TonyV

Chill, folks. For real. Remember, our only enemy here is apathy, and there's a distinct lack of it lately. I'm not going to distribute résumés or CVs because I think that's a bit unreasonable to expect. As Jimmy pointed out above, even people who have years of experience in the industry haven't run across circumstances like what we're dealing in, so in that sense, we're all breaking new ground. Rest assured, though, we do have the business and legal side of this covered. You really will just have to trust us on that. ...Or not, in which case you'll just have to wait until everything is done to determine our level of credibility. I'm cool with either way.

Good god, why didn't I extend my list of hypotheticals one more letter to E? I suppose then it would be a drug reference. Are there any safe letters? This is why I need a personal PR person.

That's totally fine, and I acknowledge and respect that. You're not yelling for my head on a platter like some people are, and as far as I know you're not spreading a bunch of misinformation, so seriously, we're good. 🙂 All I can say to that is that I really do understand that frustration, but I promise you, I was never directly involved in previous talks. In the interest of completeness, to my knowledge, there were three groups that I know of that worked on "talks" in the past. The first was Paragon Studios itself, which obviously didn't work out, and I don't think that much of anything was ever publicly revealed about their discussions. The second was a group who approached a bunch of studios to try to acquire the CoH IP and take over the game. To my knowledge, that didn't go anywhere, but I wasn't directly involved in those talks, and I don't think that crew ever dealt directly with NCSOFT, only third party studios. The third, and probably most well-known thanks mostly (and unfortunately) due to some drama around it, was a group (informally referred to as "Task Force Hail Mary") who approached NCSOFT about running the game as some sort of extension of City of Titans. This is where there has been a lot of confusion because of two main reasons: People keep getting the Titan Network and City of Titans mixed up. I'm the owner and one of the admins of the Titan Network. We run the Paragon Wiki, City Info Terminal, a few other CoH-related sites, and Paragon Chat. We are not affiliated with City of Titans, the successor project that ran the Kickstarter campaign, other than talking about it on our forums. The Titan Network never received one cent of that money, because it wasn't our fundraiser. When they named their project, I thought it was kind of a cool homage to the Titan Network, which became a community hub after the game's shutdown. In hindsight, I kinda wish that they had named their project something else because of the confusion it's creating now. Oh well. (And for the record, I'm not disparaging them; I still hope they're wildly successful with their project.) Most of the discussion that happened around the Task Force Hail Mary talks took place on the Titan Network forums, because as I mentioned above, we were kind of the de facto community hub for such conversations. I posted some of the updates myself because I knew and talked to the City of Titans people, but (and this is the important part) I was not involved in those talks directly. Everything I was posting was secondhand information, and I tried to be as clear and explicit regarding the fact as I could. When the team involved in those talks announced who they were, I let them handle communications about it from there. Nevertheless, because I was posting information passed on to me, some people are still under the impression that I was involved in those talks. I absolutely, emphatically had nothing to do with them. I mean, you have to admit that circumstances are significantly different now than they've been for the past seven years, right? I get why you may question what bearing that might have on any potential talks going on, but it's not like this just came out of the blue, in absence of anything else happening in the community. I don't want to go connecting dots that aren't necessarily connected, but a lot has changed between early April and now. I think it's important to acknowledge that no one at HC, including myself, is demanding anything of anyone. I mean, HC asks for donations to keep the hardware running, but nothing going on is contingent on that even. It's not like we're asking you to actually do anything because of this announcement. It really is just for informational purposes, it's keeping people in the loop that stuff is happening to (hopefully) turn Homecoming into somewhere where people can have confidence that the lights won't go off tomorrow. We can't promise that yet, but that's the end goal here. I guess what I'm getting at is that yes, we'd like you to trust us, but not because we can prop up some servers. It's more like trust us because... well, just because. And if you don't want to yet, that's cool, too. If you don't feel like our reputations justify that kind of faith, then hopefully we'll be able to provide some concrete evidence to justify it soon. If you want to wait until that point, that's fine, and I don't take it personally. But I'm also a bit confused as to what exactly you want to know that we haven't told you. The plan: To get City of Heroes running in a legal manner under an agreement that allows HC to continue operating minus the threat of being shut down. Yes, there are still details in flux, but that's the big gist of it. The people: GM Jimmy, Cipher, me, and various representatives at NCSOFT. There's really nothing much past that that's earth-shattering to know other than a time frame when all of this will be done. We don't have a firm one yet, and I really don't want to speculate about it because that way leads to madness. If you want to know details about our organizational structure, exactly what rights we'll have, what NCSOFT's role will be in all of this, etc., that's what I keep referring to as the minutiae that we're working out that, again, I don't want to talk about because until we have something on paper, it's subject to change. The important thing is, though, is that first bullet point above. Everything we're doing is in support of that goal. If I'd wanted you to shut up, the last thing I would have done is reply to your post. You make good points and ask good questions, ones that are well-thought-out and that I think are reflective of the community's understandable fears and skepticism as a whole, which is why I chose it to reply to. Seriously, the only thing that gets me in a "shut up" kind of mood is when I see people spreading gross misinformation about me, the Titan Network, the Homecoming crew, or events that never happened. And even that's not because of any kind of ego issue, it's because it's damaging to the community and what we're trying to accomplish here.

As a side note, I see this question sometimes too: "Why did you bother telling anyone you were talking to NCSoft to begin with? Why not just wait until a deal is worked out and then tell everyone?" The answer is that there are a few reasons, some of them better than others. They include: Everyone playing on Homecoming right now has a sword of Damocles hanging over their head. It could be shut down at any given moment with a C&D from NCSoft. Part of the reason we announced that we were in talks is to let everyone know that we're aware of that painful reality, and to let them know that we are working on removing it from being a possibility in the future. We genuinely didn't want to spring this on everyone all of a sudden. That would have drawn in a bunch of detractors complaining that we've been operating "in secret," ostensibly to avoid having the community involved in any decisions that are made. In reality, the community is the reason we're doing what we're doing, and will continue to be involved even after any deal that goes through is done. I personally wanted to let folks know because it's exciting. It's been almost seven years since the game was shut down, and I feel like we're closer than ever to having it back up again as an actual authorized project with folks actually maintaining and improving it in an aboveboard manner. I can't overstate how huge that is, and keeping that kind of news under wraps would be less than ideal for me. I guess in the end, I always think, if I were a player and I had my choice of knowing the big stuff now and finding out the minutiae later, would I want that, or to be kept completely in the dark until it was all over and done with? Having been a player who has faced both of those eventualities from various people and entities, I'd choose the former over the latter, so that's what I've pushed for. Thanks a ton for all of your continued support, even those of you who are skeptical but still hopeful.

GM Jimmy, Cipher and I are running the actual discussions on this side. I'm not going to name individuals' names from NCSoft, but I'll say that the people involved have the authority and the ability to make a deal happen. As for details, that's still being discussed. And while it has largely been agreed upon, we don't want to go blasting out what all it entails because until there's some ink dry, it's still under consideration. Let me put it this way: If we told everyone that we were working on getting A, B, C, and D, and when everything is said and done we were able to get A, B, and C, but not D, there would be a sizeable contingent of people who were upset that we didn't get D. That's all they'd hear, and they'd never be able to enjoy A, B, and C because they'd be too miserable ruing how not having D just ruins everything. There would even a smaller group who insisted that we were lying about D the whole time as some nefarious plot to get everyone behind us, only to break their hearts in the end because as everyone knows, D is really the only important thing all along. I'm not being coy here, and I'm not trying to string people along. I've maintained all along that the best attitude to have through all of this is cautious optimism. We're doing our best to nail all this down as quickly as possible and I promise that we're not going to leave everyone hanging indefinitely. I know there are a lot of people out there who think that if they were on our shoes, this would be going a lot differently. All I can say in response is that we're doing the best we can, and I personally think it's going really well. You don't have to live in a dream land of rainbows and unicorns, but all I ask is to not go all Doom and Gloom™. Give us a chance and see what we come up with. I think that it's going to be a really good deal. I will reiterate one thing that's already been said: This is a not-for-profit endeavor. I've seen speculation that we're going to start charging to play, putting microtransactions out there, yadda yadda yadda. That's simply not true. This has been and will continue to be a community supported effort, not a business. Last but not least, I know everyone wants a time frame. I can't give one. I wish I could, but all of this is pretty new. NCSoft doesn't have any kind of boilerplate template to use for this agreement; it's all having to be custom created, and that takes time and resources. We do have an idea of how long this should take, and it is finite, but again, I don't want to mention some time frame only to have everyone getting out the pitchforks if it goes a bit longer than that. As I said above, we're working to get this done as quickly as possible.

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is yeeeeeesssss. Actually, there's no technical reason it can't be now, and in fact, Jimmy has asked me specifically about this. Regardless of how all of this shakes out I intend to make the contents of the wiki more available to whomever wants it for whatever purpose they want it for. It's just a matter of time and effort. But yes, if this goes through, the Paragon Wiki will be actively updated with new changes to the Homecoming servers.

/offtopic That's not true, by the way. A "fiduciary duty" is a specific legal term, and corporations are not legally obligated to maximize profit for shareholders, the company itself, or anyone else. Obviously, that's usually a good idea at least to some sane degree to keep your shareholders happy, but it's totally up to the board and officers of a company to decide what its goals are, and they don't have to include maximizing (or even making) profit.

1 and 2: I don't know, that's not up to us and I can't speak on any of those other group's or NCSoft's behalf, only our own. As for 3, if everyone knew all the nitty-gritty details, it would probably be a bit anticlimactic. There's nothing particularly sensational or scandalous happening in secret. It's just nailing down details to try to make this a reality, details that might change between now and then. We just don't need a committee of thousands weighing in on what's a must, what's a can't, what's outrageous, what's reasonable, etc. That's not to say that we're ignoring everyone; we definitely have kept our fingers on the pulse of the community and it's been a huge factor in what we're working on. Last but not least, we don't want to say "we proposed X, Y, and Z" and then later have to tell everyone we didn't get Z. All people will hear is, "We didn't get Z," and that's what would be plastered all over, turning something really positive into a negative. That might sound like a cop-out, but admit it... This is the Internet. You know that's what would happen. In short, we want what we tell everyone to be accurate and reliable. To be honest, the only reason we're posting what we did is because we're genuinely excited and because if this goes through, we don't want to get down the road and spring on everyone that we've been "secretly" working together for some time. ("ZOMG conspiracy!") I've consistently asked the question in our talks, "What can we tell the community?" I've always said I'll be as transparent with everyone as I can, and that hasn't changed.

Option D) None of the above... Seriously, all I ask is to give us a little more time and wait until we can give some more details before deciding that it's all doom and gloom. I promise that if I didn't think this was going to be a good thing, I wouldn't be involved in it like I am. I'm not oblivious to the fact that at this point, my own reputation is inextricably tied to the outcome of what we're working on, and I'm not eager to come out of this with everyone thinking, "Man, Tony's an idiot." (Although I also recognize that a 5%-10% "hate rate" ain't so bad, so an occasional "Tony's an idiot" post doesn't get to me...) Anyway, my point is that what we're working on isn't a "best deal we can get" situation. It is, in my opinion, a genuinely good deal. I'm trying my best to not get everyone overly worked up because nothing is inked yet and until it is I'll have a healthy dose of low-level paranoia. But I also think that as things are going, when we can talk more, a lot of skeptical people will come away pleasantly surprised.

It's all good, really! And fair enough; I'm a HUGE believer in holding people accountable and remaining at least cautiously skeptical until someone gives you a reason to believe otherwise. I seriously hope that we can establish that level of credibility, but until we do, I'm not being facetious when I say you're absolutely justified and correct to be asking and thinking critically about what you're hearing.

We can't discuss details of what's we're working on, but I want to be 100% clear about this: There is absolutely zero chance that this will be for-profit. Screenshot this and hold me to it.

Quick note of clarification: The Titan Network and Homecoming are working together. I think you guys are thinking of City of Titans, which is the successor project. The Titan Network isn't affiliated with City of Titans. We're the Paragon Wiki folks, they're the folks who are working on a new game. 😉 City of Titans is not involved in this effort.