NCSoft Closes "City of Heroes" Publisher Paragon Studios

samazon writes "Earlier today, City of Heroes community manager Andy Belford announced that NCSoft is shutting down Paragon Studios. Over 7,500 individuals were viewing the official CoH forums as of 3:00 PM EST, and this thread from Belford, AKA Zwilinger, notes that 'In a realignment of company focus and publishing support, NCsoft has made the decision to close Paragon Studios. Effective immediately, all development on City of Heroes will cease and we will begin preparations to sunset the world's first, and best, Super Hero MMORPG before the end of the year.' A petition has already been created to save City of Heroes."

Comments

Comes as a BIG surprise.

[samazon]

Only four months after Matt Miller promised "a ton of plans for content beyond Issue 24 and 25. We have a pencil sketch of the stories, arcs, zones, and trials for the next few years (I say pencil, because we still want to be agile and work to bring you things you actively ask for, things even you don't know you want yet!)" and less than two weeks after the release of a new power set. As much as I enjoy GW2, I am FURIOUS with NCSoft for pulling the plug on an eight year old game. The LEAST they could do is keep the servers up, or sell it to someone who will do so.

Re:Comes as a BIG surprise.

[HappyEngineer]

Why did anyone mod you up? When someone abandons a copyrighted property of any sort then it should enter the public domain. If the book, dvd, or whatever goes out of print then you should lose the copyright. If a game is no longer available for purchase or play then you should lose the copyright.

Who gains when the government protects a monopoly on content that you refuse to provide to anyone? How is that promoting the arts in any way?

If you want to keep the copyright then just make it available for purchase. If you care so little about the product then you lose rights to the product. I can't imagine any reasonable argument against this.

People in favor of copyright are always saying that the creators should get paid for their creations. How are they being paid if they stop making it available for sale? The only possible response is that they want to restrict access to the content so that new content has less competition. That's a pretty poor argument for continuing a government enforced monopoly.

Re:Comes as a BIG surprise.

[tlhIngan]

Why did anyone mod you up? When someone abandons a copyrighted property of any sort then it should enter the public domain. If the book, dvd, or whatever goes out of print then you should lose the copyright. If a game is no longer available for purchase or play then you should lose the copyright.

Who gains when the government protects a monopoly on content that you refuse to provide to anyone? How is that promoting the arts in any way?

If you want to keep the copyright then just make it available for purchase. If you care so little about the product then you lose rights to the product. I can't imagine any reasonable argument against this.

People in favor of copyright are always saying that the creators should get paid for their creations. How are they being paid if they stop making it available for sale? The only possible response is that they want to restrict access to the content so that new content has less competition. That's a pretty poor argument for continuing a government enforced monopoly.

Given the practicality of duplicating copyrighted materials these days, I say we don't lose copyright protection.

Instead, the instant something is no longer for sale by the creator, it becomes mandatory licensed, as in, a government-set fee schedule kicks in to compensate the creator, but anyone can then sell the good, as long as they had an original. And yes, any and all DRM can be broken in order to sell it.

So the moment a book goes out of print, anyone who has it can freely scan it and sell it for whatever they want, paying the original creator the fixed per-copy fee. Ditto music, movies, etc.

Creators still get their fees, public still has the goods, and libraries and other resources can make use of their immense collections to sell copies and make some money to support themselves. Google Books can continue to sell access or copies, etc.

It also keeps copyright intact so open-source doesn't go public-domain accidentally - it's still copyrighted and users can pay the per-copy fee to use it under standard copyright laws, or obey the open-source license.

Abandoned works can have standardized collection agencies (e.g., libraries) who can hold the fees in trust and use the profits and investments of it to help fund operations

Once a work enters mandatory licensing, it cannot leave it, so if the original creator wishes to re-release it, he can compete with everyone else. The government set fee will be less than the average per-copy royalty (say, 70%) for that type of work (this is to encourage authors who wish not to participate to simply keep said book available for sale). So if all book authors earned on average (including first time authors through to bestselling authors) of $5 per copy of the book (probably a bit on the high side but it's just a number I picked out of thin air), the per-copy fee for any book will be $3.50. Ebook websites can compete against each other - I suspect after costs the price will be $3.75 or so for out of print, but not out of copyright books.

Same goes for other works.

A bit sad to see

[Galaga88]

I haven't played the game in years, but it was the only MMORPG I ever played in which I actually made it to the endgame.

The combat seemed faster paced and generally less grindy than other MMORPGs at the time.

It helped that I played a Tanker, which was a horribly unbalanced class at the time. I remember forming a team, and single-handedly holding aggro on an entire instance worth of mobs, herding them into a corner, and letting the blasters let loose all at once. Good times.

Re:Sad to see it go

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 3 max level characters and 30+ alts in CoH, and consider it to be one of the best games ever. I played from 2004-2009.

All the game zones are incredible, there is a massive amount of excellent PvE content. Most of the classes were unbalanced at launch, which made them incredibly fun. However, the lack of integrated PvP and crafting at launch held it back in my opinion, stemming from it's origins as a garage project before being picked up by NC. That said, the resulting hero/villain combat was hands-down the best PvP experience I've ever had online. I only left the game when the PvP action dwindled.

When CoV was announced they began balancing hero classes and developing the PvP system, which was an awkward move, since people were used to tanking and DPS'ing 50 mobs at once. If CoH had launched as a dual faction, open-world PvPvE with crafting and economic structures, Blizzard would have had a serious challenger for MMO subscriptions.

My all-time favorite MMO moment was the second CoV PvP beta, where everyone was allowed to make fully slotted lv25 characters of either faction and stress test the new zone. It was all out WAR. At one point one side (I forget which now) had the bulk of the other faction holed up in their hospital, with assassins teleporting around the laser defenses and killing players directly in the respawn tubes. Reclaiming those corridors was the most intense group PvP action I'd seen until contested Abyss fort raids in Aion.

CoH/V players are indeed SUPER loyal, it has always had one of the best game communities around. I will be sad losing all my characters, whenever I upgrade my PC I like to reinstall and tour Paragon and the Rogues Isles again, touch up my custom story arc.

Oh yeah, you can make your own mobs and levels, how cool is that?

From the Titan Network

[KingSkippus]

If you're a player of the game, you might have run across me at some point. I'm TonyV, the creator of the Paragon Wiki web site and current owner and administrator of the Titan Network sites.

I'm really hoping that this won't be the end of the game. I've posted a message on the official forums here (and on the Titan Network forums here discussing what I'm intending to do. It might not work out, in which case four months down the line, we're not going to be any worse off than we are today. But if you're reading this here and don't browse the official forums very often, please drop by. As the game's continued existence will depend on a crowd funding effort, we really need you to stay plugged in over the next few months. I'll post regular updates on our Titan Network forums to let you know how it's going.

Re:Being "Super"

[bhcompy]

EVE.