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  1. #1

    NCSoft Pulls the Plug on City of Heroes

    This morning we announced that Paragon Studios will be taking to the skies of City of Heroes for the last time.

    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. As part of this, all recurring subscription billing and Paragon Market purchasing will be discontinued effective immediately. We will have more information regarding a detailed timeline for the cessation of services and what you can expect in game in the coming weeks.

    The team here at Paragon deserves special praise for all that we have accomplished over the last 5+ years. These developers are some of the most creative and talented people in the gaming industry. By now, we've all been given this news internally, but to anyone who may be reading this message after the fact; know that your hard work and dedication has not gone unappreciated or unnoticed. To any potential studios looking to grow your team; hire these people. You won't regret it.

    To our Community,

    Thank you. Thank you for your years of support. You've been with us every step of the way, sharing in our challenges, encouraging us to make City of Heroes better, more than everyone else thought it could be. We couldn't have come this far without you. I implore you all, focus on the good things of CoH and Paragon Studios. Don't dwell on the "how" or the "why", but rather join us in celebrating the legacy of an amazing partnership between the players and the development team.

    Thank you, and I'll see you in the skies, one last time.

    Andy Belford

    Community Manager

    Paragon Studios.
    Pretty sad to see it go, I've been playing it on and off since beta. There's still no date on when they're going to stop providing service.

  2. #2
    November 30th I think.

    Sad to see it go. The Paragon guys are super awesome (I've had the pleasure of chatting with them briefly a few times) and the game is quite good at its core.

    Let's not turn this into what I've seen tons of other places with, "I HATE NCSOFT THEY'RE TERRIBLE" ect. If the game was still making money, it would still be open. I'm willing to bet it's either no longer profitable in this increasingly competitive MMO market, or that the profitability is marginal and they fell they can reinvest those resources elsewhere.

    Hopefully the longterm fans can find a home somewhere else, but I know nothing will replace CoH : (

  3. #3
    Too bad, really. I never played City of Heroes -- I downloaded a trial and never could get it to actually run -- but it's never good to see people, especially game developers, lose their jobs. MMOs that close really ought to just sell their server software. They could make a bit of cash from it, and the game could still remain playable without the developer needing to spend any time or money on upkeep.

  4. #4

    City Of Heroes/Paragon Studios says there final goodbye's *Shutting Down*

    Just announced 5hrs ago City of heroes the first Superhero MMORPG will be shutting down by the end of the year. It was my first MMO i subbed to and my true first MMO *not counting runescape*. Even tho i don't play it now ill miss it. i hope the best for anyone who took part in city of heroes and its sad to see a good mmo go.
    City of heroes was also the first MMO i ever played and got to max level in.

    so what is everyone's thoughts on this please do be mature about it.
    *City of Heroes Released in 2004*
    *R.I.P City of Heroes 2004 - 2012*
    Official link: http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/n.../thank_you.php
    Official Facebook of City Of Heroes: http://www.facebook.com/CityofHeroes
    Last edited by Jtbrig7390; 2012-09-01 at 12:58 AM.
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  5. #5
    That's actually a little surprising. Thought they had a pretty dedicated userbase at a decent size to support the game.

  6. #6
    Makes me miss Earth & Beyond.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Ausr View Post
    That's actually a little surprising. Thought they had a pretty dedicated userbase at a decent size to support the game.
    ya me to but it was NCsofts choice to pull the plug i figured they been doing really well since it went f2p. but i guess it wasn't pulling in the money NCsoft hoped it would.

    Edit: i did check it out since it went f2p only 3 servers stayed at High pop the rest was low and the 3 that was high did not have my main on it i couldn't be asked to pay to move it.
    Last edited by Jtbrig7390; 2012-09-01 at 12:49 AM.
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  8. #8
    The Patient Ferbster's Avatar
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    It's a little said to see a MMO get shut down, even one who's been active for so long

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Ausr View Post
    That's actually a little surprising. Thought they had a pretty dedicated userbase at a decent size to support the game.
    As a currently active player: they do.

    It's puzzling. By all indications, CoH was doing quite well - in fact, development had ramped WAY up over the last year, since the free-to-play switch; lots of new hires and more content released faster than at any other point in the game's history. The biggest major content patch in years is sitting on the beta server, and until literally yesterday devs were excited about the things in it. Then I woke up today and the game is shutting down?

    The prevailing rumor seems to be something about NCSoft not actually owning the engine, just licensing it from Cryptic (the game changed hands a couple years after release), and the license is expiring or renegotiation fell through or something. That's not officially confirmed, but it sure seems like it has to be something like that, where they have no options other than shutting the game down. With the current state of the game, it doesn't make any sense to suddenly fire everybody and shut everything down unless something forced that specific decision; if the game was just losing money they would have LOTS of room to scale back costs and go into maintenance mode. There are still around 100k active subscribers, after all; leaving the servers running is not THAT expensive.

    Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go mourn my first MMO and longtime online home...
    Last edited by Meteoric; 2012-09-01 at 12:55 AM.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Ferbster View Post
    It's a little said to see a MMO get shut down, even one who's been active for so long
    that it is its only a little older then wow *by like 2 month if even that* and it will be missed it was the first Superhero MMORPG.

    first time i got to fight a world boss was in city of heroes and it was the GAINT octopus that was fun.

    ---------- Post added 2012-09-01 at 12:55 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Meteoric View Post
    As a currently active player: they do.

    It's puzzling. By all indications, CoH was doing quite well - in fact, development had ramped WAY up over the last year; lots of new hires and more content released faster than at any other point in the game's history. The biggest major content patch in years is sitting on the beta server, and until literally yesterday devs were excited about the things in it. Then I woke up today and the game is shutting down?

    The prevailing rumor seems to be something about NCSoft not actually owning the engine, just licensing it from Cryptic (the game changed hands a couple years after release), and the license is expiring or renegotiation fell through or something. That's not officially confirmed, but it sure seems like it has to be something like that, where they have no options other than shutting the game down. With the current state of the game, it doesn't make any sense to suddenly fire everybody and shut everything down unless something forced that specific decision; if the game was just losing money they would have LOTS of room to scale back costs and go into maintenance mode. There are still around 100k active subscribers, after all; leaving the servers running is not THAT expensive.

    Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go mourn my first MMO and longtime online home...
    who knows i figured it was doing really well as well. like u said it had new content coming out soon.

    its player base did sky rocket when it went f2p im sure.
    Last edited by Jtbrig7390; 2012-09-01 at 12:56 AM.
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  11. #11
    I enjoyed it when I played it long ago but the server I was on died out and I never went back. It's still the best superhero MMO to date to me.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Kolo View Post
    I enjoyed it when I played it long ago but the server I was on died out and I never went back. It's still the best superhero MMO to date to me.
    To me DCU/CoH tie for me cause both had many things i enjoyed. but city of heroes had the best customization out of all Superhero mmorpgs's *well all 3 of them* and even better then some other mmo's
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  13. #13
    Deleted
    If you are going to miss it there is always Champions online.

    Im going to guess alot of the CoH community will move there, and having played both I always felt CO was alot more polished than CoH. (And its not that i played CO first, I actualy played CoH before even wow) Really good pvp if you take the time to learn the abilities.

    It was by cryptic originally, maybe they didnt renew some contract with NC soft to get rid of the competition :P

    Quote Originally Posted by Jtbrig7390 View Post
    To me DCU/CoH tie for me cause both had many things i enjoyed. but city of heroes had the best customization out of all Superhero mmorpgs's *well all 3 of them* and even better then some other mmo's
    Duno if you meant champions online, but arent the CoH and CO creations basically the same? Co in the end has more customisation with the fact you can change spell colours and not archetype restricted. Altho alot of the costume pieces were drops or cash shop bought so its easy to miss the scale you can reach
    Last edited by mmocbee66edd6f; 2012-09-01 at 01:04 AM.

  14. #14
    How are they shutting down, but Warhammer/AoC is still alive? /boggled.
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  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by scamander View Post
    If you are going to miss it there is always Champions online.

    Im going to guess alot of the CoH community will move there, and having played both I always felt CO was alot more polished than CoH. (And its not that i played CO first, I actualy played CoH before even wow) Really good pvp if you take the time to learn the abilities.

    It was by cryptic originally, maybe they didnt renew some contract with NC soft to get rid of the competition :P



    Duno if you meant champions online, but arent the CoH and CO creations basically the same? Co in the end has more customisation with the fact you can change spell colours and not archetype restricted. Altho alot of the costume pieces were drops or cash shop bought so its easy to miss the scale you can reach
    naw i ment DCU/CoH aka city of heroes tied as best superhero mmo for me. there was something about Champions online i didn't care for but its customisation was also really good.
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  16. #16
    City of Heroes was a genuinely fun diversion and the community was so, so much less hostile and impatient than WoW, probably as a function of its low pressure, low-learning curve playstyle and the fact that there was no meaningful "hardcore" vs. "casual" divide. They continued to produce fun and imaginative events, and had a brilliantly customizable character system and never succumbed to the banality of pigeonholed tank/heal/dps roles. I'm really bummed that it's shutting down, I may need to go play for a while just to say goodbye to it properly.

  17. #17
    Deleted
    http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/08...s-newest-hero/

    CO is getting a big update, must reinstall it to check it out, still havn't got round to it for my PC whipe for GW2 :>

  18. #18
    I started to play this game at release. I only ever played in short spurts of a few months or so over the years though, the longest being about 6 months once. The game was unbelievably fun for those few months.

    I actually just started playing again about a month ago just out of boredom and found myself sucked right back in. I could spend hours offline just building a character with Mid's, really a fun theorycrafting game if you got into it. The new powersets that they've come up with recently were/are a lot of fun.

    The news is really sad to hear, I would've thought the game was doing well enough to at least keep the server lights on. Like someone said here, there really were only two (maybe three) active servers. They could have easily merged servers (they already have a quick server transfer system in place) and just maintain those three. I mean, games like Anarchy Online are still somehow going strong, and I have to think they have even less players still playing that. Oh well...

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by scamander View Post
    Duno if you meant champions online, but arent the CoH and CO creations basically the same? Co in the end has more customisation with the fact you can change spell colours and not archetype restricted. Altho alot of the costume pieces were drops or cash shop bought so its easy to miss the scale you can reach
    Champions Online is a cool game. I don't like it as much as CoH, but I played it at launch and have gone back for a month or three now and again. So I'm not trying to put it down.

    CO's costume creator is, as a piece of technology, so obviously superior to the CoH costume creator that it really SHOULD end up generating far, far better costumes. You aren't restricted to 2 colors per piece, it has way more placement points, better scales, more categories, the list goes on. But the art style is very different, and personally I didn't like most of the individual pieces, nor most of the complete costumes. CoH costumes, despite being inferior in a technical sense, had much better design and aesthetics.

    But that's all highly subjective, obviously.

    Personally, CO is the closest thing I've seen to a spiritual successor to CoH, but it's still pretty different. Not sure if I'll end up there, or somewhere else, or giving up on MMOs altogether for a while.

    The folks who run the Titan Network (they maintain Paragonwiki and Mids and etc) are talking about attempting to buy the rights and crowdfund the whole thing, or something like that, which would be great and they have my support if that makes it past the planning stage. But I'm not counting on it.
    Last edited by Meteoric; 2012-09-01 at 01:22 AM.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Mosc View Post
    I started to play this game at release. I only ever played in short spurts of a few months or so over the years though, the longest being about 6 months once. The game was unbelievably fun for those few months.

    I actually just started playing again about a month ago just out of boredom and found myself sucked right back in. I could spend hours offline just building a character with Mid's, really a fun theorycrafting game if you got into it. The new powersets that they've come up with recently were/are a lot of fun.

    The news is really sad to hear, I would've thought the game was doing well enough to at least keep the server lights on. Like someone said here, there really were only two (maybe three) active servers. They could have easily merged servers (they already have a quick server transfer system in place) and just maintain those three. I mean, games like Anarchy Online are still somehow going strong, and I have to think they have even less players still playing that. Oh well...
    ya they could have done a mega server thing.
    I don't think there shutting down cause of lack of money but more of problems with its former owner and the current one. but who knows.
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