City of Heroes

Ordinary Hero

Save City of Heroes: a Second Incorrect Meme

The above is a video of the Atlas Park protest, right? Wrong.

One of the pieces of misinformation that has been going around is the inclusion of the above video in discussing the Save City of Heroes campaign, the implication being that this video is footage of one of the Atlas Park protests that have been ongoing in the game. It isn't.

This video, created by the genius of Leandro Pardini, is a proof-of-concept video he put together for his  City of Heroes demo file crowd assembly script. On the official forums, he asked people to send in their costume files so they could be added to the demo video. And as you can see, it came out very impressively!

One small problem. Those reporting on the closure of City of Heroes, and many people not connected with the Save City of Heroes campaign took the video to be of the Atlas Park protest that had recently taken place, not realizing the amazing but true origins and purpose of the video, and those who did understand, made no effort that their readers knew that this video wasn't of the protest nor was it connected with Save City of Heroes, but was a personal project of one very creative player. D'oh!

To clarify, the Save City of Heroes campaign never misrepresented the video. That was done by various gaming sites, YouTube channels and Tweeters. Basically, those who didn't know the game well, but heard about the closing, saw this video come out around that time, and made the erroneous connection.

Still, it is an amazing video and Leandro Pardini is one amazing City of Heroes player!

Inspirational Save City of Heroes Video by Jakinlrali

Now that my complaints about some of the campaign's philosophy is out of the way, watch this well-done inspirational Save City of Heroes video to see the campaign at its best:

A Convenient Lie

While I pat the members of the Save City of Heroes campaign on the collective backs for fighting the good fight, I do find that the truth has been a bit of a casualty among them. I refer to the campaign's meme that City of Heroes was profitable at the time of its closure.

Press for sources and hard numbers, any such claimants come up empty. They incorrectly point to the quarterly financial reports as showing profit (they show total sales, not profit), and make general references to "developer comments" (the same developers were caught by surprise at the game's closing, so couldn't have been paying much attention to the obviously troubling financial numbers post Freedom).

It's understandable that they need a narrative of why. Why is the game worth saving? It's also a narrative that needs to deal with how. How is anyone going to be convinced to invest in the game unless the game is profitable?

Under this kind of emotional pressure, simply accepting a convenient lie is very tempting. Especially one that could be true. After all, we don't know what the quarterly expenses of the game were, so we have no idea if the game was profitable or not.

Even if City of Heroes had a modest profit, that profit would almost certainly be consumed by the unannounced project the studio was working on. So even if City of Heroes was profitable (unlikely but possible) Paragon Studios itself almost certainly wasn't. The closure strongly suggests a loss, not a profit (think about it: grocery stores consider themselves to be doing well on a 1-2% profit!).

If City of Heroes is to be saved it should be saved on the facts and truth of the matter. It should be saved on its own, valid merits. Not on fictions.

P.S. I am perfectly willing to admit I'm wrong on this one if anyone can provide a valid accounting of the game's quarterly expenses. Highly unlikely any such evidence exists, but I'm always open to accepting the facts.

UPDATE: MMORPG.com has posted an article attempting to answer the question of the game's profitability. They quote two sources: an anonymous source who says the annual operating costs of the game/studio was $4 million (returning $12 million dollars a year on that investment), and NCsoft which said the anonymous source is "simply wrong" and that "The studio was unprofitable before the shutdown."

So on one hand we have an anonymous source saying the studio was profitable, on the other we have the studio's publisher NCsoft going on record saying the studio was not profitable. NCsoft seems more credible to me. Closing a studio down because it isn't profitable fits the available facts, where closing down a studio "because we're evil and or incompetent don't you know" even though it's making a 200% profit (combined with the very questionable $4 million dollar annual operating cost the anonymous source gave) doesn't.

In my opinion, and the opinion of City of Heroes' former publisher, the assertion that the game/studio was profitable is not supported by the available facts.

Come What May, "Save City of Heroes" Wins

The "Save City of Heroes Campaign" (Twitter: #SaveCoH and @SaveCoH) has no chance at all of saving the game, but every day they don't give up, every day they keep trying, they win. The day after the servers are shut down, if they never gave up, if they never quit, they still will have won.

Never give up, never surrender!

My Meta Rules

Play on the beta server is too easy, unless you set some personal meta-rules.

If you've been following my blog, you know that I've been playing on the beta server for my farewell tour of City of Heroes Freedom. The problem with the beta server is everything is free, so it's possible to buy a bunch of buffs and enhancements for your characters to make them absurdly powerful. To my mind, that defeats the purpose of the game by removing all challenge. So, I've set myself some meta-rules to keep things interesting.

I'm limiting myself to Single Origin Enhancements, no IOs allowed. If I got something as a vet reward, I get to use it. I can use travel powers purchased from the beta store, as well as XP Boosters. Recipes that drop in-game that give temporary buffs or temporary powers (such as the new Survival and Defense recipes) can be used, but all salvage must come as drops or from non-farming AE ticket purchases. Wentworth's/Black Market cannot be used, and no store bought buffs can be used.

This results in fast, efficient play (XP boosts, travel powers) to make the most of the time that's left, but leaves the challenge intact (no IOs, no store bought buffs).

Save City of Zero Wing

My Farewell Leveling Tour & In-Game Protest Saturday

Daemodand rerolled to SJ/SR Brute

I'm taking my farewell leveling tour of City of Heroes Freedom. I'm doing it on the beta server because at this point there is little difference between the beta server and live, and beta has options like the new bodysuit Daemodand is wearing above.

For my last trip to 50, I decided to roll Daemodand as what he would've been if I had been just starting out today. That means a change from MA/SR Scrapper Hero to SJ/SR Brute Hero. Street Justice is the set Martial Arts should have been, and Super Reflexes is much more enjoyable on Tankers and Brutes due to the bad power ordering on Scrappers (no AOE Defense at all until level 26!) I have fond Memories of Martial Arts, but overall it just sucks compared to Street Justice. Back when I first rolled Daemodand, Martial Arts was as close to my vision of the character as the game would allow. Street Justice absolutely nails it.

And that bodysuit! I had plans on buying the whole bodysuit pack because it's some of the best, most superheroy stuff they've added to the game in a long time. I'm very pleased with Daemodand's new look.

In other news, there's a groundswell of player activism concerning the effort to save the game. There's going to be a protest on Virtue server's Atlas Park at 2 p.m. PST on Saturday, September 8th if you care to participate. For myself, quiet acceptance of the game's fate along with enjoying my final tour through the game is the direction I'm choosing to go.

Paragon Studios Management Attempt to Negotiate Reprieve

Apparently Alpha Wolf posted on the admin channel in game news that the "...Paragon management is having discussion with ncsoft and investors." [Zwillinger has confirmed the discussions in the thread linked below. -ed]

Can the game yet be saved?

City of Heroes Bible Available Online

In case you're interested in a copy of an old, outdated version of the City of Heroes lore bible, you can find it here at Google Docs.

City of Heroes to Close November 30

According to GameSpot UK, the closing date of the game is to be November 30, and apparently the staff have all been laid off already.

More to come.

City of Heroes Freedom to Close in 2012

City of Heroes Freedom will be closing by the end of the year according to Andy Belford, Community Manager of Paragon Studios.

Disappointing, but not unexpected news. The Freedom business model failed to gain any traction, and the financial situation of the game became unsustainable.

In my opinion, the Freedom model's continued emphasis on selling subscriptions, and failing to grandfather in returning subscribers, were the major factors in the model's failure. Subscriptions had by that time already proven to be unsustainable (thus the switch to f2p), and the former subscribers who were willing to return and give the game another try were welcomed with locked characters and grayed-out enhancements, thereby losing them as customers.

There were other minor factors as well in my opinion, including an uncompelling, exclusive endgame in the Incarnate system, the erosion of the good-will of the community caused by Architect Entertainment, and the fact that the game is quite old and suffering from natural attrition, and though I would disagree, many have said the game hasn't aged very well (IMHO, the game looks and plays exceptionally well for a game of any age, let alone one designed 10 years ago!) The game's feeling of extreme repetition, even by MMO standards, was the game's number-one, perennial Achilles' Heel.

None of this changes the fact that City of Heroes, a game that ran for eight years, can only be called a great success. It's influence will live on in the features it gave to games like Guild Wars 2, The Secret World, and so many others. Never doubt that City of Heroes has been highly influential in this industry, and years after its closing, it will still be felt in the design of brand new games. We'll be able to say, "City of Heroes did it first!"

More to come.

Installing City of Heroes Freedom on Ubuntu 12.04 is Easy!

City of Heroes for human beings.

1. Download Wine & Winetricks from the Software Center.

2. Download Xdelta from the Software Center.

3. Download Unrar from the Software Center (it might already be installed).

4. In the terminal, run the following to get XML::Simple: sudo apt-get install libxml-simple-perl

5. Run Wine Configuration (winecfg) and it will create your Wine directory automatically.

6. Go to /home/YourUserName/.Wine/drive_c/Program Files and create a new folder called City of Heroes (replacing YourUserName with your user name). If you're running 64 bit Ubuntu do this in */Program Files (x86) instead. If you don't see the .Wine directory, make sure the "show hidden files" option is on (ctrl+h).

7. Download cohlaunch.pl from http://www.carnildo.com/cohlaunch/index.html uncompress it and move it into the City of Heroes directory you just created.

8. In the terminal run: 

cd "/home/YourUserName/.Wine/drive_c/Program Files/City of Heroes"

The quotation marks are necessary. On 64 bit replace Program Files with Program Files (x86). Replace YourUserName with your user name.

9. Now in the terminal run: perl cohlaunch.pl -renderthread 0 and let it do its thing. The whole game will be downloaded and patched up, so this may take several hours depending on your network connection speed.

10. Once complete, to run the program repeat the two terminal commands above to call the directory and run the script with perl in that directory. If no patch is needed the game will just run, otherwise it will patch itself up and then run. If you hear choppy sound or no sound, quit the game, log out of Ubuntu, log back in and relaunch the game.

11. Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls!

Tested on Ubuntu 12.04, Xubuntu 12.04 and Lubuntu 12.04.

City of Heroes Freeom's NPC Design Is Tops

Arachnos Arbiter shows off CoHF's fantastic NPC design.

While playing the other day, I was reminded of what I've thought for a long time about City of Heroes Freedom: the NPC design is some of the very best in the industry. Compare it to any MMO of any vintage you choose, this little game from 2004 not only competes with them all, but often (such as in the case of the Arachnos Arbiter above) exceeds them all.

Q2 2012

Sales are down 1% from last quarter. The new revenue streams the game is trying may be stemming losses, but revenues are still on a general downward trend as I predicted in my previous post. This comes during a quarter when NCsoft's revenues overall are up 4%.

Why NCsoft, notorious for an itchy trigger finger, hasn't shelved the game yet is an open question. Maybe the game is so inexpensive to run, they're still well into profitability? Perhaps NCsoft is so enthusiastic about Paragon Studios' upcoming title they're keeping City around as a sort of loss-leader? It's hard to tell, but I'm glad the game hasn't met the ax.

The great white hope is Issue 24, which is looking like a very strong Issue. Will it be enough to turn the game's fortunes around?

Missing SBOs; New Charater; Issue 24; Financials Due Soon

Comet Master, Grav/NRG Dominator Villain

So if you store your Store Bought Origin (SBO) Enhancements in emails, and forget about them for 60 days, those emails and enhancements will get deleted. I found out the hard way. I didn't think they'd delete pay Enhancements like that. Considering petitioning to get them back, but I don't know, I kind of just shoulder-shrug about it.

I rolled up a new character, a Grav/NRG Dom. Energy Assault is amazing these days, but what people don't realize is that Gravity, once it gets its pet Singularity (Singy) is one of the best control sets around. A good half of the set's control potential is in that pet. Oftentimes, Singy allows you to just blast and not worry too much about even controlling anything. That's the beauty of Gravity Control, and nobody sees that. And yes, I haven't written a bio as you can see. Sometimes I have to experience a character in-game for a good while before I know who they are.

Issue 24 has some stuff. Leveling content! Sweet, sweet, much needed leveling content! But tier-9 VIP exclusive costume set. Boo. And Blasters getting another buff, this time quick snipes (Doms benefit, yay!) but also getting regeneration in some of their secondary powers. Regeneration is not going to save a Blaster. A Blaster's still gonna die. I don't see the point. But okay, I guess. Oh, and power pools just got awesome. Customization, and a new pool power that turns your character into an "unrelenting berserker".

The latest financials for NCsoft are due out this week. Following hot on the heels of a very weak Issue 23 numbers will probably be down again (I'd love to be wrong about that). The good news is NCsoft either has forgotten the game is still running, or they like it, they really, really like it. What could possibly go wrong?

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@DarylShort

Precise Pangolin Patrols Paragon!

Captain Nighttime exacts dark justice once again, thanks to Ubuntu 12.04!

The game runs like a champ (40 fps open world; 85 fps instances) on the "Recommended" graphics setting with vertical sync off on my low-power-consumption Ubuntu box (uses only 246 watts, monitor included).

Ubuntu's screen capture app makes getting shots of ID badges and the costume creator child's play (something I struggled with in Windows).

The only tricky part of installing was figuring out how to get XML::Simple installed (Perl, Wine, Wget and Xdelta all either came with Precise or were available in the Software Center). Turns out one command line did it:


sudo apt-get install libxml-simple-perl


Oh, and as you can see, I'm finally playing in High Definition. Nice.


Windows? Where we're going we don't need Windows!

Taking a Break From All Your Cities Sure Would Help Alot

Magnaniman poses with flag made from Statesman's cape.

So I'm going on an uninstall break from the game. There are just too many games that need playing right now, and City has gotten more than its fair share recently. But fear not! I shall return as I always do because City of Heroes Freedom is my home MMO.

Some final (for now) admonitions:

If you've never played City of Heroes Freedom, try it, you have nothing to lose and I promise you you will love it!

Prices in the Paragon Store could and should be lower. A lot lower. The $10 Leprechaun really drives this home.

Beast Mastery is something I'll have to try when I come back because it looks great and my Anne of the Jungle character must be rerolled to it.

Drop rates in Dark Astoria need to be higher. They are much too conservative right now.

The new Dark Astoria's missions, though a bit wordy, are fantastically done and the zone looks and sounds better than ever! I don't miss the fog at all.

Oh, and I want to get Staff Fighting, too. Uh, I better get out of here before I start playing again lol.

TTFN!

Mr. Wrecking Ball does Dark Astoria.

Kicking the Min-Max Habit

A whole new world opens up once you get your head out of the spreadsheets, out of Wentworth's and into game immersion and just having fun. You don't have to play on +4x8, you don't have to marketeer, you don't have to Incarnate or iTral, you don't have to put the same travel power on every character. You don't have to do anything that's not fun.

Just grab some SOs and go punch face. Be the superhero/supervillain the game, and you, want you to be.

Above all, ignore the min-maxers.

Issue 22 & Hiatus Over???...

So Issue 22 is out. Stalkers have been turned up to 11. If you slot the Stalker ATO, they're turned up to 12. CRIT, CRIT, placate, CRIT is a hell of a way to open a fight. I'm gonna have a hard time rolling a Scrapper from now on. Stalkers are where the crits live.

Mr. Wrecking Ball's new look thanks to the Olympian Guard  costume set.

Yes, I came out of my hiatus from the game to try some stuff out. I also tried the Brute ATO. Old Fury is back.  I can now get Mr. Wrecking Ball's Fury up to 85ish and hold it there pretty steadily. Just like with old Fury. I hear reports on the forums of getting to 100 Fury with it, but I don't see how that's possible. 85 is solid enough for me.

More to come???...

So, Q4 Earnings Report (Now Including Q1 2012)

The fourth-quarter financials for City of Heroes Freedom are in. Sales for City of Heroes were up 18% from last quarter, and up 6% from Q4 2010.

We knew sales were going to be up this quarter, the only question was by how much. Now that the game's whales have bought their year-subscriptions and hundreds of dollars worth of Paragon Points each, will we see the numbers continue to rise in Q1 2012, or will they start to decline again? [Q1 2012 financials are in, and unfortunately the game's revenue has continued its overall downward trend: down 16% from Q4 2010. Revenues are now lower than they were the quarter before Freedom's launch. Looks like Freedom has failed to turn the game's sales around. The only question left is: how low can the revenues get before the game closes? - ED]

But for now, Freedom is a success, if a modest one. That's good to see.

Year-on-year the game's sales are down 23% due to "user attrition", but Freedom seems to be reversing that trend, at least for now.

NCSoft earnings releases page.

Rageless Brute 2: Low Fury Boogaloo

In my last article, I showed how at high Fury a Rageless Brute build, far from being gimp, is actually very viable and enjoys various advantages to make up for damage output that is only very slightly lower. Now in this followup article, I examine what happens at lower Fury values. Does the Rageless Brute fair as well as at high Fury, or does the idea of a Rageless Brute fall apart? Follow me after the break to find out!

Going Rageless?

The one and only thing I don't like about Super Strength as a set is Rage. It's a poorly balanced power and the crash is annoying. So I ask myself: can I go Rageless on a Super Strength Brute? What would I be gaining and what would I lose?

Join me after the break to examine the Rageless possibilities!

Issue 22 Fan Trailer by Sport921

While I take a break from the game, why don't you check out this great fan-made trailer to get you hyped up for Issue 22? It's looking like an amazing update for the game! And roll a Stalker. You just might be glad you did!

Positron Interview at Massively

The death of Statesman: best feature of Issue 22, hur, hur!

Addressing the death of Statesman and its implications for the game, Matt "Positron" Miller sat down with Massively.com for an interview. Among other things, it's revealed he won't be coming back (as already reported on this blog) and won't be removed from marketing materials, though he will be removed from the game.

I think you could remove Statesman from the marketing materials, replace him with just about anyone else, and it wouldn't be a big deal at all. Some potential replacements, such as Back Alley Brawler or Manticore are much cooler looking and might even be an improvement over the Face-Plated-One. But they are under the impression that Statesman is somehow a big draw for people to the game (I know, I find that hard to believe, too) so he'll be staying on marketing materials in all his dated, uninteresting glory.

Read the article at Massively.com
Unofficial discussion thread at the official forums.

Statesman Tribute Video by Samuraiko

Visit Samuraiko's YouTube channel.
Discussion thread at the official forums.

BeTwixt

Twixt

Searching the Googles for City of Heroes cosplay (don't ask) I came upon an old, but interesting article. The Twixt debacle is one I watched unfold on the forums. I never PvPed enough to encounter him in game (in part because of the attitudes the article mentions; even a great community like City of Heroes has can have a dark, ugly underbelly, and PvP tends to bring that side into view much more often than PvE).

If you want to know what the big deal about Twixt was, the article lays it all out.

Read the Twixt article at nola.com.

Signature Story Arc ViDoc #2

New Issue of Justice-Knights!

Issue 8 is #7. Best not to question that, citizen.

The most smartly-written City of Heroes Freedom digital comic book, Justice-Knights is now available. If you're not reading this one, you're really missing something. The series makes interesting observations about the game's world, including just why the medi-porter is not the 100%-death-avoidance machine most players assume it is.

Visit the official JK Comics site.

Let's Play City of Heroes Freedom Video Series

Here's an excellent City of Heroes Freedom "Let's play" video series from ThePCGamingVortex channel at YouTube. Forty-six videos, watch them all! Just go to the channel and scroll down to "City of Heroes Freedom Tutorial/Let's Play" for the playlist.

Cauteriza Takes Cap au Diable

Cauteriza takes Cap!