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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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???...