City of Heroes Reaches Sunset, NCsoft Paying the Price 290
KingSkippus writes "At midnight Pacific on Saturday, December 1, NCsoft shut down the City of Heroes servers for the final time. Since announcing the closure, a group of players has been working hard to revive the game by getting attention from the gaming press, recognition from celebrities such as Sean Astin, Neil Gaiman, and Felicia Day, and assistance from fantasy author Mercedes Lackey. Meanwhile, NCsoft has been drawing negative publicity, including a scathing article about the shutdown from local news site The Korea Times, noting that the game was earning $2.76 million per quarter and that 'it is hard to comprehend what NCsoft means when they say they closed it for strategic reasons.' NCsoft's stock price has fallen over 43% since the announcement in August, almost 30% below its previous 52-week low, right when investors were counting on the success of the recently launched Guild Wars 2 to help boost the company."
They Need To Be More Specific (Score:1, Informative)
"Strategic reasons" just does not cut it with this crowd, especially when it's your flagship product.
What's the REAL reason? Are they getting screwed by a patent troll? Did they get compromised by a breach and are bailing out before they get sued? Is the cost to running it more than the money they bring in?
All of my gaming friends who got sucked into MMOs all played CoH, they all still have active characters, and most of them juggle between WoW and CoH, or shift from one to the other on a seasonal basis.
And to a one, all of them are very upset over this.
Look, products come and go, favorite things get pushed aside for the latest, greatest and newest all the time. But when that one, single product is the foundation of your entire company, you'd better be ready with one heck of an explanation.
Re:They Need To Be More Specific (Score:4, Informative)
What on earth are you talking about?
CoH was 5% of their revenue, I think 3%. It was never, ever, ncsoft's flagship product. They didn't even make it; they bought it from someone else. They saved it from being closed back in the day, and they made money on it, but it's never been their biggest game, or their most successful, or anything like that.
Re:Come on, you knew this was an MMO (Score:5, Informative)
This was one of the beauties of CoH.
It was RIDICULOUSLY casual-friendly. And it was widely acknowledged that PVP in the game was a half-hearted attempt at best. Far FAR more development time went into PVE and MAJOR QOL improvements, where you don't have to worry about competing with "A. Random Kid" on the internet. Just play how you want to. Team when you want to. Do whatever you want in the game. No competition unless YOU desire it.