Player Forgets to Pay Station Rent, Space Armageddon Ensues

Oh, EVE Online!

Your 'spreadsheets in space' gameplay puts me in a coma even as the spectacular antics of your community make you by far my favorite MMO to read about:

What touched off this battle? A missed bill payment, basically.
"Earlier today an alliance in the N3 coalition missed a bill payment for the system where Pandemic Legion is staging and storing their fleets," writes EVE. "This missed bill caused sovereignty to drop across the system leaving the station vulnerable to capture. Seizing the opportunity, the CFC (Goonswarm Federation, Razor Alliance, Black Legion and the Initiative) and Russian Coalition (Solar Fleet, Darkness of Despair and Against ALL Authorities) captured the station."

Sheesh, and I got pissed when someone forgot to pay base rent and our zone teleporters went offline!

I'm trying to imagine the foaming lunacy of the base building community if things like this had been possible in CoH....and failing.  =P

SOE Prez Bats Eyelashes At, Shows Leg to SWG Exiles

As I mentioned in this post John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, took part in a Reddit AMA following the announced closure of four MMOs. I skimmed it and this stood out:

[–]Cranks0 If you could relaunch a shutdown title which one would you pick and what would you do differently this time? permalink [–]j_smedley[S] SWG. I would do everything differently. SWG PLAYERS - OUR NEXT GAME (not announced yet) IS DEDICATED TO YOU. Once we launch it... you can come home now.

So, this guy representing the company that first HUGELY screwed up the game and eventually shut it down due largely to that screwing up wants do-overs?

 Huh.

It would be hard to overstate the popularity of the Star Wars IP.
Owning those MMO rights is a liscence to print money, and I'm sure whatever they release will do massive launch numbers. As a game it's in another, uh, galaxy from CoH, an original property with no preexisting audience aside from a presumed affinity with generic "comic book fans". But SWG exiles and CoH exiles are on the same diaspora, along with every other orphaned community from a cancelled game. Many respondents in that thread expressed their excitement and joy at a potential homecoming, and I don't blame them.

 As contemptuous as I am of NC, if they hinted in a similar fashion at a CoH sequel I wouldn't be able to contain my excitement- that sort of irrational loyalty is a fundamental strand of the geek genome, which explains my nostalgic affection for AD&D even though I haven't played since the Player's Handbook looked like this-
 

 I hate NC as virulently as you can hate any faceless corporate entity, I wish them ill and will laugh when they go under.

 But....just like those anonymous SWG players, I'd come running back if they re-opened CoH or turned out a viable sequel, even knowing that things would, sooner or later, end up in the same place, with opaque corporate logic dictating the destruction of my world.

 Again.

 Knowing I'm prone to these uncontrollable responses when it comes to games I love is the main reason I've sworn off corporate backed MMOs. Relationships with games are like relationships with people- it does no good to go on a date thinking you've got it all figured out and that it's just a casual thing so whatever. I mean, that's how I met my wife and it's been nearly 20 years since that first casual date. While you can safely have a one night stand (so to speak) with a single player game, which are essentially finished products by the time you play them, MMOs are constantly evolving, deepening and expanding, and that's what makes them seductive and potentially dangerous.

 The game we were playing at the end of CoH had very little in common with the game at launch other than surface cosmetics. A corporate MMO is like that archetypal Bad Girl who you know is no good, who just wants you for your money, but who only has to snap her fingers to make you come running.

 And the only viable defense against that sort of attachment is complete abstinence.

Happy Goaterday!

I was working on a 'real' post, but then I found this lying around the internet. SCORE!

SOE Orphans 4 More MMO Communities (And Still Looks Better Than NC Soft)

More bad news for citizens of the MMO-verse:

Sony Online Entertainment has announced that it will shut down four MMOs before the end of the year. Free Realms and Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures will end by March 31, while Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Wizardry Online will end by July 31.

I know little about these games and have no idea if they were losing money or, like CoH, were profitable just not profitable *enough*.  Regardless, I empathize with their communities.  I figure any game that's been around a while will have built up a core community that feels just as strongly about it as we felt about CoH, and I wouldn't wish the pain of a closure on anyone.

That said, SOE is distancing themselves from the brutal, clumsy way NC Soft handled the CoH 'sunset', providing additional content for each game before destroying their worlds (click the first link for details) and exposing their president to direct feedback from the affected communities:

SOE President John Smedley is also conducting an AMA on Reddit that began at 3:00 p.m. Pacific today, and he'll answer questions until 5:00 p.m. Pacific.

Absent a virtual Bill of Rights protecting the interests of MMO gamers, I'm finished with big corporate worlds.  Once is too many times to suffer the tragedy of playing and becoming attached to a game, helping build its community, then having that world eliminated by faceless cube dwelling bean counters.

I will never again tolerate the traditional structure of Corporation > Developer > Player, with the player as essentially powerless livestock to be milked for profit until the point where they are deemed inefficient and sold off to the glue factory.

Paragon did a fantastic job of listening to us and, as much as possible, tailoring their game design to our wishes.  But that close relationship meant nothing when the NC paymasters decided to blow it all to hell.

I'm hopeful that eliminating the Big Corporation via the new paradigm of Crowd Sourced Funding > Developers > Players will give us 'little guys' at the bottom of the MMO food chain more input and security.

City of Titans......FUNDED.

Congratulations, City of Titans!

Following the startling success of this Kickstarter had immeasurably brightened this last week for me, burning through the clouds with a beam of hope & igniting a flurry of activity in all my CoH Facebook groups.

I can only imagine how thrilling & disorienting it is for the Project Phoenix participants themselves.

And it all springs from what has become the theme of this blog, to the extent that it has one- the amazing, resourceful and resilient community that coalesced around CoH over the years.

A year after NCsoft faceplanted our game, the playerbase is still strong and united, with three developer groups out there combining inspirations to make a rez...and it looks like the Phoenix Project is gunning for an Immortal Recovery.

So now it's on to their stretch goals, all of which seem to be eminently within reach.
Congratulations on all your success thus far, Phoenix Project. I'm looking forward to some in-game teaming with your devs sooner rather than later.

To quote a Titan Network rallying cry,

We are heroes....this is what we do.

Kickstart My (blackened lump of a) Heart: City of Titans Jolts Kickstarter

As of this moment, the two day old Missing Worlds Media kickstarter for City of Titans has collected $260,268 toward their proposed $320,000 development budget.

While I'm hopeful for all three 'spiritual successor' games, City of Titans is the one exactly on my wavelength- instigated by forum regulars, staffed by veteran CoH volunteers, and devoted to as explicit a recreation of the CoH mise en place as copyright law allows.  Which is why I unlimbered my wallet & dug out a bit more than I can afford just now & pitched it into the crater of Mount Diable, a dark offering to Bat'Zul in pursuit of bringing CoH back in a new body.

Given my druthers, I'd like to simply turn CoH back on.  I'd log in the Goat, hit the Sharkhead Isle Black Market to check my traps, then pull up my global tabs to see who was doing what and where.

Since that can't happen, City of Titans strikes me as the successor team with a vision closest to my own.

It is heartening to see them pulling down these big numbers, digging a big, gloved thumb right in the eye of serial MMO killer NC Soft, who murdered the game and orphaned the community not because we weren't profitable, but because we weren't profitable enough.

Positron (aka Matt Miller) had some interesting things to say in this article.

Start small. You do NOT need to ship with every feature under the sun; that's setting yourself up for failure in the long run. If you can't support a feature for the long run, don't cram it in just to have a bullet point. Add it in when it makes sense to add it to the game. Concentrate on making the game FUN and ENGAGING first, then you'll be able to add the features you've always wanted when they are ready for primetime, not because you need to get them out the door.

Which got me thinking back to CoH's launch when there was basically nothing to do except make characters & wander around beating things up on the streets, in warehouses & office buildings.

Which I LOVED more than any game I'd ever played up to that point.
If they can nail the character creator, give combat that specific CoH feeling & provide a couple of zones to explore & baddies to thump at launch, I'll be ecstatically happy.

I've seen negativity regarding the spiritual successor groups generally and Missing Worlds in particular, having to do with the "impossibility" of what they're attempting, or how "crazy" it is.  It's the same sort of naysaying that went on after the shutdown announcement when TonyV and the Titan crew were agitating to keep the game going.

Why bother, it doesn't matter, nobody cares, there are lots of other games, blah blah blah blah.

While I've been aware of the Phoenix Project almost from the moments of its formation, reading their Kickstarter page really opened my eyes to what they're about.  It's basically an MMO co-op, staffed by volunteers.  The Kickstarter money is earmarked for licensing fees on the tools they need to build the game.  I remember thinking out loud on the forums about what kind of MMO I'd be comfortable playing in light of NC Soft committing MMO genocide on a profitable title, and that's where I ended up- a game beholden to no corporate paymaster, a superhero game infused with the spirit of CoH, a game by players, for players.

Why should the success of City of Titans be any less likely than City of Heroes existing in the first place?
I see some people complaining that they don't have professional game devs.
Well, they've got a lot of talented people from our community....and this goat remembers when Big Professional Game Developer Dr. Aeon was just a guy named Fearghas, paying his $14.99 a month to play superhero like the rest of us.

I've seen this community work miracles before, and I'm confident we can do it again.
Viva City of Titans!

Community First....Literally

Just an observation today.

While I'm sure game designers have some idea of the types of player they'd like their game to appeal to, nobody really knows what they'll get.  As you've doubtless noticed, my musings on why CoH worked keep arriving at the same conclusion- the community, the one unknowable in the design of most games.

Well, unless you're one of the three dev teams vying to be the 'spiritual successor' to CoH, who are in an interesting spot.

They know *exactly* the type of community they'll be attracting....provided they can deliver a game world simulacrum of suitable fidelity.  It's game development in Bizarro World- instead of making their game and seeing what sort of players coalesce around it, the job is constructing a game to fit the expectations of an existing community...which, further complicating matters, is haunted by the ghost of their former love.

It's a scenario that could easily veer off into Vertigo territory- in the comic book sense or the cinematic one.

Which is why I'm managing my expectations and trying not to pick any favorites.
Although being human I'm inclined toward Missing Worlds Media, where the highest percentage of forum pals turned game dev reside.
That's the one team I absolutely know have their hearts in the right place, and consequently the one I'm rooting the hardest for.