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City of Heroes: Paragon Studios and City of Heroes Closing
garrett
MMORPG.COM Staff UncommonPosts: 284
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.
Read the full article here.
Comments
I loved CoX and played it with the wife for a year or so. Thanks for the memories.
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
The "Widowmaker" is shutting down? Damn.
CoX really was a very good game. I had a lot of fun with it. It still seemed to have a lot to offer, so I find this closure a bit surprising, but it happens.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
My first and favorite MMO franchise.
Sad to see it go.
Sorry to harsh your moment of GW2 fanboy gloat but, CoH was F2P.
You're a shining example for your peers.
I got a sinking feeling in my stomach when I saw this.
Good bye my friend thank you for the memories. I loved you and spent many an hour fooling around with twisted AT styles.
I always liked how users on MMORPG always find out news first and get multiple many page threads on the topic and then MMORPG finally posts a brand new thread about the news that has been going on for 4-5 hours.
Why not just link to one of the existing threads for news so there aren't like 10 threads on the same topic?
NCSoft makes SOE look like a great studio. They bail on anything.
This pretty much nails it for me to avoid playing any of their games ever. You never know when they will pull the plug.
...how time flies.
This is sad news, indeed. I think a rendition of Terry Jacks' song Seasons in the Sun is in order.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Well they went F2P in a effort to stop NC closure is my guess. Too bad the F2P model was absolute shit. No Raiding, can't join supergroups, region restricted, cannot use the regional chat and severe income/costume limitations.
It takes almost 100$ to get most of the basic stufff that the original subscribers have, a price point not worth messing with for a game that old.
As for ozmodan's post...yeah auto assualt left a terrible taste in my mouth back then. Game was barely out 7 months and boom cancelled....
What the hell are you even talking about? They had the game running for multiple years. Age caught up with it and its mechanics have become out dated. Are you still playing the game and subscribing to help keep it aloft? Do not taint one of the early greats with such a disgusting remark.BOOYAKA!
City of Heroes was my very first MMO and will always hold a special place in my heart. My first hero alt "Virgo" (Mutant Earth Control/Empathy Controller) was a blast to play and introduced me to the world of MMO's.
Even though I don't play CoX as much as I used to, I'm still gonna miss this game once it's gone.
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. - Marie Curie
This game had a great run, over 8 years and a F2P change in an attempt to keep profitability.
Now, I know about Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa, but this time it clearly wasn't the case of "bail on anything", even though Tabula Rasa was more of a problem with Richard Garriott, which makes Auto Assault the one true title which I will never understand the quick closure.
You forgot "Matrix Online"!
This have been a good conversation
This game will be missed. This game will also be looked upon as making a tremendous mark on MMORPG history. And lastly, anyone that sets out to develop a new super hero MMO will constantly have this game be compared with theirs for at least another 8 years to come or more.
They closed MXO down after they merged all the servers, were down to one and the load on it was continuously light. Basically there wasn't enough people paying to play for the servers to run and still make a profit, THEN they closed it down. This CoX closure seems a little extreme imo.
As for TR, Richard Garriott was being a typical western artist and NCSoft didn't dig that so they tried to screw him over but he ultimately got it over on stupid NCSoft.
Same here, tawess. And let me preface what I'm about to say with a "this is not a I told you so thread". I recognize that 8+ years is a great run for an MMO. But I want to point out all the posters(mainly in the official CoH forums, not here) that said in the recent year or two that the population was fine, you were wrong, wrong, wrong. So much for my game lasting a few more years as they vehemently pointed out.
They drop the news like that out of nowhere, and all they say is that NCSoft is "realigning focus". CoX was my 1st MMO and it will always hold a special place im my heart. I only stopped playing a few years ago for a few months but have been pretty consistent ever since but it was a good 8 year run of the game with the best teaming system around. The best part of this whole thing is I get to raise my hand in the air with fingers extended and gently fold only my index, ring and pinky fingers to you, Forum Cartel. The only reason I'm happy about the game shutting down is that it disperses you all to the wind.
Unfortunately, I agree with other comments (though I don't agree with it emotionally). "No company shuts down something that is very profitable, plain and simple. It means the game was just barely breaking even so estimates were it would be in the red by the end of the year so they're shutting down based on that (a very very typical business move) or the game is already losing money so they're shutting it down. and fu mawds for editing this previously. Based on the abruptness of the announcement, I would guess it was already losing money." The game just couldn't pull its weight no matter what differing opinions were tossed around in the official forums. That will teach me to listen to people not employed directly by the studio or publisher. They didn't know squat.
I disagree with NCSoft's decision and think it was a mistake but life moves on, though for the next few days it will be sadder.
Thank you for the 8 years of adventure, Paragon Studios!!!
The more I think about it, the more it looks like this is a result of two things. The first is that NC Soft disclosed a 6 million profit loss for the last quarter. And NC Soft has proven several times that it takes immediate steps when money is the topic. The second issue is that City of Heroes DOES have thousands of people playing it that do so for free as Premium players - and Guild Wars 2 is a one time investment that the vast percentage of them would switch to.
Oh FFS.
First of all, let me point out the obvious: City of Heroes/Villains has been F2P for some time now.
Is this the new trend we're going to see from the rabid GW2 fans? Every time a MMO is changed to F2P or is taken offline, you're going to heap all credit on "GW2 and its revenue model"?
When did the MMO community take a left turn into the intellectual weeds that is "Oblivious-ville"? I'm genuinely curious. I'm not talking about Aeolron here. I'm not even only talking about GW2 fans. I'm talking about this growing portion of the MMO community at large who are convinced that anytime a sub-based MMO goes offline it's automatically "because of its revenue model".
Every single sub-based MMO that has gone off-line has done so because the game failed to maintain enough subscribers to keep it going.
Allow me to also point out another easily verifiable fact: There are still subscription based games running to this day. Final Fantasy XI, FFXIV, DAoC, Rift, Eve Online, AC1 and some others are all still set up on subscriptions. They're doing just fine. Chugging right along. In a couple cases, they've been chugging right along for around a decade. They were doing fine then. They're doing fine now.
Others like EQ1 and 2, Vanguard, LoTRO, DDO and to a lesser degree, Runescape all offer a subscription payment option - and many people do actually prefer it over the F2P/Freemium setup. Crazy thought, I know.
Subscriptions are just as valid an option as they've ever been and are, in fact, far more road-tested and proven than F2P or B2P. F2P and B2P are alternative revenue setups. Not replacements.