It's taken me the better part of a day to fully digest the news of City of Heroes impending shutdown. It's honestly odd in a way. I saw the signs, but simply didn't put 2+2 together. Even though I spend little time in CoH any more, I have still watched NCSoft's corporate earnings reports with considerable interest, largely to see how CoH has been doing for them.
The simple truth is, not well. Players have assumed that things are going great guns, but that's not really been the truth. Earnings on the game have been flat or even declining since about the time Going Rogue came out. That's right, if I read the numbers right, Freedom (and free to play) did little, other than possibly arresting the decline.
I'd noted the numbers, been troubled by them, but never really realized that the game's life was on the line. I guess deep down I assumed that at worst, they'd dump the game into maintenance mode and go on. It seems that is not NCSoft's way though. The statements I read didn't really make clear if the game itself was profitable (it lists revenues, but not costs). If it was though, the profit was very marginal.
It has been interesting to watch players reactions in lots of ways though. It seems that many players forget that CoH and the American market overall are really a very small part of NCSoft. Last quarter, North America brought in 4% of their total revenue. We'll have to see how Guild Wars 2 does, but at this point, I'd not be shocked to see NCSoft pull entirely out of the western market if GW2 struggles.
Yet, while I comprehend the business decision, and even think that it may well make sense from a corporate suit point of view, that still leaves the deeper, more profound side of things, at least to players.
In the MMO world, communities are always in a state of flux. People come in, they leave for new games. Guilds and groups have members who have been there since launch day, but many of the old timers have moved on and away. Yet, even with all that shuffling and change, there is still that sense of community. You return to a game and see familiar names (if perhaps not as many as you would like).
We've come to expect that level of permanance. This is the "natural disaster" of the online community world though. It's the earthquake or volcano. The decision to end a game, and incidentally gut the community.
Oh, the individual connections that people have made will go on, and certain subgroups of the community will find a way to keep in touch (forming up in a new game, using forums or social media)... but as a whole, the community of CoH has 3 months to live. Then the doom.
The suits that make these kind of decisions? To them community isn't really important. They may see it as an important marketing tool, to increase retention and bring in new players by word of mouth, but when the red and black numbers say it is time to close down, that community isn't even a single thought. (Note, I'm not saying this about the devs and community managers and reps who are in the end a part of the community. I'm talking about the people higher up who made the decision.)
Now, in the end, NCSoft is a business, and their job is the bottom line, and as much as we'd like to, we can't evicerate them for treating this as a business decision. (Of course, the way they did it, the sudden announcement, the "get out today" treatment of Paragon Studios is callous and reflects badly on them, but that's another issue).
What does that say about online communities though? We've come to expect a level of permanance, but really, that exists at the whim of the few. Any MMO game, be it WoW, SL, SW:TOR or whatever has Poe's swinging axe above their head. For some (like WoW), that axe is a distant threat, but even there, it does exist.
Truly a sad day for CoH players, and really for anyone who has been in a MMO community for an extended period. It is a harsh reminder that our communities are impermament and always threatened.
I'm getting too maudlin here I think. It's time to cut this off. I'll probably share some memories in time, but not right now I think.
