NCsoft issued a statement about the future of City of Heroes / Villains (CoH/V). The TL;DR version is “It’s still shutting down”. The full statement says: “City of Heroes®Players and Fans, We wanted to let you know that your voices have been heard and your concerns have been taken into serious consideration. We appreciate the … Continue reading
The CoH/V community is making the loudest noise I can remember seeing in trying to save their title, getting 14 613 signatures in less than a week at the time of writing. Continue reading
I was surprised to see a large spike in my site traffic today, especially to older posts about how many players CoH/V had. Then I looked further and saw that NCsoft announced its intentions to shut down CoH/V and Paragon Studios. This has taken a lot of people by surprise, given that it seemed that … Continue reading
Here’s a fun fact: it looks like Funcom’s last profitable quarter (by EBIDTA, anyway) was Q4 2010. The company has spent around a year and a half eating into its cash reserves. Continue reading
So let’s look at the payment models available for video games, at least at a high level. Continue reading
According to a Google-translated-so-oddly-worded article, Funcom’s The Secret World (TSW) is a flop. It has sold only about half the number of boxes that Age of Conan (AoC) did – historically it appears that around 1 million AoC boxes were shipped at launch for sales of around 800k. So: 400k sold, and no idea how … Continue reading
Going back to October 2010 (and through to March 2011) I detailed five reasons why Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWOR) was a high risk MMO. Those reasons where: EA was funding SWOR for the wrong reasons – they weren’t looking to develop a profitable title, but instead create a WoW-level success with a financial … Continue reading
Having spent a bit of time looking at some infamous AAA MMO failures, it’s worth trying to see what lessons can be learned from them. Continue reading
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes was certainly a saga in development, but I doubt anyone involved in in felt pretty heroic by the end of their time at Sigil. Continue reading
If you selected this option, congratulations – you decided to back Mythic Entertainment! Mythic Entertainment Game That Destroyed Them: Warhammer Online (WAR) Studio Launch Date: 1997 (when it took the Mythic name) Studio Closure Date: 24 June 2009, when it became BioWare Mythic Invested In By: EA Estimated Money Blown: “south of US$100m” on WAR Cause … Continue reading
World Class Villains 