{"id":34281,"date":"2012-09-05T21:28:36","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T21:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2012\/09\/05\/pleasedontsqueezethegreymatter-last-friday\/"},"modified":"2015-02-21T12:20:14","modified_gmt":"2015-02-21T12:20:14","slug":"pleasedontsqueezethegreymatter-last-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2012\/09\/05\/pleasedontsqueezethegreymatter-last-friday\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-34281 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2012\/09\/05\/pleasedontsqueezethegreymatter-last-friday\/attachment\/34282\/'><img width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/files\/2012\/09\/tumblr_m9vdn2RSeM1qm9zvho1_1280-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/pleasedontsqueezethegreymatter.tumblr.com\/post\/30941441187\/last-friday-ncsoft-announced-that-it-would-halt\">pleasedontsqueezethegreymatter<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Last Friday, <a href=\"http:\/\/na.cityofheroes.com\/en\/news\/news_archive\/thank_you.php\">NCsoft announced<\/a> that it would halt development on <em>City of Heroes<\/em> effective immediately, and shut down the servers for good at the end of November. This came as a shock to everyone, most of all the people at developer Paragon Studios, some of whom had been excitedly advertising things only weeks away from release as recently as <em>the day before<\/em>. They came to work on Friday and were basically told, \u201cwe\u2019re shutting down the game. You\u2019re all fired. Be moved out of the office by the end of the day, and don\u2019t forget to tell the players before you lock up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hard data is tough to find, but the latest estimates indicate two things:<\/p>\n<p>1. <strong>NCsoft lost $6 million<\/strong> last quarter, primarily due to the under-performance of properties such as <em>Lineage<\/em> and <em>Aion<\/em>. Neither of which is on the chopping block.<\/p>\n<p>2. <em>City of Heroes<\/em> brought in <strong>$10 million in profits<\/strong> over the past year.<\/p>\n<p>If my math is right, that means that shutting down CoH is going to INCREASE those losses. By about $2.5 million per quarter. And that\u2019s not even counting the losses they\u2019ll suffer due to how many MMO players they\u2019ve now alienated, particularly with the way they\u2019ve treated the dev team at Paragon Studios. Which the players aren\u2019t going to let anyone forget, I promise. Treat your employees like crap, and even if they have to take it lying down, we don\u2019t. Treat your customers like crap, and we\u2019ll resist. We\u2019re going to make noise. We\u2019re going to write letters. We\u2019re going to get the word out about this. We\u2019re going to make sure every gamer in the world knows how little their support and your own employees mean to you, NCsoft. We\u2019re going to fight to save our city, because <em>that\u2019s what heroes do<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.addictinginfo.org\/2012\/09\/03\/city-of-heroes-being-shut-down\/\">That\u2019s what we <em>are<\/em> doing.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamerzines.com\/mmo\/heroes-online-petition-nearing.html\">less than a week<\/a>, we\u2019ve amassed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.change.org\/petitions\/ncsoft-keep-ncsoft-from-shutting-down-city-of-heroes\">over eleven thousand signatures<\/a> from players who refuse to go down without a fight.<\/p>\n<p>And while it\u2019s still too early to tell if our efforts will bear any fruit, <a href=\"http:\/\/boards.cityofheroes.com\/showthread.php?t=296759\">NCsoft is at least listening<\/a>. Now is the time to act. Don\u2019t let them up off the mat \u2014 fight for your city. Fight for <em>our<\/em> City. If you haven\u2019t signed the petition, sign it now. If you have a CoH account, log in and use it. If you don\u2019t, it\u2019s <strong>free<\/strong> \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/na.cityofheroes.com\/en\/freedom\/signup\/\">give it a try<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The players deserve better than this. The developers deserve better than this. Paragon City deserves better than this.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/boards.cityofheroes.com\/showthread.php?p=4376070#post4376070\">Now is the time to be a hero.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>pleasedontsqueezethegreymatter: Last Friday, NCsoft announced that it would halt development on City of Heroes effective immediately, and shut down the servers for good at the end of November. This came as a shock to everyone, most of all the people at developer Paragon Studios, some of whom had been excitedly advertising things only weeks away &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2012\/09\/05\/pleasedontsqueezethegreymatter-last-friday\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\"><\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[252],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34281"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34283,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34281\/revisions\/34283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}