NCSoft Closes Paragon Studios Announces End Of City Of Heroes

Written by: QuintLyn Bowers (@QuintLyn) | August 31, 2012 2:01 pm

NCSoft Closes Paragon Studios Announces End Of City Of Heroes

20 Comments

NCSoft announced today that they will be closing Paragon Studios “in a realignment of company focus and publishing support”. As a result City of Heroes will be shutting down before the end of the year.

For those of you that are subscribed, they have also announced that “all recurring subscription billing and Paragon Market purchasing will be discontinued effective immediately.”

You can read the full announcement here.

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DoctorOverlord

I played City of Heroes/Villains for about a year after quitting WoW. Amazing customization and sometimes I encountered a decent story or had a entertaining game session but in the end I found the game a grindy, boring tedium.

The game stuffed the MMO trinity into a genre is didn’t belong (superheros don’t spam heal) rather than designing new mechanics to match the genre. I had some experiences so lousy they are still memorable for being the among the worst I’ve ever had in any game from any genre. I suppose it’s not entirely CoH’s fault, it’s really no worse than any of the other older generation of MMOs which were all filled with flawed game mechanics.

I’m sorry to hear about the people who will be losing their jobs. It’s always a shame when a studio has to close. But I just can’t look back on my experience with the game with any great sense of fondness.
- Gr1ffyn
  
  Many people tried to stuff CoH into the MMO Trinity when the game did not need it. It was proven time and time again, but people still would not let go that Tank-Heal-DPS was the way to go. Sad for them, really.
  - DoctorOverlord
    
    You’re saying that blasters and scrappers aren’t DPS? Defenders and controllers aren’t support? Brutes and TANKERS aren’t tanks? (C’mon, they actually NAMED an entire archetype/profession after one the trinity mechanic classes!)
    
    Now I will agree that support in this game did not mean you had to be a healer. Buffs/Debuffs/Minions etc could mitigate group damage but it’s still the *same* trinity mechanic. The game was obviously designed with the trinity in mind. If you found ways around it, great for you, but the basic design, even the very names and descriptions of the archetypes shows clearly that the trinity is still there. And it doesn’t change the fact that the game had powersets that allowed typical healer spam-bots.
    
    This kind of powerset does NOT belong in the superhero genre in any way, shape or form. There is no example of even a semi-notable superhero whose main function is to stand there and heal. The designers of CoH put little effort in actually going after the feel of the comic book genre because they were more interested in just copying existing MMO mechanics.
    
    There have been good superhero single player games in recent years. Heck, there have been excellent ones. I remain hopeful that someday there will be a superhero MMO that feels like a comic book. CoH/V was not it.
    - Gr1ffyn
      
      I have played many MMOs that were based around the trinity and they are all the same. The tank takes damage, the healers spam heals and the dps fires away trying not to strip aggro from the tank.
      
      While you can make a direct parallel with the one of the AT names (i.e. Tanker) and you can assume that the other two trinity roles are filled with the other ATs, doing so would miss out on the underlying design. That design was definitely *not* trinity based. If it were, there is no way that teams comprised solely of Defenders and/or Controllers could wreck as much havoc as they did. If it were then all of those “healers” wouldn’t have quit teams because no one needed healing and they “were bored” (direct quote which I personally saw multiple times).
      
      I will concede that CoH did itself a disservice naming one of the ATs a Tank as it made most of the players just assume that the trinity was the expected way to play the game. And while I did play with groups that really exploited the dynamics (Buffer Overrun, Triumphant Defenders, and Repeat Offenders), I played on PUG groups regularly and it didn’t take much at all to completely break the trinity. Just add a couple non-”healer” support and you were ready to rock and roll. We had a PUG group take out Lusca last week and we had no melee characters. No Tank, Brute, Scrapper. No one was Taunting the sushi.
      - DoctorOverlord
        
        CoH constantly had balance issues so it’s not surprising at all that particular combinations of classes were able to function outside of the trinity. There were FireTanks and a host of other exploits in the CoH’s history .
        
        As I said, good for you and other players for finding a way around the mechanic but you can’t tell me that the Cryptic designers did not have the trinity in mind when they were initially creating the game. DPS, Tanking and Healing/Support are clearly delineated in the classes and their descriptions.
        
        Also Jack Emmert is not a thought-leader in the MMO industry. He wouldn’t have tried to break the standard tradition of MMOs in such a fashion even if CoH’s players were later able to find ways to move beyond it.
      - Michael Hogg
        
        Jack Emmert left CoH/CoV early on in its lifetime, so you’re clearly behind the times.
        
        Scrappers are DPS that also have tank abilities. But you’re complaining that there even exists archetypes with certain leans–CoH is no different from Guild wars 2, for example, in this regard. GW 2 supposedly does not have the trinity, but even then there are classes (like guardians) which have much more defensive potential than Thieves, for example. And not all classes can heal others (though they can themselves).
        
        CoH is the same: All Archetypes could get a self-heal via a Pool Power. All archetypes could get damage and defensive powers, as well. The existence of healers, tanks, and DPS does not equate to the necessity of rolling with all three to accomplish something, which is really where the issue with the trinity lies: You couldn’t in WoW, for example, just choose not to take any tanks or healers. you would wipe every time.
        
        But you can do endgame content on CoH without a defender or controller. Or without a scrapper or blaster. Or without a Tanker. No role is necessary, therefore the holy trinity does not apply.
        
        Your claim that a superhero game should not have the capacity for anyone to be centered on healing and buffing is ridiculous and completely subjective. I find nothing wrong with it whatsoever (especially since that ‘healer’ you are talking about has a secondary set of powers for damage, making them not just healbots).
http://twitter.com/cecilandblues Anthony Botz

I came into CoH from FFXI and it was a breath of fresh air. An MMO where I could do something other than sit in town and run in circles if I could find a group? Crazy! When WoW Launched I moved to that. CoH didn’t really have a full featured end game. I played through a lot of City of Villians when it launched and really enjoyed how they’d cleaned up the leveling experience. I also picked up Going Rogue when that launched. I enjoyed it, but I found the morality system that was introduced to be kind of ham-handed and consequence free.

I think it remained as the best Super Hero MMO on the market even if it’s age was showing.

The more important question here is about the viability of the model they were using. Were too many people riding free resulting in bloated staff and equipment costs that weren’t being paid? Was it a bloated development budget that wasn’t being covered by micro transactions?
- Gr1ffyn
  
  Or does NCSoft just need to free up server racks for GW2 before Xmas sales…
  - http://twitter.com/WadeDMcGinnis Wade D McGinnis
    
    GW2 and WildStar
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Byrne/100001642673542 Michael Byrne
  
  You’re probably dead on with the costs not being covered by the micro transactions. If you look at NCSoft’s Investor Relations report, this year’s CoH money is just SLIGHTLY above the amounts made last year. Considering it went free to play in late 2011 this means that even if they did have a HUGE influx of players, the conversion did not lead to increased revenues.
http://www.facebook.com/elecore1 Ed LeCore

Shocked, I remember all the talk last year that CoX was the most popular of the super hero mmos, compared to Champions and DCUO, what happened? Did the f2p conversion of DCUO steal many CoX players?
scottsummer

Had lot of good memories in COH/COV, honesty only COH can claimed to be the flagship of superheroes MMO, CoH was innovative and visually pleasing at that time.
CoH imo is one of the industry changing game, character creation is never the same after CoH.
http://twitter.com/BillMcD Alan

I wish paragon studio could go on to make something far better than CoH, even now it is still the best super hero MMO imo (it had time to mature and got better at making story, invention system was a nice change from raiding, champions sits in that awkward spot between not having enough action to be fun, but enough to feel like more work compared to a hotkey mmo, not to mention awkward glowy faces)
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=545365392 Michael Ponte

I spent so much time in this game. It remains the best superhero MMO out there. Definitely the best character creation system in ANY MMO
Tenthletter1979

Sad. Have a lot of good memories from this game. Ultimately it lacked any kind of endgame, and the combat, while fun, wasn’t so fun that re-rolling multiple alts would hold your attention for long, due to the long time to level once you hit 20 or so

Lack of an infinite respec feature when I played also hurt, as key abilities were often nerfed to the ground, making a character essentially unplayable, with no way to recover. Hsd that happen to three of my Defenders in a row when I finallt had enough.

That said, the character creation is still the best of any MMO in my opinion, and it had enough good that it outweighed the bad, not to mention the best MMO community I’ve ever been a part of by far. For the Superhero gamer it was the best thing ever, basically. Truly sad to see it finally shut down.
http://profile.yahoo.com/KMMYFK5MJ2APHGWIL2MEKPH3AM the_founder

meh… i played COH for a year because i was inbetween games.. great character creation as everyone knows but the gameplay was mediocre at best. i think people have inflated appreciation for this game because it was the first big “superhero” comic book themed MMO. no hate, but im just not sad to see it go.

DCUO is a far superior “superhero” experience and a far superior game overall.
http://twitter.com/SaintKristopher Kristopher

the only thing missing from this game was depth. alot of rinse and repeat quests that where fun doing them with other people but non the less repetative. I went back to try and see any changes and i could run everything on max settings but it didnt look to good in high def. It was great for waht is was, great character creation… yea ^^.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001404441847 Mark Waters

I have been playing City of Heroes since 7/2004 and the game went though a lot of changes. It wasn’t everyone’s favorite game, but it had a loyal base community. There were groups of us that would play day in and day out. We still hold six month or yearly subscriptions because we just knew that we would be playing it. I’ve purchased other games like D3 and GW2 of most recent, and played EQ2 and WOW but I always found myself wandering right back to CoH. Many others in the community have similar stories. Yesterday’s news hit the community very hard. Many of us are hurt and betrayed. We were watching new power sets being developed and released. Many of us purchased access to these new items with real world money just a week or two ago and really feel cheated. With all the activity that Paragon Studios had going on, this was farthest from anyone’s mind. There was no indication of any kind that the game was winding down or coming to an end. It’s a stinging slap from a long time lover who, without reason, just walks out of your life when you thought everything was going good.
http://www.facebook.com/harold.jones.9847 Harold Jones

I will morn the lose of City of Heroes, the MMO that started it all for me. Their will be no MMO that will fill its spot in my hart. Even WOW could not hold up to the standerds that i feel about COH. even SWTOR will only hold a 2nd place. So so long and thanks for the good times and the not so good times.
Hicks64

Loved my experience with CoH/CoV, but the game is 8 years old and had it’s flaws. The next “hero game” needs to have the customization CoH had, but focus purely on balanced, comeptitive pvp OR an over-the-top powers PvE experience like The Avengers movie with Godzilla destruction.

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