I know there are a few folks here who might have played the game waayyy back. If so, you’ll be excited to learn there’s a community-backed server that went public several weeks ago(!). It’s already gained over 22k accounts (!). A thread on another forum that posts how to get access here.
Articles on Massively about how this happened here.
I am surprised at how happy and excited this made me. Just be able to create a CoH Fire-Kinetic controller and play the Outbreak tutorial was a blast. That’s about as far as I got before I got kicked off the server. The usual warnings about it being a volunteer-run effort; no support, highly unstable, circa 2009 graphics, etc. etc.
Anyways, something to tide me over and give me a break from the SWL grind, and nostalgia-filled to boot.
I’ve been harping about the value of game community involvement and this revival is a testament to that. The entire effort is community-led and sponsored. Fans spent years rebuilding a discarded game. Now that they’re public, the community servers have reached peaks of 4000 concurrent players. The stickied “thank-you” thread is heartwarming. I’m sure there’s a profitable, yet benevolent lesson to be learned here for all game developers and publishers.
People did do that, yes, but the results of their efforts are a chatroom that looks like City of Heroes. This is literally the code that the game was running on in 2012 which was leaked.
It seems you are making this argument: The first is “people built a chat server so that doesn’t count as community effort”. The second is “Building a chat server isn’t really a lot of work”. Your final conclusion seems to be “Therefore community-driven efforts didn’t build anything of value outside of what was already built commercially.”
I’m not sure how you come to your concluding argument given those 2 primary conditions. There is some leap of logic I’m not seeing. However, your two supporting reasonings for your conclusion are incomplete.
I am not talking uniquely about the effort to build a chat server. There were other fan-driven efforts that were brought up. This was much more than just a few people spending years building a chat server. For your convenience, I post the information here:
This link here, which references the chat room you are talking about, describes a separate effort to rebuild the whole game from the ground up, the result of which is what was recently leaked.
My OP links to a separate effort to re-create the game.
There is a third effort, linked here, that had a kickstarter fund several years of effort to also re-create the game.
Massively comments on this game having had its roots in CoH
That link you posted literally confirms what I said. The servers that recently went public are using leaked code from the original NCSoft servers, which people are mixing up with the effort to rebuild the game.
I’m not trying to diminish the efforts of the community in any way but it’s completely dishonest to claim that it was a great community effort that resurrected this game - these servers have been running secretly since the official shutdown and they’ve only gone public since someone blew the whistle on them recently.
Crabs are so much cooler I got my Soldier to 20 yesterday, went to the trainer, giddy with excitement about the upcoming respec to Crab Spider … and then I remembered the career choice came at 24, not 20.
Ok, but at the same time you cannot say that the game’s current popularity is solely based on the content of the game. You needed both: a good game to start with, and the community that was dedicated enough to both keep it alive (in various forms) and come back to it.
My primary argument is this: “The value of game communities is under-utlilized and overlooked by the gaming industry. Take the IP (intellectual property) for City of Heroes. Treat it as a case study of how much community effort has been made even after the game was abandoned by commercial efforts.”
To me, there is value in the community efforts in that case study. One can argue (as you have) that the value is not there, or is insufficient. Which is an interesting way to go about it also. You could also start with first trying to define in what ways a gaming community has value.
Except I haven’t. You’re the only one engaging in debate club mate, all I did was point out you were factually incorrect.
Personally I’m happy to have the game back, I just think “the community made this happen by wishing really hard” is entirely the wrong lesson to learn here.
Tbh, I’m not entirely convinced about that. The CoH community did a good job of staying together after the servers were shut down. Without them staying visible, the deal to get the code and assets legally rereleased may not have happened. Effectively, their own specific actions didn’t actually matter, but the fact that there was large community support for something did contribute.
I’m not saying that the game was revived because of them, but the knowledge that there were thousands of people wanting to get back in probably played a part in it.
It didn’t happen. Someone leaked the server code seven years ago and it was kept secret until someone they invited to play on their servers went public.
This isn’t about debate club, it’s about being coherent and consistent. I don’t mind being corrected if the correction is sound.
I can’t see from what I said in my first comment what is factually incorrect. There are only 3 sentences you can pick at. It seems to me you’re jumping to a conclusion about what I’m saying.
What I’ve said (twice) is that, in my opinion, there’s enough evidence of community value in this story to take a hard look at it.
Why don’t you just say what lesson you think can be learned? That would actually be more valuable than trying to do, I’m not sure what.
Honestly, I can see how in this forum back-and-forth a lot of meaning and context can be misinterpreted and misconstrued. I’m pretty sure we could have a really good talk over a beer and sort things out. But I am doubtful we could do it over a forum post. At this point we’re more likely to misunderstand more. I did appreciate your perspective, even if right now we don’t seem to be on the same track. I’ll stop responding here and good luck with the rest of SWL and forum games. If you want to discuss it further with me, PM.
I got my Soldier to 20 yesterday, went to the trainer, giddy with excitement about the upcoming respec to Crab Spider … and then I remembered the career choice came at 24, not 20.