The NCSoft response

We finally got a response from NCSoft to all the Save the game activities.  

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 overwhelmingly constructive and positive messages in the emails, notes, and packages you've sent in support of the game. It has not been an easy decision for us to close Paragon Studios® and prepare to shut down City of Heroes. We've exhausted all options including the selling of the studio and the rights to the City of Heroes intellectual property, but in the end, efforts to do so were not successful. City of Heroes has a special place in all of our hearts, and we want to ensure its reputation and the memories we share for the game end on a high note.

Once again, we will be holding events throughout the process of preparing for the game's end, and we encourage players and fans of the franchise to join forces and enjoy their time in a game that we've enjoyed supporting for more than eight years.

The NCSOFT® Team

I have sincere doubts that this means anything serious is to be done.  The above response to mean has a "Don't send us anything, we're not doing squat" tone to it.   They've got to be irritated by the negative publicity the shutdown of City has caused them.   Part of me is thinking "GOOD!!!"

Meanwhile Atlas Park 33 still remains on Virtue WEEKS after the Rally event.     I noticed last night that the SKI SLOPE was up in Pocket D.  A nice touch -- given the timing of the shutdown I never expected to see it.

Part of me hopes for a Halloween event , but the other that is snapping screenshots thinks otherwise.  The sun never comes up during that event which is going to make for gloomy, less colorful screenshots outside. 

The City isn't the same now.   The rush of new toons into Atlas Park, a staple of the game for 8 years, is non-existant.   The constant spamming by influence/infamy peddlers seems to be gone.   Gone as well is the Supergroup recruitment spamming.   Anyone advertising for a Farm usually gets a "You know the game is ending" comment back.  People are SPENDING everything they've got.   Some people win Wentworth lotteries, with people paying hundreds of thousands or millions for trash salvage.   I saw one supergroup wanting to maintain their high rank on the server to the end, and asking people to buy prestige for the group to do so.

Some zones in some servers are really bad.   I was on an old character -- Ace of Clubs on Infinity.  He was one of the first toons I made, a super reflex martial artist, but was abandoned after my friends started up toons on Virtue instead.   I've kept him going over the years there, logging in for event badges on him, but little else.  It seems strange to have a toon with 8 celebration badges and still be under level 20. But on Infinity I found him before Ms. Liberty ALL ALONE.  Checking there were 4 heroes on that zone on that server.  In the middle of the evening, this was FAR from the usual levels on a secondary server.    One character was in the Praetorian zones -- and I never saw a soul.

I've been lax in refreshing less-played characters, but no supergroup has given a hero the boot for not logging in.  Why bother, eh?

Overall, to a long term player, City now is one of heroes with a sad mix of hope, determination, desperation and overall depression.  The cries for a boycott of NCSoft can be heard more and more over the voices of reason.   Clearly these are the players who love this game.   I have my doubts that more than a fraction will trust NCSoft down the road.   Based on the trend their STOCK has taken, I don't think the death of City helped them at all, and probably has HASTENED their eventual demise. 

The petition to Save CoH is still up and slowly getting more signatures, at 20644 as I write this.  If you haven't signed it please do.