Guild Wars 2 is not a subscription game -- players buy the game once and then play forever.

In 2008, players in City of Heroes were paying $15/month to play. That changed when they went free-to-play, but the population went up significantly at that time.

CoH was a reliable, if small, revenue stream for NCSoft. GW2 was a cash infusion that won't repeat itself until they release an expansion, and then probably at far reduced amounts.

I'd describe neither as 'cash cows'. But CoH *was* reliably profitable.

Many flaws in your reasoning, but I'll pick at just one: The Paragon Studio employees weren't retasked to other games. They were unceremoniously canned.

The *only* thing NCSoft gained by shutting down CoH was server space, which is pretty cheap. In return they lost a $2.75M/quarter revenue stream, a dozen or so experienced developers, and the goodwill of millions of gamers. (Hundreds of thousands of people who actually played, plus a lot of bad publicity.)

At a minimum, they could have sold the game to a company that would have kept it running. Then they could have retasked their servers while pocketing a big cash infusion and avoiding bad press. But they were too short-sighted to even do that.

What's the Korean word for 'clusterfuck'? That's the best explanation for this whole fiasco.

They never saved CoH from being closed. CoH was never in danger of closing. The development team split, with half of them going off to make (the inferior) Champions Online, but the game was always profitable. NCSoft swooped in and bought it because it was worth money, not to 'save' anything.

CoH was nothing like a 'flagship', though. If anything, Guild Wars 1 was their flagship product in America. On the other hand, CoH was a constant revenue stream unlike GW1.

Healing *did* draw aggro in CoH. It's just that Tanks in CoH were much, much better at pulling that aggro back onto themselves.

Hint to other games: If a character class is supposed to play a role, let them be the best ever at that role. There is no other game that has balanced yet indestructible Tanks like the ones in CoH.

As a player of CoH I've been watching this all unfold for months, and it's just sad on every level. Obviously sad for the players and developers, but there's a greek tragedy that is looming over NCSoft as well.

The 'strategic reasons' that caused NCSoft to shut down CoH is that they just don't understand the product -- an easy-to-play game friendly to casual players with little or no PvP content. That kind of thing doesn't sell in Korea and doesn't make sense to NCSoft's Korean masters. They have made a decision to consolidate their games along the Korean 'grind-and-PvP' model, possibly with a centralized game store using common currency, as some other large game producers have done. CoH could not be adapted to that model. Advertising in America would be additional cost for a marketing department that only understands Korean game culture. So they decided to effectively pull their games out of America and focus on what they know best back at home.

It's a strategy, I guess. They'll still sell games in America, but they'll be anglicized versions of Korean grindfests with little or no marketing. GW2 is a prime example...and the players there are beginning to understand that, with the GW1 gameplay replaced by ridiculous grinds and a 'pay to win' cash market, not to mention characters from the korean alphabet creeping into the American version of the UI.

Frankly I wouldn't trust NCSoft to keep any game alive in the Western market, not now and not for another year. They don't want to do business here. They don't want to make the kind of games that casual players enjoy. They want to have a stable full of Lineage clones, and cutting off a profitable CoH is the first step towards that strategic goal.

It's just a tragic display of hubris. They were even too short-sighted to consider selling the game. Just sad, all around. RIP, Paragon City. I'll remember you for letting me be a hero.

All jokes aside, if McAfee is right and Belize authorities want him dead, this is exactly how they'd make him disappear. Capture him, kill him, dump his body, and then claim he was never in custody.

When you're in the military you follow the chain of command and trust that your superiors are working in the best interests of your country.

If you find evidence your superiors are not, then you have the choice to exercise the soldier's prerogative: Shoot your commanders in the back, and face the consequences. You will give up your own freedom, but you will remove a commander who was harming your country.

Manning effectively shot his superiors in the back. Now he has consequences to face. A good soldier would stand up, say 'Yes, I did this and here are my reasons', then go to jail and hope that history vindicates him.

Again I'll say it -- different people have different metabolisms. For some, carbs are good energy that they burn off, while meat and fat cause lethal cholesterol problems. You're the opposite, at least at the age you are now. Things might change as you get older.

Yeah, you can do that at 29. By your mid-thirties your metabolism will start to slow down, and if you aren't very careful about what you eat then you're going to gain weight. By your mid-forties you're going to seriously consider eating an all-oatmeal diet to keep the pounds away.

Young people and middle-aged people have different metabolisms, and they need different kinds of diet advice.

Darn. I don't mind jokes flying over my head, but I hate when they poop hope and excitement all over me.

Are you serious? Because calcium bentonite would be a huge discovery. It's formed out of microscopic fossil shells. Curiosity's SAM instrument has a microscope and could probably send us images. If they show us microfossils on Mars then hell yes, it's a world-shaking announcement.

But think what we could do now that we've finally found our Illudium Q-38 Explosive Space Modulator!

According to the military code of conduct, committing adultery *is* a crime that can land you in jail. So if the affair started when Petraeus was in the military then it was a crime.

Regardless, having an affair is grounds to revoke a top level security clearance. So at a minimum, Petraeus threw his job away. Something is the matter with any top official who does that.

Maybe use even cheaper tablets with no wireless access, but with a 64 Gb cache of the Best of the Internet. I'm thinking Wikipedia, the Food Network recipe files (North Koreans are hungry!), and selected high-quality porn.

Bwa-ha-hah. The porn I like is nothing like the porn my friends like, and vice versa. Not even my girlfriend and I agree on porn. I'm also willing to bet that the illegal activities I've done in my life are nothing like the ones my friends have committed.

Where did Google get this correlation theory? It seems completely counter to my experience of human beings as individuals.