impending-shutdown
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Prius Online closes down in South Korea
Whether you think of it as Prius Online or Arcane Saga, the game known to its Korean playerbase as Prius Online has had a hard time keeping the lights on in the West. It's been running for five years over in its native South Korea, though... but no longer. As of December 17th the game will shut down for good, with character creation and the cash shop already disabled for its remaining time. Developer Netmarble has apparently been focusing more upon the mobile market rather than the PC game market, and the game presumably hit the spot of no longer being profitable to keep running. There had been rumors of a sequel, but this could kill any hopes for that as well as any lingering aspirations toward another American revival. It may have died many times before its final death, but it seems like this is finally the end of the road for the game.
A video to mourn City of Heroes and celebrate the new Paragon Studios project
It's not over until it's over for City of Heroes, but that time is fast approaching. Longtime fan and noted machinima artist Samuraiko decided that the city deserved to go out with an appropriate tribute and has put together a last video memorializing the game's environments and players. If you're a veteran player, you owe it to yourself to sit through the whole video just past the break, although you may get misty-eyed toward the end. But all is not doom and gloom for the fine folks from Paragon Studios, as they've taken it upon themselves to begin a new project, one that will undoubtedly be just as influential in their chosen field. Or possibly not. It's still worth watching after the previous video, at the least to get a smile back on your face. Jump on past the break for both videos, and keep your eyes peeled for more coverage as we approach the City of Heroes shutdown. [Thanks to the folks that sent these in!]
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: No hope for CoH, no faltering for us
By now every City of Heroes fan has no doubt seen NCsoft's backhanded dismissal of the entire Save CoH movement. If by some coincidence you hadn't seen it, congratulations! Welcome to Wednesday; here's your bad news. NCsoft has heard us and responded with, "Aw, shucks, we really tried," which is the equivalent of a five-year-old child claiming that he did try to clean his room after three minutes of picking up toys and putting them back down in roughly the same spot. If I sound bitter, it's because I am. But what does this mean for City of Heroes? Is all hope truly lost? Have we lost the fight to save our city? Is there no chance for a reprieve or some shining light in the late night? Well... not much. But this is not actually the change that it's being framed as. This is what we went in knowing, and while it changes the game being played, it doesn't change many of the hard facts. I said in my first column that we were fighting a battle with a slim hope, and the fact that it's now pretty much no hope doesn't change much, nor does it mean we should stop fighting.
