News Company of Heroes Online closed

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2011/02/03/company-of-heroes-online-closed/1

 

I am a RTS fan since I played AoE, and I own CoH, but I don't touch it at all now, but I'm dying for some good old turtleling AoE wall battles. Does that make CoH a fad?

Shame no respect is paid to the dev who died in a car accident.

 

If you want something similar to AoE keep an eye on this http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/ Free, open source and 3d in development

 

it was open beta? even here in the uk?

 

I love the orignal COH's and the two expansions. What every one wanted was a Russian expansion pack! not the same game re-released for free!? :S

 

Shame, was playing it with some people that were reluctant to buy COH, despite my pestering.

I didn't really play it *that* much but the unit upgrades seemed largely superfluous.

 

The COH community wanted a Russian front expansion pack not a re-relase of the current game for free and just slightly different :S

 

I agree with comeradealexi for the most part - I think that the community was open to an expansion of COH not an MMO of it. The beta had caught my attention, but I could never find enough time to even download it. I really have to wonder why THQ thought that COH would be a draw for Asian communities as a free to play MMO. COH is not Starcraft.

 

Relic Announced the Brian Wood Memorial Game Design Internship last week. Seems a fitting memorial to the guy. Hopefully his memory and dedication to the CoH games will spur Relic on to make CoH2 just as good as the original, which I still play at least a few times a week.

 

I think THQ has finally realised this. I myself, and many of my mates have bought CoH, many of them buying all 3 games at full price, over £100 of investment. Release a new game, it sells for £30 a pop, sell 2 million units on PC, make £30 million quids!


I'd never have spent that on micro transactions. I think the western approach to free to play games is "it's free to play, I'm not spending any money!" whereas in Asia they're more open on spending lots of little bits.

 

Triple post I know, but Free to Play games shouldn't require 8GB downloads. Even on a good broadband connection, that's a few hours of downloading. What casual players are going to have the patience to wait that long?

 

Dont get me wrong, I was obsessed with COH and OF, After TOV I felt they were changing too much too often, when I played COH online I enjoyed it but it wasnt enough to tip the balance, Turning it into an mmo was not the solution, they could have fleshed out the series with an expansion rather than continually messing round with the mechanics and play style, it just feels like a confused mess now and when my favorite mods stopped working I knew it was time to throw the towel in. I hope whatever they do next will honor the memory of the original COH and their departed team member.

 

In its defense the client did re-use vanilla COH game files instead of duplicating the content which I thought was quite sensible, but I see your point -- casual players presumably wouldn't have the original game(s), and people that do wouldn't be bothering with a potentially crippled copy of COH.

 

I'd rather they spent the time on the full game, to be honest.

 

The retail game is still good fun, and the balance beta bodes very well with plenty of bug fixes coming.

 

free 2 play doesn't work in the states. just make a dam good game and sell it instead of half ass games that nickel and dime you to death. The business decisions of THQ seem to be made by people who just last week were on French Fry duty. What a waste of time and resources.

 

I've never played COH, so I can't comment on whether an expansion pack would have been a better route to go down for the franchise.

The potential earnings in having a successful MMO are huge. Just look at World of Warcraft and Starcraft.
There is also huge potential in micro-transactions, as the Eastern Asian market has shown. So I'm not surprised that THQ took a risk on trying to crack the Eastern Asian market. It looks like that risk hasn't paid off, but that's the business. Getting a successful MMO is a nightmare in itself, with many projects falling by the wayside. Or having trouble with the business model. Take "Lord of the Rings Online", Something I'd have thought would be a definite shoe-in for taking "Warcrack's" crown. They've tripled their revenues by offering basic free-to-play, with paid for bolt-ons .

Trying to crack the notoriously difficult Eastern-Asian market at the same time may have been a step too far.
But I applaud THQ for taking the risk, and I hope what they have learned helps them makes more successful games in future. If the financial loss doesn't cripple them.

Maybe they will now get round to doing the COH Russian Front expansion the fans apparently are calling for. After the loss on the MMO, releasing something like that may be a relatively easy way to generate some profit.