NCsoft Shutters Paragon Studios; City of Heroes to Close By Year End

It’s a sad day for the MMO world; NCsoft has announced the closure of Paragon Studios, effective immediately. Responsible for City of Heroes and all of its related expansions, Paragon was responsible for being the first to deliver a super hero MMO, and one that many consider to be unmatched by anything else out there. The game took the free-to-play route (with VIP option) last summer, and everything seemed kosher. But apparently not.

Reading through the official forums, it seems that this closure came out of nowhere. Many players believed that the game was becoming even better, not worse, resulting in ruined weekends of many, to be sure. Judging by NCsoft’s actions in the past, it could very-well be that the game was in fact alive and well, but as it’s not profitable enough for the company’s tastes, it’s being shuttered. The same thing happened a couple of years ago to Lineage, while that game is still alive and well in South Korea (where it seems execs would rather take a sword to the gut than close an MMO they’ve had running for so long).

This closure makes me also question the future of Lineage II, which was released on the same day as City of Heroes (which, for the record, was almost eight-and-a-half years ago). When NCsoft decided to take that game on the F2P path, its profits quadrupled. But – that was the initial surge, and that’s never going to last. It wouldn’t surprise me if that game was announced to be shuttering in the near-future either. In my personal opinion, there’s no MMO killer quite like NCsoft at the moment. It seems the company prefers to cash in on short-term gain than to allow a game to flourish for years on the F2P model.

With CoH shuttering, it’s not only players that are affected, but 80 employees at the studio. Those on both sides have our condolences. Hopefully the fans can find another MMO they enjoy equally as much, and the employees land in other studios with relative ease.