(link to his announcement post)

You may wonder why I'm posting this, but I just have to say, that were a major Dev to move on from Cryptic and CO at this point (and with DCUO on the horizon); we'd see a FLOOD of DOOOOOOM posts. Given Back Alley Brawler either got laid off, or did the same thing just two months ago; you gotta wonder if CoX is still doing as well as soome folks would like to think; especially with some of the major people behind the game suddenly deciding to move on.

I remember there being some old quote about glass gazebos and chihuahua throwing.

Oh I get it... It's irony right? :p

Any additional info about whether it was a layoff or resignation? His statement only says his last day was Dec 24th. If I was him, I'da stuck around another week for a holiday bonus.

On the other hand, it likely doesn't matter either way. The writing's been on the wall for some time. It seemed telling that NCSoft didn't give any space to the Going Rogue expansion on the show room floor at PAX this year. Not even a small table in the two large booths they had for GW2 and ****.

I remember some data being discussed last time I read the CoH boards about how by second quarter of 2010 income had dropped significantly from third quarter 2009. From 4% of NCSoft's total income in '09 to 2% in '10. Then going back up to 4% during the quarter GR was released. So it took an overdue, long in development expansion to bump revenue back to former levels. The expansion helped them recover from the slide of falling subs, but was likely a one-off. The fourth quarter results will be interesting. Even Guild Wars, which hasn't had an expansion in 3 years and has no monthly sub, kept pace with CoH's income levels.

The question is whether any new subscribers came on board in significant enough numbers to sustain the game for a while longer. My guess is that the existing playerbase bought the expansion and not enough new customers or even returning ones, considering how disappointing GR was. So will NCSoft continue to let the game decline or will they consider following in CO's footsteps and adopt a Ftp model?

doubt it, they'll prob just let CoX die, it's just too old now. Unlike other 5+ year old MMO's like WoW, CoX is a low sub MMO so they don't IMO have the playerbase to justify putting any work into keeping it alive.

As for the dev changes, no big news there, for all we know he could've simply just found a better job offer somewhere else, changed careers, etc etc so nothing to see there either. Considering how quickly the industry changes I don't see why you think a mundane job switch is a newsworthy forum topic. It happens quite routinely actually so I see this on about the same level as creating a post to tell me the 5 day weather forecast

Two of the major devs for Champions have left in the last 6 months (Balseraph and Antiproton) as well as the head producer (PatchworkCat), and the executive producer (Bill Roper) left a year ago. Not really a sign of much, it's a high turnover industry usually.

Neat, he ruins pvp then leaves..

Cryptic DO NOT pick him up..

EVER

Lol agreed. I think NCsoft is gonna pull as much of players time out of the incarnate system as they can, keeping them coming back for it every few months, until its 10/10, then I give it 2-3 issues after that..Then....Honestly I thought champions was gonna fail right away, so I didn't give it a try til now and it isn't too bad..Although I can see myself getting bored of the power choices at 40.

I thought Patches had moved to Cryptic's core development team... has she since left Cryptic completely?

Let's see... the architect of several ludicrious nerf-fests and self-professed complete failure to understand players' investment when cavalierly obliterating existing powers/pets. The mastermind behind the Omega-grind for crafted travel powers and lord high-master of useless endgame crafting. And Bill, who needs no introduction.

Turnover like that... I can live with .

(PWC just moved higher up the food chain.)