Another_Fan
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Quote:IIRC 1930 was the movie industriess most profitable year in real dollars until the early 2000sOriginally Posted by UberGuy
Movie attendance is not the same as movie profits.
What did they do to prices in that period? The 2nd article I linked above suggests that movie ticket prices dropped by 1/3, while your numbers suggest attendance increased by around 1/2.
I hardly compelling to firmly conclude that "people flock to movies in downturns" when there are significant price cuts involved. -
Quote:Alex I'll take How to use google incorrectly for 500.Originally Posted by UberGuy
Schatz, Thomas. (1988). The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era. New York, New York: Henry Holt and Company.
At the begining of the depression movie gross dropped because people stopped making them.
http://www.shmoop.com/great-depression/statistics.html
Quote:Average Weekly Movie Attendance
in 1927: 57 million
in 1930: 90 million
in 1931: 80 million
in 1932: 60 million
in 1933: 50 million -
Quote:Forum Cop was the top forum game of all time.Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy
As much as I love COH, I've always been annoyed by the trivial vocabulary restrictions and other forms of disney channel level mandatory political correctness. Right now NCSoft is responsible for our forums and I really don't care if they get mad at me for saying boo boo naughty words, lul. The in game culture has always been radically different than the forum culture and I think if there's one good thing about the game closing, it's that more people are speaking more candidly on the forums without worrying about the player run post-police showing up on their virtual door step.
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Quote:During the Great Depression movie box office soared.Originally Posted by UberGuy
You still require dollars to spend.
I just don't buy it. If I had a serious downturn in income, video games would be the very first thing to go.
And actually, that makes me think of something about our playerbase.
If I had to characterize CoH, it would be the MMO that people who don't play MMOs do play. That could factor in to the reaction of its playerbase to the Great Recession relative to those of other MMOs - if they aren't the sort of people who would have picked up a monthly sub before they found CoH (something I constantly read here on the forums), maybe they are more willing to drop it when times get tough, irrespective of how much "entertainment per dollar" it may offer. -
Quote:Originally Posted by B_L_Angel
Really short listReally I have stayed away from this because there is no point to it unless the game gets saved somehow. Those just begin to scratch the surfaceQuote:Originally Posted by Draugadan
Another really short list
This is very telling. It would be nice to see the numbers if they are easily available.Quote:Originally Posted by Intrinsic
World of Warcraft saw increased subscription revenues during the same time period. EA and Activision posted some of their largest sales numbers ever. So did Perfect World. Escapist forms of entertainment traditionally thrive during recessions/depressions, so it really shouldn't be surprising.
Quote:Originally Posted by UberGuy
You have to have money to spend on them.
The only way increased revenue during such intervals makes sense is if those pursuing the escapism are those in careers or income brackets that are free to increase discretionary spend.
This isn't speculation. Discussions of the downward spiral of this and prior recessions regularly cite how even just the concern of job loss causes people to cut expenditures on non-essential services, which causes further job losses. Video games are the epitome of "non-essential services".
It seems to me that a game's performance during a recession is a function of the economic demographics that plays it. A game with a more blue collar workers might perform poorly compared to one with white collar ones, for example (not that white collar jobs didn't suffer in the Great Recession). I see no reason to assume that, as a proportion of its players, CoH would have a larger concentration of players more prone to suffer in the recession than, say, WoW, but honestly, I'm more likely to draw that conclusion than to assume the AE killed it. Seriously, other than these inferences from that revenue chart, I saw no evidence of that.
The claims that the game started depopulating are not universal. No such thing happened on my home server.
The concept is you compare performance against overall industry industry performance. Example if you have two real estate development companies in a region and one has rising sales and the other has declining sales it's a safe bet that one is doing things wrong and you should stay away from them.
Barring actual evidence there is no reason to accept the proposition that WoW or perfect world players have higher disposable incomes than CoH players. As far as this depression vs disposable income for entertainment MMOs are one of the cheapest entertainments for your dollar. If you look at prior economic down turns the movie industry usually holds up well. Why because people still need to take their minds off their troubles. -
Quote:Originally Posted by asgard_NA
After the trial is over, will the program still allow you to access your character, or would you have to purchase the software?
If you go through the registration process for the pro trial you can export your models. It outputs everything from 3ds to vrml.
Its a nice mechanical process. If you don't have it you will want to use it with a utility like hypersnap so you can get the needed screenshots easily. -
The multiple photos to 3D model process yields a more desirable result. You get a fully textured model as the end product and there isn't a need for manual tweaking.
I have been getting good results using 3D software object modeler from these people http://www.3dsom.com/. They have a 2 week free trial that will allow you to export the models. -
Quote:Congratulations an excellent run. But you have missed the point. Your fire/energy had only four deaths, a fire/sr scrapper could have done it with none and easier than the blaster.Originally Posted by CyberGlitch
On the day the plug gets pulled, I'm going to be playing my non-IO'd, fully-solo'd-to-50 Fire/Nrg blaster. She got from 1-50 solo and only died 4 times.
Naysayers be damned, blasters always were fine.
Don't get me wrong. I wasn't in love with the changes to blasters the way so many were. Only the change to t3 range and removing the crash from nukes seemed sensible. The regen/recovery power changes looked poorly done and didn't address the fact that mitigation in this game follows a hyperbolic curve and blasters had an incredibly tough time getting to the top of the curve. The snipe changes were just lol all around. Starting with a poor mechanism and then trying to plaster over it by overpowering the ability.
One final time we got something but what ? -
Quote:Direct physical content with a human being ? Dude you don't know where those things have been.Originally Posted by Father Xmas
Believe it or not it's a comic book movie. Sorry, graphic novel.
I didn't think it was a bad film, just an OK one. And yes, it's a film dealing with avatars that people "pilot". They don't need to look like themselves, or even an idealized version of themselves which can allow people to experience life as someone else.
But the sudden shut down was more of a "life without risk isn't a life worth living" message. It was a comment about how a technology that was meant to allow the minority among us who can't go out and interact with others due to injury/age/disease becomes corrupted so the rest of normal active society can choose to become shut-ins never leaving home. It's a voluntary Matrix because you rather have a risk free life through a proxy than direct physical contact with another human being. -
Quote:Originally Posted by JayboH
Studio is permanently gone - they are getting new jobs, and that won't stop. I have a strong feeling that anything anyone does won't make any difference, including Titan's shenanigans. I want this game to continue but I'm realistic about all efforts done with other MMOs that have been killed and the results that usually follow (I said usually.)It's a longshot but it isn't completely ruled out. It's mostly a question of will NCsoft actually take the trouble to deal ? Selling poorly performing assets seems to be an alien concept to them. It's almost as if admitting they had a division that didn't do well shames their corporate honor. Then whatever happens has to happen within the new profitability envelope for the company.Quote:Originally Posted by EvilGeko
I agree. I think this is a done deal. So be it. All you can do is never allow this company to do it to you again.
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Quote:Originally Posted by Zwillinger
It's still technically 9/6 here in CA at least.
As a heads up; We still do not have final details surrounding VIP status or the state of player services moving forward. As soon as NCsoft provides an update myself or another of the remaining team will update and hopefully answer any questions you may have.
Best,
-Z
The crack NCsoft team responsible for this ?*
*Nahh I like the stooges. -
Quote:BWAHAHA the difference between Old People and Gamers is that we Old People know how to vote, and pester our aristocracy.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Between that and the death panels eliminating all the older subscribers, I would expect the next two things to shut down will be the GetOffMyLawn MMO and the state of Florida.
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Quote:I understand what you are saying but shuttering a company is not a free action. If it doesn't have assets that you can/are going to sell off it can be a very expensive action.Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
If the cow is only producing a dribble a day then you may be better off bringing Daisy to the slaughter house.
It's an inaccurate analogy but the point kind of stands.
As far as we know they are dropping CoH in the oubliette, paying a severance package to the contracted employees and then do whatever they think they can get away with regard to customer liability. I don't know maybe there's enough unspent points and prepaid subs that they think they will come out ahead. -
Quote:Milk the cash cow for all its worth.Originally Posted by Chyll
Yeah, but even then (If I were in charge and trying to get all the cash out of it I could before ruining your fun), I'd give it a 6-month sunset internally, quietly shelf any development, start a layoff process to cut costs, and take your money as you were blissfully unaware for the items currently in flight (Bio Armor et al. that I'd already invested resources into)... and then pull the plug.
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Quote:ThisOriginally Posted by Arcanaville
There's a part of this theory that is potentially viable. Even if CoH was profitable, its possible that on a per-server basis it generated the least amount of revenue, and NCSoft wanted to release those servers for games with a better revenue per server footprint.
A small problem with that theory is that servers don't cost a lot really. NCSoft is probably saving more cash on payroll reductions. Between shutdown and Nov 30th my guess is NCSoft eliminated over a million dollars of expenses, over half of that direct cash flow (payroll taxes, deferred compensation, and the like would not impact cash flow instantly). If GW2 needed a couple more servers leasing those would have had a comparatively small impact on cash flow. That suggests that even if cash flow was a problem, the immediate shutdown of Paragon Studios was the primary goal, and the timing of the sunset of the game is not significantly important.
A bigger problem with this theory is that a cash flow problem for a company the size of NCSoft that makes you incapable of leasing a bunch of servers is a problem so serious it places the entire company in immediate jeopardy. Its one thing for NCSoft to decide it doesn't want to spend money on Paragon Studios anymore. Its another thing to say it can't buy servers and is forced to shutter a studio. That would be comparable to McDonalds removing Fillet o Fish sandwiches from their menu because they no longer had the cash to buy fish.
If they really needed the servers they could have had them provisioned in considerably less than three months.
Also as far as can be told CoH was net revenue positive. Killing it is going to increase costs in the short term not decrease them. -
Mixed loyalist/resistance praetorian missions that would become instant pvp fests.
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Quote:Hats off to you. I'm exiting with roughly 500 billion liquid and as of yesterdays pricing 600 billion in various IOs.Originally Posted by MeanNVicious
Ha thanks. Yea at first I wasnt going to burn it, but I realized I could market more over time. I will say converting that much into prestige took FOREVER !!! LoL.
That being said after all this time later my liquid worth is actually close to 1.5 trillion. Again thats liquid not including IO's and whats slotted on toons.
I have a couple bases loaded with IO's for building anything at any time. All pvp, procs, purples, rares, and a tidy pile of 52-53 HO's. Nothing else in base if the cost vs storage wasnt worth it, lol. Then you include whats on my toons and my total worth is pretty astronomical on top of the liquid.
Sadly with the recent news its almost heart breaking knowing it will all "poof" in not too long.
But it was a hell of a run, and I think I can take the title 'top dog' down with me, rofl.
Too bad they didnt allow me to throw everything into a pot and put my name on city hall or something
LoL.
The market was the best part of the game for me, I am going to miss it. -
Four years spent arguing defiance 2.0 wasn't enough and blasters got the short end of the stick. Somehow I just knew it wasn't going to happen.
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Yes no maybe.
You need recharge to make Drain Psyche work for you but its useless without a boat load of mitigation to back it up. If you are going to blap you want to try for significant ranged and smash lethal damage at the very least. Then try to get drain psyche's recharge down into the 30-40 second range. -
Hindsight is 20/20
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Quote:The record keeping is the real pain.Originally Posted by EarthWyrm
Dammit. Now this thread is making me want to go home and inventory my characters/bases...
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Quote:Does it need to be in liquid inf or are loose IOs acceptable as cash equivalents ?Originally Posted by MeanNVicious
Not quite all. I've been the founding member of the trillionaire club for a long long time now, and I have yet to have the pleasure of inducting another member.
Tis lonely at the top, no one to play chess with on Sunday afternoons over tea. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Snow Globe
That is disingenuous and you know it.
1) We're talking about incarnate trials, not task forces.
2) For every player on a task force, there is one less player for a trial.
3) You could be talking about a year ago, not in the last month. You just said before a 2XP weekend.
Team size requirements have always been a recipe for problems and incarnate trials with their larger teams made the problems worse. Toss in the devs obsoleting rewards like Hami Os and you get servers that can't remember their last Hami Raid and others where everything else has to stop for Itrials. -
Quote:Chuckle.Originally Posted by Lachlin
p.s. unless you have /energy of course lol for all other secondaries, the above will be my blueprint. -
Quote:Well that really doesn't seem on point. It's not hard to find fire powers that do good damage. (*Cough*) fireball (*Cough*)Originally Posted by Siolfir
Embrace of Fire doesn't assist all Dominator APP/PPP powers equally. Why should Rage?
If anything that is an argument to make embrace of fire, get the fiery embrace treatment.