Father Xmas

The only people that have disappeared from the forums recently have been extremely vocal and argumentative folk who belittled anyone who disagreed with them. Some crossposted their views onto every board and when asked not to by some, lit into them.

Even at the end of the world, you still will need the police to remove those who are making the lives of those who simply want to spend their remaining days with some quiet dignity miserable.

If large corporations accept Windows 8, then it will be a hit for Microsoft. The notion of a standard UI across all platforms, from XBox 360 to phones to tablets to laptop/desktop is sort of Star Trek Next Gen like. If the general public learns to adopt it, then it'll be a big hit. But since it comes now as default on every new PC/Laptop (yes you can downgrade to 7 for free), the general public may be forced to accept it as the new way of doing things.

Lineage II went F2P in NA last November. Aion went F2P in NA this April. GW2's no subscription model should have minimal impact on those games.

The closure of this game and Paragon Studio may have more to do with trying to right the sinking ship of NC Interactive, which Paragon Studio was considered part of. NC Interactive handle the NA release of NCSoft's Lineage II, Aion and sometime soon Blade & Soul as well as City of Heroes and Paragon Studio. Neither Carbine Studio, which is under direct control of NCSoft Corporation or ArenaNet, which is it's own subsidiary have anything to do with NC Interactive.

NCSoft published just the profit/loss of each of their subsidiaries. They took control of the game at the end of 2007 so I'll start with 2008. Figures are in million KrW.

2008 3623
2009 -3600
2010 -13691
2011 -24774

First half of 2012, -14207. There is something very financially amiss with NC Interactive, it's hemorrhaging money. Now remember NCSoft's Q2 loss was only -7263. NC Interactive's Q2 loss was - 7798.

Now NCSoft may be willing to operate their core MMOs at a loss in NA and they need NC Interactive to localize Blade & Soul but they can't ignore how much NC Interactive is losing. So they may have close Paragon Studio and as a side effect, since without a studio you can't keep cranking out content even for a F2P MMO, City of Heroes simply as a way to show they are trying to reduce those losses.

If City of Heroes minus the cost of Paragon Studios was as highly profitable as some of the vocal #SaveCOH movement insist it was, this would be a very dumb move since it would make NC Interactive run even more into the red. However if the profit was very small, the negative impact would be minor before any write down due to it's closure is taken into account. I would not be surprised if in Q4 they show NC Interactive reversing it's downward trend and that will be all the validation NCSoft needs to show they did the right thing for their stockholders.

My point being they don't just have a few large games but many, many games to spread 1.3 billion accounts across. I imagine there are players with accounts across a number of games in their region. They may even have multiple accounts within the same game, either the multibox or simply they forgot their previous account login info.

I played MapleStory for a short time a few years ago. I don't remember my account info anymore. The biggest problem I had was if the patcher hiccuped, you were force to download the entire game all over again. They also had an anti-cheat program that would co-install and run while playing. As for gameplay it was just do damn grindy for me and required teaming to complete certain quests.

Yes Marilyn was the creepiest one of them all. She has no problem helping Grandpa with his plans.

Lily was okay. The idea that Eddie is a child with special needs and showing Herman and Lily trying to cope with that was an interesting but I felt unsuccessful idea. But since the original series was a twist on the family sitcom tropes of the 1960s, doing a more modern family sitcom/drama trope seems only natural.

Herman, well the original Herman was jolly, this one was more of a worry wart. A definite change in his basic character.

You could really see Bryan Fuller's sense of funny macabre like what he did with Pushing Daisies. Wish they ran with this but I guess he's now off doing his Hannibal TV series (it's a prequel set before Red Dragon).

At least they found time to included Spot.

Damn, didn't realize that. I'm sad now. I was expecting this to be a regular lead in to Grimm.

Bye Houty. Glad I actually bumped into you on Virtue at Atlas 33 that one time.

Always like Y'all. Going to miss your Grr forum avatars. Just one more thing that's going.

NCSoft has 9% of their stock still in reserve. Their CEO owns 10%, Korea National Pension owns 9%, foreign investors 28%, individuals 13% and domestic institutional investors 15%. Before the sale to Nexon, NCSoft's CEO owned 25%. This is from NCSoft's August Investor Relations briefing packet.

Starts tonight at 8p EDT NBC.

Now I loved Bryan Fuller's Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies so I'm going to give his take on The Munsters a chance. I'm looking for the wit and comedy he brought to his previous series here.

Yes it's going to be odd that they are playing the cast as looking human instead of classic Universal monsters that in the original series everybody else seemed to politely ignore. Without the advantage of being in black and white, the Universal classics just don't translate well into color.

Not sure if Jerry O'Connell is tall enough to play Herman but that may just be part of making them more human like.

I'm sorry. I don't think anything could beat the very first Halloween event in 2004. The idea of trick or treating encouraged teaming, badging, first zone event when the giant sized Fir Bog shows up. And who did not laugh when they or a teammate announced they got a rock.

The whole IoP/Base raid concept was interesting but I can see why they gave up on it.

First lets go back to Issue 6 when all of this started.

Way back then bases were not cheap in terms of Prestige. SG sizes were limited to half of what they are now. Prestige generation totally wiped out Influence received when you got to Level 35. This was before IOs and the auction house. We had to replace our enhancements every 5 levels at an ever increasing cost.

Then base plots that allowed you to build an IoP Vault cost significantly more in upkeep than basic plots. You not only had to provide power and control, and a lot if you weaponized your base, but also back-up power items as well. More Prestige please.

Then, assuming you got an IoP (we'll leave the buggy/late trial aside) you then can have a raid. A raid where an opposing SG of villains can come (or heroes to a villain base) and destroy items throughout your base to get at the IoP. Win or lose the owner of the base would need to rebuild it using even more Prestige.

So base raids boiled down to a way to burn through Prestige (as if construction and rent wasn't enough) to encourage the SG to be A) fully populated and B) play in SG mode to earn Prestige while at the same time needing to earn Influence/Infamy so players could keep their enhancements from going into the red (remember ED came out at this time as well).

Can you see why at initially it wasn't a popular option once players understood what it took to A) build and maintain a base and B) rebuild it after a raid.

Sure over the years they lowered the cost of items and rent. They doubled the size of SG and made it so Influence didn't get driven to 0 simply because you are high level and playing in SG mode. But what happen in time was base construction became an art form and to facilitate that the base editor was tweaked to allow more created freedom than providing a clear path for raiding teams.

IoP trial was dead. PvP had been modified to something that I understand is rather unpopular with the PvP community. Raids damage bases. Bases became architectural wonders. So yes, base raiding died. Yes it was an interesting concept to bring SG oriented PvP into the game but like the Arena, the PvP zones, the CtF style of RV it never gained significant traction among the larger player population. Bases became placed to craft IOs, Empowerment buffs and cut travel time down. I don't thing a lot of players were willing to lose access to those abilities just to have a raid.

Well if you saw the end of last week's there is obviously a mastermind or at least a cabal that everyone one the list, including his late father and as we now know his mother belongs to. It's not League of Shadows but someone is running the city with the rich and powerful (or keeping them rich and powerful).

Zynga is just another in a long line of internet companies that really didn't have a viable, sustainable business model. However they did get their big payday when the company went public and now that it's apparent to all that they can't continue to grow earnings while losing money it's only a mater of time until they they get bought out for pennies on the dollar. The games that made their name are now past their prime and the stories about them simply cloning other developer's games shows that creatively they were just a flash in the pan.

They went from $600 million to $1.1 billion from 2010 to 2011 with profits going from $90 million up to $400 million in the red. That's right, they added $500 million to their revenues but nearly $1 billion to their annual costs.

I agree, all the camera pans were great and the various memories of fights springing up around the Hero One memorial was well done.

Very moving.

That's right, forgot the name was spelled funny for trademark purposes.

Revenues in North America were down over 60% from 2009 to 2011 and 30% in the the first half of 2012 when compared to the first half of 2011. Factoring out CoH and GW, those numbers representing Aion and L2 are even worse. How could any negative publicity from our game's and it's studio demise impact those numbers any more than they already are. Sure it could go to zero but right now there isn't a lot a difference between where they are now and zero. All it proves is as gamers, we don't like the MMO experience they are offering. They embraced Starcraft, why can't we embrace grindy MMOs that are heavy on PvP?

So they'll try again but heavy on the boobs and violence. After all we liked Mortal Combat and Dead or Alive fighting games.

While the code and art assets in the game could be priced in the $3-5 million range it's the player database that goes with it that NCSoft isn't willing to part for song. These are/were their customers, some who are still playing their other games. Customer lists are valuable things. It's not like NCSoft is getting out of the games business like when Simon & Schuster sold Eve Online back to CCP. It'll be more like GM selling off Saturn back when it was a unique platform and not just another reskinned GM chassis.