Gangrel_EU

To be fair, all they did was make it Free 2 play for *everyone* and not just the former subscribers (queue grumblings of a crappy refer a friend trial method, which was the *only* method to trial the game)

You have to remember that the EU and US have their own set of server locations... so it makes sense to have 2 unofficial RP servers (just like Union is the unofficial EU RP server)

Wherever Codemasters hid theirs as well....

Of course, they could just refund you any subscription fee that you are owed and leave it at that.

Side note: Previous reimbursement package from the closure of Tabula Rasa was:

City of Heroes +3 months sub
Lineage 2 + 3 months sub
Aion Collectors Edition when released.

Sure, you dont have accept that lot... there is *nothing* that says that you have to accept it. If you dont want it, dont use it.


*edit* I Would like to state that this was on top of any refunds/reimbursements for unused subscriptions as well.

Normally it would be as a direct competitor, so CO/DCUO or another MMO. However, there is more to life out there than MMO's and I know of an ex Destination Games person who started work with Disney on Epic Mickey soon after he was let go (another started work at NASA IIRC).

This is the thing... they *do* show which divisions are losing money vs those that are making money. That fact that you as an outsider might not be 100% sure of which part is which is neither here nor there.

"Merging" two companies to operate under the same brand (which is what they did) does not mean that you have change what it gets listed as in your financial reports.

IF however it was a full on merge, so that there was financial links and ties between the 2, so if one went down the other half went down... then yes you would.

However, that is not the case here. The losses of NC Interactive have no bearing on the financial state of play with NC Europe.

Collectively they can be called NC West and if you do that, then the whole "Western Side" looks shakey (especially when you consider the US side lost 3 times as much money as the EU side).

*edit* I would also like to state that for accounts to be fully signed off can take *months*, if not years... the Department of Works and Pensions in the UK hasnt had their accounts signed off for 24 years (for various reasons apparently)

Edit: To continue, would i support NCsoft if i liked Guild Wars 2? Yes, I would, and infact have done (2 copies in the house, possibly a 3rd for the family, depends on interest from the little sister...)

Well, i can't speak for him, but no, i do not agree outright with the actions of Ncsoft concerning Paragon Studios.

But if i had done what other players *have* suggested, I would have never returned back to City of Heroes after they closed down Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa.

I would have never gotten involved with the EU CoX player meets. Christ, Kallandra and I would have never met in the 1st place.

*shrugs* As you said, each to their own.

But it is amazing what happens though if you don't cut yourself off.

side note: I have to admit that also being friends with several (now) ex-NCsoft staff did help me stay with the game.

About EQ and EQ2, they do have the slight advantage of also being supported by SOE's Station Pass...

Going to stop here, because i have never heard of "one of" expenses... "one time", "one off" expenses, yes, but not "One of" expenses...

The NCsoft West thing... it hasn't appeared in *any* of their financial reports. NCsoft West was more than anything else, a rebranding of the UK (Ncsoft Europe) and American offices (NC Interactive), even though *financially* they are still separate entities.

still took roughly 2 weeks from the launch of the game to announcement from Dr. Ray Muzyka (21st March).

The announcement of the Extended cut was June 22nd.

And with the 15 developers/5 support staff (or how ever many it was), dont forget to add on the Community Team, who were NCsoft employed, and not Cryptic employed.

It wasn't until the management shake up when the Garriotts were ousted from their management roles, that the community management became the responsiblity of the studio developing the game and not the publisher. It is still in effect now, as you dont find the Lineage 2/Aion community people covering each other. Before the shake up, at least in the EU, i know that the CM's helped back each other up, so if one was away, someone else could easily step in to fill the breach.

Agreed, and infact it went up *that day* on the launcher as well if I remember correctly.

oh 100% agreed. It takes more time to *work out* what to type, than to actually type it.

And even thinking about *how* to start the project before you even lay fingers to keyboard, planning out the various modules/structure all takes up a lot of time.

I guess in a way, with the discussion on the forums already, that counts to the hours spent doing it

I was just going by what i was told at uni when it came to our coding projects. We were told that no matter when we started coding, a "full day coding" was 8 hours. That could be 2 lots of 4 hour stints, 4 lots of 2 hour stints, what ever. But it would be safe to assume that a "full days worth of *productive* coding" was 8 hours.

Of course, for me and my friend, our 8 hours also included playing pool, talking about the design and hashing it out on paper/in the air as we came to each problem. It helped a lot when we hit those brick walls of "what the hell do we do in *this* situation without making a mess of it".

Sure, you could probably slave away over night, using and abusing redbull, alcohol, and enough proplus to keep the titanic afloat, but you would find that *generally* speaking, your best work was inside those 1st 8 hours.

16 hours.. going by the standard of a days work being 8 hours...

If anything, recently they have been having *more* of a presence at shows over the past couple of years.

Sure, NCsoft might not have been there themselves, but Paragon Studios/City of HEroes were there.

Also, there have been the player pummits, which only started recently. They must have cost a bit to arrange.

Start with Disney and work from there....

Well, we *could* have that number, although then that would mean that over the half the player base would be non subscribers or premium players who don't spend anything on the Paragon Market

Yes, the Korean/Asian market can support NCsoft alone... infact, that is where the vast bulk of their past earnings have come from.

I would say yes it would. Infact i would go sofar to say that if it wasn't for GW2 releasing recently, if you took the Western Market out of their costs, they would probably have been making a profit for the past Quarter.

All we can extrapolate is the how many approximate people there were paying $15/month (as a subscriber). The last figure for active accounts that was on one of the financial reports was at 125K.

Since then though, revenues have declined, and currently we had the * equivalent* of 55-60K $15/month players.

That could mean that we had 55-60K subscribers spending nothing on Paragon points per month, or we could have 27-30K subscribers spending $15/month on points. Or any combination there of. We don't even know how many people were playing on "free" accounts.

It is very hard now to get an accurate figure as to how many people were *paying* for the game in any shape or form. Only Paragon Studio's and NCsoft know the answer.

Well, considering that the sales figures for those two titles were not in the quarterly reports, i can see why it would appear that it cost them a lot of cash.

Because Arena.net decided in their wisdom to link stuff from GW1 over to Guild Wars 2. So to be honest, why kill off GW1 already when you can still unlock the stuff?

Does this meant that Guild Wars 1 will stay around for the life of GW2? I don't think it will... however, the fact that you *can* retroactively add stuff to GW2 from GW1, means that those players who havn't bought GW1 but have bought GW2, can still do it.

Think of it this way... can you imagine the Mass Effect series if Bioware decided to *stop* selling ME1 when ME2 was released... and ME2 when ME3 was released?

Pretty dumb move isnt it?

Same kind of thing, if you can get people hooked on one title from a series, chances are they will pick up the prequals or sequals if they enjoy them.