Gangrel_EU
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Posts
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Quote:I have a fire/emp troller... although he hit 50 when you could have *multiple* sets of Fire Imps out, and at that point in time, they were quite possibly over powered.Originally Posted by shadow35
Trollers and Brutes rock!!
Fire/Empathy and Stone/Fire FTW-- two of my favorite all-time L50s.
And as to the AT evolution, I suppose I always thought Fenders were weak, but I managed to bring a dark/dark to 50 a couple years back and I still do play him occasionally, so I guess that's my answer. -
Quote:I have seen no Guild Wars 2 adverts in the UK.Originally Posted by Ein_Dose
Yeah, that'll be your region. I'm in Australia, which is also a pretty big blind spot for a lot of game developers. Guild Wars 2 I believe got a respectable showing over in the US, you know as much as AAA games that aren't big console headliners tend to get, but Blade and Soul, again, is only really out in Korea.
I did catch the Guild Wars 2 "My Time Is Now" youtube video though.
Blade And Soul I would expect to see nothing for, because that is indeed only released in Korea right now. -
Quote:Although I can see why you would also choose to use that, I would also like to point out that the vast majority of Asian shares have also declined in the past 24 hours. Of course this could be just pure coincidence but there has apparently been a link with Obama winning the US elections and a general decline in world stock markets....Originally Posted by Xieveral
Clearly
I find this absolutely delicious. -
Quote:Just to point out one thing about guild Wars 2 before people complain about "how little it made".Originally Posted by Starsman
That would make a lot more sense, I never seen that report before so I can't understand it and was confused where the loss was reflected.
This is the breakdown of profit per title translated to USD:
$41,990,356 Guild Wars2
$35,088,296 Lineage
$29,918,392 Blade&Soul
$24,677,040 Aion
$12,182,800 Lineage II
$09,360,604 Others
Still odd that GW is making only 20% more than Lineage 1, but I guess that's some good profits there.
It was only released for one *month* of Q3. So saying that Guild Wars 2 should have made more money... for being on release for *one* month, and it bringing in this much money, especially considering that it was not released in the Asian market is fairly respectable.
However, you can lay into Blade and Soul, because the figure for Q3 is for all 3 months, and to be honest, I would have expected it to make more money... -
Quote:I thought Blade and Soul would have had more of an impact than it did... as Father Xmas has stated, it seemed to have cannibalise their Lineage series and Aion earnings. But yeah, considering it had a whole quarter, Blade and Soul doesnt look like to have done all that well overall.Originally Posted by SpyralPegacyon
Father Xmas will know better, but if I remember right GW1 made most of their dinero on box sales and expansions. Cash shops are pretty much just gravy.
I thought B&S and GW2 would give NCSoft a very nice 3Q. Whoopsie.
However, Guild Wars 2, considering it has only officially released in the EU and US, *has* done well. And those figures are just for one month (The game was released on 28th August, Q3 ended end of september). -
Quote:I can see why you would think that, but they are *totally* different games. Even more amazing is that they managed to fit in so much stuff in such little amount of storageOriginally Posted by Tenzhi
Hrm. I'm completely unfamiliar with this game, though it reminds me somewhat of the old Star Wars vector graphics arcade game.
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Go and check the figures out here.
I have noticed nothing really special, until I got to the back end where the subsideries are listed.
NC Interactive went from a $7million loss in Q2 to just $400,000 loss (roughly) in Q3.
Make of that what you will...
Paging Father Xmas. -
Quote:£1.25million is the target he wants to raise on the kickstarter page... Just wish I had the spare cash *right now* to donate >.<Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
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Quote:I believe that Age Of Conan going F2P helped Funcom a little bit linkageOriginally Posted by Pyber
I don't know about every one of course, but LotRO and DDO are both still fairly healthy, and LotRO has seen a very marked increase (by some accounts nearly doubling) in profits since going with a "freemium" system much like TOR's (though not quite as restrictive to F2P accounts). From what I've heard, the same applies to DDO, albeit not as big a change. By all accounts our own beloved City was doing fairly well since the changeover as well of course.
Not sure offhand about any other "big name" MMO's that switched from pay-to-play to F2P or freemium. Either way, just because a game switches its subscription model doesn't necessarily translate into the beginning of a funeral dirge. It remains to be seen if it helps ToR any.
Edit to add that if you do choose to check out your old character(s), just login, go to the server select screen and look for where you've been moved to. There is a column at that screen displaying how many characters your account has on any given server. -
Quote:And to be fair, 2 of those games that they closed down are still running, because NCsoft only actually ever published them in one region. There were different publishers for different regions of the game (Point Blank and Dragonica/Dragon Saga are the games that I am referring to).Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Two.
Legend of Martial Arts and Heroes of Three Kingdoms
Currently they are running 12 games and are developing 3 more.
As opposed to NCSoft closing 7 games and having 1 being developed. I'll admit I'm not sure how many games NCSoft has active since several were only released in a single country, but I think they only have 5 international games.
In terms of Games still running internationally for NCsoft:
Lineage 2, Aion, Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2.
Lineage 1 is still running, but as far as I am aware, it is just for the asian market now, since the closure of the US servers for it. -
Quote:It is a hard one to be honest as to exactly why. It could well be due to how their back end words.Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
Other powers get allocated differently though - so a temp power seems more deliberate than accidental
There are your inherant powers (sprint, rest, ninja run... basically everything that *can* unlock when you start a new character. This also includes the costume power).
Then there are the accolades. Fair enough, combination of powers.
Then, and to be fair, I think "temporary powers" is the "catch everything else". category. Although they did have the incarnate powers have their own splits....
Looking through the list, I noticed that "Call to Power" is also listed under the temp section. Now, you have to remember that the villain and hero versions of Oroborus are *different* maps. And if i remember correctly, the oroborus travel power is *linked* to the map.
So if you change alignment you end up having to get another version of it (in this case going from hero to villain actually means that you are swapping powers out).
Could they have categorized it differently? Yes, but i believe that in their initial development of Oroborus, they just throw it into the Temp Power bin, using it as a catch all category (for the stuff that isn't inherent, nor what they viewed as an "accolade").
*shrugs* I think that you might have been reading too much into why it was categorized as such... -
Quote:The only way in which I can think of is that it was just how it was given out. It was basically a mission reward (or a badge award... depends on how you did it), so it just got allocated to that *growing* collection.Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
Ok out of all the revelatory stuff coming out there are two (not terribly) critical questions that have bugged me for a while and I'd really love to get answers to them.
- Why was the Ouroboros Portal a Temp Power? I know I've asked this before but it struck me that there's an implication that somehow, Ouroboros was going away some time. In one view, that makes perfect sense. Once the Coming Storm had been dealt with Silos had no need to keep the floating palace - but of course it would have removed a very convenient travel power, and a place to buy/sell cool stuff.
- Flying Disc: Was this a test of a new tech? What was the likely outcome going to be? New powers? It seemed to be a lot of work for a toy (but fun to use when queued for Trials) Where were the Devs hoping to go with that?
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Quote:Now, talking as an Englishman, this is how I would split it:Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Well, technically England, Britain and the UK are technically separate.
England is a country that shares a border with Wales and Scotland. It comprises the central and southern portion Great Britain.
Great Britain the country, varies by era, but generally includes all of the British Isles, including Northern Ireland. Great Britain, the geographic place, is generally just the Isle of Great Britain itself (which includes Scotland).
The United Kingdom normally overlaps the country definition of Great Britain but can be used to refer to all territories which are remnants of the former British Empire and still under British control.
England: The country, nothing more nothing less. The land of hope and glory, the bringer of NWOBHM, Alan Moore, Andrew Wildman, Neil Gaiman, Stephen Fry and many many others.
Great Britain: The countries of England, Scotland and Wales taken as a single entity.
United Kingdom: Great Britain *and* Northern Ireland -
Quote:It probably helps in that they had another set of former Blizzard developers in Arenanet who might have helped influence the decision...Originally Posted by Father Xmas
Moby Games listed them as founded in 2005. However when a group of devs who worked on WoW splinter off of Blizzard and go looking for a sugar daddy, I can see NCSoft deciding to gobble them up.
With the core group being former WoW devs, I now understand where the art style comes from in WildStar.
I can also see why, considering Blizzard's reputation in Korea as well as WoW's success in Asia, NCSoft is keeping them around. They are probably expecting WildStar to do very well in Asia.
Although this not to say that former Blizzard developers are perfect. Flagship Studios discovered this... -
Scary in that this was 5 years ago, around the same time as NCsoft bought the CoX IP and formed NC NorCal...
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Quote:Same setup as Paragon Studios was/is as far as i remember.Originally Posted by Texas Justice
Is Carbine Studios actually owned by NCSoft or are they independently owned?
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Quote:Having worked for the Dixons group, granted before Browett came in, the way in which he he changed how the Apple stores worked it wasnt surprising.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
One of the things I've said for years in this context is that companies are not hive minds, and companies do not make decisions; people make decisions.
Here's a narrative that makes no sense at all: Apple has built probably the strongest retail chain in all of retail, with the highest revenue per square foot and some of the highest customer service reviews in the history of retail. So it reduces its budget on retail store operations, cuts staffing, curtails employee training, and even reduces the operational cleaning of the stores, which causes retail employee disruption and customer satisfaction to drop. This persists until its ridiculously obvious its causing problems, before Apple decides to go back to doing things they way they were being done before.
Here's a narrative that makes perfect sense: John Browett is hired by Apple to replace the wildly successful Ron Johnson who left the company to become the president of JC Penney. He wants to make his mark at the company and prove he can improve significantly upon his predecessor, so the first thing he does is change the fundamental formulas that were put in place by Johnson that determine staffing and operations at retail stores, with an eye to reducing the cost of operations and improving profitability. At first he's allowed to do this even though its obviously disruptive to a highly profitable division of Apple because Tim Cook himself is an operational efficiency fan, but when its clear Browett's strategies aren't bearing fruit and he's unwilling to compromise on them, Apple is forced to remove him and revert his changes.
The narrative for NCsoft doesn't make sense because NCsoft is not an individual actor. The narrative would probably make a lot more sense, at least from a motivational point of view, if the narrative was focused on the right set of people. However, that's a lot more difficult narrative to construct in this case.
Dixons/PC World/Currys/The Link (before it was bought by Telefonica) stores were well known for being understaffed (most on part time contracts) with the staff having a *huge* pressure for upselling high margin addons to what ever you buy.
*shrugs*
Kinda glad I no longer work for them (although as always, there are good stores and bad stores in each company... i seemed to land in a couple of good stores, where the management let me get on and do my thang...) -
Quote:I believe that they do include microtransaction.Originally Posted by Codewalker
I have my suspicions about that.
I can't prove it as I don't have access to NCSoft's internal accounting, so this *IS* pure speculation, but I'm not entirely convinced that the "Game Sales" breakdown in the quarterlies includes microtransactions.
This is because in the PDF file in the quarterly results, they state that the drop in Aion revenues was due to poor item sales.
Look at the actual financial report... and what do you see, Aion revenues dropping. And considering that it is Free2Play *worldwide* now, if they didn't include microtransactions in the revenue model, then it would be non-existent in terms of revenue.
Now, extending that further, why would they choose to include it for one game, and not another?
Or infact, why would they include it for their *other* games, and not City of heroes? -
Quote:Just as an *idea*, and I know that this has worked in the past with a friend of mine.Originally Posted by SinergyX_EU
Twice i've been trying, but only getting there was already a huge effort (work, costs etc), by the risk of not getting anything drawn at all (i believe it was just a 'enter the queue' thing and i believe artists were randomly put on drawning - i wanted a specific style of drawing
).
They wanted a drawing of Optimus Prime for their son's birthday, done by Andrew Wildman.
So they got in touch with him directly.
Lo and behold, they got one just in time for his birthday. I don't know how much it cost, but it was not *extortionate* pricing. Could be worth a shot, especially if you know the name of the artist who does draw in the style that you want.
If you head over to Draw The World Together, they will have more information there... just as an idea. -
Quote:Did you ever attend any of the conventions that Ncsoft attended where the Draw The World people were there as well? That was a good way of getting your stuff done by one of the comic book guys.Originally Posted by SinergyX_EU
Inhale..
MEEEE!!!!!
ok.. short breath :X
I was trying to my get characters drawn way back in the time CoH still had a UK office.
Hell, i would even pay for it. -
Poop. Only for the Americans
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Quote:Project Z over on the Titan Network forums should interest you....Originally Posted by Anti_Proton
I simply find it hard to believe that there is a such a large player base available and no one is out trying to create a game that caters to them.
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Quote:To be fair, it would have looked crappy if CoX was closed down *immediately* when Tabula Rasa was given 3 months to sunset. But of course, a lot of the players here didn't give 2 hoots about Tabula Rasa and how it was closed down, so why would they care if TR was given 3 months and CoX wasn't given anything.Originally Posted by Ogi
It would have sucked for us players but if they had pulled the plug on 8/31 at the announcement the anti-NCSoft firestorm would have been glorious. Which is why they "gave" us three months.
Rather surprisingly, I am actually amazed that there hasn't been more uproar over "compensation" packages.
Tabula Rasa players got quite a nice deal. Here, it was just a refund. -
Quote:The only problem with mmodata.net is that their previous datapoint for Star Wars Galaxies was in the Q3 (roughly) of 2009. Then the next one it is reading 0 (time of game closure).Originally Posted by Torment And Agony
check out mmodata.net they seem to have reliable numbers
after a quick peek - looks like swg had less than 25k when their announcement was given. same with tabula rasa. i wouldn't be surprised if their CoH claim is correct.
:'(
So, as to how the game was doing in between those two data points, they have no information on. Is it sensible to say that it was declining... yes. But as to by how much though is another matter.
Less than 50K susbcribers? I can go with that, but as to *how much* below 50K subscribers I cannot comment on.
Side note: it is interesting to note that mmodata.net doesnt have any data on City Of Heroes from 2009 onwards so make of that what you will. -
Quote:The only one that I can think of that would have been a *close* comparison to size of player base closed down would be Star Wars Galaxies.Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
I read "most active" as the dev team currently working on Issue 24, 25, etc...
I would however like to see a citation for "largest" MMO to be shut down. Without hard facts regarding subscription numbers makes me wonder how one can claim this. The best guesses out there atm are that CoH had between 50k-60k subs on 8/31/2012. I have no idea about games like SWG, Auto Assault, etc etc as I never played them nor had any idea how large their populations were. I am NOT saying Posi is lying.. I would just love to know the numbers for such a thing.
As to how many it had at the time of *announcement* for closure, I do not know, but I am fairly certain that it would be at least closer to CoX levels than Tabula Rasa/Auto Assault levels.
For the NCsoft games that were closed down, Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault both had "low" population levels, at the time of their shutdown announcement.
From what i can work out from the financials, these are the rough levels of players:
Tabula Rasa: *roughly* 30-40K subscribers at the time of announcement. Personally, I would be more inclined to put this in the 25-35K range (due to currency exchange fluctuations, and me being lazy to work it out properly). At an NCsoft event that I attended in 2008, Kerensky (former German CM for Tabula Rasa) and I talked about the game, and he said that it wasn't looking healthy, and that my guess was in the ball park.
Auto Assault: Unknown, but it isnt listed under the Q4 tables for 2006 *or* 2007. However as an idea... "others" brought in through out 2007 roughly $2million for the *year*. It had a very very very small player base.
Dungeon Runners/Exteel: Once again, unknown as to their player base levels. They have always been (as far as i can tell) listed under "Others" in NCsoft's financials, so it is impossible to split them apart.
Also because both of those titles were Free2Play (although Dungeon Runners *did* have a subscription option as well), they could well have had a *lot* of accounts, but not many people actually spending cash on the games. In terms of active players though (ie those who played once a week), chances are they were each smaller than CoX at the level it was at when the announcement came through.