Grey_Hare
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This post reads like something NCSoft USA wrote under orders from NCSoft Korea.
I'm really surprised NCSoft hasn't moved toward a model that made it less costly for them to sell off insufficiently profitable (or obstructing or whatever) property. This is money they are not making.
They could sell the hardware and data storage to the highest bidder, even if it's just a guy who's going to put it all in Public Storage, and be ahead of where they land on their current course. Unless there's something in there that Can't Be Let Out. Hence my earlier point: that something needs to be more easily removable, even if what's left isn't self-contained.
This had better not be because an executive has a personal grudge. That would just be silly. -
Quote:We tried to get something like that together for the TR devs, but got rolling too late, and it wound up just being me and Redlynne meeting up at Trudy's a week after shutdown. We ran into another dev (who we couldn't get on the phone earlier) on the way out.Originally Posted by MisterD
Does anyone know of ANY MMO, hell, any PC game, where something similar has occured?
Too little, too late. -
Well, this is the second MMO NCSoft has taken away from me. The first being Tabula Rasa, three and a half years ago.
TR at least got to keep some of its dev team the last couple months. One of the musicians (Tracy W. Bush) composed a song, Blue Turns to Grey (not the Rolling Stones song), that was used as the final mission BGM -- the mission we were all on when they turned off the servers.
It's a great song. Here are a couple YouTubes setting it to game footage from those last days:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I43zOLko1o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCgcizG3qbk
...
Yeah, that's New York ...
The game storyline had just gotten to humanity trying to retake Earth ...
I hope my next MMO isn't from NCSoft. I'm not sure I can go through this again. -
Quote:The servers would likely need upgrades to handle the new game, though. Maybe the limited resource isn't the servers themselves as much as power, cooling, and physical rack space, all of which need building alterations to support major increases.Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU
That is an interesting line to take indeed... however with both AA being closed as TR launched, there was a 2 month gap between the closure and next launch. Same with TR and Aion (and that was a 7 monthish gap IIRC).
So whilst it is a nice theory, it holds less water with the TR closure and Aion. Because you are then sitting on servers that are not doing anything.
Anyway, my main theory is that NCSoft hasn't spun off any of these games (as Champions Online and Star Trek Online did) because the games themselves are very dependent on some proprietary NCSoft server-level code or other infrastructure (of which NCLauncher would be the tip of the iceberg), which can't be spun off. Kind of sad, because they'd recover a lot more of their costs by selling off than by killing off. -
Quote:And we remember you. ^_^ And, unlike PTR, your forums still exist, right? -_-;Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU
I remember you guys over at the PlanetTR forums!
I got in on TR about a month before the beta ended. Red and I joined CoH back in Nov. and Dec. 2004, respectively. Both were awesome rides. And in hindsight, we would have loved to work on the dev teams; every one of them we've met was awesome. But we managed to miss those chance meetings that Positron didn't. ^_^;
Though I was put off a bit at the CoX pummits. The programmers who were there behaved like caged animals, afraid to talk to anyone. Like there was some kind of caste system, or if they knew they would get fired if they said anything.
They paid to fly everyone in (except us locals, of course); it would have been way too expensive, and they'd have to leave out anyone without a passport.Quote:Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU
The AFS Bootcamp idea is something that was a marvelous idea... shame that it was limited to just those in the US
If only we had better technology, we could have teleconferenced you guys in.
Yeah, but the AA crew was commiserating with us TR folks for a while there.Quote:Originally Posted by TiberianFiend
And Auto Assault was canceled July 2. Of course, that one probably didn't spoil too many parties.
We also noted that AA and TR were canceled right as Aion was being launched... and now CoX is canceled as Guild Wars 2 gets ready to launch. So maybe NCSoft has a relatively fixed amount of server assets, and has to kill off whatever's at the bottom of the list when something new launches to free up servers? -
Are we still telling Sean Fish stories? I hope we're still telling Sean Fish stories, because here's mine:
Years ago, during the summer of 2008, the Tabula Rasa community had an event called the "AFS War College". They brought eight players from around the country in to meet the team and discuss ways to make the game a lot better. There was some desperation, since the game still had a lot of bugs (it was basically beta quality) because it was, at NCSoft's behest, launched about 1-2 years too early.
Redlynne and I ("Line" and "Lanster" in TR, respectively) were there because the event was in Austin and we lived there. I'll spare you the details of the rest of that Saturday, but while waiting for one meeting to get rolling, CuppaJo went and fetched Sean Fish and brought him by.
As soon as CuppaJo introduced him to Redlynne, Redlynne immediately (possibly reflexively) did the "We're not worthy! We're not worthy!" routine from Wayne's World.
I didn't notice, because my back was turned to them and I was talking to another dev. So Cuppa got Red to Stop That, then tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to see this guy with a big Nice Handsome Guy aura going (think Dirk Benedict as Starbuck). I say, "Hi. You are...?" and both Red and Cuppa say, "That's Sean Michael Fish." Upon which I reflexively started the "We're not worthy! We're not worthy!" routine. The grin on Sean's face was huge.
I barely remember what we talked about. I think "Striga Island was awesome" and "TR needs a writer like you, badly," were a couple points of discussion. It lasted a few minutes until the meeting started and Sean had to get back to what he was supposed to be doing.
As we all know, Tabula Rasa went on to be cancelled around Thanksgiving (what is it with NCSoft and ruining long weekends?), and finally shut down on Feb. 28, 2009. But they got some dev support for the shutdown, and were able to make a big final event out of it. A lot of former devs even came in, unpaid, to run the NPC boss mobs one last time.
I have no idea what Sean Fish is doing these days, or if he's still in town. But at least I got to thank him for all the fun he wrote.
And to Positron and the rest of the devs: "We're not worthy! We're not worthy!" I still have no idea what the "secret project" some of you transferred to is/was, or if it still exists. But wherever you go, let me know. Unless it's fantasy; I'm sick of that.
Just make sure that next time you control the server assets. That way you can spin off or something if the parent company decides they're done with you. No "great deal" is worth this kind of heartbreak. -
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I'm so glad that the devs don't give a damn about angering their customers. I must not get this business thing...I thought angering your customers was bad.
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No, you're thinking of stockholders. Angering them is bad, because some of them can get your CEO fired.
Customers are a necessary evil to be dealt with, nothing more or less.