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I'm looking forward to the devs combining the Cathedral of Pain and the Coming Storm and releasing the Rain of Pain.

The NCsoft Q1 2010 financials are out and things don't look good for CoH/V. Q1 covers January to March 2010, which includes the start of the GoRo pre-order offer (March 2, I believe).

In that period of time, CoH/V earned 3 348 M Won, which roughly translates to about US$2.9m (I've used an end of period exchange rate than an average over the 3 month period, but I don't believe there is much difference between the two results). Sadly, this is the lowest quarterly revenue generated by CoH/V in its history. It's a 13% drop on the previous quarter's earnings, with Q4 2009 being the previous record holder for the lowest revenue generated. In Won terms, it is also about half the revenue generated compared with year-on-year figures.

It's a result that is probably explained by the lack of content releases in Q1 2010 and that players may have adopted a 'wait and see' approach about Going Rogue.

DOOOOM comments incoming in 5, 4, 3, 2, ...

I would have like to have been there for the "let's leave forum rep on when when activate the new forums - the players will love it!" discussion.

However, in the sense of the time it took to earn those merits, would NT have been better off under a TF with a random roll system? Would he have earned more than 33 rewards?

Obviously he would have actually collected the rewards, rather than have them just sitting there, so there is that...

Going back, I think a lot of players are wanting to know some of the important detail around GoRo and expected the Q&A to answer some of that. It didn't and now, 2 - 3 months before launch, players are wondering exactly what they are in for.

That the GoRo site isn't updated with all the info released from various sources doesn't help either.

Great OP.

As a question, what is the inf equivalent of a merit based on those specified times? How much inf would I earn on average on a lvl 50 TF per hour that would earn me 20 merits?

Ultimately merits might be a 'cheaper' way of earning particular in-game rewards, but it has had the impact of creating supply issues through the reduced generation of particular items. Personally I believed that both systems - random rolls AND merits - should have been implemented, so that players had a choice and the overall supply of recipes into the economy was maintained (or even increased).

If the purpose of trial accounts is to restrict RMTers from using this mechanism as much as possible, mission achieved.

If the purpose of trial accounts is to get new players interested in playing CoH/V and giving them a streamlined play experience, I don't think the current trial is anywhere near that.

Key to this is the issue of trial accounts not being able to start their own teams. I know of several people who signed up to the CoH/V trial with friends (also on trial accounts) who don't last long when they find they can't team with each other without trying to flag down another player to start the team for them.

I've read half the thread, so just some general comments:

- The in-game advertising on billboards probably doesn't exist any more, but the real question is what advertiser wants to advertise to what amounts to a niche audience through such a mechanism? Given the small handful of ads that appeared to players, I don't think there are particularly many. That BP appeared surprised to even consider this method makes me think that it isn't going to come back and that he isn't in favour of it.

- Things that CoH/V already has done: advertised in comics, released books, released a card game, almost released an RPG, plus all the usual online channels (banner ads, site promotions, social networks, etc). Just a reminder.

- Why pay Samuraiko to do the CoH/V videos when she currently does them for free and CoH/V already gains all benefits from them? If they are helping to bring people to CoH/V (and I don't think they are, as fun as they may be for the forum population) then Paragon Studios is already getting all the benefits at $0 down. I'd suggest that BP / marketing could certainly be promoting the videos more - Massively.com and the like always want content - but it is an open question about the value that any kind of online video provides to a game. Some boost interest immensely (and these are often the out-of-game CGI promos, not in-game footage), but the vast majority would have no notable impact at all.

- A lot of the suggestions in this thread help promote awareness of CoH/V, but is only a small part of it. The key part is promoting trial of CoH/V and here is where I'll make a suggestion: change the limits on trial accounts so that they can START THEIR OWN TEAMS. The trial player who logs in with a trialling friend only to find that they can't even team up is a pair of triallists who don't hang around long. For anyone who says, "WoW does it that way," CoH/V isn't WoW.

So, there is some data for you BP: find out how the conversion rate on trial accounts before the restrictions came in vs after them. Wash the data if possible to take out gold farmer effects and see what you can do to take in other time-based effects. I've got a strong hunch that the trial restrictions had a very negative impact on this conversion rate by presenting CoH/V in such a limited way to first-time players.

Agree - the devs never said it is harder to redevelop old zones, just that it takes just as much time to do that as create a new zone.

To slightly disagree with Dr Mechano, CoH has enough zones and definitely has some that need a revamp (all untouched hazard zones, for instance) while CoV really needs some new zones to help fill it out more (and perhaps provide another story outside of the 'Destined One' meta-story).

Here is a question for WW: what are your plans for the non-NA community? You might not control marketing and distribution, but you certainly should have some idea of what you want to do game-wise for those outside of NA.

If the answer is: same thing we've always done, that's fine because it is an answer, but then the answer is 'not much'. I fully understand that your core audience is in NA, but there is definitely a perception that non-NA regions are being left to wither.

Not having boxes on shelves certainly makes it appear that NCsoft is happy to ignore CoH/V players outside of the US.

"I can't afford to find $15 a month" is only the completely true reason in a very small proportion of the population who are truly living pay cheque to pay cheque. Most people who make those kind of comments likely can't justify the cost in terms of the value they get back from CoH/V. It's also a kind way of saying, "I'm just not that into you."

Personally CoH/V could probably drop its price down to $9.99 a month and attract some more players back that way, but I couldn't guarantee that the number of returning players would match the loss in revenue as it currently stands.