NCsoft Brighton more trouble?
By
3dent,
Posted on: 2009-02-11 11:33 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
To be perfectly honest setting aside the loss of jobs (which is truly sucky) and the loss of the EU community (also sucky) the best thing they NCWest could do is to lump the EU and US together I've never seen the point of creating these borders for online games all it serves to do is dilute your users.
[/ QUOTE ]
But, as I understand it, part of it's always been down to tying the forum membership to the game account and the restrictions on data sharing between EU and US companies.
i.e. they've not been able to have both EU and US on the same forum if they're using personal account data (may be the address and financial info) to determine membership.
Pretty sure that without these external restrictions no company would ever really consider hosting seperate boards.
[/ QUOTE ]
true for things already in existence there are laws in the way but nothing is impossible and I'm sure there are numerous ways around such things its all just a matter of doing it in the right way.
But what really gets me is why do it at all what purpose dose it serve to split your users?
[ QUOTE ]
And I'm not saying the sky IS falling. I'm making predictions as to what MAY happen to us in the future, and a little conjecture beyond that, but my main point of contention here is the total lack of communication.
[/ QUOTE ]
/signed
As things stand NCSoft's coming across as either incompetent or indifferent as far as EU customers' futures are concerned. Not sure which of those two is worse, but neither's very good.
I'm with FFM on this.
The old saying "No news is good news" doesn't always hold true. In this instance the absolute absence of communication from NC is raising more questions than it's answering. Without even a holding statement: "Bear with us and more will be forthcoming" is, frankly damning them.
It could be they are following the Denis Thatcher school: "It is better to say nothing and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
And frankly, if there is a shed-load of blood on various carpets at NCWest, they'll want the clean-up crew in there before they say a word.
Incidentally, Jeff Strain's blog had this image on it yesterday. Then it was mysteriously offline for a while and now it's back, that image is gone. With no additional content relating to that image to my knowledge I think that was a message being sent by him to the guys in the EU office - hence my thoughts that something of a coup's been staged.
Thelonious Monk
Withdrawal from Europe a missed opportunity, says former NCsoft exec
Courtesy:GamesIndustryBiz
An interesting article Mumsy.
Sorry Scarlet but who is this Jeff Strain fellow?
Badge Earned: Wing Clipper
A real showstopper!
[ QUOTE ]
The old saying "No news is good news" doesn't always hold true.
[/ QUOTE ] but isn't there a saying where bad news travel faster then good news???
It dose look like they've decided to pull everything in under the NCwest banner i wonder if the demise i wonder if the failings of TR were the finale nail in the coffin of the last group of managers.
Also if there has been some kind of power grab / change in leader ship like some suggest what dose it mean for CoH as hole. i recon we may come of quite well the devs are already housed at NCWest so provided they can pull there fingers out and get some kind of official statement out to us before the lack of information spreads completely out of control.
They could also do with rather rapidly getting i14 out and live it'll go some way to ease the feelings of abandonment and keep us all distracted for at least a while (yes there will be shouts of its rubbish there's no content in it etc etc but there normal for a issue) after that they'll want to get i15 out for the anniversary maybe it wasn't there intention to do that but the hints dropped have pointed at that date so missing it will be perceived as a failure weather it truly is or not. the problem is i15 will need to be substantial to keep every one happy.
In other words there gonna be doing lots of damage control to the playerbase and the longer they leave it the more damage there causing as it is were all panaking like headless zombies in a burn patch its only a matter of time before those on the US boards start connecting lack of Dev posts to something going bad even if its not the case.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The old saying "No news is good news" doesn't always hold true.
[/ QUOTE ] but isn't there a saying where bad news travel faster then good news???
[/ QUOTE ]
There is. But there's still no actual news.
[ QUOTE ]
It dose look like they've decided to pull everything in under the NCwest banner i wonder if the demise i wonder if the failings of TR were the finale nail in the coffin of the last group of managers.
Also if there has been some kind of power grab / change in leader ship like some suggest what dose it mean for CoH as hole. i recon we may come of quite well the devs are already housed at NCWest so provided they can pull there fingers out and get some kind of official statement out to us before the lack of information spreads completely out of control.
They could also do with rather rapidly getting i14 out and live it'll go some way to ease the feelings of abandonment and keep us all distracted for at least a while (yes there will be shouts of its rubbish there's no content in it etc etc but there normal for a issue) after that they'll want to get i15 out for the anniversary maybe it wasn't there intention to do that but the hints dropped have pointed at that date so missing it will be perceived as a failure weather it truly is or not. the problem is i15 will need to be substantial to keep every one happy.
In other words there gonna be doing lots of damage control to the playerbase and the longer they leave it the more damage there causing as it is were all panaking like headless zombies in a burn patch its only a matter of time before those on the US boards start connecting lack of Dev posts to something going bad even if its not the case.
[/ QUOTE ]
I've been saying more-or-less the same thing. However shockingly it's been handled (and there does seem to be some seriously over-inflated egotistical stuff going on...) but it could be ok for the game
Thelonious Monk
[ QUOTE ]
An interesting article Mumsy.
Sorry Scarlet but who is this Jeff Strain fellow?
[/ QUOTE ]
He's co-founder of Arena.net, executive programmar or such on guildwars.
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
(50)MaceX/(50)Encore
Sign the petition, dont let CoH go down! SIGN!
Ah cheers Sinergy.
Hmm perhaps it is a subtle hint to the guys at the EU office that as the album/single title says 'the final countdown'
Still I think we've all got the panic out of our systems and gone through the 5 stages.
1) Confusion.
2) Anger.
3) Panic.
4) Theorising.
5) tired of being confused, angry and paniced (there is little to no acceptance 
).
Badge Earned: Wing Clipper
A real showstopper!
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
An interesting article Mumsy.
Sorry Scarlet but who is this Jeff Strain fellow?
[/ QUOTE ]
He's co-founder of Arena.net, executive programmar or such on guildwars.
[/ QUOTE ]
and now one of the directors of NC West - effecitvley he's the guy who has just made the guys in Brighton redundant
Thelonious Monk
Badge Earned: Wing Clipper
A real showstopper!
Boy would I hate to be a NC shareholder right now.,...... although I hate holding the shares I do already so more of any would probably upset me.
So which server has the most west coast activity? Having friends in California means I could possibly make player meets there. I could probably make some in DC too, but the population of DC irritated me last time I visited
"Well, they found my diary today.
They were appropriately appalled
at the discovery of the eight victims
They're now putting it all together.
Women wrapped in silk
with one leg missing
Eight legs, one body, silk,
spider, brilliant!"
[ QUOTE ]
Boy would I hate to be a NC shareholder right now.,...... although I hate holding the shares I do already so more of any would probably upset me.
[/ QUOTE ]
Actualy shareholders are quite happy, NCsoft made a succes launch in Korea, if their guessing for 2009 is true they could hit way higher profit then they did past 2 years. Higher profit -> higher stock -> happier stockholders.
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
(50)MaceX/(50)Encore
Sign the petition, dont let CoH go down! SIGN!
Not too happy for the ROCE on a company in the entertainment business myself, 2009 could be good, but 2008 wasn't great
"Well, they found my diary today.
They were appropriately appalled
at the discovery of the eight victims
They're now putting it all together.
Women wrapped in silk
with one leg missing
Eight legs, one body, silk,
spider, brilliant!"
Is NCWest wholey owned by the korean parent company though, or do they just own a controlling share?
I really should do something about this signature.
for anyone that finds the conference call streaming link doesn't work (and the download seems to be disabled) it's here too http://1.x10hosting.com/NCsoft_20090...rence_Call.mp3
I found too boring to listen to all of it but maybe someone else can point out highlights I dunno
Must admit I agree with FFM and Scarlet.
All of this saying nothing whatsoever IS having a negative effect.
I know people besides myself who are unsure about playing and some who arent on at the moment as they do not want to invest in their characters further, without knowing what will happen next.
They dont have to break employment laws or land themselves in doodoo just by saying things will be fine, bear with us.
The silence is just feeding the rumours and to be honest, backs up the fact that the customer support or service sucks, making the players feel really undervalued in this.
Zhaan, Chakyra, Fiorina 161, Aeryn, Polly Nation, Dee Pression, Shazanne, Night Jester and too many more to mention.
Network Hell 47640
Valley of the Harpies 74519
Green and Pleasant Land 75966
So do we actually know anything more than we did yesterday?
[ QUOTE ]
So do we actually know anything more than we did yesterday?
[/ QUOTE ]erm it the weekend tommorow and kids off school next week 
Apart from that?
Sod all, really. Getting a little ticked off about it, myself.
Sam: "My mind is a swirling miasma of scintillating thoughts and turgid ideas."
Max: "Me too."
Stuff
Yeah likewise!
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
This silence is causing NC irreparable harm by the minute.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hyperbole very much?
I think you're all overreacting rather strongly to be honest.
What is surprising is how quickly some have switched from "Everything is rosey, stop saying there's less people on Server X" to "Ahhh. The sky is falling"
It's a reorg, it's most likely the servers will stay up for the medium term and then there may be some sort of switch / change. Until that's confirmed people should probably stop working themselves into such a lather.
[/ QUOTE ]
OK, by the minute is an obvious exaggeration, but they ARE causing themselves harm by not saying ANYthing to us. Harm to a customer's trust is possibly the worst kind of harm a company can suffer, IMO, and they're certainly doing THAT to themselves.
And I'm not saying the sky IS falling. I'm making predictions as to what MAY happen to us in the future, and a little conjecture beyond that, but my main point of contention here is the total lack of communication.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.