[ QUOTE ]
We've always brought these free updates that a lot of other MMOs don't do -- you have to go out and buy a boxed expansion. We do a mini-expansion three times a year.
[/ QUOTE ]
Wasn't the official target* 4 issues a year?
Is my memory failing on this or does the interview mean that they've finally, officially stepped back to 3 per year?
* official target as in stated by rednames but 2 or 3 years ago now - and a lots changed since then and this may easily have changed.
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
We've always brought these free updates that a lot of other MMOs don't do -- you have to go out and buy a boxed expansion. We do a mini-expansion three times a year.
[/ QUOTE ]
Wasn't the official target* 4 issues a year?
Is my memory failing on this or does the interview mean that they've finally, officially stepped back to 3 per year?
* official target as in stated by rednames but 2 or 3 years ago now - and a lots changed since then and this may easily have changed.
[/ QUOTE ]
3 afaik.
And a year meaning 12 months. Not from January to December.
*edit* +1 *edit*
Also also... No need to be testy if I am wrong. 
If memory serves statesman once said that the updates would be every 3 to 4 months. With the aim of getting 4 a year. So in a way saying 3 a year is a low estimate.
[ QUOTE ]
If memory serves statesman once said that the updates would be every 3 to 4 months. With the aim of getting 4 a year. So in a way saying 3 a year is a low estimate.
[/ QUOTE ]
Better to be gloomy about it and say 3.
And when they do manage to publish a fourth you get extra happy.
[ QUOTE ]
If memory serves statesman once said that the updates would be every 3 to 4 months. With the aim of getting 4 a year. So in a way saying 3 a year is a low estimate.
[/ QUOTE ]
Our new captain of this boat said 3 per 12 months tho. So statemans old statement (no pun intended) is a bit outdated.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
We've always brought these free updates that a lot of other MMOs don't do -- you have to go out and buy a boxed expansion. We do a mini-expansion three times a year.
[/ QUOTE ]
Wasn't the official target* 4 issues a year?
Is my memory failing on this or does the interview mean that they've finally, officially stepped back to 3 per year?
* official target as in stated by rednames but 2 or 3 years ago now - and a lots changed since then and this may easily have changed.
[/ QUOTE ]
To be honest, he just stated the facts. It's irrelevant what they aimed to do, [ QUOTE ]
We do a mini-expansion three times a year.
[/ QUOTE ] is the truth of what has happened recently.
�How do I like my MMOs? I like them the way Paragon Studios used to make them.� - a fitting tribute from kiasa.org
EU, Union mostly.
Three or four FREE updates a year is nothing to be sneezed at - especially when you consider the subscription for CoX is significantly lower than many other games.
One thing that did strike me as odd was this statement:
[ QUOTE ]
For me, personally, if we maintain our subscriber base -- because we have a very healthy subscriber base, where it's at, I don't expect our numbers to drop with this feature. I don't think we really have expectations. I never had a conversation with anyone that went "If you don't bring in an extra 200,000 subscribers from this, this is a failure." Our game is doing really well. We're well past where we need to be for our subscriber base. So this is a feature we're excited about. Are our numbers going to go up? We hope so. At the end of the day, if it went up by 2 or 200,000, though, it's still a success for me.
[/ QUOTE ]
That's incredibly low key especially for a game that's just about to launch a ground breaking update and a new purchasable box. If I read between the lines I see "we've got an [censored] good product and a very loyal user core, but if this doesn't up the figures I don't know what the [censored] will. If it wasn't for the rest of the interview, I'd be keeping half an ear out with the expectation of an announcement saying NC are selling the game off - but the rest is the normal upbeat marketing talk.
Thelonious Monk
Well, he does have a point, MA might bring a lot of creative people back into the game, and even a bunch of new people. How many MMOs do you get the chance to actually make content in yourself?
Sure, *I* would personally rather see some serious dev created *new* content, but I'm not gonna go on a moaning rampage today! 
...well, not yet, at least! 
[ QUOTE ]
Well, he does have a point, MA might bring a lot of creative people back into the game, and even a bunch of new people. How many MMOs do you get the chance to actually make content in yourself?
Sure, *I* would personally rather see some serious dev created *new* content, but I'm not gonna go on a moaning rampage today!
...well, not yet, at least!
[/ QUOTE ]
ok I'm interested: Why specifically Dev created content? If something passes muster does it matter who wrote it? If it's that good, it should get turned into a proper arc anyhow.
More to the point tho, I was concerned about how lackluster and downbeat his response to the question was. As tho the Dev team are really excited by the product but not expecting it to drive new revenue. That's a borked business model if ever I've seen one.
Thelonious Monk
[ QUOTE ]
More to the point tho, I was concerned about how lackluster and downbeat his response to the question was. As tho the Dev team are really excited by the product but not expecting it to drive new revenue. That's a borked business model if ever I've seen one.
[/ QUOTE ]
As I read it, the dev team are (rightly) excited about this, but publicly cautious as it's pretty much untested on MMOs - so they've no real idea what sort of response it will get.
If they publicly state any number they are just setting themselves up for criticism:
State too low a number for some people and they'll either question why the devs waste their time on doing something with low appeal (i.e. which wasn't on the critics list of dev-must-dos) or why didn't they do change X, Y & Z and aim for a better response.
State too high and there's a fair chance that they might not hit the stated numbers leading to criticism that MA was a failure, devs don't know what they're doing, why didn't they do X, Y & Z instead.
Leaving it open with no publicly stated forecasts makes it easier to later claim a public success, pretty much regardless of how it performs.
Given the response so far in beta, the fact that it's pretty much untested in MMOs and that the devs got a nice and simple internal tool out of this I'd say it's already a success. And the early previews seem to suggest that the press like it (or at least like the idea of it) - so I can't really see it failing to any great degree.
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
[ QUOTE ]
More to the point tho, I was concerned about how lackluster and downbeat his response to the question was. As tho the Dev team are really excited by the product but not expecting it to drive new revenue. That's a borked business model if ever I've seen one.
[/ QUOTE ]
Didn't the dev team say some time ago that their drive at this point was to retain subscribers over gaining new ones? I thought it just sounded like a repeat of that, rather than doom and gloom.
This bit caught my eye:
[ QUOTE ]
We did the math: if everyone in the in the game made three mission arcs and maxed out their file size for stuff we would store 9GB on the server.
[/ QUOTE ]
I did my own math and I make that 30,000 subscribers. Am I out of touch or does that sound low?
"If there's anything worse than being sacrificed, it's being sacrificed incompetantly."
[ QUOTE ]
This bit caught my eye:
[ QUOTE ]
We did the math: if everyone in the in the game made three mission arcs and maxed out their file size for stuff we would store 9GB on the server.
[/ QUOTE ]
I did my own math and I make that 30,000 subscribers. Am I out of touch or does that sound low?
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm guessing you arrived at that number on the basis that each player needs 300KB of space to hold 3 arcs? I doubt that's true, they're probably compressed on the server.
Compressed to a RAR file, one of my arcs which is 119KB in Windows Explorer shrinks to 12KB.
"The Hamidon is a what what of what?" - Brian the mission guy.
[ QUOTE ]
That's incredibly low key especially for a game that's just about to launch a ground breaking update and a new purchasable box. If I read between the lines I see "we've got an [censored] good product and a very loyal user core, but if this doesn't up the figures I don't know what the [censored] will. If it wasn't for the rest of the interview, I'd be keeping half an ear out with the expectation of an announcement saying NC are selling the game off - but the rest is the normal upbeat marketing talk.
[/ QUOTE ]
The subscriber numbers have been slowly decreasing for a long time if one looks at the NCSoft quarterly reports.
If they manage to stop that, they will probably see it as reasonably successful issue.
They do not really know how MA will work out in the long term. E.g., will people be excited about it for a few months and then ignore it and move on to something else? Or will it continue to bring in new material?
Will it be good enough to help keep players once Champions Online releases?
It makes sense to be a bit cautious while still trying to convey a possitive message.
[url="http://adingworld.wordpress.com/mission-architect-story-arcs/"][b]My Story arcs[/b][/url]: [i]The Siren Supremes[/i] ([b]1143[/b]), [i]The Missing Geneticist[/i] ([b]2542[/b]), [i]Elemental Jones[/i] ([b]263512[/b]), [i]The Soul Hunter[/i] ([b]294431[/b]), [i]Heart of Steel[/i] ([b]407104[/b]), [i]Project Serpens[/i] ([b]434082[/b])
[ QUOTE ]
I did my own math and I make that 30,000 subscribers. Am I out of touch or does that sound low?
[/ QUOTE ]
Sounds about right to me.
I really should do something about this signature.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I did my own math and I make that 30,000 subscribers. Am I out of touch or does that sound low?
[/ QUOTE ]
Sounds about right to me.
[/ QUOTE ]
Not been reading the financial reports every quarter then? 30,000 isn't accurate.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I did my own math and I make that 30,000 subscribers. Am I out of touch or does that sound low?
[/ QUOTE ]
Sounds about right to me.
[/ QUOTE ]
Not been reading the financial reports every quarter then? 30,000 isn't accurate.
[/ QUOTE ]
30000 is for Vigilance isn't it? That's the smallest server
Thelonious Monk
[ QUOTE ]
I'm guessing you arrived at that number on the basis that each player needs 300KB of space to hold 3 arcs? I doubt that's true, they're probably compressed on the server.
[/ QUOTE ]
I do not think they are necessarily in the same format as you have on the client side. Various constants and fields that are textual in the client do probably have a more compact binary representation on the server side.
They would likely have a few key fields in the database extracted for various searches and queries and other DB operations. The rest is perhaps in some compact format which is used over the network.
Anyway, 9GB is nothing, so anything they have done would not be because they wanted to save space in the database.
[url="http://adingworld.wordpress.com/mission-architect-story-arcs/"][b]My Story arcs[/b][/url]: [i]The Siren Supremes[/i] ([b]1143[/b]), [i]The Missing Geneticist[/i] ([b]2542[/b]), [i]Elemental Jones[/i] ([b]263512[/b]), [i]The Soul Hunter[/i] ([b]294431[/b]), [i]Heart of Steel[/i] ([b]407104[/b]), [i]Project Serpens[/i] ([b]434082[/b])
http://www.massively.com/2009/04/06/...tect-in-depth/
Thelonious Monk