NCSoft and Massively

Keep in mind that there's an entire investment strategy industry that turns a profit just from advising its clients what to buy/sell solely based off market/industry speculation w/o access to real and current numbers. Of course it helps to build a portfolio that takes into account a company's current financial status (Dun and Bradstreet is a good economic indicator - but not the only one and certainly not the best) but without real-time current information its still possible to predict a company's future performance with some accuracy using just historical performance data, recent profit/loss trends and abnormal shake-downs at the executive level without having access to real and current numbers - which this blogger has managed to include in his assessment.

Most definitely this article hit a raw nerve *somewhere* inside NCsoft otherwise they wouldn't have made a public rebuttal. That NCsoft made ANY comment at all is a huge mistake that lends more creedence to the article than it deserves. That's not the blogger's **** up - that's Marketing's.

Personally I'd still worry that anyone inside NCsoft took it seriously at all... regardless of whether or not its true.

Umm... You do realize that this paints an absolutely no-win situation for the game's makers and publishers? If they are silent, then that will be taken as tacit agreement with the doom calling. And yet if they protest, that's taken as a sign of desperation, reinforcing the doom calling.

I mean, reallly now.

I can help.

The first paragraph is about telling BABs he's wrong and that there's a ton riding on GR, because all the stuff we got in the last six issues (you know, Ouroboros, Cimerora, AE, dominator buff, leveling pacts, merits, power customization, and 2x proliferation) has sucked. It also goes on to tell them (the devs) that their job is easy, and also that they should spend their time fixing the gobs of nonspecific issues with the game.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

[gonna repeat myself here, buuut...]

Past 6 issues have been garbage?

Garbage.

Really?

REALLY?!?

You know, I've often said that you seem to play a different game than the rest of us. This pretty much seals it. The last 6 issues may not have been perfect (though to me, they were mostly, almost overwhelmingly, positive), but garbage?!?

You're either being a total drama-queen, or you're a glutton for punishment. I know that if any game I played put out 2-years worth of what I considered garbage, I'd have been long-gone.

So which is it?

GR is the reason that there hasn't been much new content. Where do you think the new content development is focused?

How well GR does has little-to-nothing to do with how (perceived or real) current issues are "cleared up". The success of GR will be solely determined by how much neat new stuff it brings, and how much that adds to the existing gameplay.

1) If you think Castle delivered (and that's a simplistic view anyway) "heavy handed nerfs", you need to talk to players of other MMOs and learn what "heavy handed nerfs" actually are.

2) The "cesspools of greed and corruption" (corruption?) are due to actions of players, not the devs. Also, the markets are just fine now.

3) You're gonna have to wait another 3-6months.

Which was never the intent of GR, nor promised.

Tough noogies. Sometimes you have to work a bit to get what you want. Also: WAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaah.

Blatant speculation. The only way this will happen (my blatant speculation now) is if side-switching is easily accomplished, in terms of time required.

If anything, I realize that Marketing overreacted.

That's a true statement regardless of whether anyone believes that the COH brand is failing or still very much successful.

Oh, please. You make this point the capstone of your argument? We've all seen that the market is one of your pet peeves but to suggest that the game is going to live or die based on what is down with the market is utterly absurd.

Admitedly that was rather a lean time. I can recall several SGs that didn't make it through that rough patch and out the otherside.

Some good came of it however, I joined my current coalition SGs because of that. Then as COV came along we grew and expanded the coalition. That which did not kill my interest, just made it stronger. I was active and took steps to make my game play time more enjoyable.

The point is very sound. WoW didn't kill us, and if we can survive that we can survive just about anything as long as development remains active.

lol.

Silver bullets. /nod

Or, possibly, DCUO and/or Old Republic. If those two launch at nearly the same time, and are good, quality games (I have faith in you BioWare), then that combination might be enough to pull enough subs away long-term... maybe.

It's even more amusing, and possibly more representative of the posters intelligence if you include a bit more of it.
um..... what? I honestly have no idea what word he meant to put where he has "breed". I'm always astonished at how many people post in a public forum and make zero effort to proof-read their writing. This has the unfortunate result of putting the reader in a position where they can not distinguish between someone with a good idea but poor communication skills -or- a gibbering moron. Maybe he actually believes NCSoft is breeding an entire species of corporate spokesmen.

I wish they'd made that a pop up info window when I logged then, then I would have known not to enjoy them.

REALLY!!! I loves me some GARBAGE!!!



Sorry, you guys kept saying 'Garbage'. One of my favorite bands. Carry on.

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Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
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378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)

Lol-ing at the guy playing a game that's been nothing but garbage for the past two years.

(Too lazy to find all the EvilRyu posts exclaiming how great some of those features were at the time to him, if the forum purges haven't gotten rid of them.)

Yeah, partially for the controversy they use for stirring up frenzy and that they are obsessed with WoW's success.

I get a kick of how WoW suddenly (supposedly) changed the measuring stick single handed. Before, a game with 100k+ subscribes was a gigantic success. Now apparently if a game can't break the 1 million mark, it's doomed to fail inside of 1 month.

Yeah, no. I don't buy that. Running with that logic, every single MMO before it would have never made it past one month (Everquest included, which peaked at an official count of 430k). It's actually nice to see that the ones making the decisions don't give that new measuring stick any real merit.

Whenever NCsoft is involved? Yes. And I'll tell you why:

- - - - -

When you catch a child with a cookie that they just stole out of the cookie jar, and you ask that child "Did you just steal a cookie?", the child truthfully answers "No." How is that a truthful answer? The child has truthfully answered the question that they heard, which is not the question you asked. You asked, "Did you steal a cookie?" What the child heard is, "Do you consent to a spanking?"

When you tell your manager, "I heard a rumor that I'm going to be laid off in three months, is it true?", your manager truthfully answers "No," even if he has been informed that yes, you will be laid off in three months. If he has been informed that you will be laid off in the next three months, how is his answer a truthful one? He is answering the question that he heard, which is, "Is it okay with you if I don't do any actual work for the next three months, and instead work on updating my resume and finding another job?"

When you ask NCsoft, "Is one of your MMOs in trouble, are you considering shutting it down?", NCsoft always truthfully answers "No," even if they have already set a metric that they suspect can't be met and a date on which the shutdown will occur if that metric isn't met. If they already know that the game probably isn't going to hit that metric and they've already picked a shutdown date, how is their answer truthful? They're truthfully answering the question that they heard, which is not, "if I spend my recreational time leveling a character up and equipping them, and recruiting my friends into a group to play your game with, am I wasting my time, should I instead be looking for a different game that'll still be here a year from now?" The question they hear is, "Do you want an extra $180 from me between now and when the game shuts down, or not?"

- - - - -

Look, here's what we all know. In the last year, NCsoft has doubled their initial investment in the game, buying out Cryptic. And they've tripled the annual budget for maintenance and development. Several months after they made that announcement, for the first time in four years, they stopped reporting quarterly subscription numbers for City of Heroes. In the intervening 8 or 9 months, we haven't seen much evidence, from where we're sitting, that subscription revenue has gone up.

Now, it's possible that add-on pack revenue has gone up enough to pay the increased expenses; in that intervening time, Paragon Studios has been pretty aggressive about selling add-on packs and other micro-transactions, probably raising the average subscriber cost by $5 to $10 a month for costume packs, extra character slots, character renames, character moves, paid respecs, extra mission-architect slots, and so on. So maybe NCsoft Corporate is happy that their investment is producing revenue growth. But we'd be crazy to believe that, given NCsoft's track record.

Several games in a row now, NCsoft has gone for the Hail Mary pass on failing games: invest heavily in one last major expansion that's supposed to fix all of the problems with the game and make it so exciting that subscription revenues grow explosively. Several games in a row now, when all those expansions did was slow the hemorrhage, they have pulled the plug. And every time, so far, that they have done this they have lied and lied and lied to our faces about whether or not they were considering pulling the plug right up until about 2 weeks before they pulled the plug.

If you do read the comments over at Massively, one comment you will see on a regular basis is that because of those lies, there are thousands of potential customers who've sworn to never play another NCsoft game ever again. People who can't be persuaded to give City of Heroes: Mission Architect or City of Heroes: Going Rogue or even an unrelated game like Aion a fair chance, because they are just that angry about being lied to right up until server shutdown. Maybe if NCsoft corporate had told us the truth about, for example, Tabula Rasa or Auto Assault, some (but by no means all!) of the players would have packed up and left for other MMOs. So lying to those people for a year did milk them of another $180 or so per person lied to who only stayed because they were lied to, however many people that was. I hope NCsoft really enjoyed that $180. It's the last $180 they're ever going to get out of them. No matter how good their future games are; they sacrificed all future revenue, from that customer, by lying to them for that last $180.

- - - - -

What do we want? Well, frankly, what we want is for this game to succeed.

But whether or not the game is going to succeed, what we really want is to break the legacy of lies. From where we sit, it seems patently obvious to us, based on NCsoft's past management practices, that when they doubled-down on City of Heroes, they almost certainly set a metric that the game had to meet, and a date by which it had to meet it, or they are going to pull the plug. What we really want, right now, is to know four things:

1) What metric for success did NCsoft set for City of Heroes?
2) What's the deadline to meet that metric before they take action?
3) Is City of Heroes on track to meet that metric by that deadline?
4) If City of Heroes does not meet that metric by that deadline, which seems more likely to you? That they will do what they did when CoV didn't meet its metric, and merely slash 75% of the development budget, or if they will do when Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault and Dungeon Runners didn't meet their metrics, and pull the plug on the servers?

If we don't get an answer to those questions, we will assume the worst.

If we get answers that tell us what the metrics are, and when the deadline is, and why you think you'll make that metric or why you think the game will survive the inevitable cuts when it doesn't, we'll be quietly relieved.

If we get an answer that says, "there is no deadline and there are no metrics," we're going to assume that you're lying to us, and even if you're not, there very probably isn't anything you can do to convince us otherwise, not after all the times NCsoft has lied about this subject in the past.

- - - - -

And THAT is why the comments over at Massively.com are so negative. Any further questions?

honestly man, the content was preordained by the poster's name. ER has been ER for as long as I remember, and thats classic ER.

Been on the ride for 63+ months and if the game is still around for 63+ months more I plan to still be riding. I've not jumped ship yet. I played WoW for a while. I beta tested The Matrix Online. I open beta tested Champions Online and have debated giving it a try for the 30 free days. I'm looking cautiously forward to DCUA. I'm excited about Star Trek Online. I have high expectations for The Old Republic (even went back through KotOR 1 and 2). And yet through all that I've maintained an active CoX account and always find myself coming back here and comparing the other games to it. From what I've seen of Going Rogue I'm only that much more excited.

If some of those other games are good then I'll give them a try and if I like them, then I'll have to find a way to pay a second game fee again. I don't see anything stealing my love away from CoX, especially with GR coming. I was here pre I1 and I'll be here post I100 if it goes that long. Massively obviously has no clue what they're talking about.

50s - Energyman, Elec^3 Blaster - Light Bringer Prime, Triform PB - OxyStorm, Robo/Storm/Mace MM - Widow Lotone, NW - Psi-Vox, Ill/FF/Earth Control

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GG, you just crossed your Normal/Cutting snark post line. We need to see an increase in smilies to rectifiy that!

(Seriously, the snark is funnier than the smily posts, moar plz ^^ )

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.