NCSoft and Massively

Wait...
You're suggesting they have rules?
HERESY! Burn him!

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.

I realize that, among other things that happened in the buyout, NCSoft "cut out the middle man." But they had to purchase the IP and license the engine - it other words, it cost them some money. Amortized over the next x number of years, that sum took up some of the extra you are talking about.

On the Cryptic side, you are assuming Microsoft and Marvel contributed nothing? That Cryptic took out no loans or took on no new investors? That Cryptic is headed by financial geniuses that were basically fleecing NCSoft before NCSoft wisely bought them out?

You further assume that a 100,000 subscriber game can self expand with relative ease? If that is the case, why isn't CoX the standard NCSoft business model, rather than the repeated trying-for-WoW-numbers approach that they they seem to take?

Best case, NCSoft is forgoing profit to produce GR. If the end result after GR is the same steady-state subscription numbers, I wouldn't be pleased as an investor. (I wouldn't give a flip as a player, and I'd be thrilled that the game lived longer and expanded, but that's a different issue.)

You are welcome to hold any opinion you like. I just have a different one. I think "reinvesting in a franchise" carries a financial risk If the desired results are not realized, NCSoft's track record shows they will cut bait at "some point." I don't think any reasonable person would disagree with that basic assessment. And UnSub merely stated that he thinks that "some point" is sooner rather than later. It's perfectly fine to think that the "some point" isn't that close yet.

Disagreeing with the author by calling him ignorant and a jerk, etc. IS an attack. Either you did not bother to check what I was quoting, or you have a far different definition of the word "attack" than I do.

That seems like an attack as well, because that goes after the person and does not address the person's points. You see the difference?

Hopefully, you are just having a bad day.

You got the second part right, anyway.

No, that's Hyper. He's blunt and calls it as he sees it. Whether he's right or not in any given situation, is a different question.

The desired results from investing in an expansion for a stable game is to still be a stable game on the other side. Stable games make way more money for a development/producing company than a start-up game.

If 90% of the current subs buy the expansion (there's always gonna be some that won't, for whatever reason), any new subs the expansion will attract will virtually be icing on the cake. This is not as risky an investment as you're envisioning.

Hell even if the new expansion reduces normal churn for 6 months to a year, it pretty much pays for itself. The minute someone decides to keep paying until GR comes out, or comes back because of GR, it's "found money" anyone deciding to begin playing because they see GR is an added bonus.

I'll get right in with that with all the prebeta feedback I can provide on the product I haven't tried yet.

Actually, if you look at your quote again, it was the author HIMSELF who tacked the "ignorant/jerk" label on.

Just a bunch of "poor put-upon me" mentality.

About the only thing that even has the ring of truth is the "ignorant" charge.

He's a third-party observer with no real insight, other than imagination, into the business practices and arrangements between NCSoft and Paragon Studios. This, by definition, makes him ignorant.

I claim the same status.

So should you if you're possessed of a clue.

Again, my call for more than a passing perusal of the subject of rhetoric stands.

It's an attack. Yes. Of your argument and the points you're striving to base it on. If you feel this questioning of your argument results in questioning of your own personal validity, this is your problem, not mine.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

My guess is the expansion will include the full game so new players will not need to buy two boxes (EQ2 has done this for its past three paid expansions). I think the $40 price is a good bet.

This will, naturally, lead to DOOOM from people who already own the game and just want to buy the expansion because they will mistakenly assume that the all-in-one box they need to get GR will cost more than if GR was offered on its own.

that really sums up how i feel also, but as far as this game or any mmo going under is highly unlikely. Google huxla to see what i mean (is that huxla with a A or a e i forgot). it been in pre-production for awhile not sure when alfa started.

So if that game can still get funding and it does not have any sub's im not sure what would stop any mmo.

For that matter check out Love one person is making the game so we shall see but i dought that this game will close because of that.

now back to playing Dragon Age: origins<-------very good game btw

Yes. Yes, indeed, that is "standard procedure" for the MMO industry ... for losers. If you look at just about every MMO that has ever shipped, you see that the subscriber numbers ramp up fast the first three or so months, then decline steadily from then on. Contrary to industry hopes, paid expansions followed by layoffs do not turn this decline around, they merely slow it down. Every. Single. Time.

And if you look at the numbers across the industry, only three games, in the entire history of the industry, have never had that "peak fast, decline until the servers go dark" curve: WoW, EVE, and the paid version of Runequest. What do those three companies have in common, other than the fact that all three of those games are perceptibly, visibly, obviously, remarkably, and unambiguously worse games than CoH? Their publishers and developers never went into cost-cutting mode. They kept reinvesting in the game, which gave players the confidence to stick around even when things weren't going well, which generated steady revenues, which resulted in constant, steady improvement for all three of those games. They didn't all do it the same way; they have different shipping schedules and different mixes of paid versus free expansions. Didn't change the outcome. The only thing they had in common was three different companies that were in it for the long haul, that knew that their development budget was only going to go up, never down, and were okay with that when they decided to get into the business. Revenues followed.

I love this game. And I've never been shy about saying so. But you can't deny that it's under the "tender care" of an MMO company that just plain flat-out doesn't "get" MMO customers. And that's why Lineage I has been steadily declining for ages, why Lineage II only stole customers from Lineage I and didn't check the decline, why Exteel has been in "maintenance mode" since it shipped and dropped off the radar, why Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa are dead, why Dungeon Runners has an announced death date, and, yes, why this game has hemorrhaged users absolutely reliably and consistently since the mass layoffs that followed issue 6.

(Guild Wars, on the other hand, has remained steadily profitable. But then, so far as we can tell, Guild Wars is the one NCsoft title that's never had mass layoffs; like Blizzard, its developers shift seemlessly to the next expansion as soon as each one ships. Coincidence? Or ancient astronauts?)

NCsoft is now engaged in a new-to-the-industry experiment to see if the industry-standard decline curve can be turned around once it's gotten entrenched. They've never managed it before. No one ever has -- because it's never been tried. They obviously think that it's possible, or they wouldn't have doubled down their bet on this game and then doubled it down again. The experience of companies as diverse as Activision/Blizzard, CCP Games, and Jagex Interactive has shown that they cannot fail (unless public opinion is too thoroughly poisoned against the game by the slow pace of improvement during the Freem 15 years) ... except by committing the standard form of MMO company suicide, by losing their nerve and trying to cost-cut their way to long-term profitability. What they're doing now may not work. What I'm afraid they'll do if they don't see results fast enough to suit them, though, is something that has never worked. Ever.

I don't think I have a post-I14 vendetta at all. I thought that I14 was badly handled in both design and PR terms, even thought it might have been the right thing to do, so I said so. If I really had a vendetta, I could be a lot more harsh. If I disliked the game that much, I don't think I'd be paying to play it.

The maintenance timing issue is better now, not resolved, with that comment coming before the devs changed the maintenance schedule. I think I'd made it after three or so nightly attempts of trying to play some new content during my peak evening hours only to be blocked by server maintenance - something that really did make me wonder why I was paying a sub fee for the game when I couldn't even play. Being blocked from playing by server maintenance isn't something the vast majority of CoH/V players have to deal with, but it is something that can really aggravate Oceanic players - and did, since several other long-term CoH/V players chimed in on how it was destroying their motivation to remain subscribed.

If I have any credibility at all, it's because I try to state a considered opinion backed up with available sources of information. In some cases, those opinions aren't the same as the majority on these boards and they aren't always complimentary or optimistic about CoH/V because otherwise I'd be a mindless fanboi, which is as equally toxic (in my opinion) as the relentless DOOOOOMsayer. I've been wrong in the past on some things and I might be wrong on this issue, but that's how I see it.

I'm really hopeful that GoRo is an exciting release that re-energises the CoX franchise, brings back tens of thousands of players and brings CoH/V back to the forefront of the MMO industry. But that hope is tempered by the reality of both how hard it will be in today's market, by how NCsoft Korea has treated NCsoft West for the past two years or so and by how the info released at Hero-Con didn't (in my opinion) offer any big hooks to pull in exited / new players (although it did offer quite a bit to retain the current base).

To a degree, I do get that some on these forums have circled the wagons against CoH/V criticism and that if I wanted approval I should join in the circle-stomping of ChampO. At some point I'll blog about that title, but my next trick is going to be looking at CoH/V's revenue and estimated subscription figures.

What exactly do they do then? I'm actually honestly asking this. What is the thrust of a major expansion to an MMO if it isn't to help grow the game's population? Retention of the current playerbase only?

Retention of current players by giving them something to do. A reasonable increase in playerbase as new people and friends of existing players try stuff out.

I don't think there's anything an MMO could do that would result in a "massive" increase in players. People either like the stuff the game has, or don't. Expansions add more stuff for people to like.

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

CoV brought in only 60k new users, which was considered to be under target. Which in turn led to the reduction of CoH/V's team by 75%.

Arguably Star Wars Galaxy's expansions also didn't help the game to grow, leading to the point where NGE was forced in.

Expansions might make some people come back and take a second look, but they aren't guaranteed growth or even growth levels that hits ROI targets. And those who come back might not stay.

And YET...

...both CoX and SWG are STILL RUNNING! This game has had the shallowest 'death spiral' of all the MMOs out there. People seem to forget that this is a NICHE GAME. US style Comic Book lovers are an incredibly loyal bunch, but we're small in terms of entertainment consumers. Until a game comes out that does Comic Book better, CO didn't and DCUO looks like City of Sidekicks, CoX will keep running

Hippy Nelfs and Galaktik Gank-sters might have staying power for the easily amused and the 'hard core', but I think CoX has at least 5 mores years in it before they shut us down entirely

The funny thing, in my eyes, is that this is exactly what PlayNC did once already with CoV. They pinned high expectations on it, the "expansionalone" didn't deliver, so they slashed development to a skeleton crew, at least according to Jack. And we've all see what that led to - development of the game slowed down horribly and the money otherwise went into a couple of games that tanked pretty much as badly as a game can tank - they shut down.

Now, I like to think that the big shots at NCsoft are smart guys who know how to run a business, given that they're running a pretty solid one, and they're smart enough to realise that this was a mistake, and that investing in a game with proven long-term revenue and NOT cutting that funding to fund an untested gamble of a new game would be a smart move. City of Heroes may not be a smash hit, but at this point it has proven to be a survivor and a constant source of revenue, and turning your back on something like this not only bad business, but has PROVEN to be bad business before.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Was it PlayNC that did it? Or was it Cryptic?

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Your not missing much, just the standard doom rants of how new content is added without fixing current bugs ect. ect.

Excuse me one second here...

*kneels over from laughter at the last statement.*

Ok, lets get one thing straight, writing takes a lot more time and effort to do than simply thinking of something then writing it down. You have to deal with backstories, explain orginal concepts to the reader/player, and find ways to get the reader/player to connect with the story. The last one is particually important in MMOs as the player is one of the main characters in the story.

The MA Arc in my sig took three weeks to complete, that included writing, creating the arc and OCs in the MA, bug testing, rebuilding the arc to fix/get around the bugs and getting a few mates together for a final playthrough before puplishing.

Add onto that the development time for any new animations/attacks/maps/models/gameplay mechanics/cutscenes and that new storyarc now takes at least 3 months rather than 3 weeks. That's right, at least 4 times longer than creating a story arc in the MA. And right now that's all being channelled into GR.

You forgot the fact that it would break within five minutes in a standard DOOM thread.

Can you name one feature that the WoW dev team have proposed for after Cataclysm, no, then we have no assurances about the 100million pound gorilla of the MMO industry's future after Cataclysm. After the mess JE caused announcing features Posi and Co. came up with would all be in CO, I'd be surprised if they announced things up to 10 months ahead of schedual.

That's assuming that the playerbase is around 150k players. Now, give me a link where I can find this information.

Emmert's pointed the finger at NCsoft a few times and no-one on NCsoft's side has issued a contrary response.

The reason I believe NCsoft probably had the lion's share in that decision is that at the time Tabula Rasa was absorbing money from every other NCsoft West project and they would likely have been paying the bulk of development funds - most video games publishers control the purse strings, which is how they retain their power.

Of course, there probably is at least a chapter in "What Cryptic Did to NCsoft" (and I understand that NCsoft North America felt a bit aggravated after covering the legal fees in the Marvel lawsuit, only for Cryptic to start work on a competing product as one example) about that saga that could be written, but it requires someone with inside knowledge to come forward. Thus far, the only person who has done that is Emmert.

Considering that for every expansion, the swg dev team visited two or more population crushing changes on the game, I'd argue that with you for a long time. Any positive effects from Jump to Lightspeed or the Wookiee expansion were largely masked by people leaving because of Yet Another Revamp of the Jedi System (tm) or the Combat Upgrade, or any number of other Class nerfs/ poor upgrades.

NGE wasn't thrown in to try and turn the game around, the devs themselves have admitted it was a shoot from the hip response done largely because they had no clue what their players wanted. It was done almost in a vacuum.