NCsoft Q1 2010 financials out: ouch.

It would make sense with some SGs, and why not leave it up to the owner what makes sense?

Most large SGs are already present in both, including RP SGs.

There's also a limit of 10 channels, meaning that SG channels have to compete with other types of channels, and you can only join so many SGs. Open SGs would be a far more elegant solution.

As for the rest of it... let's just see how GR works. I'd really REALLY like to be surprised with more rogue options than it sounds like there are so far. Maybe there will be, for example, rogue story arcs in Paragon and a way to access markets while cross teamed.

I have to disagree there. I think the SG channel stinks under any conditions since you often only see one side of a conversation due to not being in coalition with everyone in the conversation.

The Coalition channel is not the Super Group channel, and neither is a global channel.

Well, conversely I was like the seventh or so person to the level (40) cap when CoV came out. And that was on a MA/Nin stalker. If I want to step on the gas, my feet do reach the pedals. I just tend not to see the point.

Clap, Clap.

I think us soloers might number more than the Devs know...if there is a way to determine this via datamining they really should check it out.

And if all the good stuff is only to be gotten via Banner like events..I am never going to get anything, because, all the Banner teams I have been on have all ended in failure. Every single one of them. I appear to be cursed in that regard....I blame Mr Bocar.

So Devs, please, please, please, think of us soloers.

We buy booster packs, respecs, slots, subscriptions, etc.

Lisa-Has fingers crossed

Vanguard.

Honestly I am not sure whether that proves or disproves his point.

I am not sure what Chaos meant either but I know I will find it annoying to have to hop over to the Rogue Islands to use the BM if I were a Rogue and hop back to Paragon City to use WWs if I am a Vigilante as things are reported to work at this time.

Odds are I will simply Vendor or delete stuff I am not certain is very valuable.

So If I am already lvl 50 what content will I be able to do to switch sides? Old stuff? Or what?

And they are all pretty similar in what you do.

I have only two extremely vague notions about that.

First of all, the last statement recorded an accounting loss of about 2000 MWon for NCI and a revenue of about 3350, which I'm assuming is mostly CoH. This suggests that at least for that quarter NC was accounting NCI as having 5350 MWon of expenses, at least roughly for our purposes. If we assume that about half of those expenses are being accounted for as part of whatever new thing they are cooking up, that means CoH the game itself was at least on-paper slightly profitable: to the tune of about 700 MWon.

That's like aiming for the 50 yard line and claiming to have landed somewhere in the stadium, but its the best I can do. Even that loss number is suspect because that bounces all over the place in their consolidated statements, and that can't be due to costs themselves fluctuating that wildly, I don't think. So a more in-depth analysis of the numbers would need to be done to figure that out. But I suspect that the game itself is still profitable in terms of its real costs to support, separate from the accounting perspective which may be different.


The more critical thing I think is actually not profitability. Its critical mass. I think below a certain critical number of subscribers the difficulty in growing the game crosses a point where, short of a miracle, the trend can't be reversed in practical terms. In other words, the game could last for years but it would be constantly dwindling downward, albeit very slowly. I personally don't think we're there yet, but I personally wouldn't want to flirt with subscriber numbers much lower either.


Personally, I would rather have a slow but sustained increase in subscribers over time than a big spike followed by an inevitable drop, even if the net effect is to end up somewhat higher. In my opinion the game needs long term forward momentum, not a quick burst of activity and cash. Of course, I'm not the one that has to manage the cash.

They don't work well because they're bad features but because the game itself is bad.

Unique doesn't mean quality or better or even automatically make something good. I'm not saying "make every game WoW". I am saying, however, you're a fool if a lot those WoW-esque features seem like a bad idea to you. It's a solid base. The problem with other MMOs has been ****** development teams attempting to bite off far more than they can chew. They also tend to release products that probably would have been acceptable 5 yers ago when WoW came out.

I agree completely with the points stated in both paragraphs. My sole point of argument is that I believe City of Heroes passed the point where the slow, slow bleed of players and accounts can't be reversed at least a year ago, possibly even earlier. Note, as Arcanaville explains, that this doesn't necessarily make the game unsustainable or even unprofitable.

I, too, would rather see steady, sustained growth, but I don't see that as likely. MMO's are still a fairly new form of entertainment, and it would be unwise to say that they follow all the rules of existing media. That said, the marketing strategies and conceptual models of a game's life cycle that do exist all rest on two premises: strong release and retention. The build-up for Going Rogue is an attempt to create a strong release, while much of the game's marketing strategy over the past several years has focused on retention. Both tactics have their places, but neither is likely to generate long-term growth. Analogizing to the book world, an MMO is treated like a frontlist book, that is, a new release designed to have strong initial sales to make back its development costs. A few MMO's have graduated to become the equivalent of backlist books, those that sell steadily over a period of years (the Bible being the classic example). I'd say WoW probably fits here.

The problem is, how do we make City of Heroes a backlist seller? And do we want to?

I don't even know how to respond to that insult, especially since I didn't specify which they copied. WOW being solid as a base is very much debatable opinion.

Okay, all the talk throughout this thread about the Korean Won, exchange rates and doom is hurting my head. This is how a simple old ditch digger looks at the financial health of the game I love to play:

For the sake of arguement, let's say CoH/CoV currently has 80,000 subscriptions, NOT players, subscriptions (some folks say its more but I doubt its less). Each subscrtiption is paying $15 a month for a given year. This gives Paragon a gross annual operating budget of $14,400,000.

If the grand-pooh-bahs in Korean take a 15% cut off the top for profit that comes to $2,160,000 leaving $12,240,000.

If Paragon is running at the high end of the payroll to income "comfort zone" and spends 30% of revenue on payroll expenses, that comes to $4,320,000 per year or an annual average salary of $86,400 per year for the 50 Paragon employees. If you would like, throw in an insurance/benefit package of $35,000 per employee for another $1,750,000

After Korea's cut and payroll/benefits there is $6,170,000 left to run and develop the game. Someone with more knowledge of the costs to do those things will have to tell me if that is enough. I am guessing it is sufficient.

None of this includes booster packs, GR pre-sales, or any other source of revenue. That is just what they have to work with based on 80,000 subscriptions.

This is all a very rough estimate from a guy that plays with giant tonka toys for a living but I think they are doing ok.

CoX definitely has the ability to survive for a long time past 2010. The question that everyone is asking is, does it have the ability to thrive?

The answer to that question is probably not likely- in its current form. This is my take on it. It's not scientific and it has no numbers other than my gut feeling. It is anti-Arcana, if you will.

The market conditions that existed 6 years ago are very different from today, so many of the steps being taken are ones out of necessity, and some are fairly obvious.

The MMO market tends to be a zero sum game. By this I mean there are very few players who play many MMOs at once, or who are hardcore into multiple MMOs at any given time. I don't think it is common to see many MMO players who will subscribe long term to more than 2 MMOs. Many players have only chosen 1 MMO to play. This is in contrast to non-MMOs where games are played and then put down for the next latest game.

This means that in order to get MMO players to play this game, you will be required to get them to reduce or stop playing their other MMO game (conquest sales). The problem with conquest sales is entrenchment...players are invested in their toons and of course their friendship base, so it takes a lot to get them to switch, so usually it's the screw ups of the other company that causes enough rage quitting to get groups of players to come over.

The question is how to market to the other MMO players over a sustained period to 'pick them off' if they fall out of love with the other games. Of course, the biggest screw up is if the other MMO closes its doors.

MMOs that fall off the leading edge tend not to 'bounce back'. The two big killers to MMOs are boredom and ragequitting. Big changes to the game lend themselves to people being surprised and angered by seemingly unnecessary changes. This is probably the area where I've found this game to have its biggest failing. This area is all about change management. From ED to troller nerfs to PvP changes, there should have been someone who was dedicated to (and trained in) making sure the player base was groomed to accept those changes so the least impact was made upon them. Change management is really an area that the devs and community representatives did not understand and fumbled their way through. Things are better now but not necessarily by design. Once someone is gone for n months, it is rare that they will come back. Recovery of players is therefore then a slow recovery.

Keeping players from being bored is the other issue, but that can be rectified two ways. Content and PvP. Those two are well trodden paths so I won't even bother adding my two cents.

One of the issues people cite is the economy. In many ways it does show up in the numbers but just remember that every MMO in this market labours under the same conditions. Companies can still thrive in a recession. The smarter ones will do better than the others.

Marketing is a big factor in the whole d000m scenario, but if people are hesitant to return, and the market is saturated, standard selling just won't be effective in this case. Unless there is some internet phenomena (underground marketing) that will get the attention of millions of people, it will still be a slow climb back.

The simplest fact of the matter is that no matter how much the internet has changed things, gaming sales are still dominated by retailers. This means that placement within retail shops is paramount to getting noticed and generating numbers.

Expansion packs aren't bad, but everyone is always excited when a new game comes out...ergo CoH 2. Therefore it is fairly evident that in order to make this franchise successful it will be necessary to start over again, as it were. The trick is to keep everyone who is here entertained enough to stay on to guarantee they switch over to the new game and then have a chance to draw in everyone else who had previously quit or net new players.

Name an innovation WoW has made.

Don't worry about it, I already know you can't.

WoW works not because it has great systems that other MMOs do not, but because it looks at the systems of other MMOs and integrates the ones that work best within itself.

WoW has borrowed heavily from CoHV in the recent past, and borrowed heavily from many other MMOs that preceded it since its inception. While the "everything to everyone" development model works for WoW, it was designed by a company with a much larger payroll to begin with, and continues to employ a much larger development base than Paragon Studios has. Paragon Studios simply does not have the man power to employ the WoW-esque "Good Parts Edition" model, and must instead innovate on its own to find good systems that work well.

Among Paragon's greatest feats to date is the Super Sidekicking system, which was quickly adopted by WoW, and the Power Customisation system, which CO beat them to the punch with only by having the freedom to use a brand new engine that could implement the system from the start, rather than having to be hacked in afterwards; the idea, however, was still CoHV's.

It's inevitable that a smaller studio will have to rely more on innovation, because cobbling together the Good Parts Edition like WoW does is, perhaps ironically, more work; it's more difficult to ensure than systems borrowed from other places fit into your existing model than it is to create brand new systems that naturally evolve from your existing model.

LOL, what a load of old rubbish

it took me over 700 hours to get my first 50, I never PL'd anything and never farmed anything either, so, yeah, complete nonsense

Source, please. This system does not exist in WoW, to my knowledge, and I am a current player.

Lol. WoW's phasing technology. Not instancing, the phasing.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Phasing

Oh yeah, let's talk about their new Dungeon Finder system. You know, that thing that will assemble groups from a group of servers automatically and slap them all in a dungeon together. Finds a healer, DPS, and a tank. Yeah, it's nice. Best addition to any MMO.

I don't know where the hell you see "super sidekicking" in WoW at all.



Ditto.