NCSoft $28 mill. loss

-Virtue's First Naughty Girl-

I have a feeling NCSoft is aware of the weakness in their position on his "voluntary termination". I wonder who they consulted to come up with that legal strategy...

no. he shouldn't have left people in charge at Destination games that didn't understand the lore or design of the game.

They do. AION is a huge money maker in Korea. NCSoft also just dropped eXteel from their line-up, which will save on operating costs and development costs, although it won't save much since eXteel wasn't exactly a huge money maker / expenditure to begin with.

As to whether or not it will affect City of Heroes... the effects of Tabula Rasa has already been felt in the development. NCSoft, at the very least, is skittish about allowing games to change their development focus. Case in point with City of Heroes, PvP content is a decided down-play. The Tabula Rasa debacle was largely caused by the development staff capitulating to a very vocal minority demanding PvP play. The result was a dissociative experience with players doing one game on the road to level 50, then doing a completely DIFFERENT game at level 50. Before Garriott even got off the ground and into space Tabula Rasa had already knocked NCSoft's income down 42%.

One of the big problems that Tabula Rasa faced was the saturation of the multi-player shooter market with games that cost nothing to play online: Call of Duty, Battlefield, Unreal Tournament, Quake, Prey, AvP, F.E.A.R., and so on. The only successful MMO shooter was Planetside, which was also wrecked largely due to developer incompetence in understand the lore and focus of the game.

Granted, CoH isn't a shooter, but it is an MMORPG... and again... the market is flooded with competitors that offer dedicated PvP focused experiences. Guild Wars, AION, Lineage, Dark age of Camelot, Ultima, and WarHammer just off the top of my head offer some of the most extensive competitive experiences.

Given that some of the best-reviewed PvP focused MMORPG's to make a commercial release are from NCSoft, it's not like one can claim that NCSoft does not know Player-versus-Player design. They do. They also understand the mechanics behind what draws a player-base.

For NCSoft, they "allowed" Destination Games to radically change the scope and direction of the game post launch, essentially pulling a SWG:NGE right as the game launched. They paid for that hard. Richard Garriott's dismissal, while rotten, was merely a loose end to be tied up. I still think that with the right help (me, for example), Tabula Rasa could have recovered.

From NCSoft's perspective then, even though CoH is now the odd-game-out in their stable of ongoing franchises, it does have a predicatable and sustainable player-base. As the publisher and owner, NCSoft isn't likely to allow the Paragon Studio Developers to mess too much with the base mechanics and focus of the game. Unfortunately, that means that PvP content, as paid to be developed by NCSoft, largely won't happen.

This doesn't mean that Castle or the other devs won't work on a PvP experience on their own time. It just means that when they are on the clock at the office, it's not going to be a priority. As it stands, that is pretty much the only direct fallout City of Heroes will experience from the Tabula Rasa debacle.

I don't think they consulted anybody. NCSoft was already taking a financial pounding from the game's collapse. I think their focus at that time was to get as far away from Destination Games and Tabula Rasa as possible.

Were they wrong in terminating Richard Garriott? As NCSoft did it, yes.

I disagree with you on the consulting. Companies do not terminate rights or attempt to on whims.