2010 2nd quarter earnings

Most(not all) story arcs are badly written. The fact that a lot of time was spent on it doesn't really mean anything.

Since the majority of subs are monthly, that would require new content at minimun every other month to keep people from dropping every time they complete the newest stuff. Not only that, it would have to be fairly significant content to actually keep people renewing their subs. That would certainly be nice, but probably unrealistic.

Merging servers would be less desirable, but probably more realistic in the current economic climate. I'm not saying it should happen, but it most likely will if GR doesn't turn things around long term. If we are seeing pre-GR numbers next quarter, mergers might be the next step.

Why should they merge servers? To satisfy the few who want off-season Freedom numbers? Then those people should transfer to Freedom now and live with the queues during this peak season.

I see no reason for them to do the cost and effort of server mergers and alienate those who don't want it just to satisfy people who cannot be bothered to transfer when it is free but want to complain in the forums when it drops off.

That's all 3 of mine (12+2).

And how many people would be so upset by server mergers that they would actually quit the game? What percentage do you think that would be? Do you think it would be significant enough to keep NCSoft from doing it? Consider that the majority of those people most likely play on the lowest population servers. During regular periods when there isn't a new release, how many of those servers would you have to add together to equal the population of Freedom or Virtue alone? Three? The four lowest would be my guess, and that's assuming everybody on those servers does not want mergers. I would guess that at the most they would lose a few hundred subs due to ragequit if servers were merged. Roughly equal to the number of PvPers that left after issue 13, and we all know how much NCSoft cared about them now don't we? And lets be honest, if the servers were reduced by three, any new players wouldn't even know that there were three fewer servers than there was at this point in time. All they would know is that there sure seems to be alot of people around.

Again, not saying they should do it, especially in light of the success that GR is showing right now. In 4-6 months we will have a better idea of the future of the game. People with yearly subs might want to rethink their decision.

I'm going to guess that its exactly one person more than the number of people that would jointhe game/be retained because some of the servers had been merged and were slightly busier.

Not based on anything, but hey, why not?

If that's true then what a tremendous waste of resources I14 was.

The BAD PUBLICITY would be significant enough to keep NCSoft from doing it, that's for sure.

Things aren't broken, they don't need fixing.
Especially in a way that would have every orifice of the gaming press howling COH IS DYING, DYING I SAY!!11

People who only play on one server pay the same subscription as people who play on several.

Therefore a person only playing on Freedom = a person only playing on Protector = a person who will play on any of the servers (me). All those subs pay to keep all the servers running and new content.

But if they merged and ganked many of my alts, I'd take my 3 accounts and walk.

How much do those servers cost to maintain? If it is less than the guesstimated number of cancelled accounts then why should they do it.

And I will repeat all the idiots, yes idiots, who think the servers should be merged better use the free transfers this time when it is working and go to Freedom and Virtue and stop their incessant whining about the low pop servers.

Because I only have one thing to say: If you want servers merged then transfer to Freedom or Virtue now and shut up.

SwellGuy is correct.

To people that want more/easier teams to find I suggest joining global channels on your server. Teaming is typically much better when you form through those.

With some exceptions, I don't want my characters on any other servers than they are now.

I want my Pinnacle alts on Pinnacle.
I want my Champion alts there.
I want my villains on Infinity, that's "home" for them.

I would, at the very least, cancel my second account if they merged servers.
I would strongly consider never purchasing any add-ons, booster packs, additional items for my primary account.

Don't merge, just get the transfer tool up so *I* can move the alts I want to the servers *I* want.

That depends on the niche. The end game is a niche. Task forces are a niche element of the game. Accolades serve a niche. Respec serves a niche. The markets serve a niche. The invention system serves a niche. Purples serve a vanishingly small niche. HEATs and VEATs are a single digit niche element to the game. Probably less than half of all players ever play a single controller or dominator, so its probably fair to say only a small percentage of players will ever roll an electric control anything.

Very few elements of this or any MMO have ultrawide appeal or use. The game is composed of a large set of overlapping niches. In my opinion, there's a lot of improvements that could be made to the AE that would make it have a wider appeal overall, but calling it a waste of resources because it only served a "niche" of the playerbase is missing the point. Nearly all things added to the game since launch are as well. In fact, since the devs have consistently stated that only a small percentage of the playerbase ever levels to 50, you could argue that all of Issue 1, and everything connected to it since then, including the entire game above level 40, is essentially one large niche addition.

I never said there were not good arcs out there (I've played some, actually). The "you" was more generally aimed at the "NO ONE PLAYS MY ARCS BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL FARMING, STOP THIS PLEASE" people - because, hey, if your arc was good, people would run it.

You'd think the way they advertised and hyped AE, that it would be more than a niche. However, a year later...

@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."

I14 was more about improving the Dev tools for generating content than the AE.

the much improved content written since then shows, to me at least, it was a good investment.

Does new content really only have to be available for new Issues only? It would be rather nice to see, like say, every two or three weeks, that we get a few new story arcs, missions, or TFs, just because the devs happened to be able to churn some out at that time.

Then again, I'm just wondering. I have no idea how long it takes for devs to create a mission. There is AE, but due to the farm craze, and the sheer amount of farms and badly written arcs that remain, most people refuse to even go near AE. I've had several other players ingame and on the forums tell me that they refuse to play any content not created by a dev. Which is too bad, since some of the arcs I've played in AE have been written and used in unique ways that the devs probably never thought of (or had the chance of) doing in the past.

If you look at the revenue figures back when NCsoft also published CoH/V's player numbers, I think there is fairly solid evidence that you are correct on this - if you plan to stay with CoH/V, it makes sense to bulk buy.

I'm of the opinion that the effort and time put into AE vs. what has been gotten out of AE is probably somewhat less than other niches in the game.

Especially in terms of how it was talked about and marketed by the devs. If something gets added that satisfies some folks and not others...that's fine. Day Jobs I can certainly live without. I think I have more of an issue with pouring resources into something that not only doesn't end up doing what the original purpose of it was, but then also costs time and effort to police and fix due to abuse. Not to mention generated some very negative press for the game.

Compared to some of the other niches you mentioned...I don't think it's quite the same.

From my viewpoint, Tip missions come much closer to filling a content void than AE missions ever will. More regular content is probably what most people were desiring rather than feature/reward limited player content.

Which they're not going to do for one reason...their character names are already taken on those servers. People irrationally pushing irrational "solutions" usually have another agenda entirely.

You're probably a bit mistaken in that opinion, though.

A great deal of the back-end that went into creating Mission Architect was an effort to improve the development tools the DEVS use to create things like the tips missions. Yes, they had to further idiot-proof them & then put out a lot of exploit-prevention patches, but the bulk of what makes architect ARCHITECT was also required to allow the devs to easily create new content like the tips and story arcs. When you think of what resources they "poured into" it, you have to look at what's needed JUST for the players, and not stuff that improves developer productivity.

As for "who uses AE now?" well, the devs stated they didn't want AE to be the ONLY way, but it should have some purpose. It gives a creative outlet to a certain niche, some new material to read for those interested in not repeating the same content, and an alternate reward system that, while no longer the be-all-end-all of reward systems, still has some good things going for it for people that know where to look. The ability to select your reward from the tokens given can be very helpful when the market monopolists have cornered the remaining uncommon you need.

But really, people severely underestimate the amount of time it takes for OFFICIAL content to be made. Take ALL the time that the devs have spent on producing the player side ofvArchitect and apply it to content creation? Ignore that it's an entirely different skill set and just go by sheer man-hours involved. You MIGHT have freed enough manpower to create something on the scale of Croatoa... maybe. Sounds like a lot, but some people devour content so fast that they "beat" croatoa in one good weekend and don't look back.

Given the choice of OFFICIAL content of that scale, or several thousand times that in unofficial content... with the potential of fresh stuff being constantly added to it.... even if it's just appealing to a segment of the player base... that's still a pretty smart investment.

Furthermore, while the number of creative people that enjoy making things in Architect may seem small, these types often fill "thought leader" roles in their various communities. They're GMs for the pen-n-paper games, the storytellers. They often hold positions of influence in guilds... if not leading them. They're more likely to be fansite organizers and actively advocate the game. They're the people that offers suggestions on what to do when others just passively complain that they're bored.

That's a small but very valuable niche group to have in your corner, since they've got a better-than-normal likelihood of encouraging others to try/stay with the game.

I'm pretty sure it's been stated that the devs don't actually use AE to make their content. And you're right in that I have no idea what percentage of effort went toward player only and what went toward developer tool improvement. Of course, unless you're part of the dev team, neither do you.

In addition to that, I do believe that Castle himself made a note of all the extra effort in support that AE called for(hello mass bans and character deletions etc.) and that he wasn't exactly pushing for it. Obviously that decision wasn't in his hands.

While this might well all be true, I still have to think that as well as who is using AE, one still has to consider how many are using it when you talk about its value versus other niches.

All the more reason for official content to be made smarter and with more options for repeated playthroughs. This is why I think that GR brings something that has more value than a lot of the things that have been in the game previously. A new way of making content and making it more interesting.

On paper I can agree that it looks that way. However, it didn't quite work out that way in practice. I have always thought that the niche in AE were the players who would actually create quality content, not so much the people who would utilize that content(after it was stripped of all the horrible exploits).

That doesn't suggest to me that these valuable people would not fulfill those roles minus AE. Please note that I'm in no way saying that those kinds of folks aren't valuable to the community.

I don't think the content writers literally use the AE to make the game content (although they might prototype in their version of it), but there have been many cases of AE tech fallout improving many parts of the game and the game development outside of the AE.

Quite the opposite.

Back when the devs were leading up to the release of Architect, they stated specifically that AE began as an effort to expand on the internal development tools to make them more robust for their own use, so they could have a broader set of people work within the tools. See Joe Morrissey's Interview.

I'll quote it for you:
Where it diverged and by how much is open to question, but it was noted in the I14 beta that the I13 missions had actually been made IN Architect itself as a kind of alpha testing. Can't find the link, but I'll try to dig it up.

So, we can assume that there was a good deal of overlap.

As for the support issues-- "Support" is an entirely different skillset than development, but generally Castle's right- user-generated content (or user interaction like PvP) generally dominates support issues... well, after gold farming.