With Freedom an apparent financial success...

No we aren't. The Dark sets are free VIP content. Subscribers aren't paying anything extra to get them.

The new sets on test? Yeah, you're horribly mistaken.

As single packs by themselves? Maybe not. Packed in a Super Booster Pack ( Like the origin packs, etc? )? Absolutely.

Multiply that by 5. You'll have a more accurate sub count pre-Freedom. Although, an MMO can certainly survive at 30k. Some plug along at 10k. They don't thrive, but the "death threshold" is much lower than 30k.

Although going by the NCsoft financials, 150K would have been an amazing amount... with one slight problem...

150K active subs pre freedom would have actually had a higher income than they were showing.

I would have been more inclined to say somewhere between 50k (extreme low ball estimate) to roughly 90K... it is hard to say due to how yearly subs work out, if the earnings included booster pack purchases (if they did, then there would have been fewer subs accounted for in the same amount of earnings, unless a booster pack just didnt sell a dime) etc etc

Are you looking at raw income or profit? Taking into consideration multi-moth sub discounts? "RAF" time? etc, etc, etc.

They brought in $2,500,000 (roughly) for Q3... so roughly $800K/month

and at $15/month that equals 55,000 (ish) subscribers...

so unless *every* single player was paying $5/month... there is no way that they were getting 150K subs pre freedom

Q3 2010 = roughly $5,100,000 (Note: Going Rogue was also released in this quarter)
Q4 2010 = roughly $2,900,000
Q1 2011 = roughly $2,700,000
Q2 2011 = roughly $2,400,000

This was taking into consideration *all* monies being taken, so I just went for the most expensive sub rate going (assuming all players, EU and US based are paying the same rate as well)... and that a player will not buy any boosters or character slots or server transfers...

Even going for $10/month sub rate (which i believe is cheaper than you can actually get) you only hit roughly 80K players...

((edit, the numbers are from the Consolidated Sales Breakdown by game (excluding royalties)) so from what i can gather they are basically "all monies taken before costs"....

Edit 2: Incase you are wondering Q1 = January - March, Q2 = April - June, Q3 = July - September, Q4 = October - December

The numbers are available from NCsoft Quarterly reports (freely available from http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/quarterly.aspx )

And the numbers are "Net sales from the online games" so pure raw income.

So, that isnt taking consideration their "Cost of Goods Sold" (which is taken off for Gross Profit, nor staff costs)

(and just to make it easier, you want the Game Sales sheet from the consolidated factsheet spreadsheet

Now this is what I remember seeing the number of subs to be pre-Freedom.

You realize that "net" means after all adjustments, right? ( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/net Specifically the first "adverb" definition: "remaining after deductions, as for charges or expenses ( opposed to gross): net earnings." ) "Gross" is the raw figures before any adjustments... ( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gross "without deductions; total, as the amount of sales, salary, profit, etc., before taking deductions for expenses, taxes, or the like ( opposed to net): gross earnings; gross sales." )

I would just like to point out that i was going from the names of the fields that are in the report...

Net Sales for NCsoft in Q3 was 135,735 Million Won, of which 2,812 Million Won was from City of Heroes (roughly $2,500,000).

Gross Profit for Q3 from NCsoft was 119,026 Million Won (no individual break down given between games though)

Gross Profit (again, taking the field names from the spreadsheet) is Net Sales - Cost of Goods Sold (according to the financial spreadsheet)

Now, NCsoft *do* list earnings from Royalties as well, so we can obviously not take those into consideration.... and they do also list under their expenses wages, severance benefits, bad debt, travel expenses, taxes and dues and other stuff as well.

Now granted, since NCSoft (nor Paragon Studios) have *not* released actual subscriber numbers for several months, the only method we have for gauging as to how successful a game is via this method...

Of course, if the monies from subscribers *wasnt* listed in any way shape or form on these quarterly reports, i would be very worried about the figures that NCsoft will be giving to their shareholders.

Of course, you have access to the same numbers as I do, so i would like to know where you got the 150K subscribers pre Freedom from (please cite sources as well)

*edit* and if you look at the last tab on the spreadsheet, you will see that the total takings for their MMO's *DO* add up to the net sales listed.

Wrong.

VIPS get Dark Control, Dark Affinity, and Dark Assault for free.

F2P players, will have to purchase them.

And while I think giving F2P access is likely a good thing, I don't think there's anything wrong with Paragon Studios charging them for the new sets.

Several years actually, http://mmodata.blogspot.com/ stops tracking them at 2009 with a steady down turn at around 120kish subs.

Would be interesting to see if they managed to spike back up at any point.

I'm just hoping beast mastery doesn't cost 800 points, y'know seeing as it can only be used by one AT.

You're right, there isn't. People choosing not to sub are fully aware that means restricted access in this game and if they don't want to buy a "cobbled together" power set that is optional, they don't have to.

This isn't a hidden charge they are being billed for that they didn't authorize.

Animal skeletons are worth 800 points to me.

Ignoring the useless drama, this is what I feel would be the best use of any 'surplus'.
Granted I doubt there is a surplus with the amount of content we've been getting, unless they really just sat on this treasure chest for over a year+. Still, I'd hope they are looking to the future, as much as I love this game it can't last more than 5 more years on the current engine.

Saddly I don't think that even if Paragon Studios wanted to do so, NCSoft would be smart enough to let them.

What's that have to do with say, people who prefere to play Corrs over Defenders and Blasters, and thusly never roll the Ranged set on Defender or Blasters, since they never play it.

That means the 800 points is going to basically 1 AT for that purchaser.

Now, one could say that's them limiting themselves.

True.

But a power set is a power set.

What one should really be hoping is that if this isn't free, that maybe they give MMs a free new powerset at some point.

I'd say the best way to get more money from VIPs is if you let them transfer their characters over to the new system so they get to keep their level 50s with all their badges and inf and whatever.

Not knowing at all how a CoH 2 would be like though, I'm assuming that character generation might actually be a little different. Maybe a lot different. Hopefully, backwards compatible in a way that would let VIPs pre-pay to get their vets from the original CoH into CoH 2. And I don't know, maybe those characters could get a special veteran type badge or something, as I'd assume the game's lore would be progressed however further into the future and so vet characters from the original game would be seen as being part of the old guard, or whatever.

Also I'm not really sure how much money they could make from that. How many VIP and Premium players are there, and how many of them would be willing to pre-pay how much and how far in advance to have how many of their high level characters from the original game transferred to its sequel?

Realistically, considering how many plans like this simply fail to ever see the light of day, I'd be willing to pay zero in advance. However, if a CoH2 actually was created, and I could bring over my original characters for a fee, my position might change to "Shut up and take my money!"

Considering the amount of development that went into it, spawning a whole new model "framework" in the process, 800 PP is a bargain.

It'll be 800 points

I knew Statesman would come back from the dead as a troll....