By
Adelie,
Posted on: 2012-09-01 05:17 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Originally Posted by SpaceNut
it's amazing now many people are commenting "I don't play anymore, but this still hurts".
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When did this thread become the Def Poetry Jam?
That earnings report issued on August 8th may have been the last straw, but it wasn't the entire story.
First of all Nexon, a Japanese toy company, became NCSoft's largest shareholder in June, 2012.
Then there's the fact that City of Heroes really hasn't been doing that well financially:
"Going F2P saw about a 20% jump in revenue. It certainly wasnt in the realms of a several hundred percent increase claimed by other MMO companies who had also made that shift, but it was a positive step forward.
NCsoft has just released its Q1 2012 financial information and things arent that positive any more. To begin with, NCsoft saw declines of over 60% on both income and profit against the same time last year despite sales only being down about 9% over the same period, claiming a lot of increased variable expenses saw those profit figures drop."
So it was the big-wigs at Nexon who weren't getting as much money from their newest acquisition as they thought they would who are almost certainly the ones that made the decision to pull the plug on Paragon Studios and City of Heroes.
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Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU
and the same could be extended for those who were by saving themselves money by buying multi-month subscription deals....sure, it was only a few dollars or pounds you were saving...
/sarcasm |
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Originally Posted by Peregrine_Falcon
Then there's the fact that City of Heroes really hasn't been doing that well financially:
"Going F2P saw about a 20% jump in revenue. It certainly wasnt in the realms of a several hundred percent increase claimed by other MMO companies who had also made that shift, but it was a positive step forward. |
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Originally Posted by Peregrine_Falcon
That earnings report issued on August 8th may have been the last straw, but it wasn't the entire story.
First of all Nexon, a Japanese toy company, became NCSoft's largest shareholder in June, 2012. Then there's the fact that City of Heroes really hasn't been doing that well financially: "Going F2P saw about a 20% jump in revenue. It certainly wasnt in the realms of a several hundred percent increase claimed by other MMO companies who had also made that shift, but it was a positive step forward. NCsoft has just released its Q1 2012 financial information and things arent that positive any more. To begin with, NCsoft saw declines of over 60% on both income and profit against the same time last year despite sales only being down about 9% over the same period, claiming a lot of increased variable expenses saw those profit figures drop." So it was the big-wigs at Nexon who weren't getting as much money from their newest acquisition as they thought they would who are almost certainly the ones that made the decision to pull the plug on Paragon Studios and City of Heroes. |
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Originally Posted by Feycat
Stupid. That doesn't make your point at all.
GW2 isn't shutting down sales because it's run out of servers. They had TWICE this many servers running during beta. They HAVE servers. They released only a limited amount in an attempt to control and balance population, so you don't have what you usually have in an MMO release, which is several very crowded servers, and a bunch of ghost-town servers that get worse and worse as the initial rush wears off. Since WvWvW is actually a very important part of their game design, keeping the server populations roughly even is actually a very important QOL point for the game. They're shutting down sales because they're having infrastructure problems and want the game to be stable for the people who ALREADY paid for the game before they let it ramp up any further. And it will, because it's a great game. |
Actually, I think the ANet team is trying to learn from SWTOR's mistakes. If you have enuogh servers to handle the first day traffic, they're going to be half empty in three months.
Although their overflow server is also a brilliant idea.
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Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan
Lots of people are saying that. Forgive me, but... if you truly wanted to support the game, you'd have already been a paying subscriber.
Not pointing any fingers, but those who "were going to come back" have contributed greatly to this outcome. |
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Originally Posted by RavenGlenn
That's just idiotic. That's like saying that if you really like...Big Bang Theory, and you intend to watch it again when the new season starts, well tough! You should have been watching the reruns that are on every single day of the week, streamed it online every day, watched video on-demand of BBT AND bought the DVDs! Otherwise, you just don't support them.
People tend to leave games and come back for new updates/expansions. Just look at WoW with Mists of Pandaria. |
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Originally Posted by Brillig
Correction: Nexon didn't acquire NCSoft.
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Originally Posted by Peregrine_Falcon
Correction: I never said that Nexon acquired NCSoft.
They acquired 14.7% of NCSoft. That was their acquisition. And it may not seem like much, but as the largest shareholder they almost certainly have the clout to make many decisions, unless a large portion of the shareholders openly oppose a certain decision, which none of them would have any reason to do. |
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Originally Posted by Paladiamors
As it stands, you're just upset because he is right. If you didn't pay, then you weren't supporting the game financially. Its not really a difficult concept.
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Originally Posted by NightshadeLegree
@FFM, you're pissed off and looking for someone to blame, but insinuating that those players who took breaks from the game are partly to blame for this is wrong headed and downright low, and stinks of the kind of "thou shalt have no other game but me" fundamentalism that is one of the worst things about MMO communities.
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Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan
Says another freeloader.
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Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan
Says another freeloader.
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i was a paying subscriber, i borrowed money when i couldn't spare the subscription price when times were hard. Bottom line, if the numbers weren't there instead of saying POOF shut it down they should have worked on it. They had many options, they could've done the upcoming issue but added something huge to draw in new players, they could've redone things for the next issue after, they could have said ok we can't afford this free to play stuff y'all have to pay for it, and maybe subsidize with a free period, maybe give people a month. SOMETHING. You can't tell me that there was no way to save CoH 
i'm sorry i'm a bit bitter i am...
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Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan
Says another freeloader.
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Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan
Says another freeloader.
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Originally Posted by NightshadeLegree
He's not right. The way the genre works these days, no MMO that relied on retaining all of its players all of the time would survive past the first 6 months. People come and go - especially in games with F2P models, and that is, or should be, taken into account by the companies that run these games.
@FFM, you're pissed off and looking for someone to blame, but insinuating that those players who took breaks from the game are partly to blame for this is wrong headed and downright low, and stinks of the kind of "thou shalt have no other game but me" fundamentalism that is one of the worst things about MMO communities. |
| Not entirely, mind you, but if you weren't paying in some way then you weren't supporting the game. |
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Originally Posted by Angry_Citizen
Hi. Some of us have other responsibilities than paying for a game that they're not currently playing. Like, say, eating. Doesn't cheapen the love, it's just called reality.
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How would you know whether I'm "supporting" it or not? For all you know, in my absence, I'd turned several people onto the game and increased its playerbase, thus earning them more money than by simply subscribing. Don't tell me what I did and did not do like some sanctimonious shaming session. The game died for a lot of reasons, but it was not from a fickle fan base. Even having this conversation implies that accusation, so how about shutting up?
I only read the first five pages or so, so I'm sorry if this has been brought up.
But there IS one way in which axing Paragon Studios, a profitable venture, could itself be more profitable. It is about returns on investments: Every dollar that is spent on any project can be considered an investment into that project. The returns from that project are considered not in an absolute sense, but as a ratio to that investment. A "I put in one dollar, get one dollar and 50 cents back" type of ratio.
NCsoft is currently hemorrhaging money. If this is a fact, then which projects get funding becomes not about what is making money, but what can make more money for their investment. Of course, this assumption is a very big, jiggly, and hairy assumption that fringes on several things:
#1: The money that is no longer going to paragon studios will eventually be appropriated to other projects that are theoretically more profitable.
#2: The rather steady profit that CoH has will be negligible to the potential profits that can come from a new investment into another IP.
#3: NCsoft has something lined up that has the potential to actually be a large profit.
#4: That the current capital of NCsoft was not capable of pushing a sufficient investment alone on this alternate project.
From a business standpoint I wouldn't have made this decision due to one very large reason: It is a gamble. A move like this is capable of backfiring if the reapportioned investments have the same or less returns. The investments have to be profitable enough for the company to save enough face with the public that there won't be a overly negative backlash for killing off Superman. The investment also has to be substantially big enough that you'll get a large enough return to cover any deficits the company is getting, so it is a big gamble at that. Normally you would only make a move like this if one of two things were true:
*The new investment was a surefire thing and they care nothing for the people on the previous project and they don't have the capital to make this investment without axing things.
*They are panicking with what is the corporate equivalent to a mass PANCAKING of their pants.
And neither of them are really nice things to be true. The former is a poorer and heartless company that will lose a ton of face for their actions, and the latter is a panicking company that may have just dug it's own grave with that gamble. The more I think about this situation, the more I don't like it.
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Originally Posted by Arson_NA
I wouldn't go so far as to call anyone a freeloader anyway. Those "freeloaders" are the people you are teaming with for TF's and making your community better. Give them a good enough experience and they become paying members or encourage their friends to join.
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