Maybe don't boycott NCSoft

NCsoft recently posted a $6m loss for the previous quarter. It's entirely possible their intention is to write off Paragon to balance out this loss. If so, then the studio is worth more to them dead than alive. It sucks, but that's just the way the bean counters work.

Again, for emphasis, this is just mere speculation. There is no evidence whatsoever this is bona fide reason.

It's not the first time their net income dipped into negative. In 2006 it went into the red (of course not as much as last quarter) but the following quarter their net income shot back up.

This quarter they had blade & soul mmo launch in korea and guild wars 2 in north america/eu region so their net income was expected to shoot back up to compensate for their expenses in the previous quarter.

Guild wars 2 pre-sold over a million copies and b&s did better than Aion in the first month.

Whether or not it will be enough is still a question...bit early to tell. It is said the Ntreev acquisition cost them about $100mil and b&s about $50mil...not sure how much gw2 cost them but taking 5 years to develop just like b&s, maybe it's about the same.

It is however a bit early to tell...gw2 had some problems and b&s though had a good reception, has decreased in user time drastically after diablo3 launched.

EDIT: With some talk about refocusing their business, they did mention they are but not where/how they're refocusing. Not sure if they're going away from the north american region since guild wars 2 is launched in the na/euro territories with no mention of releasing in asia yet.

Whatever their full reasons are i'm not sure that's a simple answer as just doing away with NA. However one might feel about CoX, in the overall picture, CoX's revenue barely constitues 2% of NCSoft's total revenue. Unless something drastic happens to that other 98%, i don't think NCSoft is going anywhere anytime soon.

Someone else speculated that NCsoft is dumping projects that are only in the NA/EU market -- that they want to only go with titles that are both in the west and east. GW2 is getting released in China at some point.

Lots of speculation, zero facts.

News is in a flurry so possibly missed some...if you can have that person post a link for that info would be nice. (Not implying any issues with validity...i just like collecting news links to things i'm interested in)

Last news i saw was in this one in 8/15/12 that mentions:
That also mentions B&S troubles.

FYI: I have pm disabled since forever...if there's a question you can ask in the threads.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/08...ding-to-china/

Cool...thank you. Catching up with news is daunting hehe.

Hmm, the theory that they might be refocusing on games that are more global in reach (works in eastern and western territories) is sounding better. Not necessarily abandoning NA but maybe a game that speaks to both NA and asia.

That's interesting...CoX does seem to be one of or the only current game that couldn't get traction in asia...City of Hero didn't last at all in Korea.

If City of Heroes, with its operating costs and Paragon Studios behind it, is losing money, I would expect that the shutdown announcement would have been preceded by some sign in the company's quarterly financial announcement along with the itemization they published of all the other places where they've taken a financial hit in the quarter.

If City of Heroes is merely breaking even, then killing it outright kills any income from it, so shutting it down is a wash when it comes to the bottom line; it doesn't save them anything, it doesn't help them cover their shortfall, except insofar as it could be considered an 'asset' that they would be able to claim a loss on -- and if it's not making money for them, it has no real value as an asset, and I would expect that all the server hardware would already be fully depreciated.

If City of Heroes is turning a profit, then killing it deprives NCSoft of that profit while giving them only a one-time opportunity to claim a loss on the value of the game. If NCSoft expects a writeoff like that to balance the books enough for GW2 to bring them back into the green, they're betting the company on the success of one game following pissing off a tightly-knit and vocal player community. Passing up the opportunity to show off the GW2 beta at Comic-Con, where they could have whipped up a lot of buzz about the game, and following it up with the negative PR fallout from the cavalier way they threw the CoH playerbase into the dumpster, don't seem like good business decisions to me.

Boycotting certainly IS the only response to this. And if you play GW2 after NCsoft FIRED you from COH then you can go **** yourself.

So ArenaNet should be punished for something they had absolutely nothing to do with?

No offense, but if you are going to take that point of view, then Paragon Studios should have done something similar when Auto Assault and TR were closed down

So, why dont you blame Paragon Studio's for not getting away from NCsoft a few years ago...

See, although you are blaming Arena.net for sleeping with the enemy, you ahve to remember that Paragon Studio's slept with the enemy whilst 2 other MMO's were closed down.

Don't try and distract us from the argument with false equivalencies . I would not expect anyone playing Auto Assault or TR to keep playing COH for the same reason I think anyone who wants to keep playing GW2 who plays COHis an a$$hole.

If they shut down a game you say you love but you keep giving them your money then you are an ******* idiot. If you defend your idiocy then you an *******.

The more people like this I see, the more I'm tempted to buy GW2.

Multiple copies.

I bought it last week.

It's rather good. Nice evolution on the standard fantasy MMO set-up geared towards always exploring your enviroment rather than running from A to B and then back to A again.

I don't see where the false equivalency is. All I did was point out that Paragon Studio's were *just* as bad as Arena.Net

Why did I still support City of Heroes? Because I still *enjoyed* the game. I still had a lot of friends who played the game, and to be honest, it sucks not being able to play the same game as them.

Sure, I loved TR, and had a fling with Auto Assault.. but I still loved and enjoyed City of Heroes (when I didn't burn out on it). So I still supported it, played it, complained about it. But I *never* once thought twice about not giving Paragon Studios my money when I wanted to.

Yes, it sucks... yes it hurts... but if you are going to go around and accuse Arena.net of being bad and sleeping with the enemy, then Paragon Studios are just as guilty of it.

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

God, you are *sooo* correct

*sets fire to his CoX collection*


NOOOOOOOOO!, My komputah!

Buy whatever the hell you want. It's a semi free country.

But don't tell me you love COH.

And it IS all about revenge. I want to see NCSoft burn for this.

I'm not delusional enough to think somehow they will see reason and sell the game to someone or give out the code. That is not their MO.

They give a big middle finger to the COH community, I'm giving them two back.

Go on and enjoy GW2 while it lasts. I'll be the one laughing when thewy shut it down.

As the person who got power customization implemented in CoH, this post is full of crap.

Jack never said nuffin about power-customization. It was probably me that said something about it and probably before the switch from working for Cryptic to working for Paragon (or shortly after). At the time, it was impossible. We didn't have the code to support it and it would require rebuilding every single player power effect, something that just wasn't feasible for one person who was the sole animator and VFX artist on the project at the time.

I did manage to get weapon customization in, because that was something we did have a way of doing.

Fast-forward a couple of years and Paragon's humming along, Champs is on the horizon trumpeting 'power customization' as a huge selling point and I, in a competitive spirit that I'm sure Jack would appreciate, decided we were going to beat them to the punch.

So I pushed for the feature. I came up with a way to do it. Wrote out a detailed process so one of the programmers could write a python script to do most of the heavy lifting. Then I and Keetsie (Tunnel Rat)--mostly Keetsie if memory serves--put a lot of time and work into tweaking a few values in every single player power particle and FX script. The UI interface was designed, implemented, code was written.

In short, it was a metric ****-ton of work. It was crazily expensive to implement, took a long time, and involved a lot of work from many people...which did not result in any real measurable gains for the game or studio. New player didn't flock to the game. Current players didnt' throw buckets of money at out feet. You guys playing at the time enjoyed it and appreciated it...but from a business perspective, it was a recklessly stupid thing to do. I'm honestly shocked it happened.

It's still one of my proudest accomplishments.

People talk a lot about Jack's vision this and Jack's vision that, but reality is that by the time CoH was being offered to NCSoft, Jack's "vision" was focused on other projects at Cryptic. Cryptic needed those other projects to keep it's doors open. So when Jack would say X wasn't possible, it was because little Timmy, who was actually working with X, told Jack, "X is probably not possible, and here's why..."

In reality, practically nothing is really impossible, but if it's going to take a dozen people 6 months to implement and probably not be a net gain for the business, then it's "impossible".

Side-switching was another one of those things. Technically, very possible. It's a couple of flags to flip on a character. BAM. Your Tank is a villain. Problem is, you've got no contacts, no way to get new missions, no story explanation as to why it happened, nothing organic about the process, etc. Again, I was involved in a lot of those conversations about 'Going Rogue' and it was a TON of work from multiple people to get implemented.

Nowadays, Jack is the CEO at Cryptic. He has very little to do with games. Other people have stepped in and provided 'visions' because no game, NO GAME, gets done without someone having a vision for it. And no one person's vision is going to match every single player's vision. Hell, it won't even match half the developers vision.

As for rumors of Cryptic/PWE sabotaging CoH. There's one company and one company alone responsible for this. NCSoft. It was their decision to pull the plug on this, and it's perfectly in line with things they've done to other games and studios in the past.

FYI, I worked on Auto Assault, I worked for Cryptic on CoH, then Paragon on CoH, and I'm now back at Cryptic on something not CoH. Friday's news went through cryptic like a cold ripple. We were as shocked and dismayed as many of you. While many people who originally worked on CoH have moved on to other things, some to Paragon, some to other ventures entirely, there are still a lot of people at Cryptic who put love and care into this game that has so profoundaly touched all of our lives.

God, it's nice to not be a redname anymore. I can say things like metric ****-ton!

So we're either with you or against you, eh?

F-ing Sith Lords...

It's damn ironic that the same, unwilling to see both sides, scorched earth bull that you're espousing is exactly what you claim is bad about NCSoft.

And yeah, if I buy GW2 and enjoy it, then when NCsoft shuts it down I expect I'll be laughing right alongside you, because I'll have enjoyed years of entertainment while you simmered in years of rage and bile.

Good luck with your hate-fest. Remember to have your blood pressure checked.