NCSoft is going about this all wrong
By
Angry_Citizen,
Posted on: 2012-09-03 15:30 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
While I understand what you are saying there was important difference between the two situations. The shut down of SWG was not a result of financial troubles of the publisher; it was a failure of the IP license holder to renew. They had a known finite date for the end which makes planning a bit easier.
The shut down of CoH, on the other hand is purely an immediate cost cutting measure. They cut all development to save costs on salaries and facilities used by the Devs. The servers being shut down in a few months is probably a contractual requirement with the hosting company. They are again cutting as soon as they possibly can.
Does it suck? Yes. Does the developers deserve better? Hell, yes. But, it is hard to compare the two situations really.
--Rad
/whereami:
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... maybe.
| The shut down of CoH, on the other hand is purely an immediate cost cutting measure. |
Doom.
Yep.
This is really doom.
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Ok maybe. But, it seems to be a logical assumption considering the immediacy of it.|
Originally Posted by Angry_Citizen
... maybe.
|
--Rad
/whereami:
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And in case someone wants to bring up the Cryptic engine situation: We've had Zwill say it's merely a rumor multiple times, Ghost Widow (she's still around???) speak out against it, BaB (now with Cryptic) speak strongly against the idea, and a STO Community Manage say the entire idea is 'insane'... so it's extremely unlikely that's the cause.|
Originally Posted by Radionuclide
Ok maybe. But, it seems to be a logical assumption considering the immediacy of it.
--Rad |
The financials do seem reasonable, as NCSoft was in the red last quarter (for the first time ever, apparently), by $6 million. They're likely to make a huge amount of money from Guild Wars 2 very soon, so long term they don't need to worry about, but it's the short term... by killing Paragon Studios and CoH right now, they'd be able to do a short term fix of their financials to appease the shareholders (CoH and GW are the two smallest revenue sources... killing GW would be suicide at this point, as it'd cause a massive firestorm around GW2). It hurts them a bit long term, but GW2 will make that unnoticeable.
The most likely situation is that CoH/Paragon happened to, unfortunately, be in the wrong place at the wrong time when NCSoft went into the red. With any luck, the Devs will be able to find new home(s) deserving of their talents, and our CoH will be able to be reborn with a new publisher that can be to NCSoft what NCSoft was to Cryptic (i.e. "buy the game, then back a dump truck up to the Devs and tell them to go wild"). If we're double lucky, the publisher will try to hire our former Dev team.
(when I say our 'Devs', I'm also including people like Zwill that technically aren't developers... it's just easier to say that
)
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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I feel NCSoft ought to become the poster child for how NOT to "sunset" a popular MMO.
Compare it to how Star Wars Galaxies was "sunsetted"... while the fan base there was unable to convince SOE/LucasFilms to keep the game running, at least SOE kept some of the developer crew around AFTER making the "sunset" announcement, and continued to work on and RELEASE game patches and updates. They even came out with a fairly major addition to the game, namely the ability to fly spacecraft over the surface of planets. (Granted, the feature was close to being released anyway, but still...) And SOE managed to have the game go out with a bang by declaring there would be a final victor in the ongoing Empire-vs-Rebellion war, and encouraging all combatants to participate.
Now look at NCSoft: they announce that, bam! City of Heroes is simply going to be shut down, and that the entire dev team will lose their jobs. No more updates, not even minor ones. It's just, "Okay, everyone leave NOW, we'll be turning off the lights and locking the doors in ten minutes."
Sheesh.
I fear for the future of the entire MMO industry if this kind of mentality is the driving force of the bean-counters at a major player like NCSoft....
TargetOne
"If you two don't work this out RIGHT NOW, I'm turning this invasion around and going home!" - Emperor Cole