NCsoft is NOT our enemy
Considering the in the Q2 reports there are no financials for Blade and Soul and Guild Wars 2, it was most likely a one quarter blip. Did this introduce a knee jerk reaction from someone up high in NCsoft?
Possibly... but from *my* interpretations of the financial quarterly loss is that it was simply that... a single quarterly loss. IF they dropped any of the other titles, it would make the *rest* of their financials look a lot worse next quarter (because in my mind, dropping Aion/Lineage/Lineage 2 would just drop them all that much closer to being permanently in the red, and nothing that CoX could do would save them in that state, because CoX *doesnt* make enough money to cover that loss in income). |
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
The counter-point to that is to look at the profit numbers for the last 5 quarters. That graph is pretty damn discouraging.
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As my husband just told me - they're going to self implode eventually with what they're doing.
Together we entered a city of strangers, we made it a city of friends, and we leave it a City of Heroes. - Sweet_Sarah
BOYCOTT NCSoft (on Facebook)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/517513781597443/
Governments have fallen to the power of social media. Gaming companies can too.
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I have a couple of different feelings about this.
First of all, I think the technical or legal aspects of what consitutes a corporation, while interesting, are not really relevant to this discussion. I don't think anyone here who has expressed disastisfaction with the company is doing so on legalistic grounds. What they are expressing is frustration with the nature of a service bundled under a brand name. The corporation may legally be a way to organize work efforts for the purposes of taxes, but it is not "just" (my paraphrase) that. If distrust of NCSoft is impossible, then so is distrust of Exxon, the Psychic Friends Network, Monsanto, or Fox/NBC News. It is possible for a company to have good public image too, like Blizzard did for many years. It does not require animosity (or good feelings) toward any particular individual within a business/brand to maintain an opinion on that brand's reliability or quality of service.
Secondly, I think it has to be recognized that player investment in an MMO is more than just financial. In creating an MMO, a developer or publisher is also asking players to invest trust. Part of that is related to how assets shared between the company and the public are managed. I think too many companies (and a few posters here as well) mistake legal ownership of the MMO's electronic assets (hardware, intellectual property, etc) with the community sense of ownership, which includes such things as history, time, relationships, number of times the game frustrated you but you kept on in order to support it, and so on.
In a pure legal sense, NCSoft can take away its game world at any time. It owns "everything" that could be objected to in a court of law. But expecting players to accept that at face value in the marketing sense is engaging in science fiction. People do not think that way--especially not people who've developed (moreover, been encouraged to develop) strong emotional relationships with the service.
Long story short, no MMO is just selling access to the game. That is not sufficient to keep players around. Emotional attachment and trust are the real products. To sell your MMO, you must convince players that bits and bytes have real world values.
A lot of players are quite suddenly realizing that what trust they thought they had invested in NCSoft is now gone. That's what they are mainly annoyed about. And talk of boycotts is more than financial; in most cases on these message boards it's a personal vow to stay emotionally uninvested (or in a few cases, hostile to) the brand under which these changes are being directed.
Do you honestly think that NCsoft is just a heartless collective of accountants, managers, HR people, and even a CEO that didn't agonize over this decision, who, for whatever reason, thinks that cutting Paragon Studios was essential to the company's well being, maybe even survival?
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Sometimes the parent company of the company where I work makes decisions about our company that I don't agree with. It doesn't mean they're stupid, or evil, or incompetent. It just means that the guys in the U.K. running a business that spans 3 continents have a different perspective and different goals from one small division in the U.S.
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
In other words, you don't actually care if a company treats their customers with sensitivity, you care how they treat you.
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I suspect your replies read this way because you are trying to be "the objective one" in the group. However, I feel that in your quest for objectivity you've simply become contrarian. You imply that businesses can make self-interested investment decisions but individuals cannot. I'm tempted to start replying to you by replacing "players" with "sole proprietor businesses" to see if you pick up on the inconsistency.
I'll give NCSoft credit for what they did to fund the game. But they're losing any good will I have for them fast.
Their actions last week, or, hell, last Friday for all we know, were a MAJOR **** stunt. To go from being in the Beta for the next Issue and alluding to plans up to what, I30something, to the completely out of the blue Paragon Studios getting completely axed and the game being closed down in 3 months?! They deserve any ire they get for that, in my humble opinion.
For me, it's down to NCSoft being willing to sell the CoH license. That will either be the final nail in the coffin or their last bit of any redemption in my view.
Tales of Judgment. Also here, instead of that other place.
good luck D.B.B.
![](http://i.imgur.com/VgXCk.gif)
Semi-OT, but you work for a game company Hyper? Now that the forum rule against naming other products has crumbled away, you mind sharing? I'd like to support your company's product.
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Most of my efforts are in convention support. Most of our developers and staffers are coastal. Our two major cons a year are in NE-Central US. Being as I'm in Chicago and in relatively close driving distance, that makes me "local". I'm normally in charge of our convention cartage (read: I'm the schmuck in the truck), uber-gopher, and supplies manager while at the con...being the only guy there with a car helps).
I'm also the lead geek wrangler for our web services and provisioning planning (basically we're the guys who decide how beefy our web server needs to be).
My regular day job is at a company up in Chicago. Even there I'm surrounded by gamers. My boss' stepfather used to run TSR, and he's in solid with the Champions RPG guys.
The first year I worked here my boss was like "You're going to GenCon and Origins this year right?".
Seeing as I'd been off work a year and working menial jobs (burning out in the nursing field SUCKS), I was like "Well, I dunno. Gotta check my finances."
"No, you're GOING to GenCon and Origins RIGHT? *NUDGE*NUDGE*"
"Uh. Yes?"
"GOOD!"
Now I have to hear the "The coolest boss EVER" stories at the con. I'm starting to get eye strain from the eye-rolling. But, it's true! My bosses are incredibly cool to work with. Getting paid to go to GenCon and Origins, outside of already getting hotel, swag and stipend just rules!
total kick to the gut
![Frown](images/smilies/frown.gif)
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
I suspect your replies read this way because you are trying to be "the objective one" in the group. However, I feel that in your quest for objectivity you've simply become contrarian. You imply that businesses can make self-interested investment decisions but individuals cannot. I'm tempted to start replying to you by replacing "players" with "sole proprietor businesses" to see if you pick up on the inconsistency.
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If you've lost trust in NCSoft, that's fine.
If you don't want to buy NCSoft products in the future, that's also fine (although you should have a realistic appraisal of how much difference that is likely to make for NCSoft.)
When you start making statements about "wanting to see NCSoft burn," you've gone over the edge, and should probably start heading back to shore.
However, I feel that in your quest for objectivity you've simply become contrarian.
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Sorry, I was just suddenly reminded of that!
NCSoft is not our friend. NCSoft is not our enemy. NCSoft is not a bean counter, or a back stabber, or any of those things. NCSoft is a company. Its a building and some masthead. NCSoft doesn't have feelings, doesn't make decisions, can't be reasoned with or argued with.
NCSoft is a container of people. Some of those people probably wanted City of Heroes to go on. Some of those people wanted City of Heroes to end. That's probably always been true. On Friday, the latter group got what they wanted. But while those people may deserve our antipathy, there are lots of others who don't. NCSoft is an easy target for anger, but its also a completely unfeeling target for that anger. NCSoft won't care if we're angry. NCSoft won't care if we boybott the company. NCSoft won't notice if the world ends tomorrow. The important thing to understand is that while a certain amount of corporate-directed anger is understandable, its rather like hating Korea, or Earthlings. Someone at NCSoft gave us a chance when not many others would have. Someone at NCSoft gave us the resources to expand the game beyond our expectations for five years. Those people may still want to see the game continue. They don't deserve our spite. Maybe some bean counter at NCSoft made this call. Then again, maybe this was not a financial decision at all: I've seen many corporate restructurings happen for political reasons more than financial ones, and political fights often have the most corporate bystander casualties. Maybe someone at NCSoft could help us save the game. Hate NCSoft as an abstract entity, but remember that people make decisions, and NCSoft is composed of lots and lots and lots of people. As I've said for over eight years about Paragon Studios, NCSoft is not a Hive mind. While you hate the abstract entity, remember the people that exist within it. I find the guy responsible for the shutdown, and he and I will have some words. Anyone who knows me in the real world, and has seen me in meetings, knows they will be interesting words. I'm definitely not known for being discrete. But I won't lob bombs at people I don't know for a crime I don't know they committed. That goes for the people behind Aion, the people behind Guild Wars, and even the suits at NCSoft. NCSoft is an easy target and I catch myself doing it as well, but NCSoft is not a thing that cares if I'm angry, and its not something I can extract revenge on. NCSoft is a thing on paper that doesn't care if it even exists or not. People are the important thing. The developers and community people at Paragon are the important thing. The players of City of Heroes are the important thing. And for good and for bad, the people at NCSoft are the important thing. And the most important thing is to protect the innocent people while we punish the guilty people. Not burn an entire building down to catch a couple of twits. That's should be the City of Heroes way. Except for Villains, but the devs hated villains anyway. |
total kick to the gut
![Frown](images/smilies/frown.gif)
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
Sorry, but seeing as how NCSoft decided to pull the plug on City of Heroes as far as I'm concerned they are the enemy.
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Given that NCsoft wants to focus on other efforts, how would you, the City of Heroes community, feel if they came out and said something to the effect of, "Unfortunately, City of Heroes isn't part of our future, but we understand that you still want it to be part of yours," and opened the door for the game assets to be given or sold to someone else?
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
Given that NCsoft wants to focus on other efforts, how would you, the City of Heroes community, feel if they came out and said something to the effect of, "Unfortunately, City of Heroes isn't part of our future, but we understand that you still want it to be part of yours," and opened the door for the game assets to be given or sold to someone else? |
If you've lost trust in NCSoft, that's fine.
If you don't want to buy NCSoft products in the future, that's also fine (although you should have a realistic appraisal of how much difference that is likely to make for NCSoft.) |
NC is the one that will largely determine if they will burn themselves down with their remaining non-Korean playerbase, or not.
Reasonable people (not just the fanatics) who have honestly lost trust in NCSoft, aren't going to contradict that by turning back around and opening their wallets.
![](http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee319/Kyuuenofskies83/33cohatKyuuen.jpg)
So let me ask this, and I really want serious answers because I'm in the midst of writing releases and communications: What if NCsoft agrees to let us or someone else purchase the IP and software?
Given that NCsoft wants to focus on other efforts, how would you, the City of Heroes community, feel if they came out and said something to the effect of, "Unfortunately, City of Heroes isn't part of our future, but we understand that you still want it to be part of yours," and opened the door for the game assets to be given or sold to someone else? |
![](http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee319/Kyuuenofskies83/33cohatKyuuen.jpg)
Well then, get off your collective a$$es, buy the CoH IP and keep this game going damnit!
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Thanks.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
So let me ask this, and I really want serious answers because I'm in the midst of writing releases and communications: What if NCsoft agrees to let us or someone else purchase the IP and software?
Given that NCsoft wants to focus on other efforts, how would you, the City of Heroes community, feel if they came out and said something to the effect of, "Unfortunately, City of Heroes isn't part of our future, but we understand that you still want it to be part of yours," and opened the door for the game assets to be given or sold to someone else? |
![](http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e387/ObsidianLight/City%20of%20Heroes%20and%20Villains/Globaltag.png)
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Freedom, Virtue, Exalted
Yeah, that's the part that makes me think there's a whole lotta "rest of the story" involved here. Which we may or may not ever know.
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City of Heroes is an amazing game -- it did things that other MMOs copied, and things that we wish other MMOs would do -- and one that is highly amenable to the casual gamer -- you can log in, run a mission or two, and call it a night, then come back a day or two later, this time to get together with some friends to do a Task Force -- and if you fell a couple levels behind, that's what sidekicking is for.
Look at the type of MMOs that are popular in Korea. Grind. Grind. Grind. Gather materials so you can use them to grind your crafting skills. Buying from the ingame store or other players to get the gear you don't make yourself, in a constant struggle to keep from slipping behind the power curve, having to replace all your gear over and over again as it becomes trash relative to the opponents you face. Most of the world is set up so you need to go out in groups to survive. And PvP is an integral part of the game, with mechanics designed to actively push you out into the PvP areas, where the gank is the only true expression of superiority. NCSoft has brought this style of game to the Western MMO market again and again, and their track record is poor -- Auto Assault flopped, Exteel flopped, Dungeon Runner flopped, Tabula Rasa flopped, Aion's performance is 'disappointing' -- and Guild Wars deliberately took the game in a different direction to try to eliminate grinding.
The games NCSoft manages that are successful -- albeit only moderately, compared to the Asian market, which is 99% of their business -- are the ones that don't conform to the gaming style that is the core of NCSoft's game stable. And City of Heroes is almost the antithesis of this -- you're not forced into PvP, you don't have to team for the vast majority of the content (and what you do need to team for you can skip without it affecting your character), you get enough reward that you can readily advance your character, and you don't have to touch the in-game store to do it. Having City of Heroes succeed while the Asian-style MMOs that NCSoft brought to the Western market fail creates an appearance that NCSoft does not understand the Western market. And NCSoft needs to appear successful to maintain its reputation; they bought the casual-game company Ntreev in an attempt to buy the success in the casual gaming market they couldn't achieve on their own merits.
By throwing City of Heroes under the bus, NCSoft is left with a stable of MMOs all in the same vein -- even Guild Wars, and the newly-released Guild Wars 2, have enough grind in them to be 'familiar' -- which lets NCSoft look at a failing MMO and rationalize it as "The market didn't want a game about [subject]", instead of having to face the truth that the Western MMO market isn't the same as the Asian MMO market, and releasing Asian-style MMOs onto the Western market again and again in the hopes that us Westerners will finally see the superiority of the style of game [i]they[i] want us to desire won't give them the success they want.
Yes, it's a niche market, and I don't think that it could possibly ever accumulate enough subscribers to make a blip on Blizzard's radar, but City of Heroes, warts and all, did so many things right.
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
So let me ask this, and I really want serious answers because I'm in the midst of writing releases and communications: What if NCsoft agrees to let us or someone else purchase the IP and software?
Given that NCsoft wants to focus on other efforts, how would you, the City of Heroes community, feel if they came out and said something to the effect of, "Unfortunately, City of Heroes isn't part of our future, but we understand that you still want it to be part of yours," and opened the door for the game assets to be given or sold to someone else? |
I think that if NCSoft were willing to do this they'd have quietly put the game up for sale before the announcement on Friday. Instead of Friday's announcement we'd have instead seen a press release like the one when Paragon Studios was formed. Friday's announcement hurt the earnings potential for the game for any company that might consider purchasing it. I saw a lot of "goodbye and thanks for everything" messages in global this weekend and compared to usual my gfriend list is about half as active as it usually is on a Monday night around this time.
Together we entered a city of strangers, we made it a city of friends, and we leave it a City of Heroes. - Sweet_Sarah
BOYCOTT NCSoft (on Facebook)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/517513781597443/
Governments have fallen to the power of social media. Gaming companies can too.
Possibly... but from *my* interpretations of the financial quarterly loss is that it was simply that... a single quarterly loss. IF they dropped any of the other titles, it would make the *rest* of their financials look a lot worse next quarter (because in my mind, dropping Aion/Lineage/Lineage 2 would just drop them all that much closer to being permanently in the red, and nothing that CoX could do would save them in that state, because CoX *doesnt* make enough money to cover that loss in income).