This might instill some perspective ...

Emphasis mine.

Doesn't this sound a bit like the present situation with City of Heroes and Paragon Studios? I know it wasn't always like this; City of Heroes in its first few years of life made as much as Aion or Guild Wars 2 do now. However, we know that up until this month, City of Heroes was bringing in several million bucks. Call me naive, but I find it hard to see how all the expenses of continued maintenance and development of the game could exceed that kind of revenue. I wonder if this might be the more likely explanation for NCSoft's "realignment of focus."

If nothing else, I think it's food for thought for the smug detractors responding to articles on "Save Paragon City!" insisting that the only logical explanation for NCSoft's actions was that the game was operating at a loss and therefore should be left to die.

Nope, never did. CoH in the first four years had revenues between $25-34 million. Aion last quarter was a mere $31.6 million, down from $46.9 million the quarter before. Aion had revenues of $175 million in revenues over the last four quarters. CoH had revenues of $183 million in revenues in it's entire 8 year life.

As for Guild Wars 2 ... over one million pre-orders. 'Nuff said.

I'm not poo-pooing the game I'm just trying to put things into prospective here. While CoH had reasonable numbers for a pre-WoW MMO in the west, compared to NCSoft's other titles, we are the hot dog cart on a street of popular high end restaurants. Our revenues are simply not in the same ballpark and never were.

Still don't know what caused the revenue downturn between Q2 2009 and Q4 2009 when it dropped from a reliable $5 million or more a quarter before to $3 million after.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Okay, I was wrong there, and should have said that during its first few years City of Heroes brought in an amount comparable to Aion's current revenue.

That doesn't invalidate the point I was trying to make, though, in that City of Heroes used to be way more profitable in its first few years, and that the mentality Electronic Arts has might be also present in NCSoft--that they would kill an otherwise healthy MMO just because it can't be used as a tax writeoff like a dud, nor bring in a massive amount of revenue like a blockbuster.

Are you counting the huge spike from the sale of City of Villains, though?

yes Obama killed COH...I am suprised this is not on fox news.

CoH's best year is comparable to Aion's worst quarter. Factor of 4 here.

Yes but that's business, and not just the entertainment business. I once worked at a company that destroyed a bunch of excessive old consumables used in an older model of their product because it was more favorable financially to get the tax write off than putting them on sale and sell them off at a loss to the few customers still using that older model. Customer goodwill isn't a line item on a financial report.

Yes, our best quarter was Q4 of 2005 at $15.3 million (CoV launched the end of October). 2005 was our best year at $33.5 million. Guild Wars came out that year as well, and in three quarters (they weren't around in Q1) they had total revenues of $40.4 million. In 2006 they had twice our revenue. We didn't out earn them until 2008, a year after their last box expansion came out.

and, sadly, hordes of cretinous tl;dr players who'd rather whack-a-mole in overworld 'kill x things' quests than play a game with actual reading in it.

I've been trying to find a game with as much narrative delivery mechanics as CoH, and failing. Bios, clues, speech bubbles, info panels, mission briefings, mission REbriefings...

Eco.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

I'm gonna need some more coffee tonight.

This definitely isn't a business practice I was are of until now. I suspect that's the same for a lot of the people claiming CoH was operating at a loss because NCSoft shut it down.

Though from this context, it definitely explains why MMOs of CoH's vintage (or older) are still operating just fine with smaller and/or independent studios. Or why Cyan Worlds has been able to keep bringing Myst Online Uru Live back from the dead ...

This is pretty much how big corporations think. If you have 80 people on a project turning a one million dollar profit every year, that's one thing. But if those 80 people could be used elsewhere to turn a 10 million dollar profit, then it makes very little financial sense to keep the first project running.

Of course, in our case they closed down the first project and fired the 80 people, so "reallocation of resources" probably isn't the real purpose here.

LittleDavid, I don't think you are understanding what is being said because your response doesn't make sense.

It's because I'm comparing his example to what was said of Electronic Arts' strategy in Escapist Magazine--that duds are used as tax write-offs, and are therefore more valuable to the company than a game that makes a modest proift, but isn't a blockbuster. Did you read my opening post?

But money is a resource too. If spending $10 to make $11 on one thing while spending $10 could make $12 on something else, why stick with the first thing?

And in my example it's because tax laws are overly complex to the point it's counter intuitive.

Because your business model consists of selling people virtual goods that have no real world value if you show no commitment to maintaining them?

Trust me on something. It'll be 5 minutes after this exercise before the next MMO company complains that players today just aren't willing to invest in MMOs. I wonder why that could be.

By the way, American_Knight, this is the other half of my rationale behind what I said, concerning CoH-vintage MMOs operating under smaller and/or independent studios.

The way I'm seeing it, those smaller and independent studios aren't as focused on maximizing profits like a big publishing company such as Electronics Arts is, and it's probably because they are small and independent that they can get away with it. Big businesses have a lot of stakeholders who want to see ever-increasing profits, so there is a lot of outside pressure to make as much money as possible.

I'm willing to bet that at least some of those studios running CoH-vintage MMOs aren't publicly traded, either--which would keep other companies from either performing a hostile takeover through a tender offer to shareholders, or from buying enough stock to be on the board of directors and putting pressure on the studio to change its plans.

In either of those cases, I think a studio independently running an MMO only has to worry about getting enough revenue to continue operating the game. If they see an opportunity where they could shut the MMO down to invest their funds into something that would (or does) bring much more profit, that's ultimately their decision--they don't have to worry about pleasing shareholders or getting the ax from upper-level management due to not being beneficial enough compared to the duds and blockbusters.

In other words, those studios are free to "do it for the art," or as a labor of love.

LOTRO and SWTOR are story intensive, rather than what I call 'rat pellet' games with repeatable 'go kill X" quests to get end game loot. They're good story, if that's what you're looking for.

I can't speak for endgame for SWTOR because after one month they had a bad patch that made it impossible for me to launch the game. Maybe they've worked that out, if so I'll try it when it goes FTP. That launcher business was just plain nasty and the company handled it very badly.

I played LOTRO for about 2 years and dabble in it occasionally (lifetime sub).

Aion **** *****. I only played it because my best friend did and I want to spend time with her. It's the worst rat pellet game I've ever found. The community is the worst I've ever seen. The store is more moneygrubbing than Scrooge McDuck. The art is pretty. I advise avoiding it.

PS: If I go to any other MMO it will probably be WOW because 1) my machine can't run newer games, and 2) I want a game that isn't going to go poof.

We can't really conclude that, because they could plan to reallocate the costs for running PS elsewhere, to something they think will earn more income.

Remember, PS was not just 80 people. It was an office space in California, a set of shard (and web?) servers in Texas, and CS reps who needed to spend time responding to CoH petitions (and had to be trained/experienced in how to respond to them), just to name a few things off the top of my head.

They could view any and all of those things as money they could stop spending on CoH and start spending on, say GW2 (educated guess only, here). They don't have to move people - in theory they can fire the people they have and hire other ones, and they can see that as a better return on investment (despite that firing people incurs added costs) particularly if they are firing expensive, highly skilled game design people and replacing them with added CS reps for GW2, or something like that.

But a factor of 4 is only two bit shifts.

And two bits is a quarter, which is 25 cents.

So it's only 25 cents off!

>.>

<.<

What?

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

You know, I think I get what they are doing.

Here's what I'd do if I was Dr. Evil (or, more likely, Number Two): I'd take the $10 it takes to run CoH, and I would spend all of that on advertisement for GW2 (or any other game in my stable). Any advertising agency worth their salt should be able to churn out a couple of bucks worth of return investment. Voila, $12+ in the pocket.

(disclaimer: no accurate numbers were hurt in the writing of this post)

Exactly so. Companies rarely look to long-term goals.

Corporations today complain that the younger generation skips from job to job, displaying no company loyalty. Well, that's just the chickens coming home to roost: that same generation saw companies fire their parents and their friends' parents after they had worked at said companies for decades, usually adding insult to injury by not providing much of a severance. So the obvious conclusion the next generation came to was that you had to get what you can when you can. Loyalty is no longer a currency.

Brand loyalty used to be a thing, too. When I was a kid, there would be shouting matches between guys who drove Ford versus those who drove Chevy. Yet how many companies inspire that sort of fanatical devotion today beyond Apple and Harley-Davidson? You reap what you sow.

EDIT: When I was in business school, we were taught something that has always bothered me, but it is true. A public company's managers are not necessarily interested in profits. They are interested in maximizing shareholder value through stock price. Think about that line. The goal isn't to be a strong successful company. The goal is to get people to pay the maximum amount for a share of your company's stock.

Normally, that's through making a profit. But that's only part of the equation, and not necessarily the most important part. Dropping small, low ROE (return on equity) business lines is often rewarded by the markets. It leads to short-term thinking that is a plague on businesses. But it's not going away.

I don't know what happened to our beloved CoH, but I suspect that's part of it.

This seems to be a problem in non-MMO games too. "Less story and lore, more PEW PEW PEW!"

It's sad, because it seems that MMO gamers have become conditioned to only want rewards coming at them constantly. I love my loot too, but without a story, it's not satisfying to have the rewards.