Time to Put the Hurt on Guild Wars 2

Here's what I consider the relevant facts of the situation with some speculation filling in the holes. But hey, if NCSoft doesn't want to fill in the gaps for us, I'm willing to speculate and my conclusion is that ultimately this is corporate douchebaggery coupled with a bizarre anti-Western mentality that makes me confused as to why they even did business in NA/EU in the first place.

http://www.amazon.com/Would-Touch-NC...sin=B008MAZ0PU

A lot of us spent money just before the way-out-of-left-field announcement on purchases that we wouldn't have made if there were only three months left and that's unacceptable. This game was profitable. They killed 80 jobs with no attempt to sell the studio or the game when it was in no clear danger of going into the red, in fact seemed to be experiencing a resurgence in popularity IMO, and there has been no communication to the fans about what went down other than Paragon basically saying they had no hint/idea why it happened this way either.

This is a pretty mature, mellow community overall but they clearly have no intention of treating us right so !@#$ 'em. Smear them all over the internet. Add "Avoid Publisher" reviews everywhere. Since GW2 is a micro-based profit-model, I think it is an entirely relevant and reasonable thing to point out that every COH fan that made a micro transaction in COH just got severely burned for absolutely no good reason whatsoever. MMOs, IMO are perfectly fair game for bad publisher reviews. And after all, isn't GW2 taking a bit of a loss right now? How can we be certain they won't just can it with zero notice?

But bring that maturity to the review. Don't write rants. The only chance of getting this made somewhat more right by which I mean, they sell the game to somebody who actually doesn't see a problem with a modest steady profit with IP-potential where a sequel is concerned is to remind them that COH fans are smarter than your average gamer and we have big beautiful literate-if-not-eloquent mouths.

Bring your villains to the table kids. It's time to tear up some NCSoft profits for the games whose "focus" they apparently do care about.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...action=preview

Bad, terrible, awful idea.

Really.

There are threads down in the section discussing and all the social media sites involved in the campaign that will tell you what a bad, awful, terrible idea this is. Like this one: NCSoft is not our enemy

It's not mature or adult to bash products and reflects negatively on any position you are trying to support.

Play GW2 if you like it; don't play it if you don't like it. Simple as that.

edited to add linky.

While a few of the rampant GW2 fanbois spamming their obsessions here make the idea tempting, I'm not a believer in Flying Monkey Justice.

NC won't be getting another dime of my money, and I'll happily make my case directly to anyone who wonders why, but I'm not going to slag a game I have no intention of ever playing.

I mean, it might be a good game...I'll never know, so I won't venture an opinion, let alone a review.

Keep in mind that it's entirely possible that some of our own devs could easily find themselves working on said game if the opportunity arose. Would you really want to hurt their career options?

I'm currently a dev and an ex-Game Informer reviewer. After years of thinking about the ethics of writing reviews I came to the conclusion that all you can do is share your experience. My experience is that I'm quite convinced it's an awesome game and that I was interested in GW2 but that I can't enjoy a game knowing that the publisher has behaved this callously towards a community, not even offering a graceful retirement with notice longer than three months for a game that's still making a steady profit nor offering refunds to people who purchased year-subs in advance or who spent a lot on micro transactions in recent months assuming perfectly reasonably the game wouldn't be randomly and unreasonably shut down for no apparent reason with very little notice.

If you haven't figured it out yet, the Korean side of NCSoft is basically douchebags and it is not going to give a damn about this community until they realize they've just opened up a PR sh*tstorm right at the launch of a property that does fit their "focus."

On the matter of screwing things up for Paragon devs wanting to continue working at NCSoft, which of the Paragon crew that were unceremoniously drop-punted out the door with zero notice that was hoping to work NCSoft again would you be referring to? You couldn't pay me enough to work under a publisher like this and I don't get the impression there were any hires to other divisions of the company. Just a mass-ganking with very little notice for a studio that wasn't in the red and could have at least been sold along with the IP if somebody could have been bothered by the apparent chump-change of an 80 person operation that brings in millions a year. I can't speak for designers and QA but quality devs do not have a hard time finding work and COH is a respected property.

They haven't just alienated COH fans and MMOers in general with this move, they've alienated talent.

When somebody kicks you in the nards and refuses to apologize or explain their abhorrent behavior you do not try to be a bigger person than they are. You make noise and you kick back.

No, really don't.

Really? Amazonbombing Guild Wars 2? That's a pretty distasteful tactic, IMPO. It's not relevant to the actual product (GW2), or the fine people at ArenaNet.

I'm on the fence about giving it a shot (was thinking not, but I have friends trying it out, etc.; not that I have the time at current anyhow), but even if I were stark-raving homicidal towards NCSoft, the people at ArenaNet have done *nothing* that would warrant anyone defiling the reviews for their game based upon the actions of their publisher; a situation over which they have zero control.

IMPO, this is an extremely low tactic, and one that no one should employ, regardless of your supposed past or current employ in the game industry. Your ire should be addressed directly at NCSoft. There's a vast difference between not monetarily supporting a publisher and slinging mud at an otherwise innocent studio.

Sadly at the top most decision level of a large corporation it's not about their customers, their employees, their local community or even what they sell. It's about their stock holders. And all they care about is whether the stock price to goes up or that they a getting a nice dividend, or both. They don't care how, that's up to senior management and all they look at are cold hard numbers.

To airlines, passengers are simply cargo that needs a seat and complains about no "free" drinks. If it was legal for them to drug us, pack us in tubes and stack up like cord wood so they could maximize their profit on that leg of the flight they would do it in a heartbeat.

Same is true here. We may think of ourselves as a community but they think of us as nothing more than an interchangeable sources of revenue. They encourage us to think of ourselves as a community simply because it's a cheap way to retain us as a revenue source.

This isn't your local bar who knows your name and lets you run a tab and nurse one beer all night. It's a corporate chain restaurant which buys the cheapest ingredients and measures how long you are occupying a table and if it's too long relative to the amount of money you are spending the server will encourage you to leave.

Why do you think nobody questioned the notion that the former CEO of Pepsi was hired to run Apple way back when? Because it's taught in "MBA college" that what you are selling doesn't make a difference. Who you are selling to doesn't make a difference. What the manufacturing process entails doesn't make a difference. It's a highly dispassionate discipline that entirely revolves around doing what's best for their stockholders. And since a few large financial firms who are equally dispassionate act as proxies for the actual individual shareholders, public outcry usually falls on deaf ears.

Oh yes, I'm sure coming across as hateful, spiteful, bitter people in all the publicity we've been getting will help our endeavors of actually getting some sort of positive outcome from this whole situation.

:l

Don't do this. There are a lot of things going on behind the scenes right now, on top of the campaign people trying to save the game are running. Do your best to not make us appear like whining, angry children please. While it probably won't hurt everything in the long run, I'd much rather not take that kind of chance.

This is not the moment to do this.

Maybe if they actually turn of the servers and this forum. Then the community is gone and there is no reason to hope to get it back.

Feel free to not purchase NCsoft products. Feel free to badmouth NCsoft. But stop badmouthing a game (GW2) and company (ArenaNet) that had nothing to do with the shutdown. Don't take your hurt over City's sunset out on ArenaNet. That's their livelihood. Try it before you bash it.

In all honesty, it's a really great game and I haven't had as much fun as I'm having there since playing City. It's a completely different look and feel, but I'm having fun in there. It's a good home while I am too hurt to play City without feeling nauseous.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

I haven't read this entire thread, but I did read Ad Astra's comment, and I cannot emphasize how right she is. Please bear this in mind: Right now, we need NCsoft. I'm going to ask this again because it seems that no matter how many times I ask it, folks still are all antsy to go scorched earth on them. Please stop with the negative campaigning against NCsoft. This is doing infinitely more harm than good. The more negative you go, the more they will be convinced that they are making the right business decision by killing off this community.

Humor me. Just give us three or four more weeks to see how this plays out without calling for NCsoft's head on a platter. I'm trying my best, but I really need you guy's help on this. It won't take many "NCsoft doesn't give a crap about us!" posts before that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm not asking you to ingratiate yourself to them, but for just a little while longer, please at least be civil. If you can't say something nice, just hold it in a little bit longer.

Guild Wars 2, from what I can see of gameplay trailers and the like on YouTube is a -beautiful- game. It seem that yes, some of the ideals that were founded and refined in this game are in it, along with others that are simply amazing.

However...it's on www.ncsoft.com and that means....no matter how much it might appeal to me...I'll never pay money to play it. No game I see there will get my money.

And I do agree with the "let's not do this" people. It's not time yet. We're still trying to get NCSoft to agree to sale of IP and license. However, those same people need to understand this true fact: The best way to get a corporation that only cares about profitability to listen is to cut into it. Deeply. We as a community need to be prepared to do just that if it is what is needed to be heard and taken seriously.

So, for now...be civil. Be nice. Be respectful.