A Business Focused View of NCSoft's Actions

You assume VERY wrong. Not only did I sign the petition but I CONSTANTLY tweeted about it every day. I was very much for SAVECOH until approx a week ago when it became clear that no amount of letters or tweets were going to Save CoH. NCSoft made their decision and instead of continuing in an effort that will be fruitless I stopped.

Heck I even got a few co-workers to sign it who have never played CoH.

These boards irk me when people assume so much about people they have no idea about

I have no problem with NCSoft as they were the ones who allowed me to play CoH for 7+ years. I was not delusional and knew CoH would close eventually.
From my standpoint the population was noticeably declining within the past 2 years - many of my global friends went on to other games and these were people who had played 5-6 years.

You and I both can think of ways for CoH to make money, but then again we also do not head a billion+ corporation and know everything that went into the decision...so yeah it's easy for us to say NCSoft was wrong.

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Originally Posted by Talionis I'll assume you also didn't sign the petition to save the game, but I think the vast majority of the people that signed that petition will steer people clear of NCSoft. If you fall in the tiny minority be happy for yourself, your an individual. I meant to say even 100,000 signatures (if we had got 80,000 more) wouldn't change anyone's mind. I'm pretty sure CoH had more players than Everquest and a lot of MMO's. So there is no magic minimum number of players that CoH had too few players to keep the game going. I do think MMO's eventually die, but CoH didn't look like a game dying. The population seems to be steady at what it has been for the last two years or so. New content has been coming out faster than ever. For a dying game you'd expect new content to be coming out slower than ever. CoH hit a critical mass and was big enough to support itself for the immediate future. It would've been my hope that if CoH died it was CoH2 that killed it. North America also has a very viable market for a game like CoH, no marketing has coincided with the releases of blockbuster Super Hero movies. But with no real option for Super Hero MMO, the population has no substitute-like place to go. Most people do not consider Champions Online or DCUniverse to be rough equivalents to CoH. And because of genre we aren't just going to go to WoW and be happy there. Project X was not CoH's fault, unless project X is CoH2. (Rumors are to the contrary) If the problem really was excessive staff, you'd expect a dying game would substantially cut staff and reassess the viability after reductions in staff. Either way, personally I see lots of things that could've been done to allow NCSoft to make money on CoH, that were not done. CoH though groundbreaking in so many ways didn't get the same treatment that Everquest received. And to the average gamer, there was no way to see how or why CoH isn't as viable now as it was two years ago.

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Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

I see this is still going.

I wondered if anyone was actually going to take a business-focused view of NCSoft's actions...

Here's one.

Revenue for the past two years for CoH has been slowly declining, aside from a brief bump when Freedom launched.

Now why did NCSoft invest Paragon resources in doing Freedom? Was it to make less money? Was it to make the same amount of money? If it were either of those, wouldn't they have just kept putting out content instead?

Now why would a company make a significant change like implementing a F2P model? Would you say a company that makes a move like that is a) satisfied with the revenue of their product or b) dissatisfied with the revenue of their product?

Considering the risk involved, I'd say a radical move like a shift to F2P is an indication that NCSoft was dissatisfied with the revenue from CoH. And make no mistake, changing your revenue model like that is a major business risk - they could have killed the game right there.

So, add it up.

NCSoft unhappy with the revenue from CoH.
NCSoft invests considerable effort to implement Freedom.
CoH revenue does not improve.

Given that, it's a constant mystery to me how the people at Paragon could possibly have thought that things were going well. They may not have thought it was code red, but there's no way to realistically paint this as "going well."

Whether this game, or Paragon, was profitable or not is debatable.

Whether this game was meeting expectations is not.

Is there really evidence for anything from either side? Anyone really have information directly from the inside or an inside source?

So far, the only solid thing we have is NCSoft for some reason did not like what they see and decided to end it. The reason seems to be mostly pure speculation at this point or maybe it's it's all of the above or none of the above, or really as NCSoft said, the only inside and only ones that know the facts and is the horses mouth source said, to streamline the product line. So far their statement is the as close to a fact we have right now. COh did not fit within that streamline process so it had to go.

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Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

The descent continues for NCSoft. They're hovering around their 52 week low.

Will the axe fall on another studio?

Down down down their stock keeps going. Hasn't been this low since April 2010.

Guess 3Q report wasn't what investors wanted to hear.

I guess the new direction they cited for closing Paragon was 'down'.

Paragon wasn't a big part of NCSoft. The closing of Paragon BARELY made a blip on 8/31 in S. Korea. There has been no mention of Paragon/CoH in South Korean news since. Hell the whole shut down was barely a blip in US news.

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Originally Posted by DarkCurrent Down down down their stock keeps going. Hasn't been this low since April 2010. Guess 3Q report wasn't what investors wanted to hear. I guess the new direction they cited for closing Paragon was 'down'.

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Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

So if Paragon was a tiny part of their business and it mattered virtually nothing to their financials what do you suspect was the reason for closing it?

Closure seemed to imply it was hurting the company somehow and had to go.

I'm not making that up - the data is out there. I believe CoH accounted for a whopping 2% of NCSoft revenue. They closed it because it was a slowly degrading MMO that was not meeting the profits they wanted it to.... This has been discussed over and over.

As for the S. Korean press. I am from South Korea and still have family there who have "monitored" the news for me and there was a BLIP about it on 8/31 and nothing since. NCSoft is a S. Korean company whose main revenue comes from outside the US. A 50,000 sub MMO in the US is not a factor to S. Koreans nor NCSoft's stock price no matter what people like to think

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Originally Posted by DarkCurrent So if Paragon was a tiny part of their business and it mattered virtually nothing to their financials what do you suspect was the reason for closing it? Closure seemed to imply it was hurting the company somehow and had to go.

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Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!