I hate to say this...but, I think it's really over for our beloved game.

Because they believe they can reduce costs?

See above.

Because they were as dumb as the proverbial posts? Reportedly, they were on their third 'new game development' after having the first two cancelled. That's pretty big writing on the wall.

I don't "think" I know better. An SEC filing is authoritative. Go look that up.

You can claim whatever you want that makes ML an "authority," but when she is wrong on the facts, she is wrong. I'm not dumb enough to accept everything based on what a "respected" person says, but go ahead and enjoy your certainty.

The problem that i have with the $800K profit per month figure is that it is *almost* exactly the same as the average monthly revenue (which ISNT profit based, just money coming in) figure that you can get from the NCsoft financials (Available here).

On top of that, if that figure that is given *IS* the "profit" of the game, then that means that *multiple* people have been misreading and misusing it on the forum.

Now THAT I do find unlikely (especially seeing as this information has been used to back up the game in the past).

Now saying that... $800K profit per QUARTER I can believe. And it *does* fit roughly into what we (as outsiders) can work out (This being the difference between Revenue per year at *roughly* $10/year and the *rough* annual wage and benefit cost (lets call it $7million/year)

That *does* suggest a profit margin of roughly $800K per quarter... which is roughly $266K/month profit. A far cry from the $800K/month that Mercedes (and quite possibly other people) have posted up.

No, but unfortunately spreading information which cannot be verified (especially when there IS evidence to the contrary) doesn't raise their standing in my mind. And this doesn't go for just Mercedes, but for everyone else out there. An example is the rumor that i have read that this was the 1st MMO closure that NCsoft have *voluntarily* given subscriptions for, instead of just giving you gametime for their other MMO's).

I do appreciate what she (and the rest of the Titan crew) are trying to do to save the game, but people who end up saying stuff that they cannot (or will not) back up with the exception of a "just trust me" statement (or words to those effects) just makes me tend to ignore them.

I am pretty certain that *most* if not all of the "naysayers" will change their tone if they are provably shown evidence to the contrary.

Of course, that is pretty much also my point of view with organised religion as well... I am willing to wait for evidence to appear to the contrary, but I never just accept something at face value. I will do research to see what there is.

Side note: I honestly doubt that Melissa would be able to post the internal finances of Paragon Studio's without approval from Ncsoft.

I would agree that this is a more plausible figure, but you have to remember that the operating costs for Paragon Studios don't include the servers and support staff necessary to run the game.

If Paragon were running a profit of ~$800k/quarter exclusive of non-Paragon Studios costs, that's not a number that is of much use going forward. If anyone were to take over the game, they would still need to take on those additional costs.

A fresh out of college CS major that scores a 100k+ job in the Bay area has effectively hit the lottery. Also, no fresh out of college CS major is worth $100k. I don't care if he graduated valedictorian from Stanford and flew to the job interview in his personally constructed jetpack.

Oh 100% agreed. And this is an additional problem that people have to realise. Paragon Studios making a profit of 800K/quarter is nice... especially seeing as they have none of the support costs to worry about (because the support staff are employed by NCsoft and *not* Paragon Studios).

Once you start to factor *those* costs in... that $800K/quarter starts to dwindle quite rapidly.

As a Computer Scientist with 15 years experience in various aspects of software development and design I must concur. It's truly amazing how much we don't know when we graduate and how much we think we do. It's like being a teenager all over again...but with less angst and acne.

When I said I stayed away from the forums, I was thinking of you. Not specifically you but the general you. An internet dweeb with a bunch of Beavis and Butthead clones that they hung out with. I read your thread I see you beating up someone, nerd fan comes into point out you don't know what you're talking about, and you aren't man enough to admit it.

Everywhere in this game you had cheerful helpful people, on the forums you had wannabe devs and kissups.

Just for fun and because it looks like you can't take being wrong. During I18 you could get pvp IOs by afk farming for them. That's how I did it, and you couldn't give away the Targeted area effect pieces or the non proc point blank area effect pieces.

So why are you still sticking around whining about how awful we all are instead of walking your talk and going the **** away?

Your numbers need to take into account that some portion of those 80 personnel were NOT working on this game. They were working on a new project and, therefore, their costs should not be attributed to CoH. Unfortunately, we don't know what percentage of the staff was on the new project.

Not my numbers, I was looking to putting some money into a friends project and that's what he was using for out the door labor costs. I double checked with people operating in the area and they told me they were reasonable.

Crap son. If you are going to pitch at least try to get the same zipcode as home plate.

Beating up someone? Did you see the part where he thanked me for the tone my posts took once I really understood what he was saying? Hm. Makes me wonder if you actually read the thread.

And if you think that thread shows I don't know what I was talking about, you're either a colossal moron, or (I think more likely), you didn't read the thread. You know, because there are screenshots proving what said.

You're ignorant. Literally. You don't know me, clearly. The vast majority of my posts on these forums over the years have been to help people with game mechanical information. I have a particular enmity with A_F, (which sprung largely from that thread) and I find it instructive that you judge everything based on my interactions with him.

Is this one of those things where you expect that you're "blowing my mind"?

My best RL friend plays this game, and has been farming like that for ... ever. These days he uses, I kid you not, 12 accounts to do it with. (Well, he did, he stopped after the announcement.) So yeah, I know how that works, and have all along. Guess what? That ability of players like him to farm them has always been baked into the market prices. Do you know when the prices on the high-end ones crashed, and finally dipped under the 1-2B mark? When converters came out, and allowed the massive stockpiles of low-value PvPOs those farmers all had created to be converted into the valuable ones.

Ooh, look out, he broke out "son".

The reason he brought that point up was because Paragon Studios actually tried getting two other game ideas off the ground (one of which being CoH 2), however NCSoft didn't approve of the ideas and dismissed them. So yeah, the games didn't fail since they didn't even exist, but the publisher wasn't fond of the ideas. However NCsoft did approve the third game, which became known as their Secret Project.

And honestly, I'm of the opinion that CoH wasn't failing, but NCSoft couldn't/didn't want to focus it's effort on it any more. It happens. They already have other games that are far more successful in Korea, with a new game launching that's pretty popular in both Korea and the US. So it's not far fetched that, despite CoH's success, NCsoft just wanted to focus energy elsewhere. After all that IS what they said to begin with.

I see why you had to get friends to back you up

True, but potentially irrelevant. My read is that NCSoft didn't regard just killing the new project (and leaving CoH running) as a possibility. After all, they'd been down that road before. Even though a significant portion of the costs of Paragon were development of the new project, NCSoft shut the entire business unit down.

This is what I've been getting at. I think all the talk about "realignment of company focus and publishing support" has nothing to do with CoH, but with killing the new project. There was no way that big profits were going to come from CoH anyway, the big deal would always have been a new game - that was where NCSoft was going to see a big reward if Paragon were successful.

CoH is collateral damage.

Personally I would want to wish the second one is more than certain but it's not heard of for at least US buisness and probably non-US based ones maybe just a little tiny non-noticable outside finance world fib on their financial reports. It is said to happen alot inside some buisness sources. But proving it before it goes "Enron" is another matter.

In the lack of evidence of showing this, whether it's hard to get or hidden or dont exist, compared to there seems to be evidence that the staff was shocked and had future plans, I think the second option is more likely.

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!

Well, to be fair, without knowing who you are referring to specifically, I am going to believe that you were referring to Another_Fan's wage estimates (which to be fair, in my mind I *do* believe that they are a high, which is why I ended up settling for a $7million/year wage/benefits package cost for 80 developers).

However, what I was personally disputing was Mercede Lackeys figures that the game was making $800K/month *profit*. Because that means that the game was making almost $13million(ish) per year profit. However, the financial statements from NCsoft contradict that figure quite soundly. Because in 2011, they only managed to bring in just under $11million in sales/revenue over the course of the year.

And we can see that this year has been a *slight* downward slope in terms of revenue/sales/income/call it what you will (just not *profit* as that is something different).

If you want to look at it yourself, go to http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx download the file that you want, and have at look at the IR_Consolidated FactSheet (you will be wanting the Games Sales tab in the excel spreadsheet).

That is where a lot of us are getting our figures from. And to be fair, we have *never* assumed that this was profit, but pure earnings before costs are taken into consideration. And in the past, people have been *willing* to accept those figures as "pre expenditure".

Or to be more accurate, we would *love* to know how "Larry" got his figures together. That would explain a lot, especially as Mercedes is putting a lot of weight into the figures that he has given out.

So please, can you find out how on earth you can make $800,000 profit a month on $800,000 income?

The only way I can see this happening is if you have zero expenditures. Which to me seems impossible.

Now, I am going to ask you a question here.

How many subscribers (or to make it easier for you) or accounts which receive a Paragon Point stipend are there for City of Heroes, and how did you arrive at that figure?

The answer is important here, because it will show how attentive you are.

I will tell you how I arrive at my figure of 55,000-60,000 subscribers (although to be fair, the number of subscribers is likely to be *lower* although the number of "active accounts" will be higher).

I looked at the NCsoft financials and saw how much money it was making. Due to currency conversions and rounding, this is only an estimate, but still fairly accurate.

1) Take the Korean won earnings value and covert it into US$. You can find this on the NCsoft Earnings page. You will need to be looking at the Game Sales tab of the excel spreadsheet.

2,855,000,000 Korean Won = $2,552,412.
Lets call that $2.5million

2) Divide that by 3 to get monthly earnings.

$2,500,000/3 = $833,333 earnings/income/revenue

3) Divide *this* figure now by $15 (this is the maximum monthly sub that someone pays. Sticking with this figure because those in Europe actually pay more than $15/month to subscribe to the game once you take into consideration currency conversion). This will give us an *estimate* of the number of subscribers or number of *equivelent* subscribers (if you are going for active accounts) in the game

This means that we now do the following sum

$833,333/$15 = 55,555. Lets call this 55K to 60K current active subscribers to the game.

Of course, this is assuming that no one spends money to buy Paragon Points and that everyone spends just $15/month.

Of course, we know that isn't exactly true. There are free accounts and premium accounts out there. But without extra information, we cannot even begin to guess how much they are spending.

But for every full subscriber who spends money on Paragon Points, that just reduces the number of "equivalent subscribers" out there.

Now, I have read out in the big wide world, that the game *apparently* has 100,000 subscribers. However, the NCsoft financials *do not* support that theory. Unless of course the subscription fee is $7.50/month.

There is a difference between a subscriber and an active account. A subscriber pays $15/month to play the game (or there abouts) and get access to incarnate content and receives a monthly Paragon Point stipend (there are other benefits). An active account can play the game and *doesnt* get access to incarnate content nor the stipend. They can however pay to gain access to "rent" or buy access to missing features though (with the exception of Incarnate Content).

Now, all of everything that i have stated previously goes out of the window, if "game sales" doesn't mean "how much money they have coming in" and instead means "just clear profit". Infact, it throws *everything* out of the window.

A small bit of research from *your* side can help a lot. Especially when it is backed up by a conclusion as to how you arrived at the number.

I'd actually agree if I was talking base salary. That was employee cost. Everything you need to have someone working in an office doing that kind of job. For tech companies that includes things like employers contribution to taxes, continuing education benefits, health plan, etc, etc, etc.

Fair enough, and it does indeed all depend on how much stuff you are including. Continuing education is important, especially as new technologies/advancements in current tech arises. Need to stay on the ball here (hell going from OpenGL 2 to OpenGL 4 requires a bit re-education).

And chances are that there are also similar things for Nvidia and ATI to attend as well.

What's more likely? That I had a cabal of posters come and lie on the forums for every reader to see to defend my position, or that the one person everyone was disagreeing with was the victim of his own spectacular inability to comprehend what was being said?

Why don't I provide a link to another thread where that same thing happened. Here's a thread where you piled in and promptly started driving the discussion down narrower and more convoluted arguments about the semantics of the words used in order to defend positions that felt tangential to the original debate. Watching you in this thread is amazing - every 10 posts or so you're involved in an almost completely different argument.

Here are a few fine quotes in response to your posts (none of which were responses to me). These are just samples; there are more like this in the thread.

But yeah, it totally makes sense that in a thread where you and I argued, everyone on my side of the argument was "my fan club". Yeah, you caught me, man.

I actually did post a lot in that thread (which is why I have a link to it), but most of my interaction was actually with another poster, and not with A_F. I should add that, for as much as that other poster and I disagreed, I actually rather enjoyed most of the debate with him, I learned new things by engaging in it, and was never angry about having had the discussion.

We also have no idea what their other expenses they had a budget for marketing, they attended trade shows and meet and greets, they had the events going on facebook. Safe to say that was more than 0.