NCSoft West

Matryoshka

It seems like day and night comparing NCSoft West to their Korean counterpart. When games are ported over to the west from Korea, it always seems like NCSoft West just handles it terribly. Or even if they publish a game made in the west, they somehow always manage to do something to screw it up. They've published so many great games and have many good ones coming out in the future, it sucks that the only thing stopping people from playing them sometimes is the fact that their NA counterparts are run by a company that sometimes just doesn't seem to know what they're doing. Will NCSoft West ever improve themselves or will we be forever stuck with "This game looks amazing, but NCSoft? No thanks, been there done that."

Omali

I feel that NCWest could have done better with Lineage overseas. I find it baffling that a game that continues to make anywhere from $60-80 million USD consistently on a quarterly basis, after the western servers were shut down, was no longer viable in North America and Europe.

bcbully

The way I see it is that Blizz is McD's and NCsoft (current) is Burger King. It doesn't have much to do with the location selling the food.

Quirhid

What makes you think NCWest is responsible?

Kuro1n

NCWest is shit and has always been, that said the EU counterparts are even worse usually. *sigh*

Matryoshka

Originally posted by Kuro1n
NCWest is shit and has always been, that said the EU counterparts are even worse usually. *sigh*

That is true, but they are usually not a NCSoft based company. It's weird that they can do so well in Korea, where standards are so much higher, and then in NA if you've ever played a NCSoft game run by NCWest, well, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Matryoshka

Originally posted by Quirhid
What makes you think NCWest is responsible?

I've played a lot of games run by NCWest, if it's not their doing, then I would be pretty surprised. I highly doubt all of those developers had all of the same problems, and the common factor was always NCWest.

Quirhid

Originally posted by Matryoshka

Originally posted by Quirhid
What makes you think NCWest is responsible?

I've played a lot of games run by NCWest, if it's not their doing, then I would be pretty surprised. I highly doubt all of those developers had all of the same problems, and the common factor was always NCWest.

Have you played the same game under both NCSoft and NCWest? It is hard to imagine localization would change the game all that much.

Matryoshka

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by Matryoshka

Originally posted by Quirhid
What makes you think NCWest is responsible?

I've played a lot of games run by NCWest, if it's not their doing, then I would be pretty surprised. I highly doubt all of those developers had all of the same problems, and the common factor was always NCWest.

Have you played the same game under both NCSoft and NCWest? It is hard to imagine localization would change the game all that much.

If you mean played the Korean version and the NA version, yes. It's like night and day on the difference in how they run things. I feel like NCWest tries to change the game to "appeal to a Western audience" a lot and ends up just making it worse. Games like Aion and L2 are extremely popular in Korea and in Aion's case get very frequent content updates. NA Aion isn't as lucky, even though it's just localizing the content, it's ridiculous.

Bookah

After playing an NC west game, I sadly have to agree with the OP.

Aion NA is a great example, its been a mess from day 1 and the game was almost ruined as server populations for pvp factions were never kept in balance...while in Korea factions are kept dead even and the managment of the game is exellent.

My friends and I showed up to the faction Sieges to find out the siege was 1000+ vs 100 because the game was allowed to get so out of whack.

Matryoshka

Originally posted by Torvaldr
I put the blame squarely on NC Korea. They control everything and seem to have a conscious dislike for western gamers in general. They control how the games are balanced and adjusted and don't care if our game experience is crap. I see NC West as a bunch of puppets.

I'm not sure if I believe this, my guess is more they just plain don't care what NCWest does and how they handle themselves and their games, as long as profits are still coming in. So they probably don't take the time as much as they should to check in and make sure the changes they are making to games are quality ones, and that they are keeping things like customer support, in games stores, etc all somewhere that is something that won't frustrate players.