Shutting down CoH seems to be what people rage about. That game ran for 8 years. People say it was "still making money", but they don't know the costs of continued development, keeping servers going etc. so they can't say that for sure.
What do you mean can't say for sure. The earnings report is public. Check the 2012 financials.
Eh, care to link them? Along with all the costs associated with keeping the game going and resources allocated to a game that was in decline rather than shifting them to a game that was going to grow (Guild Wars 2)? Yeah that's not so easy to do, is it?
Here's a good quote on it:
"NCSoft is a publicly-traded company, and it suffered a $6 million loss in Q2 2012. A publicly-traded company that loses money needs to convince its shareholders that it will not continue to lose money, lest the shareholders jump ship. Clearly, NCSoft thought they could increase their profits by closing CoH.
This doesn't necessarily mean that City of Heroes was responsible for the $6 million loss. I haven't seen anything concrete one way or the other on that. It's possible that CoH was in the black, and it would still make sense for NCSoft to shutter it.
Let's make up some extremely arbitrary numbers for a thought experiment. Assume that CoH cost NCSoft $1 million a year and was bringing in $1.2 million a year. Sweet, profit! But what if they had another property with a higher profit potential? What if they could move that $1 million dollars from the somewhat-profitable project to an incredibly profitable project? Maybe they could spend that $1 million in such a way they it would generate $2 million in revenue instead of $1.2 million.
Enter Guild Wars 2. According to Massively, "NCsoft said that it is banking on Guild Wars 2 to produce a profitable third quarter" (NCsoft weathers $6M loss in Q2). Is it reasonable for NCSoft to conclude that the Guild Wars franchise has greater profit potential than CoH? I think so. CoH was on a fairly slow decline, but a decline nonetheless. GW2 still has potential for growth. And Q3 looked great for NCSoft, thanks to GW2.
It's also possible that the benefit for NCSoft was of a more arcane nature: taxes. I couldn't even begin to try to explain that one."
Anyway, bottomline, CoH was out for 8 years. In 2012 it was in decline and NcSoft was losing millions as a company. They shut it down, and apparently they made some good decisions at least because since then NcSoft has become very profitible.
Personally, I don't expect a company to keep a game going past 8 years if it's in decline, especially not if the company itself is losing millions.
FYi, you care to link them part. This was talked to death when it happened and was linked back then. If you weren't around at the time you missed out. Either you believe it or you are calling us liars. You lack of knowledge on the history of this is your problem. We don't have to prove it to you because it is true. Your lack of belief in the facts doesn't change the truth.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I can't think of a single MMO company that has a perfect track record that would warrant blind trust.
The closest thing would be Blizzard, and that largely just because they have only had one game. But, even then, they've made several mistakes with the direction of their MMO too. If you were to factor in Diablo3 and HotS, etc., then their development is quite a mess.
Still, I would call them the most trustworthy as far as support for their games. Even though I'm not a fan of the decisions they make along the way, at least they don't abandon their products/customers.
Trion, EA, NCSoft, SquareEnix, SOE, Turbine, Perpetual, etc., all have black marks on their cards. To SE's credit, at least they try to fix their blunders. CCP has proven themselves to be a one-hit wonder, but they've kept the EVE addicts happy; so I guess EVE fans could find some trust there. But, they've had several failed attempts at other projects, so I'd consider them in the same box as the others.
I used to love NCSoft back when I was playing City Of Heroes. So when we use the word "trust" What is it that we "trust" NCSoft to do?
Well of all the mmo companies that exist. NC Soft is the only one that has stuck to strictly mmo's. Unlike other companies that have brought Mobas,FPS, ARPG's to surface. NC Soft (America)has been dedicated to mmo's regardless if good or bad.
I agree with the OP, they publish so many good games and actually have guts to close the shitty ones despite small vocal community that is raging on online forums instead of playing their "favourite" game.
NCSoft pissed ALOT of people off with the unceremonial and unexplained shutdown of CoH/CoV. Many of those players are still very upset about it. Really we have not gotten a replacement for it yet. I also remember you could get quick in game support for issues in CoH. Psft. Not for BnS or Wildstar. Shutting down CoH was like Blizzard shutting down WoW suddenly in my opinion. So...yea screw NCSoft! I am following City of Titans development closely.
Funny enough, that's the exact same reason EA shut down Earth & Beyond. It was making money, just not enough money. They could have just cut spending and slowed development, but nope, close that sucker down, piss off the fans, and fire all the talent behind it. And then refuse to sell the license to anybody else so the game can continue.
They really are the EA of Korea.
I don't think you know what it means when they say "enough money".
Publicly traded companies have to make money for their investors. Just like your retirement funds need to make money for you.
If you looked at "whatever stocks/funds you have" and saw that your money was only making a small profit or none at all, you might be pissed.
Companies are looking to make higher "earnings per share". If a company is not making much and doesn't match or exceed estimates then their stock price goes down.
As an investor "you do not want this". You want them to exceed their estimates as this usually makes their stock prices go up.
This is not a club. It's a business that makes money and more to the point it's a business that makes money for their investors.
You, as an investor, want your investments to make you money. Believe me, it's a shame when a company closes down a beloved game but unless they are a small company doing it for the love of the game, the company is going to have to make their investors happy.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Shutting down CoH seems to be what people rage about. That game ran for 8 years. People say it was "still making money", but they don't know the costs of continued development, keeping servers going etc. so they can't say that for sure.
What do you mean can't say for sure. The earnings report is public. Check the 2012 financials.
Eh, care to link them? Along with all the costs associated with keeping the game going and resources allocated to a game that was in decline rather than shifting them to a game that was going to grow (Guild Wars 2)? Yeah that's not so easy to do, is it?
Here's a good quote on it:
"NCSoft is a publicly-traded company, and it suffered a $6 million loss in Q2 2012. A publicly-traded company that loses money needs to convince its shareholders that it will not continue to lose money, lest the shareholders jump ship. Clearly, NCSoft thought they could increase their profits by closing CoH.
This doesn't necessarily mean that City of Heroes was responsible for the $6 million loss. I haven't seen anything concrete one way or the other on that. It's possible that CoH was in the black, and it would still make sense for NCSoft to shutter it.
Let's make up some extremely arbitrary numbers for a thought experiment. Assume that CoH cost NCSoft $1 million a year and was bringing in $1.2 million a year. Sweet, profit! But what if they had another property with a higher profit potential? What if they could move that $1 million dollars from the somewhat-profitable project to an incredibly profitable project? Maybe they could spend that $1 million in such a way they it would generate $2 million in revenue instead of $1.2 million.
Enter Guild Wars 2. According to Massively, "NCsoft said that it is banking on Guild Wars 2 to produce a profitable third quarter" (NCsoft weathers $6M loss in Q2). Is it reasonable for NCSoft to conclude that the Guild Wars franchise has greater profit potential than CoH? I think so. CoH was on a fairly slow decline, but a decline nonetheless. GW2 still has potential for growth. And Q3 looked great for NCSoft, thanks to GW2.
It's also possible that the benefit for NCSoft was of a more arcane nature: taxes. I couldn't even begin to try to explain that one."
Anyway, bottomline, CoH was out for 8 years. In 2012 it was in decline and NcSoft was losing millions as a company. They shut it down, and apparently they made some good decisions at least because since then NcSoft has become very profitible.
Personally, I don't expect a company to keep a game going past 8 years if it's in decline, especially not if the company itself is losing millions.
FYi, you care to link them part. This was talked to death when it happened and was linked back then. If you weren't around at the time you missed out. Either you believe it or you are calling us liars. You lack of knowledge on the history of this is your problem. We don't have to prove it to you because it is true. Your lack of belief in the facts doesn't change the truth.
We don't have to prove it to you because it is true...
LOL OK. Well, worse case scenario is NcSoft turns "pure evil" on my new favorite MMO Blade and Soul, and shuts it down... in 8 years.
NCSoft pissed ALOT of people off with the unceremonial and unexplained shutdown of CoH/CoV. Many of those players are still very upset about it. Really we have not gotten a replacement for it yet. I also remember you could get quick in game support for issues in CoH. Psft. Not for BnS or Wildstar. Shutting down CoH was like Blizzard shutting down WoW suddenly in my opinion. So...yea screw NCSoft! I am following City of Titans development closely.
They are also in league with gold farmers. And will ban any threats to them.
NCSoft pissed ALOT of people off with the unceremonial and unexplained shutdown of CoH/CoV. Many of those players are still very upset about it. Really we have not gotten a replacement for it yet. I also remember you could get quick in game support for issues in CoH. Psft. Not for BnS or Wildstar. Shutting down CoH was like Blizzard shutting down WoW suddenly in my opinion. So...yea screw NCSoft! I am following City of Titans development closely.
I'm with you on this, I played that game pretty religiously and loved it almost too much. I loved my Villain character. I took her from being a normal human character to slowly "evolving" to a grotesque gargoyle type creature as she gained levels. The missions while were somewhat cut and paste type hallways (similar to Matrix) never really seemed to get boring plus periodically you would get missions where you could rob a bank...how many MMOs do you know that allow you to rob banks that way. I made so many characters to (though the one I described above was the main). It was just so interesting.
The game was also right in the middle of an upgrade when it got pulled (why even plan the upgrade if it's going to shut down...oh right because the devs didn't even know it was about to be shut down) and the intial reason for shutting down was shady as all heck. We are looking into a different way of doing things. Which when they received backlash for it, quickly changed to, it wasn't making enough money. Sure NCSoft, then why didn't you say that right away. We can see with things like Wildstar (doing much worse than CoX) that this statement was pretty much crap.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
As far as I know they had two games they shut down. Heroes and Villians and Dungeon Runners. Both of which were very good games. There was internal conflicts between the developer and publishers. They have done very well. Have worked with players to give them what they want.
They also shut down lineage 1, their most profitable game. Then there was tabula rasa (just due to politics). Their dev team working on L3 fled the company and took the source code (that says alot about how they are running things). and if that isn't enough for you, check my post above where a community of a few thousand players tried to band together due to the banning, corruption, and ignoring us.
Lineage 1 is the most profitable game for them in Korea. Not in North America where they shut it down. They shut it down here because there was less than 100 active users on the server logged in at a time. They would not shut down their most profitable game made by their own development team if it wasn't doing horrid in the area they shut it down in.
As far as I know they had two games they shut down. Heroes and Villians and Dungeon Runners. Both of which were very good games. There was internal conflicts between the developer and publishers. They have done very well. Have worked with players to give them what they want.
They also shut down lineage 1, their most profitable game. Then there was tabula rasa (just due to politics). Their dev team working on L3 fled the company and took the source code (that says alot about how they are running things). and if that isn't enough for you, check my post above where a community of a few thousand players tried to band together due to the banning, corruption, and ignoring us.
Lineage 1 is profitible- in Korea. It wasn't in NA. It ran for FIFTEEN YEARS in NA. It's still running in Korea- 18 years later. It is one of the longest running MMOs of all time.
I don't know how long an MMO has to run for it to be ok for you guys to shut it down, but apparently if an MMO is ever shut down it's a crime against humanity.
Same thing is happening with Wildstar. It's doing horribly but it's been running for years despite that. If NcSoft were so trigger happy on pulling the plug on MMOs, they would've ended that one LONG AGO.
Shutting down CoH seems to be what people rage about. That game ran for 8 years. People say it was "still making money", but they don't know the costs of continued development, keeping servers going etc. so they can't say that for sure.
What do you mean can't say for sure. The earnings report is public. Check the 2012 financials.
Eh, care to link them? Along with all the costs associated with keeping the game going and resources allocated to a game that was in decline rather than shifting them to a game that was going to grow (Guild Wars 2)? Yeah that's not so easy to do, is it?
Here's a good quote on it:
"NCSoft is a publicly-traded company, and it suffered a $6 million loss in Q2 2012. A publicly-traded company that loses money needs to convince its shareholders that it will not continue to lose money, lest the shareholders jump ship. Clearly, NCSoft thought they could increase their profits by closing CoH.
This doesn't necessarily mean that City of Heroes was responsible for the $6 million loss. I haven't seen anything concrete one way or the other on that. It's possible that CoH was in the black, and it would still make sense for NCSoft to shutter it.
Let's make up some extremely arbitrary numbers for a thought experiment. Assume that CoH cost NCSoft $1 million a year and was bringing in $1.2 million a year. Sweet, profit! But what if they had another property with a higher profit potential? What if they could move that $1 million dollars from the somewhat-profitable project to an incredibly profitable project? Maybe they could spend that $1 million in such a way they it would generate $2 million in revenue instead of $1.2 million.
Enter Guild Wars 2. According to Massively, "NCsoft said that it is banking on Guild Wars 2 to produce a profitable third quarter" (NCsoft weathers $6M loss in Q2). Is it reasonable for NCSoft to conclude that the Guild Wars franchise has greater profit potential than CoH? I think so. CoH was on a fairly slow decline, but a decline nonetheless. GW2 still has potential for growth. And Q3 looked great for NCSoft, thanks to GW2.
It's also possible that the benefit for NCSoft was of a more arcane nature: taxes. I couldn't even begin to try to explain that one."
Anyway, bottomline, CoH was out for 8 years. In 2012 it was in decline and NcSoft was losing millions as a company. They shut it down, and apparently they made some good decisions at least because since then NcSoft has become very profitible.
Personally, I don't expect a company to keep a game going past 8 years if it's in decline, especially not if the company itself is losing millions.
FYi, you care to link them part. This was talked to death when it happened and was linked back then. If you weren't around at the time you missed out. Either you believe it or you are calling us liars. You lack of knowledge on the history of this is your problem. We don't have to prove it to you because it is true. Your lack of belief in the facts doesn't change the truth.
We don't have to prove it to you because it is true...
LOL OK. Well, worse case scenario is NcSoft turns "pure evil" on my new favorite MMO Blade and Soul, and shuts it down... in 8 years.
I'm 100% fine with that.
Actually, i kind of hope you get suckered in by them, so I can point and laugh at you later and say told you dumb ass.
Uh huh. Yeah clearly this is a logical argument and not some mob mentality thing based on emotion. Clearly.
Anyway, if by "suckered", you mean playing a great game with an awesome payment model I thoroughly enjoy for months, with great customer service and a bright future of content updates for at least the next year, then call me suckered.
As far as I know they had two games they shut down. Heroes and Villians and Dungeon Runners. Both of which were very good games. There was internal conflicts between the developer and publishers. They have done very well. Have worked with players to give them what they want.
They also shut down lineage 1, their most profitable game. Then there was tabula rasa (just due to politics). Their dev team working on L3 fled the company and took the source code (that says alot about how they are running things). and if that isn't enough for you, check my post above where a community of a few thousand players tried to band together due to the banning, corruption, and ignoring us.
Lineage 1 is the most profitable game for them in Korea. Not in North America where they shut it down. They shut it down here because there was less than 100 active users on the server logged in at a time. They would not shut down their most profitable game made by their own development team if it wasn't doing horrid in the area they shut it down in.
Dude, NcSoft should've said f-u to their shareholders and kept it going. Pissing off 100 people that played the game for 15 years is just WRONG!
From my perspective, although I have to proof to back it up, NCsoft is the single most obvious corrupt publisher out there. And by corrupt I mean working hand in hand with the RMT companies.
edit: but that doesn't mean all their games are crap. L2 is still one of my all time fav MMOs, even tho it's always been ruined by...RMT
Yeah, most of the hate is about City of Heroes shutting down. It wasn't well explained why they did so, although the close timing with the Nexxon deal adds suspicion.
If all they did was shut it down, it would be one thing. But they refused all deals to acquire the rights. There were some well financed legitimate attempts to acquire the IP. Clearly there was a group of people that thought the IP had value. But NCsoft refused to sell.
It looked like MWM was going to get a deal done towards the end of 2014, but obviously that did not happen. Now we are in a waiting game for the three spiritual successors toe release products. That should happen in around two years according to most estimates I have seen. If NCsoft sold the rights for CoH out to issue 24, whoever bought it would be making money hand over fist from the day the servers opened. But since the game would be unsupported (Only Paragon Studios would have enough understanding of the spaghetti code in use to advance the game), its profitability would only last as long as the player base continued to spend on the game.
IMO that would be until City of Titans released. While CoH was a lot of fun, the game engine is twelve years old, and according to what I have seen struggles with modern OS's. As soon as a similar game released with a modern engine (City of Titans looks the most ready) the crowd, other than the diehards, would abandon ship.
With the window for the ability to pay back investors before CoT releases getting smaller and smaller, the chance for NCsoft to make money on the IP is getting lower and lower... so why is NCsoft holding onto the IP? Are they planning to release CoH2? There has not been a whisper anywhere about that. They must be doing this to 'save face' by not allowing the actual profitability of the IP to be seen.
Bleh. If that is what they think of the players, that they are not worth a small bit of embarrassment, why are we even considering buying games from them?
The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!
5. Blade and Soul - they waited for 4 fucking years to port this game. Most of the content are ig shop items. A stupid costume skin costs around 15€. You whine about Blizzard being greedy with their mounts? At least you can use them on all your characters and servers, while you can use your BnS costume only on the character you bought it for. Also, you dont need to buy mounts in wow, because that game is fkin full of em..hundreds of farmable mounts, while BnS only has a limited set of costumes you can get for free and that AFTER 4 YEARS!
.
If you think that's bad take a look at Black Desert no costumes available ingame on top of that only 1 or 2 armor styles per character class from lvl 1 - endgame every char looks like a clone forever, Costumes are 30€, character locked and they have p2w stats, while in BnS you can farm dozens of purely cosmetic Costumes in game....
I can't think of a single MMO company that has a perfect track record that would warrant blind trust.
The closest thing would be Blizzard, and that largely just because they have only had one game. But, even then, they've made several mistakes with the direction of their MMO too. If you were to factor in Diablo3 and HotS, etc., then their development is quite a mess.
Still, I would call them the most trustworthy as far as support for their games. Even though I'm not a fan of the decisions they make along the way, at least they don't abandon their products/customers.
Trion, EA, NCSoft, SquareEnix, SOE, Turbine, Perpetual, etc., all have black marks on their cards. To SE's credit, at least they try to fix their blunders. CCP has proven themselves to be a one-hit wonder, but they've kept the EVE addicts happy; so I guess EVE fans could find some trust there. But, they've had several failed attempts at other projects, so I'd consider them in the same box as the others.
Going in a direction that you don't agree with isn't a mistake.
Publishing a game that is ripe for the picking by botters, scripters, cheapers, RMT Farmers and Consumers, Duping, Hacking and other sorts of things when it was plainly obvious how bad the design was from even a monkey's point of view is a mistake.
Games like Lineage II aren't even comparable to WoW when it comes to management. WoW looks like a lesson in game management compared to half the games NCSoft has published - and that's being VERY generous to them.
The company is also pretty much non-existent outside of Korea as well. Western players basically get what the Korean players demand, while the Korean Players ignore issues with the game because cultural differences in some cases keeps those things in check.
"Honor" is not a big thing here. People don't play legitimately simply because it's honorable to do so, when they're getting curb stomped by shift levelers and cheaters. Sooner or later, those people either quit or they join in on the madness. NCSoft doesn't really do anything to stop it, either.
Additionally, their developers have absolutely no clue how to balance their games. The games are usually rift with hard shifts in imba from one class to another... It's madness.
Lastly, I don't like the overly-sexualized art style of Asian MMORPGs. Women with oversized/disproportionate breast/bum sizes, costumes that leave them looking half dressed, voices that sometimes sound more like sex than spell casts, with some feminine and/or emo male character models thrown into the mix etc.
I have trust and faith in NCsoft that they will shut down their products if they are no longer profitable. As such, I will never get really involved in their games if I play them at all.
I have trust and faith in NCsoft that they will shut down their products if they are no longer profitable. As such, I will never get really involved in their games if I play them at all.
I would expect any company to do exactly that. Why should they lose money just so a few people can have fun. It is bad business sense to operate in that way.
The issue with NCSoft has more to do with how they handle their communities and how they manage their games. It also has a lot to do with the fact that they keep whipping out games that seem custom tailored to providing employment opportunities to the RMT companies out there.
Companies dont trust their consumers, they only trust their open wallets. We, the consumers, should never trust companies either.
With that said, haters bringing dead games up to justify their hate are just talking out of their buttcheeks. Every online company shuts down online games. Every single one.
The fact that you are committing time and money to an online game is enough risk that you shouldnt be complaining when the game dies. Online games dont live forever. You want a game that lives forever, you get an offline game that doesnt run on a server.
Long live games that run on your system, not on someone else's server.
As far as I know they had two games they shut down. Heroes and Villians and Dungeon Runners. Both of which were very good games. There was internal conflicts between the developer and publishers. They have done very well. Have worked with players to give them what they want.
You've missed something then. Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault were another two MMOs they shut down.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
Nope NCsoft really can't be trusted had my L2 account compromised when it went F2P because of an exploit GM refused to restore gear or properly investigate and let me know what happened gave wrong bound set back so I quit all together not worth me playing a game since release to be back-stabbed by customer support and lack of security at the time.
What brought this entire interest for me is I play Hex(Gameforge Studios,Germany). They also have Aion as one of the game choices you can play with that company.
Only game i played for decent amount of time is Lineage 2 for obvious reasons. All their games are bot infested and usually fail at launch in the West.
Except Lineage 2 still has severs up (10 years now...9 years maybe in western markets) Aion, GW still going, Blade and Souls is very populated. So not sure where you got your facts from, but you are mistaken.
More to the point of the post, Yeah NCSoft has to be the most bot friendly developer out there.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
Comments
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
The closest thing would be Blizzard, and that largely just because they have only had one game. But, even then, they've made several mistakes with the direction of their MMO too.
If you were to factor in Diablo3 and HotS, etc., then their development is quite a mess.
Still, I would call them the most trustworthy as far as support for their games. Even though I'm not a fan of the decisions they make along the way, at least they don't abandon their products/customers.
Trion, EA, NCSoft, SquareEnix, SOE, Turbine, Perpetual, etc., all have black marks on their cards. To SE's credit, at least they try to fix their blunders.
CCP has proven themselves to be a one-hit wonder, but they've kept the EVE addicts happy; so I guess EVE fans could find some trust there. But, they've had several failed attempts at other projects, so I'd consider them in the same box as the others.
Publicly traded companies have to make money for their investors. Just like your retirement funds need to make money for you.
If you looked at "whatever stocks/funds you have" and saw that your money was only making a small profit or none at all, you might be pissed.
Companies are looking to make higher "earnings per share". If a company is not making much and doesn't match or exceed estimates then their stock price goes down.
As an investor "you do not want this". You want them to exceed their estimates as this usually makes their stock prices go up.
This is not a club. It's a business that makes money and more to the point it's a business that makes money for their investors.
You, as an investor, want your investments to make you money. Believe me, it's a shame when a company closes down a beloved game but unless they are a small company doing it for the love of the game, the company is going to have to make their investors happy.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
LOL OK. Well, worse case scenario is NcSoft turns "pure evil" on my new favorite MMO Blade and Soul, and shuts it down... in 8 years.
I'm 100% fine with that.
The game was also right in the middle of an upgrade when it got pulled (why even plan the upgrade if it's going to shut down...oh right because the devs didn't even know it was about to be shut down) and the intial reason for shutting down was shady as all heck. We are looking into a different way of doing things. Which when they received backlash for it, quickly changed to, it wasn't making enough money. Sure NCSoft, then why didn't you say that right away. We can see with things like Wildstar (doing much worse than CoX) that this statement was pretty much crap.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Lineage 1 is profitible- in Korea. It wasn't in NA. It ran for FIFTEEN YEARS in NA. It's still running in Korea- 18 years later. It is one of the longest running MMOs of all time.
I don't know how long an MMO has to run for it to be ok for you guys to shut it down, but apparently if an MMO is ever shut down it's a crime against humanity.
Same thing is happening with Wildstar. It's doing horribly but it's been running for years despite that. If NcSoft were so trigger happy on pulling the plug on MMOs, they would've ended that one LONG AGO.
Anyway, if by "suckered", you mean playing a great game with an awesome payment model I thoroughly enjoy for months, with great customer service and a bright future of content updates for at least the next year, then call me suckered.
Dude, NcSoft should've said f-u to their shareholders and kept it going. Pissing off 100 people that played the game for 15 years is just WRONG!
Kappa.
edit: but that doesn't mean all their games are crap. L2 is still one of my all time fav MMOs, even tho it's always been ruined by...RMT
If all they did was shut it down, it would be one thing. But they refused all deals to acquire the rights. There were some well financed legitimate attempts to acquire the IP. Clearly there was a group of people that thought the IP had value. But NCsoft refused to sell.
It looked like MWM was going to get a deal done towards the end of 2014, but obviously that did not happen. Now we are in a waiting game for the three spiritual successors toe release products. That should happen in around two years according to most estimates I have seen. If NCsoft sold the rights for CoH out to issue 24, whoever bought it would be making money hand over fist from the day the servers opened. But since the game would be unsupported (Only Paragon Studios would have enough understanding of the spaghetti code in use to advance the game), its profitability would only last as long as the player base continued to spend on the game.
IMO that would be until City of Titans released. While CoH was a lot of fun, the game engine is twelve years old, and according to what I have seen struggles with modern OS's. As soon as a similar game released with a modern engine (City of Titans looks the most ready) the crowd, other than the diehards, would abandon ship.
With the window for the ability to pay back investors before CoT releases getting smaller and smaller, the chance for NCsoft to make money on the IP is getting lower and lower... so why is NCsoft holding onto the IP? Are they planning to release CoH2? There has not been a whisper anywhere about that. They must be doing this to 'save face' by not allowing the actual profitability of the IP to be seen.
Bleh. If that is what they think of the players, that they are not worth a small bit of embarrassment, why are we even considering buying games from them?
The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!
Going in a direction that you don't agree with isn't a mistake.
Publishing a game that is ripe for the picking by botters, scripters, cheapers, RMT Farmers and Consumers, Duping, Hacking and other sorts of things when it was plainly obvious how bad the design was from even a monkey's point of view is a mistake.
Games like Lineage II aren't even comparable to WoW when it comes to management. WoW looks like a lesson in game management compared to half the games NCSoft has published - and that's being VERY generous to them.
The company is also pretty much non-existent outside of Korea as well. Western players basically get what the Korean players demand, while the Korean Players ignore issues with the game because cultural differences in some cases keeps those things in check.
"Honor" is not a big thing here. People don't play legitimately simply because it's honorable to do so, when they're getting curb stomped by shift levelers and cheaters. Sooner or later, those people either quit or they join in on the madness. NCSoft doesn't really do anything to stop it, either.
Additionally, their developers have absolutely no clue how to balance their games. The games are usually rift with hard shifts in imba from one class to another... It's madness.
Lastly, I don't like the overly-sexualized art style of Asian MMORPGs. Women with oversized/disproportionate breast/bum sizes, costumes that leave them looking half dressed, voices that sometimes sound more like sex than spell casts, with some feminine and/or emo male character models thrown into the mix etc.
I would expect any company to do exactly that. Why should they lose money just so a few people can have fun. It is bad business sense to operate in that way.
The issue with NCSoft has more to do with how they handle their communities and how they manage their games. It also has a lot to do with the fact that they keep whipping out games that seem custom tailored to providing employment opportunities to the RMT companies out there.
Blade & Soul being the latest exhibit.
We, the consumers, should never trust companies either.
With that said, haters bringing dead games up to justify their hate are just talking out of their buttcheeks.
Every online company shuts down online games. Every single one.
The fact that you are committing time and money to an online game is enough risk that you shouldnt be complaining when the game dies. Online games dont live forever. You want a game that lives forever, you get an offline game that doesnt run on a server.
Long live games that run on your system, not on someone else's server.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
More to the point of the post, Yeah NCSoft has to be the most bot friendly developer out there.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.