General Discussion

Originally posted by Alienovrlord

Cerebrex knows exactly what he's talking about when he says NCSoft is not in as good a shape financially as they previously were.    The Koreans themselves are seeing this. 

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/biz_view.asp?newsIdx=10753&categoryCode=123

Originally posted by gunbug

"ncsoft is very cash light these days and honestly not doing so well financially. "

What? Source? Again, what?

Originally posted by Lateris

 How is NCSoft doing badly these days? They have LII which has 17 million subscribers in Asia.

Originally posted by airborne519

I would expect this sort of statement from someone who obviously has no idea how successfull NCSoft is.

Read the article.

For those of you with short memories who don't remember history, NCSoft LOST Jake Song, the creator of Lineage after 'creative differences' during the development of Tabula Rasa when the Garriott Brothers were hired.

$18 million for the Garriott Brothers plus even more in stock.  That doesn't include the costs for 6 years of development of Tabula Rasa.   And TR has gotten rather mixed reviews and even the good reviews are on the lines of "It's an okay, fun game, but not great." 

This deal means NCSoft is stuck with an old superhero game and not going to get any profits from the upcoming Marvel MMO.   Even if they team with Sony on the DC MMO, who do you think is going to get most of that money?

Yeah NCSoft's CEO is a real genius.   But then who else would pay that much for the Garriotts?

 

Old news, and despite it NCSoft are still well in the black. L2 alone could keep the company afloat for years to come.

I just received an email from the CoH Team saying CoH and CoV owners will now have access to both sides for free (nothing mentioned about those of us who already own both games), a total debt wipe with Issue 11 (not sure if debt is going away, or if it just means debt is reset to 0), and later a free 20,000 Prestige for SGs per member after Issue 11 is live. 

Now back to you, the players. You are the lifeblood of our game. In
celebration of our new studio and our exciting plans, and in order to
thank you for the fantastic community that you have built, we are
pleased to announce the following.

Full Access to City of Heroes and City of Villains(R)
All players with City of Heroes retail* accounts will now have access
to City of Villains, and all City of Villains retail* accounts will
now have access to City of Heroes. Players that didn't previously have
access to "the other side" will find that they do now. Just log in to
check it out!

Debt Wipe
After the launch of Issue 11: A Stitch in Time this Fall, we are
removing Debt from all characters and giving you a fresh start. Actual
date will be announced shortly. Have fun in the mean time.

20,000 Prestige
Also after the launch of Issue 11, all Supergroups will receive an
additional 20,000 Prestige per Supergroup member, meaning SGs could
acquire up to 3 million Prestige based upon their Supergroup
membership roster! Actual date will be announced shortly.


In the near future we will begin to share more information about our
development plans. With this major reinvestment and effort ahead of
us, we will take City of Heroes to new heights!

Sincerely,

The City of Heroes Team

Removing the game from Jack Emmert's influence could be a real boon for City of Heroes. Jack (aka: Statesman) always insisted that the game was going to be played his way, which alienated a lot of players. Anyone paying attention could figure that the thing with Microsoft and Marvel was going to monopolize time and resources from Cryptic since working with the big boys would be too much for Emmert's swollen ego to handle responsibly.

QFT.

Thank god Emmert is completely out of the picture now.  Now if they'll just un-nerf travel powers completely and roll back ED...

Originally posted by Serling

Thank god Emmert is completely out of the picture now.  Now if they'll just un-nerf travel powers completely and roll back ED...

Indeed, if they did this I would sign back up to play.  When they gutted my Invuln/SS tank in I5, I compensated for it, until I6 brought ED and killed my concept.  They killed my playing enjoyment, so I took my money away.

They killed my playing enjoyment, so I took my money away.

Ditto.  Only I got out at Issue 4.  The (now empty) arenas and all the nerfs that went with their cobbled together PvP system (which is still broken) drove me away.

If NCSoft wants me back as a customer, they're going to have a go a little farther than giving me free access to CoV, which never interested me in the least.

Since you brought up Jake Song's departure as a blow to the company, I must ask--did you play the game that he did after he left NC?

I admit I grow weary of the internet experts that predict the demise of games forever...UO has been "dying" since 1999.

NC's ownership of the COH IP sets up sequels--often where the money is in PC entertainment. True, this hasn't yet be proven to be the norm in MMOs, but it's still a young genre.

NC's still huge in Asia, with both L1 and L2 generating serious profit, the US is solid with L2 and COH, not to mention gangbuster GuildWars. Europe is doing quite well, recently announcing a growth of 100 additional jobs over the next couple of years.

DOOM, I say! If only they'd have held on to Jake Song and that WoW killer he ended up making!

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Originally posted by Serling

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Removing the game from Jack Emmert's influence could be a real boon for City of Heroes. Jack (aka: Statesman) always insisted that the game was going to be played his way, which alienated a lot of players. Anyone paying attention could figure that the thing with Microsoft and Marvel was going to monopolize time and resources from Cryptic since working with the big boys would be too much for Emmert's swollen ego to handle responsibly.

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QFT.
Thank god Emmert is completely out of the picture now. Now if they'll just un-nerf travel powers completely and roll back ED...

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That would be the only thing that would bring me back, other than re-adjusting level caps for defense, damage and damage resistance per archetype back to pre-PVP/arena levels.

Basically, roll the whole enhancement/cap system back to pre-PVP/ED. There was nothing wrong with it and it was fast, furious fun. Post-PVP/ED became a grind for me and left me feeling less super-heroic the more I played.

Unfortunately, it's doubtful that could even happen without a major overhaul of all of the NPC stats and all of the new content introduced since PVP/ED.

The effects of what is commonly assumed to be Jack Emmert's unilateral decision on PVP/ED most likely won't be going away any time soon.

I have an idea.. let's all worry about it, and don't forget to banter back and forth.....

for financial context

news.filefront.com/lineage-drives-ncsofts-q2-821m-sales/

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Lineage and Lineage II continue to lead the company’s sales at $27.6 million and $34.7 million respectively,

followed by Guild Wars at $8.9 million and City of Heroes/City of Villains at $6.9 million.

Sales for the Lineage series fell a respective 16% and 2% in the quarter, while the City of Heroes/City of Villains sales rose 7%.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Of_Heroes

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As of June 2007 City of Heroes has around 153,331 subscribers in the US & Europe, according to financial reports released by NCsoft in August 2007.[15]

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COH has only 150k subs but made 6.9 mill revenue for Q2