Lineage 3 is not being developed in Austin, course with the code stolen from the korean office by a former lead developers, nobody knows what is going to happen with the future of Lineage3. 

I play Lineage which is maintained in Austin and has a ruleset that differs from Korea's Lineage platform.  They have had issues with cutting staff on the NC Austin Lineage team over the last several years, and they are far behind Korea.  Korea has implemented Episode 6 and Lineage U and are on to new updates, while we're still stuck on Episode 5.  Much of that is due to our shrinking Austin development staff and ruleset differences from Korea.  Hope they don't scrap future development for us, but with the low number we have across three servers I don't hold out too much hope for sustainability.

Here's a thought:

It might in truth refer to something not yet announced in america, for example, www.thisisgame.com/board/view.php, Steel Dog (also on NC's official website here: games.plaync.co.kr/steeldog )

I can't say if it's likely or not that people would be working on this title in Austin but it's a possibility.

Possibly focusing on Guild Wars exclusively? It seems like NCsoft wasn't confident with their other products and they don't want to spend loads of money on employees, so they are lowering them for that reason, or they are thinking that they don't need that many people...

Either way, it seems like they believe that GW is their ultimate franchise.

Originally posted by Laibeus_Lord

If NCsoft Austin is impending closure, will DestinationGames (which is NC Austin itself) break-up from the NCsoft Family?

Remember? DG joined the NC family to form NC Austin. Help NC Korea to enter the American market. Help DG to enter the Korean market.

I wonder....

In any case, I say Richard Garriott should go back to making non-online games. Im thirsty and hungry for another "Ultima"-ness series.

 

Richard Garriott is too busy going into outer space, but after that trip he should work on a single player game, hopefully good enough to be re-made into an online game, free to play. I know EA owns Ultima, but it can't be that difficult to build a new fantasy world considering a big portion of the Ultima series were generic d&d terms that EA does not own, and he still owns Lord British with associated symbols, he doesn't need to toss that character into the new world but he could if he wanted to, what made Ultima good was it's storyline and attention to detail, all he needs to make an Ultima-esque game is a team dedicated to making a great game.

Selling the Ultima franchise to EA was a huge mistake.  If Richard still had control of that, I have no doubt we would of seen another Ultima product out by now.  Maybe he doesn't want to do a single player RPG similar due to fears of EA swooping in and screaming copyright infringement?  Who knows....

Again sucks to those that were laid off but a handful of people laid off isn't going to hurt NCSoft in the least.

21?  Is that it?  When Bank of America bought MBNA (whom I was employed by for 10 years) had lay-offs, they'd let 8,000 of us go. 

General Motors has it worse:

"General Motors has announced that it will cut 30,000 jobs by 2008 and stop production at nine assembly, powertrain and stamping plants.

Now, its workers are coming to grips with the idea that they may lose their jobs, and questions remain about how much the cuts will help the struggling automaker going forward."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5022706

General Motors is still around.

Originally posted by DrowNoble

Selling the Ultima franchise to EA was a huge mistake.  If Richard still had control of that, I have no doubt we would of seen another Ultima product out by now.  Maybe he doesn't want to do a single player RPG similar due to fears of EA swooping in and screaming copyright infringement?  Who knows....

Again sucks to those that were laid off but a handful of people laid off isn't going to hurt NCSoft in the least.

You do realise that EA bought OSI in 1992 don't you? this was 4 years before UO was ever concieved. Garriott didn't know his biggest success would be in the future, but I feel if he wanted to he could design more single player fantasy games or online games, the references in the Ultimas are pretty generic, 99% of the monsters are not unique to Ultima, he couldn't use names like Batlin, Shamino, so what he could design another Ultima-esque game if he wanted to but he's busy in outer space, probably one huge factor to the Austin NCsoft operation closing, I would be happy to work for such a company but my resume isn't good enough.

Originally posted by Razimus

Originally posted by DrowNoble

Selling the Ultima franchise to EA was a huge mistake.  If Richard still had control of that, I have no doubt we would of seen another Ultima product out by now.  Maybe he doesn't want to do a single player RPG similar due to fears of EA swooping in and screaming copyright infringement?  Who knows....

Again sucks to those that were laid off but a handful of people laid off isn't going to hurt NCSoft in the least.

 

You do realise that EA bought OSI in 1992 don't you? this was 4 years before UO was ever concieved. Garriott didn't know his biggest success would be in the future, but I feel if he wanted to he could design more single player fantasy games or online games, the references in the Ultimas are pretty generic, 99% of the monsters are not unique to Ultima, he couldn't use names like Batlin, Shamino, so what he could design another Ultima-esque game if he wanted to but he's busy in outer space, probably one huge factor to the Austin NCsoft operation closing, I would be happy to work for such a company but my resume isn't good enough.

Yes I am well aware that EA bought Origin back then.  That was the whole point of my saying that selling the franchise was a mistake.  Before UO came out the various Ultima games were doing very well, I started the series at Ultima IV myself.

EA is very anal when it comes to IP's they own.  When they shut down Earth & Beyond a few other companies offered to buy the rights (similar to NCSoft buying CoX from Cryptic), but EA refused to sell.   Even to this day there is a small but strong following for E&B, but EA is ignoring them.  If Richard made a single player RPG that was even slightly similar to Ultima, I have no doubt EA would get their undies in a wad and scream lawsuit.

Originally posted by saint4God

21?  Is that it?  When Bank of America bought MBNA (whom I was employed by for 10 years) had lay-offs, they'd let 8,000 of us go. 

General Motors has it worse:

"General Motors has announced that it will cut 30,000 jobs by 2008 and stop production at nine assembly, powertrain and stamping plants.

Now, its workers are coming to grips with the idea that they may lose their jobs, and questions remain about how much the cuts will help the struggling automaker going forward."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5022706

General Motors is still around.

That's a silly comparison in my eyes. You're dealing with an office that booted a majority of it's Austin group, AFTER announcing a profit that year.  Not a bank, who downsized to save cash, or a car company who has been known to have constant layoffs over bad business decisions. Something's going majorly wrong down south. I don't see NCSoft doing well for the next year.

Originally posted by ZDPhoenix

That's a silly comparison in my eyes. You're dealing with an office that booted a majority of it's Austin group, AFTER announcing a profit that year.  Not a bank, who downsized to save cash, or a car company who has been known to have constant layoffs over bad business decisions. Something's going majorly wrong down south. I don't see NCSoft doing well for the next year.

That's what I was basically asking.  Is 21 a significant number?  What percentage of the corporate population is it and what exactly were their roles?  To say 21 in itself does not tell the rest of us a lot.  How many groups do they have?  What did the Austin group do?  Perspective please, this was my original inquiry.

Originally posted by Fatal_Redux

Possibly focusing on Guild Wars exclusively? It seems like NCsoft wasn't confident with their other products and they don't want to spend loads of money on employees, so they are lowering them for that reason, or they are thinking that they don't need that many people...

Either way, it seems like they believe that GW is their ultimate franchise.

Guild Wars is not developed by NcSoft, Nc is the publisher and ArenaNet is the developer. GW makes money in the USA but NcSofts Lineage series 1 and 2 pulls in the $$$ throughtout europe and asia and will be the darling of NcSoft for many years yet. The american market place is just some extra cash for Nc and when things start to look ugly they ofcourse are going to respond in the way they did.

To be honest I am suprised that this did not happen sooner.