My serious suggestion - bring out the equivalent of Sony's station pass already.

If they had one of these I would subscribe and play T.R & COH. I could justify it as my kids would get to play multiple games.

As they dont I am not currently playing any NCSoft games.

Originally posted by _Shadowmage

My serious suggestion - bring out the equivalent of Sony's station pass already.

If they had one of these I would subscribe and play T.R & COH. I could justify it as my kids would get to play multiple games.

As they dont I am not currently playing any NCSoft games.

^^^

THIS!!!

I agree. I would love to play CoX again and even dable into L2 to mess around.

But yes I think it would bring in some people to the game.

If people want to keep playing TR, the company better do something.

Recently a friend who is a TR player sent out a mail to many of us that full versions of TR were selling for less than 1 USD on several sites.  Most of us either tried it before or knew someone who did, and couldn't be bothered.

I don't see how this could happen, without the fact that the publisher told them it was ok to do that. Were they told "get what you can for them, while you can?" or "push the product for next to nothing and maybe a few subs will come from it, and we'll pay you on the back end".

Either way, TR is not doing so well and might be on the verge of getting axed by the Koreans.

Ah well.

The problem with creating an access pass for all NCsoft games is that NCSoft knows (and in fact planned it this way on purpose would be my guess) that about half of their games appeal mainly to the asian market while the other half appeals mainly to the rest of the world. So an all access pass would still be seen as only HALF useful by any given person they might attempt to sell it to. Plus you then have Guild Wars which throws a whole other money wrench into the equasion by being free to play.

Thanks to the fact that Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa have both bombed, the only thing an all access pass would really be good for is CoH. I already have a subscription to that. Paying extra to get access to TR doesn't sound like a good deal to me. (Even the OP sounds like he would only be buying it for his kids and not himself...) Such a deal might fly in the asain market where NCsoft actually has a few subscription fee based games which are successful but I can't see it happening in the rest of the world.

Honestly, I doubt NCsoft has even really thought about this. They strike me as being very "hands off" when it comes to all their games outside of the asian market. They pretty much let Cryptic do whatever they wanted with CoH for a long time. And ArenaNet has always been pretty much running the show with Guild Wars. Up until now their plan to let their developers have such a long leash has worked pretty well both for them and for gamers. But they gave our buddy RG wayyyyyy too long of a leash when it came time to work on Tabula Rasa and that didn't work out quite as well. Hopefully NCsoft will not only learn a lesson from all this but will also learn the RIGHT lesson. The right lesson in this case being to hire a lead developer who is located on the same planet as the rest of the dev team. Sadly they will probably learn the wrong lesson from all this and turn into hyper control freaks like a lot of publishers do when they hit a bump in the road...

Originally posted by Raltar

Thanks to the fact that Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa have both bombed, the only thing an all access pass would really be good for is CoH. I already have a subscription to that. Paying extra to get access to TR doesn't sound like a good deal to me. (Even the OP sounds like he would only be buying it for his kids and not himself...) Such a deal might fly in the asain market where NCsoft actually has a few subscription fee based games which are successful but I can't see it happening in the rest of the world.

Well, Aion is releasing soon, that would off course be worth of playing by the side of COH. But the question is: Would that save TR? If noone would buy the pass because of TR, do NC soft have any reason of keeping the game?

I think they should sell it to SOE instead, SOE are having game with far less players than TR, maybe they could also fix it up a bit.

We also need to see why the game did so badly, and think about if it is anything that can save it...

Unless I've been drastically misinformed... Aion is more of an Asain Market style of game...

And sell the game to SoE!? Udder maddness! NCSoft may be a real hit and miss kind of company, but SoE is almost nothing but miss. They wrecked Star Wars Galaxies, released Vanguard as an unfinished mess, Everquest was a grindfest of the worst kind and don't even get me started on the disaster that is Matrix Online (whoever came up with the plan to have Sony and Sega team up to make an MMO based on a sub-par action movie seriously needs to be dragged into the street and shot)! And even the very small number of games that SoE got half-way right like Planetside were treated like red-headed step-children getting no funding or upgrades while Sony went off on their next hair brained scheme to milk Everquest with another pointless add-on or to drive away another few thousand subscribers from SWG. SoE has no clue what they are doing.

I would sooner sell the game to Funcom than SoE. Funcom would probably just make it open PvP and let everyone gank themselves to death they all cancelled their subscriptions. SoE would release a patch that would triple the number of bugs in the game, add no content of any kind and somehow manage to totally alter the combat system in some way that would require everyone to have their characters reset to level one. That would be MUCH worse.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Raltar

Thanks to the fact that Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa have both bombed, the only thing an all access pass would really be good for is CoH. I already have a subscription to that. Paying extra to get access to TR doesn't sound like a good deal to me. (Even the OP sounds like he would only be buying it for his kids and not himself...) Such a deal might fly in the asain market where NCsoft actually has a few subscription fee based games which are successful but I can't see it happening in the rest of the world.

Well, Aion is releasing soon, that would off course be worth of playing by the side of COH. But the question is: Would that save TR? If noone would buy the pass because of TR, do NC soft have any reason of keeping the game?

I think they should sell it to SOE instead, SOE are having game with far less players than TR, maybe they could also fix it up a bit.

We also need to see why the game did so badly, and think about if it is anything that can save it...

What SOE game has far less players than TR? Planetside maybe but at the 1 year mark Planetside was doing better than TR is. 
 

If what I see is correct TR had 1.3 million dollars in revenue last quarter, that means less than 30k subs left. The quarter before that they had over 35k and nearly 1.8 million in revenue.

I think NCSoft needs a larger stable of games to pull off an all access pass. When your biggest seller is a game with no monthly fee,GW, it is hard to get people to pay extra if you do not have the list of games that make it worthwhile.

See, here is another big difference between SoE and NCSoft.

When SoE has a bad game that nobody wants to play, they keep it alive on life support forever to pad the value of their all access pass.

When NCsoft has a bad game, they close it down. They did it with Auto Assault and now with Tabula Rasa as well.

Thus, another reason why an All Access Pass plan would not work as well for them. They don't have enough bad games to pad it with like SoE does.

Not that I'm trying to say something bad about NCSoft here. Atleast they have the guts to close down games that didn't pan out they way they were meant to. SoE is actually just trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes by refusing to admit their mistakes so that they can milk people for more money.

Originally posted by Raltar

See, here is another big difference between SoE and NCSoft.

When SoE has a bad game that nobody wants to play, they keep it alive on life support forever to pad the value of their all access pass.

When NCsoft has a bad game, they close it down. They did it with Auto Assault and now with Tabula Rasa as well.

Thus, another reason why an All Access Pass plan would not work as well for them. They don't have enough bad games to pad it with like SoE does.

Not that I'm trying to say something bad about NCSoft here. Atleast they have the guts to close down games that didn't pan out they way they were meant to. SoE is actually just trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes by refusing to admit their mistakes so that they can milk people for more money.

IT takes no guts to close the games down. NCSoft is no better than SOE. AT least with SOE if you paid $50 for the game at release you can play it cheaply for years with all access. NCSoft took some people for a ride with TR. $50 for the game $15 a month since and now the drop dead date has been issued.
 

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Originally posted by Raltar

See, here is another big difference between SoE and NCSoft.

When SoE has a bad game that nobody wants to play, they keep it alive on life support forever to pad the value of their all access pass.

When NCsoft has a bad game, they close it down. They did it with Auto Assault and now with Tabula Rasa as well.

Thus, another reason why an All Access Pass plan would not work as well for them. They don't have enough bad games to pad it with like SoE does.

Not that I'm trying to say something bad about NCSoft here. Atleast they have the guts to close down games that didn't pan out they way they were meant to. SoE is actually just trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes by refusing to admit their mistakes so that they can milk people for more money.

IT takes no guts to close the games down. NCSoft is no better than SOE. AT least with SOE if you paid $50 for the game at release you can play it cheaply for years with all access. NCSoft took some people for a ride with TR. $50 for the game $15 a month since and now the drop dead date has been issued.
 

The difference is that NCsoft actually cares about their customers, which makes them atleast one notch above SoE in my opinion. SoE keeps the games open just becasue they want to pad the value of the all access pass and because they don't want to admit their mistakes (which is why SoE to this day still tells people the NGE was a good idea while refusing to open a pre-NGE server). NCSoft knows when they boned it up and is willing to bite the bullet and atleast half-heartedly admit their mistake. Then they show they care about the customer (or atleast care about buying the customer off) by giving them three free games and 7 months of subscription time.

I'm not saying its perferct, but atleast its better than SoE's attitude of putting the blame on us as the consumer for not buying their product even when it sucks.

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Originally posted by Rokurgepta
IT takes no guts to close the games down. NCSoft is no better than SOE. AT least with SOE if you paid $50 for the game at release you can play it cheaply for years with all access. NCSoft took some people for a ride with TR. $50 for the game $15 a month since and now the drop dead date has been issued.

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TR had some decent potential and, for a short time after launch anyways, a good player population to work with (launch saw ~130k subs, one month after launch was like ~100k, respectable IMO) but after launch development was simply the worst I have ever witnessed.  Couple that with simply launching the game relatively devoid of content and featureless to begin with and it was quite obvious how doomed this game was.

Originally posted by _Shadowmage

 

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Originally posted by Rokurgepta
IT takes no guts to close the games down. NCSoft is no better than SOE. AT least with SOE if you paid $50 for the game at release you can play it cheaply for years with all access. NCSoft took some people for a ride with TR. $50 for the game $15 a month since and now the drop dead date has been issued.

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I disagree they took anyone for a ride. Some basic research would have shown anyone interested what sort of game T.R is.

As a casual player - I played and enjoyed it from beta, through release to August this year.

On the station pass thing - Too many responsibilities, too little time, I get about 10 hours a week for gaming - which is enough to play one MMO - currently WAR. So for me there is no point in paying for 2 mmo's. But a station pass thingy from NCSoft I would buy - as I could then dabble occasionally in a number of games without having to pay the full fee very month.

And before you ask - I dont have Sony's station pass as I have no interest in any of their games.

 

Basic research? What? I started playing right after release, what research was there for me to find out the game sucked past level 30? That would be none. Then I played for a few months and found out how shallow and weak as an MMO it was. So yes anyone who has spent $50 to buy and then $15 a month until today got taken for a ride, because the money you invested in the game went to a lost cause.

Originally posted by Raltar

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Originally posted by Raltar

See, here is another big difference between SoE and NCSoft.

When SoE has a bad game that nobody wants to play, they keep it alive on life support forever to pad the value of their all access pass.

When NCsoft has a bad game, they close it down. They did it with Auto Assault and now with Tabula Rasa as well.

Thus, another reason why an All Access Pass plan would not work as well for them. They don't have enough bad games to pad it with like SoE does.

Not that I'm trying to say something bad about NCSoft here. Atleast they have the guts to close down games that didn't pan out they way they were meant to. SoE is actually just trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes by refusing to admit their mistakes so that they can milk people for more money.

IT takes no guts to close the games down. NCSoft is no better than SOE. AT least with SOE if you paid $50 for the game at release you can play it cheaply for years with all access. NCSoft took some people for a ride with TR. $50 for the game $15 a month since and now the drop dead date has been issued.
 

 

The difference is that NCsoft actually cares about their customers, which makes them atleast one notch above SoE in my opinion. SoE keeps the games open just becasue they want to pad the value of the all access pass and because they don't want to admit their mistakes (which is why SoE to this day still tells people the NGE was a good idea while refusing to open a pre-NGE server). NCSoft knows when they boned it up and is willing to bite the bullet and atleast half-heartedly admit their mistake. Then they show they care about the customer (or atleast care about buying the customer off) by giving them three free games and 7 months of subscription time.

I'm not saying its perferct, but atleast its better than SoE's attitude of putting the blame on us as the consumer for not buying their product even when it sucks.

Giving them free time to their next to be cancelled failure means they care about the customer? If they really cared about the people playing TR they would have cut some staff so that their monthly revenue coverd costs and still tried to add content as they went. TR obviously had some loyal followers. If they could have stayed around 30k and ran their business better they could have found a way. Cutting out and giving away time to other games does not to me prove they care about their customers anymore than SOE does by keeping the games people enjoy alive even if they do not add much to some of them.

I would rather have a game I enjoyed stay alive to play then have the plug pulled and be given free time to a game I may have no interest in.

Not that i agree with SOEs attitude about things either, but I just do not see NCSofts way as more caring.

Originally posted by Raltar

Unless I've been drastically misinformed... Aion is more of an Asain Market style of game...

And sell the game to SoE!? Udder maddness! NCSoft may be a real hit and miss kind of company, but SoE is almost nothing but miss. They wrecked Star Wars Galaxies, released Vanguard as an unfinished mess, Everquest was a grindfest of the worst kind and don't even get me started on the disaster that is Matrix Online (whoever came up with the plan to have Sony and Sega team up to make an MMO based on a sub-par action movie seriously needs to be dragged into the street and shot)! And even the very small number of games that SoE got half-way right like Planetside were treated like red-headed step-children getting no funding or upgrades while Sony went off on their next hair brained scheme to milk Everquest with another pointless add-on or to drive away another few thousand subscribers from SWG. SoE has no clue what they are doing.

I would sooner sell the game to Funcom than SoE. Funcom would probably just make it open PvP and let everyone gank themselves to death they all cancelled their subscriptions. SoE would release a patch that would triple the number of bugs in the game, add no content of any kind and somehow manage to totally alter the combat system in some way that would require everyone to have their characters reset to level one. That would be MUCH worse.

LMAO! You really don't have a clue do you? You just nothing more then the typical SOE basher on this forum!

Vanguard was developed by Brad McQuad and his company Sigil (wich no longer exists). Microsoft was the first publisher of this game, but pulled the plug and their funding as they saw what dissaster the game was. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_Saga_of_Heroes

As Brad McQuad was an old friend of John Smedly (EverQuest1 period) he gave Brad a chance by pouring in a couple million extra dollars, gave them some more time and took over the publishing from Microsoft.

But even SOE didn't want to put in more dollars after an extra year of development and it was either releasing the damn thing or Sigil going down (as they were just out of money!), wich they did anyway and so SOE took over the sacked Developers and hired them into SOE and swapped the game under Station Access.

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Matrix Online same. SOE had nothing to do at all with the development.

Maxtrix Online has been developed by Monolith Productions and was released by Warner Entertainment and SEGA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_Online

The game flopped badly and as SOE was interested in some IP's owned by Warner Entertainment. They took over Matrix Online and swapped that game under Station Access to get the IP they wanted (DC Universe). It was a one in all deal or no deal basically.

--------------

So get your facts straight, instead of this stupid nonsense bashing against SOE so many of you do without having one single clue!

Cheers

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Originally posted by Rokurgepta
Basic research? What? I started playing right after release, what research was there for me to find out the game sucked past level 30? That would be none. Then I played for a few months and found out how shallow and weak as an MMO it was. So yes anyone who has spent $50 to buy and then $15 a month until today got taken for a ride, because the money you invested in the game went to a lost cause.

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So 10 months later you are still here crying about your wasted $80 - time to move on.

As for basic research - reading any previews would have told you the game was aimed at casual players, no pvp, minimal crafting, no vehicles, small maps etc.

Reading a few forum posts from beta testers would have told you there was nothing to do at the end of the game.

As for the game sucking past 30 - thats your opinion which you are entitled to. I had fun - right upto 50 - but after that there was nothing to do.

Originally posted by _Shadowmage

 

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Originally posted by Rokurgepta
Basic research? What? I started playing right after release, what research was there for me to find out the game sucked past level 30? That would be none. Then I played for a few months and found out how shallow and weak as an MMO it was. So yes anyone who has spent $50 to buy and then $15 a month until today got taken for a ride, because the money you invested in the game went to a lost cause.

---

 

So 10 months later you are still here crying about your wasted $80 - time to move on.

As for basic research - reading any previews would have told you the game was aimed at casual players, no pvp, minimal crafting, no vehicles, small maps etc.

Reading a few forum posts from beta testers would have told you there was nothing to do at the end of the game.

As for the game sucking past 30 - thats your opinion which you are entitled to. I had fun - right upto 50 - but after that there was nothing to do.
 

I read previews game sounded good, I played game started good. Then the game lost all sense of fun after a couple of months. Of course I must be wrong and TR was not cancelled today.

Originally posted by Guillermo197

Insults, blah blah, SoE rocks, ect.

You throw around a lot of insults and random deatils about who developed what, but I played Vanguard at launch. Who did I pay my subscription fee to? SoE. Thus, they are the publisher for the game. Don't care who pulled funding on what, that was their problem.

Matrix Online, same deal. SoE is the publisher now and its still as bad of a game as it ever was. If SoE was so great they would clean it up. But they didn't. They keep it alive just to pad the value of their all access pass and yet allow it to continue to suck. Did they buy it from someone else for some complicated reason? Sure, why the hell not. But that doesn't make them any less the publisher of it.

You wrote a whole essay picking apart two sentences of my post while not addressing the actual point of the post as a whole: SoE owns a lot of crap games. You did nothing to disprove that point other than tell a long pointless story about who made the games suck in the first place. SoE still owns them.

Originally posted by Raltar

Originally posted by Guillermo197

Insults, blah blah, SoE rocks, ect.

 

You throw around a lot of insults and random deatils about who developed what, but I played Vanguard at launch. Who did I pay my subscription fee to? SoE. Thus, they are the publisher for the game. Don't care who pulled funding on what, that was their problem.

Matrix Online, same deal. SoE is the publisher now and its still as bad of a game as it ever was. If SoE was so great they would clean it up. But they didn't. They keep it alive just to pad the value of their all access pass and yet allow it to continue to suck. Did they buy it from someone else for some complicated reason? Sure, why the hell not. But that doesn't make them any less the publisher of it.

You wrote a whole essay picking apart two sentences of my post while not addressing the actual point of the post as a whole: SoE owns a lot of crap games. You did nothing to disprove that point other than tell a long pointless story about who made the games suck in the first place. SoE still owns them.

What do you people want? What do you people expect?

NcSoft pulls the plug on their games on the first sign of trouble.

SOE at least keeps them running under Station Access and the fans are at least still able to play their game and even have a chance to play one of the others if they so wish.

Matrix Online would have shut down 4-5 months after release if SOE didn't took over the game with the DC Comics IP. As Monolith went bankrupt.

Same with Vanguard. Vanguard would have never made it even into beta if SOE didn't step in, after Microsoft pulled the plug.

I would have rather see these games die. That's my personal opinion. As they are pure garbage.

But appearently there is still a small hardcore fanbase who still love Matrix Online and Vanguard and are now able to still play it, thanks to SOE.

You cannot expect SOE to pour in millions of dollars in MxO and Vanguard, just because their predecesors failed to do so. They never even said they would do so. Only with Vanguard they said they would try improve it as they took over the devs from Sigil. Wich they did and still do.

Even if they throw in millions in MxO and Vanguard to brush it up, they will never earn it back and make any more profit on it, as people simply don't come back in numbers needed.

So instead, they pushed it under Station Access, so people who still like to play it are able to do so.

Cheers