"[NCSoft] has noted that several positions in the office have been terminated as a result of recent events."

"As a result of the realignment, several employees and contract positions were affected."

"Ncsoft : Massive layoffs..."

"This could effect all off Ncsofts games including GW2."

It is amazing and amusing the amount of effort some of you put into trying to create doom and gloom to prophecize about GW2.

People losing their jobs sucks big time, but lets face it NCsoft isn't exactly know for making very good games.

If the company was losing money then maybe that is why GW2 was pushed out faster than it should have been.

While I do think the game overall is good value, it has disapointed in several areas including pvp which they claimed would be e-sport material yet isn't anything remotely close to being ready.

What titles are likely to be involved in this?  I only know of CoH, L2 and Aion.

I'm surprised there is much staff here in the US.  I always guessed that such would be limited to localization, customer service, marketing, and server operations.  Also, I guess a handful of management.

Originally posted by botrytis

ALso, if NCSoft and A.Net both have offices in Seattle, why not merge the two.

 

People really want to see GW2 fail. WHY? I never understood the attitude of some people who gleefully jump up and down when a game goes south.  Seems to me, if it was their lively hood that went south, they would want people to at least have sympathy.

It's kinda like when your ex starts dating someone else, wanting that relationship to fail is kinda natural.  Hearing about how a new game is supposed to be all that, people look for the negatives so they can bring them to light. This leads to statements like "Sure the world looks great, and the dynamic events are fun, but the large scale WvWvW is absolute crap if you're a solo player! It's nothing more than a zergfest!"   (just in case there are people unsure of what a zergfest is, it's where a large group of players fight together. It usually works out for the best if it's against another large group of players)

As for the OP. I think the "realignment" is just resource management. Maybe they are trying to free up enough money to buy out funcom before Disney does.

Originally posted by Nihilist

People losing their jobs sucks big time, but lets face it NCsoft isn't exactly know for making very good games.

GW, GW2, Lineage, Lineage 2, Aion. Some of those were blockbusters here and others didn't do too well here, but they all did well overseas.  While they can probably be seen as 50/50 on their titles, a major thing to their credit is that they at least try to expand beyond the mainstream style, something that SOE has recently started doing, as well.

Originally posted by someforumguy
Is Arenanet downsizing? No? Well, then you know how it affects GW2.

The week is still young.

Well, and I know this is going to sound weird, this doesn't "necessarily" mean they are doing horribly.

ok hear me out.

I worked for a global company that had a very strong product pipeline mapped out over the next few years but because of the economic weirdness a few years ago, they didn't make as much money as they had projected on current products and services.

They figured out that they had to lay off quite a few people. I heard 10%. In one of these articles I read NC was going to lay 12% off so not too far off.

IN any case, I and another 8 from my office were laid off (and I was actually out of work for a year).

Now, if I look at their stock, it's definitely higher than it was when I was laid off, they closed our office and merged the staff with another company they bought (now down the street from where I am now working; ironically...) and they are doing well. From my conversations wiht my excoworkers, they were moved to different teams that are doing well and bought another company in the midwest where my old manager is moving.

Additionally today the company stock is listed as "buy" and they just bought another company for over 300 million. They're doing just fine, they just had to lay off people at that time to "readjust". Sucks, but there it is.

Sometimes companies have too much debt or they don't do as well or they grow too quickly, etc. In order to lessen any damage to stock holders, as well as many reasons that I'm not qualified to address, they lay people off.

Now, i do know Aion isn't doing as well as they would like but I dont' know how GW2 is doing with sales based upon their initial sales projections.

But it's very possible that they just need to "right" things in order to get on with business.

regardless of the restructuring,

they are still hiring

http://us.ncsoft.com/en/jobs/index.html

Originally posted by Lazzaro
How does this affect wildstar

Or B&S for that matter,  probably nothing  is my guess.

Originally posted by botrytis

ALso, if NCSoft and A.Net both have offices in Seattle, why not merge the two.

 

People really want to see GW2 fail. WHY? I never understood the attitude of some people who gleefully jump up and down when a game goes south.  Seems to me, if it was their lively hood that went south, they would want people to at least have sympathy.

For the same reason people want TOR or MO or WoW or anything else to fail.  To claim they were right and that the type of game that failed needs to go while the game they like and would prefer to be made, should be made.

To feel justified.  To be right.

Anything really.  But don't worry. People will keep doing it with any game that comes out.

Originally posted by Abuz0r
Their games in general are un-rewarding time sinks.   Lot's of time invested with absolutely nothing to show for your efforts.  They set before you a really challenging ladder to climb with nothing at the top.  Can you name 1 NC game with entertaining end-game content?

Well, there you go..   This is the new generation of MMORPG's.. 

"" GIMMEE STUFF ""..

I need reward stuff.. I need something to increase my epeen show off factor..

     I find it puzzling and sad that people need "cyber" stuff to feel rewarded.. Really?  What has this society come to these days when people expect compensation and rewards to do anything.. Why not just do it because it feels good?  I love how GW2 has done zones and adventuring in general.. It's not perfect, but it is far more enjoyable then those I've played in the last 7 years plus.. I just wish there was MORE zones in GW2 to play in..  I'm max level on one toon and still haven't explored all the zones and haven't done a single instance yet..  It's a shame CoX didn't survive because I enjoyed it for the short time I was there.. I just hope that NC Soft figures out a better business plan..

Originally posted by eyelolled

As for the OP. I think the "realignment" is just resource management. Maybe they are trying to free up enough money to buy out funcom before Disney does.

One company I worked at a while back did this.  Downsizing put a lot of black ink on the books, enough to get financing to buy out a competitor.  More of an accounting trick than anything, but it worked.

Hardly surprising. NC Soft have been struggling since the closure announcement of City of Heroes. Perhaps if they had not shut it down, or if they sold off the COH IP, they would not have had a "PR black eye" and not be making lay offs.

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,6267.0.html

Fifth of all, I am not giving up hope that we'll still be able to acquire City of Heroes at some point. Right now, NCsoft is suffering a massive PR black eye (gee, really?) for their unwillingness to sell or license the IP for reasonable terms. I've heard some of the terms they were demanding, and they really are unreasonable. Needless to say, claiming that they had "exhausted all efforts" was disingenuous at best. People have been taking to their Facebook, Twitter, and other public pages to let the larger gaming community know what's going on. While I'm not directly leading those efforts, as a gamer myself, I have been encouraging people to share how they feel to other communities so that even if City of Heroes can't be saved, it gives game publishers a heavy dose of reality to chew on.

And speaking of NCsoft, they're not doing so well right now. Their stock price is currently down to 169,000 KRW. The 52-week low? That's right, 169,000 KRW. They are a whopping 52.5% off their 52-week high and have been consistently falling almost since the closure of City of Heroes was announced. While I don't think that investors care so much about City of Heroes specifically, I do think that they are taking note that it represents NCsoft's floundering presence in the North American market. While Guild Wars 2 launched to much fanfare, I honestly don't think it will be the stable long-term source of income that City of Heroes was, and there is a lot of negative attention being given to Blade and Soul even before it launches.

I mention all of this because if NCsoft goes bankrupt or is sold to some kind of holding company, there's a distinct possibility that the IP and/or code base could be acquired at liquidation or fire sale price. It's definitely something that we are keeping a very close eye on and hopeful about.
 

Originally posted by botrytis

ALso, if NCSoft and A.Net both have offices in Seattle, why not merge the two.

 

People really want to see GW2 fail. WHY? I never understood the attitude of some people who gleefully jump up and down when a game goes south.  Seems to me, if it was their lively hood that went south, they would want people to at least have sympathy.

Maybe for the same reason GW2 fans were gleefully predicting how "their game" would "bury" other MMOs out there?

I think a lot of the "anti-GW2" is backlash from the obscene amount of hype around this game prior to launch, just after launch, and even up to this day for some.

If you weren't "on the GW2 bandwagon", it was pretty obnoxious to be reading forums for a completely different game - including the official forums for various MMOs - only to have the GW2 fan brigade invading it with the same crap. "GW2 is going to bury this game", blah blah blah.

I'd personlly like to see GW2 underperforming (not failing, just not doing as well as it was assumed it would) just to shut those people up. Kind of similar to what happened after TOR launched and people realize that game wasn't the Second Coming they claimed it would be.