Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of speaking with Chris Chung, newly appointed President of NCSoft North America. Assuming the position previously held by Robert Garriott, Chung is more than qualified with plenty of NCSoft and other experience in the tech industry.
Chung entered the industry in 2003 as the business manager for ArenaNet, the company behind GuildWars. Chung did a brief stint as Vice President of NCSoft’s Publishing Unit in South Korea, then came back to the North America team. Since 2004, Chris has served as Vice President of game publishing for NCSoft North America.
During our talk I was able to get the scoop on the NCSoft game line up: how the last year went, and what’s planned for the future!
Tabula Rasa
After 6 years in development and a total scrap of the original game, Tabula Rasa’s launch was a big excitement for NCSoft this year. I asked Chung how the game was doing, and he said that it was progression well – he is looking forward to the upcoming game update and the Japan launch in the first half of 2008. Half of UO’s subscribers were from Japan, and he anticipates much success there with the Garriott followers!
Tabula Rasa will continue to see more free content updates; further down the road we might see a retail presence with larger expansions, but nothing there is concrete.
Dungeon Runners
The other NCSoft release this year was Dungeon Runners, their first free to play MMO (with a subscription option). Chung referred to DR as “The little engine that could” – while the game is backed by a very small design team, they’ve introduced a great sense of humor to the industry.
The most recent news for the DR team was the introduction of advertisements for free players… while somewhat annoying, this allowed them to open up more content to the non-subscribers.
Aion
Of the upcoming NCSoft games, Aion absolutely has my attention – it’s absolutely gorgeous and reminds me of my days in Lineage II! The good news is we’re looking at a late (second half) 2008 release – the bad news is, Chung couldn’t tell me much more.
Exteel
The other upcoming NCSoft title is Exteel, a third person shooter game where you play as a mech. Like Dungeon Runners, this game is free to play for the majority of content. But instead of a small subscription fee for extra content, Exteel supports a micro transaction system. We should see Exteel releasing in the US in the first half of 2008.
Lineage… III?!
No, not yet – but soon! Chung told me that NCSoft’s main concern was assembling the right team to tackle this project. Said Chung, “This is the year that we are assembling that team.” On the Lineage II front, the recently release Kamael expansion has done very well, bringing many players back to L2 to try out the new race.
City of Heroes and Villains
The big City of Heroes/Villains news in 2007 was the NCSoft buyout of the CoH/V game and IP from Cryptic. For any City of fans, don’t worry about a radical change in development mindset; the entire COH team came on board when NCSoft opened up a new COH studio in December. In fact, the team will be expanding soon!
COH will continue on the same development cycle, said Chung, but they want to take the size and quality of expansions up a notch. “[We are] continuing to grow this fantastic franchise!”
Guild Wars
The Guild Wars model, so far, has been a series of individual games that interact in the endgame PVP. The latest Guild Wars creation, though, was an expansion: Eye of the North.
I asked Chung whether this was the new future of Guild Wars, making expansions instead of separate game worlds. While he didn’t have much news on the form of future content, he was excited that the ArenaNet team is working hard on Guild Wars II! Content updates will continue, of course, for the original Guild Wars during/past GWII development/launch.
NCPass?
For the past year (or longer) I’ve been asking NCSoft when they’ll let us pay one monthly fee (obviously higher than 14.99$) for access to their suite of games. The answer is always “soon” and sadly – it is again! “[We] should have something to announce this year,” said Chung. “There isn’t anything really holding it back, but timing, making sure our infostructure supports it, and we want to make sure it’s the right thing for our customers.”
Spacetime Studios
It wasn’t the most comfortable topic, but I felt it worth mentioning – just last week NCSoft dropped their publishing deal with Spacetime Studios, working on an undisclosed MMO since March of 06. “Unfortunately, we do not have a pot of gold that is generating money every day,” said Chung. “We decided that we needed to have a little more focus in our portfolio.”
This doesn’t mean the NC lineup will be shrinking; there are 8 other titles in development, in-house and with other studios. We should receive some information on them in the second half of this year or early next year.
Play Station 3
NCSoft has partnered up with Sony and is beginning to develop some titles for the PS3! I asked Chung if we’d be seeing City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa, or one of the other NC titles on the console soon. Chung answered, “The game needs to feel right on a console.” While some of the current NCSoft IPs might be present on the PS3, straight port is likely not the answer. Keep on the look out, too, for some entirely new NCSoft IPs.
;)
8 other titles? Wow, NcSoft is very nice, I just wish their customer support would be better (this is coming from Lineage 2, not sure of other NcSoft titles).
Let me save you some time if you haven't already read this. "Soon, maybe, no word yet, you'll find out later this year or next."
In all seriousness, I'm very interested in a NCSoft Pass as long as its priced reasonably. Hope we get more info on this "soon."
I'm the Asian RickJames, B%#ch!
Hey, someone tell this guy we need better PvP planning in these games too! In most of them, it's like you're not even playing the same game as PvE, but some kind of horribly imbalanced alien world with no point and no progress either. They need to make some kind of effort to have them actually "mesh" together for a change if they ever plan on competing with Blizzard.
If they came out with that, I would likely re-subscribe. I occasionally miss CoX but would not play it enough to warrant a normal subscription.
This is quite big news, so I am quite disappointed by the lack of depth of the questions. We didn't really get much out that we didn't know already (beside the possibility of one payment getting you access to all of their games). I would hope next time we can get more pressing questions, or at least questions a little more suitable for the president of a company.
I would like to know in what are his goals for the company in the next few years as president. What differences are there in vision between him and his predecessor? What are his views of the current industry scene? Where is the industry going in his eyes, and how will he make sure that NCSoft is not left behind? Questions like this are really valuable for those of us who not only play games and think about the next title thats coming out, but who also are really interested in the industry and direction that its moving.
I do appreciate the article regardless, and thanks to MMORPG for being up to date on their news.
Haha, I guess you thought it was an actual interview, and not just a glorified press release.
There is no such thing as a true journalistic interview in the gaming industry.
So, now we can start waiting for even more grinding in ncsoft games?
Im surprised by the openness of the conversation, its not every day a huge corporation admits they are in money trouble and cancels support for a production.
NCSofts subscriber base is shrimping day by day, looking at the latest official subscriber numbers and when you look at the portfoloio they are going to offer, there is pretty much only one game that can excite and thats Aion. And Aion has so far been giving bad reviews.
I wonder what the president of NCSoft has up his sleeves, is that the new nordic MMO I heard about or the new dublin one (APB)
What's that about PS3?
I'm mighty interested in hearing more about that. I liked playing FFXI on my PS2, even though I was somewhat suspicious of the whole idea at first. I am looking forward to being able to play more MMO's on my new PS3 as well.
Theres a bit more about the ps3 porting at the 1up interview. http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3165479
As a average Joe when it comes to playing, ok ok above average Joe then, I wonder how they failed to make a better MMO with 6 years in the making as Tabula Rasa came out to be, only strain this game is making was on my old Grphx card, not on me brain or playskillz unfortunately.
Secondly when asked about a NCPass The answer was Quote: "There isn't anything really holding it back, but timing, making sure our infrostructure supports it, and we want to make sure it's the right thing for our customers.", waht a load of crap the last part of the sentence was!!!!!! WHEN EVER would it be wrong for the customers to get cheaper payment for playing multiple MMOs???? If this quote originates from the new President of the company, Ohhh vey!!! We are doomed!!!
I'd rather hear what Robert and Richard Garriott had to say.
Assuming the position previously held by Robert Garriott, Chung is more than qualified with plenty of NCSoft and other experience in the tech industry.
So were they saying Robert was not qualified for his role?
Less talk, more of City of games! :P
City of Vampires, City of WereWolves, City of Medieval-Fantasy, City of whatevercoolyouthinkoff!
Might want to remove the enhancements for simple specialisations and adds gear for some concepts! The enhancements are overly complex IMO...gear would definitely be better and less abstract, if applicable for the setting.
Anyway...I want MOOOOORE! *make a 6 year old angry dance despite been 33 and scaring most peoples around* :P
I hope they release their Q4 of 2007 reports soon. It is very interesting to see the changes in subscription numbers.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
NcSOFT SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I WILL NEVER GO BACK TO AN Nc made game egain.
Account losses!
Myself, along with few friends and people I knew from Lineage2 (an NcSoft game) lost our accounts.
Ban for botting you ask???? NO. We were all banned without reason!!!! We asked, we mailed, we even attempted to take the matter to court. GM's had no answer to give us, simply, "you're account is stated as banned, so we can not access your account nor provide any continued substantual customer service, sorry". All the replied come back like that. I've sent in petitions and... god I've done so much, I've even put up a fraud website.
5 years of playing aside from most my friends as well.
All I can say is, NcSoft president a total moron fraud piece of (*&%#$ along with his corp and GM's... don't matter how great the games are, when accounts are being banned for no reason.......... (mabye they are mixing up their account bans???)
HAS anyone else had this problem or alike problems where NcSoft GM's appear to be frauding accounts mabye even stealing things inside them after BAN???
well mr president, since your new i will tell you your NC soft customer service blows monkey chunks. your people fail to understand the concept of time, they fail to understand the concept of "feedback", who puts in their surveys that negative feedback will be discarded? NC soft is a poor example of how the gaming word treats its customers. as you aquire more games mr pres you might want to aquire competant folks to help gamers in a timely manner and that they actually know something about the game they try to help in. Shapoopi!!!!
(of course i know he wont read this, they dont care)
NCPass?
Well, that would be different.
As long as the price was right.
CoH/CoV, Dungeon Runners, Tabula Rasa (will they EVER put in 1st person view?)
I suspect, however, that the cost would not be worth it.
Also, they do not seem to be really interested in 1st person mode games (CoH/CoV was not their original development). So I am somewhat skeptical that I would, in the end, be interested.
*blink*
I understand that the big ball of fire outside is scary sometimes. But once you've stood under it for more than 1 hr a day it's not so bad.
It seems apparent that anyone doing these interviews have no intent of throwing anythng but softballs. Why not ask the REAL question.
WHY DOES NCSOFT HAVE THE WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE OF ANY COMPA NY KNOWN TO MAN?
We are not talking about the worst of this particular industry. We are talking about the worst of ANY industry. The phone company has better service and they won't even allow you to talk to a human. Those of us that have been foolish enough to continue to play this addictive game of LineageII know the examples well.
Banning players without recourse or reasonable explanation.
Not banning the real offenders in any kind of timely manner (botters).
Offering no recourse or potential game restitution to proven hacked accounts.
No human responses... virtually all responses to issues in the game are answered with scripted gobbledi-english.
Talk about missing the boat !! NCsoft took what was potentially the GREATEST MMO and turned it into complete crud with horrible customer service and an unwilligness to listen their greatest designers .... the players themselves.
I am a business professional with 31 years of experience. Let me know NCSoft if you want some help fixing the problem.