Curse

HawkofStorms · Sep 11, 2008, 04:04 AM // 04:04

Umm... maybe read the first paragraph of that quote. Like I said, it may or may not make financial sense for them to release GW2 now or later (like I said, I don't know NCsofts specific financial plan/situation).

My only point was that if GW 2 was delayed by this news, we wouldn't know about it. IE, if GW2 was supposed to come out 2 years from now, but instead due to this comes out 4 years from now, we wouldn't know that the delay happened (since we weren't expecting it to be released at any specific time).

JaiGaia · Sep 11, 2008, 04:28 AM // 04:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by wetsparks

1) You are right, they wouldn't want those two products to compete (not that they would, only the beta was supposed to happen this fall).

yea i was referring to some of the feedback on gw2 beta not being this yr, and Aions seems to be around the time we would have expected GW2 ... which just seems like a good move on both behalf. Your right too though that they wouldn't have to compete but bc of the business model they are going to have, youd truly be able to play both simultaneously .. and only have to worry bout a subscription to 1.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wetsparks

2) That was a great article.

those that havent read it google it or look on GW's official site its a good read.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wetsparks

3) That is a big load there. First off, the only reason the xbox has the lead that it has is because it launched earlier. The Wii (obviously) and the ps3 have outsold it world wide if you align their launches and the ps3 has been outselling the 360 world wide since last Christmas and selling as much, if not more, than the 360 in the US all year. Hell, the ps2 has kept pace with the 360 for most of the 360s life span and for the entire lifespan of the 360 the ps2 has been in over 100 million homes. And it definitely not "a known fact" that it is being bought as a blu ray player because the sales of games (now that there is a good list of good ones) is increasing while sales of games on the 360 have slowed down. Attach rates for the ps3 have gone from 3 to 5 while the 360s attach rate has gone from 8 to 6. And btw, the ps3 hasn't been the cheapest blu ray player all year. I bought a blu ray player in the spring for $300. As for the MMOs, if I remember correctly, Sony went to NCSoft about the MMO, not the other way around, that is why it is going there. And I don't know how Sony is trailing in a "true multriplayer experience," last I checked you could voice chat, message, make a friends list, and play games. What else is there?

ok now im not dissing them, ok not totally cos i own both consoles myself, infact i got my ps3 shortly after NC Soft announced their deal with Sony for the promise of future console titles ... and my 360 to hold me over while PS3 got some genuinely good titles going regularly .... but in reality MS's XBL and large community is the very reason a few games over the last yr have been able to break records like HALO 3, CoD4 [which they said it was due to the 360 sales in an interview on their success] GTA4 just to name a few. Theres more coming. What i was really getting at was that they shouldnt have limited themselves in that aspect bc the market is just that huge, and lets be realistic here if u want to measure success of PS3 vs 360 online and multiplayer experience ... 360's community is by far larger and for MMO's thats exactly what u want a larger community base to market too. Basically should've included the 360 into their Console gaming idea

pamelf · Sep 11, 2008, 04:54 AM // 04:54

They'll do whatever's good for business. End of story. After the failure of Tabula Rasa i'd say there's a fair amount laying on the shoulders of Aion and the success of GW2. I really don't think there's anything to worry about.

4thVariety · Sep 11, 2008, 06:02 AM // 06:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by JaiGaia

ok now im not dissing them, ok not totally cos i own both consoles myself, infact i got my ps3 shortly after NC Soft announced their deal with Sony for the promise of future console titles ... and my 360 to hold me over while PS3 got some genuinely good titles going regularly .... but in reality MS's XBL and large community is the very reason a few games over the last yr have been able to break records like HALO 3, CoD4 [which they said it was due to the 360 sales in an interview on their success] GTA4 just to name a few. Theres more coming. What i was really getting at was that they shouldnt have limited themselves in that aspect bc the market is just that huge, and lets be realistic here if u want to measure success of PS3 vs 360 online and multiplayer experience ... 360's community is by far larger and for MMO's thats exactly what u want a larger community base to market too. Basically should've included the 360 into their Console gaming idea

IMO, the whole Sony deal was just so that Sony could announce something. At that time they had little to show on PS3 and were desperate. By now they have not one, but two MMOs scheduled to launch, Agency and DC Online. I doubt they are excited about a third party releasing MMOs on their platform. The 360 has problems of its own, mainly that outside the U.S and the UK it's almost a total failure. Japan refuses completely, Germany is limbing (6% reported marketshare in 2007, down to 5.4% in Q1/2008), France is not good and Southern Europe is worse than Japan.

Joypad controls in GW work just fine for the casual player, if you are more motivated then just get it over with and buy mouse+keyboard. Other franchises sell you plastic instruments at every chance; hasn't hurt them. PSO on Dreamcast did the same, worked for them. The only real problem here is cross platform connectivity and patch certification. All patches have to be certified and are subject to a number of crazy rules regarding their size and whether they may be free or not. Gabe Newell from Valve recently leaked that Team Fortress on 360 was not getting the PC Updates because Microsoft tells them they can only give out a content update for free if they sold two others before that. Rules such as this seem to be different for different teams and publishers to further increase the insanity. On top of that, all patches have to be tested by Microsoft before release, adding a two-week delay. Same goes for cross-platform play, it's not that hard to pull off for anybody, except Microsoft does not want it to happen. If you release on their platform you may not add it to the official build.

For ArenaNet the recent changes are excellent. They are even more in charge of their product and financing. Their way of doing business with customers survived and is healthy. Other MMOs struggle to keep the lights on because fewer people than they need turn to subscription. ArenaNet has a userbase who rabidly demands new content and is willing to pay for it, or would you really consider NOT buying another expansion?

ele pl · Sep 11, 2008, 06:30 AM // 06:30

Is that mean that Gw1 will have a better support @ updates, new content etc.? Seems not

Anyway. i am sure Gw2 will come faster, or either better, or even faster and better

cthulhu reborn · Sep 11, 2008, 07:01 AM // 07:01

Well the fact that they are going with the PS3 is too bad for me as I will never own one of those, but in the future they may expand to the X360 as well. Still, I don't need NC to make games for me on each possible platform. Others do fine on making Xbox games already.

The consolidation move comes as a surprise but I think it's kinda strange people worry about GW2, considering Jeff Strain is the new president. One can assume that he has a thing or two to say about his own baby in the role of president.

All in all, to me, this feels like good news. However, I still wonder about their strategy concerning Aion and GW2 but I suspect they're not gonna tell us. Admittedly, from seeing the video clips for Aion I could see a lot of GW influences in it and it looks good. So, it is going to be interesting to see how the GW2 graphics are going to be after that and how the 2 games are going to interact.
With that it will be interesting to see what the pay scheme for Aion since apparently that's not clear yet. Well, if Aion is not going to be a monthly subscription either it may well make it easy for people to take in both games. Time will tell I guess, but I still think that this consolidation things is probably good news rather than what the title of the thread would suggest.

Tijger · Sep 11, 2008, 09:02 AM // 09:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kerwyn Nasilan

So NCsoft is putting all there eggs in the GW2 basket? Might be good if more funds/workers, or bad is GW2 fails.

No, they're giving the people who've created success more power, ie Strain and Wyatt, over NCSoft' US and EU operations. Smart move, I'd say.

Regina Buenaobra · Sep 11, 2008, 04:04 PM // 16:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by cthulhu reborn

...I still think that this consolidation things is probably good news rather than what the title of the thread would suggest.

Yes, the thread was not named very well in terms of what it means for ArenaNet. The formation of NC West is a good thing for ArenaNet and a good thing for Guild Wars/Guild Wars 2.

Lonesamurai · Sep 11, 2008, 04:40 PM // 16:40

The full press release:

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

PRESS RELEASE
NCsoft Announces Formation of "NC West"

CEO Taek Jin Kim Promotes Chris Chung, Jeff Strain, David Reid, and Patrick Wyatt
Thursday 11th September, SEOUL, Korea/... NCsoft ® Corporation (KSE: 036570.KS), the world’s leading publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), including award-winning franchises Lineage ®, Guild Wars ® and City of Heroes ®, today announced the formation of “NC West™”. A wholly-owned subsidiary of NCsoft with operating responsibility for western regions including the US and Europe, NC West will be led by Chris Chung as CEO, Jeff Strain as president, product development, David Reid as president, publishing, and Patrick Wyatt as CTO as well as yet unannounced European executives.

NCsoft’s existing subsidiaries NC Interactive, NC Europe, NC Austin, and ArenaNet will be led as a unified organization under NC West with a dedicated focus towards becoming the world’s premier western publisher of MMOs. NC West is the tentative name for the organization, and the company expects to announce final naming and corporate structure in the near future. NC West's headquarters is planned to be established in Seattle, WA by the end of 2008.

Chris Chung, previously CEO of NC Interactive, has a long history with NCsoft. He began his tenure at NCsoft’s ArenaNet® studio, where he managed that studio’s business and helped launch the multi-platinum selling Guild Wars franchise. Chung later went on to become the chief publishing officer for NCsoft’s Seoul headquarters. Prior to NCsoft, Chung spent more than five years at Microsoft and later co-founded a marketing research firm. As CEO of NC West, Chung will continue to report directly to NCsoft CEO Taek Jin (TJ) Kim.

“We are confident that by combining our subsidiaries into a unified global organization under Chris Chung’s leadership, NC West will become a more powerful force to be reckoned with in the western MMO market,” said TJ Kim. “Chris has become a guiding force within our company and has been extremely successful at every position he has held with us. His detailed first-hand knowledge of all aspects of our business is invaluable and will help establish NC West as a global leader.”

Jeff Strain was formerly the president and co-founder of ArenaNet, a company he formed with Patrick Wyatt and Mike O’Brien when they left senior roles at Blizzard Entertainment in 2000. Additionally, Strain held the position of executive producer of Guild Wars 2™ prior to taking this new role. Strain will report directly to Chung and manage all NC West development studios across all existing and future products. Strain will also direct the production of NCsoft’s Asian-developed titles for NC West territories.

David Reid began with NCsoft in March 2008 as vice-president, marketing for North America. Reid came to NCsoft from Turner Broadcasting’s GameTap, where he served as vice-president, marketing. Prior to that, he worked at Microsoft as director of global platform marketing, where he launched the Xbox 360. In his new role, Reid will continue to report to Chung and will lead franchise management, marketing, public relations, sales, and customer support for NC West.

As a founder of ArenaNet, Patrick Wyatt led the development of the network and server technologies for the Guild Wars franchise, and directed the architecture and deployment of ArenaNet's global game network infrastructure. Before co-founding ArenaNet with Strain and O'Brien, Wyatt was the vice president of research and development for Blizzard Entertainment, where he led programming for the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises. As CTO for NC West, Wyatt will report to Chung and will focus on platform technology development, network operations, and systems engineering.

“There is an unparalleled opportunity for growth in the massively multiplayer online market,” said Chris Chung. “By combining the strength of our US and European teams, NCsoft has the best global infrastructure to win in new and existing markets, and the best developer talent capable of creating blockbuster MMO franchises.”

Sparks Dawnbringer · Sep 11, 2008, 05:38 PM // 17:38

I was very excited to play Tablia Rasa but when I found out it was a pay per month I passed.

beanerman_99 · Sep 11, 2008, 06:55 PM // 18:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparks Dawnbringer

I was very excited to play Tablia Rasa but when I found out it was a pay per month I passed.

Agreed. I thought it looked pretty cool too. But I am not paying monthly fees. No way.

I am so glad that Anet is sticking to no monthly fees for GW2. If they want to add microtransactions for purely cosmetic Items. I would be fine with that too. Imagine if there were microtransactions in GW. Would you pay for a new hairdo? A special dye color for your armor? A super cool minipet? What about a weapon skin?

I think the news is great for ArenaNet. Good luck!

creelie · Sep 11, 2008, 09:03 PM // 21:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by beanerman_99

Imagine if there were microtransactions in GW. Would you pay for a new hairdo? A special dye color for your armor? A super cool minipet? What about a weapon skin?

My first impulse is to worry about a slippery slope, but I suppose the BMP and its related weapon skins are a form of cosmetic microtransaction and that worked out pretty well. And I know lots of people would be very happy to pay money for a reroll of an established character. And so on, and so forth . . . I guess so long as it was kept purely cosmetic it would be fine. Certainly it would help if they want to make GW2 have more longevity than GW1.

ElinoraNeSangre · Sep 11, 2008, 09:12 PM // 21:12

I used to say I'd never play games with monthly fees. Tabula Rasa taught me that monthly fees aren't a bad thing, though - the amount of content and goodies coming in from the dev team is really high. So I'm okay with a monthly fee for what I get out of it (frequent quality updates and high dev responsiveness to issues).

I'd heard that Jeff Strain was moving onto a new role within NCSoft and it's nice to see the details (when I'd heard it, it was along the lines of "well you know that Jeff is the something something for NCSoft now" and I nodded and smiled because no, I had NO idea!). It sounds like a nice solid NCSoft hub here in the US, and it sounds like it'll be a great thing for NCSoft's games. Especially with this team behind it.

Best of luck to Jeff, David, and Patrick in their new and exciting roles! I think huge congrats are in order!

wetsparks · Sep 12, 2008, 03:17 AM // 03:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by JaiGaia

ok now im not dissing them, ok not totally cos i own both consoles myself, infact i got my ps3 shortly after NC Soft announced their deal with Sony for the promise of future console titles ... and my 360 to hold me over while PS3 got some genuinely good titles going regularly .... but in reality MS's XBL and large community is the very reason a few games over the last yr have been able to break records like HALO 3, CoD4 [which they said it was due to the 360 sales in an interview on their success] GTA4 just to name a few. Theres more coming. What i was really getting at was that they shouldnt have limited themselves in that aspect bc the market is just that huge, and lets be realistic here if u want to measure success of PS3 vs 360 online and multiplayer experience ... 360's community is by far larger and for MMO's thats exactly what u want a larger community base to market too. Basically should've included the 360 into their Console gaming idea

Yeah I kind of over reacted about that, my apologies. Its just that fanboyism annoys me and that is how your post sounded to me. That is why I always come back to this forum and not others. The problem with putting a MMO on a console is that Sony or Microsoft want a cut of the monthly fee. I don't remember who said, maybe someone from Blizzard about WoW or someone from Mythic about WAR. I have a feeling that Sony said they wouldn't take a cut of the monthly fee if NCSoft made a MMO for the ps3 since they needed some good pub at the time when they didn't have many big games released.

Fril Estelin · Sep 12, 2008, 10:07 AM // 10:07

One question I'd like to ask Regina is this: are Jeff Strain and Patrick Wyatt leaving ArenaNet for NC West and, if so, how is this going to affect ArenaNet and GW? I've got the feeling from what I read that there'll be minimal impact, but I'd like to know if you can issue a statement on that.

I sincerely hope that NC West will be a huge success, as the game they/you release are astounding and you're fighting in an arena dominated by mamoths (Blizzard Activision, EA). And grats to Jeff and Patrick for the promotion

BenjZee · Sep 12, 2008, 10:22 AM // 10:22

from what i understand the title is misleading, Regina states that this is good?

Ctb · Sep 12, 2008, 12:26 PM // 12:26

Quote:

from what i understand the title is misleading, Regina states that this is good?

No offense to Regina, but of course Regina states it's a good thing. As will anyone else on the payroll.

I'm not saying it's not good, since I don't know, but take the "official" word on things like this with as big a grain of salt as you can find.

Personally, I'd wager that if consolidation goes off without a hitch, it's more neutral than anything. It sounds to me like they're going to try and focus their guns on the Warcrafts and Everquests that we have on this side of the globe. That could mean they're doing so well they're looking to expand, or it could mean that they're staring at a decline in their Asian markets and need something to pick up the slack. We won't know for sure for awhile, but all you have right now is idle speculation and the word of the company (and anybody who thinks press releases and company spokespersons say anything valuable is either a lazy journalist or a fool).

Good or bad? You might as well just a flip a coin for the time-being if you feel the need to take up an opinion immediately...

Numa Pompilius · Sep 12, 2008, 01:50 PM // 13:50

My reading of this is this:
NCSoft isn't as profitable as they'd like to be after a string of failed and expensive MMO's (Tabula Rasa, AutoWars). They've decided to restructure, thereby lowering administrative costs. They've also decided to concentrate resources on the most promising projects.
NCSoft has apparently also decided that they don't really understand the MMO market in the west, but that ANet do/did, hence they've created NCSoft West and populated it with some of the people from ANet.

Short term this is a good thing. ANet really did understand the western MMO scene a lot better than NCSoft (most of the BS people blame ANet for is really NCSofts doing), and if they're now a bit freer to act that's great.
Long term... Long term it depends on whether NCSoft west can produce a hit MMO. If Guildwars 2 flops, they'll likely have to spend the rest of eternity producing Maple Story clones for cellphones.

Fril Estelin · Sep 12, 2008, 02:11 PM // 14:11

We can't really second-guess what this means. I believe what Regina is saying because it'd be stupid from ArenaNet to "lie" (double-quote) on such a topic. It could be that Jeff and Patrick have great ideas to develop NC West and this will directly benefit ArenaNet through GW2. It could be that they're going to fix problems put in place by the old NC Soft admin.

For all we know, Jeff, Patrick and Mike have different hats and they may have too many of them, so it's a nice reshuffle of responsibilities so that everyone will work better. What I was wondering in my previous post is what Jeff's and Patrick's departures mean to ArenaNet. Mike is now in charge of ArenaNet and GW2, so it may well be that Jeff and Patrick were not focusing on GW2.

I'd prefer to wait for Regina's clarification rather than continuing to guess with too many maybe's.

Ctb · Sep 12, 2008, 04:37 PM // 16:37

Quote:

I believe what Regina is saying because it'd be stupid from ArenaNet to "lie" (double-quote) on such a topic.

They don't have to "lie", they just won't tell the truth. Go through this thread and read the press release and Regina's comments and then tell me what material information you can pick out of any of it. What actual, material statements of fact are there in any of it?

Nothing.

Because Regina probably doesn't have any facts, and press releases are specifically designed not to.

This is typical company spin. They've reorged, and reorgs are ugly, and they don't want anything unpleasant to seep out about it. Whether the reorg works as intended, and specifically why it occurred to begin with, will probably never be known, so you might as well speculate as hard as you want.

Regors are always bad for the people involved. Whether or not its good for the business in the long term? Eh... I'm not going to hold my breath. It might not be devastating to the company, but reorgs and consolidations in the middle of large development projects are almost always disastrous for the projects.