Curse

Zorgy · Sep 16, 2008, 08:55 PM // 20:55

"...Jeff Strain as president, product development, David Reid as president, publishing, and Patrick Wyatt as CTO as well as yet unannounced European executives..."

"...Forgot to congratulate the ArenaNet alumni and Mike O'Brien on their new positions. Talent is being rewarded..."

Talent is being rewarded for the a/m guys, I agree with you........but watch out !!!!! its not always the best who are rewarded....its often the worst in our beautiful world

Read the following link....its amazingly sad.

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2008/09/1...lehmans-board/

Red Sonya · Sep 16, 2008, 10:47 PM // 22:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zahr Dalsk

So am I, mainly from that developer interview about it and the "hundreds of hours leveling your character" stuff.

Yes that's going to be fantastic I can hardly wait for the new GW with improved leveling and hundreds of hours just doing that as now you can do it in less than 24 hours. I'm sooooooo expecting GW2 to be more like the other mmorpgs out there but with the GW combat engine that's all they really need to do since the others don't have a lot of buttons for you to press in combat.

Robbert Monga · Sep 16, 2008, 11:23 PM // 23:23

I must say TR was a big disappointment for me... I am suprised it lasted this long.

ElinoraNeSangre · Sep 18, 2008, 07:49 AM // 07:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robbert Monga

I must say TR was a big disappointment for me... I am suprised it lasted this long.

Mostly, it's the fact that it's got an insanely involved dev community that listens to players and talks to them daily, frequent large, quality updates that keep making the game better every month, and a community that has a lower than average quotient of jerks.

But that could just be my take.

Ravious · Sep 18, 2008, 10:04 AM // 10:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElinoraNeSangre

Mostly, it's the fact that it's got an insanely involved dev community that listens to players and talks to them daily, frequent large, quality updates that keep making the game better every month, and a community that has a lower than average quotient of jerks.

But that could just be my take.

I concur. Now Jeff Strain just needs to apply the GW business model for the complete win!

Tijger · Sep 18, 2008, 11:59 AM // 11:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ravious

I concur. Now Jeff Strain just needs to apply the GW business model for the complete win!

That would be extremely stupid and if Strain has shown anything its that he isnt stupid.

Different models for different games is perfectly allright, GW has done well without subscriptions and other games have done well with subscriptions. Helgate didnt necessarily have subscriptions and it died a horrible , TR has subscriptions and it wasnt a success.

A smart executive fits the business model to the product, not the other way around, I wish Jeff Strain and Pat Wyatt all the success in the world and I hope that their visionary work on GW will translate to great new games for NCWest

Robbert Monga · Sep 18, 2008, 10:59 PM // 22:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElinoraNeSangre

Mostly, it's the fact that it's got an insanely involved dev community that listens to players and talks to them daily, frequent large, quality updates that keep making the game better every month, and a community that has a lower than average quotient of jerks.

But that could just be my take.

It is also incredibly boring. Super primitive combat. Super stupid NPCs. Absolutely random and meaningless character development. Lame armor/weapon modification system. Zero storyline and copy-pasted quests (though some of them have decent humor). Zero reasons to group with other people. Zero economy. Lame naming of things. Character rebuilding (cloning) utterly fails at it's main goal.

Overall game was an epic fail (i would like to stress epic). And I am not saying that as a GW fan, I am saying that as a GW former fan who desperately waited for TR to replace GW.

EDIT: Oh, and don't get me started on RG's image being glued to every corner of the game - they even renamed game from TR to RGTR coupe of months before release hoping to score some popularity... Makes me wanna puke... Like if he was a hawt chic, then I might have bought some of that bs, otherwise no thanks.

Ravious · Sep 18, 2008, 11:41 PM // 23:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tijger

That would be extremely stupid and if Strain has shown anything its that he isnt stupid.

Winkies denote slyness, a hint of sarcasm, or inside joke. 'Ya know what I mean'

maraxusofk · Sep 19, 2008, 01:51 AM // 01:51

slighty off topic but did anyone else see the word incest in the title post? i swear dyslexia is troublesome.

Fril Estelin · Sep 25, 2008, 09:53 AM // 09:53

Great clarification of the situation in an mmorpg.com article:
http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/2262

Quote:

What's Behind NC West?

MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood recently caught up with David Reid, the President of newly minted NC West. The formation of this new company from NCsoft has been the starting point of a number of runors about the future of NCsoft Austin. In this interview, Reid speaks about the new company, and the future of games like Tabula Rasa and Dungeon Runners.

Last week, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to David Reid, the new President of Publishing at NC West, the recently announced spinoff company from NCsoft.

There has been a great deal of confusion and speculation coming out of this most recent announcement. Even looking around at various forums and even some news sites, reports and rumors of the closure of the NCsoft studio in Austin, among others, have been circulating.
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The best guess for the heart of the circulation of these rumors is the line in the company’s original press release which read: “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.”

This seems to have been mis-interpreted (at least according to Reid) by some readers and members of the media alike.

“Basically, the idea here was to set up a new publishing headquarters for the company,” Reid said in the interview, “that would govern the operating roles throughout our western territories.”

What we’re looking at here, according to Reid, is the fact that before this announcement hit, the four companies listed above: NC Interactive, NC Europe, NC Austin, and ArenaNet all have various and sundry responsibilities when it came to publishing and marketing NCsoft games.

“If we’re really serious about getting into the big leagues,” he continued, “then we need to consolidate those efforts and make sure that everyone is on the same page.”

Essentially, the company decided that rather than having a number of different smaller companies with a myriad of responsibilities, that they would bring them all together under one roof in Seattle. This also allows the company to keep a separate outlook for the Eastern Market (Asia) than they have for the Western Market (Everywhere else) which, according to Reid, require quite different approaches.

The long and the short of the situation is that, according to Reid, rumors of the death of NCsoft’s studio in Austin have been greatly exaggerated. And that they are more of a case of mistaken identity than anything else.

“There has been some misperception about the Austin office, which is still a very vibrant place with over 200 employees. Nothing has changed on that front other than the publishing headquarters which is primarily: marketing, sales, PR, some of those customer facing things are what is moving up to the Seattle office.”

This is all fine and good, and completely understandable. NCsoft has always had a bit of an identity crisis in terms of being a developer and a publisher at the same time.

This left open the question of the recent rounds of layoffs that we have been hearing about, leading fans and industry speculators alike foretelling doom.

“The first one was several weeks ago,” Reid said in response to my question about the two recent incidents of layoffs. “and that was really a decision based on focusing the company’s development efforts on these large scale AAA MMOs that very few companies are successful in doing aside from ourselves and maybe two other companies. Those particular positions are related to what we call “light” MMOs, a couple of unannounced projects, some explorations on things that just weren’t really in the wheelhouse of what has made NCsoft the successful company that it is.”

In terms of the move toward AAA MMOs, David had this to say:

“We are one of the best companies in the world at these large-scale MMOs. The business is great, the product is successful, the gamers love our products. Why should we be doing anything else?”

The implementation of this new focus for the company, we were told, is what was responsible for the first round of layoffs.

The second and more recent round only last week, we were told, was 12 jobs out of an office of 250 employees. These were positions that were eliminated as a result of the move of positions (from the departments listed above) into the Seattle office.

So what about the speculation that these consolidation moves are born out of Tabula Rasa performing under expectations?

“The company has been fairly straightforward about the fact that Tabula Rasa hasn’t delivered exactly on the level that we had hoped it would but we are still very behind the game.”

The company has indeed been behind the game as of late, with a marketing push centered around Operation Immortality that will see human DNA taken into space when Richard Garriott reaches the International Space Station. This promotion, which has collected not only public DNA, but also the DNA of people like Stephens, both Hawking and Colbert, and a number of other celebrities.

This has resulted in the program being mentioned on television shows like The Colbert Report and even TNA Impact, a wrestling program.

“We would have preferred that the game got off to a better start,” he said, “but we are behind the game, the team is intact and we are very excited about the progress that we are seeing. In a lot of ways, this is a brand new game… Twelve updates later, people who went through a beta or launch experience with that game would find a brand new game and we’ve got the free trials for them to give it a shot and a promotion around it to encourage them to do so.”

“The move to Seattle has nothing to do with any of our development studios,” he continued. “It has everything to do with building a world-class presence for the publishing side of the business.”

So, a move toward AAA size MMOs is a move away from what Reid described as “Lite MMOs”. A couple of these MMOs have been making waves for NCsoft recently in the form of Dungeon Runners and Exteel.

I asked Reid about the future of Dungeon Runners given this new direction and he told me that while DR would continue to run for the PC, they have abandoned thoughts of expanding its scope to the platforms like Xbox (this would be one of those “explorations” we mentioned earlier).

So, in the end, according to Reid, NCsoft isn’t in the level of trouble that many have speculated. NCsoft Austin isn’t going anywhere and in fact will be a “critically important office”.

“NC West is really about NCsoft getting serious and doubling down back into the AAA side of the business. These games have big teams, require huge investments, and take years to build but there aren’t many people who do that as well as we do and you can expect to see and hear more from us on the Lineage / City of Heroes / Guild Wars kind of product going forward. That’s what this company is going to be all about.”

Author: Jon Wood
Created: September 24, 2008

Zorgy · Sep 25, 2008, 12:12 PM // 12:12

"...In terms of the move toward AAA MMOs, David had this to say:

“We are one of the best companies in the world at these large-scale MMOs. The business is great, the product is successful, the gamers love our products. Why should we be doing anything else?”...."