Why NC-Soft are awesome - NOT a suck-up

NC-Soft are awesome for one simple reason. Unlike most other gaming companies out there, they LISTEN.

City of Heroes/Villains - Capes were requested by fans. Trenchcoats. Wings. Henchmen. More costumes. Lots of popular ideas that people asked for were incorporated into the game.

Guild Wars - People wanted skills for Sins and Rits in Nightfall. Reduced size groups in PVP. Being able to play heroes across all chapters. Halloween event. Extra slots for characters. Increased storage space for materials. So on and so forth.

I very rarely see a game company LISTEN as much as NC-Soft do. As I've said, this isn't a suck up, it's just very refreshing to have a publisher that fans can make a suggestion to and they're actually considered. Wish other companies would take note.

Their continued interest also originates from the will to keep their business model / franchise alive.
This is not a way of doing business unique to NCSoft. All major corporations try to increase the quality of their product by making it appeal to the largest audience possible. Some just do not ask around as openly as ANet/ NCSoft.

I don't think NCsoft "listened". They might have given instructions to A.net and other developers, to listen, but NCsoft doesn't manage the game content.

NCSoft signs Anet's checks. I guarantee you that they "gently encourage" incorporating the most popular fan ideas if it's technologically possible to do so.

Im stillwaiting for the auction house we have been asking for since early in chapter 1

ya their good to their fans which is why i will keep buying Guildwars exps. Their a smart company.

BTW: Cat auction house is comming, when sometime after nightfall is out and has really no need for patchs. It will most likey come out a few months like the materials storage did. Just gotta wait.

The other game I play is Battlefield 2 from the giant EA and I couldnt agree more with the OP. Anet (or NCSoft) is truly amazing, whereas EA's BF2 managed to destroy a great Battlefield community. Every patch they make arrives several days or even weeks late and then it creates more bugs than it fixes. And listening to the players, big no-no. No one cares.
GW is a complete opposite. Patch almost very week with some cool stuff, stable, running at quite crappy computers... And this game runs off only 2 files! I couldnt believe it when first saw the content of GW folder. Wanna install your game on another computer? Burn the folder to DVD, copy to the other computer and run. It will "install" itself on the first run. Brilliant. Great programming, great game, great people at Anet!

Actually, A-net is a separet company who happens to be ownd by NC-Soft, so A-net signs the checks, then NC-Soft get's whats left after expences are taken care off.

Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant, We love them, you love them, If you dont someone from this furom will shank you..................Just kidding. No good Job Alex and gaile, this is the first time that the people who play the game get to feel like this is "their" game. You get a chance to design weapons in game? where else? fans make new capes,emblems ext. wonderful game

Anet is awesome, I don't know so much about NCSoft.

I think NCSoft could make a lot more money if they offered all their "monthly subscription" games for a discounted monthly price. I'm not sure how they would split the profits, but one reason Auto Assault failed is because no one was playing.

But think about it: If I could play Auto Assault, CoH & CoV, Tabula Rosa, and all the other pay-to-play NCSoft titles for one monthly fee, that would be very tempting....

Thats as close you can get to how it really works without getting technical, Anet is just a part of NCSoft.

I'm pretty sure that all aspects of suggestions/bug reports and such are taken care of 100% by Anet and not NCSoft. Though recently it looks like NCSoft has adapted (or incorporated) the support system Anet has been using for all their products which makes it looks like NCSoft is actually behind the changes.

I recently discovered the "auction house" concept is stolen from WoW... which gives me just one more reason to say "NO THANKS WE DONT NEED IT!"

The are some things that AN are preparted to change, no capes, mini pets etc and some they will not even though the majority of players hate it, Favor, elite missions for example.

Personally, for some things like reconnects I would happily delay Nightfall for.

Sorry to break it to you, but the in-game auction system is a concept older than World of Warcraft.

Yeah, designers listening to their fans is great.

I present you http://www.threerings.net. These guys have been in the new a bit lately, since they just started working on an online rpg, and it was a success. They're making quite a lot of money with their unique pay-to-play system and gaining popularity.

However, the best thing is that they always listen to their gamers. 2 of the developers are in I think the top 3 posters of the forum. All the GMs are also just talking with the normal players. No such thing as a difference in rank or something. They treat everybody equal, and just discuss things. The great thing about this is that they A) Don't need any supporting fansites, as they run their own wikicities and forums and B) They can announce coming features and have people discuss them with them.

It's great.

I'm still waiting for the auction house too!

Ownership confers the rights and power to be gently encouraging to Anet (and the devs of other NCSoft games) to listen to the players. Yes, it's actually Anet who does the listening and the R&D and implementation, but no doubt there is plenty of encouragement from NCSoft for them to do so.

They would be awesome if requested things were added to current versions, not new versions so they grab more cash

I don't know how much NCSoft really has to do with the design or implementation of anything in ArenaNet's Guild Wars -- probably very little, outside of billing.

I do however really love the design of everything in Guild Wars. Just about every design point makes a lot of sense. No travel time, no farming consumables, no nuisance factors for a class (conjure water, soul shards, inner fire, feeding pet, etc.). And when things are in game that don't make sense (e.g. way way back you couldn't arbitrarily change attribute points around in town, which was inconsistent with the ability to change skills in town), they fix it.

Ok, I don't believe this. Everything I read from ANet in response to the auction house question is a comment about "trade improvements" are coming. I have never ever ever ever seen anything from ANet promising specifically an auction house. Only people in forums who make statements like yours. I may be wrong, as just because I haven't seen it, it doesn't make it false, but some link to something official would be nice. Otherwise, I have to disagree with your claim.

I am impressed with ANet. I am not impressed with NCSoft. ANet is who is responsible for the good things that you have mentioned. When NCSoft gets involved, we have such things as account hacks due to their lack of security and a mandatory registration when we buy character slots that precludes us from changing our passwords as we were freely able to do before associating our login with NCSoft.

ANet = good.
NCSoft = needs to get their butts in gear.