Formation of NCWest

interesting

its been said a few times so far but i think this will be good for ANET, and its obvious that GW has become a nest egg of sort for NCSoft and that their ability to do what ANET has done is definitely something to set the bar high for what u want to expect in return. Whats truly surprising is that this is all happening now right before the holiday season with Aion just on the brink of finally being released and GW2 we all hope to follow shortly after. They knew about this for months ahead of time and are just now making the announcement, hence why we probably had GW2 pushed back, that and why would they want AION and GW2 to compete?

To hear that Jeff is now a major player in NC makes me feel a bit more comfy about the move in general, the guy is a great thinker and knows what hes doing. Ever since i read that article "how to build a successful MMO" ive seriously taken a special liking to the ANET crew. And tbh i think is a much better move than RG as a key influence cos its no doubt the guy was over paid and under performed. But i wont take away what he has given to the gaming community cos he was once considered a genius for gaming.

TBH though i think the worst decision made though was limiting their console platform to the PS3, sure its up and coming but ppl wont go buy the system just bc NCsoft released a game, and if they were really looking to make a dent in console than xbox 360 and future MS console should have been taking into consideration. WoW 10 mill~ Xbox live 10 mill subscribers~ PS3 barely alive when it comes to true multiplayer experience. Heck right now its a known fact most ppl bought a ps3 bc of being the cheapest BLU Ray player and not so much for gaming.

The TR news about it shutting down and then being recanted and saying that nothing is happening there in near future is so they can try to figure out what to do next. I mean if u were playing TR right now and heard ur game was closing would u still continue to subscribe and play, probably not and they know this too, its called protecting your investment .. so id still be watching this game a lil closer and see what really happens. As far as their F2p games i understand they were trying to make something new for their company to invest in .. but lets be realistic here ... theres so many other F2p games on the market they should have come with something better.

The formation of NC West has raised a lot of questions and speculation about what this means for ArenaNet, Guild Wars, and Guild Wars 2.

As far as ArenaNet and Guild Wars are concerned, the creation of NC West ensures that we will get all the publishing support we will need to make Guild Wars 2 a success. ArenaNet remains a standalone studio focused on Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. Mike O’Brien heads up the studio and is also the Executive Producer for Guild Wars 2. You may recall that Mike is one of the founders of ArenaNet and was also the Executive Producer for the original Guild Wars.

We’d like to congratulate ArenaNet alums Chris Chung, Jeff Strain and Pat Wyatt and we look forward to working closely with them (and kicking ass!) in their expanded roles at NC West.

So what this means is that it's still Anet but with a different name, few more people and some nifty publishing support to boot?

Sounds good to me :P

EDIT: Had to point the lettering in the bold, you know it's good when Regina says that ^^

The ArenaNet name is not going anywhere. (I'm keeping my forum pic!)

That's just wrong. Anet is a wholly owned subsidiary of NCSoft. Therefore, while NCSoft != Anet, Anet= NCSoft (or a small part thereof). If NCSoft tanks, Arenanet will either be sold off or plundered for assets and closed. Arenanet and it's sister companies involved in this merger will effectively cease to exist when they become NCWest, at least from a senior management point of view, meaning they will have a single board of Directors etc. At least, that's what it sounds like.

Good that Anet people have been promoted to control the other studios. As much as Anet may be reviled (by some), Guild Wars is the best MMOesque type game I've ever played, so they did something right.

Oh ok cools

Hope this brings out GW2 that much faster

All this sounds like very good news and makes me even more excited for when Guild Wars 2 comes out.

Hehe.

¡Viva ArenaNet!
¡Viva Guild Wars!

Good news!

So long as GW's ideology doesn't change from what was said by Jeff Strain, I'm fine with this move. Although whether or not I'm fine with it doesn't matter at all.

People in my alliance are worried about GW2 since there has been no new news about it as of late. One thing they are deeply worried about this change will there still be pay once and play or pay to play?

They said it's still going to be pay once and play free forever. Let's hope it don't change.

If they added a subscription i'd pay my money elsewhere...

Guild Wars 2 is not going to be pay to play. They've said it a hundred times already. Promoting a.net founders up the ladder makes it more likely that the GW model will persist, not less likely.

The real question is if this means future projects under the NCWest umbrella will use the GW model (opposed to the subscription model).

It will still not be pay to play (and I agree with drekmonger, they might actually add this to other games at NCSoft due to the sucess of A.net's pricing model).

The reason GW2 info hasn't been given out yet is because they are still in the EARLY, early stages of development.

Edit: Good job mods for cleaning this thread up a bit.

Well, if GW2 gets canceled (which is possible if there's a company reorganization, since I doubt GW2 is past the halfway point in construction), that's a moot point.

hope they wont forget GW 1 even more now, but at least make GW 2 even better now?

If anything, GW2 will be worse, as ArenaNet's more valuable resources (ha, ha) will be relocated in the merge.

Ugh, you guys don't get it! This move is not punitive at all. They even keep their freaking name. NCSoft wants GW2 to happen. GW1 pushed 5 million+ copies, of course they are going to want the sequel.

Anyway, on topic, there is no way to know how this will affect GW2, short of Regina telling us (and even then, she could lie/scew info). I mean, sure GW was successful and they would want a sequel.
StarCraft was successful (behind the Sims, the greatest selling CPU game ever), and it took 12 years for a sequel to appear. Sucess does not mean it will neccessaryily be financially viable for them to produce a sequel at this point in time.

However, at the moment, we are overreacting. How can this "delay" a game that doesn't even have a tenitive release date yet? It might delay it, but we wouldn't even know if this was a reason or not for the release date.

Do you know what Aion is? It's being hailed as the spiritual sequel to Lineage II, NC softs greatest creation. Now, what makes more sense for a company like NC Soft that's currently doing quite badly at the moment?Leave members of a development team on a game that hasn't even produced a concept art,or move say,half of those members to working on Aion a Pay to Play MMORPG and release as early as possible?

By the way, be sure to use your business sense. Not your fanboy sense.

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).

2) That was a great article.

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?

4)Like I said, I thought Tabula Rasa had a few hundred thousand subscribers which would be good if not for a game called World of Warcraft.
Let me ask you to use your business sense. Do you want people working on a sequel to a game that sold 5 million copies, or do you want to slow down development of that for an unknown franchise? And by the way, there is concept art. Look around you might find it, I won't because I still have the copy of PC Gamer that has them in there. And just because a game is a spiritual successor to something doesn't mean success (Hellgate: London says hello) or has a good vibe around it if it is true about Tabula Rasa. It certainly had good credentials to it's name.