Especially with how much it costs to keep these games running in this day and age...
I'm not sure if you are brainwashed by the likes of WoW or TESO or FFXIV but running an online game in this "day and age" is actually a lot cheaper than it used to be last year, and the year before that, and the one before that and .... you get my point.
Pretty sure my i7 CPU now beats all the processing power of the initial WoW servers back in the day at least tenfold. So that's that. And it didn't cost thousands of dollars you know.
Just my 2 cents.
I take it you know the costs involved in running a data center or are you just trying to apply what you know from your own home computing experience?
I'm going to agree with the thrust of Geezer's question.
Additionally, salaries are up so I'm not sure how one can come the conclusion that it's cheaper employee developers to develop and run these games?
Erm... sliding in: While my evidence is limited I do know a little bit about datacenter costs. (We have some 500 servers, 1/3 iron, rest virtual, in total about 200 physical servers.)
Generalisation: 10 years ago 50% of hosting fees were traffic, 20% hardware, 10% electricity, 20% support incl. backup
Today: 40% is traffic, 25% hardware, 15% electricity and 20% support incl. backup.
Overall hosting costs are down about 30%. Yes hosting is a hell of a lot cheaper. Overall trafficamount is about 600% higher. Backup/support is actually significantly less $ pr. user today (automization etc.) Bottomline: We are moving more data, have more clients, same SLA's but our hosting costs have dropped significantly. Things may be very different in gamehosting, but I seriously doubt it.
BTW: How did this "NCSoft must be near death" thread turn into yet another "People who enjoy WoW are stupid/Quality of life in a game needs P2P" mudslinging contest? Reiterating: No great loss I guess ;-)
It actually is quite different. Online gaming servers do not lend well to Virtualization.
I think NCSOFT's announcement at GSTAR in a week or two about the upcoming release of Lineage Eternal is going to shake up the MMORPG world.
I am looking forward to this game, at least in consolation or until they release Lineage 3.
L1 is meh, L2 is meh, TERA was being developed as L3 and its meh, ArcheAge is made by the "legendary" L1 dev and its meh.....
i dont think another Lineage is going to shake anything but itself.....
My opinion based on the meh pattern they keep following.
Your opinion is indeed just your opinion. Lineage 1 itself is comparable to WoW in subscriber numbers if you count it from it's inception which launched MUCH EARLIER than WoW did.
The only reason the Lineage series died in the western regions is because of horrible mismanagement by the western counterparts to deal with the botting and illegal players that STILL are rampant in at least Lineage 2 in the west.
If this time around, when Lineage Eternal and Lineage 3, which is STILL BEING MADE, is released to the west and translated, their success would wholly lie in the hands of the managers in the west, if they do not botch it up again like the ones that have done so in the past.
Especially with how much it costs to keep these games running in this day and age...
I'm not sure if you are brainwashed by the likes of WoW or TESO or FFXIV but running an online game in this "day and age" is actually a lot cheaper than it used to be last year, and the year before that, and the one before that and .... you get my point.
Pretty sure my i7 CPU now beats all the processing power of the initial WoW servers back in the day at least tenfold. So that's that. And it didn't cost thousands of dollars you know.
Just my 2 cents.
I take it you know the costs involved in running a data center or are you just trying to apply what you know from your own home computing experience?
I'm going to agree with the thrust of Geezer's question.
Additionally, salaries are up so I'm not sure how one can come the conclusion that it's cheaper employee developers to develop and run these games?
Erm... sliding in: While my evidence is limited I do know a little bit about datacenter costs. (We have some 500 servers, 1/3 iron, rest virtual, in total about 200 physical servers.)
Generalisation: 10 years ago 50% of hosting fees were traffic, 20% hardware, 10% electricity, 20% support incl. backup
Today: 40% is traffic, 25% hardware, 15% electricity and 20% support incl. backup.
Overall hosting costs are down about 30%. Yes hosting is a hell of a lot cheaper. Overall trafficamount is about 600% higher. Backup/support is actually significantly less $ pr. user today (automization etc.) Bottomline: We are moving more data, have more clients, same SLA's but our hosting costs have dropped significantly. Things may be very different in gamehosting, but I seriously doubt it.
BTW: How did this "NCSoft must be near death" thread turn into yet another "People who enjoy WoW are stupid/Quality of life in a game needs P2P" mudslinging contest? Reiterating: No great loss I guess ;-)
It actually is quite different. Online gaming servers do not lend well to Virtualization.
At least that was the case a couple years ago.
You'll be amazed at how much virtualization changed in the past 5-10 years. Most companies run virtual machines now, because its more robust than an actual server. They are easier to install, easier to maintain (automated) and there are no performance setbacks if set correctly. All major OSes support it at core level as well.
All this cloud mambo jambo is basically this.
Hell even those mobile phone SDKs use some sort of virtualization for their emulators.
People learned to scale horizontally instead of vertically long ago.
@thread: How comes every quarter there is still some jaded CoH fanboy who cries SEE THE DESERVED THAT FOR CLOSING DOWN COH whether the sales drop slighty, stay stable and even if they grow and I get banned for no reason after pointing a finger at some CoH fans posting the same nonsense over and over again. They are not going to go away at all like the last dozen times and doing very well without it. Probably just better.
Sorry if that offends you. NCSoft made their own bed, they now get to lie in it. Their reputation in the west is pretty much solely of their own making.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
@thread: How comes every quarter there is still some jaded CoH fanboy who cries SEE THE DESERVED THAT FOR CLOSING DOWN COH whether the sales drop slighty, stay stable and even if they grow and I get banned for no reason after pointing a finger at some CoH fans posting the same nonsense over and over again. They are not going to go away at all like the last dozen times and doing very well without it. Probably just better.
Sorry if that offends you. NCSoft made their own bed, they now get to lie in it. Their reputation in the west is pretty much solely of their own making.
Sorry to burst your bubble, their 'reputation' is only in heads of very tiny amount of players.
@thread: How comes every quarter there is still some jaded CoH fanboy who cries SEE THE DESERVED THAT FOR CLOSING DOWN COH whether the sales drop slighty, stay stable and even if they grow and I get banned for no reason after pointing a finger at some CoH fans posting the same nonsense over and over again. They are not going to go away at all like the last dozen times and doing very well without it. Probably just better.
Sorry if that offends you. NCSoft made their own bed, they now get to lie in it. Their reputation in the west is pretty much solely of their own making.
Sorry to burst your bubble, their 'reputation' is only in heads of very tiny amount of players.
Funny, I've already run across a few players from Wildstar worrying that the game may get closed down if it continues to defy expectations.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
That is the thing about NC Soft and their games. They did shut City of Heroes/Villains down even though it was making money . SOE can be trusted to keep Everquest up so your investment in the game is secure. Wildstar players better think before spending time and effort on their characters ,the game might get shut down based on what NC Soft has done before. There is a precedent and you must be wary of what they will do to balance their books.
GW2 earnings exclude Chinese sales that are listed sepparately as royalty revenues in the report. WildStar was launched right before Q3 and went downhill quickly after initial sales and according to Daewoo's forecast it's expected to earn 9 billion KWR in Q4 while GW2 is expected to earn 34 billion KRW (170% QoQ) in Q4 excluding Chinese sales. These expectations might be based on speculations that GW2's first expansion is about to be announced soon this quarter. I'm pretty sure the expansion will be released during the first half of 2015.
Oh boy, another "mommy, are we there yet?" thread. Two years after GW2's launch and uh... some time after CoH shut down, we've got the same people saying NCSoft is finished and GW2 is going to die, even though NCSoft's revenue grows and GW2's Western side makes 1/3 of what Lineage 1 does. And L1 is Korea's WoW.
@thread: How comes every quarter there is still some jaded CoH fanboy who cries SEE THE DESERVED THAT FOR CLOSING DOWN COH whether the sales drop slighty, stay stable and even if they grow and I get banned for no reason after pointing a finger at some CoH fans posting the same nonsense over and over again. They are not going to go away at all like the last dozen times and doing very well without it. Probably just better.
Sorry if that offends you. NCSoft made their own bed, they now get to lie in it. Their reputation in the west is pretty much solely of their own making.
Sorry to burst your bubble, their 'reputation' is only in heads of very tiny amount of players.
Funny, I've already run across a few players from Wildstar worrying that the game may get closed down if it continues to defy expectations.
NCsoft has a terrible reputation in the west... which is why their western games are generally underwhelming... keep in mind these earnings reports are q3... and wildstar has only gotten worse since then... so it is a valid concern for people to have if they truly enjoy wildstar... id say by next summer if wildstar hasn't turned it around or stopped the bleeding at least.. ncsoft will probably close up shop... or at least run it as barebones as possible for a while and then close up shop.
I was under the impression that COH/COV shutdown was not entirely related to financial considerations but to the differences of opinion between Paragon Studios (future games development) and NCSoft, that included a Paragon studios move to buy themselves out of NCSoft.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Oh boy, another "mommy, are we there yet?" thread. Two years after GW2's launch and uh... some time after CoH shut down, we've got the same people saying NCSoft is finished and GW2 is going to die, even though NCSoft's revenue grows and GW2's Western side makes 1/3 of what Lineage 1 does. And L1 is Korea's WoW.
MMO hatedom sure is everlasting.
True. Besides, B2P games do need an expansion now and then to keep earning large sums of money.
I am actually surprised that GW2 do earn so much money since most of the income really is from the item shop nowadays (and frankly don't you need to spend money in there, I buy my gems from in game gold as do most of my friends who play who even bother with gems, many don't at all).
GW2 do need to make some kind of expansion or campaign, that is true if they plan to make the game grow and go up in earnings in areas where it already is released. Releasing the game in new regions like they just did in China is another option.
Lineage always been the top game in Korea like Wow in North America and Final fantasy in Japan. Probably because it have a certain Diablo feeling to it...
Lineage always been the top game in Korea like Wow in North America and Final fantasy in Japan. Probably because it have a certain Diablo feeling to it...
Blade and soul is anybodies guess.
Blade and Soul earnings in this report would also reflected its market presence in China - it is not doing great there but good enough.
"A game is fun if it is learnable but not trivial" -- Togelius & Schmidhuber
Blade and Soul earnings in this report would also reflected its market presence in China - it is not doing great there but good enough.
Earnings by game exclude royalties which means for Blade and Soul those earnings don't even include whatever China turned in. Good or bad.
My bad - even though page 4 of the financial report does include royalties in revenues and specifically mentioned China Blade and Soul, the sales breakdown figures quoted in this thread (page 5 of report) clearly exclude royalties as you said.
"A game is fun if it is learnable but not trivial" -- Togelius & Schmidhuber
Comments
It actually is quite different. Online gaming servers do not lend well to Virtualization.
At least that was the case a couple years ago.
I think NCSOFT's announcement at GSTAR in a week or two about the upcoming release of Lineage Eternal is going to shake up the MMORPG world.
I am looking forward to this game, at least in consolation or until they release Lineage 3.
L1 is meh, L2 is meh, TERA was being developed as L3 and its meh, ArcheAge is made by the "legendary" L1 dev and its meh.....
i dont think another Lineage is going to shake anything but itself.....
My opinion based on the meh pattern they keep following.
Your opinion is indeed just your opinion. Lineage 1 itself is comparable to WoW in subscriber numbers if you count it from it's inception which launched MUCH EARLIER than WoW did.
The only reason the Lineage series died in the western regions is because of horrible mismanagement by the western counterparts to deal with the botting and illegal players that STILL are rampant in at least Lineage 2 in the west.
If this time around, when Lineage Eternal and Lineage 3, which is STILL BEING MADE, is released to the west and translated, their success would wholly lie in the hands of the managers in the west, if they do not botch it up again like the ones that have done so in the past.
You'll be amazed at how much virtualization changed in the past 5-10 years. Most companies run virtual machines now, because its more robust than an actual server. They are easier to install, easier to maintain (automated) and there are no performance setbacks if set correctly. All major OSes support it at core level as well.
All this cloud mambo jambo is basically this.
Hell even those mobile phone SDKs use some sort of virtualization for their emulators.
People learned to scale horizontally instead of vertically long ago.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Sorry if that offends you. NCSoft made their own bed, they now get to lie in it. Their reputation in the west is pretty much solely of their own making.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Sorry to burst your bubble, their 'reputation' is only in heads of very tiny amount of players.
Funny, I've already run across a few players from Wildstar worrying that the game may get closed down if it continues to defy expectations.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Oh boy, another "mommy, are we there yet?" thread. Two years after GW2's launch and uh... some time after CoH shut down, we've got the same people saying NCSoft is finished and GW2 is going to die, even though NCSoft's revenue grows and GW2's Western side makes 1/3 of what Lineage 1 does. And L1 is Korea's WoW.
MMO hatedom sure is everlasting.
NCsoft has a terrible reputation in the west... which is why their western games are generally underwhelming... keep in mind these earnings reports are q3... and wildstar has only gotten worse since then... so it is a valid concern for people to have if they truly enjoy wildstar... id say by next summer if wildstar hasn't turned it around or stopped the bleeding at least.. ncsoft will probably close up shop... or at least run it as barebones as possible for a while and then close up shop.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Web & Graphic Design - www.xdrac.com
why is Lineage 1 and Blade and Soul so popular?
explain
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
True. Besides, B2P games do need an expansion now and then to keep earning large sums of money.
I am actually surprised that GW2 do earn so much money since most of the income really is from the item shop nowadays (and frankly don't you need to spend money in there, I buy my gems from in game gold as do most of my friends who play who even bother with gems, many don't at all).
GW2 do need to make some kind of expansion or campaign, that is true if they plan to make the game grow and go up in earnings in areas where it already is released. Releasing the game in new regions like they just did in China is another option.
Lineage always been the top game in Korea like Wow in North America and Final fantasy in Japan. Probably because it have a certain Diablo feeling to it...
Blade and soul is anybodies guess.
Blade and Soul earnings in this report would also reflected its market presence in China - it is not doing great there but good enough.
"A game is fun if it is learnable but not trivial" -- Togelius & Schmidhuber
My bad - even though page 4 of the financial report does include royalties in revenues and specifically mentioned China Blade and Soul, the sales breakdown figures quoted in this thread (page 5 of report) clearly exclude royalties as you said.
"A game is fun if it is learnable but not trivial" -- Togelius & Schmidhuber