Home › Game Forums › Lineage 2
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
revealing article showing SERIOUS problems at NCSOFT
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/biz_view.asp?newsIdx=10753&categoryCode=123
That says it all. If they don't make back their investment on Tabula Rasa, they go kablooie. I can't for the life of me get why the stupid CEO would risk their flagship title Lineage and flagship developers (the guys who made Lineage and probably the ones that put NCSOFT on the map in the first place) to bank on a game that is 4 or 5 years delayed and untested.
Well time will tell.
Rha
Comments
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20061204/henderson_01.shtml
Here is a pretty interesting follow up to the previous article. About what Jake Song (pretty much the creator and main programmer of Lineage: The Bloodpledge has been up to).
It doesn't say they are going to go "kablooie"...as much as you would like to see that happen, I'm sure.
They have issues, no doubt but they aren't going to go under if TR doesn't work out. (which it won't, the game is a dog) I would expect to see NCSoft NA get dumped though or maybe Rich get put out of a job. He has put NC through way to much grief over the last 6 years and cost them way to much money.
As I wrote in another post, Aion's success will hinge on Asia not here at all. The western market is totally irrelevent for that game just like L1/L2..as the article says. So they have that in the cooker and GW2 is rolling out next year. Odds are GW2 will do very well for them here in the west. Since its not an inhouse game, it won't bring them the cash flow they would like to see, I sure. Arena net has proven they can deliver a great product. It should hold them over while they slip out of the western market.
What will probably happen is they will wash their hands of the western market and refocus on the Asian market. Also we know the western market is dominated mainly by the console market and in PC's, the shooter genre. Seeing as NC cut a deal to make console games recently, this news is probably months behind whatever strategy they came up with. They just didn't wake up yesterday and go "OMG if TR doesn't do well, we are screwed". They are just putting it out that if it doesn't, Rich and his branch are screwed.
Which is fine, Rich and gang haven't done squat for the western market at all.
Why did he bank on it? He took a risk to break into the western market and put to many eggs in one basket. It happens. They will recover, its not like they are going bankrupt.
Once they refocus on Asia they will produce another mainstream game and be fine. Their adventures in America are probably over though.
(on the other hand, I could be wrong and TR will be a critical success and there will be parades in the street and NCSoft will send Rich to moon or something stupid like that)
well your right, if Tabula Rasa isn't a success in the west, it may not make NCSOFT go kablooie but it will cripple them severely ... and on how severe, we can guess.
The article speculates that NCSOFT spent nearly or close to 100 million into TR. The article also gave a figure of 240million as a comparison...I don't remember what the amount represented but i think it had something to do with NCSOFT's total operating budget.
The article further speculates that stock holders may dump NCSOFT stocks causing further financial problems if TR is not a success.
Those things combined, if the resulting effect becomes severe enough, could make NCSOFT go "kablooie". Seeing as only Lineage and Lineage 2, as the article points out, really are the only games that NCSOFT profits highly from, its not a far stretch to see the disastrous effects, NCSOFT's actions towards these core games of theirs, have resulted.
The entire reason they purchased Rich (errr...his studio) was to make a blockbuster game that would have the same impact here as L1 did in Korea. At the time it made sense although the rest of the management did not agree with him on it and eventually caused the other dude (Jake?) to leave NCSoft which probably hurt them more then anything. Instead they get this guy who thinks he's the MMO version of (insert famous pop star name)
Not to mention, I also feel / agree that Rich's side of the house runs L2 like sh*t.
On the other hand, NCSoft is still a pretty strong company, yes its losing ground every year but it's games are very aged at this point. L1 is over 10 years old and L2 is over 3. They are still pulling a decent profit although not as much as they would like to see I'm sure. Unfortunately for them, Blizzard spanked their arse when they put out L2 in NA not to mention NCSoft NA didn't enforce the EULA from the start, probably to show subs. Rich has been covering his arse all along IMHO.
Either way, I'm still looking forward to Aion and Guild Wars 2. I think (IMHO) Aion is moving in a positive direction for MMO's. The guys from GW (Arena net) have yet to make a bad product. Everything they touch is gold. These guys are the ones to watch.
Time will tell.
My personal opinion is as I have been writting for over a year now. The western MMO market is in trouble. Even games that should have been a sure hit (LotR) are not doing so well. I don't think the traditional MMO market was as large and had the "unlimited potential" everyone said back in the WoW popularity hysteria explosion. WoW was launched to a cultivated pre-existing player base that already numbered in the millions well before WoW. WoW was made as an MMO version of Warcraft for the battlenet people. There was no "magic" of Blizzard. There was no rush of millions of "new" MMO players. Sure it brought in a lot of people to the game but those people are not bleeding over to other MMO's.
Most MMO's are having populations problems these days. That doesn't exactly encourage investors. Not to mention western devs can not seem to launch a game that works at launch. They keep kicking themselves in the nuts over and over.
Meanwhile, at the AGDC MMO devs have talked about a lot of things, one of the key points were business models. I don't think anyone can dispute the fact that free to play is become a more powerful force in the game industry. (I don't remember names but...) the guys from Bioware and other companies attended a seminar given by the CEO of the game "Maple Story" about how to correctly run a succesful F2P game. Maple Story boast a monthly revenue of 16 million according to the AGDC notes. I'm pretty sure EQII, Vanguard, Lineage 2 and SWG are not pulling those sorts of numbers. 100,000 subs yields 1,499,000 in monthly revenue. None of those games I listed, with the exception of EQII is breaking 100k now days. (which in business terms is not a whole lot of money)
Micro trans-actions of some form or another are the way of the future. I would expect to see something like the GW system. (a retail box) mixed with pay to access content packs in the future of western games with no monthly fees. You can already see it in SOE's "The Agency" or..."Hellgate London". Free to play the base game, pony up a sub if you want more. Western gamers don't like monthly subs. You can easily see that in the success of many games outside of MMO's. Halo 3 is kicking Hollywoods arse. That speaks volumes.
TR doesn't look remotely promising. Aion on the other hand ...
Which illustartes my point that the US NC operations have failed to an astounding degree.
Instead of simply promoting and properly managing the excellent games that NC Korea comes up with, they try to jam some half-assed crap down our throats while intentionally smashing the otherwise inevitable success of games like Lineage.
Which illustartes my point that the US NC operations have failed to an astounding degree.
Instead of simply promoting and properly managing the excellent games that NC Korea comes up with, they try to jam some half-assed crap down our throats while intentionally smashing the otherwise inevitable success of games like Lineage.
Errr.....your point?
You haven't posted on this topic here or anywhere in your history(?) The OP targeted NC as a whole, I singled out NC NA....
Good post Torak especially this:
A lot of people don't understand this but it is 100% true.
Imo the question now is, when WOW starts to die off, will these people move on to other MMOs or the next Blizzard title?
I hate to be the devil's advocate here, but it doesn't seem like WoW will be dying off anytime soon, if ever.
I'm not saying this because I'm some WoW fanboy, I play WoW, but not frequently. I'm the 'casual WoW' player. I do, however, scope as many Betas for upcoming games out as much as I can.
The main problem I find is exactly what you've been talking about -- they just don't have a large enough fanbase to begin with. And now that WoW has set the new proverbial MMO Subscription Bar, it's something that will be difficult to top without such a fanbase.
The last decent MMO, in my humble opinion, was Dark Age of Camelot, and I think the next will be Warhammer.
Maybe I'm just a sucker for Mythic...*shrugs*
I plan to fully retire from MMO gaming if they all go the way of F2P item malls or GW. Their game style is just not my style of play. I personaly don't think NCSoft NA will shut down just because of Tabula Rasa even with a supposed 100 mil cost, to do that would mean shutting down all their games that are actually popular here in NA. They take in decent revenue from Lineage 2 and Lineage 1 plus they have Dungeon Runners member ship accounts. Not to mention when GW2 comes out they plan to be subscription based as well because the F2P model must of hurt them (i guess). Will it recover their 100 mil quickly? No..but atleast it'll keep them afloat. If this was their first ever game in the MMO market it would most definitly destroy them just like it did Sigil.
The MMO market needs fresh blood in its design teams, bringing back the dinosaurs that created UO and EQ1 are massive mistakes and will continue to be so. It just gets hard to teach old dogs new tricks you know and as much as I thank them both for UO and EQ1 because I loved those games their ideas are dated. Item Mall gamers are a completely different gamer type. I think going all one way instead of building on both genres would be a massive mistake if not finish polishing off the PC game market for good.
As for the Vanguard & SWG subscription numbers no one will ever really know how many people play that game exactly because they're apart of SOE's member ship package which is not the standard 15 dollars a month it starts around 20+ bucks and up depending on what features you want turned on.
My post is a bit rambling *looks around* posting from work on my lunch break no time to check myself for rambling!
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
Don't misunderstand when I speculate that NC NA will get the boot (speculate) NC Soft can always assume direct management of everything else. I seriously doubt that GW / GW2 is in any jeopardy at all. In fact most of NC's games do pretty good overall. GW has been kicking down doors for years now and it just keeps getting better and better.
Its probably going to cost the Garroitt bothers their jobs in any event. TR isn't going to do well.
I think I already said all of that in my earlier post. You will at least see a changing of the management guard when TR flops. Remember, the entire reason NC bought Destination Games and put the Garriotts in charge of NC NA was because they were going to make "holy grail" for the western market. Read those articles Rha-El linked in. The board of directors isn't happy with the CEO over this entire situation and it might cost HIM his job before this is all said and done.
Dunno about SWG or Vanguard subs, I do have a station pass though and I can tell you they all have serious issues. Vanguards parent company went bankrupt, SOE merged the servers from 12 to 4 and the game is hardly playable. (have fun falling through the world and dieing, taking an XP hit and losing your gear ON LOG IN) SWG ...NGE killed it, need I say more? It doesn't matter with those games in any event, they crashed,its over, the market moved on. L2 however, remains one of the key MMO's worldwide.
One of the issues is that NCSoft is accustom to huge profits. So when those profits begin to drop off because their big games are aging and up against a lot more competition then 4 or 5 years ago, all the chicken littles start running around crying the sky is falling. Meanwhile, in NA, NOTHING has done well but WoW and GW in the last decade. The western market is NOT making up for NC's loss due to aging powerhouses in Asia. NC will need to refocus on Asia if it plans on keeping its leading roll in the market. Its a wash in the west. (I think I wrote this same thing over a year ago right here in this L2 board
) Nothing has performed well and frankly the quality of western MMO games is pretty poor overall. For ever one well made western MMO, there are what...15 dogs? Its beyond the point of bad launches, the devs are giving up before they even get to launch. (G&H)
Seveth, I don't think you are a fanboi at all, anyone who denies that WoW is an excellent, well made game is delusional. Its impact on MMOs is undeniable. The problem with it is that it may have impacted the genre in the wrong way and that no fault of Blizzards. It did what NC wanted L2 to do, crossover to dual markets.
NCSoft is just going through a preassure patch thats all, all companies have them from time to time.
as for the TR costs its spent approx 7% of its yearly income in future investments, umm well this is not particularly high really just 7% on code and graphics that could be used as a base for there next series of games too.
Large Game companies dont write things for scratch every time, alot of the work is resusable on many titles for years to come.
If TR fails it just rattle a few people and it be business as usually with adjustements in there mid to long term plans.
All I care about is Aion and GW2....please dont take them away from us in america!!!!
I play all ghame
Did you know that Richard Garriot was the producer on Lineage in 1998?
He also produced City of Heroes, Lineage II, and was involved in managing City of Villians. He didn't just show up and suck NCSoft dry ROFL which is how this thread makes it sound.
In software development outside the game world, we have a name for RG does, it's called the project manager. They are the ones that stand on everyone's head and twist their foot to get a project done and make sure it's done right.
This makes them fairly unpopular if you are the one who's head they are standing on. They make the software happen. The developers just write the code. The producer makes them write it and tells them how things need to work. They design skill systems, game mechanics etc. The coders turn that into software.
Jake Song was the lead developer on the project. I'd lay money on the fact that Jake left because he knew that after TR was done, he may have to deal with him again and they didn't have the greatest working relationship. He probably just didn't like his style and figured he was above the nonsense.
I've been there myself...
If NCSoft survives on Lineage it will be because of RG, not in spite of him. Producers are supposed to "produce". They make things happen. RG is doing that. If he didn't produce lineage, it might not have ever seen the light of day...
-Viz
I tried the open beta and while the game isn't bad it's simply not worth a monthly fee. I think they would have been better off making the game a single player game and added some strong npc interaction and scripting to tell the games story. That's the major fault with the game as I see it. The design for the game and what it offers doesn't justify in my opinion a monthly fee. It's similar to Dungeons and Dragons Online in that it isn't a bad game but the design of the game doesn't show why a monthly fee is required and both would work better as single player games instead as a mmorpg.
There is simply no need to interact with anyone in TR. Not to mention the communication interface is just bad I feel.
$100 mil to make Tabula Rasa? Talk about overspending! And I thought Vanguard was bad....
I refuse to believe they spent 100 million dollars on a game that looks like it will be in the bargain bin in 1 month. That's insane.
If its true, this is a monumental failure. Its horrible for the genre, because this will scare other good companies away.
100 MILLION DOLLARS?!? What a moron!
If you are talking about the original design where it was more fantasy type then I too wandered why they switched. Ohwell, it seems that game isn't doing bad but I am not sure how long it will keep the player's attention.
~Greatness~
Currently Playing:
Nothing
Saying that Richard Garriot has done nothing for the Western market is wholly inaccurate and uninformed.
Richard Garriot has been one of the most influential video game developers of ALL TIME. He started making the Ultima games out of his garage and (with his brothers business sense) built himself a very successful studio and made a fortune along the way. His Ultima series has been credited by a large number of American video game developers as the inspiration for them to get into game programming and production. Lord British is an icon in the gaming community.
Richard shouldn't get all the credit for his success though. As is usually the case, he had a plethora of talent supporting him through most of his career, most notably his brother Robert, and Starr Long. And I only say most b/c the first few games he made he programmed solo,
A MUCH more accurate phrase would be "Rich and gang haven't done squat for the western market lately"
Any chance you can back this up with a link? Because I'm doubting this claim.....
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Any chance you can back this up with a link? Because I'm doubting this claim.....
It's actually true... And I think Lineage 2 aswell, but who knows I could be wrong.
This is just what I've heard and read somewhere too (Long time, cant find a link now...)
Any chance you can back this up with a link? Because I'm doubting this claim.....
It's actually true... And I think Lineage 2 aswell, but who knows I could be wrong.
This is just what I've heard and read somewhere too (Long time, cant find a link now...)
That was Robbert garriot, Richard Garriot's brother.
I really dont even try to get involved in the business side of game developers business or whatever. All i care about is good games, if they fold i'll just move over to the next company who puts out a good game. Besides its a waste of time to sit up and speculate about if a company is going to fold or not, it absolutely doesnt benefit consumers in no way to speculate, and im sure some people have more important things to do in there life besides making assumptions.
Alot of the speculation is irrelevant.
______________________________
Currently Playing: Tabula Rasa
Waiting to play: Aion
Games played: Lineage, Lineage 2, WoW, Guild Wars, City of Heroes, Archlord, Espa Grenada
______________________________
System Specs: Windows Vista Home Premium (x64)
AMD X2 5200 (OC-2.8ghz)
4gb Corsair XMS2 ddr2-800 mem.
Crossfire 2 x (ATI 2600xt HD)
Are you aware that at some point the Garriott brothers owned 6% of NcSoft (not NA, the whole company)--this number is in the Yahoo company profile. Whether they have sold this asset, or are still hanging onto it, I do not know. This is also what NcSoft may lose--not just the forty-plus million and six-seven years that it cost them to develop TWO TR games, but the hit when this stock or stock option is sold--if it hasn't already been sold.
NcSoft won't go under if worst comes to worst. It MIGHT get bought out by a "white knight" like SOE or EA. Wouldn't it be ironic if EA bought them out? You may not remember, but when Origin Systems was floundering and dying, EA rescued the brothers and made them rich.
Until you spread your wings, you have no idea how far you can walk.
A lot of people don't understand this but it is 100% true.
Imo the question now is, when WOW starts to die off, will these people move on to other MMOs or the next Blizzard title?
Yep Torak really nailed it with that comment and I couldn't agree more. WoW became popular before it was even concieved via Diablo/Diablo2 players. Blizzard knew theiur market...they knew it because they had all ready delivered two great games. The potential to tap into those battlenet players was all ready in place and Blizzard did was tap into their all ready huge market chunk.