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would you trust ncsoft enough to buy aion given they ve closed down tabula rasa so soon ?
googajoob7
Member Posts: 866
the problem for ncsoft now is why trust them to invest in buying and subscribing to something like aion . they ve proven twice its not worth the time and effort of leveling characters in one of thier mmos . i ve only tried tabula rasa now because i got it cheap and am playing out the first month . i would nt say its the best mmo but neither is it the worst . what i cant understand is why give your company such a bad name by shutting down something this quickly .( vanguards still going even if its not that popular at least that shows soe has some respect for its user base ) .
my personal view is they should have tried a different payment model , used in game advertising or added it as part of a package with one of their other mmos . or even sold it on to another company to continue it . shutting it down is the worst thing they could have done .
Comments
I think alot of folks will wait and see what gets posted here after what Funcom did and is still trying to do to keep subscriptions ive learned my lesson.
MAGA
I was going to write up the pros and cons of TR from an outsider's prospective, but its just a waste of time.
I think it took balls for NCsoft to come out and announce the end of TR. Its more honest than leaving it to painfully die while continue to profit from box sales.
And hey, its not like NCsoft is SoE =P
/salt
They do not continue to profit from box sales. They profit from digital downloads. The boxes were sold to retailers last year. NCSoft already got their money for those.
yes i will still be playing aion. while its true that some publishing companies are pretty crappy, that shouldnt effect the gameplay at all.
Tabula Rasa was a terrible game its concept was changed multiple times, its project was started multiple times costing NCSoft millions which they were never able to gain back. They're essentially bleeding money by leaving Tabula Rasa run, its not the first time they've cut losses that are justified by the state of the game.
NCSoft has alot of other rather popular but still niche games that have never suffered the weakness that TR has ... Aion is oddly enough going to be one of these games. I'm not saying people should rush out and buy it but they certaintly shouldn't judge Aion by what happened to Tabula Rasa. NCSoft is the publisher and server host but the games themselves are made by entirely seperate production houses. Needless to say the people who made TR are out of a job or severely hurt in reputation right now.
Shutting it down was exactly what was needed. The game was a disaster as an MMO as the 28k still playing at the end of last quarter proved. The game was operating at a loss every month. If they scaled back to turn a profit no new development would happen anyway. The game is a three month game tops if you do not play a bunch of alts and with the cloning they took most of the alt play out anyway.
Vanguard is better than TR and has a larger population. SOE avoided the big initial investment and most likely turns a profit monthly with their way of doing development. Not saying their way is good or bad, but they are most likely not losing money like TR was.
NCSoft shutting TR does not make me trust them less. I have no interest in Aion anyway, but I am waiting to see GW 2 when it comes out.
In game advertising? To who? Advertising is not going up as the economy goes down, why would a company pay to advertise to 28k people? I can yell out a window at my house and reach that many people almost. If they go free to play with an item shop they have to develop the entire shop and put it in place for a game they know was on life support since release. Keeping it alive in any other state be that selling it off or packaging with another game would have meant much less development. In the last year they barely added anything content wise as it is, the game was almost out of players and I doubt it was going to become profitable no matter what they did at this point.
I'm comfortable with the decision even if I do like Tabula Rasa ( I was obsessed with that name for a while) I still feel they did what they could and the MMO didn't show any signs of keeping or regaining any of its userbase so they chose to shut it down and since General British decided to leave they thought it would not be worth keeping it any longer. Its a bold decision and i actually regret missing out on the freebies which unfortunately were given in a month that i was packed full of work and didn't have time for games.
This is not a game.
Tabula Rasa was a terrible game its concept was changed multiple times, its project was started multiple times costing NCSoft millions which they were never able to gain back. They're essentially bleeding money by leaving Tabula Rasa run, its not the first time they've cut losses that are justified by the state of the game.
NcSoft went into their deal with the Garriotts with good faith on the part of NcSoft. They expected competence, talent and effort and were disappointed every step of the way. .
People should keep in mind that NcSoft also must listen to their stockholders. Would you buy NcSoft stock if the company continued to pour money down the TR rathole?
Aion was developed by developers, not by a egomaniac whose star power has come and gone. Lineage and COH and of course GW are successful. I think NcSoft is a good company, has been treated badly by a a selfish American drama queen, and deserves a break.
LOL just because you dont like the game does not mean "it took balls, or thats what was needed" blah blah blah.
Ncsoft is hurting for money right now so if you think the next MMO they put out will last more than one year lol good luck. Any one else I would say go for it. Not Ncsoft.. Just wait for 2+ months see how many servers they got going. If its 5 or less the game will not last.
One Major problem people have with the way the TR announcment was handled was that even after they made the descision quietly to close down the game they continued to HYPE the game in every conceivable fashion.
Everywhere you look they are still trying to get people to buy the game. Yes I know some would say they are just trying to recoup losses. Thats B.S. They can just write it off. Take the game off the market if your going to close it down PLAIN and SIMPLE.
I doubt that it is the worst thing that they could have done.
As to whether or not someone can trust NCSoft? Well I would sooner trust them over a company that would sit there and convince players to continue paying subscription fees while they kept turning the game inside out and upside down. Although it's been a few years since I last played, LineageII seems to continue going on strong and I haven't heard anything about them shutting down the servers for Guild Wars (though they might come GW2) nor COH/COX. Aion looks to be more traditional with a couple of new features and as to whether or not that game lasts 6 mos or years upon years, is entirely up to the subscribers.
Obviously they could have pulled the same bs that some other companies have done; Bundling it and making a package monthly sub for all their games etc etc, open up NCSoft controlled item malls etc, but why? That would cause far more harm to their reputation than the admittance of a failure and pulling the plug. Rather than taking resources from games that are still profitable they are cutting their losses and prepping for the next thing. To me, it seems they are far more honest than other companies out there so yes, I trust them more now than I ever would have had they gone the _ _ _ route (you fill in the three letters yourself )
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Honestly I believe that it was more like:
We'll run some promotions and if subs going up to a certain level we'll continue. If they don't then we'll shut the game down.
I went back for the "free comback" but I honestly couldn't see any reason to stay. I'm going to assume that before this promotion subs were at a level they weren't willing to keep the game running at. So I'll also assume most people that even bothered to re-install probably felt like I did.
It was a shame becuase imho that game had more potential than anything that has come out in a long time. The foundation of the game was very solid and the combat was some of the most fun I've had.
You just kinda need to build a game around that.. and imho TR wasn't much of a game beyond the first areas.
Aion.. I will wait for it to launch and see what I hear... I've honestly entered a phase with MMO's I never thought I could be in before.
That's where instead of wanting to beta test games just to be part of the process (I've beta'd most of them). I now want to beta (to be part of the process) but to also see if the game is worth it.
So for me its not even an NCSoft issue... its the fact that so much trash has come out I am flushing money down the toilet basicly. My GF wants to try new MMO's with me.. so on average we are out a minimum of 100 bux (usually more) to play a game for 3 days.. cancel and uninstall.
That's more of the issue for me with Aion or any MMO currently.
What? NCSoft is not hurting for money. They put out quality products and the ones that aren't, they stop wasting their money and their customers money and shut them down (sound busniess sense there).
NCSoft is the 2nd largest MMO provider out there (probably the biggest). Lineage and Lineage 2 are still going strong, even tho Lineage never took hold in the West and Lineage 2 has started to run its course in the Western market, but both are still strong in the Asian markets.
Aion is not going to be a cheap "lets get it out the door quick" product. They have a lot invested into this one -- even moreso than TR. Everyone is banking on Darkfall to be a hit, but, seriously, its chances of that happening are the same for a cow to starting pumping out gold milk.
{ Mod Edit }
I am guessing you do not bother to research your subject before posting. NCSoft is down 50% in profits this year from last year. If you think that is a good thing you obviously do not understand business or profit. They put out TR which was not ready for release and was not a quality product. It cost them $74 million before release alone. Not to mention what was paid to the Garriots that was not part of TRs costs.
They invested way too much in TR and it cost them dearly. Aion needs to be a big hit or NCSoft could be in serious trouble. Or did you think the closing of offices and consolidating was a sign of good times for the company?
To be fair and accurate NCSoft has seen a total increase in NET income. The problem has been that since 2004 their bottom line has been flat. Internal costs and other red line items have killed its profit margin.
Some of the worst were:
Income (Loss) on Equity Investments
Gain (Loss) on Sale of Assets
Minority Interest in Earnings
Other Unusual Items
So your theory here is that a publishing company that cancels a product that is not profitable is a crappy company.
NCSoft gave the TR (and AA) developers a year to make their games profitable. They were not up to the task. That's not NCSoft's fault. I certainly don't blame them for cutting their loses by canceling failed products.
I don't trust NCSoft. They could have at least kept one or two servers running for both AA & Tabula Rasa. Now the assets to these games just collect virtual dust on some backup server deep within the bowls of NCSoft. What a waste and such a shame.
Aion will be alot better than Tabula Rasa was so yeah I still trust NCSoft. Also Guild Wars 2 is coming and that will be the best mmo when released
I think there is nothing but good things headed for NCSoft. Sometimes you have to take a step backwards in order to go forward 
TR was never going to make back the initial investment. Keeping a server open would still have cost them money. Why would people continue to pay to play TR if no more development was going to happen? How long would that one server have any population?
Hell no I wouldn't trust them. I've been a big NCsoft fan for years, played both Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa, and they continued to lie to us until the formal announcement of the closing of both games. Lineage II is a grind/botfest, and CoX is finally seeing some serious competition - it's never even had competition before - by DC and its own developer no less. The only coup de grace NCsoft can hold onto is Guild Wars, but we haven't heard a peep about Guild Wars 2. And what about Aion? I don't believe these "East meets West" designs for a second - has everyone already forgotten the Last Remnant and Infinte Undiscovery for Xbox? They just came out and are pretty average at best.
i remember when there was a lot of buzz about tb . ncsoft failed to live upto the hype there . i still dont think aion will attract enought players to be any more than a niche game at best . look at the reality of the game its interesting but its not something that ll attact a huge number of players and with tabula rasa being closed so soon . it does nt offer any reason to invest money in a niche game produced by a company willing to do this .
guild wars 2 is a different matter given its free of monthly fees .
hmmm why not offer tabula rasa as an incentive free mmo with that ???
i think there must be some amazingly blinkerd folks at ncsoft . who rather shoot a lame horse than put it out to stud .
such companys deserve to fail .
I trust them fully, they have great games, Guild wars Exteel, City of Heroes, All great games, all up and running. Sure they got rid of the weakest link but that does not bother me at all hell I think TB honestly should have gone down sooner, would have cost NCsoft less money in the long run.
I agree in trusting NCSoft. While I did love the gameplay of TR, between what seemed like a disorganized dev team and a leader who wanted to play Space Cowboy with others' money rather than be responsible for a game he gave his name, the game didn't have a chance. The same as AoC, the game peetered out after the first few areas. Once you got past Divide and Palisades, it became the same old MMO grindage.
NCSoft is reorganizing to support the team that gives them the best chance of success: ANet. GW is still showing success after 3 years up, despite being instanced and offering no major new content for a year. Most of the North American positions have former Anet staff running them. After Aion is released, I believe you will see the vids, screens and full-court press for GW2. Besides, Lineage 2 is still making them money, as is CoX.
Unlike Sony, which hates to admit failure, and will try to squeeze blood out of a stone, NCSoft knows when a game is failing and cuts its losses. That's how you stay in business.
Nope, they're being wiped off the hard drives so the servers can be used for a REAL game.
yes i trust them i think that the tabula rasa closure is the last time a ncsoft game will close so soon as they have learned from their mistakes and will not blinding follow the developers. im playing aion