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[Column] General: NCSoft Quarter 2 Analysis - Lineage Still Going Strong
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The second quarter revenue reports for NCSoft have come in a few weeks early, and the results are pretty much positive across the board. I know this is the part where I'd normally add "unless you play Wildstar," but I'm not going to do that this month. Given the figures presented in this quarter's report, I'm going to guess there aren't a whole lot of people left that such a message would actually apply to. So instead, I'll say that it's positive across the board unless you work on Wildstar.
Read more of Connor Wack's NCSoft's Q2 Financials - Lineage Still Going Strong.
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Hm, I'm curious about Blade and Soul a bit, as it's one of the titles I'm rather excited to see coming to the West. Perhaps the numbers are a small indication that long term viability is lacking somewhat (I believe that's the issue with GW2 as well). I'll probably still play it anyway to be honest...F2P and all...
And good job on bashing Wildstar. I know they replaced half the studio already anyway (or "people resigned" lol), but it has been a huge crash and burn story. Worst devs in the history of devs.
Wildstar is taking way to long to move on to F2P. I love the game, but I don't like playing an MMO were it feels deserted during most of my game time. The F2P transition should have been either quickly decided on or scraped. The loss of so populations is what makes it hard for me to re-sub, hopefully F2P will bring some folks back.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
i wouldnt be surprise if they decide to close WS before it goes F2p- but iam sure they are just being compliant to the people who spent 30.00 when game was released and staying open for a 2year max.
for the record i love WS. and hoping i get proved wrong!
yeah this would be great news!
Wildstar has the same 10 year feeling too.
Lineage 1 has always been NCSoft's biggest income game and I don't see it going down anytime soon. I imagine they would shut down half of their other games before L1 goes away anytime soon.
Lineage 2 and Guild Wars 2 were the only other games that appealed to me. Problem is Lineage 2 is younger than Lineage 1 and it's doing very poorly in the market.
Out of all of their titles Wildstar is the one I hated the most followed by Blade & Soul; and yes I played it on the Korean servers as well as the Russian one.
The answer is simple: Lineage 1 is much more balanced and competitive (in terms of pvp) than L2. L2 has been messed up a lot through the years without solving any balancing problem and yet excluding a lot of players from the pvp, destroying a lot of content, crafting, etc...
In L1 for example if you are 10 levels lower you can still be useful in a siege, something that can't happen in L2 anymore.
Finally some good financial MMO news. Most MMO companies seems to just give us bad news like cancelled games and similar.
Too bad there only are 2 Western studios in NC soft and that Carbine is doing so badly. We actually need a Western publisher that believes in MMOs as much as NC soft or soon will all MMO developers beside the indie games belong to NC soft or PWI with very few exceptions (like Square enix).
Well. Lineage is 5 years older than Wow so it honestly is a miracle that it gains players.
Lineage is Koreas Wow, the game that opened up MMOs to the regular gamers and not just a niche market. I beta tested the western version myself in 2001, it did have some charm back then (I kinda felt that it was something in between Diablo and Meridian 59 at the time but my MMO refferences back then were pretty limited).
Sequels that perform worse than the original is not that uncommon anyways, Asherons call is another MMO IP with the same thing.
It will be interesting to see how L3 will do.
Curious if this (in my opinion) horribly unappealing expansion will revive GW2.
Revenue-wise, the game is currently dead in the water. That desperate pre-purchase action didn't really change anything about it.
Although, come to think about it... without it, that yellow downwards slope could have been even worse, I guess.
Why would you HOPE a game you dont play shuts down? If you weren't an asshole, you would be hoping it improves with its F2P transition.
I have played wildstar since launch, and our guild is one of many guilds enjoying the sheer chaos of hardcore raids. - It's not for everyone, but why would you wish to end that for people?
An I won't even start on the whole Wow-Clone rubbish, only someone who never played it would say that. Comparitivly across every MMO ever made, Wildstar is the LEAST like WoW I've ever played and I played almost all of them. It was made by some of the original producers of wow and they said they wanted to move as far away from it as possible.
Pre-purchases aren't included in earning reports until product release.
$20M/quarter is $80M/year or more than a game like EVE ever did on yearly base.
GW2 revenue is at the same levels of 2Q14.
So it is not a question of reviving but boosting the revenue.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Are you sure about that, i would have thought that financial reports had to include all earnings regardless of source ?
That's because you probably were low level or not having access to the last zone, i.e. Tanaan. Since first expansion launched, WoW's newer content always made the older zones depopulated, because there's almost nothing there to do (besides achievements/pets) and only the last content offers ways for character progression.
Hell, for a player that properly progressed through WoD like I did, by now the only way for character progression is the last raid, Hellfire Citadel, Mythic difficulty. All the other stuff in the game offers me nothing, and I have to admit it's just boring and lame.
Arenanet and NCSOFT started GW2 pre-purchases in April 2012. Those pre-purchase revenues were only reported during the 3Q12.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Yep. And I tell my friends too when they ask about new games. "NCSoft kills games". Que the old saw, "They made their bed, now they can lie in it."
When they move outside of their home base in Korea, NCSoft doesn't perform nearly as well.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
I'm looking forward to trying W* f2p,but how on earth can you turn this ship around?
Sad story.Such a good game being almost wasted.
And now,run Forest,run!
The focus of the game is end game raiding just like WoW and 90% of the game world and what's in it becomes useless once you hit max level unless you enjoy crafting.
I'm currently playing but get the feeling that FTP won't help the game out financially and they'll close the doors b/c it's what NCSoft does when they aren't making enough $$$. CoH went rogue/FTP before it shut down so they are probably seeing if they can milk it for as much as possible before they do what they do.