News – Page 398 – MMO Fallout

Surprise! Asheron's Call 2 Is Back Online

Here is one headline that I never thought I would see. Asheron’s Call 2 is back from the dead. In a post on the Asheron’s Call forums, Turbine has announced that the game is freely accessible (in beta) to current subscribers of Asheron’s Call.

Asheron’s Call 2 has returned! We have opened up a new server for anyone who has an active Asheron’s Call subscription to play Asheron’s Call 2 for free! Although we would have loved to revisit some of our old characters with you, we were not able to bring over any of your old characters. We do, however, present this new Asheron’s Call 2 server, Dawnsong, to all active Asheron’s Call players with a paid subscription or who purchase an ACTD retail key and subscribe.

Asheron’s Call 2 released in 2002 and was met with a lack of interest by the fan base and outside customers. As a result, Asheron’s Call 2 became something of the sequel that never happened, and shut down in 2005 despite Asheron’s Call still running (and doing so quite healthy) to this day. The resurrection is likely to gauge possible interest in bringing the game back entirely.

(Source: Asheron’s Call Forums)

End of Nations Hasn't Been Cancelled, Trion Taking Over

Finally some good news. End of Nations has not had the greatest of times in recent months. Just a few days ago, we learned about major layoffs at the developer Petroglyph Games, coming just shortly after a prior announcement that the game’s open beta would be delayed until further notice to address some major issues facing the MMORTS. With delays and layoffs, it seemed like the persistent strategy game might never hit store shelves. The good news is that Trion is taking over End of Nations development from Petroglyph. In a post on the official forums, Myll Erik laid out the details:

As End of Nations was reaching the pre-launch phase in its lifecycle, we officially brought the game development in house to Trion Worlds and will complete the development internally. Our team has been hard at work implementing many changes based on your feedback from the beta events. Keep checking back for more updates as we are looking forward to showing off some of the cool new things the team has been working on.

Trion is hard at work addressing player concerns, from difficulty curve to a revamped user interface as well as optimizations across the board. Petroglyph is well known for their real time strategy games, including Star Wars: Empire At War.

(Source: Trion Forums)

Eve Online's PvP Has Stagnated, Says CCP

As we learned from Stephen Calendar many months ago, the MMO industry is one of test and react. So it stands that over the years, not every change or new feature to a game will be openly accepted by the community, or for that matter updates that are intended to improve gameplay may not always do so. In the case of Eve Online, the updates revolve around factional warfare changes implemented in the recent Inferno expansion. The goal of Inferno was to shake up the way that all players, new and experienced, fight.

Unfortunately, as CCP points out in their dev blog, this didn’t go as planned. Instead of focusing on content, players have been distracted by farming and cashing out alternative points, and a number of factors have come together and caused an inflation in the market. In order to alleviate player concerns, CCP is ready to implement a patch tomorrow that will take the focus off of farming LP and more on to the actual fights themselves.

You can find more in-depth patch notes at the link below.

(Source: Eve Online)

NCSoft Ignored Potential Buyers, Says Report

One of the luxuries of being a reporter is that I can always fall back on the ability to say “well it is a press release, so we have to give the benefit of the doubt.” The same way in which we automatically trust what comes out of a developer’s financial statements on the grounds that just because ENRON lied, doesn’t make all companies suspicious. But with NCSoft, even a simple notice on the Main page is suspect, thanks to the precedent set just a couple years back with the forging of Richard Garriot’s resignation. Sorry, fool me once shame on you.

So when NCSoft published the notice that all options had been exhausted when selling City of Heroes, the game’s fans were understandably suspicious. In a report over at Addicting Info, it appears that NCSoft may have been toying with what constitutes “all options.”

Within short order, two different investment groups (speaking while protected by anonymity) claimed that NCSoft had refused to even discuss a sale, and ignored any and all offers. A company which engages in this kind of behavior is not a good steward of its shareholders’ investment.

Only Addicting Info knows who these developers are, but if NCSoft did ignore even the idea of a sale, this news is just fuel on the growing fire that is NCSoft’s community relations following the surprise closure announcement. For now, however, the SaveCOH movement is not giving up hope.

(Source: Addicting Info)

SaveCOH Responds to NCSoft

Last week NCSoft published a press release to try and quiet the growing masses of angry City of Heroes players. Breaking their previous silence, NCSoft took to the stage to explain that attempts were made to sell the City of Heroes game, but we’re unsuccessful. And as you can see by the comments on our coverage alone, the community is having difficulty swallowing what NCSoft is trying to feed them.

In a press release by SaveCOH, the community presents several questions that they would like answered by NCSoft, including just what counts as “exhaustive efforts” in selling the game, and why potential buyers are reporting no response to their offers.

What attempts were made to sell the IP address, and how they were exhausted.
• Why a number of potential investors who came forward to try and buy the rights, did not receive a response of any kind from NC Soft.
• How NC exhausted all the option, given that the game is not due for closure until November 30, and the fact that there have only been only 32 business days since the announcement of the ‘sunset’ of the game.
• Why NC Soft did not consider combining servers, putting the game in maintenance mode and keeping it running without further developments or updates, or allowing people to create their own, private servers.
• They are calling on campaigners are also calling on NC Soft to publically name a price that they would be willing to accept for either Paragon Studios, or City of Heroes itself.
• And they want to know why a game that was running ‘well in the black’ and had seen an increase in players in the months leading up to the announcement is being closed down, while games such as Guild Wars which are running at a loss, are being kept alive.
• And why NC Soft failed to respond to an invitation from players to play the game with them, or a letter from best-selling author Mercedes Lackey to endorse NC Soft products, free of charge, for a period of five to ten years, for free, if they would be willing to work with players to keep the servers online.

Hopefully we will have more details in the near future. You can find the SaveCOH movement at http://www.cohtitan.com.

(Source: Press Release)

NCSoft Tried Selling City Of Heroes, No Buyers

It’s been over a month since NCSoft announced that City of Heroes would be shutting down, and since then the community has thrown virtually every theory out there as to why there hasn’t been any news from the talks with Paragon Studios. The question that lays on everyone’s mind is: If NCSoft isn’t willing to keep the game running, why didn’t they try selling the studio/game? As it turns out, they did try. In an announcement on the City of Heroes website, NCSoft offers a small bit of detail on what went down.

We’ve exhausted all options including the selling of the studio and the rights to the City of Heroes intellectual property, but in the end, efforts to do so were not successful. City of Heroes has a special place in all of our hearts, and we want to ensure its reputation and the memories we share for the game end on a high note.

So there is some kind of reassurance that NCSoft at least made an attempt to save City of Heroes. It may not be the answer that they want to hear, but it is an answer nonetheless.

(Source: City of Heroes)

Phantasy Star Universe Sunsets

For Western players, the Phantasy Star Universe has already been over. Originally launched in 2006, Sega first began the MMO’s eventual closure by shutting down the North American and European servers on the PC and Playstation 2 in March 2010. Following, PS2 support in Japan was discontinued in April 2011, and just this month we saw the closure of the Xbox360 servers. Well, yesterday the game has finally come to a close with the closure of Japan’s remaining Phantasy Star Universe servers.

Any remaining Guardian Cash for players will be refunded as Phantasy Star Online 2 credit or as Webmoney AC. The shut down was originally announced at the end of July, and for the last month of service, players were granted access to PSU’s premium course for free.

NCSoft's Sales Per Region, Per Quarter, Mapped

NCSoft2 — Click on me to enlarge. I look much better zoomed in.

I’ve mapped out the sales per region over the entirety of NCSoft’s financial statements, dating back to the first quarter of 2005. You’ll see that Korea makes up more of NCsoft’s sales generally than every other region combined, and occasionally even doubled. Sales in North America and Europe peaked in 2009 and have been on a steady decline since, with European sales you will see becoming virtually nothing in Q2 2012 (less than 1% of total sales for the quarter). Japan has its ups and downs but is on a general incline, and Taiwan has been relatively stable since its tracking began in 2007. Royalty sales are on an incline, with a few stumbles along the way.

NCSoft may be banking on Guild Wars 2 to save its sales in North America and Europe. Guild Wars sold millions of copies and did quite well in the West. Shutting down City of Heroes will cut NCSoft’s income by a small amount, small beans compared to the sales of Guild Wars 2.

Just a few notes:

Units are KRW in Mn.
Up until Q3 2008, royalties were included in Korean sales.
Taiwan was not listed until Q1 2007.
Up until around 2006, NCSoft changed its label “US” to “North America.” For the sake of continuity, N. America has been used for the entire list.

Black Prophecy Shutting Down In September

I find myself asking this question a lot: Why does everything I love die? Black Prophecy is easily one of Gamigo’s most impressive looking titles, not to mention a unique player in its own right. Launched last year, Black Prophecy is a sci-fi MMO similar to Eve Online but with a more action-oriented control scheme and a more traditional MMO quest system. It wasn’t perfect, but for many players left on their own after the cancellation of Jumpgate Evolution, it was something to call home.

Unfortunately, times have not been so great to the game or its developer. Back in February, we mentioned that Reakktor Media was insolvent and regardless of the quality of Black Prophecy, it wasn’t bringing in enough money to keep afloat. So it comes as terrible news that Black Prophecy will shut down on September 26th. Players will no longer be able to buy cash shop funds starting today.

(Source: Announcement)

Star Trek: Infinite Space Cancelled, No Publisher Found

Star Trek: Infinite Space was announced a couple of years back by Gameforge as a browser-based free to play title. Set in the Deep Space Nine sector of the Star Trek universe, Infinite Space had the consultation powers of Denise and Michael Okuda to make sure that the game stayed true to the series. Unfortunately, times have not been great for the German developer, as last year the company was hit with layoffs that saw 100 staff cut and the cancellation of Mythos and Hellbreed. No longer able to publish the game themselves, Gameforge paused the beta in an attempt to find a co-publisher.

Well it seems that the endeavor has not been met with success, and Games Industry has reported that the project has been cancelled.

“”Unfortunately, our efforts were not successful. So we have decided with a heavy heart to finally abandon the project Star Trek: Infinite Space. The discontinuation is very regrettable. “

(Source: Gamesindustry.biz)

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