NCSoft – Page 13 – MMO Fallout

NCSoft Lowering Hero Coin Costs

Lineage II’s Hero Coin program launched approximately three months ago to some heavy criticism over the outrageously expensive reward system. As players spend more NCoin, they receive Hero Coins that can be spent on items in the reward store. We began to question just how much NCSoft expects some of its players will spend, as Hero Coins reset annually and some of the rewards require spending in excess of thirty thousand dollars.

NCSoft announced on the Lineage II website that prices for most items are being dropped by at least 40%. In addition, NCSoft is running promotions to increase Hero Coin gains. The move is unlikely to quell criticism of the game selling rare and valuable equipment at expensive prices.

(Source: Lineage II)

Wildstar Preorders Begin

Carbine Studios has officially announced that Wildstar will launch on June 3rd, 2014. For those wishing to get in on the action early, preorders for the game will begin on March 19th, with early buyers receiving access to closed and open beta periods, three days of early access, an exclusive rocket house, a mini-ship house decoration, a ten slot storage bag, and the ability to reserve character and guild names prior to launch. Both a standard and collector’s edition of the game will be made available with the latter including exclusive items, titles, and costumes.

Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney says that the Carbine Studios team is “stoked to launch Wildstar,” adding:

“We’ve aimed for fun and unique content for MMO gamers of all stripes from level one to level cap and beyond. WildStar is a brand new IP and new universe that has attracted more than 1.4 million beta signups already, so it seems like other gamers are also eager for something new and different in the MMO space.”

Wildstar will be available for preorder in one week, at the official website or from select retailers.

(Source: Wildstar Press Release)

NCSoft Annual Revenue Chart

I’ve been meaning to create this for quite a while now, but I finally got around to compiling a chart for NCSoft’s yearly sales figures on a per-game basis. Looking at the chart on a yearly basis rather than quarterly makes the difference in income all the more obvious, especially when you see that Lineage alone makes more than Lineage II, Guild Wars 2, and Aion combined. Lineage is also NCSoft’s only game to provide a consistent and growing cash flow, with Blade & Soul’s progress too early to tell, especially since the game’s exceptional overseas performance is not reflected in the figures above.

Over the next few weeks, I will be working on expanding our charts from NCSoft, Perfect World Entertainment, Funcom, and more.

NCSoft Q4 2013 Looking Good Thanks To Blade & Soul

NCSoft has released their Q4 2013 finances, and things are looking up for the Korean developer. Following the company’s major dip in the previous quarter, sales have recovered by 24% and profits by 85%, with pre-tax income up a staggering 97% over last quarter. Total sales amounted to $197 million in the fourth quarter, with operating profit at over $54 million. Royalty revenues from Blade & Soul contributed heavily to this outcome, thanks to the game’s ongoing success in China. Lineage continued to grow in Korea despite being the oldest game in the library, with Guild Wars 2 holding strong in its associated territories.

As already stated, Lineage saw a large rise in sales. Guild Wars 2 and Lineage II also saw bumps in revenue, with Aion remaining on a slight decline from the last couple of quarters. While Blade & Soul’s direct revenue decreased over last quarter, this presumably does not factor in sales from royalties in territories where the game is selling quite well. Cost of labor and marketing decreased year over year thanks to layoffs and launches of Guild Wars 2 and Blade & Soul respectively.

(Source: NCSoft Finances)

Blade & Soul Expanding Again…To Japan

Prepare your expletive buttons, as they are about to get a workout. The good news is, Blade & Soul is once again expanding. Following the game’s massive success in China, NCSoft is following up on its 2011 announcement to bring the game overseas…to Japan. Sorry, westerners, but if you look to your right you will find several expired issues of Highlights magazine* with which to pass the time waiting. There is currently no ETA on when the Japanese servers will launch.

*magazine delivery not currently planned for North America, South America, Europe, and Oceanic regions.

(Source: MMO Culture)

Lineage II Top Reward Costs $200k Within A Year

As I always start these types of articles: If you are the type of person who is willing to spend five or six figures in a video game, why not take a little bit of that money and invest it in something more sensible, like MMO Fallout? Everyone wins. You get to keep spending insane amounts of cash on virtual goods, and we have more capability to tell you where you can spend a lot of money. Lineage II has revealed the hero coin program, allowing players to earn rewards for the simple act of spending their cash. The way the system works is simple: For every 80 NCoin you spend in Lineage II, you receive one Hero Coin that can be saved up and spent on items in the reward store.

Here’s where the deal gets controversial. First, Hero Coins only accumulate on the character that the item was redeemed on. Secondly, Hero Coins expire on the following January 1st of every year. There are items on the cash shop that translate into well over $30 thousand being spent on the game in a single year, with the most expensive item going over three hundred grand. You can laugh and, when you come to the realization that at least one person will hit that transaction mark, slowly dissolve into tears.

(Source: Lineage II)

Guild Wars 2 VIP Membership Discovered

Dataminers on Reddit unearthed the above information regarding a VIP membership for Guild Wars 2. Although no price is detailed, membership includes a bundle of extras, including bank and inventory space, convenient banking/trading, and more. There are at least 20 tiers, going by the VIP badges found in the Mists beta client. Mark Kerstein, Head of Global Community, commented on the forums to point out that the VIP member is an internal experiment and is not intended for western gamers.

This is a testing branch. We conduct internal experiments for various territories on our testing branches. This particular experiment is not being tested for the West.

Whether or not VIP will make it into Guild Wars 2 in any territory will have to be seen.

(Source: Reddit)

Blade & Soul Making Bank In China

Blade & Soul may not be coming westward for a while, but gamers in North America and Europe should be relieved to see that the game is performing exceptionally well in China. According to MMO Culture, not only is Blade & Soul on its way to surpassing two hundred servers, fifteen of which were added last week, the game has eighteen million active users. To top things off, the number of concurrent online users surpassed 1.8 million. To put that into perspective, if you took 1.8 million people, all of them would be playing Blade & Soul.

Look forward to Blade & Soul’s spike in revenue on NCSoft’s next quarterly report.

(Source: MMO Culture)

Lineage's 1.8 Billion Dollar, uh, Lineage

Lineage is NCSoft’s most successful title to date, launching in 1998 and still going strong fifteen years later in Korea and not in North America or Europe where the game was decidedly less popular. Still, Lineage has quite a following in Korea, Japan, China, and several other territories. With the game’s fifteen year anniversary a couple months behind it, NCSoft has revealed that Lineage has raked in $1.8 billion in sales. On second thought, that doesn’t sound impressive enough. Think of it as two trillion won, or ?2,000,000,000,000.

If South Korea celebrated Thanksgiving, I imagine the folks at NCSoft would be stuffing their turkey with money today.

(Source: Destructoid)

Lineage II's New Race Coming In 2014

The fact that Lineage II launched ten years ago is hardly a deterrent for NCSoft, who continue adding in new content of rather substantial value on a decent basis, and it isn’t all just new areas and bigger toys to thwack creatures over the heads with. Last year, Lineage II players had the pleasure of witnessing a true rarity from the massive publisher: Rather than shut the game down and execute the studio, NCSoft admitted that a few years of poor decisions had left the game in a bit of a messed up state, and then did what few other MMO developers would do, they asked for feedback on how to go about fixing those problems.

The Ertheia is the newest race to come to Lineage II and is preparing to hit North American servers sometime next year to coincide with Lineage II’s ten year anniversary events. Check out the teaser trailer at the link below.

(Source: Lineage II)

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