NCSoft – Page 14 – MMO Fallout

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)

NCSoft Operating Profit Down 51% Over Last Quarter

NCSoft has released their financial statements for the third quarter of 2013 and the results are not so great. While sales dropped only 12% over last quarter, operating profit dipped 51% over the same period and pre-tax income similarly dropped 47%. Net income stands at a 23% drop over the previous quarter. In the report, NCSoft links the loss of profit due to the “lion’s share of Lineage in-game item sales in 3Q being carried over to 4Q.”

On the game side, Lineage saw a nearly 27% drop in sales over the last quarter, while Blade & Soul enjoyed 40% rise in sales attributed to the “Baek-chung” content pack recently released for the game. Sales for Lineage 2, Aion, and Guild Wars 2 all dropped over the previous quarter.

According to NCSoft, while labor costs remained flat, royalty and marketing expenses increased due to a license contract with the Baseball Players Association and the Wildstar marketing campaigns respectively. Other expenses included the relocation of the NCSoft headquarters, restoration of the Seoul offices, and office supplies.

(Source: NCSoft Corporate)

[Community] NCSoft’s Support Timeline

For this week’s Community Concerns, I decided to put together a graph of NCSoft’s library of MMOs, past and present. The above graph shows each game’s support timeline from the year it launched to the year that it shut down or to present if it is still running. Several of the titles may seem inaccurate as they are based on the Korean launch and may be a year or more ahead of their western launch, and at least one title has not launched in the west at all. I also decided to include Lineage as it is still in operation in Korea.

Keep in mind that Blade & Soul has not launched in the west and Lineage has shut down in the west.

[Community] NCSoft's Support Timeline

Keep in mind that Blade & Soul has not launched in the west and Lineage has shut down in the west.

Wildstar Announces PLEX System

Carbine Studios has finally announced the monetization system for their upcoming game Wildstar, and it’s looking a whole lot like Eve Online. Wildstar will institute a system called C.R.E.D.D, which stands for Certification of Research, Exploration, Destruction, and Development. C.R.E.D.D will sell for $19.99 in real life money and can be sold to other players and redeemed for one month of subscription time. The idea is to allow one group of players to play without paying a subscription fee, as the money they make in-game will essentially pay for the subscription itself. The other group of players are those who would otherwise buy gold from gold farmers.

The Commodities Exchange, where players will be trading their goods, will operate much like RuneScape’s Grand Exchange: Anonymously.

“The CX is unique in that when a player wants to buy a particular commodity, they will only be able to buy that commodity at the lowest currently offered price, with no awareness of who’s actually selling it. Once the stock of that commodity at that price is gone, players will then be able to buy from the available stock at the next lowest price.”

Wildstar is set for a 2014 release. You can read more about it at MMORPG.com’s coverage below.

(Source: MMORPG.com)

NCSoft Q2 2013 Finances

NCSoft has released their second quarter results for 2013, and the news as always is a combination of the good and the bad. Revenues grew thanks to a major spike in sales in Lineage. Sales in Lineage II and Blade & Soul remained mostly stable, while Guild Wars 2 sales dropped by 20%. Sales are up 4% over last quarter, with operating profit up 12%. Pre-tax income dropped 10% compared to last quarter, while net income is down by more than a third (35%). Aion is reportedly running strong in China, and Lineage is enjoying its highest sales ever thanks to a healthy population of players and strong in-game item promotions.

Korea increased its share of NCSoft’s resources and currently carries 67% of NCSoft’s sales per region, with sales in Japan (8%) and via royalties (7%) raising slightly. North America and Europe have continued their downward trend after the spike following the launch of Guild Wars 2, and now stand at approximately 10% and 7% respectively. Taiwan remains flat at slightly more than 1% of NCSoft’s market share.

MMOrning Shots: Wildstar Edition

Today’s MMOrning Shot comes from Wildstar, in development by Carbine Studios and published by NCSoft. The Chua, pictured above, are a hamster-like race with an “uncanny grasp of science and mechanical engineering.” In the world of Wildstar, the Chua were given the means to forward their industrial exercises and promptly destroyed the environment in their psychotic need for advancement. With their own world now devoid of resources, the Chua look toward the Nexus as a haven of exploitable land, ripe for the picking.

Wildstar is set for release later this year.

Aion Is Still Adding Classes

Holy cow, NCSoft, have you considered taking a vacation? Most MMOs are content with adding a new class in once every few years, assuming they do so at all, but Aion clearly isn’t most MMOs. Aion 4.0 brought with it two new classes, the gunslinger and songweaver, the first new classes introduced in four years. The upcoming 4.5 launch for Aion will introduce yet another class, the aethertech. Not debuting on the Korean test servers until July 29th, the Aethertech uses his fists to form a number of different weapons, and is a giant hulking mech.

What’s next for NCSoft and Aion? I’m thinking a Sharknado class.

(Source: Aion)

Guild Wars 2 Unlikely To See Expansions

Guild Wars 2 was originally envisioned to follow in the footsteps of Guild Wars: A buy to play game supported through microtransactions and through the sale of expansion packs. With production steadily increasing on the sequel’s ongoing living story, ArenaNet quickly changed its focus to providing world-changing content on a regular basis for its players. Nowadays, the Living Story has four teams rotating and keeping content churning out at a regular pace. As a result of the focus on the living story, the odds of an expansion are becoming slimmer according to Mark Zadorojny, Lead Content Designer at ArenaNet, talking to Eurogamer.

“It’s something that’s on the table but it’s not something we’re focused on, because what we want to do is – our idea here is that with Living World, we can do what expansions would have done but do it on a more regular basis.”

You can read the entirety of Eurogamer’s article down below, where ArenaNet assures us that the box sales and gem sales are more than enough to sustain Guild Wars 2.

(Source: Eurogamer)

Aion 4.0 Launches

Aion’s massive 4.0 update, Dark Betrayal, launched earlier today and promptly broke everyone’s client. Due to an unforeseen issue, the new Aion launcher was taken offline for several hours of extended maintenance today when it became apparent that critical client files had gone missing from the download, resulting in players receiving a corrupt version incapable of downloading the rest of the patch. Technical oversight, or viral marketing for Dark Betrayal? Today’s update brings with it, among other changes, the introduction of two new classes to Aion: The Gunslinger and Songweaver. Players are encouraged to create new characters to test the new classes out.

Also part of the update includes additional incentives for players to join the Asmodian side. The Asmodian faction has had a historical deficiency in population on several servers, so in order to entice players to even the sides, characters on said faction are able to obtain rewards simply for leveling up on those servers. Characters on the servers Tiamat, Siel, and Israphel are the target of this campaign, however the update does not give retroactively to players who have already leveled past the rewards.

Perhaps now is a good time to bring back Aion’s test server?

(Source: Aion)

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