Tag: NCSoft

NCSoft Q2 2013 Finances


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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


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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


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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


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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


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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)

Tabula Rasa Revival Petition


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By the time it shut down, Tabula Rasa had a small but very dedicated community, and when NCSoft did announce that the servers would be coming down fans were enraged twofold. First for the simple fact that the game had launched in a rather poor state and the fan perception that NCSoft didn’t do a whole lot to save the title, and secondly when Richard Garriot sued the publisher (and won) for $32 million alleging that NCSoft fired Garriot, forging his letter of resignation to defraud him of stock options, and did all of this while he was in decontamination in Russia following his trip into space.

Much like our friends over at City of Heroes, the Tabula Rasa fans are yet another group of embittered fans who once called themselves NCSoft’s customers, and they are not going to let a game they enjoy go down with a whimper. A petition on gopetition.com is asking for ten thousand signatures to send over to NCSoft to bring back Tabula Rasa.

The petition is a nice touch, but we don’t see the endeavor going far. After all, we are talking about NCSoft, a company not known for its willingness to change course once the shutdown notice is given, and one which apparently would rather see its games rot in a digital warehouse than sell it off to a willing buyer. Second, the petition seems to assume that Richard Garriot was part of the game shutting down, which couldn’t be further from the truth. That being said, Garriot and NCSoft did not exactly part on a good note (see the above lawsuit), so any chance of the two getting together to revive Tabula Rasa is most likely slim.

There’s something to be said about horses and turnips here, but for the life of me I don’t know what it is.

(Source: Gopetition)

Guild Wars Is In Maintenance Mode


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I think most of us got the hint that this was coming around the time that NCSoft stopped listing Guild Wars on their quarterly financial releases. With the rousing success of Guild Wars 2 and the ever advancing age of Guild Wars, Arenanet has posted today to reveal that their ongoing updates to Guild Wars have had a secondary purpose: To teach the game to run itself. With Arenanet’s views moving elsewhere, Guild Wars is being updated to run on automation, or maintenance mode as many of you know it. The game will no longer be updated, except to better service the automation.

So what does this mean for players? Foremost, handing out trims at tournaments and the map rotation of the tournaments themselves will be completely automated. Weekend events will be extended to full week events and run on automated rotations as well. Basically everything that used to require the hand of Arenanet to start will be fully automated. The goal is to get Guild Wars to a point where it can operate mostly by itself, allowing the game to run in maintenance mode for “years to come.”

(Source: Guild Wars)

 

NCSoft Q1 2013 Finances


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(I apologize for the outdated screenshot. I will update with a graph once I’m in front of a real computer.)

NCSoft has released their first quarterly report for 2013, and I’m sure we are all wondering how Guild Wars 2 will perform following the initial rush, so let’s dive in. Sales remained strong in 2013 thanks to Guild Wars 2, Aion, and Lineage. Profit is understandably down since last quarter’s launch of Guild Wars 2, however NCSoft’s year over year figures are amazing: 31% higher sales, 348% increased profits, 256% pre-tax income, and 322% net income over Q1 2012.

Lineage 1 continues to be NCSoft’s big seller, consisting of 38% of the total game sales in Q1, with Guild Wars 2 at 21% and Aion at 16%. Aion and Lineage saw an increase in sales quarter over quarter while Lineage II, Guild Wars, and Blade & Soul saw a mild to heavy loss. NCSoft as a parent company has thankfully recovered from being in the red last quarter for pre-tax income and net income.

Korea remains NCSoft’s largest market at 64%, with North America and Europe dropping by about half to 13% and 8% respectively, Japan’s 7% percentage share remained the same even though sales dropped. Sales in Taiwan increased slightly, remaining at 1%. Royalties dropped about one third in total, remaining at the 6% percentage value from the last quarter.

As usual, Guild Wars is bundled in with the “other” and is not represented by its own category. For legal reasons, I must remind you that these results are un-audited and may be subject to change during the auditing process.

MMOrning Shots: Everyday Low Prices


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Auto Assault shut down nearly six years ago, so Walmart was kind enough to discount it to $29.88. This shot was taken 4/11/13.

MMOrning Shots is a (somewhat) daily line of screenshots from various MMOs. Most are taken in-house or come to us in press releases, but if you would like your screenshot featured, send it over to contact[at]mmofallout[dot]com with the subject “MMorning Shots.”