Tag: NCSoft

Brilliant! Aion Performs Weekly Sweep of Block List


Don’t you get tired of blocking people who are harassing you, only to later wonder if it is safe to remove them from your list? What about gold farmer accounts, how can you be sure that they haven’t been banned? They could be waiting just around the corner to surprise you with cheap gold at fast delivery speeds and customer satisfaction guaranteed. And no one needs that after a long day at the Pottery Barn picking out new bed sheets. Luckily, NCSoft has just the idea: Periodically sweeping banned accounts from everyone’s ignore list.

Starting with tomorrow’s maintenance, every week we will be clearing players’ block lists of permanently banned accounts! This means that banned accounts–including RMT spammers!–will no longer take up space in your block list! We will continue to perform this function every week.

(Source: NCSoft)

Save COH Plays For Charity


The community of City of Heroes weren’t just virtual superheroes this weekend. A team of forty nine battle ready players took to the streets this weekend to fight crime (and cause it) in a 24 hour marathon for the name of freedom, honor, and charity. The marathon raised over $8,500 for Children’s Miracle Network Hospital, a facility that treats children regardless of their family’s ability to pay.

One participant, DrakeGrimm, had the following to say:

“It is events like this that make me honored to stand up and be a part of this community. We are heroes, and this is what we do.”

At the end of the marathon, players grouped together outside City Hall in Paragon City to raise their torches in support of the game and its community. City of Heroes is scheduled to shut down on November 30th, although the community has still not given up hope of saving the MMO. You can find the SaveCOH campaign here: http://www.savecoh.com/

(Source: Press Release)

NCSoft Opens Account Migration


As announced earlier this year, NCSoft has rolled out account migration for players of Aion and Lineage II, beginning today. The move will bring both games under one account, consolidating how the player handles their login, NCoin, and security. As mentioned in the release:

NC Accounts allow players to manage their Aion and L2 game accounts with a single email, which you will be able to change for added security–no more static account name! NC Accounts also share a wallet for NCoin, meaning that any NCoin you purchase can be used between your Aion and L2 accounts!

The migration is currently voluntary, but only temporarily. Following a grace period, users will be required to migrate their Aion and Lineage II accounts to NCsoft accounts in order to log in at all. Any unapplied items will not transfer over, so NCSoft recommends you apply them before making the move.

A small update, but an important one nonetheless.

(Source: NCSoft press release)

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)

NCSoft Admits Lineage II Faults, Wants Your Feedback


Lineage II has changed greatly since launch, and as Gon Namkung of NCSoft has admitted, not all of the changes have been for the better. In a letter to the community released today, Namkung admits that changes over the years have diluted what made Lineage II unique, from the removal of elements that made classes unique, to the unbalanced economy and weakened community. Attempts to fix the overabundance and imbalance in classes has resulted in classes that have lost their unique pull, and other classes that were no longer useful to groups.

So NCSoft wants to bring Lineage II back to its former glory, and they want you to help. While Korean players have already taken the poll, NCSoft wants to ensure that the two hemispheres are tailored for different tastes. Players are asked to take a poll asking them how they would like the classes to be diversified. The options to choose from are splitting the 8 Awakening classes into 34, adding race specific traits, and choosing 3rd class skills from 3rd class counterparts.

Each option is presented with its related pros and cons. Players can head over to the Lineage II forums (at the bottom of the page linked below) to vote.

(Source: NCSoft)

City of Heroes Details Reimbursement


Sorry, City Of Heroes players. NCSoft has finally broken their silence over the incoming shut down of City Of Heroes, and it wasn’t to announce that the talks with Paragon Studios and player support had moved them to change their minds. Rather, the publisher announced the expected round of compensation and reimbursement.

Players who were VIP as of September 1st will remain so for the rest of the MMO’s life. Outstanding balances as of September 1st will be reimbursed, as well as Paragon Points purchased after August 24th. If your outstanding balance was purchased with a game card, you will be required to submit a support ticket and have NCSoft call you to reimburse via wire transfer. If that is not possible, players will receive a check by mail.

There are several events planned to take City of Heroes to its sunset with a bang.

(source: NCSoft)

Guild Wars 2: Now On Mac!


Blah blah blah, no gamers on Mac, etc etc. With that out of the way, Arenanet has good news everyone! As of right now, Mac players will be able to download and play Guild Wars 2 on a native client. Currently in beta, the client supports all of the features that Guild Wars players enjoy on Windows. In order to download the client, players need an active Guild Wars 2 account, and the game can be downloaded through the account management section of the Guild Wars website.

The Mac Beta client is available immediately for all Guild Wars 2 players. It shares the same features and connects to the same live game servers as the PC client. Anyone who purchases Guild Wars 2 can now play it on both PC and Mac.

Check it out. Keep in mind that this is a beta client, and may have bugs that are not present in the Windows client. Guild Wars 2 on the Mac requires OSX 10.7 or later, Intel Core i5 or later, at least 4GB of ram, 25GB of hard drive space, and runs well on a variety of Mac computers from iMacs, Macbook Pros, and Mac Mini.

(Source: Guild Wars 2)

Night Cap: Save City of Heroes, Save NCSoft


Welcome to your night cap. If you pay attention to MMO news, odds are you already know that City of Heroes will be shutting down this November 30th. That is, of course, assuming NCSoft completely dismisses the overwhelming support given by the community and Paragon Studios to keep the game running. But for all intent and purpose, let’s assume the train is already halfway over the bridge, and the bridge is out. There is no turning back, the game is over. For the sake of this conversation.

NCSoft is growing its collection of disenfranchised customers. Auto Assault was shut down rather than humoring potential buyers, Dungeon Runners had a small but loyal community who also shot back at NCSoft when the MMO shut down. And I don’t think I have to point out the vile, and rather justified, hatred over the closure of Tabula Rasa and the fraudulent firing of Richard Garriot which left a $28 million hole in NCSoft’s pocket and a big dent in their revenue.

So assuming that talks break down and NCSoft refuses to change their minds, the end result can only be even more angry ex-customers. And where does NCSoft win in this equation? If City of Heroes was not drawing a profit, well the answer is obvious. But if the game was performing well as the players and Paragon Studios would like us to believe, then the benefits for NCSoft are rather foggy. Rather than making whatever profit was to be had from City of Heroes, apparently NCSoft would rather take no income at all. Then again, as NCSoft’s markets shift back over to Korea, and the Western hemisphere has shown little signs of interest in their import MMOs (Lineage, Aion), perhaps NCSoft doesn’t put much merit into what the North American and European markets think.

I have very little doubt that someone will open up a private server, so odds are people will still be enjoying City of Heroes, whether or not NCSoft sees a dime from it. Of course, MMO Fallout does not endorse the legally grey are of the internet that is the private server.

Good night.