NCSoft just posted a notice that they will be holding interviews on May 31st from 9am to 7pm at Providence Biltmore. All applicants are welcome, especially 38 Studios (and presumably Big Huge Games) ex-employees.
Tag: NCSoft
NCSoft Q1 2012: Aion/Lineage Up, Lineage 2 Down
NCSoft has published their first quarter finances, and as always there is good news and bad news.
- Quarterly sales were up, although profits were down nearly 20% due to increased labor cost, royalty expenses, and other factors.
- Korea grew due with sound in-game item sales, while Japan dropped.
- Aion and Lineage performed strongly.
- Lineage 2 saw a notable loss in sales due to a “weakened user base,” according to the report.
- City of Heroes also dropped in sales, while Guild Wars saw an increase.
The data above is sourced from the official NCSoft earnings releases and is presented in a more digestible form.
Korean Supreme Court Finds Bluehole Innocent, Three Employees Guilty
Back when the internet was powered by Steam and everything cost a nickel NCSoft sued Bluehole Studios, a company made up of ex-Lineage III developers. There has been a bit of confusion with convictions being upheld while others were later appealed and overturned, and I hadn’t noticed that the case has made its way to the South Korean Supreme Court, who yesterday came out with their ruling.
Bluehole Studios has been found innocent of any charges of wrongdoing. However, three employees were convicted of leaking trade secrets and must both pay two billion won in restitution ($1.7 million USD, approximately). The story might be over for now for Bluehole Studios, but the three employees mentioned now face criminal charges for which sentencing will take place at a later date.
In January, NCSoft launched a lawsuit in the United States to keep TERA from releasing, and from the outside looking in this ruling does not bode well for a guilty verdict. While the case in Korea has successfully taken down those responsible for the theft, NCSoft has failed in their other objective: Shutting down TERA.
So those of you on the bench in regard to preordering TERA can probably breath a sigh of relief and grab those credit cards. TERA launches in just a few weeks.
(Source)
NCSoft Reactivating Aion Accounts
Aion free to play technically doesn’t launch until next week, but NCSoft has something all players can get into, past, present, and prospective. Starting today, inactive accounts that are in good standing will be reactivated and able to log on. When Aion Truly Free goes live, a new server Kahrun will be launched. While you cannot play on the server until it goes live, starting today players will be able to create characters and reserve names on the server.
To compensate current players with additional time on their accounts, NCSoft is crediting 40 NCcoins per day remaining on the account (or around 1200 coins for each month you had remaining). The credit may take several days to process, however.
(Source: Aion news)
City of Heroes Dropping Localization In France/Germany
Community Manager Andy Belford over at Paragon Studios would like to thank you all for the tremendous support of the European communities ever since City of Heroes went live, and subsequently free. That is, except for the French and German communities who have not “seen rapid growth” in the past. As a result, Paragon Studios has announced that starting immediately, City of Heroes will begin phasing out support for French and German communities.
Official support for the French and German clients will end when Issue 23 is released, and players will be required to use the English language version. The French and German servers (Vigilance and Zukunft) will not be closed down, however the content will be changed to English. In addition, all support tickets will still be answered in French or German.
(Source: City of Heroes website)
Guild Wars 2: Genius Method of Catching NDA Violators.
How do you stop someone from stealing your art and claiming it as their own? You watermark it, just enough so that it doesn’t get in the way of the actual image. How does a developer stop people from violating the non-disclosure agreement and posting screenshots of, say, Guild Wars 2 anonymously? Equal levels of watermarking.
Now, the above is not a screenshot from Guild Wars 2, as posting a screenshot of such feature from Guild Wars 2 even for proof of concept is what my lawyers refer to as “digging myself into a hole” that they will later “shoot and bury me in,” so instead I’m using an old April Fool’s teaser of the Guild Wars commando class. Click on the picture to enlarge it, and you can see my email address watermarked frequently enough that you couldn’t possibly crop a usable picture.
Obviously this doesn’t prevent people from posting their thoughts of the beta test without repercussion, but it does make it impossible to post screenshots without Arenanet taking action against the account.
Reminder to all closed beta players: you’re under NDA. Don’t risk breaking the NDA, you could permanently lose access to all ArenaNet games. ~RB2
Guild Wars 2: Legit Real Money Trading, "Convenience Items" In Cash Shop
In Guild Wars 2 we have three currencies: gold, karma, and gems. Gold is the common in-game currency. Karma, which players earn in-game but cannot trade, is used for unique rewards. And gems are the currency that’s bought and used to purchase microtransactions.
Mike O’Brien has gone on Arenanet’s blog to post about Guild Wars 2’s upcoming microtransaction system. In the post, Mike notes that while the content in the shop has not been finalized, the framework is in place to support it. Mike went on to state that the policy with Guild Wars 2 will be that any player who buys the game should be able to fully enjoy it without having to continue paying, and that players should never be allowed to pay for an advantage, and that the cash shop will be used to buy cosmetic items, convenience items, and account services.
One addition that might surprise Guild Wars 2 players is the legitimized Real Money Trading system, ala PLEX in Eve Online:
We have a new player-driven market that allows players to trade gold for gems and gems for gold. If you want something, whether it’s an in-game item or a microtransaction, you ultimately have two ways to get it: you can play to earn gold or you can use money to buy gems. We think that’s important, because it lets more players participate on a level playing field, whether they use their free time or their disposable income to do it.
The cash-for-gems system will provide Arenanet with a substantial potential revenue increase, as the system has worked for Eve Online with PLEX and World of Warcraft with the recent pet addition.
We have always taken our responsibility to players seriously with the original Guild Wars, and we will continue to do so with Guild Wars 2. We believe the foundation I’ve described here is the right foundation for us to build upon, and we look forward to sharing more details with you in the future as we nail down our microtransaction content..
(Source: Guild Wars 2 blog)
Guild Wars 2: Legit Real Money Trading, “Convenience Items” In Cash Shop
Mike O’Brien has gone on Arenanet’s blog to post about Guild Wars 2’s upcoming microtransaction system. In the post, Mike notes that while the content in the shop has not been finalized, the framework is in place to support it. Mike went on to state that the policy with Guild Wars 2 will be that any player who buys the game should be able to fully enjoy it without having to continue paying, and that players should never be allowed to pay for an advantage, and that the cash shop will be used to buy cosmetic items, convenience items, and account services.
One addition that might surprise Guild Wars 2 players is the legitimized Real Money Trading system, ala PLEX in Eve Online:
We have a new player-driven market that allows players to trade gold for gems and gems for gold. If you want something, whether it’s an in-game item or a microtransaction, you ultimately have two ways to get it: you can play to earn gold or you can use money to buy gems. We think that’s important, because it lets more players participate on a level playing field, whether they use their free time or their disposable income to do it.
The cash-for-gems system will provide Arenanet with a substantial potential revenue increase, as the system has worked for Eve Online with PLEX and World of Warcraft with the recent pet addition.
We have always taken our responsibility to players seriously with the original Guild Wars, and we will continue to do so with Guild Wars 2. We believe the foundation I’ve described here is the right foundation for us to build upon, and we look forward to sharing more details with you in the future as we nail down our microtransaction content..
(Source: Guild Wars 2 blog)
Guild Wars Dropping .05% Of Players, Old Windows OS
As a college student living off of what I can, I am sympathetic to the plight of people who cannot afford to buy a new computer. Unfortunately, the time comes in any game’s life where those who for one reason or another are unable to upgrade, are left behind, and generally developers ensure that this comes at a time when it affects as few customers as possible. After all, no one likes having a game they bought and probably invested in subscriptions or cash shop items stripped away from them.
For Guild Wars, Arenanet has announced that on June 14th, 2012, the game will no longer support Windows 95, 98, 98SE, and Millenium Edition. According to Stephane Lo Presti, this should impact less than .05% off the community.
Since the launch of Guild Wars in 2005 we’ve stayed locked into our original minimum system requirements. Unfortunately, the game has reached a point where this is preventing us from deploying important features.
For Wine users, whether or not Guild Wars will still function is up in the air as it is unsupported.
(Source: Guild Wars forums)
Yea, Well, The Old Republic Will Fail When…
You may not be aware of it, but here at MMO Fallout I have a very lax policy of commenting. I don’t require you register, or for that matter even fill out your username or email address (a good portion of the comments here are entirely anonymous). There are well over five hundred comments spanning 1,100 articles, and in the two and a half years since MMO Fallout was funded, I think I’ve had to delete one legitimate (not a spam bot) comment but only because the person was using a large amount of racial epithets. Still, there are a lot more comments about this website off site than on site.
I think it has something to do with not wanting to risk looking like a fool on the off chance that your premise is inaccurate and you are unable to edit the message, which is also why I receive more emails than I do comments. With The Old Republic, I managed to hit a nerve with a few people every time I referenced the game this past year as clearly “the biggest release of 2011.” First I was told to wait until I’d played the game. Truth be told, I started playing The Old Republic around the time the Electronics Entertainment Expo was still running, so I already had experience. Then the closed beta weekends started and those same people told me to wait until open beta for the game to flop.
Naturally, closed beta turned to head start and I was told to wait until launch, that was when the game would flop. Forget that, by this point, The Old Republic had already been referred to as the best selling preorder for Electronic Arts. Finally the game launched, and this is where those same people started sending me actual “proof,” in the form of empty guild channels. I was told to wait until the dreaded first month passed, and that is when I would see subscriber numbers drop off and the server mergers start.
Well now Bioware has stated that The Old Republic has sold two million copies and retained 1.7 million subscribers, most of whom are past the first month. No doubt the next step will be waiting for the initial three and six month subscribers to drop off, and then we’ll play it by expansion. Will The Old Republic grow or decline? I don’t know, I don’t claim to foresee Bioware’s production schedule to ensure players at end-game don’t get bored too quickly.
In other words: I’ve already talked about how Guild Wars 2 will be insanely profitable and popular, and some of the fans shouldn’t take good news for The Old Republic as a personal assault on their game of choice.
MMO Fallout 