Tag: NCSoft

Guild Wars 2: Genius Method of Catching NDA Violators.


Click to enlarge

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


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 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.

Aion: Truly Free Coming To North America


Last year, NCSoft announced the upcoming free to play transition of Aion…in Europe. In a rather unsurprising move, the developer announced today that North America will be following. Players will have access to all of the content in Aion free of charge, without restrictions on zones, housing, mounts, quests, etc. In addition, NCSoft promises robust cheat detection to ensure that bots won’t take a choke hold over the game.

As a head start, NCSoft will be launching a “Rallying the Troops” event, offering new players a chance to check out the game with no time limit, but a level cap of 40. Returning players will have the ability to have their accounts reactivated for 14 days in the run up to the launch of Truly Free.

Aion Truly Free hits this spring.

(Source: Aion Truly Free)

NCSoft Q4 Finances: Sales/Profit Down


NCSoft has posted their fourth quarter finances. Sales were hit with a 6% loss since the last quarter, with operating profit reportedly taking a 51% hit and net income down 42% since last quarter. NCSoft attributes the decline in sales and profits due to scaled back in-game item sales.

Year over year sales from 2011 compared to 2010 saw a similar drop in revenue by 7%, operating income by 24%, and income by 21%, due to what NCSoft refers to as a weakened user base, and an expansion in research and development. Labor costs increased 9%, marketing increased 25%, and variable expenses grew 7%.

You can see from the chart above that Lineage has continued its dip in sales, which NCSoft attributes to a lack of item sales in-game. Lineage II’s sales opened up somewhat, attributed in the release to “roust sales in Japan.” Aion saw a dip in sales of about 8%, as did Guild Wars (22%), and City of Heroes has shown a 22% increase in sales over Q3.

In terms of regional breakdown, Korea’s stake in NCSoft dived from 69% in Q3 to 60% in Q4. North America rose from 4% to 5% while Europe dipped from 3% to 2%. Japan almost doubled its share, from 12% to 21%, while Taiwan lowered its share from 3% down to 2%. Royalties increased to 10% from 8%.

City of Heroes and Lineage II went free to play recently, with Aion moving free to play in Europe.

(Source: NCSoft Finances)

Guild Wars 2 Opens Door For Non-Cosmetic Cash Shop


By now, I hope that I don’t have to lecture any of you on how important wording is in this industry. When Realtime Worlds said that they had no intention of shutting down All Points Bulletin, they didn’t factor in the results of their ongoing chapter 11 bankruptcy forcing the game to shut down. When Turbine stated that they had no intention of selling equipment with stats at the time, they technically spoke the truth. When Sony answered the free to play question by saying they would not alter existing player’s game, and launching a separate product, they were telling the truth.

Guild Wars Guru has noticed an alteration made to the Guild Wars wiki by user JohnSmith, who is a confirmed Arenanet employee. Previously, the article read:

Yes, micro-transactions will exist. These will be cosmetic additions which will not affect balance or gameplay, similar to the transactions offered by Guild Wars.

Now the article reads:

Yes, micro-transactions will exist. Be assured goods and items bought for cash in GW2 do not offer any advantage over those available in the game through the investment of time.

So the wording changes from only cosmetic items to not being more powerful than existing items. Now, this could simply be referring to Arenanet’s plan to include mission packs and transmutation stones in the cash shop, or the possibility of boosters, or it could open the door for selling equipment that is only as powerful as equipment found in-game. Martin Kerstein of Arenanet weighs in later in the thread.

As usual, everybody just needs to calm down a bit. This change was done to actually make the wording easier to understand – seems like that was not the case.

But the statement in it is still the same: Nothing you will be able to buy in the in-game store will give you an advantage over people who are not buying anything. That is the baseline.

So the outcome is that Arenanet, for now at least, is being vague on a familiar level to companies of the past. For now we’ll simply have to wait for clarification by Arenanet on an exact list of what will be sold in the Guild Wars 2 cash shop.

NCSoft Is Suing TERA Again


It’s been two years since I last talked about the lawsuit between NCSoft and TERA developer Bluehole Studio, so I think a recap is necessary. Many years ago, before Lineage III was known as Lineage Eternal and when NCSoft still had plans to develop the MMO on the Unreal 3 engine, several members of the Lineage III staff left to form their own developer, Bluehole Studio, developer of the MMO The Exiled Realm of Arborea. NCSoft sued Bluehole in Korea in 2006, claiming that the developer had stolen software and hardware, as well as art, to make TERA. Bluehole was convicted in Korea and convictions were upheld (for the most part). A civil complaint was filed in 2010 and overturned by the courts. However, as you are well aware, TERA continued its development and launched in Korea with a western release early this year.

As it turns out, NCSoft isn’t taking this US release sitting down. The publisher launched a lawsuit in New York today, with essentially the same charges of theft of physical and intellectual property.

“Their business plan was simple and audacious: create a competing product using the very work they had done while at NCsoft, launch it themselves to great fanfare and acclaim, and, in the process, deal a crippling blow to their former employer,”

NCSoft seeks an injunction barring TERA from releasing in the United States, as well as enhanced damages for Bluehole’s misconduct. Appeals of the criminal and civil cases in Korea are still ongoing.