Worldwide launch of the mobile NCSoft title.
Tag: North America
Dragon’s Prophet Shutting Down In November
North American players will no longer have access to Dragon’s Prophet after November 16th, as Daybreak has announced that the service will be coming to an end. While the game will still be available in Europe and Asia, there are no plans to allow players to transfer their characters over to these other publishers. In the announcement, Daybreak thanked the community for their support.
We are extremely grateful to all the Dragon’s Prophet community members and appreciate the support we’ve received from each and every one of you. We plan to make additional seasonal content and items available during the final weeks of the game and hope you enjoy them.
If you look back at the past year or so, the signs of the demise of Dragon’s Prophet are likely written on the walls. Dragon’s Prophet was suspiciously left out of the Daybreak All Access pass, leading many to speculate that Daybreak would ultimately be parting ways with Runewaker.
(Source: Dragon’s Prophet)
Blade & Soul Hits Western Shores This Winter
Put down your torches and extinguish your pitchforks, because Blade & Soul is joining Fievel and going west. The long awaited MMO from NCSoft will go into closed beta this fall with a launch sometime during the winter. Players will be able to get their hands on six classes, four races, and a level cap of 45 at launch to go through the game’s first three acts (the Korean version is up to act 6).
Blade & Soul has been a bit of a mystery for the past few years, with NCSoft touting the game’s success and continued growth in its launch territories while refusing to give a hint on westward expansion. Today’s news should ease those pained hearts.
Gamers will be able to get their hands on Blade & Soul when it launches as a free to play game this winter.
(Source: MMORPG.com)
Black Desert Coming West In 2015
It isn’t so often that you hear about a release date being pushed up, but here it is. Black Desert, a rather anticipated MMO, will be hitting digital shelves in North America and Europe beginning in 2015. The western publisher will be Daum, generally a Korean publisher, who cited an inability to find a suitable western publisher as their reason for changing course.
The reason why Daum is bringing the game to Europe and North America prematurely is probably because of the increased hype and positive feedback from the western community. Daum is actually a Korean publisher, but they decided to expand to the west because they couldn’t find a suitable publisher in EU/NA for Black Desert.
Check back in 2015 for more information.
(Source: Black Desert)
Dungeon Fighter Online Shutting Down In North America
Dungeon Fighter Online launched in 2009 in North America and despite some complaints about issues with gold spam, it was actually a fun game to play. Despite the shortcomings of gold farmers and hackers, DFO was a solid side scrolling hack and slash game, one that probably deserved a much warmer reception than it apparently received. Sadly fortune does not always find us, and Dungeon Fighter Online never caught on with the kind of audience Nexon expected, and the developer has posted a notice on the official website that services will be coming to an end on June 13th. The ramping down will begin on April 11th with the closure of the game’s cash shop.
For more than three years, our teams worked hard in hopes of building a strong community through new content updates, service fixes, and events. We tirelessly battled hackers and farmers. We even had the honor of presenting the game to you at E3 and PAX. However, Dungeon Fighter Online was not able to grow beyond its very special and proud core following. Sadly, Dungeon Fighter Online has not attracted enough player interest to properly service the game. Internally, we struggled deeply with the popularity of DFO in North America as the title is immensely popular overseas. For more than three years, we went through many milestones and several pushes before we came to this very difficult decision.
Information regarding compensation will be coming on April 11th.
We will compensate the purchase of Permanent, Durational and Consumable items purchased within the past six months. The dollar value is correlated with the time of purchase. Please note that this compensation is non-transferable.
(Source: Dungeon Fighter Online)
Phantasy Star Online 2 Delayed In North America
Saying that Phantasy Star Online 2 has been delayed is a bit of a stretch, particularly considering that Sonic Team has never actually specified a release date. Regardless, PSO2 will not be making the early 2013 launch that Sega asked for for Christmas.
“Originally slated for an early 2013 launch, Sega can officially confirm that PS02 has been delayed,” a Sega spokesperson told Polygon. “We don’t have any specifics but will update everyone as soon as there are more details to share.”
Phantasy Star Online is set to hit Windows machines in North America and Europe at some point in 2013, with versions for the Android, iOS, and Playstation Vita coming sometime after. By contrast, the game has already launched in Japan as of last July on Windows and has already launched its Vita version just last February. Not that many PSO fans would have noticed, having already downloaded the Japanese client and applied one of the many English translation patches created by the community.
(Source: Polygon)
Wakfu Publishing Changing Hands In North America
New news, Wakfu players. As of March 1st, Square Enix will no longer be handling the publishing of Wakfu in North America. In an email to account holders sent out today, Ankama Games will be taking full responsibility of publishing in the region. The good news is you won’t have to do anything, unlike in most other transitions. If you have an account on Wakfu, you already have an Ankama account. Ankama Games is the developer and international publisher of Wakfu, meaning players will be dealing directly with the source instead of a third party publisher when it comes to game issues.
We’d like to reassure you that this decision was not made lightly, and that this process will not have any impact on the game itself, your characters and progress, or the delivery of new content; we will do our utmost to ensure that the transition will be as seamless as possible and without interruption of service.
This may be the easiest publisher transition in MMO history. Characters and accounts will make the transition with no input needed from the user, subscriptions that overlap the transition date will not be affected at all, and accounts will have the same amount of Ogrines as they did under Square Enix. There won’t even be any server downtime associated with the move (planned).
(Source: Wakfu News)
TERA Closer To Free To Play? En Mass Entertainment Shuffles Executives
With TERA going free to play in just about everywhere but North America, stateside fans are no doubt beginning to ask when their time is coming. The latest news from En Masse Entertainment was a post from Minea on the forums stating that TERA will remain subscription based in the United States. A definitive answer, one that sparked mixed reactions on the main forums with some players applauding the announcement and others not as satisfied.
With an announcement gone out today, En Masse Entertainment has revealed that Christopher Lee has been promoted to the position of Chief Executive Officer, replacing Dr. Jae Heon Yang who will step down and continue his role as an executive at En Masse Entertainment’s parent company Bluehole Studios. Mr. Lee was previously Vice President of publishing. Additionally, former Vice President of Nexon America Soo Min Park has been hired as Chief Operating Officer, replacing Patrick Wyatt who had left the company earlier in 2012 but still acts as an external adviser for the publisher. Halo Group Marketing Manager Bryan Koski has been hired to Director of Marketing while TERA Senior Producer Brian Knox will be promoted to Executive Officer.
What does this mean for TERA? Some might see the writing on the wall with hiring an ex-Nexon VP as Chief Operating Officer.
(Source: Games Industry International)
TERA Will Remain Subscription Based In US/EU
Update: Gee that was fast. TERA’s European community manager has posted on the forums to confirm that more details will be released of the EU free to play transition in January.
Please understand that it is too early right now to talk about this but we will have more information for you about the EU version in January.
(Source: TERA Europe)
Original Story: Hold your horses, people. If you’ve been paying attention to TERA’s operations in Korea, you already know that NHN successfully launched a free to play server. Initially just a separate server and originally implemented as a temporary experiment, KTERA has announced that beginning in January, all servers will be converted to free to play:
Starting 2013 Jan 10th, TERA will go free-to-play, and with this start, new contents and changes will occur in political system, raid system, and massive pvp, with alliance and alliance training center?, 10man raid sorcerer’s fortress, and 20man raid kelsaik’s holyplace? and battleground of fire?.
What does this mean for the west, where En Masse Entertainment merged down to three servers? Nothing. TERA’s Community Manager, Minea, posted on the forums to state that TERA will remain subscription based in North America and Europe.
Regardless of the news from Korea, the good news is that TERA will continue to grow and improve with new game contents in North America, and all contents will be available for us should we decide to evaluate their use.
Korea isn’t the only country to be taking TERA free to play. TERA in Japan will also be heading free to play. The details of Japan’s transition are a little unclear, due to some poor translation, but the move appears to begin today (December 26th) with a single server and eventually open up the entire game in February 2013. There is little doubt that TERA will eventually go free to play in North America and Europe, despite EME’s insistence to the contrary.
(Source: TERA)
NCSoft’s Sales Per Region, Per Quarter, Mapped
I’ve mapped out the sales per region over the entirety of NCSoft’s financial statements, dating back to the first quarter of 2005. You’ll see that Korea makes up more of NCsoft’s sales generally than every other region combined, and occasionally even doubled. Sales in North America and Europe peaked in 2009 and have been on a steady decline since, with European sales you will see becoming virtually nothing in Q2 2012 (less than 1% of total sales for the quarter). Japan has its ups and downs but is on a general incline, and Taiwan has been relatively stable since its tracking began in 2007. Royalty sales are on an incline, with a few stumbles along the way.
NCSoft may be banking on Guild Wars 2 to save its sales in North America and Europe. Guild Wars sold millions of copies and did quite well in the West. Shutting down City of Heroes will cut NCSoft’s income by a small amount, small beans compared to the sales of Guild Wars 2.
Just a few notes:
- Units are KRW in Mn.
- Up until Q3 2008, royalties were included in Korean sales.
- Taiwan was not listed until Q1 2007.
- Up until around 2006, NCSoft changed its label “US” to “North America.” For the sake of continuity, N. America has been used for the entire list.
MMO Fallout 