Author Topic: NCSoft Stockwatch  (Read 714401 times)

Victoria Victrix

  • Team Wildcard
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,886
  • If you don't try, you have failed.
    • Mercedes Lackey
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #740 on: December 10, 2012, 12:44:03 AM »


While we all loved the game, do we really know for certain that it was in fact making money and not some fancy financial account involved?



What we have is a logical extension of previous behavior.

In the shutdowns of Exteel, Dungeon Runners, Auto Assault, and especially Tabula Rasa, NCSoft loudly proclaimed that they not only were not making any money, they were losing money.  With CoH there has not been a single word along those lines.  Which suggests that they were at least breaking even, or making a modest profit.
I will go down with this ship.  I won't put my hands up in surrender.  There will be no white flag above my door.  I'm in love, and always will be.  Dido

Kistulot

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 540
  • Argentum Weritas Est!
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #741 on: December 10, 2012, 12:50:35 AM »
With CoH there has not been a single word along those lines.  Which suggests that they were at least breaking even, or making a modest profit.

And with this previous history, I imagine Paragon Studios would have been far more paranoid about their jobs than they EVER showed themselves to be.
Woo! - Argent Girl

Blue Pulsar

  • Boss
  • ****
  • Posts: 213
  • Epic Mediocrity
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #742 on: December 10, 2012, 07:36:11 AM »
...
While we all loved the game, do we really know for certain that it was in fact making money and not some fancy financial account involved?

I mean, NCSofts behavior  as it relates to the CoX decisions, is exactly in line with the behavior of a company that is trying to cover up something.

As others have said, they closed down other games and gave reasons openly as to why. Among those reasons was the lack of income. I have heard it stated here many times that CoX was one of it's most profitable ventures inside North America. It would be out of their norm to close down a game because it was not making money and not admit it.
Blue Pulsar - 50 nrg/kin def - first toon - Liberty
Bane of Lanur - 52 nec/dark MM - Main vill - Liberty
Destan H. - 53 SS/FA brute - Farm/PvP hybrid - Freedom
Destan's Fury - 53 StJ/Regen brute - PvPer - Freedom
Destan's Shadow Gang - 53 Thug/Dark MM - PvPer - Freedom

Segev

  • Plan Z: Interim Producer
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 2,573
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #743 on: December 10, 2012, 05:01:26 PM »
Especially since most of us would probably have nodded sadly but understood if it had been announced (and verified) that it was "not making money."

The outrage here is not over just the closure. The outrage is over its inexplicability and the refusal to make any effort to help the fans save their game. While there will always be people who rage that water is wet and that they people can't flap their arms hard enough to fly and carry the ragers with them, most of us are not that unreasonable. If it was truly a problem of the game just losing money, the volume and organization of our efforts would be deflated by the fact that we are, in the end, reasonable people who simply want to be treated reasonably.

Colette

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 466
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #744 on: December 10, 2012, 05:41:24 PM »
"Unless Colette has something that ties him to Enron, it's simple guilt by association."

Yes, as I conceded earlier. Nevertheless, involvement with Arthur Anderson is worth noting.

I have a question for the technically minded among us.

Assuming no development staff and no future updates, a single server with tech staff, (I've heard this called "life support mode") what is the absolute minimum monthly cost to allow City of Heroes to run? How much money does CoH need to break even under those conditions?

Mandrake

  • Boss
  • ****
  • Posts: 100
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #745 on: December 10, 2012, 08:27:08 PM »
If you were to run on 'life support mode' ... you could only handle a few hundred to possibly a few thousand players at a time depending on how efficient the code is and how awesome the server is. Probably can virtualize everything you need on one, I imagine a couple are needed for all the database and game server transactions going on. I'm sure it is probably designed somewhat modular in this way - I could be wrong.

If it were truly just a single server - you could just have one or two people monitoring the server to do restarts and maintenance. Possibly be regular restarts due to the likely constant queue to get in.

All in all it wouldn't cost much of anything. Active server staffed location (server farms that have people onsite at all times and will perform certain tasks that are included with the monthly fees) Probably around $300 - $500 USD per month cost. Which you would most definitely cover if you still wanted to charge even a minimal fee for access.

Just a matter of doing it or not.

Colette

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 466
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #746 on: December 10, 2012, 08:38:18 PM »
In other words, NCSoft could have pared down costs and continued running CoH for a trivial sum, easily recouped. Okay, we have verifiable mathematic proof that these guys are douchebags.

Meanwhile, they seem to have stabilized a bit. http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/chart?symbol=036570.KS Let's see how they hold up against our next salvo.
« Last Edit: December 10, 2012, 11:24:46 PM by Colette »

DrakeGrimm

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 742
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #747 on: December 11, 2012, 12:32:28 AM »
In other words, NCSoft could have pared down costs and continued running CoH for a trivial sum, easily recouped. Okay, we have verifiable mathematic proof that these guys are douchebags.

Meanwhile, they seem to have stabilized a bit. http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/chart?symbol=036570.KS Let's see how they hold up against our next salvo.

You may fire when ready. /Tarkin
We are the crazy ones, the mavericks, the dreamers, the forgotten sons. We color outside the lines for fun. We are the crazy ones! - "The Crazy Ones," Stellar Revival

"We put ourselves in "the attitude of heroes"--and we all became a little more heroic." - VV

Illusionss

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 690
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #748 on: December 11, 2012, 04:41:34 AM »
Quote
Guild Wars sells 2 million copies, although they were expecting it to sell 6 million, based on the number of sold copies of GW1.  One reason it only sold two million is because they shut off sales, claiming they weren't ready to handle that many all at once, thus chopping off a lot of impulse purchases.  [WTF? you boast that you EXPECT to sell 6 million copies and you aren't ready to handle that number when you go on sale??]

Allegedly they shut off sales because the servers were so overloaded that players zoned in and all but could not move, for the lag. GENIUS!!

Still a very poorly thought out move, but this IS NCStupid we're talking about - so what else would we expect. You don't shut down the kitchen when the hotcakes are flying out the door, that's just stupid.

Do these people even have actual business degrees, as opposed to hanging any shingle under their names that they feel like, because INTERNET and who will know, anyways? Do they even have a clue about basic human psychology? No and no again, is my guess.

They know about as much about business as I do about neurosurgery.

Colette

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 466
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #749 on: December 11, 2012, 04:49:33 AM »
"NCStupid?!" OOoohhh... I feel new memes brewing! Bless'ya, Illusionss!

Blitzwing

  • Lieutenant
  • ***
  • Posts: 88
  • Boot to the Head!
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #750 on: December 11, 2012, 04:55:57 AM »
They HAVE been exceptionally quiet in the last 3-4 days...as far as I can tell, they've stopped responding to anything....

...given how hard and repeatedly we've been hitting them, they're either in a punch-drunk state of confusion...or are potentially gearing up for a nasty counter-strike....  *ponders*

MishaFox

  • Minion
  • **
  • Posts: 40
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #751 on: December 11, 2012, 05:39:24 AM »
This may seem like stating the obvious but it's plain to me that something is seriously messed up at NCSoft. Something is going on in the background that we aren't aware of. I think something big is about to happen there. I feel like a person in Hawaii on Dec 6, 1941.

Victoria Victrix

  • Team Wildcard
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,886
  • If you don't try, you have failed.
    • Mercedes Lackey
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #752 on: December 11, 2012, 05:41:40 AM »
This may seem like stating the obvious but it's plain to me that something is seriously messed up at NCSoft. Something is going on in the background that we aren't aware of. I think something big is about to happen there. I feel like a person in Hawaii on Dec 6, 1941.

Then let us hope the bombers are going the other direction this time.
I will go down with this ship.  I won't put my hands up in surrender.  There will be no white flag above my door.  I'm in love, and always will be.  Dido

Feycat

  • Lieutenant
  • ***
  • Posts: 69
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #753 on: December 11, 2012, 06:53:29 AM »
Allegedly they shut off sales because the servers were so overloaded that players zoned in and all but could not move, for the lag. GENIUS!!

Still a very poorly thought out move, but this IS NCStupid we're talking about - so what else would we expect. You don't shut down the kitchen when the hotcakes are flying out the door, that's just stupid.

Except that isn't what happened.

NCsoft forced Anet to release GW2 before they were ready to do so.

It was Anet's decision to shut off sales because their infrastructure was groaning - but at no time was anyone unable to move from lag. Most of the problems had to do with zoning parties into the same instances, overflow servers becoming glitched, and glitched events.

Anet is a great dev team and had repeatedly told us through the long betas that they wouldn't even release hype about systems they didn't have working yet to the general public. Anet's decision to shut down sales is because they actually give a crap about their player's experiences, it was not a decision of NCsoft's.

NCsoft's stupid move was to shove GW2 into a release just to shore up their terrible Q3 numbers.

I'd also like to see a cite on the "expecting 6 million in sales" thing. I hear it thrown around, but as someone who was avidly watching Anet through the beta process, I never saw it. People may be confusing it with the announcement that the GW franchise as a whole sold 6 million units as of April 2009, but I could be wrong, I'd love to see a link.

Victoria Victrix

  • Team Wildcard
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,886
  • If you don't try, you have failed.
    • Mercedes Lackey
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #754 on: December 11, 2012, 09:09:22 AM »
I'd also like to see a cite on the "expecting 6 million in sales" thing. I hear it thrown around, but as someone who was avidly watching Anet through the beta process, I never saw it. People may be confusing it with the announcement that the GW franchise as a whole sold 6 million units as of April 2009, but I could be wrong, I'd love to see a link.

I found the link to an interview with an NCSoft flack when I was searching three months ago when the shutdown was first announced.  NCSofte definitely said confidently they figured on selling 6 million boxes, and part of the reason their stock dropped after the release was that it was only 2 million.
I will go down with this ship.  I won't put my hands up in surrender.  There will be no white flag above my door.  I'm in love, and always will be.  Dido

Feycat

  • Lieutenant
  • ***
  • Posts: 69
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #755 on: December 11, 2012, 01:34:30 PM »
I found the link to an interview with an NCSoft flack when I was searching three months ago when the shutdown was first announced.  NCSofte definitely said confidently they figured on selling 6 million boxes, and part of the reason their stock dropped after the release was that it was only 2 million.

I would really love to see it, no snark, seriously.

Not like it would SURPRISE me to find NCsoft blowing smoke up its own ass as Anet's expense, all things considered, y'know? :-/ But I'd like to see it just so I can have a cite to point at. I can't find anything with that number.

Illusionss

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 690
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #756 on: December 11, 2012, 02:05:43 PM »
Then let us hope the bombers are going the other direction this time.

The bombers have already been here, there is nothing left here for them to hit. Gotta think of it like that.

Illusionss

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 690
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #757 on: December 11, 2012, 02:11:54 PM »
Quote
It was Anet's decision to shut off sales because their infrastructure was groaning - but at no time was anyone unable to move from lag

People were experiencing extreme lag -because- the servers were so overloaded. I saw a tutorial video on YouTube where someone was demonstrating how to roll a new character over there, when they zoned into the game there were easily 100-150 characters standing en masse at the zone-in location. It looked like a subway platform.

No, the official reason was not "people cannot move from lag." But that's a logical side-effect of a massively overloaded server.

I waited to roll a character until CoX shut down, because not only did I want to enjoy CoX till the last minute with no distractions, I wanted to have room to move once I zoned in. Which did work.

Feycat

  • Lieutenant
  • ***
  • Posts: 69
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #758 on: December 11, 2012, 03:46:31 PM »
I waited to roll a character until CoX shut down, because not only did I want to enjoy CoX till the last minute with no distractions, I wanted to have room to move once I zoned in. Which did work.

And I rolled my characters the moment head start was available and played every day, and never ever experienced that level of lag.

Yes, the servers were crowded, but they never hit that level of performance issue. Someone with a crappy computer making a youtube video doesn't mean much.

It sure would be nice if some people could Save COH without continually bashing GW2.

Colette

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 466
Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #759 on: December 11, 2012, 03:56:02 PM »
Well, with all the fury directed at NCStupid, no surprise everything they run is getting caught in the crossfire, no matter the quality.

Soon as CoH is liberated, we'll forget and move on, and GW2 can continue... until it gets the axe in another fit of caprice.

They've regained their losses and stabilized. I don't like that.