Author Topic: NCSoft Stockwatch  (Read 714382 times)

healix

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #860 on: December 14, 2012, 12:46:34 PM »
I must now take the feat Improved Bunny Sundering.

It lets you sunder bunnies without an attack of opportunity being provoked.

Here is the walkthrough:



>.>


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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #861 on: December 14, 2012, 01:30:46 PM »
They must have rumor-mongering in Korea. Every other society on Earth does. Haven't they heard that in the total absence of official explanation, rumors, wild speculation, and tinfoil-hat theories will fill the void?

If these lines of thinking make NCsoft uncomfortable, if they take offense at the implications, there's a simple solution:

Grow a set. Step up.

Segev

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #862 on: December 14, 2012, 02:17:41 PM »
Even leaving our all-caps Hispanic friend who's name translates to "rich" out of this, if there were significant numbers of people who bought Paragon Points and never spent them, that's a sign that Paragon Studios may have been even more profitable than otherwise indicated.

Codewalker

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #863 on: December 14, 2012, 02:20:02 PM »
I know I had several thousand points at the end on each of my accounts, that I had bought to get that last rewards tier and was hoarding to use for new powersets / costume sets as they came out.

After the shutdown announcement I didn't see much of a point in spending them, but now I'm kind of wishing that I had.

That's also the kind of creative accounting I was thinking of when I suggested that the quarterly revenue numbers may not tell the whole story in regards to microtransactions. The real question is what trick that NCSoft uses to recognize that as "revenue" on the corporate level since no actual service was delivered.

WildFire15

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #864 on: December 14, 2012, 02:22:49 PM »
I know I had several thousand at the end on each of my accounts, that I had been gotten to get that last rewards tier and was hoarding to use for new powersets / costume sets as they came out.

After the shutdown announcement I didn't see much of a point in spending them, but now I'm kind of wishing that I had.

I'd done pretty much the same thing, but I did use a load after the shut down announcement for stuff I wasn't originally planning on getting. Still had about a thousand left over.

Segev

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #865 on: December 14, 2012, 02:24:36 PM »
Well, post-shutdown, who knows if the updating mechanism still credited the spent points to Paragon, since it was no longer extant?

Victoria Victrix

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #866 on: December 14, 2012, 02:30:35 PM »
Well, post-shutdown, who knows if the updating mechanism still credited the spent points to Paragon, since it was no longer extant?

Unspent points go into the Never-Never.  They are never credited to anything.  Only the real money wings its way to NCSoft.

One of the reasons my spidey-sense started slowly tingling on this is that I definitely remember Dark Watcher having to deal with shoving the store in sideways, and him wondering why it just couldn't be dealt with account-side with direct payments to NCSoft as the old options were--why they suddenly, desperately needed this third party.

Just sayin'. 
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johnrobey

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #867 on: December 14, 2012, 03:08:30 PM »
Sorry VV, you and the legal system have very different definitions of Bunny Saundering.  NCSoft handling of the proxy game currency is totally legal and makes sense back when they introduced NCCoin, which was suppose to be a multigame currency.  Same could apply to gaming time sold in Korea and other Asian countries for their "native" MMOs or the NCSoft generic time cards sold here.  Of course it adds another layer of accounting, tracking how much proxy currency that was spent that wasn't rewarded either ingame or part of a subscription, and then credit it as income from the game.

Plus they aren't getting all the money if the proxy currency is bought in a store front.  Retailers get a cut and here in the US a fair chunk of those cards are handled by one company and they get their cut before the publisher sees any of it.  This is why BestBuy still sells CoH Game Cards.  Until the card company tells them it's OK to pull them and will provide the retailer with credit (or cards for other games still in business) they are contractually obligated to display them.

Actually if you want to extend your explanation, all box sales first go in NCSoft's coffers and then credited to each game.

Listen I get it.  What NCSoft did to Paragon and us out of the blue was wrong at the very least a PR perspective.  However you can't imply malfeasance in any legal business practice that you find objectionable.  Attempting to drive down the stock price of NCSoft doesn't hurt them.  It hurts the people that own the stock but NCSoft got their money way back when the stock first went public.  A stock price is a reflection what investors think of a company, but as long as the company is profitable the stock price is immaterial to it's operations.  At best it's a source of pride.  NCSoft doesn't hire talent with attractive stock options.  They aren't Google.

The only time when the stock went down because someone here did something was VV's comments for The Korea Times piece, and that's loss has been erased with this restructuring of the western subsidiaries.  The Unity rally was great for us and generated a lot of western press but zero in Korea where most of their investors are.  Any drop in the stock between them and the 3Q numbers release is entirely due to NCSoft repeatedly missing their sales targets combined with a downturn in the industry as well as the worldwide economy.  I also imagine that those with their ears to the ground got a strong hint about the direction the 3Q numbers were heading, likely from their PC Bang game rankings of all their games and got out before the pancake hit the fan.  Those who didn't, had only a partial picture (B&S hits #1 in PC Bangs but ignored the Lineage and Aion rankings) and/or believed NCSoft was about ready to skyrocket again saw these drops as buying opportunities which is why the stock rebounded several times on the way down.

I'm not raining on your parade but simply trying to put some perspective into this.  All that driving the stock price down is only going to make them into a easier target for someone to take them over and that's it.  But as long as their sales are growing and profits are comparable to other online gaming companies, then the stock will never be driven below book value or below the range what the industry's P/E ratio says it should be.

Simply noting that I appreciate your perspective and your taking time to post this.  Thank you, Father Xmas.
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General Idiot

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #868 on: December 14, 2012, 04:08:17 PM »
I know I had several thousand points at the end on each of my accounts, that I had bought to get that last rewards tier and was hoarding to use for new powersets / costume sets as they came out.

I had four or five thousand on my account, as well. I was saving them for the all the costume packs and powersets that were in the I24 beta. And for the second round of super packs.

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #869 on: December 14, 2012, 04:37:43 PM »
I had four or five thousand on my account, as well. I was saving them for the all the costume packs and powersets that were in the I24 beta. And for the second round of super packs.
THIS.  I stocked up on Paragon Points to purchase all the new stuff coming out with I24 and then Black Friday happened. :'(
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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #870 on: December 14, 2012, 04:58:50 PM »
the last time i bought points was for nature affinity, granted i still had about 2500 pts leftover by the time the shutdown happened because i was still accruing VIP stipend until the end (i checked my account history and it said i got a stipend for sept, oct, and nov)

SkyStreak

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #871 on: December 14, 2012, 05:09:54 PM »
I had over 10,000 points between my two accounts.

Triplash

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #872 on: December 14, 2012, 05:31:23 PM »
I was in a similar boat, I had a little over 9600 points still there. I was expecting the second super packs to go live sooner rather than later and bought up the $100 deal sometime in June or July to be ready for it. If it's true that only spent points got credited to Paragon, then I'm glad I spent them before the end.

eabrace

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #873 on: December 14, 2012, 05:45:56 PM »
I had a little over 9600 points still there.

:)
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corvus1970

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #874 on: December 14, 2012, 05:47:38 PM »
Beat me to it! :D
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Triplash

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #875 on: December 14, 2012, 06:34:48 PM »
At least it wasn't 9000 of these:


FatherXmas

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #876 on: December 14, 2012, 06:51:47 PM »
I never said it wasn't legal.  It's perfectly legal.  It's also wide open to Honey Maundering.  That's why Honey Maundering is so widespread, it uses legal ways to clean illicit cash.

And if you were trying to put another level of obfuscation between you and the company (NCSoft Interactive) that you had been using to Maunder Honey, wouldn't you close that company and resell its assets to another shell company?
I'm sorry, I know you are a wordsmith by profession but illicit includes illegal in it's default definition.  It's not a word one chooses by accident when discussing the activities of a company when you didn't mean to imply malfeasance.
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Megajoule

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #877 on: December 14, 2012, 07:08:02 PM »
I understand that a lot of people are very angry with NCsoft for killing our game, for no reason that is apparent or adequate to us, and are thus willing to ascribe all sorts of evil motives and/or conspiracy theories to the decision... but I would like to again call for some restraint and/or application of Hanlon's razor.

We want someone to blame, a villain to fight.  But sometimes it really is as simple, stupid and/or petty as a business decision, which may seem unwise, short-sighted, and/or uncaring to us who invested so much of ourselves emotionally.

NCsoft is not Crey.  It's not a Nemesis front company.  It's a business with an eye on the bottom line, troubled stocks, and internal politics, separated from most of us by an ocean and a very different culture (business and otherwise).

Victoria Victrix

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #878 on: December 14, 2012, 07:17:15 PM »
I'm sorry, I know you are a wordsmith by profession but illicit includes illegal in it's default definition.  It's not a word one chooses by accident when discussing the activities of a company when you didn't mean to imply malfeasance.

Where, in this statement, did I use the word "illicit?"  It does not exist in this statement.

Quote
When Paragon Points or GW Gems or other in-game currency that requires hard cash are purchased in the marketplaces, the money goes straight to NCSoft via their third-party store.  That money remains with NCSoft until the points are cashed in at the game.  Only then does the game studio get credit for that influx of money and have it go on their side of the ledger.

So if a large number of F2P accounts would purchase points or gems, NOT cash them in, and cancel the accounts, NCSoft would get a large influx of money...that would never be credited as income to the game studio.

And one might speculate why someone would do something like that.  Why on earth would someone want to transfer money to another entity and get nothing from it?  (Hint:  Two words.  First word: rhymes with honey.  Second word: rhymes with maundering)
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Kistulot

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Re: NCSoft Stockwatch
« Reply #879 on: December 14, 2012, 08:24:20 PM »
At least it wasn't 9000 of these:



Each of those will be worth five Korean Wons.

That is the exchange rate the bank of Korea will set... AFTER I'VE KIDNAPPED THEIR QUEEN.

They have one of those right?
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