Author Topic: Thinking about PR - NCSoft hasn't been acting ABSOLUTELY ruthlessly.  (Read 3235 times)

chaparralshrub

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Something occurs to me: NCSoft does seem to care about PR with us a little bit.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that NCSoft truly did not care about us, or about our "Western" market. Running CoH for three months costs them money, and they aren't making any money off of it right now because nobody's buying CoH merchandise. Why, then, did NCSoft not simply shut the servers down on August 30 when they made the announcement, giving us no warning whatsoever?

This, of course, is possibly the absolute worst thing they could have done, PR-wise. At least with us, they're trying to seem magnanimous to give the game a "proper" sunset instead of just sucking the sun into a black hole. Paragon, or what's left of it, of course, wants to go out with a bang, in their own words. They want a supernova.

Maybe they are just trying to save face, hence the silence and coldness. Maybe, if we keep this up, we can even force them to some kind of action, down the road.

chasearcanum

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Re: Thinking about PR - NCSoft hasn't been acting ABSOLUTELY ruthlessly.
« Reply #1 on: September 28, 2012, 03:38:34 PM »
Part of that is CYA, though.

Yes, NCSoft is refunding those of us that paid for months ahead, but (for example) those people that may have bought a new powerset the week before or a new costume piece wouldn't be getting that money back.  By letting the servers sunset after a few months, they've effectively given those buyers an opportunity to use what they purchase, thus avoiding some of the hassle of unraveling that ball of knots.

Segev

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Re: Thinking about PR - NCSoft hasn't been acting ABSOLUTELY ruthlessly.
« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2012, 04:06:06 PM »
There is also the possibility that they have contracts for leasing the servers and maintenance and all that. These may not expire until Nov. 30th. This is sunk cost; they may as well keep it running.


THAT SAID! NCSoft does care about PR. We should not think of them as "the enemy," but as potential allies who are currently terribly misguided. Keep up the pressure, but remember its purpose is to help NCSoft see that their best interests lie with doing what we want done. It's purpose is NOT to hurt nor punish NCSoft, but rather to make any path other than the one we want...uncomfortable. At the same time, the path we want must be made as smooth and inviting as possible, which means we need to be friendly, smiling faces if they turn their head that direction.

Atlantea

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Re: Thinking about PR - NCSoft hasn't been acting ABSOLUTELY ruthlessly.
« Reply #3 on: September 28, 2012, 04:09:49 PM »
As chase said - they really don't get "credit" for that, seeing as how this was the absolute scraping the bottom of the barrel bare minimum they could get away with without being sued. The three months is nothing more than CYA.

If they COULD have gotten away with shutting down the servers on Aug 31? Oh you better believe they would have. I have zero doubt about it.

Mantic

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Re: Thinking about PR - NCSoft hasn't been acting ABSOLUTELY ruthlessly.
« Reply #4 on: October 01, 2012, 05:31:16 AM »
I expect the three month notice is calculated to give the community time to wither and die. After so many games being put down, surely they've got some ideas about how to play this game with us.

My hopes lie with the developers, who I hope have more passion than any of us. It's frustrating that we have no means of coordinating efforts with them, though.

Victoria Victrix

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Re: Thinking about PR - NCSoft hasn't been acting ABSOLUTELY ruthlessly.
« Reply #5 on: October 01, 2012, 05:56:44 AM »
Well now there might be something we can do to boost our visibility.  Crowdsource a Google sidebar ad to the petition.  Limit the expense to what we crowdsourced.
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Quinch

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Re: Thinking about PR - NCSoft hasn't been acting ABSOLUTELY ruthlessly.
« Reply #6 on: October 01, 2012, 06:02:10 AM »
I could get behind that.

- considers the irony of buying a Google ad while personally running AdBlock -

emu265

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Re: Thinking about PR - NCSoft hasn't been acting ABSOLUTELY ruthlessly.
« Reply #7 on: October 01, 2012, 06:47:20 AM »
I could get behind that.

- considers the irony of buying a Google ad while personally running AdBlock -
Had the exact same thought.

But yeah.  I'd be in.

Osborn

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Re: Thinking about PR - NCSoft hasn't been acting ABSOLUTELY ruthlessly.
« Reply #8 on: October 01, 2012, 10:27:21 AM »
Something occurs to me: NCSoft does seem to care about PR with us a little bit.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that NCSoft truly did not care about us, or about our "Western" market. Running CoH for three months costs them money, and they aren't making any money off of it right now because nobody's buying CoH merchandise. Why, then, did NCSoft not simply shut the servers down on August 30 when they made the announcement, giving us no warning whatsoever?

This, of course, is possibly the absolute worst thing they could have done, PR-wise. At least with us, they're trying to seem magnanimous to give the game a "proper" sunset instead of just sucking the sun into a black hole. Paragon, or what's left of it, of course, wants to go out with a bang, in their own words. They want a supernova.

Maybe they are just trying to save face, hence the silence and coldness. Maybe, if we keep this up, we can even force them to some kind of action, down the road.

Because they're legally obligated to give a window to a shut down.

Also, all the 'goodies' that we've gotten had basically been dragged out of them fought tooth and nail by Zwill and Paragon Studios.

If it was up to them, things would had progressed like they did from September 1st up until November 30th.

Zwill had to basically beg for weeks to get any word on simple things like refunds for time spent. That shouldn't have happened in any situation where leadership was functioning properly. And he got probably relieved of his job for thanking us for a dinner.

They're actually only just now sending letters out to customers telling them the game is going away. For like, 2 weeks, it was basically up to the community to even tell people their purchases were vanishing.

That's pretty sad.

I expect the three month notice is calculated to give the community time to wither and die. After so many games being put down, surely they've got some ideas about how to play this game with us.

My hopes lie with the developers, who I hope have more passion than any of us. It's frustrating that we have no means of coordinating efforts with them, though.

You'd think that in a morbid way they'd be used to or at least capable of running a funeral for a game, but really every time they do it they sort of do it in an even more amateurish way.

I mean, yeah, Tabula Rasa probably cost them the most to shut down. 28 million, then they tried to counter sue Richard Garriott and bought themselves an increase in 32 million. They lost a pretty legendary team member (Garriott had a hand in producing CoH when it was new as well), with an extremely transparent display of jerk behavior in the process too.

But CoH's shut down was handled in an almost 1984 sort of fashion. I can't think of anything this big that's been handled this poorly that I've been a part of.
« Last Edit: October 01, 2012, 10:35:39 AM by Osborn »

Turjan

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Re: Thinking about PR - NCSoft hasn't been acting ABSOLUTELY ruthlessly.
« Reply #9 on: October 01, 2012, 02:03:59 PM »
AFAIK, NCsoft never tried to counter-sue RG, they did try to appeal the decision though (and lost, which lead to the increase in damages). The whole case was about him being forced to sell before he actually wanted to.
Indeedy, they appealed and lost, incurring an extra $4million in costs/legal fees.

But something else has just struck me about that case and about the manner of TR's closure. As ex-TR players will recall, NCSoft issued a "resignation letter" purpoting to come from Richard Garriott...while Garriott himself was still in Russia at the time of his trip into space. It subsequently emerged that NCSoft had effectively forged that letter, putting words into Garriott's mouth that he hadn't - and wouldn't have - said himself (in fact far from resigning, Garriott had actually taken a data chip with TR player info up onto the International Space Station as part of a publicity stunt for the game - but that's another story...).

The point is, if NCSoft weren't bothered about PR in the western market, they'd never have gone to the lengths of trying to forge a resignation letter from Richard Garriott in the first place. They could've just canned the game without a word.

Okay, so a forged letter may not exactly be good PR, but it was an attempt at PR nonetheless ;)

Segev

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Re: Thinking about PR - NCSoft hasn't been acting ABSOLUTELY ruthlessly.
« Reply #10 on: October 01, 2012, 02:26:39 PM »
I believe that there was a lot of backstage politics to get him (and his brother) out of NC Interactive. The letter was just one stage of it. Since the change of leadership of NC Interactive, I feel that *in general* NCsoft had lost it touch with its player base. When NCSoft ran the community teams for their various MMO's they seemed far more supporting of all their games. But when the power struggles came in, it all went to hell in a handbasket.

*queue conspiracy theories*
In the limited research I did on Gariot's case against NCSoft, it seems the forged resignation letter was part of an attempt to fraudulently claim that he had left voluntarily. He had a protection clause in his employment contract that left him some very valuable stock options for a period after he was involuntarily terminated. That is what the suit centered around, as NCSoft actively attempted to deny him those stock options.