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Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: Eoraptor on May 10, 2014, 12:22:43 AM
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So I got an email a few minutes ago, inviting me into the Wildstar Beta this weekend.
Never have I so wished for an option which said "never email me again or I shall hunt you down and end you!"
Glob it triggered me so bad. I want nothing more than to crawl into the skin of my ice/axe tank or my dual claws stalker and just bust some heads. :gonk: Fuck you NCSoft, and the syphilitic horse you rode in on!
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So I got an email a few minutes ago, inviting me into the Wildstar Beta this weekend.
Never have I so wished for an option which said "never email me again or I shall hunt you down and end you!"
Glob it triggered me so bad. I want nothing more than to crawl into the skin of my ice/axe tank or my dual claws stalker and just bust some heads. :gonk: pancake you NCSoft, and the syphilitic horse you rode in on!
I on the other hand didn't get an e-mail but I have been downloading the beta for the last 12 hours (3Mb plan). And it's a 10 day open beta. Don't plan to buy it but I am curious to see what kind of SciFi MMO the former vanilla WoW team (and at least one Paragon Studio member) made.
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On facebook on the CoH survivors group, I couldn't have felt more annoyed about a thread about Wildstar today, especially since I got into an especially annoying conversation with a couple of "average mmorpg" players that seemed completely unable to get anything outside of end game and repetitive holy trinity grinding. No matter what anyone said these players were of such a one track mind that it was especially annoying when they were saying stupid things like CoH was easy or that it's being "mind numbingly easy" as the reason it didn't need a holy trinity or anything. It was actually very predictable but the I was left with an annoyed realization how dissimilar most of us CoX players were to such players, in that we tended to play more for fun rather then just end end end end and same tactic over and over again, we were actually playing the game to have actual fun with it.
But these players were so one-track minded that you couldn't even explain the concept of unpredictability and how it relates to fun to them, it went right over there head, like if it's not part of some routine to them it's a bad thing to them when in reality, most gamers play games that tend to do unexpected things alot longer then games that get repetitive or require a routine. So I cannot explain how annoyed I am at Wild Star and NCSoft today. Granted I don't blame Wild Stars devs, but I certainly am annoyed at the players who seemed to have forgotten what NcSoft has done. Heck I think those who were more or less trolling me just joined the group just to troll us CoH players.
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So I got an email a few minutes ago, inviting me into the Wildstar Beta this weekend.
I got the same e-mail and was equally annoyed.
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I get the same email for Wildstar betas and whatnot. While exceedingly annoying, I do try to annoy them in return. I have a standard response to NCSoft:
"DO NOT SEND ME ANY MORE OF YOUR WILDSTAR SPAM EMAILS!
When you shut down City of Heroes/Villains, you shut down the best MMO in existence. To that end, NCSoft is unworthy of any manner of support (i.e., my money) until such time as the City of Heroes/Villains servers are reopened permanently (even if its only Maintenance mode).
A while back I received an email from you stating that Wildstar misses me. Wildstar misses me? What a joke!! More like you miss my money, wouldn't you say?
However, I'll let you in on a little secret. NCSoft *can* have some of my money... *every month*... when City of Heroes/Villains is back up and running (I don't necessarily need all of my characters again, but it would be nice) and I can play with the best ever player community.
Go murder Wildstar instead and bring back City of Heroes/Villains, with the Paragon Staff you so callously let go. Also, advertise and market the game so it grows in the North American Market, like it should have been doing in the first place.
Also, don't be a hoarder, let City of Heroes/Villains escape the black pit you've put it in and sell it (at a reasonable price). Your stock value would probably skyrocket, and you'd get a nice injection of the money you want from the game you killed.
Kindly email me when you are finished making selfish decisions and either become a company that cares about its loyal customers or sell City of Heroes/Villains to a company that does care about its loyal customers."
I'm sure this makes absolutely no difference to NCSoft, but at least I can rest a bit easier.
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My junk folder received that email. I left it there.
I suppose I could have given them the standard JRanger response though...
That seemed to annoy a lot of the players, and the community Reps, on the CoH forums a lot.
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I'm really excited for Wildstar, and refuse to punish a committed, entertaining dev group because of their choice of publisher - a choice which, by the way, was made long before NCsoft was even whispering about shutting down the game. (It's been in closed beta for nearly three years, with a couple years of in-house-only development before that.) Carbine are good people, the game is incredibly amusing and fun and a little bit different, and I'm stupid excited about owning my own floating island that I can decorate to look like damn near anything. <3
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I'm really excited for Wildstar, and refuse to punish a committed, entertaining dev group because of their choice of publisher - a choice which, by the way, was made long before NCsoft was even whispering about shutting down the game. (It's been in closed beta for nearly three years, with a couple years of in-house-only development before that.) Carbine are good people, the game is incredibly amusing and fun and a little bit different, and I'm stupid excited about owning my own floating island that I can decorate to look like damn near anything. <3
Agree 100%
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I'm really excited for Wildstar, and refuse to punish a committed, entertaining dev group because of their choice of publisher - a choice which, by the way, was made long before NCsoft was even whispering about shutting down the game. (It's been in closed beta for nearly three years, with a couple years of in-house-only development before that.) Carbine are good people, the game is incredibly amusing and fun and a little bit different, and I'm stupid excited about owning my own floating island that I can decorate to look like damn near anything. <3
Sometimes life deals you lemons.
In this case it's the presence of NCsoft for Carbine.
I will not affiliate myself with any game involving NCsoft until they sell or reopen CoH.
Carbine may well be good people but unless they have negotiated a contract that prevents NCsoft from being able to close the game down, I'd give it 18 months to 3 years tops before it bites the dust.
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I don't see this notice as a gloat. I see it as a mark of desperation.
Think about the pressure that Carbine must feel at this point; it is a pressure other developers don't have. Wildstar is designed by a western development house. Wildstar is not a fantasy game. Wildstar is also aimed at the Western market. And NCSoft has shown, as made painfully clear to us, that it has no patience with that combination. It didn't with Tabula Rasa. It didn't with Auto Assault. And it didn't with us, when push came to shove.
Other developers are allowed some space in which to grow and mature with their publishers. Not Carbine with NCSoft. If the game doesn't net massive numbers on launch day, and keeps those numbers, it'll be over in a year. The risk that Wildstar will be a Tabula Rasa 2.0 is rather high.
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I don't see this notice as a gloat. I see it as a mark of desperation.
Think about the pressure that Carbine must feel at this point; it is a pressure other developers don't have. Wildstar is designed by a western development house. Wildstar is not a fantasy game. Wildstar is also aimed at the Western market. And NCSoft has shown, as made painfully clear to us, that it has no patience with that combination. It didn't with Tabula Rasa. It didn't with Auto Assault. And it didn't with us, when push came to shove.
Other developers are allowed some space in which to grow and mature with their publishers. Not Carbine with NCSoft. If the game doesn't net massive numbers on launch day, and keeps those numbers, it'll be over in a year. The risk that Wildstar will be a Tabula Rasa 2.0 is rather high.
A very cogent point. NCSoft has a very bipolar relationship with the western market. they come crowing and crooning and cajoling every few years, and then change their minds after a few months, pull up tent stakes, and move back to Seol to cater to the korean market. and behind them they leave hurt feelings and a damaged relationship that can never be the same.
I feel sorry for the folks at carbine getting into bed with them. But that doesn't change or soften my tune. As you point out, there's already plenty of bad history there where the past should have proved prologue to Carbine and told them this is a bad idea. But just like girlfriends, videogame designers always feel like they'll be the ones to break the pattern and change the abusive producer.
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I'm really excited for Wildstar, and refuse to punish a committed, entertaining dev group because of their choice of publisher - a choice which, by the way, was made long before NCsoft was even whispering about shutting down the game. (It's been in closed beta for nearly three years, with a couple years of in-house-only development before that.) Carbine are good people, the game is incredibly amusing and fun and a little bit different, and I'm stupid excited about owning my own floating island that I can decorate to look like damn near anything. <3
It's worth pointing out, again, that City of Heroes is hardly the only game to have been killed off by NCSoft. And this has been going on for longer than Wildstar has been in development.
Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa, Exteel. Heck, we can even throw Dungeon Runners into that list. They all have player bases that feel badly burned by NCSoft's whims. It's especially nasty in the case of what NCSoft did to get rid of Tabula Rasa, as they pulled what amounted to character assassination on Richard Garriott's part. Even today, after his lawsuit revealed just what kind of skeevy crap NCSoft pulled, he is still regarded as the "crazy space guy who walked out of his own game."
So, while someone can play and support the game with the reason that they won't punish a committed, entertaining dev group because of their choice of publisher ... I feel it's equally reasonable to avoid it with the rationale that you're not going to reward a publisher for their history of "discard-and-draw" tactics with the games they publish.
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NCSOFT isn't just the publisher. Like ArenaNet they bought Carbine (in 2007). Unclear if they have the same kind of "special" relationship that ArenaNet has.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/ncsoft-unveils-carbine-studios/017482
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Carbine are good people, the game is incredibly amusing and fun and a little bit different, and I'm stupid excited about owning my own floating island that I can decorate to look like damn near anything. <3
Don't get too attached to it, would be my advice.
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That's exactly how I feel about 'The Secret World'.
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Got the beta invite, decided to try it.
Kinda fun, but not enough to get me to end my boycott. Ah well.
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I'm really excited for Wildstar, and refuse to punish a committed, entertaining dev group because of their choice of publisher...
To me, this is a bit like people who make the argument that you shouldn't boycott Wal-Mart because even though they're an evil company, a lot of good people depend on it for jobs. That may be true, but if you continue shopping there, you are implicitly condoning their business practices and nothing will ever change.
I've never disputed that Carbine isn't a perfectly good company, and I suspect that the developers who work there are fine, upstanding people who are unswervingly loyal and dedicated to Wildstar and making it as great a game as it can be. That's what's going to make what I think will happen to them before too long a real shame. And I'm not denying that Wildstar is a fun game; I haven't played it so I honestly can't say, one way or the other.
But two things that I do know is that: 1) If I spend money on Wildstar, that money isn't going to Carbine, it's going to NCsoft. To do so would be implicitly condoning their business practices, which I am not going to do. And 2) at any given time, NCsoft has the ultimate authority to pull the plug on Carbine and Wildstar, and history has proven that they're willing to even if the game is making a profit. Because Wildstar is an MMORPG, a genre of game that induces people to spend a lot of time, effort, and money on it, I'm not going to do so unless I have some reasonable expectation that the game will stay open as long as it is successful. With NCsoft, I have no such reasonable expectation, therefore I'm not going to waste my resources on it.
Obviously, I'm not sitting around hoping that everyone at Carbine gets laid off, I wouldn't wish that on anyone. But practically speaking, that's exactly what I'm pretty sure is going to happen in the not-too-distant future (I am personally giving it two years maximum). I also can't help but think that the damage NCsoft is causing to the MMO industry is greater than the good that Carbine is doing. I'm convinced that it's just a matter of time--sooner rather than later--before the same thing happens at Carbine that happened at Paragon Studios, and the developers working their asses off right now to produce the best damn game they can are going to see all of their hard work and artistic creation flushed down the toilet when NCsoft cuts them loose.
Whether their eventual future was or wasn't foreseeable at at the time they inked the deal, my best advice to them right now would be to look for another job while they can still leave by choice instead of circumstance, and now that NCsoft owns all of your creative effort on Wildstar, find something else worthwhile without their taint to pour your heart and soul into.
Again, I harbor no ill will towards Carbine or Wildstar, or anyone who wants to play the game. I do encourage you to keep a really close eye on your wallet and not invest much into the game, because as I said, I'm convinced that within two years at most, you're going to see any money and time you've poured into it disappear.
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My sentiments exactly, TonyV. Especially in light of what FatherXmas pointed out, that Carbine is directly owned by NCSoft.
That's exactly how I feel about 'The Secret World'.
With respect to whose comment, though?
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In respect to not getting attached to my character.
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NCSOFT isn't just the publisher. Like ArenaNet they bought Carbine (in 2007). Unclear if they have the same kind of "special" relationship that ArenaNet has.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/ncsoft-unveils-carbine-studios/017482
They were structured identically to Paragon until December 1st 2012, when they were restructured to the same system Arenanet works under. This likely had to do with the shutdown of holding company NC Interactive Inc. 30 days later.
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I think what TonyV is saying is NC likely *already* has intentions to harm Carbine and shut down Wildstar out from under players. It's part of their business plan from Day One. So buying Wildstar is silently condoning that sort of business behavior.
And that's probably true. NC has shown their business strategy to be "turn and burn" - spend millions making a game, then when it's no longer their new toy, burn it to the ground and force subscribers to try something new. And usually along with that, burn the studio responsible to the ground as well.
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But only in the west when expectations aren't met.
Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault both never got subscription numbers that they would need to sustain them. Especially with Tabula Rasa which ranked up there with Daikatana in terms of money and time spent. Both were pushed out early and at the time of the closure announcement were finally started to show their full potential.
But compared to NCSOFT's mainstays in Korea, even City of Heroes and Guild Wars were not all that impressive even at their best, considering how much larger the market is in NA and EU is compared to Korea.
They haven't closed any MMO in the east they developed and their teams are intact. Lineage, Lineage II, Aion, Blade & Soul are all alive and well. Well Lineage II and Aion have started to fade and B&S wasn't the blockbuster NCSOFT hyped it was but it is now out in China (along with Guild Wars 2) and B&S will soon be released in Japan as a follow on to the animated series/commercial that's running there now. The MMOs attributed to NCSOFT that they shut down in Korea, NCSOFT was only the publisher for that game in Korea. One or both were picked up by other publishers for the Korean market.
So their "turn and burn" strategy is only in the west. Except NCSOFT are sort of stuck with ArenaNet and it's possible Carbine has a similar sweetheart deal with NCSOFT.
If there's anything I've learned on the GW2 forums is that there seems to be a very vocal population wanting complex MMOs and that's what I've been seeing during my short time in Open Beta with WildStar. But whether or not those same players would be willing to pay $15 a month for the privileged, that's a different question altogether.
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I'm torn.
I wish the Carbine crew the best in their endeavours. I've found many of their teasers for Wildstar quite entertaining.
I remain reluctant to give NCSoft any of my business going forward and I'll share that reluctance with others that may consider doing so.
How a game publisher treats both their customers and their employees is important to me, and NCSoft has not demonstrated changes sufficient for me to again consider trusting it.
There are other things out there that can consume my spare time, and I'll pursue them for now.
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Sometimes life deals you lemons.
In this case it's the presence of NCsoft for Carbine.
I will not affiliate myself with any game involving NCsoft until they sell or reopen CoH.
Carbine may well be good people but unless they have negotiated a contract that prevents NCsoft from being able to close the game down, I'd give it 18 months to 3 years tops before it bites the dust.
This, also who cares if Carbine are good people? Sometimes bad choices come with consequences. It's mean and harsh, but it isn't as though CoX was there first nasty behavior, what, 4 games were closed prior? And why do so few even mention what happened with Tarbula (spell). They let the creator go on vacation, then fire him while he's gone, fake his signature to rob him of his stock benefits and closed his game down. There was even a court case over it, it's something Carbine, and hell even Molten Games, should have considered before hoping up to sign that contract and whatever horrible clauses it has, especially in today's world where steam green light (which I'm pretty sure we had like 3 years ago at least) and kickstarter can help Developers get stuff done without having to put themselves at the mercy of a profit hungry, delusional monster (point of being even if CoX wasn't making enough profit, it makes ZERO now, better to have set it up as they have the original GW, which was never a sub game, then close it and have to pay to keep the copyright every year, but not make money off it at the same time).
It looks ok. It might be fun, and Carbine might be good, passionate people, but unless it's possible to play and support them without making NCsoft a profit, making them more money, then there's no way I'm going to do that for them. That's a shame for Carbine, but that's what happens sometimes. I'd also like to point out that by going ahead and supporting this game and giving them money, it just reenforces for NCsoft that in the end they did the right thing mistreating their customers and staff, being no real consequences or penalties, and instead back to profit, which will only lead to it happening again and again. I won't vote with my wallet in a way that's going to continue a behavior that harms future players, even new MMO players, in a way that's so disrespectful and cold.