NCSoft obviously doesnt care about us

[Captain Electric]

Jaguar, if you cash out on a relative high point, then use all of it to fund Plan Z kickstarters (all three projects), then I'll forgive you.  :P

[JaguarX]

Jaguar, if you cash out on a relative high point, then use all of it to fund Plan Z kickstarters (all three projects), then I'll forgive you.  :P

Will get there eventually. :p

Added with some of the other stuff cashed out at high point. Some of course is for when I start to turn gray and to have fun with later.

[FatherXmas]

Minimal investigation is all it would have taken you to find this out, as this is on the very last (i.e., most recent) page of the stockwatch thread:
Apart from the link in the quote, here's the link to said page of that thread: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,5250.2100.html

Also please note that the illustrious Mr. JaguarX never denied owning any shares, as that would have been ludicrously disprovable, and an admin is backing me up as having seen same.  I believe we can move on from this now.

It was a two thousand plus post thread so I used search on what seemed to be the two most obvious keywords.  Sorry.

And aren't you saying that since nobody can disprove they don't own shares then isn't everyone a possible filthy NCSOFT shareholder?  Or am I reading that last statement wrong.

[Pinnacle Blue]

It was a two thousand plus post thread so I used search on what seemed to be the two most obvious keywords.  Sorry.

And aren't you saying that since nobody can disprove they don't own shares then isn't everyone a possible filthy NCSOFT shareholder?  Or am I reading that last statement wrong.

Not only are you reading it wrong, I can't even figure out how you arrived at that reading.

[Sleepy Wonder]

By teaching people to accept the fact that businesses are not obligated to "care" about anything other than maximizing profits is wrong. It's how we got to the current state of affairs as it is.

Also, it's really none of anyone's businesses who owns what stocks. I'll bet there are people here who own stocks that don't even know what stocks they own because they're managed by someone else. If someone else also wants to support a game by NCSoft, that is also their right and their own business. If you don't want to like somebody because of these reasons, then you're missing the big picture here.

With that out of the way, RE: OP

My account was closed too, and I only had CoH in it. I sent in a support ticket to see if they could give me an official reason, but after reading through and doing some research, it appears it was nothing more than "cleanup" time when they switched over to dropping "NCSoft Master Accounts" in favor of email-based "NC Account" accounts.

I don't know if anyone here has other games WITH CoH that can shed some light on what their account status is or looks like, but I am curious for my own curiosity.

NCSoft would have to delete/close or completely remove any/all information about CoH in your account anyway even if a sale DID occur of CoH.

It would be weird being able to log into CoH to see a copy of the same billing history and so on of your CoH subscription if the same thing showed up in a new owners account system.

I'm not hinting that this is what has happened, but it's one less step in the process.

I'm also pretty sure account usernames and passwords were stored in the game's database for the account in question and that the NCSoft accounts for CoH within the Master account simply had a web module that accessed it.

Again, there's nothing here that says to me "Oh, they deleted all of our game data."

I firmly believe there is a backup somewhere, at least, as Tony mentioned, for a limited time.

[Segev]

This is quite right GG. Until the 1980's, the thought of a company without concern for its customers or employees was enough to force companies out of business.

It still is. To claim otherwise is to be spreading propaganda, not facts. A company that doesn't care about its customers or employees is a doomed company, because a company without customers has no profits, and a company without employees has no products nor services. The attitude that either is expendable destroys companies, and rightly so. It tends to come from MBAs who only studied business and didn't learn the industry they are going to manage, who were taught by pure academics who never ran a thing in their lives or who also only ran a company or two into the ground because they never learned the industry.

They make the mistake of assuming that any business is the same at the top level as any other, and that a balance sheet tells you the whole story, so all expenditures and intakes are as fungible as the dollars written beside their entries. This is demonstrably false, and companies that fail are the ones that make this mistake more often than not.

There are concerns beyond what makes a customer happy, mind. There is truth to the counter, "the customer is not always right." In truth, people often have just enough information to get in their own way. They think they know what they want, but miss the forest for the trees. Successful marketing people who do proper research and feedback to the parent company don't simply find ways to manipulate the customer base, but rather report back what really went over well and have expertise to isolate and identify what made customers genuinely happy. To find what customers  really are talking about when they express pleasure. Often, they find these things are not what customers say with a blank question of "what do you like?"

Again, Extra Credits has a couple of good episodes dealing with analyzing your players during play-testing at all stages. This analysis applies rather well to any customer-testing of any product or service. Obviously it requires adaptation, but the overall philosophy of really trying to break down the customer experience to find out what they liked and didn't like is crucial.

Apple does so well because they decide what they're going to make, then see how their customers use it, and adapt it to be even better at that. They do listen to customer requests, but they don't take them blindly, and some of their behaviors really irk their customer base. And yet, their customer base are practically rabid fans for their products. It's not that Apple disrespects their customers, but that Apple behaves like a professional who knows its business better than those who use it. They focus it all on serving their customers, but they do not do so at the expense of doing what they know works better than what their customers necessarily demand. And they can make mistakes. Everybody can. Everybody does.

But to say that businesses have philosophically moved to a "customers don't matter" position is to demonize needlessly. It dehumanizes businesses, and that's wrong, because businesses are run by humans, worked by humans, and patronized by humans. Are there "business men" who run things stupidly and greedily? Heavens, yes. Is this because of some mythical philosophy that was instituted in the 80s? Perhaps, but if so, only because those who are pro-regulation decided that deregulation meant it was a free-for-all and that they should take THEIR piece of the pie by whatever unethical means they could think of before somebody else beat them to it.

Actual businessmen - the men and women who run companies to make products and succeed overall - don't behave in this way, as a general rule. They have a passion for their product or service, and they want to make money by proving it works.

[LadyShin]

If I were a business person..and I had been the one to order a popular game to be taken offline..and for some strange reason couldn't make a sale amid a sea of bids...I'd find some way to harvest the mechanics and general structure of that game and turn it into cold hard cash. If this sort of thinking holds true, NCSoft will exploit the popularity and success of City of Heroes and use its infrastructure to shape future ventures. Following this sort of thinking, I believe NCsoft would sit on the rights to COH indefinitely, just for the sake of avoiding IP rights disputes, should they develop something out of the content of COH.

[srmalloy]

While the game generated $10 million in sales it wasn't a lot compared to their other properties.

They decided that the costs they had supporting the game would be better used to support newer games with much higher short term sales potential.

IMO their action is equivalent to a restaurant removing a rarely ordered item off the menu and replacing it with one that is likely to be considerably more popular.  Sucks if you went there for the item they removed but in the long run they are willing to lose your business if it means replacing you with 5 new customers.

The problem with that analogy is that it does not match what NCSoft did. To be a good analogy, the closure of City of Heroes would have resulted in the entire Paragon Studios staff being reassigned to work on a new project. Or, inverted, taking the rarely-ordered item off the menu, firing the chef who prepared it, the sous-chefs who assisted him, and the waiters who served the item, and then hired a completely new set of personnel to prepare and serve the new item, even though the sales of that menu item were more than sufficient to pay the salaries of the chef, the sous-chefs, and the waiters. It's barely possible that your analogy is viable, but only if you posit that you only have a fixed amount of preparation space, and you don't have room to be able to prepare both this rarely-ordered item and a more popular one, and the cooks preparing the former item are unsuited to preparing any other dish -- neither of which are likely to be relevant to game development.

Killing CoH and Paragon Studios cost NCSoft an ongoing profit source. If the various statements -- that CoH was turning a profit, while Paragon Studios as a whole (i.e., including the staff working on the undisclosed and unreleased project) wasn't, then normal business practices would be to kill the part of PS that is causing the studio to operate at a loss, which leaves a trimmed-down Paragon Studios turning a profit, which can be used to help bankroll the better-performing game. Closing the whole studio, rather than just the part causing PS to run at a loss, meant that they would have to divert more funding from somewhere else for another project.

Unless you argue that the people managing NCSoft are incompetent to run a business, and would make bad business decisions out of ignorance or stupidity, there has to be some other reason why NCSoft shut down Paragon Studios, and CoH with it -- a reason that made sense to them. And when dealing with people from other cultures, aspects of that culture's mindset can influence decisions. And without data we can trust out of NCSoft, we may never know why they made that decision; we can only be sure that it was not made on the basis of proft-and-loss. Although I can see a low-probability situation where someone up the chain in NCSoft sees that 'Paragon Studios' has been running a loss for the last several years and decided on that basis to close the company, without knowing that Paragon Studios was two separate groups of developers, one of whom was responsible for the studio as a whole running at a loss -- and either no one paid any attention to this fact, or the person who made the decision was sufficiently highly-placed that their mistake was glossed over and the closure left to stand, rather than embarrassing them over it.

[Pinnacle Blue]

By teaching people to accept the fact that businesses are not obligated to "care" about anything other than maximizing profits is wrong. It's how we got to the current state of affairs as it is.

Agreed.

Also, it's really none of anyone's businesses who owns what stocks. I'll bet there are people here who own stocks that don't even know what stocks they own because they're managed by someone else.

Disagreed.  Personal business is not quite personal when the person whose business it is publicly announces it.  Also, there's a big difference between owning a stock because it's in your 401(k) and deliberately purchasing it.  Furthermore, that information goes to motive, but I believe I've already said all I need to regarding that.

If someone else also wants to support a game by NCSoft, that is also their right and their own business. If you don't want to like somebody because of these reasons, then you're missing the big picture here.

I understand that that's their right and their own business.  But I'm pretty sure I'm not violating anyone's rights by expressing bafflement regarding that decision.  Incidentally, making that decision does not make me dislike a person. 

To clarify, when NCSoft shat out "realignment of focus" as justification for shutting down a profitable game, it was a massive insult to the intelligence of the portion of their customer base that played CoX.  When they flat out lied to us and said they had exhausted all options for selling the game?  That made me slightly annoyed.  When they demonstrated what they think of their employees by firing the devs just before Labor Day weekend?  I became slightly less inclined to have anything but a burning hatred for that company.  So when somebody-- and I'm not saying it's anyone in particular-- says with an ostensibly straight face that CoX is gone because NCSoft realigned their focus?  I tend to, shall we say, not view that person in the best light, but that's on me.  I'm the idiot who assumed this forum would be a sanctuary free from that particular insult to our intelligence again.

Such unpleasantness, however, is merely that, and everyone who wants to give money to a company that perpetrated all that AND forged Richard Garriot's resignation letter after firing him should feel free to go absolutely nuts.  I can't possibly imagine what might conceivably go wrong placing one's trust in such an ethically run corporation.

With that out of the way, RE: OP

My account was closed too, and I only had CoH in it. I sent in a support ticket to see if they could give me an official reason, but after reading through and doing some research, it appears it was nothing more than "cleanup" time when they switched over to dropping "NCSoft Master Accounts" in favor of email-based "NC Account" accounts.

I don't know if anyone here has other games WITH CoH that can shed some light on what their account status is or looks like, but I am curious for my own curiosity.

NCSoft would have to delete/close or completely remove any/all information about CoH in your account anyway even if a sale DID occur of CoH.

It would be weird being able to log into CoH to see a copy of the same billing history and so on of your CoH subscription if the same thing showed up in a new owners account system.

I'm not hinting that this is what has happened, but it's one less step in the process.

I'm also pretty sure account usernames and passwords were stored in the game's database for the account in question and that the NCSoft accounts for CoH within the Master account simply had a web module that accessed it.

Again, there's nothing here that says to me "Oh, they deleted all of our game data."

I firmly believe there is a backup somewhere, at least, as Tony mentioned, for a limited time.

It's just wishful thinking on my part, but I also hope that-- if the limited time expires-- certain clusters of data were furtively backed up and taken offsite.

[Aggelakis]

I'm the idiot who assumed this forum would be a sanctuary free from that particular insult to our intelligence again.

tHIS FORUM-- EXCUSE ME, CAPSLOCKING OVER HERE-- that's better--

This forum isn't forbidden from use by people who enjoy NCsoft's other games or people who don't think NCsoft are a giant pile of horse pockey. This forum isn't forbidden from use by people who enjoy bukakke either, but that toes the line a little over the "PG13" atmosphere we *try* to keep around here.

Expecting to see or not see a particular viewpoint on this forum because of what it's based on (the love of CoH and information surrounding CoH) is setting yourself up for disappointment. We don't stifle people unless they become disruptive.

[Pinnacle Blue]

tHIS FORUM-- EXCUSE ME, CAPSLOCKING OVER HERE-- that's better--

This forum isn't forbidden from use by people who enjoy NCsoft's other games or people who don't think NCsoft are a giant pile of horse pockey. This forum isn't forbidden from use by people who enjoy bukakke either, but that toes the line a little over the "PG13" atmosphere we *try* to keep around here.

Expecting to see or not see a particular viewpoint on this forum because of what it's based on (the love of CoH and information surrounding CoH) is setting yourself up for disappointment. We don't stifle people unless they become disruptive.

Oh, I don't expect that any more, believe me!  I had only been checking in here occasionally, instead of daily, so I was a bit disturbed and disheartened to see what had been going on in certain quarters.  I understand now that that's just how things are around here, and that they don't rise to the level of disruption.

As for me?  As long as the IP remains under lockdown, I will remain hostile to NCSoft.  Others may feel differently.

[FatherXmas]

The game had sales of $10-12 million a year in it's last two years.  Lets say that after everything, including the cost of Paragon Studios, the game had a 25% profit.  That's $2-2.4 million a year on costs of $8- 9.6 million a year.

If NCSoft decided that $8-9.6 million being spent can make more than $2-2.4 million a year somewhere else you end up with a "realignment of focus".  If those funds being spent on CoH and Paragon could speed up the release of a new game by even a few months, those few extra months could easily bring in $2-2.4 million, probably many times more.  It's the same cold logic that goes into closing one manufacturing facility over another or discontinuing a product because some unique part is now too expensive.

The decision was made during a time when NCSOFT had a loss in a quarter for the first time in over 7 years.  Now you could say that it was because the bought a GD baseball team (but Ma! all the other game companies were doing it) so they looked to where they could tighten belts or shift resources to improve future cash flow which for a game company means new products.  GW2 was almost done.  Wildstar was demoing at E3.  Blade & Soul was finally out in Korea (and promptly fell on it's face, I think it was top heavy and the long moment arm, well leg, didn't help with the balance).  If the money taken from CoH and Paragon for a year moves up Wildstar's release so it's out in the fourth quarter this year rather than next, then they did the "right" thing for their shareholders.

And did it ever occur to people that maybe Jag is yanking your chains about being an NCSOFT stock holder?  He still thought you could trade it on the Nasdaq and that hadn't been the case for years.  Some people just like to start fights.  They say it makes the survivors stronger.

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=images2.wikia.nocookie.net%2F__cb20090720162410%2Fbabylon5%2Fimages%2Fthumb%2F8%2F81%2FMordenShadows_01.jpg%2F640px-MordenShadows_01.jpg

[Thunder Glove]

No matter how you spin it, it still seems to me that they could have cut costs without closing the game entirely (especially since, as I understand it, it wasn't CoH that was using all the resources, it was the "secret project"), keeping the income while still moving resources elsewhere.

Or that if it's just cold hard cash RIGHT NAO that they want, they'd get more from selling it than killing it, sitting on it, and pretending it never existed.

[Captain Electric]

Thunder Glove isn't the first person to notice this very big hole in the "business as usual" theory. Someone notices that hole every time this discussion comes up.

Publishers don't always ditch their top talent along with a realignment, especially when they fully own the studio. Sometimes they do; But let us not forget the way in which this all went down. Paragon Studios wasn't just a casualty of a well-oiled machine. It was the ultimate "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" maneuver on the Friday before Labor Day, because Paragon Studios wanted to buy themselves out, and at the top of the well-oiled machine, there is a gaggle of repugnant dickheads and they just weren't having that.

Now there's a theory that makes sense.

[Mantic]

It still is. To claim otherwise is to be spreading propaganda, not facts.

The problem with this argument is more clarity of language. When we say that companies lose their humanity to fiscal concerns we are generally referring to motive, as well as operation.

What you point out about market research is just that: an external gauge of subject (customer) response in the tradition of BF Skinner. It is exactly how the corporate machine deals with the "customer" as a quantifiable and manipulable business factor to be optimized, rather than a human being deserving of compassion and respect. The human entrepreneur, barring he or she is already operating under such a business philosophy, tends to operate on a more personal social philosophy, guided by moral principle. The human entrepreneur is more likely to accommodate employees beyond the demands of optimum performance, and more likely to consider the moral implications of any business decision before it's purely fiscal sensibility.

Take Sam Walton as a major contemporary example. In his lifetime, Wal-Mart was a very strong franchise, but apparently due to his guidance as a moral human figurehead the company was rarely considered predatory, and even had a fair reputation for employee relations. After his death, the company became much stronger, but has become so viciously predatory that it poses a threat to any small town that dares zone a super-center within city limits, and their franchise employees now feel that a union may be the only hope for fair treatment.

Wal Mart does plenty of market research. They know how to make consumers short-term happy, and they also know how to continue exploiting markets once competition has been eliminated. But that does not equate to "caring about" their customers. It's just business optimization.

[JaguarX]

The game had sales of $10-12 million a year in it's last two years.  Lets say that after everything, including the cost of Paragon Studios, the game had a 25% profit.  That's $2-2.4 million a year on costs of $8- 9.6 million a year.

If NCSoft decided that $8-9.6 million being spent can make more than $2-2.4 million a year somewhere else you end up with a "realignment of focus".  If those funds being spent on CoH and Paragon could speed up the release of a new game by even a few months, those few extra months could easily bring in $2-2.4 million, probably many times more.  It's the same cold logic that goes into closing one manufacturing facility over another or discontinuing a product because some unique part is now too expensive.

The decision was made during a time when NCSOFT had a loss in a quarter for the first time in over 7 years.  Now you could say that it was because the bought a GD baseball team (but Ma! all the other game companies were doing it) so they looked to where they could tighten belts or shift resources to improve future cash flow which for a game company means new products.  GW2 was almost done.  Wildstar was demoing at E3.  Blade & Soul was finally out in Korea (and promptly fell on it's face, I think it was top heavy and the long moment arm, well leg, didn't help with the balance).  If the money taken from CoH and Paragon for a year moves up Wildstar's release so it's out in the fourth quarter this year rather than next, then they did the "right" thing for their shareholders.

And did it ever occur to people that maybe Jag is yanking your chains about being an NCSOFT stock holder?  He still thought you could trade it on the Nasdaq and that hadn't been the case for years.  Some people just like to start fights.  They say it makes the survivors stronger.

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=images2.wikia.nocookie.net%2F__cb20090720162410%2Fbabylon5%2Fimages%2Fthumb%2F8%2F81%2FMordenShadows_01.jpg%2F640px-MordenShadows_01.jpg

I bought mine with the bank account that I still had in Korea that I aquired when I got stationed there through direct of the Korea stock exchange. Assuming that most people dont have a Korean bank account, I was answering it in a way that I thought most people here would be able to get their hand on it.  Most stock that I own is Asia and most I bought while I was stationed in Korea. Originally the account was to sock away a bunch of Won and sit on it but then found dual purpose use for it.  I also still have the german account from when I was statuoned there. Mostly just sitting on Euro there until I decide I want to buy European and surrounding areas currency and stock. 

[thunderforce]

The game had sales of $10-12 million a year in it's last two years.  Lets say that after everything, including the cost of Paragon Studios, the game had a 25% profit.  That's $2-2.4 million a year on costs of $8- 9.6 million a year. If NCSoft decided that $8-9.6 million being spent can make more than $2-2.4 million a year somewhere else you end up with a "realignment of focus".

This seems a bit confused because it doesn't quite know if it's about capital investment or ongoing income; the second sentence reads as if about capital.

Either way, no, you don't. If a business needs capital to run a profitable subsidiary, or if the capital tied up in that profitable subsidiary stops it running something still more profitable, borrow it at a lower interest rate and pocket the difference - NCSoft's market capitalisation is well over 3 billion USD even after the stock issues, it cannot possibly have trouble borrowing a few million.

If it's actually about ongoing income I'm afraid that makes less sense. If you get day to day returns on that $8 million - as you do with MMO subs - it's just a net profit, it doesn't in any way stop you doing something similar elsewhere. If you pay 5 quid to get the train to work and get paid by the day, you in no sense have to make a choice between Monday's train fare and Friday's, unless you actually didn't start the week with 10 quid; each train fare pays for itself.

And (in either event) the profitable subsidiary has value. If for some mysterious reason you can't afford to run an income-generating asset, what do you do with it?

[Segev]

Take Sam Walton as a major contemporary example. In his lifetime, Wal-Mart was a very strong franchise, but apparently due to his guidance as a moral human figurehead the company was rarely considered predatory, and even had a fair reputation for employee relations. After his death, the company became much stronger, but has become so viciously predatory that it poses a threat to any small town that dares zone a super-center within city limits, and their franchise employees now feel that a union may be the only hope for fair treatment.

Wal Mart does plenty of market research. They know how to make consumers short-term happy, and they also know how to continue exploiting markets once competition has been eliminated. But that does not equate to "caring about" their customers. It's just business optimization.

Not to derail into a debate over Walmart, but this is actually untrue. Walmart's policies have not changed all that much since Sam's days, and most actual Walmart employees to whom I speak are quite happy there. Unsurprisingly, most of those who speak poorly of their experiences at it are ex-employees. Unsurprising because - humans being rational animals - they left a job they didn't like. Walmart clearly offers something that its employees cannot get elsewhere, or they wouldn't have any; their employees would work elsewhere. Yes, even in this economy. People can live QUITE comfortably on government assistance (and this isn't the place to discuss why that's a bad idea; suffice it to say I have a friend who would make about $100/month more if he quit working and fully exploited all the govt. benefits to which that newly unemployed state would entitle him, but who has other reasons for continuing to work. And he lives comfortably right NOW, and not even paycheck to paycheck).

What Walmart has done that has earned them a bad reputation is pissed off the unions and the pro-union politicians and press by refusing to work with unions. Propaganda, not any truth in their policies, has foisted upon them a reputation as "predatory." Personally, I have lived in two small towns, and the Walmart there has been nothing but a boon to the quality of life for its customers in each. Anecdotal, of course, but so are the stories of "destroying" small towns. Especially since I've not actually seen evidence that they're more than stories.

[FatherXmas]

I bought mine with the bank account that I still had in Korea that I aquired when I got stationed there through direct of the Korea stock exchange. Assuming that most people dont have a Korean bank account, I was answering it in a way that I thought most people here would be able to get their hand on it.  Most stock that I own is Asia and most I bought while I was stationed in Korea. Originally the account was to sock away a bunch of Won and sit on it but then found dual purpose use for it.  I also still have the german account from when I was statuoned there. Mostly just sitting on Euro there until I decide I want to buy European and surrounding areas currency and stock.

Figured that was the most likely scenario if you did own stock.  Buying from over here is a tad convoluted.

[Captain Electric]

They're still a bunch of jerks. It's no one here's fault. You don't have to defend them. Those of you defending them, they're worth 3 billion dollars, they can shut down the game you loved for 8 years, fire 80 developers without notice, and look at em, they're STILL getting the cha-ching outta your wallet. They're on top of the world. They answer to no one. They don't need you to defend them. Just keep your wallet open!  :P