New efforts!

[Sinistar]

ladies and gentlemen, it is corporate golf vacation season. This is when all things work are ignored except serious matters or stock matters by cell phone/chat.

I do not suspect we will hear from NCSoft for a while. Possibly if we are lucky we will see some sort of reaction in December, if not we will have to wait till after Western newyear (January first) or at worst february something till after Asian newyear.

so, at this rate time travel would be a good option if you have it.

If, if we want faster results, we could in fact find our best golf player to go play a game with NCSoft execs along with those in charge of this matter, of course the situation still remains the same; no one playing golf can mentio CoH unless NCsoft starts the conversation.  that is just my input, take it or leave it.

the point of this is to keep relations active so they don't just discuss it and forget it.

Also make sure our golf pro loses the game but makes it look good.  Gotta make NCSoft happy. :)

[MM3squints]

Me thinks with the under performing of Wildstar, NC Soft needs to shore up their books with revenue. That might mean they are more eager to sell the IP, but also want to try to squeeze as much out too

[Surelle]

Me thinks with the under performing of Wildstar, NC Soft needs to shore up their books with revenue. That might mean they are more eager to sell the IP, but also want to try to squeeze as much out too

The critical thing I wish NCSoft would see is that Wildstar tried to appeal to the old-school raiding crowd and long-time MMOers-- exactly the people most likely to have been around long enough to have been burned by the closure of other NCSoft games in the past, or to have experienced the "overrun with gold farmers and lag since beta" way that they run their games that are still up, like Lineage 2 NA and Aion NA.  And of course those are the very same people that wouldn't touch NCSoft's games with a 10-foot pole nowadays.

And according to their current Glass Door reviews, they're still just as bad as ever to work for. http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/NCsoft-Reviews-E23242.htm

The attitude that, after all this time, they refuse to try and understand the western market is the one that concerns me most.  It doesn't bode well for any future for CoX:

"NCSOFT is a hostile environment with constant chaos and confusion which they call "reorganization." One of the core values is "never ending change," which translates to "never commit to any direction and abuse your employees by constantly changing their reporting structure, job duties, and priorities." They've repeated the same mistakes every couple of years since I've been here and refuse to accept that gaming in the West is different than in Korea and our customers aren't the same. They want to do everything the same as they do in Korea, which doesn't work here, but they are too stubborn and prideful to admit it."

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

Me thinks with the under performing of Wildstar, NC Soft needs to shore up their books with revenue. That might mean they are more eager to sell the IP, but also want to try to squeeze as much out too

Well, the IP sale would still only be of real significance to the employee(s) working on the sale, not something NCsoft as a whole would take very much notice of since at most it's a few million dollars, which isn't even a drop in the bucket for NCsoft. It might be a nice extra feather in the cap of whoever brokers the deal, but in company-wide terms it's almost inconsequential.


Added:

The critical thing I wish NCSoft would see is that Wildstar tried to appeal to the old-school raiding crowd and long-time MMOers-- exactly the people most likely to have been around long enough to have been burned by the closure of other NCSoft games in the past, or to have experienced the "overrun with gold farmers and lag since beta" way that they run their games that are still up, like Lineage 2 NA and Aion NA.  And of course those are the very same people that wouldn't touch NCSoft's games with a 10-foot pole nowadays.

And according to their current Glass Door reviews, they're still just as bad as ever to work for. http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/NCsoft-Reviews-E23242.htm

The attitude that, after all this time, they refuse to try and understand the western market is the one that concerns me most.  It doesn't bode well for any future for CoX:

"NCSOFT is a hostile environment with constant chaos and confusion which they call "reorganization." One of the core values is "never ending change," which translates to "never commit to any direction and abuse your employees by constantly changing their reporting structure, job duties, and priorities." They've repeated the same mistakes every couple of years since I've been here and refuse to accept that gaming in the West is different than in Korea and our customers aren't the same. They want to do everything the same as they do in Korea, which doesn't work here, but they are too stubborn and prideful to admit it."

Pretty confident it doesn't really bode anything for the future of CoX. Even in Korea selling off an IP for X Earth moneys plus whatever cut of theoretical profits may or not be part of the deal means that NCsoft will not be in charge of the IP going forward. That's the whole point of buying it.

[LaughingAlex]

The critical thing I wish NCSoft would see is that Wildstar tried to appeal to the old-school raiding crowd and long-time MMOers-- exactly the people most likely to have been around long enough to have been burned by the closure of other NCSoft games in the past, or to have experienced the "overrun with gold farmers and lag since beta" way that they run their games that are still up, like Lineage 2 NA and Aion NA.  And of course those are the very same people that wouldn't touch NCSoft's games with a 10-foot pole nowadays.

And according to their current Glass Door reviews, they're still just as bad as ever to work for. http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/NCsoft-Reviews-E23242.htm

The attitude that, after all this time, they refuse to try and understand the western market is the one that concerns me most.  It doesn't bode well for any future for CoX:

"NCSOFT is a hostile environment with constant chaos and confusion which they call "reorganization." One of the core values is "never ending change," which translates to "never commit to any direction and abuse your employees by constantly changing their reporting structure, job duties, and priorities." They've repeated the same mistakes every couple of years since I've been here and refuse to accept that gaming in the West is different than in Korea and our customers aren't the same. They want to do everything the same as they do in Korea, which doesn't work here, but they are too stubborn and prideful to admit it."

I seriously hope the same thing with regards to what they see with Wildstar and where it was going wrong.  Old-school mmorpgs in reality are not as popular as people seem to insist they are.  Even WoW is when you consider it, just a single game.  When you look at so many games out there and the sheer number of actual players, mmorpgs are actually on the lower end of the number of players in popularity.  The fact that only one game has players in the millions range should say more there, especially with so many mmorpgs being near-clones of WoW.  I'm often baffled by how many players can still see a WoW-like game as different than WoW just on the appearance.

Which generally means that they are trying to make a game compete with WoW that essentially copies WoW.  That isn't going to work.

And equally baffled many will say X is a WoW clone when X doesn't happen to be.  City of heroes had that problem, some would mistake it for one, bring WoW tactics in, and get a rude awakening then either really enjoy it or get mad they cannot be the attackless healer they wanted to be all that effectively, or that every mob but counsol and freaks were "to hard" when in reality, they never adapted any variety of tactics outside of the trinity.

But these same players go to developers and ask for their game to be playable with WoW tactics.  This creates the first problem above.

Then of course there is the mismanagement issue, but then that generally results in rushed projects and further degrades the quality of the games being made when they are trying to copy WoW as it is by request of players or publisher.  :/

Until some big mmorpg publishers really realise that things like the trinity, extreme grinds, and gambit-roulette-plan-reliant raids are not actually that popular I personally think mmorpgs are going to continue down that path of becoming a game genre most people really don't want to get into.

[Dr. Bad Guy]

The only downside is you come out of it naked

I think Skynet would be a pretty big downside. Oh and the almost extinction of humanity as well.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

I think Skynet would be a pretty big downside. Oh and the almost extinction of humanity as well.

Depends on who your home team is, doesn't it?

[MM3squints]

I think Skynet would be a pretty big downside. Oh and the almost extinction of humanity as well.

Small details xD, we will then reprogram a governor to save us all

[FloatingFatMan]

I think Skynet would be a pretty big downside. Oh and the almost extinction of humanity as well.

I wouldn't miss most of it...

[Noyjitat]

Had a dream that we got the game back and I was playing... not too far into the dream I realized this is a dream because I coudln't possibly be playing it the same day the game was bought... and then I woke up and screamed:

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.nooooooooooooooo.com%2Fvader.jpg

[Ohioknight]

We're all traveling forwards in time, just all at the same rate, give or take.

Pointless pontification follows:

You can think of the universe as a wave in a pond.  You tossed a pebble in and the ring is expanding from the splash.

In this analogy
there is one dimension of time -- the direction towards and away from the splash
there is one dimension of space -- left and right around the circle of the wave
there is one dimension of vibration -- up and down from the surface of the water

in String/Brane/M theory
there is one dimension of time
there are three dimensions of space
there are seven(ish) dimensions of vibration

we are patterns formed by tiny ripples in the expanding wave

(the analogy fails because the motion of the wave in the pond has "time" built into the motion itself -- a better idea is a wave pattern of cracks in an ice sheet but that's not as clear)

The "Splash" is the inflationary event -- we don't know how big the "pebble" was, but judging by the flatness of the universe's curvature, that was a big pebble compared to the ring's expansion distance of 12 billion light years.  The section of the "ring" that we can see (distance light could travel from the inflationary epoch) has NO detectable curvature -- implying the total universe is MUCH MUCH larger than the 12 billion light years distance that we can see to the "horizon".

So how are the negotiations going?

[pinballdave]

Pointless pontification follows:

You can think of the universe as a wave in a pond.  You tossed a pebble in and the ring is expanding from the splash.

In this analogy
there is one dimension of time -- the direction towards and away from the splash
there is one dimension of space -- left and right around the circle of the wave
there is one dimension of vibration -- up and down from the surface of the water

in String/Brane/M theory
there is one dimension of time
there are three dimensions of space
there are seven(ish) dimensions of vibration

we are patterns formed by tiny ripples in the expanding wave

(the analogy fails because the motion of the wave in the pond has "time" built into the motion itself -- a better idea is a wave pattern of cracks in an ice sheet but that's not as clear)

The "Splash" is the inflationary event -- we don't know how big the "pebble" was, but judging by the flatness of the universe's curvature, that was a big pebble compared to the ring's expansion distance of 12 billion light years.  The section of the "ring" that we can see (distance light could travel from the inflationary epoch) has NO detectable curvature -- implying the total universe is MUCH MUCH larger than the 12 billion light years distance that we can see to the "horizon".

So how are the negotiations going?

7 dimensions of vibration? How does one observe that?

[darkgob]

7 dimensions of vibration? How does one observe that?

String theory is purely theoretical and has not yet been observed.

[JennSpace]

Small details xD, we will then reprogram a governor to save us all

OH but it's already happening, Terminator 5 is coming out in 2015!  ;D

[Ankhammon]

Not to derail this railless train, but I'm a sad Royals camper right now.

Can we get a game to play to make my mood better?

[Rejolt]

Not to derail this railless train, but I'm a sad Royals camper right now.

Can we get a game to play to make my mood better?

I broke down and started playing The Secret World again. Slow moving and combat is meh (which will make it easy to leave for COH or a successor project) but man does the atmosphere and mission structure rock.

[Ankhammon]

I broke down and started playing The Secret World again. Slow moving and combat is meh (which will make it easy to leave for COH or a successor project) but man does the atmosphere and mission structure rock.

Pretty spot on with the analysis there Jolty. But unless it's f2p, it leaves me out. Was going to hit up Marvel if the download ever finishes.................

Would rather be playing CoH. I got lots of alts to put together. Good part is each one is gonna be better than the last. :)

[Angel Phoenix77]

Pretty spot on with the analysis there Jolty. But unless it's f2p, it leaves me out. Was going to hit up Marvel if the download ever finishes.................

Would rather be playing CoH. I got lots of alts to put together. Good part is each one is gonna be better than the last. :)

What I do not like about The Secret World is it has no tab to nearest enemy, so you can easily get in a pincher attack and all the enemies love to run behind you. The difficulty runs from stupid easy to stupid hard. Just as a mission I dies literally 12 times in a row before I quite because, it was a simple click but a green flag was guarding the location with 4 minion class. Also the only group instances are layers. 

[Harpospoke]

- anything that requires new graphics or unfinished graphics such as Wind Control is right out.

That makes me want to watch The Holy Grail again.

They've repeated the same mistakes every couple of years since I've been here and refuse to accept that gaming in the West is different than in Korea and our customers aren't the same. They want to do everything the same as they do in Korea, which doesn't work here, but they are too stubborn and prideful to admit it."

That sounds a lot like their "You can't talk to anyone directly without being introduced first" thing.

[Illusionss]

Surelle: The attitude that, after all this time, they refuse to try and understand the western market is the one that concerns me most.  It doesn't bode well for any future for CoX:

This refusal does not necessarily bode ill for the successful sale of CoX. Not at all.

It does bode ill for someone, though [remember, corporations are people nowadays]. Due to my keep-it-nice moratorium, I will say no more. Well, maybe one more thing. You know that old saw about leading the horse to water, but you cannot make him drink? We got some folks doing that. They have been led right up to that fresh, tasty water [i.e. the western market - or pick your fav corporate stumbling-block] and they are looking down at it and going, "NOOOOOOPE."

Oh well. Can't force that horse to drink, y'know. Horses who refuse to drink are eventually doomed. And they better drink wherever water is to be found, that other water might dry up later. But what do I know anyways....