NCSoft Stockwatch

[Illusionss]

If another Great Depression happens, we will not go down alone. As the main consumer-nation in the entire world, we will take almost everyone with us; things are much more interconnected now than they were in the 1930s. For instance, if we go the Chinese will be right behind us - because they sell the lion's share of what they make to us, and they own most of our debt. And they're already horribly overextended as it is, building "ghost" cities and infrastructure that they don't need, in order to give a semblance of growth. In one shot, the two largest superpowers in the world are economically helpless.

You'd better believe that the resulting ripple effect will be more like a tsunami. Korea and the entire Far East will not escape that economic wall of water.

As far as NK, they're in a whole hell of a lot of hot water that they are intent on making hotter by the day. But squashing them like a bug won't be that big of a deal. They're going totryto use 1950s technology against things like the Stealth bomber. I give that war about two days before NK is a smoking wasteland - and not necessarily a nuclear one. We dont need nukes to flatten Lil' Kim.

Meanwhilem Guild Wars 2 has become a license to print money.

Has it? I have not logged in in almost a month now. Even back then I was seeing fewer people.

[LadyVamp]

I'm a fairly active player in gw2 and it seems to have plateaued as far as membership is concerned. 

oh and companies that are restructuring are almost always broke.  They're confirming what I suspected all along.  They killed their one good money maker aka coh and now they're getting what they sowed back.  I would say let's form that LLC and make a tender offer for coh just as they go under.  It's the only asset they got worth buying anyway.  After we got the real code, then we pull Matt and friends back in and get back to smashing hellion faces.

[Aggelakis]

They killed their one good money maker aka coh and now they're getting what they sowed back.

I say this as a City fangirl and with the full force of my love of City backing it: LOL WUT. You're crazy. City was not their one good money maker. City was barely a blip on the radar.

[Kemphler]

I say this as a City fangirl and with the full force of my love of City backing it: LOL WUT. You're crazy. City was not their one good money maker. City was barely a blip on the radar.

If I recall correctly, City was making only 2% of their total Revenue...Hardly anything, considering the amount of games they have out there. It may have been one of their main money makers here in the States...at least until GW2 came along. That game probably blew City out of the water, unfortunately, rather fast, considering how fast people took to it. I could hardly be called an expert on this stuff though, so its all speculation on my part (being a business major student) based on what I've heard/seen.

[Quinch]

If I recall correctly, City was making only 2% of their total Revenue...Hardly anything, considering the amount of games they have out there. It may have been one of their main money makers here in the States...at least until GW2 came along. That game probably blew City out of the water, unfortunately, rather fast, considering how fast people took to it. I could hardly be called an expert on this stuff though, so its all speculation on my part (being a business major student) based on what I've heard/seen.

That's about the sum of it - North America amounted for a whopping 4% of NCsoft's total earnings {with Korea alone making up for over 70%}. It's quite possible that, with GW2 coming up a success, they figured they could painlessly get rid of the smaller earner and simply transfer the City of Heroes customers to another NCsoft game.

If that's the case, it backfired just a little bit.

[JaguarX]

That's about the sum of it - North America amounted for a whopping 4% of NCsoft's total earnings {with Korea alone making up for over 70%}. It's quite possible that, with GW2 coming up a success, they figured they could painlessly get rid of the smaller earner and simply transfer the City of Heroes customers to another NCsoft game.

If that's the case, it backfired just a little bit.

Yeah. I guess they forgot that many COX players liked COX because it was COX and nothing was like it on the market. Then again, it may e a calculated loss move and realized that already and figured they lost a few thousand customers (maybe about 10-20 thousand of course I have no way of proving any of these numbers even if I think it was 100,000 customers lost or 1 million) in exchange for many thousands more. I doubt they expected the backlash and the outcry.

But they went down a path that really there is no way to correct. Even if they turned on COX today many already stated they  wont play as long as NCSoft is involved meaning it will make even less than before and be even smaller percentage of total income. Yet, if they do nothing people will still be angry. It's like they went down a path where there is no turning back and is in a damned if they do damned if they dont situation. And what do many entities and people do in this situation? Continue on hoping to get through it instead of trying to go back in a now futile attempt to correct what cant be corrected.

[FatherXmas]

As for GW2 coming up with something in the cash shop to attract paying customers, they just added as drops to their equivalent to our Super Packs, a series of weapon skins that had people pour a whole lot of money since Tuesday into their item store in hopes to get one.  And just like our Super Packs with numerous threads have blown up complaining about the RNG and how some have spent supposedly thousands upon thousands of gems (their Paragon Points) to in an attempt to get those skins.  100 Gems = $1.25 or 2.29 gold.  A week ago 100 Gems would have cost only 2.02 gold.  The gold to gem exchange rate goes up as more players convert gold to gems and down when they convert gems to gold (their legal RMT method).

Then like back on our boards when SP came out, a debate ignited about if this is considered gambling and whether it's legal, since you are paying for a "roll of the dice" hoping to "win" the prize you want.  Before this they spent the whole month putting different items up for sale every day, 20% off.  I believe it was moderately successful, at the very least they should be able to tell the kind of products players are interested in.

Note: Unlike the devs in CoH, ArenaNet is a flashback to Jack's days where they hold the actual percentage chances and drop table weights to themselves.  One dev recently posted "we don't want to show you how the sausage is made".  Lack of transparency has also brought out a number of the tin foil hat crowd.

On the up side the changes that went into Tuesday's large patch for WvW, server vs server vs server PvP via capture the flag across 4 similar maps have queued up entry to WvW on all the maps for the first time in recent memory.

[JaguarX]

Note: Unlike the devs in CoH, ArenaNet is a flashback to Jack's days where they hold the actual percentage chances and drop table weights to themselves.  One dev recently posted "we don't want to show you how the sausage is made".  Lack of transparency has also brought out a number of the tin foil hat crowd.

Isnt there a saying somewhere that states something of the likes when there is no facts available people will create their own "facts"?

[Triplash]

That's about the sum of it - North America amounted for a whopping 4% of NCsoft's total earnings {with Korea alone making up for over 70%}. It's quite possible that, with GW2 coming up a success, they figured they could painlessly get rid of the smaller earner and simply transfer the City of Heroes customers to another NCsoft game.

If that's the case, it backfired just a little bit.

Score one for the underdog, eh?

[TimtheEnchanter]

Then like back on our boards when SP came out, a debate ignited about if this is considered gambling and whether it's legal, since you are paying for a "roll of the dice" hoping to "win" the prize you want.  Before this they spent the whole month putting different items up for sale every day, 20% off.  I believe it was moderately successful, at the very least they should be able to tell the kind of products players are interested in.

Always fascinated me, that loophole. One of those things that had a hand in killing video arcades too, really. Those games that dispense tickets when you win, which you can then use to get toys that are even cheaper than the ones at the Dollar Store.

Apparently it's only gambling in the eyes of government if you can win money.

[Quinch]

Score one for the underdog, eh?

I'd rather have had CoH see the success it deserved than underdog vindication.

[Golden Girl]

Closing Aion so soon after CoH could have a major impact on player confidence in any of their titles.

[JaguarX]

Closing Aion so soon after CoH could have a major impact on player confidence in any of their titles.

hear hear.

[Kistulot]

Closing Aion so soon after CoH could have a major impact on player confidence in any of their titles.

Then, tin foil hatting for a moment, how long (theoretically) would it take for the closure of Aion not to be perceived as such? Feels a worthwhile question to consider.

[Illusionss]

Then, tin foil hatting for a moment, how long (theoretically) would it take for the closure of Aion not to be perceived as such? Feels a worthwhile question to consider.

Who knows: it has been since last August that we got our announcement, and that perception has not faded one bit. In fact it seems to be spreading, as the idea that NCSoft cannot be trusted is getting mentions in articles that are not even about CoX in the first place.

Player confidence has been traumatized, and I have zero faith that the people running NCIdiocracy are smart enough to avoid similar actions, when the latest wound has not even begun to close. That is not an intelligent bunch and they exhibit little if any insight into the causes of their current woes.

[Triplash]

I'd rather have had CoH see the success it deserved than underdog vindication.

Well yeah. Naturally. However if it's down to vindication or nothing, I'll take vindication. The sting they're feeling serves to remind me that we're right to be upset over what happened, and we're right to be fighting to change the situation.

They chose poorly in dismissing us so easily, and other people are starting to see that now too. Hopefully "don't mistreat your players" is what other game companies are hearing these days, each time a new article talks about the latest downturn NCsoft has taken. Most of them probably aren't, but some of them are, and that's a start.

[Tubbius]

Closing Aion so soon after CoH could have a major impact on player confidence in any of their titles.

Are they closing Aion?  Am I missing something?

[Aggelakis]

Are they closing Aion?  Am I missing something?

No announcement of such. The numbers are dropping, though.

[FatherXmas]

Always fascinated me, that loophole. One of those things that had a hand in killing video arcades too, really. Those games that dispense tickets when you win, which you can then use to get toys that are even cheaper than the ones at the Dollar Store.

Apparently it's only gambling in the eyes of government if you can win money.

Except the ticket thing has some kind of skill associated with it, Skee-ball for example.  Gambling has to be entirely by chance and it needs to be pay money to win money.  If you win a prize then it's a raffle and raffles are usually OK with the government.

Pachinko in Japan is interesting.  You take your "winnings" from the machine (balls) and use them to buy little goods.  However there is a place near by, TOTALLY unrelated to the pachinko parlor who will buy the items for cash.   

[FatherXmas]

Are they closing Aion?  Am I missing something?

No announcement of such. The numbers are dropping, though.

Aion's numbers have declined rather noticeably in the last year or two.

2010 - 262,137 million KrW world wide, 178,867 million in Korea (68.2%)
2012 - 141,311 million world wide, 106,627 in Korea (75.5%)

Only thing is sometime after 2010 they did license the EU operations to a third party.  That income may now be reported as royalties and not assigned directly to the game.  Royalties did increase from 48,033 in 2010 to 64,101 million KrW in 2012. 

It was the sensational success of Aion that drove the stock price through the roof.  Between it fading and B&S not seeming to generate new income the way Aion did is what was behind the drop of the stock to the 120,000s range.