NCSoft Stockwatch

[JaguarX]

the stock seems suprisingly stable despite the upswing in coh media, although my guess is its more reflecting on what happened to coh than bashing ncsoft and/or pointing out one of the many flaws about them

Yeah.
dont take any of the following this the wrong way or anything but it's just little tidbit I observed while hanging about many people that deal heavily in stock. I mean beyond the little fiddling I do, I mean some are in it major that make my 10,000-15,000 per corporation, look like a penny not worth bothering about. Some of those guys gain and lose more than that in a matter of hours (depending if the stocks are actually in a nose dive) and dont even flinch.

I dont think we reached their sight much. Alot of these guys are old school old money who definition of playing a game is blowing 100,000 or so at the craps tables. For some, the stock market IS a game.

Also some dont give a hootenanny about how the corporation make money and raise the value of the stock, as long as they do just that. For many, the corporation could fire everyone person except one guy working for 1.50 hour 19 hour days 7 days a week and burying his body out back when he dies from exhaustion as long as the profits go up and or stock value go up.

Although some will sell their stock off after hearing about questionable activities no matter how much they lose out of their moral beliefs. 

Others still, may be outrage at the decision but stick around.

And some are in it for the long haul and look at things in 5-10 year increments. We see a dip here and there but it's still higher than about 5 years ago and 10 years ago and those long haulers dont care about minor dips that happen month to month. As long as it stays above the level they bought it and show no sign of crashing, they are smugger than a dude swimming in an ocean of money.

And some area combination of all the above, well most are in one way or another according to the ones I know about and who they know about.


Overall stockholders are not on Massively, IGN and other game sites. Many probably never played the game. If I get a letter to the stockholder's meeting and I can go (side note: one corporation I own only one stock now and really dont even count it as part of my portfolio and still get the invites lol.) I'll try to ask them if they actually play the products assuming I dont get crushed by someone's wallet.

[Tubbius]

Anyone got any ideas as to why the stock chart is going almost vertical for the last few days?  :|

[FatherXmas]

Only thing I can find is that the 3rd closed beta test date was announced for B&S in China, May 7th, and beta keys are becoming available.  Also this beta is closer to the current Korean live version than the last beta (well I hope so).

Also it may be undergoing a name change or at least an addition in China.  The Chinese website has a letter to players that Google translated as the game will now be referred as "Sword of the Spirit".

Investors might be getting excited by that.  It's likely not for the 3-11 record of the NC Dinos.  The Nexon Heroes are 10-6 BTW.

[TimtheEnchanter]

I must say "Sword of the Spirit" has a much nicer ring to it than "Blade & Soul."

[Beltor]

The stocks may be on the rise because Wildstar is a week into beta.

[General Idiot]

I must say "Sword of the Spirit" has a much nicer ring to it than "Blade & Soul."

On the other hand, both of them sound stupid next to 'City of Heroes'. :p

[Mister Bison]

On the other hand, both of them sound stupid next to 'City of Heroes'. :p

the Korean name even was "city of hero". talk about individuality!

[Safehouse]

the Korean name even was "city of hero". talk about individuality!

Well "hero" does have a very individual ring to it

[FatherXmas]

That's because the plural for hero in Korean is hero.

[Twisted Toon]

That's because the plural for hero in Korean is hero.

Sort of like the plural of sheep is sheep?

What would you call a group of heroes (or hero in Korea) anyway? My guess would be a League.

Much like a group of girls is called a giggle...

[FatherXmas]

Oh and a second reason, for the uptick last week, GW2 1st closed beta test in China is starting next month as well.  And yes they nerfed a few costume parts there as well to reduce the exposed skin on females.  Kind of a shame since Norns, giant sized shape shifting (not a great power unfortunately) Norse like humanoids can have full body tribal style tattoos.  Can't really show those off all covered up.

So we have both the former B&S 3rd closed beta and  the GW2 first closed beta in the same month in China, so it does look as if the China strategy is going ahead at full force.  Toss in a few weeks ago Wildstar expanded closed beta starting up here has soothed investor's nerves over new product/markets and the lousy record for the baseball team, now 3-1-13 and currently 8th of 9 teams in the league.

[srmalloy]

Sort of like the plural of sheep is sheep?

Sort of; it's more that Korean, like Japanese, doesn't by default indicate plurality for nouns -- they have a 'general number', and can be either singular or plural. For example, 책 (chaek) can mean book, or books. You can specify the number -- 책 한 권 (chaek han gwon) "one book", 책 두 권 (chaek du gwon) "two books" (권  -- 'volume' -- is a counting term to indicate how a collection is counted, as is sometimes seen in English -- one sock, two socks, one pair of socks). However, you can make a noun explicitly plural by adding 들 (deul) to the end: 책들 (chaek-deul) "books". The Korean localization of CoH, however, transliterated the name -- 'Siti Obeu Hieoro' -- rather than doing an actual translation of the game title into Korean (in the same way that 'elevator' is often transliterated as 'erebetaa' in Japanese). Pushing "City of Heroes" through an online translator into Korean returns '영웅들의 도시', which does have the plural marker, which leads me to wonder how well the Korean localization was done.

As I don't know enough Korean to be able to make an informed judgement, I'm not in a position to say for certain, but it leads me to wonder whether NCSoft might not have stacked the deck against CoH's Korean release by having a slipshod localization done; they couldn't make the art or gameplay worse, but a shoddy translation of the game text would have make the game look like a half-assed American attempt to break into the Korean MMO market. If true -- and I have to point out that I have no clear evidence that it is -- it would suggest that NCSoft had regarded CoH as the 'red-headed stepchild' in their stable of games for years before the shutdown, although I can't see CoH as having had the ability to make any significant dent in their home-grown MMOs even if it had gotten a full push in Korea.

[Golden Ace]

That's because the plural for hero in Korean is hero.

Marketing was stupid on that one.  Marketing it in Korea they should have packaged it in Korean.

[dwturducken]

OK, much as I can't believe this thread is still going, it's been more than 8 months and is nearing 100 pages. Now, we MUST!

[DarkCurrent]

Stock is creeping upward in anticipation of its next major drop following misguided Chinese dreams and lackluster Western sales.

[srmalloy]

Marketing was stupid on that one.  Marketing it in Korea they should have packaged it in Korean.

Want to bet that NCSoft (this being pre-Paragon Studios, IIRC) didn't allocate enough money to do a proper localization on it?

[Golden Ace]

Want to bet that NCSoft (this being pre-Paragon Studios, IIRC) didn't allocate enough money to do a proper localization on it?

lol hell no.

[Joshex]

eventually gamers are gonna realize that any MMO thats been in china has already been hackzored before it gets here, I didn't notice any hacking for example in Aeria games Scarlet Blade, but the Game Masters had to shut down the server unexpectedly abot 5 times in the last week to address security concerns

one time I was in the middle of playing and suddenly a red message comes in chat "emergency server maintenace" and then says "you have been disconnected from the server" 2 seconds later.

obviously something severe has happened, and from what I can tell the more we Beta MMOs in china first the more and more the hackers will know how to do more and more nasty things.

I forsee a future where by the time we get the game in america it comes prehacked and random account details are stolen.

it's for this reason that unlike NCSoft, aeria games does not supply the ability to link a credit card to your account and does not retain credit card info on thier servers.

I have never seen aeria do this much work to anti hack a game, usually they just refute it as something the player needs to prove, but this time they themselves are catching it cause it's there from the start.

immagine the liability lawsuits to NCSoft if blade an soul comes prehacked with an account hacking system to steal credit card info, yeah I know they probably have some clause in thier ToS that states it's your problem but that wont hold up in court in the case of mass account theft as that would obviously be thier problem.

[FatherXmas]

Okay, what the deuce?  An 11,000 point, 6.75% rise in the last few hours of Friday's trade?

Someone heard about something.  1st quarter numbers are due very soon now.

KDB released last week (but may only be publicly available yesterday or today) a new outlook on the company.

Overall they've adjusted their estimates on earnings for each quarter.

They expect Lineage to do 17 billion KrW more than their previous 1Q prediction and 30 billion more for the entire year.

Lineage 2 is expected to stay the same as their last estimate.

Aion is expected to do 1 billion more than previous guess for the quarter and 10 billion more for the year.

B&S is expected to do 6 billion worse than previous 1Q guess and 13 billion worse for the year.  (I hear cheers)

GW2, the estimates now reflecting no paid expansion, has 1Q at 18 billion more (nearly doubled from previous guess) with 2013 guess off by 33 billion.

Their 4Q Wildstar estimate has doubled, up 27 billion for the quarter and the year.

Overall their 1Q guess is up 31 billion while the 2013 guess is up by 33 billion.

They've now changed their price target to 250,000 a share from 200,000.

I have no idea if this and possibly other similar releases have caused this sudden rise today.  I'm guessing we'll see the 1Q numbers on the 14th.

Edit:  Oh, they've estimated 1Q profit to be 43 billion, up 10 billion from last estimate and the year's profit up 51 billion to 226 billion from previous estimates.  Last year it was 154 billion.

KDB is on the high side of estimates BTW.

[NecrotechMaster]

interesting, not happy to see a rise in price, but the higher they rise the harder they fall is how i see things lol

i think what will determine if they pass or fail is if they can get a foothold in the Chinese market