Karma baby got to love it.

[Rotten Luck]

Or to put it another way.  NCsoft new long term goals might be trash.  Link... note might need to translate.  http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2012/09/129_117289.html



08-13-2012 17:09        
NCsoft's revenue model questioned

NCsoft's Blade & Soul
By Cho Mu-hyun

The popularity of game developer NCsoft's latest title Blade & Soul may fade sooner than expected due to lackluster content updates, according to industry observers Monday.

The massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) took five years to develop and cost 55 billion won. It was launched commercially in June to rave reviews.

Its growth was also helped by rivalry from Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo 3 released in May. Declining interest in the California-based firm's release, due to poor server management and its return policy, saw local gamers turn to the Korean offering.

As NCsoft's release had a martial arts theme, it differentiated itself culturally from the Western, medieval fantasy world of its American counterpart.

However, a month after commercialization, Blade & Soul ceded its top position to a lesser game in scope and size: Raw Games' League of Legends, a real time strategy game based on Warcraft's customized map, Defense of the Ancients in which users pick heroes and fight with automated units from opposing sides battling each other.

"There is reasonable speculation from the market that the game (Blade & Soul) will see a repeat of what happened to TERA," said Kim Min-kyu, a cultural content professor at Ajou University over the phone. "Despite the buzz that surrounded its launch, the overwhelming number of accounts by gamers online complained about insufficient content. As it is a pay-per-month game, users tend to be more sensitive over what they get for their money."

"The game is at a critical point, in which its life-span will be decided."

TERA is an online role playing game released by NHN's game division Hangame in collaboration with Bluehole Studio last year. It started commercialization in January and received similar hype to Blade & Soul as a big-budget domestic game with a strong caliber. It challenged then No. 1 Aion by NCsoft, for three months. However, its user time in Internet cafes dropped below 10 percent, and continued to plummet to fall to near 20th position, where it remains.

"This is the difficulty of launching a large-scale game like Diablo 3 or Blade & Soul, and having a common scenario. There are a lot of unpredictable factors and some luck involved but a game's future is decided upon how well it keeps its good reputation for around three months. Blade & Soul's second position in the charts is not reassuring though," said a former NCsoft official by telephone, on condition of anonymity.

Both Kim and the official said there is an impending urgency for NCsoft to update content because Korea has one of the highest content consumption rates in the world. This problem was one of the reasons for the decline of Diablo 3 as well.

NCsoft announced on July 18 that it will not charge users before they reach level 15, which industry analysts judged to be a strategy for the game developer to prevent its user pool from leaving.

"I've noted many complaints on community websites about balancing the ability of characters and requests for patches to fix them. Reacting to these as soon as possible should be NCsoft's main goal," said the official.

Another problem for the game's future is World of Warcraft's expansion pack Mist of Pandaria to be revealed in more detail at Gamescom 2012 next week. As most current users are thought to have played World of Warcraft a lot during its heyday, if a better game emerges, they will jump ship without hesitation.

NCsoft saw a net loss of 7.3 billion won for the second quarter. The profits from Blade & Soul will be reflected starting in the third quarter and the company needs the numbers to be high to offset its recent deficit.

[Turjan]

One is forced to wonder if such worries are one of the reasons behind NCSoft CEO TJKim selling 2/3 of his own personal NCSoft stock to rival company (and F2P pioneers) Nexon, so that two companies can work together with closer ties...

[RandomUnicorn]

I would strongly suggest that one of our local experts in Korean diplomatic writing and several of our more talented writers put together a letter and contact the writer of this article. He might very well be interested in writing another  article on NC Soft. There are a number of directions this can be pitched including canceling a profitable game, their mismanagement of the affair, the fact that they are an MMOKiller, their failure to act in a an ethical or responsible way, the manner in which they have handled this has upset and insulted  many people, or any other avenue that would appeal to the writer. A single critical article in Korea would do more to shake NC Soft then 10 such articles in America.

[Rae]

That's an awesome idea, Unicorn.

[downix]

With Korea being content hogs the shutdown of their most content filled game makes even less sence.

[Keyne]

Leveling in CoH is too easy, it's an MMO that promotes rolling alts and playing through repeatedly.

How many Korean MMOs can you name with more than twelve character slots?

[Victoria Victrix]

Leveling in CoH is too easy, it's an MMO that promotes rolling alts and playing through repeatedly.

How many Korean MMOs can you name with more than twelve character slots?

It's also not a grind, and I was under the impression that was the favored Korean style of play, ending up with massive PvP faction battles at the level cap.