New efforts!

[LaughingAlex]

Anyone ever notice that CoH/CoV and Guild Wars, two American made games caused (and in Guild Wars' case, still is) NCsoft to gain money versus lose it but Aion, Lineage 2 and Wildstar, three Korean-made games are causing NCsoft to lose money?

Seems rather ironic to me.
I mean, TWO games not even made by a company based in Korea are/was gaining NCsoft money and yet THREE games made by a company based in Korea are causing NCsoft to lose money!

Someone explained this earlier...

Firstly one person already mentioned wildstar is an american game, true.  As for the games they can't seem to sell here, it's because Americans are very different gamers than Koreans.  Many in South Korea spend hundreds of hours on the game and over an even longer period of time, as they spend most of their gaming time at internet cafe's where they have to spend a lot of money to even play.  So for korean mmorpgs, more time = more money.

Which course is the opposite for us americans.  We don't have very many internet cafe's that are dedicated to that.  Most of us who do go to wifi connections go to places like Starbucks of McDonalds.  And they don't always have a lot of bandwidth at the local stores(I knew a few mcdonalds that were way behind in tech to the point even THIS website was impossible to load).  We when we are gamers tend to spend a lot more time on games at a time, rather than spreading it out.  So we are far more likely to get bored of them far more quickly if they are very grindish.

So South Korean MMORPGs like Lineage 2 and Aion fail in america, while city of heroes/GW tend to do really well.  Wildstar however was designed as a typical old school grindy mmorpg that wanted to be korean.  Even though it was american, it was viewed as generally unoriginal, and unimaginative, so it wasn't going to do well.

Two different circumstances of type of gamer/environment/economy :/.

[Mistress Urd]

If the game is good, it doesn't matter where it comes from.

[Brigadine]

I wanna play :( :( :( I miss this game. MMOs today SUCK.

[Aggelakis]

Anyone ever notice that CoH/CoV and Guild Wars, two American made games caused (and in Guild Wars' case, still is) NCsoft to gain money versus lose it but Aion, Lineage 2 and Wildstar, three Korean-made games are causing NCsoft to lose money?

Seems rather ironic to me.
I mean, TWO games not even made by a company based in Korea are/was gaining NCsoft money and yet THREE games made by a company based in Korea are causing NCsoft to lose money!

A) Wildstar, as stated, is made in the US.
2) Aion and L2 make NCsoft oodles and oodles of money. L1 makes NCsoft more money than the first two combined.
III) Paragon Studios was losing NCsoft money. City, the game, was profitable (in NCsoft's world, "just barely" - barely breaking two digit millions a year) - but it couldn't support two dev teams for products in development *in addition to* its own devs.

I think you have your sources mixed up.

[Kassandros]

It makes so little sense that NCSoft couldn't just spin off CoX to Paragon Studios. I know, I know, there was some kind of personality conflict but it still seems crazy that opportunity was missed.

[JoshexProxy]

It makes so little sense that NCSoft couldn't just spin off CoX to Paragon Studios. I know, I know, there was some kind of personality conflict but it still seems crazy that opportunity was missed.

They still could, maybe that's the real hold-up is they made said offer to the THeM and they are considering it.

logic dictates that if CoX was shutdown due to concerns from Nexon, now that it's gone they have no reason not to run it, it's income sitting there doing nothing, lost money.

they might have been like "Hey THeM, if you like; we own Paragon Studios and can restart it for you and you can be the new dev team, then the game can continue forwards, before we do that though [insert list of requests to add in before they are allowed to run it, bug fixes, updated graphics etc.]"

could be that NCSoft wants real proof that they have what it takes to add new content.

I mean that's probably the best outcome or reason for the wait.

On the other hand the wait could have to do with the method the THeM plan to use to perform maintenance on the game, and consequently who owns that method or how cost effective is it/ how the projected sales can compensate for it and where is the proof of those projected sales.

real boring business stuff.

or maybe the them haven't "proved themselves as valid developers" yet according to NCSoft's terms. that would be terrible.

[Angel Phoenix77]

It makes so little sense that NCSoft couldn't just spin off CoX to Paragon Studios. I know, I know, there was some kind of personality conflict but it still seems crazy that opportunity was missed.

Who, knows maybe the holding company for the ip might be held by the defunct Paragon Studios. Just a guess and maybe a bit of hope :)

[Brigadine]

Who, knows maybe the holding company for the ip might be held by the defunct Paragon Studios. Just a guess and maybe a bit of hope :)

Would Miller be the one to give the approval? Maybe the holdup is he wants to be involved!

[Angel Phoenix77]

Would Miller be the one to give the approval? Maybe the holdup is he wants to be involved!

I don't think so, due to him being out of the mmo market. It could be someone the team and Nc Sot both likes to head up the holding company.

[Brigadine]

I don't think so, due to him being out of the mmo market. It could be someone the team and Nc Sot both likes to head up the holding company.

Miller lol

[Felderburg]

I think it's necessary to note that Paragon Studios is a completely defunct entity. All the personnel involved have moved on to other projects or jobs, and it has ceased to exist as anything but a memory.

[Ryo Kinsaru]

I have lottery tickets for tomorrow night, and if it hits it will take my new staff all of an hour to fix that.

[Shibboleth]

Reality of course was the person who litterally specialized only in restoring health points was far less effective, but they would assume he/she was the best.

Well, the person who specialized in healing probably was best. . .at keeping them up as they repeatedly did things which required healing.

But yeah, having people assume that your purpose in the game is to allow them to have fun is always a weird thing to encounter. I can almost forgive the "there is only one effective way" people who have latched onto something that works and think that is the only thing that can work.

I remember the early days of CoH and all the grief I got for playing my Defender "as a blaster"--except one has to figure that when I've debuffed what I am fighting so it takes more damage and can't hit reliably that I have actually done a fair amount of defending and that the health you don't lose because its dying faster due to my blasting is in fact worthwhile. And my Dark/Inv Scrapper back then. . .no, he couldn't equal a tank but he could hold and survive a lot of agro, which in many circumstances was enough.

[Rejolt]

I hate knocking CoH like this but: it's not worth the old Paragon Studios crew time and expertise to come back and maintance mode a game launched in 2004. Active development or go home as far as they are concerned.

A new group with at best some input from Miller and crew to get the game functional (I24 beta and issues maps beyond that were in production for AE... I know, from what we know not going to happen) is what I think is happening.

I need a new hobby for the next 2 years.

[LaughingAlex]

Well, the person who specialized in healing probably was best. . .at keeping them up as they repeatedly did things which required healing.

But yeah, having people assume that your purpose in the game is to allow them to have fun is always a weird thing to encounter. I can almost forgive the "there is only one effective way" people who have latched onto something that works and think that is the only thing that can work.

I remember the early days of CoH and all the grief I got for playing my Defender "as a blaster"--except one has to figure that when I've debuffed what I am fighting so it takes more damage and can't hit reliably that I have actually done a fair amount of defending and that the health you don't lose because its dying faster due to my blasting is in fact worthwhile. And my Dark/Inv Scrapper back then. . .no, he couldn't equal a tank but he could hold and survive a lot of agro, which in many circumstances was enough.

It wasn't just the guys needing a healer but the fact that buffs were far more powerful but most those types refused to ever recognize support other than healing.  On top of also sucking, course.  It was a double wammy, they were bad to begin with but also refused to realize that other forms of support far outclassed healing and that healing by itself was very very weak compared to the mobs dps.

Edit: I think i'm not going to use my Ipad anymore for typing here.

[blacksly]

If the game is good, it doesn't matter where it comes from.

It is, however, possible for a game to be "good" for a large group of players, and "bad" for a different large group of players.

Case in point: CoH's more free-style team building vs WoW and WoW-clones being pretty largely based on Tank-Healer-Extra. We here may look down on the Holy Trinity-style games, but it's really silly to argue that these games are not perceived as being "good" by a large group of MMORPG players.

[JoshexProxy]

Would Miller be the one to give the approval? Maybe the holdup is he wants to be involved!

shortest answer:

no.

long answer:

Nope. Miller doesn't own Paragon Studios, it was 100% purchased/owned by NCSoft back during the cryptic team's era. So NCSoft needs no one's approval or presence to start/run Paragon Studios.

it would be easy to see if the holding company is Paragon Studios, just run a search on businesses named paragon studios or containing the name and see their status, if it's still there that would suggest this is a correct assumption and might tell us something about the negotiations.

technically it would be a good idea or maybe even necessary for the THeM to run the game through Paragon Studios First then while acting as Paragon Studios; Transfer the rights to an new company or continue to run it there where NCSoft would sell Paragon Studios to the THeM.

goes to search.

[JoshexProxy]

search complete:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragon_Studios#External_links

Paragon Studios was a video game developer, and wholly owned subsidiary of NCsoft. Founded in November 2007 as NCsoft NorCal, the studio's remit was to further develop the City of Heroes and City of Villains franchises following the acquisition of the titles by NCsoft from Cryptic Studios.[1] In April 2009, NCsoft NorCal was rebranded as Paragon Studios.[2]

and this:

http://www.gamespot.com/companies/paragon-studios/#js-game-coming

Bingo, we have a winner.

"Paragon Studios Games", New company, No titles yet, nothing listed as Coming Soon. gamespot would only list it if it was a valid company, game spot only usually lists companies that have games, this means that GameSpot somehow found this company on game company business listings and tracked it down to confirm if it actually had any game licenses, but Due to the NDA they couldn't disclose which game. seems reasonable.

[Vee]

you're like Sherlock Holmes without the violin and the copious amounts of cocaine. well without the violin anyway.

[MM3squints]

search complete:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragon_Studios#External_links

and this:

http://www.gamespot.com/companies/paragon-studios/#js-game-coming

Bingo, we have a winner.

"Paragon Studios Games", New company, No titles yet, nothing listed as Coming Soon. gamespot would only list it if it was a valid company, game spot only usually lists companies that have games, this means that GameSpot somehow found this company on game company business listings and tracked it down to confirm if it actually had any game licenses, but Due to the NDA they couldn't disclose which game. seems reasonable.

Nope "Paragon Studio Games" is not a new company nor is it the name. It is the title of the page saying "Paragon Studio" Games as in games that fall under them. If you look at other publishers, you can see that:

http://www.gamespot.com/companies/bethesda-softworks/

The name of the tittle is "Bethesda Softworks Games," but we all know they are known as "Bethesda Softworks" or casually "Bethesda"