Aion

I am just thinking aloud and what not so please don't take anything I say seriously.

To me it feels like NCsoft is giving us the shaft a bit. Now  I know we are all excited over Aion and thats great but I just keep getting the feeling the devs really don't give a crap about us. Now I know some of you are going to say "Well they said they are going for a world wide audience" but remember people can say one thing and do another.

Now with Korea's open beta up in full flame, you hear all this great stuff about the game. You hear how its breaking records, and how much the fans love it. Hearing all these things is great, except for the fact that 90% of them are coming from fan translations.

I can buy the idea that they don't want us to see the game without all the polish on it. Heck none of us wants Aion to read like a Nigerian spam email, but the fact that 'the west' has no contact with the developers and the only times we are addressed by them is in off statements troubles me. Now if this was a company like Blizzard I wouldn't be so worried. Blizzard love them or hate them has a great track records with their games with the fun factor and support. But as we all know this is NCsoft, we are reaching out on a limb and throwing a tad of trust at them. Anyone who knows mmorpg history knows how bad they shafted the west with the lineage series.

I don't know, well I am going to head to bed now, its a little after midnight and I have to work tomorrow. Best of luck everyone

If it was NCAustin then ya I would say they are ignoring us..but NCWest is newly formed and I think they need to settle in a little more.

here's some news that gives me a little hope.

Plaync News

"The response we're seeing in Korea isincredibly exciting," said David Reid, president of publishing for NCsoft West in Seattle. "Our Aion community in North America and Europe is also rapidly growing. We've got aggressive plans for the western launch in 2009".

Originally posted by Fihtheninja

I am just thinking aloud and what not so please don't take anything I say seriously.

To me it feels like NCsoft is giving us the shaft a bit. Now  I know we are all excited over Aion and thats great but I just keep getting the feeling the devs really don't give a crap about us. Now I know some of you are going to say "Well they said they are going for a world wide audience" but remember people can say one thing and do another.

Now with Korea's open beta up in full flame, you hear all this great stuff about the game. You hear how its breaking records, and how much the fans love it. Hearing all these things is great, except for the fact that 90% of them are coming from fan translations.

I can buy the idea that they don't want us to see the game without all the polish on it. Heck none of us wants Aion to read like a Nigerian spam email, but the fact that 'the west' has no contact with the developers and the only times we are addressed by them is in off statements troubles me. Now if this was a company like Blizzard I wouldn't be so worried. Blizzard love them or hate them has a great track records with their games with the fun factor and support. But as we all know this is NCsoft, we are reaching out on a limb and throwing a tad of trust at them. Anyone who knows mmorpg history knows how bad they shafted the west with the lineage series.

I don't know, well I am going to head to bed now, its a little after midnight and I have to work tomorrow. Best of luck everyone

 

I suggest taking a peak and some of the live streams, so far i must say, the game looks incredibly polished. To use a mediphore, the devs only need to dust off and do a little bit more buffing to shine it up a tad, And walla.
 

As far as whether the NCsoft as a corporation really gives a rats ass about the players.. Well you bet they do, After all, we feed them money so they can make a living + feed us a ltitle bit of content in return to make sure we dont run and stop feeding them.

The playersbase is almost like a pet cat really, You feed a pet so you can give it love and so it doesnt run away, but in doing so, you are also fufilling your own agenda by giving yourself company. The real people you should love though are the men & women in the art team, they are living out their life's passion being able to create and implement art direction and beauty to the games enviroment.

From a technical standpoint, i think mainstream game developers are a cut between greedy corporation, and also a caring corporation, If it wherent for people who loved games, the industry wouldnt have gone anywhere, usually people working for the gaming industry do it because they like games, you know the saying if you love what you do you never really work a day in your life. They like games and in return deliver games.

Even now as these corporations grow into giants, i beleive they always retain a certain ammount of that aspect, and thats to make a good game. And if the game turns out shit, its sad because either they where pressured to keep with dates, or just lacked talent to bring something amazing to the table.

NC has been slowly pulling out of the western market over the last 2 years.

They got burned far to many times and negected their real money making markets, Asia. The Lineage franchise has aged and lost a lot of ground in Korea while they dumped millions and millions of dollars in failures like AA and TR here in the west. TR alone cost NC something like 74 million dollars. After all that money the US only makes up 12% of their total revenues and their real money makers have aged and lost their competitive edge.

NCSoft quarterly operating report

ncsoft.net/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

GW2 will probably be NC's last western produced product. After that, IMHO all NC West is going to be is a server localization point for the games they make for Korea. (Aion, Blade and Soul, L3 and the other projects they are working on)

IMHO, NC has hit gold with Aion in Korea and they really are not all that concerned with what the west thinks about it.  They will throw us our localized version like they did with L2 when they are ready. IMHO, their dreams of a creating a successful US/EU market seperate from their own are gone.

(source article stating the cost of Tabula Rasa www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/11/133_34283.html )

 im actually happy if nc would go that way

i absolutely love the distinc looks and feel of lineage2 and i never understood why instead of concentrating their full force on 1 game to lets say compete with wow, spread their resource so thin supporting all these other games.

even now on the asian market with aion on the horizont they have to support lineage1, lineage 2 and have blade&soul and l3 on the horizont while blizzard basicly just has to fokus on wow.

and i dont think asian game equals failure in the western market. just look at the market share mangas and anime has in the area of comics and tv. i believe that there is a market here for asian games as long as long as they are high quality. also quality is universal and the gamers may not be so different as devs think or they wouldnt have such problems with wow taking their share of asian gamers.

Originally posted by denshing

Originally posted by Fihtheninja

I am just thinking aloud and what not so please don't take anything I say seriously.

To me it feels like NCsoft is giving us the shaft a bit. Now  I know we are all excited over Aion and thats great but I just keep getting the feeling the devs really don't give a crap about us. Now I know some of you are going to say "Well they said they are going for a world wide audience" but remember people can say one thing and do another.

Now with Korea's open beta up in full flame, you hear all this great stuff about the game. You hear how its breaking records, and how much the fans love it. Hearing all these things is great, except for the fact that 90% of them are coming from fan translations.

I can buy the idea that they don't want us to see the game without all the polish on it. Heck none of us wants Aion to read like a Nigerian spam email, but the fact that 'the west' has no contact with the developers and the only times we are addressed by them is in off statements troubles me. Now if this was a company like Blizzard I wouldn't be so worried. Blizzard love them or hate them has a great track records with their games with the fun factor and support. But as we all know this is NCsoft, we are reaching out on a limb and throwing a tad of trust at them. Anyone who knows mmorpg history knows how bad they shafted the west with the lineage series.

I don't know, well I am going to head to bed now, its a little after midnight and I have to work tomorrow. Best of luck everyone

 

I suggest taking a peak and some of the live streams, so far i must say, the game looks incredibly polished. To use a mediphore, the devs only need to dust off and do a little bit more buffing to shine it up a tad, And walla.
 

Where are the live streams?

NCSoft has lost a huge chunk of their ass on us western gamers.  I wouldn't blame them for focusng all their efforts on making games for Korea and other Asian markets with the Western market being an after thought.  Let's face it, in the Western Market, if you're not WoW you get beaten down and thrown into oblivion by the gamers.  In asia Blizzard's not such a big tough guy like they are here.  What, they have 11 million subcribers compared to Ragnarok's 25 million.  Haha... in some areas of the world I guess Blizzard could be viewed as a epic fail.

Originally posted by Torak

NC has been slowly pulling out of the western market over the last 2 years.

IMHO, their dreams of a creating a successful US/EU market seperate from their own are gone.

(source article stating the cost of Tabula Rasa www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/11/133_34283.html )

That's an interesting perspective and probably has truth to it. I hope on one hand that you are wrong though, but I can't deny that NC has been burned bad lately either. :(  QQ