Profile: Rokurgepta
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• • would you trust ncsoft enough to buy aion given they ve closed down tabula rasa so soon ?

  • Originally posted by Gigget
    

    Originally posted by Zeblade
    

    LOL just because you dont like the game does not mean "it took balls, or thats what was needed" blah blah blah.

     

    Ncsoft is hurting for money right now so if you think the next MMO they put out will last more than one year lol good luck. Any one else I would say go for it. Not Ncsoft..  Just wait for 2+ months see how many servers they got going. If its 5 or less the game will not last.

     

    What?  I don't know what ass your pullin crap out of, but you need to find another.  NCSoft is not hurting for money.  They put out quality products and the ones that aren't, they stop wasting their money and their customers money and shut them down (sound busniess sense there).

    NCSoft is the 2nd largest MMO provider out there (probably the biggest).  Lineage and Lineage 2 are still going strong, even tho Lineage never took hold in the West and Lineage 2 has started to run its course in the Western market, but both are still strong in the Asian markets.

    Aion is not going to be a cheap "lets get it out the door quick" product.  They have a lot invested into this one -- even moreso than TR.  Everyone is banking on Darkfall to be a hit, but, seriously, its chances of that happening are the same for a cow to starting pumping out gold milk.

     

    I am guessing  you do not bother to research your subject before posting. NCSoft is down 50% in profits this year from last year. If you think that is a good thing you obviously do not understand business or profit. They put out TR which was not ready for release and was not a quality product. It cost them $74 million before release alone. Not to mention what was paid to the Garriots that was not part of TRs costs.
     

    They invested way too much in TR and it cost them dearly. Aion needs to be a big hit or NCSoft could be in serious trouble. Or did you think the closing of offices and consolidating was a sign of good times for the company?

  • Posted: 12/01/08 7:22 PM
    Tabula Rasa
• • would you trust ncsoft enough to buy aion given they ve closed down tabula rasa so soon ?

  • Originally posted by googajoob7
    

    the problem for ncsoft now is why trust them to invest in buying and subscribing to something like aion . they ve proven twice its not worth the time and effort of leveling characters in one of thier mmos . i ve only tried tabula rasa now because i got it cheap and am playing out the first month . i would nt say its the best mmo but neither is it the worst . what i cant understand is why give your company such a bad name by shutting down something this quickly .( vanguards still going even if its not that popular at least that shows soe has some respect for its user base ) .

    my personal view is they should have tried a different payment model , used in game advertising or added it as part of a package with one of their other mmos . or even sold it on to another company to continue it  . shutting it down is the worst thing they could have done .

    
     

    Shutting it down was exactly what was needed. The game was a disaster as an MMO as the 28k still playing at the end of last quarter proved. The game was operating at a loss every month. If they scaled back to turn a profit no new development would happen anyway. The game is a three month game tops if you do not play a bunch of alts and with the cloning they took most of the alt play out anyway.

    Vanguard is better than TR and has a larger population. SOE avoided the big initial investment and most likely turns a profit monthly with their way of doing development. Not saying their way is good or bad, but they are most likely not losing money like TR was.

    NCSoft shutting TR does not make me trust them less. I have no interest in Aion anyway, but I am waiting to see GW 2 when it comes out.

    In game advertising? To who? Advertising is not going up as the economy goes down, why would a company pay to advertise to 28k people? I can yell out a window at my house and reach that many people almost. If they go free to play with an item shop they have to develop the entire shop and put it in place for a game they know was on life support since release. Keeping it alive in any other state be that selling it off or packaging with another game would have meant much less development. In the last year they barely added anything content wise as it is, the game was almost out of players and I doubt it was going to become profitable no matter what they did at this point.

  • Posted: 12/01/08 5:51 PM
    Tabula Rasa
• • would you trust ncsoft enough to buy aion given they ve closed down tabula rasa so soon ?

  • Originally posted by Nixish
    

    I was going to write up the pros and cons of TR from an outsider's prospective, but its just a waste of time.

    I think it took balls for NCsoft to come out and announce the end of TR. Its more honest than leaving it to painfully die while continue to profit from box sales.

    And hey, its not like NCsoft is SoE =P

    /salt

    
     

    They do not continue to profit from box sales. They profit from digital downloads. The boxes were sold to retailers last year. NCSoft already got their money for those.

  • Posted: 12/01/08 5:40 PM
    Tabula Rasa
• • Good Riddance

  • Originally posted by levsix
    

    It is interesting that a huge majority of the people who hate the game haven't played it in the last several months.

    I loathed it at beta, hated it at launch. I had a lot of negative things to say for it.

    The game has come a long way. I wonder why people get all furious and intensely angry at a video game. Some people like Hello Kitty. Some like playing Korean item mall games. Tabula Rasa in its current form is a good game, especially when contrasted with what is currently on the mmo market.

    Does it have flaws? Yes. Could it have been better yes? Has it improved? Signficantly. Is it horrible? Not even close.

    For each person that posts about how terrible it is, tell me your highest level character and when the last time you played was. Then let me know what game you consider to be amazing. All of those answers should help to get some appropriate context.

    I, for one, am sorry to see it go. At least we still have WOW and all of those other amazing, original games left. If sales were a benchmark for creativity or the quality of a project, then by that very same logic Pink (or some other terrible top 40 musician) is much better than Bach.

    
     

    My highest character was level 50. I lasy played in August after reading on PTR how much the game changed and how great it had become. So I had been gone about 4 months at that time. Fired it up and found the same game I had left. Skills were a little different but it was still the same lonely world and my new character was still killing bane left right and center.

    Your comparing a musician from now to Bach is simplistic at best. Bach had a problem with sales back in the day due to no PR and limited technology to record his masterpieces. Not to mention a much smaller population in which to reach with his music. So the truth is there is no logic in your so called logic.

    TR was not amazing and what little originality it had was destroyed by poor decisions and lack of content. This is not that the MMO world was not ready for a game like TR, TR was simply not readyh for release and might be about there now. Too bad they released such an unready product that it killed their chances of ever being moderately profitable.

  • Posted: 11/30/08 4:48 PM
    Tabula Rasa
• • SAVE TABULA RASA

  • Originally posted by Raltar
    

    Originally posted by lkavadas
    

    Originally posted by _Shadowmage
    
    

    - strength of the I.P in the gaming industry - Warcraft were hugely successful games, whereas at the time SWG was released there had not been a good Star Wars game released.

     Wow, really?  So the whole X-Wing and TIE Fighter series never happened?  Or the original KOTOR?  Or Dark Forces?  Those are just the titles I can think of off the top of my head but I can guarantee you this:

    Lucas Arts sold more Star Wars PC games before SWG launched than Blizzard sold Warcrafts.  People tend to forget the original War Craft was f*cking terrible.  It was a turn based POS and that's why Blizzard went into scramble mode to save their company in 1994 and completely ripped off Command & Conquer (itself an evolution of Westwood's previous RTS title, Dune II) with Warcraft II.

    
     

    I think you missed his point. It was not so much the quality of the games as their popularity which determined the strength of the IP.

    First off, KOTOR was released several months AFTER the original SWG, so that doesn't count. 

    Secondly, X-Wing vs TIE fighter is seriously old school stuff. They may have been considered better than average games back in their day but you would be hard pressed to find many MMO players today who remember or even played those games.

    Third, Dark Forces? Are you kidding me? I can walk down the street and ask people if they have heard of Warcraft and almost everyone will know what I'm talking about. Ask people if they have heard of Dark Forces and they will tell you to "ask someone else for directions to the sci-fi convention, nerd!"

    As for Warcraft itself, it was not turn based. I don't know what game you played but I played the original Warcraft and I clearly remember it being an RTS game. Granted it wasn't as good as the games being made by Westwood Studios at that time but it was neither terrible nor turn based. It made logical sense for Blizzard to compare their product to what their competitors were offering at that time and make improvements based on that, thus the reason why Warcraft II may have been much more similar to what C&C was like. Its not some kind of crime to improve your game.

    I think the point Shadowmage was trying to make boils down to this: Blizzard was a super popular company which was very well known for making great games, one of which was their Warcraft series of games. Compare that to Star Wars, where games were very hit and miss and much less popular overall.

    This is probably why Bioware was chosen to make the new Star Wars MMO, because they are better known for quality and could connect their title to the popular KOTOR games by calling it "Old Republic" so people would think it was the same game. The bottom line is that it all boils down to who can make their product SOUND better on paper or in an ad on TV. I think WoW wins that contest over SWG without even breaking a sweat.

    Don't get me worng, I hate WoW as much as the next guy. I'm just setting the facts straight here.

    I bet if you walk down the street and ask about warcraft most people will not know what you are talking about, unless of course you aim for just certain age groups. If you asked about Star Wars I bet more people know what you are talking about.
     

  • Posted: 11/27/08 8:23 AM
    Tabula Rasa