[WolfCoder]

Mines WolfCoder.7189

This game renders pretty much every MMO I've ever played (I used to review the free ones too as well as had WoW for a year) obsolete.

[gangrelguy]

I'm not likely to ever pay money to NCSoft (the maker of GW2) since on August 31st, with no warning to anyone, they fired the entire staff at Paragon Studios (developer for City of Heroes). 80+ people lost their job in San Francisco. At the same time, announced they were closing the payment services immediately and shutting the CoH servers down at the end of Nov.

City of Heroes was a steady and profitable game (it was a bit low on subscribers but netted $800k/month consistently the months leading up to and including August). They did this because they want to cut American and European assets and have plans to shutdown all American and European studios in the near future.

The developers were about to release a new update (it's on test server with at most 2 weeks left to fix bugs) and had the next 4 updates in the works. Absolutely NO warning to the developers, they came into work that Friday and before lunch found out they didn't have a job to go to the following Monday.

GW2 and Blade and Soul were the reasons for this. You can find corporate releases on how they lost $600million in the development of those two games and they cut one that was profitable so they could dump the American game studio that develops it.

It's not a matter of money to them as the CoH community has come forth and pledged $250k that would be donated off-the-cuff to keep the game running without any idea of an amount needed to be raised.

The CoH community ALSO started a fundraiser to pay for lunch for ALL the employees at Paragon Studios to go to a favorite nearby restaurant. There was a $1000 cap on the fundraiser. It took less than 3 hours to raise $1045 and MOST of the community didn't get to donate due to being at work before the cap was reached. There is currently talk about running another $2000 cap fundraiser for the developers since so many of the community WANT to donate and the first fundraiser reached cap so quick.

I am a gamer and was interested in GW2, I've played a majority of NCSoft games, but when you want to dump 80+ Americans out of jobs in a barely recovering economy, you've lost my money for the rest of my life, and earned the right to have the above information given out to ANYONE that will read it.

I have restrained myself to posting just facts in this post, though I'm sure you can tell the ....frustration over this. Yes, I played City of Heroes for 8 years, since day 1. But the way they put those 80+ Americans out on the street with no warning whatsoever is infuriating. Sure, they should be able to find jobs to move on to, but on a forum of coders, put yourself in their shoes. If even one of the employees has issues finding work, it could have been you if you were working there.


If you haven't paid for GW2, take all this information into consideration.

If you HAVE paid for GW2, make your own decision. I wouldn't want to encourage anyone to not get their moneys worth out of something you paid for, but have this information at hand if you ever consider putting out more money to an NCSoft-based game or service, and think it over.

[Kilorn]

Unless you cite sources on all of these "facts", you're just spouting off information that isn't verified. Please post sources where you've obtained this information when trying to make an argument.

[rgfirefly24]

here is the official announcement from Andy Belford. They will be shutting down the servers by end of year with the entire paragon studio being gone "effective immediately". I'm sure though that they knew about the upcoming shutdown before it actually happened, and I would hope at least that they would be given severance pay to help them till they can all find new jobs.

This post has been edited by rgfirefly24: 20 September 2012 - 05:47 AM

[Kilorn]

I believe that they shut down the studio, and are planning to sunset the game, but the fact that this person has come here with all of these numbers on how profitable the game was without any real data to support it, leaves me skeptical. NCSoft obviously realized that they were spending more money to maintain the game than it was bringing in, so they decided to let it go. If you're not making money, then you need to change the way things are done, or you will lose your business.

[gangrelguy]

First, I didn't come here just to make this post. Was just checking out the forums and saw this GW2 topic and was reading through it.

Second, I'm not trying to make an argument, just listing info. However, I get the "pics or it didn't happen" mentality.

So for third, check @MMODesigner on Twitter for posts Aug 30, then Aug 31st. Business as usual, Aug 31, no more Paragon Studios. I don't know any way to link directly to posts 3 weeks ago on Twitter. @MMODesigner is the Lead Game Designer, Matt Miller (AKA Positron for the community) for Paragon studios Matt Miller.

The post by Andy Belford on the announcement of the closure states that NCSoft "In a realignment of company focus and publishing support, NCsoft has made the decision to close Paragon Studios." I will elaborate on this more when I get back.



As I caught these responses just before heading out the door, I will edit this post when I get back and add the links to the other information.

[xclite]

I haven't touched this in weeks. Goodbye, $60.

[Curtis Rutland]

Same here. I kept telling myself I'm going to go play it some more, but then I got Borderlands 2.

[gangrelguy]

Ok, can't find how to edit a previous post.

First, I said 'net' profits instead of 'gross' profits. I know the difference and simply misstated.

Some consolidated financial info at:
INDEPENDENT MARKET REVIEW NCSoft

Article at Massively talking about the "Take the Devs out to dinner" fundraiser:
city-of-heroes-fans-buy-paragon-studios-a-meal

A lot more can be found by googling Save City of Heroes and such.

There is info all over about NCSoft wanting to dump their American and European assets and since I can't edit a post, I'm not going to drag out this 'sub-topic' any longer.

I just wanted to get this info out and it's turning into an OP-hijacking and since I never got around to buying GW2, I won't likely post in this thread again except 'maybe' to reply, but I'll be around the forums helping answer stuff in hardware and networking questions (my specialty) and to ask coding questions (where I'm focusing my life/career in now).

gangrelguy, on 20 September 2012 - 07:33 AM, said:

First, I didn't come here just to make this post. Was just checking out the forums and saw this GW2 topic and was reading through it.

Second, I'm not trying to make an argument, just listing info. However, I get the "pics or it didn't happen" mentality.

So for third, check @MMODesigner on Twitter for posts Aug 30, then Aug 31st. Business as usual, Aug 31, no more Paragon Studios. I don't know any way to link directly to posts 3 weeks ago on Twitter. @MMODesigner is the Lead Game Designer, Matt Miller (AKA Positron for the community) for Paragon studios Matt Miller.

The post by Andy Belford on the announcement of the closure states that NCSoft "In a realignment of company focus and publishing support, NCsoft has made the decision to close Paragon Studios." I will elaborate on this more when I get back.



As I caught these responses just before heading out the door, I will edit this post when I get back and add the links to the other information.

[modi123_1]

Shucks.. a game that doesn't have a fan based large enough to continue... it happens. Commiserate with the Asheron's Call 2 folk.

Not With a Bang but a Whimper

[Bort]

Modi, I have several friends who play CoH, and from what they have been saying, CoH was a profitable game. Like LotRO and DDO, it went F2P and became more profitable than when it was subscription based.

[Kilorn]

modi123_1, on 20 September 2012 - 03:32 PM, said:

Shucks.. a game that doesn't have a fan based large enough to continue... it happens. Commiserate with the Asheron's Call 2 folk.

Not With a Bang but a Whimper

And the Tanarus players, including myself.

[WolfCoder]

Guild Wars 2 is too awesome a game for me to care about corperate politics.

[Sergio Tapia]

Man, I've been busy finishing up my Senior Thesis project and upgrading our company intranet website. It's been a week and I haven't been able to play at all.

Do you think ArenaNet will refund me a week of game time? I feel like I wasted money on this month's sub fee.

HA-HA-HAAAA.

Eat it, WoW fans. This is one of the major reasons why I love GW2.

[xclite]

However, in World of Warcraft I can choose which skills I want out AND have an awesome weapon at the same time.

Disclaimer: I don't actually play WoW.

This post has been edited by xclite: 25 September 2012 - 01:48 PM