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Shakeup At NCsoft
MMORPG.com has word that Jeff Strain and David Reid, who run NCsoft, are no longer at NCsoft.
Looks like this isn’t a layoff but a management shakeup. Unfortunately this does mean that David Reid can’t inform the media how the departure of David Reid will have no effect on NCsoft.
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about 1 year ago
So, the President Of Product Development and the President Of Publishing for “NC West” walk. Many mysteries abound. Were they were seeing something really nasty coming down the pike, or was it a matter of unresolved dissatisfaction with their South Korean overlords?
about 1 year ago
Hm, how about ArenaNet and Guild Wars 2 then?
about 1 year ago
Guild Wars 2 will probably be fine.
All those hidden NCsoft West titles though… they’ve got a good shot at having to convince the new managers that they should still keep funding their development. Again. And if the new management is straight out of Korea, they’ll need all the luck they can get.
about 1 year ago
Huh, interesting. Some people thought that Garriott’s departure and the subsequent cancellation of Tabula Rasa was a political maneuver to get the ArenaNet crew in charge of the American side of NCSoft. That doesn’t appear to be going according to plan if so….
about 1 year ago
I’m not really familiar with the NCSoft story, but with these latest developments, could we say that NC West was a fluke in the company’s history and that NCSoft is gradually going back to being an Asian company?
about 1 year ago
Vet: Depends on Aion and GW2, I’d wager. There is room in WoWs marketplace.
Aion is … I dunno. I find myself enjoying the ways in which it is both WoW and NOT WoW. For me, this will be the first PvP end-game-game that I’ve actually enjoyed. Aion PvP, so far, has been wickedly fun. WoW PvP was NEVER fun.
If it can succeed in being a bridgehead for heavy PvE players (like me) to embrace PvP it has a great chance at being a commercial success. There’s no possible way it will touch WoW numerically, but it can still be wildly successful. It’s TOO similar to pull millions of PvE players out of the Coliseum at this point.
about 1 year ago
@Hellfire
WoW PVP was fun… briefly, before the Honor system and (especially) battlegrounds came in. There were some great open field battles around the Crossroads and Tarren Mill for the fun of having a good old mass brawl… or I suppose you could call it a zergfest if you’re too cool for mass PvP, but we enjoyed it
Once the Honor system went in, the incentives were all skewed towards making it a grind. Open field battles disappeared as everyone went to farm BGs, and BGs became less fun because of the dead weight of AFK leechers.
If Aion can make PvP as much fun as the glory days of DAoC and WoW, then NCSoft are in with a chance.
It’ll be a hell of a thing if a Korean MMO succeeds by being less grindy than a Western MMO
about 1 year ago
The PvE XP curves are analogous to launch-WoW. Not EQ sloooooooow, but not present-day WoW by any stretch. The first 10 nub levels as played by any seasoned player won’t take you more than 3 hours or so which is pretty spot-on.
I did the WoW PvP you speak of, but I never found it overly fun. Any “even” battle at the Crossroads inevitably drew max-level pwninators to ruin the fun and as soon as the other side brought in its own heavies everyone bailed. That may have just been my server, though. I played on the same zero-day PvE server for the entirety of my WoW run.
That said, that’s the promise of Aion. Like DAoC, the best stuff comes from the common PvP+ zones. Why am I finding it more fun? No idea. I’m thinking it has something to do with there being a sense of fairness. The pure DPS classes and “everyone else” aren’t so far apart that winning/losing is a foregone conclusion. I’ve been ROCKED by a Chanter (chain/healer/modest DPS) turtling me as a Gladiator (think arms warrior, plate & good DPS). On my Chanter I’ve also been able to burn down a Ranger who wasn’t playing to his strengths and my weaknesses (range v melee).
It just seems, for lack of a better description, more fairer.
I’ve never felt that way about WoW PvP. Even rolling around in S2/T5+ gear on my Rogue.
about 1 year ago
Honestly, I felt that more than anything the fundamental problem with WoW PVP balance was that they fucked themselves over when they wrote the combat system. There’s a gross disparity between the handling of players and the handling of mobs that results. The fundaments of the game are designed for PVE, and they continuously have to ad hoc their way to something semi-playable for PVP.
I’m actually surprised to hear that Aion PVP is good because the things I heard about previous games seem to imply that Asian MMO PVP is mostly about cheesy death combos, but since I was already thinking about switching, this is another notch in its favor.