FloatingFatMan

TBH, i14 is ONE closed beta where they should consider roping in some EU people... Especially roleplayers.

Might get rid of a bit of the doom and gloom over here if folks here know that some EU folks are getting to try it too...

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Comes direct from NCNC, I spoke with them on the phone last night.

All I can really say here is that they want to do the best they can for the EU community under the new NCsoft West structure. They're good people over there, and they have big plans. I'm just sad I won't be here to see them come to fruition.

NCNC deserves no blame for this situation.

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No, NCNC are blameless here, it's NCWest (or ArenaNet) who are to blame if anyone, although the wider blame is really on the current global recession. It's really sad, but needs must I guess. What was getting to us mostly was just the silence, so you posting to let us know this is REALLY appreciated.

I think for the future though, most people here seem to favour our servers being added to the US server cluster and the forums merging. So if NCNC are wondering what to do, something like that might be an idea.

Or, they could come on here and ASK us!

Thanks for the official notification GR.

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Looking forward to see the system, fool around with it and make some story arcs. Have a few in my mind already.

My biggest hope though is that we can play the maps made on the US servers and they can play ours.
(If not atleast allow the Dev's choices to be able to cross the pond...)

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I'm sure I read somewhere that it's Global. (Like the Auctions)

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Yeah, I've definitely read the same too.

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This silence is causing NC irreparable harm by the minute.


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Hyperbole very much?

I think you're all overreacting rather strongly to be honest.

What is surprising is how quickly some have switched from "Everything is rosey, stop saying there's less people on Server X" to "Ahhh. The sky is falling"

It's a reorg, it's most likely the servers will stay up for the medium term and then there may be some sort of switch / change. Until that's confirmed people should probably stop working themselves into such a lather.

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OK, by the minute is an obvious exaggeration, but they ARE causing themselves harm by not saying ANYthing to us. Harm to a customer's trust is possibly the worst kind of harm a company can suffer, IMO, and they're certainly doing THAT to themselves.

And I'm not saying the sky IS falling. I'm making predictions as to what MAY happen to us in the future, and a little conjecture beyond that, but my main point of contention here is the total lack of communication.

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GR is probably metaphorically biting his lip.

He realises that saying anything other than just plain factual corrections may not help him find future employment. Would you hire someone in GRs line of work who'd potentially embarassed their last employer on public forums?

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I absolutely don't expect GR to be able to say ANYthing about what's going on tbh. He needs to look after himself and it's absolutely right that he do so. You'll note that I've not actually asked him if he can tell us anything.

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stating that the EU boards are closing and that the EU players are being moved to the US servers would have no undue impact on any talks with Brighton staff

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That would affect the status of a post actually existing or not. It probably would have no influence on negotiations, but the lawyers would have advised them to say nothing anyway, as lawyers always err on the side of non-disclosure of information.

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THAT kind of statement could affect things yes, but there are still plenty of things they COULD say which wouldn't, such as "Please bear with us during the current ongoing transition period. More news will be forthcoming as soon as possible".

But they're not saying ANYthing. Even GR, who's been posting a little today mostly in defense of his soon to be former employer, is making absolutely no comment regarding what's going on. Almost certainly because he's been TOLD to make no comment. This silence is causing NC irreparable harm by the minute.

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By that he means that after Issue 13s introduction subscribers went up and continue to do so, there was a 400 concurrent user increase from September to December but probably not the big hit that you usually see when an Issue is released.

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Actually, I suspect that there WAS the usual new issue spike in players, but it was offset by a whole bunch of people leaving over the PvP debacle.

Possibly not as big a spike as we'd normally get, as i13 was content light, but there was almost certainly a spike, and it's almost certainly been offset by a least SOME amount; otherwise there'd be more than 380 concurrent logins than the previous quarter with NO issue release.

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Except for Freedumb.

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It never ceases to amaze me how people can judge an entire server population on the actions of a small minority. I'm sure they're are quite a few dedicated and intelligent players on Freedom.

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Even the American's call it Freedumb!

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if someone had suggested the game was doomed because they weren't targeting pensioners, the game not doing well now wouldn't mean they were correct.

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Lots of time, possibly have difficulty getting out of the house to socialise, remember Steve Reeves as Superman, would seem like an ideal target market to me.

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Hmmmmmmmmmmm.............

I wonder....

*Phones ITV to sell them his idea about a Coronation Street MMO*

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Because bearing in mind I have tried to put forward why I think the game has never hit its potential, and you lot have constantly knocked my theories and suggestions,then clearly the game should be doing fab business right now.

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That had a hell of a lot more to do with the WAY you said it rather than what you were actually saying. The message was drowned out by the arrogant attitude.

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Things must be getting bad when I think Lionsbane is talking sense...

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DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!™

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But we also need to consider what NCWest does? It doesn't have much else other than CoX right? (I think I'm right, again caveats apply.) So they need to control it to justify their own existence.

Something has happened in the board rooms and we possibly won't ever know the actual results - but it's not looking good right now

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NCWest is ArenaNet pretty much; run by ArenaNet people, staffed by ArenaNet people. The ArenaNet people are the ones who make Guild Wars.

Try it on a trial account then. No global chat... No Broadcast... No replying to tells...

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Out of curiosity (inspired by the lovely person above me) should we all create Marvel/DC inspired characters just to see if we can get away with it or would that just be a mean a spiteful act?

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I'd personally call it mean and spiteful, but it DOES raise one question. Do we actually HAVE any GM's at the moment? Are petitions being ignored if so, or passed automatically to the US GM's already?

Are we alone in the dark?

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Hmmmm - boards seemed to go down for several minutes then.. was that just for me?

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Went down for me too.

Y'know... I find it curious that there's no published key metric data there for Tabula Rasa... There's a sales breakdown, which doesn't look too bad until Q4 which was probably affected by the closure news, but no key metrics...

Still, nice to see that they've made a net increase on income of 4.7 billion Won from Q3 to Q4...

Y'know... I find it curious that there's no published key metric data there for Tabula Rasa... There's a sales breakdown, which doesn't look too bad until Q4 which was probably affected by the closure news, but no key metrics...

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A couple of other things to consider.

I think we are mostly agreed that the plug was pulled on TR rather prematurely. It might never have recovered it's development costs, but it should have been able to turn a small operating profit.

The only reason I can see for axing it so suddenly is if the company desperatly needed to liquify assets to pay creditors.

Also, thier have been no posts (on anything) by deveropers/community staff on the US forums since the news broke. My inference is they are uncertain about thier own jobs.

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I agree completely. Killing TR just smacks of an urgent need for some cash, and silence from rednames in the US really DOES lend credence to something else afoot...

It's hard to say exactly what has happened without the month on month figures, but with December '08 including an issue release and only being just under 400 higher than the previous quarter, that's BAD.

Another thing to note is exactly how many staff the Brighton office lost in September. From 149 down to 84. I wonder exactly how many are left after Wednesday?

To be honest... With such numbers, if I were senior management at NC I'd be asking serious questions as to the continued viability of CoH... They almost certainly have a close eye on it.

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Yowza, 17k one month then 13k the next, normally doesn't an Issue release bring with it a massive increase in subscriber activity?

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That's quarter, not month. Still bad though. One would have expected the December 08 result to be significantly higher than Septembers with the i13 release, but it clearly isn't... Looks to me like the PvP changes and people leaving over that countered the increased number of people playing for the other new content.

Q4 numbers are out folks.

Looks like things [censored]'d in September, but improved very slightly by December...

Either way, 13,823 concurrent users for US/EU combined is rubbish.

Games sales are, however, up. From 5,416 in Q1 to 6,865 in Q4, increasing steadily throughout the year.

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Your dads not Giant Haystacks is he?

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Nope. My dad quit wrestling back in '75 when he tore his knee up. Retired British Lightweight champion. You won't of heard of him though, it was before wrestling became popular and televised.

Uncle Marty was a great guy though. Another close friend of the family who we unfortunately lost contact with...

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Including the Shirley Crabtree Appreciation Society?

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Oi! You leave my uncle Shirley out of this!

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Oh I hope you aren't serious... My girlfriend is actually related to him. That would make us.. distant family of a sort.

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Well, to be completely accurate, he was my god father, not my uncle; but I always called him just Uncle Shirley. Have known him since I was knee high to a wasp and it's only a disagreement between Shirley's missus and my dad that our families drifted apart in the 15 years before he passed.

He and my dad were in the army together, and were wrestlers together. Old old friends.

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emmm, where are people getting the less lag on us servers idea from ?

the servers are in the us ==> if you are in europe you have to do more hops through more internet nodes to reach them, each hop == lag ==> us servers means more lag and not less.

doesnt make one bit of difference what bandwidth they have on their side of the atlantic or if they have a fibre mpls piped directly through their ISP and into a load balancing box. transatlantic traffic, especially that used for streaming or online gaming, will have a noticeable time delay (at least more often than a locally - relatively speaking - hosted server). Why else do you think large online entities start server farms in foreign hosting providers and ISPs in the first place ?


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For mainland Europe that is true, but that's NOT true for the UK. We have far better links to the US than we do to mainland Europe, and having played on the US servers myself, I can guarantee you, there's less lag from here to there than from here to Hamburg.