Judgement_Dave

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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.

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It also went very quickly (within the span of 2 months) from NC taking a public position of TR is going well and we've great plans for it to we're closing it down.

Whilst understanding that plans to close a game would be kept under wraps until announced as fait accompli, there's usually no need to be lying and claiming a rosy future whilst those plans/possibilities are obviously on the cards. You can just keep quiet about it's future.

I'd be inclined to think that the speediness of NC's U-turn may support th eidea that it was driven by the need to appease unknown, external parties.

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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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Uncertain or possibly just told to keep their mouths shut if they want to keep their jobs.

Never quite understood how they manage to have spiders the size of sheep and yet they still manage to hide under the dunny seat. And they still manage to bite people...

If my loo seat was raised 3 feet and appeared to be suspiciously wooly in an arachnid-kinda-way I'd find some way to hold it in...


BTW - the dunny is the outside toilet. I remember Mike Harding talking about trips to Australia and stating he'd been bitten by one of these spiders. In the morning, at hospital, he looked under the sheets at the damage wrought an dasked the nurse 'could you take away the pain but leave the swelling?'...

With regards to some of the horse-based posts: It's not a pun if it's just using a horse-related term that's entered common parlance in it's common meaning. And it's not surprising that there's quite a few horse-related phrases in English - anything related to gambling (horse racing in this case) tends to develop a load of phrases that enter common usage.

I like a good pun as much as the next man (well a little more so usually) - but you got to be shire that it's puns and wordplay. You'll just look foalish otherwise.

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Short term: no change (albeit possible US Forum migration).
Long Term: Pack your suitcases, I can't see it lasting without an EU.team to cater for our support.
Longer Term: Someone from NC actually talks to us


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Notice that you're doing a sterling job talking to the americans on their boards FFM...

I just love the guy who wrote the following:
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Gamewise bringing the EU players over to the US will hurt no one and will only enhance everyones playing experience in my opinion.


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Don't suppose he's considered that if they make a ballsup of a transfer that it could end up hurting plenty - y'know as most of the 'hundreds' of players decide that giving NC the finger is preferable to starting from scratch.

Mind you, the same person reckons we shouldn't be upset with anyone except Richard Garriott (whilst getting his name wrong) as if the ego-trip into space and development costs are what is stopping NC from communicating with its customers/players.

Already realising that a move to the US boards would seriously alter the signal to noise ratio we've enjoyed over here.

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Q: What did the Zombie say to the Kings Row ******?

A: Keep the tip.

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Hear about the zombie who enterd the poker tournament?
Didn't do well - he kept throwing his hand in.

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it's going to take some time for the folks at NCNC to formulate their plans going forward.

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It always does - hope that NC are doing the utmost to keep you guys informed though. Bad when these things happen, best you can hope is that the company deal with the employees in a thoughtful manner and try to help them as much as they can.

All the best for the future.

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http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...onfirms-ncsoft

Confirmation statements from NCSoft.

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Already posted twice in this thread yesterday - I posted the link c.18:00 iirc and someone later posted the link and tghe content copy & pasted...

It's not been updated (the date still shows 17:30 yesterday)

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Thanks for the well wishes, everyone.

My position is 'potentially redundant' within the Brighton office, and at the current time I intend to accept voluntary redundancy. I'm not interested in living in the US.

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Damn. Sorry, Alex. I hope that the "potentially" doesn't mean "certainly", but in these times we live in...

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The "Potentially" in that means "If you take up a job in the US, you'll probably still have a job. Otherwise, you're redundant and you can either leave now, or wait out your notice period".

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Isn't the potentially more due to employment law specifying consultation periods and such?

No-one is made redundant effective as of now, it's always "your poition is redundant but by law we've got to pretend to be making sure that's the case and looking to see if you fit in anywhere else in the organisation for the next few months". It's usually a done deal, but legal hoops need to be observed...

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Spades a Spade.

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Unless you are playing 500 when it can be a club...

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Or, I'd guess, on the US forums (where we may soon be) where I wouldn't be surprised if Spade is censored.

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Including the Shirley Crabtree Appreciation Society?

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I sense that responding to this comment may date posters just as surely as any carbon dating, ring-counting or peeking at birth certificates could...

It'll be spangles next.

What's so wrong with Elitism?? It may have dated a bit but Elite was a pioneering game in its day.

Much like last year's cuts I'm cynically expecting the next few workdays to bring some info about the next issue and the announcement that it's hitting test (closed or open). The announcement was probably due soon and it'd help distract some players from doom...


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to Ghostraptor and everyone else at NC Brighton affected by this cutback: Best of luck for the future, wherever you end up.

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Agree totally. Thanks for all the work to date & good luck wherever this takes you.

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The official date was:
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So it is with regret that we must announce that Tabula Rasa will end live service on February 28, 2009.

Before we end the service, we’ll make Tabula Rasa servers free to play starting on January 10, 2009.

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That was the official info - but after saying that they apparently changed their minds and it was, as Gangrel says, free from well before Christmas. IIRC they didn't make an official statement that it was free earlier than previously announced though.

Our favourite source of the day has a new article of relevance.

It looks like some of the US employees will be affected and the development/QA positions from the UK are moving stateside.

Also:
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Some development and community roles may be recreated in Seattle and California said NCsoft, and there is also a possibility that the sales and marketing team in the UK will grow.

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Now it says 5 departments closed down whereas the original said 4.

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I have both open and a quick comparison-by-eye suggests that the only 3 differences are:
* Mothballs -> Cuts Down (in headline)
* Four -> five (departments , in 1st paragraph)
* IT QA -> IT, QA (in list of cut departments in 2nd paragraph)

i.e the departments affected stayed the same, but in the earlier copy they had IT and QA departments wrongly listed as a single 'IT QA' and so counted one fewer department than they should.

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What? This?

Is anyone actually surprised by such a move?

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Looks to me like that link is now 404...

EDIT: And a search on the site isn't bringing up todays news - only the cuts from last year.

EDIT2: Ah - appears to be here now - it's not indexed in the search and maybe been moved as the phrase 'mothballs' the office was deemed too dodgy compared to 'cuts dow'[sic].

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In fact, when I logged onto Pocket D on Monday on Defiant on 11am GMT there was only 5 there, myself included!



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Maybe your problem right there.

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It's also the case that the servers hadn't started the VAlentines event that long before 11:00 Monday and at least some people appeared to only be getting the message when they zoned - so it's possible that many people who were in the game hadn't actually seen the message about the event yet.

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What? This?

Is anyone actually surprised by such a move?

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This appears to have been updated with more info.

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Step up NCWest.

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LOL

QR

Much as I understand that it's annoying to not have a team and that it's good that pretty much everything is soloable (for most characters, if they build to solo) I do actually like it that there are some tasks that try to promote teaming. Ok - maybe promote isn't quite right.. but at least they demand teaming.

BTW - in your OP you said:
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oh - and before you say - well just invite more people to the mission - well - we cant guarantee time towards doing it as we dont play every evening - and sometimes only for 30 minutes at a go - and it would be unfair to have a third party waiting around for days on end just to finish the trial / taskforce.


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Do you all have alts? If so, have you considered seeing if you could set aside a regular hour or so once per week maybe?

If you could, you could try posting on the server-faction-forum (e.g. for Union Heroes) asking if anyone is interested playing a TF as something like 1 hr every saturday afternoon (for example).

I've seen threads in the past organising things like a TF done for 2 or 3 hours on Saturday and then continuing on the Sunday... You might get some response and if not, asking won't hurt.

BTW - you'd need alts to play different characters if you wanted to play in between organised TF sessions, as once on the tF your characters remain on it until it's completed or you quit. And whilst in a TF you cannot do your other missions or talk to your other, non-TF, contacts.

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Possibly dumb asking this question, as all this is based on pure speculation...

Why haven't you considered moving the 4 servers (physically or just data-wise) to the US list/server hosting?

Surely all that we know would definitely need to change would be the possibility of global names and channels, as characters would still exist on th esame logical server... so slightly harder to do but slightly less chance of hacking off your non-US userbase.

Serious question, as I may be missing something obvious (data protection laws maybe).

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Actually, I did consider that but dismissed it due to cost. Physically moving the servers to the US would cost 10's of 1000's. Adding 4 more servers to their cluster would cost 10's of 1000's. Copying us all to their existing server network? All that costs is the wages for the guy writing the db script, and he already gets paid that anyway.

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A slightly false analysis - I'd have to argue that a move to US servers would have to include the 'cost' of lost subscribers. The question is only how many would the move lose and very possibly wouldn't affect the eventual comparison (i.e. it'd lose subscribers but possibly still be cost effective).

But then: What future revenue for other games does it lose? Word of mouth works both ways and is still, to the best of my knowledge, more trustworthy and persuasive. Heck - I'd probably go and see what old Cryptic do with CO and would happily advise people against NC products based on them not giving a damn unless your US based.

Still... we don't know what they're planning yet. Be good for some sort of press release before we all mentally write NC off as probably being nasty to us in a possible future.

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All active EU accounts made before [ enter date here ]

Will receive;

Lineage II client and 2 months playtime free!

Aion Early access code and client free!

City of combined edition client ( US ) and 2 months playtime free!

We thankyou all for your continued support!

Btw that's not speculation on my part that's what the subscribers of Tabula rasa got.

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Well I've already got that from TR...

If they do do something like this then I'd be seriously wondering if NC were doing this partly to try forcing people into Aion to ensure it's a success in the West.

hey - we cancel all the games but Aion and give everyone a month free, then some will stick with it

Seriously would wonder that...

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Time to look at what may happen objectively. What's actually happening here?

Damage control, that's what. NC West are clearly cutting their losses to protect their core business. This is a sensible thing to do, no matter how unfortunate it may be for employees in the EU operation.

Here's what I think may happen in the coming months.

With only a couple of staff left at NC Brighton, this is clearly an unsustainable number to maintain EU servers for CoH. Therefore, a database move is highly likely.

We will not be given a choice of where we go, they will just transfer us wholesale to a couple of the emptier US servers. The 4 EU servers will go completely.

We MIGHT then be granted free server transfer tokens, so that we can move our chars to servers of ours choice within the US, but this is by no means a given.

Localised language support will be discontinued.

No consideration will be given to duplicate character names or global names. We will just be given rename tokens as a cure all.

Some people will decide to leave over losing names, others will leave over losing localised language support. NC West will accept this as part of the loss cutting operation.

The above, whilst harsh to us EU players, is likely the cheapest route for NC to take because clearly, the EU market has become unsustainable. NC West are a profit making company, and they will do what they must to protect their profits. If we're a drain on that, we go bye bye.

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Possibly dumb asking this question, as all this is based on pure speculation...

Why haven't you considered moving the 4 servers (physically or just data-wise) to the US list/server hosting?

Surely all that we know would definitely need to change would be the possibility of global names and channels, as characters would still exist on th esame logical server... so slightly harder to do but slightly less chance of hacking off your non-US userbase.

Serious question, as I may be missing something obvious (data protection laws maybe).

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they make it so TFs/SFs never scale below minimum team size anymore? Example, if you start a TF that requires 4 people to start, with 8 people, and 6 quit, it still scales for 4, not 2. No?

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That's what i was remembering but someone made a quote about it, the changes to TFs devs made last year.

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Wow - it does show how confused the devs made us all...

I originally said that I thought it had the minimum size, but Suzumebachi (sp?) posted the quoote and linky to the patch where that was removed.