Posts Tagged ‘ncsoft’

LoreHound Crier: The Week at a Glance

20 April 2012 | No Comments » | Pherephassa

It’s been another great week here at LoreHound. More PAX interviews have appeared, we’ve had a few exclusives, and there’s even been some game industry mudslinging. I was terribly excited to see news about Torchlight 2, and I’m sure there’s even more excitement about Diablo 3. I won’t be playing either game as I’ve got weekend plans, but I’m sure between TERA and Diablo 3 there’ll be lots of beta testing going on this weekend.

This week seems to have flown by so quickly! Maybe it’s because I’ve been sleeping through a nasty flu, or wasting lots of time on The Secret War. Actually, given that I’m ranked #2 for my state on the leaderboards, I’d say I’ve been wasting entirely too much time on The Secret War. What can I say, I’ve got not-so-hidden dreams of world conquest, although I’ve been contenting myself with doing my best to keep Brasil and China in the hands of the Dragons. In any event, I feel like no time has passed at all since I wrote last week’s rundown. But enough about me, I’m sure the week’s news is much more interesting!

 

  • PAX East Interview with Jared Gerritzen of Zombie Studios, who discussed Blacklight: Retribution with iTZKooPA. New maps, game modes, heroes and more!
  • PAX East Interview with Chris Rippy of Robot Entertainment where iTZKooPA gets the scoop on lots of gameplay footage for Orcs Must Die 2.
  • PAX East Interview with Tor Egil Andersen and Erling Ellingsen of Funcom, talking about character progression in The Secret World. Part Two is where iTZKooPA asks tougher questions, like when will we see more ARGs.
  • itZKooPA talked about the new content patch in Champions Online, and how it put the game back on his radar.
  • PAX East Interview with Victor Kislyi , CEO of Wargaming.net about the upcoming flying MMO World of Warplanes. If you want to take to the skies, there’ll be a public beta in June!
  • Mike told us about Yet Another Free SWTOR Weekend. How many of these do they plan on having? I agree with Mike, they should just get it over with and open up a fulltime free trial.
  • I was excited to see the launch of The Secret War, the Facebook app that’s paired with The Secret World, and discussed the unexpected success that shut it down for a few hours. My wild speculations turned me into a laughingstock – I honestly expected the app would be down for days or weeks instead of hours!
  • The first beta weekend for Guild Wars 2 was announced!
  • TERA‘s open beta weekend kicked of yesterday. Everyone can play this weekend, even if you’ve not purchased the game.
  • SWTOR‘s subscription numbers may be declining, according to analyst group Cowen and Company.
  • Bluehole Studios called NCSoft a corporate bully, and said they won’t back down. TERA will be released, even if they have to fearlessly stomp through the grist of rumors and lawsuits.
  • PAX Interview with Stefan Ramirez of Bluehole Studios. iTZKoopa got the scoop on how the “holy trinity” will play out in TERA, as well as more details about the lauded political system.
  • The Diablo 3 open beta stress test weekend is underway, allowing anyone to get their hands on the game. I haven’t had much interest in this, but I’ll admit to being slightly disappointed it’s this weekend when I won’t be at home to play.
  • PARTY!! It’s the five-year anniversary of Lord of the Rings Online, and iTZKooPA spoke with Aaron Campbell, Senior Producer of LotRO, about the exciting events happening within the game to celebrate. Fireworks, mounts and costumes are just a few of the goodies available during the festivities.
  • PAX Interview with Max Schaefer of Runic Games about co-op, quest sharing and other exciting tidbits in Torchlight 2.

Bluehole Studio calls NCsoft a “corporate bully”

19 April 2012 | No Comments » | Mike

On Tuesday, it was reported that ex-NCsoft employees were found guilty of leaking Lineage 3 information and coding to a rival and were sentenced to jail time. It was reported generally by media outlets as a win for NCsoft and implied by some that Bluehole Studio, the makers of TERA, were guilty because of the verdict.

Yesterday Bluehole Studio’s fought back stating they are “NOT guilty“, calling NCsoft a “corporate bully“.

NCsoft is a billion-plus dollar corporation, so they can afford to have a team of high-priced lawyers spin out reasonable-sounding documents. These baseless accusations have led to unfounded rumors, which is disappointing and unfair. But that doesn’t mean the rumors are true.

It is no surprise that the latest spin on the story has it that “TERA is guilty.” That is wrong. For the record, after extensive Korean proceedings, Bluehole Studio was NOT found to have made any use of any NCsoft trade secrets in the form of source code or game design. In fact, TERA didn’t even exist when the Korean case against the former NCsoft employees arose, and neither did En Masse Entertainment. In Korean civil proceedings, Bluehole was also found NOT to have been responsible for the exodus of NCsoft developers.

To our fans and followers, we want to let you all know that we are not going to let a corporate bully or baseless rumor mill derail us from focusing our efforts on delivering TERA to you on May 1, 2012.

BlueHole Studio’s goes on to point out that NCsoft has not filed a motion in the US to prevent the launch of TERA, suggesting they have not done so because the claims that Bluehole used any trade secrets is indeed false.

While the guilty verdict for the ex-NCsoft employees does prove that they did indeed shared trade secrets with Bluehole Studios, it has not yet been proven that Bluehole used any of them.

While the image posted above is from one of the documents submitted to the case and shows many character similarities, really how many different ways is there to draw a elf, high elf, human etc? Half of them don’t even look alike imo other then physical size.

Aion: Ascension Goes F2P April 11th

15 March 2012 | 3 Comments » | Mike

NCSoft today announced that the free-to-play version of Aion will be launching on April 11th.  Aion will be truely F2P, with no content restrictions or account tiers. The highly anticipated update 3.0, called Aion: Ascension will bring with it two new systems, C.U.B.E and the Atreian Atlas.

C.U.B.E, which stands for Customizable User Bundling Experience, is just a fancy way of saying you’ll be able to make your own item-store bundles to purchase from the Aion Store. How it works is that players purchase the Cube from the Black Cloud Marketplace, then can place as many store-items into it as they can fit. There will be different size Cubes, at different price-points, depending how many items you want to buy. Pretty clever idea by not allowing players to buy just one item, instead only allowing bundles; which obviously costs a lot more.

The second major feature is the Atreian Atlas; which acts as a guide for players throughout the game. The system will provide players with quest details on past completed quests, upcoming ones including: quest difficulty, minimal suggested level, related quests, maps, videos, guides, boss info, etc. Pretty much everything you need to know in order to complete any quest, aside from the Atlas actually completing it for you.

Along with those two new features, update 3.0 will also raise the level cap to 60 (from 55), introduce two new zones, 6 new instances, and add more housing and mount choices.

Below you can watch the Aion: Ascension trailer.

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Guild Wars 2 Large Scale Beta in March!

15 February 2012 | 2 Comments » | Mike

Guild Wars Insider has posted some fresh new details from NCSoft’s earnings call where it revealed that Guild Wars 2 will be setting up some large scale beta tests in March and April; which will then determine the next step for the game.

Whether these beta tests will be open, or remain closed, has yet to be revealed. However, the “large scale” statement suggest that if it’s not open, there will be plenty of closed beta keys up for grabs.

In March & April there will be large scale testing for GW2; depending on results of testing a finalized commercialization schedule will be determined.

They also confirmed that NCSoft is working on a console version of GW2, which will be released after the PC version.

We stated multiple times in public that we have a small team working on a console version, but that we are fully dedicated to make the most kickass game for PC.

Exciting news for Guild Wars and MMORPG fans a like.

Lineage 2 Doubles Servers, Quadruples Revenue

8 February 2012 | 1 Comment » | Mike

MMORPG.com posted some ridiculously impressive numbers about Lineage 2 since NCSoft made the switch to free-to-play back in November of last year.

250,000+ new players for a game that’s almost 8 years old is not too shabby. There’s no doubt making the switch to F2P is rejuvenating many older MMORPGs and even some newer ones that stumbled out of the gate. There’s really too many to name at this point, but the last one’s were DC Universe Online and Age of Conan who were  flaunting their skyrocketing numbers back in November, when they too made the switch to free-to-play.

Check out the stats below.

  • NCSoft has almost quadrupled its revenue in two months
  • The concurrent player base has increased more than 800%
  • The number of servers more than doubled to accommodate the influx of new players.
  • More than a quarter of a million players have enjoyed the “Path to Awakening” service, which provides helpful buffs, items and advice to accelerate new characters towards the level cap.
  • A surge of activity in forums, as well as Facebook, where “Like”s soared to more than 280,000 thanks to an active and still growing community

I’m sure next month I’ll be reporting on how Everquest II has increased their player-base by 10 fold since switching a few days ago.

The Upcoming MMOGs of 2012

30 December 2011 | 5 Comments » | LHStaff

It’s not quite over yet, but 2011 was not a banner year for the MMOG genre. There was no massive success, no breakaway hit. Players did receive their handful of expansions and new content patches, but with the exception of the just-released Star Wars: The Old Republic – a title which may become that massive success – most events were a blip on the radar.

Perhaps 2011 will be remembered not for its lack of breathtaking releases in the genre. No, no, the Year of the Rabbit may go down in history for a paradigm shift in the genre itself. Yeah, you guessed it, a continued aggressive shift to the free-to-play model.

What started with a last-ditch effort by Turbine Entertainment to save Dungeons & Dragons Online has continued to spread through the industry like wildfire. From dieing titles to titles that would have surely been paid-to-play years ago to upcoming AAA games, escapisms from every subgenre, every part of the world and catering to every type of game were released, entered beta or teased during the year. It’s getting to the point that drawing the line between what is an MMOG and what isn’t is becoming increasingly difficult.

Below you’ll find the titles that have us here at LoreHound.com the most excited. There’s a little bit of everything, AAA to F2P, MMORTS to MMORPG, casual to hardcore. An exhaustive list of expansions, content patches and releases? No, but the post is choke full of excitement, previews and information.

We’ll kick it off with the prediction for Star Wars: The Old Republic‘s seemingly bright future. More after the cut.

Star Wars: The Old Republic: BioWare has definitely set themselves on the right track with this game, going full blown into production. They have stated that they have a years worth of content already in back log before launch, giving them a year’s head start worth of content as they still work on more to come. Add to the fire the fact they’ve watched every MMO that was released in 2011, and took notes, along with everything the head megabeast, World of Warcraft, has done for the last 5 years. The game is only just over a week old (officially), and besides the hiccups with a launch of any new game, the game is going pretty solid with 1 million subscriptions already created on December 22nd (before people who got it for Christmas could subscribe).

Is the game perfect right now? No. Give it a few months, and all the kinks will be found and ironed out, with some new content. Yes, yes, that statement could be recycled for almost every MMOG release in modern history. That doesn’t make it any less true. The fully voiced story gives a very cinematic feel. Check out the Lore Cast Episode 5 in the coming days to hear how Mordil, Beararms, and perhaps a few others are feeling about the game.

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Aion: A Nostalgic Picture Diary

20 May 2011 | No Comments » | Ronix

“A thousand devs of the NCsoft empire descend upon you. Their nerfs will blot out the sun.”

“Then we shall QQ in the shade.”

It has been recently announced that the long-awaited Aion 2.5 patch has arrived on the Player Test Server.  The new patch will bring additional content in the form of PvE instances, a graphics overhaul, optimization of existing systems, such as crafting and enchanting, and the introduction of new ones, such as the Helper system. Legion features will be further  improved, character customization will receive an expansion and there will also be several tweaks and fixes to gameplay.

Having avoided logging in to the game since the end of 2009, I find myself strangely curious about the news. The urge to give this game another try seems to be getting worse, like an annoying itch that you can’t quite shake off. Instead of giving in, I decided to resist the temptation because I generally don’t go back to games that have burned me once. I’m just spiteful like that. Instead, I’m writing up this diary entry that will serve as a visual depiction of some of the entertaining things I still remember about the title. Follow along and remember to click on the thumbnails to enlarge them.

All RvR games start with a rivalry. Having amassed a huge community on the forums before launch, all that Aion-related threads needed was one spark, one short reply and everything was engulfed in the holy fire of a flame-war. Both Asmodians and Elyos would call each other names and comment on the looks of their opponents. The picture presented above is a good example.

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Another One Bites The Dust: Lineage Closing in North America (and Cryptic Studios ‘Discontinued’)

18 May 2011 | 3 Comments » | iTZKooPA

What? It's from 1998.

It’s unfortunate that Another One Bites The Dust exists, but necessary. This column chronicles the fateful announcements ahead of an MMOGs’ downfall, a company closure or, in some truly sad cases, both. Grab your Big Gulp and let some hit the floor for the fallen.

NCSoft, perhaps best known in the West for being the publisher behind the Guild Wars franchise (and my favorite Sci-Fi MMOG Tabula Rasa) recently announced that the company will be shutting down Lineage in North America. The early MMORPG title continues to support itself in its homebase of South Korea, but North American gamers have moved on, perhaps to its sequel Lineage II or sister product Aion.

NCSoft is giving all players, current and previous, a chance to partake in the title’s final moments. Any player that is in good standing (i.e. not been banned) has had their account reactivated. All billing has been cancelled from last week on. If that describes you, you’d best join in, as the development team promises a few live events before Lineage heads to the digital graveyard.

Given that it’s remaining online elsewhere, I wonder if the closing moments of Lineage will have any impact on other realms. I’ll always remember Lineage as the game that introduced me to the horrors and joy, in that order, of MMOG PvP, and Eastern MMOG developers.

The North American servers for Lineage will close on June 29, 2011. That’s assuming the world doesn’t end on May 21 like those nutjobs keep saying.

In not-so-directly-related news, former NCSoft development partner Cryptic Studios is having its own issues. Atari, the company’s owner since 2008, announced in its financial report that it considers Cryptic Studios to be a “discontinued operation.” Gamasutra reports that the original developer of City of Heros/Villains (now at NCSoft subsidiary Paragon Studios), Star Trek Online, newly free-to-play Champions Online and the upcoming Neverwinter RPG will be sold off.

Atari and Cryptic Studios have separately stated that the developer’s products will remain unaffected, at least for the immediate future.

Atari is dropping the recently-acquired studio to focus on its new business strategy “of fewer but more profitable releases and further expansion into casual online and mobile games.” Losing some $25 million in the past two years probably didn’t bode well for Cryptic. The studio has not divulged if Champion Online’s move to the F2P genre was as successful as past endeavors by other companies.

All the best to those affected by the decisions.