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Role Playing (Games)

NCSoft Financials Show Promise, Game Delays 22

Posted by simoniker from the real-subscription-numbers dept.
Thanks to GameGossip for its story discussing Korea-originating MMO firm NCSoft's financial results for the first half of 2004. Along with an "operating profit [of] $23 million", specific sales/subscription numbers were announced, a rarity in the MMO world, as the company "reported that Lineage II and City Of Heroes are both doing well, with sales as of the end of June at 86,000 units (Lineage II) and 190,000 units (City Of Heroes) respectively. Meanwhile, as far as active players are concerned, NCsoft reported that Lineage II and [the soon to be cape-friendly] City Of Heroes have 76,000 and 170,000 active players respectively." However, delays to NCSoft's forthcoming titles were also announced, since "Guild Wars has been pushed from Q4 2004 to the first-half of 2005. Meanwhile, [recently re-organized Richard Garriott title] Tabula Rasa has fallen back from Q4 2004 to the second-half of 2005."
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NCSoft Financials Show Promise, Game Delays More

NCSoft Financials Show Promise, Game Delays

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  • Oh man, capes! That's awesome. They look good too. City of Heroes sounds like its a really fun MMORPG, I;m glad to see it doing well.

    Hopefully the delays in the other games will help them get up to CoH's level {I hear Lineage II kind of sucks, which seems to show in the sales figures}. Kind of like Blizzard, who delays games all the time, but it's in order to make/refine/perfect a superior product.

    and yea, what's up with all the 503 errors?
    • Guild Wars is by a bunch of ex Blizzard folk so the analogy is good. From what i've seen of it, it was already up to CoH's level at E3 and when they finally release it, it will be outstanding.

      I'm betting Tabula Rasa is toast tho.
    • Lineage 2 is written with Korean gamers (the audience of Lineage 1) in mind. It does a lot of things we here in the states find to be very poor game design (the treadmill makes EQ look tame. I believe it took 2 people multui-playing an account for 20 hrs a day over a month to go level 70-75). It won't ever be very popular here in NA, and in Korea its competing with L1, the world's largest MMO.
      • 44 Days was the time it took to go from 70-75 if I recall. Lineage II was fun. I played open and closed beta, but the grind just started too early. One of my friends bought 20 dollars worth of adena on ebay, used it to buy some stuff, then made the money back and sold it on ebay. He said that made it more fun because he got better pretty fast. The game looks like a blast at above level 40, but I just don't have the desire to play up to there right now.

        • Lineage 2 sucks.

          The grinding sucks.
          The developers don't fix broken things sucks.
          They don't get rid of botters or adena farmers sucks.
          They don't tell you what they fix sucks.
          You only play because your clan got a castle.

          Droves of people left prior to C1. Droves of people left one month after C1. They've seen it all, they've gone through castle seige, you only need level 53 to see all your skills, so there's no point going higher.

          I'm sure lots of the 70k active players are not really active at all. They
  • so FFXI is roughly 3 times as popular as City of Heroes. nice figure.

    consider also though that FFXI has roughly 10 times the content.

    i recommend CoH to people that are into hero based action and FFXI to RPGers but i would have though that CoH had a player base of almost double that
    • CoH has pretty much replaced my nightly Battlefield and Unreal gaming. Its sort of mmorpg light. Not much plot, lots of combat, no user economy whatsoever. For some people that may seem like a negative, for myself its just right.
      The combat is fun and action oriented (no where near an FPS though). The variety in powers is pretty cool and each character archetype offers a different way to play.
      The nice thing is that there is progression and I get to see my characters grow and become more powerful. Different t

    • Or... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bluemeep ( 669505 )
      CoH for soloers and FFXI to social folks. I've spent 95% of my time in CoH doing things my own way, while FFXI forced me to either beg my friends to play or join up with often unreliable strangers. Or CoH for people with imagination that dig a healthy character generation and FFXI for folks that don't mind looking and performing exactly like someone else of the same class and level. To each his own, of course.

      • Re:Or... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Elsebet ( 797203 )
        CoH is one of the few MMORPG's where duos or small groups work just as well, if not better than huge groups.

        Time spent in FFXI: ~4 months
        Duo: Warrior & White Mage (Me)
        Level attained playing casually: 16 (almost 17) of ~70

        Time spent in CoH: ~3 months
        Duo: AR/Dev Blaster & Emp/Dark Defender (Me)
        Level attained playing casually: 27 of 50

        Guess which one is still active? :)

    • i recommend CoH to people that are into hero based action and FFXI to RPGers but i would have though that CoH had a player base of almost double that

      City of Heroes has been out for two months. FFXI's been out for MUCH longer than that, already has an expansion with another on the way, has a lisence that makes it lucious to both japanese gamers and western ones. I don't think the figures are any surprise.

      That said, I prefer CoH. I think there's a distinct reason why it's more than double the base of Linea

  • I would have bought Lineage II if it wasn't a MMORPG. Good graphics, the best elements of both japanese and european/american RPGs, along with rather nice character generation. Shame really, that it became a MMORPG. No real story, monthly subscriptions and worst of all, other people, really ruin any RPG for me.

    • Umm, L2 character generation is non existant. Pick 1 race, pick 1 of 4 or 5 avatars, almost 0 changes to the default look, 2 starting classes per race (except for dwarfs with 1). The graphics are nice, i will give it that. But it also didn't "become" an MMO- it was always an MMO. Its the sequel to the MMO Lineage 1.

  • How strange.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by dave-tx ( 684169 ) <df19808+slashdot AT gmail DOT com> on Monday August 02, 2004 @03:33PM (#9864571)
    ....I just passed a car (in Austin, TX) that had a "NCSOFT" license plate an hour ago. Wonder who that belongs to.

  • guildwars (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I am happy that the statement about guild wars being pushed back is as far as arena.net knows is false.

  • Guildwars delayed? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jlink7 ( 802246 )
    Quote from http://www.guildwars.com/ [guildwars.com]Guildwars.com:

    "What is the expected release date?

    There has been no change in the release window, and we anticipate that Guild Wars will be released in the second half of 2004."

    That was in the official game FAQ, where is this news of the game being delayed coming from?
  • In CoH, it took me 29 days to go from "Wow, this is amazingly cool" to "This is nine shades of suck."

    Every door mission is the same. Getting a group to stay together long enough to complete a Task Force is nearly impossible. At level 19, I've essentially run out of new power options.

    Still, I got more play out of it than I did with Everquest or Ultima Online.

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