Formation of NCWest

interesting

its been said a few times so far but i think this will be good for ANET, and its obvious that GW has become a nest egg of sort for NCSoft and that their ability to do what ANET has done is definitely something to set the bar high for what u want to expect in return. Whats truly surprising is that this is all happening now right before the holiday season with Aion just on the brink of finally being released and GW2 we all hope to follow shortly after. They knew about this for months ahead of time and are just now making the announcement, hence why we probably had GW2 pushed back, that and why would they want AION and GW2 to compete?

To hear that Jeff is now a major player in NC makes me feel a bit more comfy about the move in general, the guy is a great thinker and knows what hes doing. Ever since i read that article "how to build a successful MMO" ive seriously taken a special liking to the ANET crew. And tbh i think is a much better move than RG as a key influence cos its no doubt the guy was over paid and under performed. But i wont take away what he has given to the gaming community cos he was once considered a genius for gaming.

TBH though i think the worst decision made though was limiting their console platform to the PS3, sure its up and coming but ppl wont go buy the system just bc NCsoft released a game, and if they were really looking to make a dent in console than xbox 360 and future MS console should have been taking into consideration. WoW 10 mill~ Xbox live 10 mill subscribers~ PS3 barely alive when it comes to true multiplayer experience. Heck right now its a known fact most ppl bought a ps3 bc of being the cheapest BLU Ray player and not so much for gaming.

The TR news about it shutting down and then being recanted and saying that nothing is happening there in near future is so they can try to figure out what to do next. I mean if u were playing TR right now and heard ur game was closing would u still continue to subscribe and play, probably not and they know this too, its called protecting your investment .. so id still be watching this game a lil closer and see what really happens. As far as their F2p games i understand they were trying to make something new for their company to invest in .. but lets be realistic here ... theres so many other F2p games on the market they should have come with something better.

The formation of NC West has raised a lot of questions and speculation about what this means for ArenaNet, Guild Wars, and Guild Wars 2.

As far as ArenaNet and Guild Wars are concerned, the creation of NC West ensures that we will get all the publishing support we will need to make Guild Wars 2 a success. ArenaNet remains a standalone studio focused on Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. Mike O’Brien heads up the studio and is also the Executive Producer for Guild Wars 2. You may recall that Mike is one of the founders of ArenaNet and was also the Executive Producer for the original Guild Wars.

We’d like to congratulate ArenaNet alums Chris Chung, Jeff Strain and Pat Wyatt and we look forward to working closely with them (and kicking ass!) in their expanded roles at NC West.

So what this means is that it's still Anet but with a different name, few more people and some nifty publishing support to boot?

Sounds good to me :P

EDIT: Had to point the lettering in the bold, you know it's good when Regina says that ^^

The ArenaNet name is not going anywhere. (I'm keeping my forum pic!)

That's just wrong. Anet is a wholly owned subsidiary of NCSoft. Therefore, while NCSoft != Anet, Anet= NCSoft (or a small part thereof). If NCSoft tanks, Arenanet will either be sold off or plundered for assets and closed. Arenanet and it's sister companies involved in this merger will effectively cease to exist when they become NCWest, at least from a senior management point of view, meaning they will have a single board of Directors etc. At least, that's what it sounds like.

Good that Anet people have been promoted to control the other studios. As much as Anet may be reviled (by some), Guild Wars is the best MMOesque type game I've ever played, so they did something right.

Oh ok cools

Hope this brings out GW2 that much faster

All this sounds like very good news and makes me even more excited for when Guild Wars 2 comes out.

Hehe.

¡Viva ArenaNet!
¡Viva Guild Wars!

Good news!

So long as GW's ideology doesn't change from what was said by Jeff Strain, I'm fine with this move. Although whether or not I'm fine with it doesn't matter at all.

People in my alliance are worried about GW2 since there has been no new news about it as of late. One thing they are deeply worried about this change will there still be pay once and play or pay to play?

They said it's still going to be pay once and play free forever. Let's hope it don't change.

If they added a subscription i'd pay my money elsewhere...

Guild Wars 2 is not going to be pay to play. They've said it a hundred times already. Promoting a.net founders up the ladder makes it more likely that the GW model will persist, not less likely.

The real question is if this means future projects under the NCWest umbrella will use the GW model (opposed to the subscription model).

It will still not be pay to play (and I agree with drekmonger, they might actually add this to other games at NCSoft due to the sucess of A.net's pricing model).

The reason GW2 info hasn't been given out yet is because they are still in the EARLY, early stages of development.

Edit: Good job mods for cleaning this thread up a bit.

Well, if GW2 gets canceled (which is possible if there's a company reorganization, since I doubt GW2 is past the halfway point in construction), that's a moot point.

hope they wont forget GW 1 even more now, but at least make GW 2 even better now?

If anything, GW2 will be worse, as ArenaNet's more valuable resources (ha, ha) will be relocated in the merge.

Ugh, you guys don't get it! This move is not punitive at all. They even keep their freaking name. NCSoft wants GW2 to happen. GW1 pushed 5 million+ copies, of course they are going to want the sequel.

Anyway, on topic, there is no way to know how this will affect GW2, short of Regina telling us (and even then, she could lie/scew info). I mean, sure GW was successful and they would want a sequel.
StarCraft was successful (behind the Sims, the greatest selling CPU game ever), and it took 12 years for a sequel to appear. Sucess does not mean it will neccessaryily be financially viable for them to produce a sequel at this point in time.

However, at the moment, we are overreacting. How can this "delay" a game that doesn't even have a tenitive release date yet? It might delay it, but we wouldn't even know if this was a reason or not for the release date.

Do you know what Aion is? It's being hailed as the spiritual sequel to Lineage II, NC softs greatest creation. Now, what makes more sense for a company like NC Soft that's currently doing quite badly at the moment?Leave members of a development team on a game that hasn't even produced a concept art,or move say,half of those members to working on Aion a Pay to Play MMORPG and release as early as possible?

By the way, be sure to use your business sense. Not your fanboy sense.

1) You are right, they wouldn't want those two products to compete (not that they would, only the beta was supposed to happen this fall).

2) That was a great article.

3) That is a big load there. First off, the only reason the xbox has the lead that it has is because it launched earlier. The Wii (obviously) and the ps3 have outsold it world wide if you align their launches and the ps3 has been outselling the 360 world wide since last Christmas and selling as much, if not more, than the 360 in the US all year. Hell, the ps2 has kept pace with the 360 for most of the 360s life span and for the entire lifespan of the 360 the ps2 has been in over 100 million homes. And it definitely not "a known fact" that it is being bought as a blu ray player because the sales of games (now that there is a good list of good ones) is increasing while sales of games on the 360 have slowed down. Attach rates for the ps3 have gone from 3 to 5 while the 360s attach rate has gone from 8 to 6. And btw, the ps3 hasn't been the cheapest blu ray player all year. I bought a blu ray player in the spring for $300. As for the MMOs, if I remember correctly, Sony went to NCSoft about the MMO, not the other way around, that is why it is going there. And I don't know how Sony is trailing in a "true multriplayer experience," last I checked you could voice chat, message, make a friends list, and play games. What else is there?

4)Like I said, I thought Tabula Rasa had a few hundred thousand subscribers which would be good if not for a game called World of Warcraft.
Let me ask you to use your business sense. Do you want people working on a sequel to a game that sold 5 million copies, or do you want to slow down development of that for an unknown franchise? And by the way, there is concept art. Look around you might find it, I won't because I still have the copy of PC Gamer that has them in there. And just because a game is a spiritual successor to something doesn't mean success (Hellgate: London says hello) or has a good vibe around it if it is true about Tabula Rasa. It certainly had good credentials to it's name.

Umm... maybe read the first paragraph of that quote. Like I said, it may or may not make financial sense for them to release GW2 now or later (like I said, I don't know NCsofts specific financial plan/situation).

My only point was that if GW 2 was delayed by this news, we wouldn't know about it. IE, if GW2 was supposed to come out 2 years from now, but instead due to this comes out 4 years from now, we wouldn't know that the delay happened (since we weren't expecting it to be released at any specific time).

yea i was referring to some of the feedback on gw2 beta not being this yr, and Aions seems to be around the time we would have expected GW2 ... which just seems like a good move on both behalf. Your right too though that they wouldn't have to compete but bc of the business model they are going to have, youd truly be able to play both simultaneously .. and only have to worry bout a subscription to 1.

those that havent read it google it or look on GW's official site its a good read.

ok now im not dissing them, ok not totally cos i own both consoles myself, infact i got my ps3 shortly after NC Soft announced their deal with Sony for the promise of future console titles ... and my 360 to hold me over while PS3 got some genuinely good titles going regularly .... but in reality MS's XBL and large community is the very reason a few games over the last yr have been able to break records like HALO 3, CoD4 [which they said it was due to the 360 sales in an interview on their success] GTA4 just to name a few. Theres more coming. What i was really getting at was that they shouldnt have limited themselves in that aspect bc the market is just that huge, and lets be realistic here if u want to measure success of PS3 vs 360 online and multiplayer experience ... 360's community is by far larger and for MMO's thats exactly what u want a larger community base to market too. Basically should've included the 360 into their Console gaming idea

They'll do whatever's good for business. End of story. After the failure of Tabula Rasa i'd say there's a fair amount laying on the shoulders of Aion and the success of GW2. I really don't think there's anything to worry about.

IMO, the whole Sony deal was just so that Sony could announce something. At that time they had little to show on PS3 and were desperate. By now they have not one, but two MMOs scheduled to launch, Agency and DC Online. I doubt they are excited about a third party releasing MMOs on their platform. The 360 has problems of its own, mainly that outside the U.S and the UK it's almost a total failure. Japan refuses completely, Germany is limbing (6% reported marketshare in 2007, down to 5.4% in Q1/2008), France is not good and Southern Europe is worse than Japan.

Joypad controls in GW work just fine for the casual player, if you are more motivated then just get it over with and buy mouse+keyboard. Other franchises sell you plastic instruments at every chance; hasn't hurt them. PSO on Dreamcast did the same, worked for them. The only real problem here is cross platform connectivity and patch certification. All patches have to be certified and are subject to a number of crazy rules regarding their size and whether they may be free or not. Gabe Newell from Valve recently leaked that Team Fortress on 360 was not getting the PC Updates because Microsoft tells them they can only give out a content update for free if they sold two others before that. Rules such as this seem to be different for different teams and publishers to further increase the insanity. On top of that, all patches have to be tested by Microsoft before release, adding a two-week delay. Same goes for cross-platform play, it's not that hard to pull off for anybody, except Microsoft does not want it to happen. If you release on their platform you may not add it to the official build.

For ArenaNet the recent changes are excellent. They are even more in charge of their product and financing. Their way of doing business with customers survived and is healthy. Other MMOs struggle to keep the lights on because fewer people than they need turn to subscription. ArenaNet has a userbase who rabidly demands new content and is willing to pay for it, or would you really consider NOT buying another expansion?

Is that mean that Gw1 will have a better support @ updates, new content etc.? Seems not Anyway. i am sure Gw2 will come faster, or either better, or even faster and better

Well the fact that they are going with the PS3 is too bad for me as I will never own one of those, but in the future they may expand to the X360 as well. Still, I don't need NC to make games for me on each possible platform. Others do fine on making Xbox games already.

The consolidation move comes as a surprise but I think it's kinda strange people worry about GW2, considering Jeff Strain is the new president. One can assume that he has a thing or two to say about his own baby in the role of president.

All in all, to me, this feels like good news. However, I still wonder about their strategy concerning Aion and GW2 but I suspect they're not gonna tell us. Admittedly, from seeing the video clips for Aion I could see a lot of GW influences in it and it looks good. So, it is going to be interesting to see how the GW2 graphics are going to be after that and how the 2 games are going to interact.
With that it will be interesting to see what the pay scheme for Aion since apparently that's not clear yet. Well, if Aion is not going to be a monthly subscription either it may well make it easy for people to take in both games. Time will tell I guess, but I still think that this consolidation things is probably good news rather than what the title of the thread would suggest.

No, they're giving the people who've created success more power, ie Strain and Wyatt, over NCSoft' US and EU operations. Smart move, I'd say.

Yes, the thread was not named very well in terms of what it means for ArenaNet. The formation of NC West is a good thing for ArenaNet and a good thing for Guild Wars/Guild Wars 2.

The full press release:

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PRESS RELEASE
NCsoft Announces Formation of "NC West"

CEO Taek Jin Kim Promotes Chris Chung, Jeff Strain, David Reid, and Patrick Wyatt
Thursday 11th September, SEOUL, Korea/... NCsoft ® Corporation (KSE: 036570.KS), the world’s leading publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), including award-winning franchises Lineage ®, Guild Wars ® and City of Heroes ®, today announced the formation of “NC West™”. A wholly-owned subsidiary of NCsoft with operating responsibility for western regions including the US and Europe, NC West will be led by Chris Chung as CEO, Jeff Strain as president, product development, David Reid as president, publishing, and Patrick Wyatt as CTO as well as yet unannounced European executives.

NCsoft’s existing subsidiaries NC Interactive, NC Europe, NC Austin, and ArenaNet will be led as a unified organization under NC West with a dedicated focus towards becoming the world’s premier western publisher of MMOs. NC West is the tentative name for the organization, and the company expects to announce final naming and corporate structure in the near future. NC West's headquarters is planned to be established in Seattle, WA by the end of 2008.

Chris Chung, previously CEO of NC Interactive, has a long history with NCsoft. He began his tenure at NCsoft’s ArenaNet® studio, where he managed that studio’s business and helped launch the multi-platinum selling Guild Wars franchise. Chung later went on to become the chief publishing officer for NCsoft’s Seoul headquarters. Prior to NCsoft, Chung spent more than five years at Microsoft and later co-founded a marketing research firm. As CEO of NC West, Chung will continue to report directly to NCsoft CEO Taek Jin (TJ) Kim.

“We are confident that by combining our subsidiaries into a unified global organization under Chris Chung’s leadership, NC West will become a more powerful force to be reckoned with in the western MMO market,” said TJ Kim. “Chris has become a guiding force within our company and has been extremely successful at every position he has held with us. His detailed first-hand knowledge of all aspects of our business is invaluable and will help establish NC West as a global leader.”

Jeff Strain was formerly the president and co-founder of ArenaNet, a company he formed with Patrick Wyatt and Mike O’Brien when they left senior roles at Blizzard Entertainment in 2000. Additionally, Strain held the position of executive producer of Guild Wars 2™ prior to taking this new role. Strain will report directly to Chung and manage all NC West development studios across all existing and future products. Strain will also direct the production of NCsoft’s Asian-developed titles for NC West territories.

David Reid began with NCsoft in March 2008 as vice-president, marketing for North America. Reid came to NCsoft from Turner Broadcasting’s GameTap, where he served as vice-president, marketing. Prior to that, he worked at Microsoft as director of global platform marketing, where he launched the Xbox 360. In his new role, Reid will continue to report to Chung and will lead franchise management, marketing, public relations, sales, and customer support for NC West.

As a founder of ArenaNet, Patrick Wyatt led the development of the network and server technologies for the Guild Wars franchise, and directed the architecture and deployment of ArenaNet's global game network infrastructure. Before co-founding ArenaNet with Strain and O'Brien, Wyatt was the vice president of research and development for Blizzard Entertainment, where he led programming for the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises. As CTO for NC West, Wyatt will report to Chung and will focus on platform technology development, network operations, and systems engineering.

“There is an unparalleled opportunity for growth in the massively multiplayer online market,” said Chris Chung. “By combining the strength of our US and European teams, NCsoft has the best global infrastructure to win in new and existing markets, and the best developer talent capable of creating blockbuster MMO franchises.”

I was very excited to play Tablia Rasa but when I found out it was a pay per month I passed.

Agreed. I thought it looked pretty cool too. But I am not paying monthly fees. No way.

I am so glad that Anet is sticking to no monthly fees for GW2. If they want to add microtransactions for purely cosmetic Items. I would be fine with that too. Imagine if there were microtransactions in GW. Would you pay for a new hairdo? A special dye color for your armor? A super cool minipet? What about a weapon skin?

I think the news is great for ArenaNet. Good luck!

My first impulse is to worry about a slippery slope, but I suppose the BMP and its related weapon skins are a form of cosmetic microtransaction and that worked out pretty well. And I know lots of people would be very happy to pay money for a reroll of an established character. And so on, and so forth . . . I guess so long as it was kept purely cosmetic it would be fine. Certainly it would help if they want to make GW2 have more longevity than GW1.

I used to say I'd never play games with monthly fees. Tabula Rasa taught me that monthly fees aren't a bad thing, though - the amount of content and goodies coming in from the dev team is really high. So I'm okay with a monthly fee for what I get out of it (frequent quality updates and high dev responsiveness to issues).

I'd heard that Jeff Strain was moving onto a new role within NCSoft and it's nice to see the details (when I'd heard it, it was along the lines of "well you know that Jeff is the something something for NCSoft now" and I nodded and smiled because no, I had NO idea!). It sounds like a nice solid NCSoft hub here in the US, and it sounds like it'll be a great thing for NCSoft's games. Especially with this team behind it. Best of luck to Jeff, David, and Patrick in their new and exciting roles! I think huge congrats are in order!

Yeah I kind of over reacted about that, my apologies. Its just that fanboyism annoys me and that is how your post sounded to me. That is why I always come back to this forum and not others. The problem with putting a MMO on a console is that Sony or Microsoft want a cut of the monthly fee. I don't remember who said, maybe someone from Blizzard about WoW or someone from Mythic about WAR. I have a feeling that Sony said they wouldn't take a cut of the monthly fee if NCSoft made a MMO for the ps3 since they needed some good pub at the time when they didn't have many big games released.

One question I'd like to ask Regina is this: are Jeff Strain and Patrick Wyatt leaving ArenaNet for NC West and, if so, how is this going to affect ArenaNet and GW? I've got the feeling from what I read that there'll be minimal impact, but I'd like to know if you can issue a statement on that.

I sincerely hope that NC West will be a huge success, as the game they/you release are astounding and you're fighting in an arena dominated by mamoths (Blizzard Activision, EA). And grats to Jeff and Patrick for the promotion

from what i understand the title is misleading, Regina states that this is good?

No offense to Regina, but of course Regina states it's a good thing. As will anyone else on the payroll.

I'm not saying it's not good, since I don't know, but take the "official" word on things like this with as big a grain of salt as you can find.

Personally, I'd wager that if consolidation goes off without a hitch, it's more neutral than anything. It sounds to me like they're going to try and focus their guns on the Warcrafts and Everquests that we have on this side of the globe. That could mean they're doing so well they're looking to expand, or it could mean that they're staring at a decline in their Asian markets and need something to pick up the slack. We won't know for sure for awhile, but all you have right now is idle speculation and the word of the company (and anybody who thinks press releases and company spokespersons say anything valuable is either a lazy journalist or a fool).

Good or bad? You might as well just a flip a coin for the time-being if you feel the need to take up an opinion immediately...

My reading of this is this:
NCSoft isn't as profitable as they'd like to be after a string of failed and expensive MMO's (Tabula Rasa, AutoWars). They've decided to restructure, thereby lowering administrative costs. They've also decided to concentrate resources on the most promising projects.
NCSoft has apparently also decided that they don't really understand the MMO market in the west, but that ANet do/did, hence they've created NCSoft West and populated it with some of the people from ANet.

Short term this is a good thing. ANet really did understand the western MMO scene a lot better than NCSoft (most of the BS people blame ANet for is really NCSofts doing), and if they're now a bit freer to act that's great.
Long term... Long term it depends on whether NCSoft west can produce a hit MMO. If Guildwars 2 flops, they'll likely have to spend the rest of eternity producing Maple Story clones for cellphones.

We can't really second-guess what this means. I believe what Regina is saying because it'd be stupid from ArenaNet to "lie" (double-quote) on such a topic. It could be that Jeff and Patrick have great ideas to develop NC West and this will directly benefit ArenaNet through GW2. It could be that they're going to fix problems put in place by the old NC Soft admin.

For all we know, Jeff, Patrick and Mike have different hats and they may have too many of them, so it's a nice reshuffle of responsibilities so that everyone will work better. What I was wondering in my previous post is what Jeff's and Patrick's departures mean to ArenaNet. Mike is now in charge of ArenaNet and GW2, so it may well be that Jeff and Patrick were not focusing on GW2.

I'd prefer to wait for Regina's clarification rather than continuing to guess with too many maybe's.

They don't have to "lie", they just won't tell the truth. Go through this thread and read the press release and Regina's comments and then tell me what material information you can pick out of any of it. What actual, material statements of fact are there in any of it?

Nothing.

Because Regina probably doesn't have any facts, and press releases are specifically designed not to.

This is typical company spin. They've reorged, and reorgs are ugly, and they don't want anything unpleasant to seep out about it. Whether the reorg works as intended, and specifically why it occurred to begin with, will probably never be known, so you might as well speculate as hard as you want.

Regors are always bad for the people involved. Whether or not its good for the business in the long term? Eh... I'm not going to hold my breath. It might not be devastating to the company, but reorgs and consolidations in the middle of large development projects are almost always disastrous for the projects.