Does ANet have poor communication with NCSoft? (regarding Day of Tengu)

Does ANet have poor communication with NCSoft? (regarding Day of Tengu)

It was annouced that 1day head start will hold an unique event, Day of Tengu, as well. It's good. As my account belongs to US server, I have a chance to take part in the event when it comes.

But how about players on servers other than US/EU? Did NCSoft and its co-companies (NC Taiwan etc.) provide preorder package/key in their region?

AFAIK I know one no example. NCJapan released GW:F package on April 20th. It includes the right to get exclusive in-game items(those for assassin and ritualist), but no 1 day head start right. No equivalant of preorder kit available in Japan.
NCJ will accept GW:F serial at their site from April 28th 4:00PM(28th 7:00AM GMT), just at the end of the event period. So there is no chance for those on JP server to take part in the coming event. What a terrible joke for them.

I'm not sure, but is pre-order kit available for international(US/EU) version? How about Korea, Taiwan, Hong-Kong etc.? Does ANet, as a developer, exclude all players outside US/EU server with or without knowledge of how their boss(NCSoft and its co-companies), as service prvodider, deals with GW?

In the past, Gaile and ANet staff worked hard to convince NCJ to let us choose Japanese interface and type Japanese words outside JP server(with certain limit). We owed them for it. During the discussion/request was run on another forum, Gaile stated that NCJ accepted to take measure to transfer accounts of Japanese on US/EU server to JP server, and ANet would annouce detail on their site.

It was never done. Yes, NCJ kept their word and did the transfer. But its detail was announced only on NCJ's Japanese GW site and inside JP server. How on earth majority of Japanese on US/EU server would know of that? Gaile herself admitted(sort of) in one of LA int#1 chat that she didn't know account transfer campaign was ongoing till someone ATM mentioned her of it. It seems Gaile/ANet wasn't informed of NCJ's final decision. Strange, isn't it?

From those experiences, I feel ANet and NCSoft has rather poor communication, or ANet isn't informed of what's going on around GW as a whole. To me, it seems ANet's recognition/knowledge is limited to only US/EU server.

I hope ANet staff to have more close communication with NC group and more interest in GW as a global service.

A bit OT, but delay on the last GvG playoffs showed us their not-regarding of TZ just clearly (at least when they created the original schedule. (Who on earth could play during day time in week day?)

Such and coming event's would-be exclusion must be considered for better service. I hope future event will be scheduled with better timeline and without exclusion of people on different server/timezone. It's just unfair for a service globally provided.

Well they don't all speak the same language eh? This slows down communication a bit. But mainly it's just a big company. They're all over the place focused on communicating with the people in their respective regions, and getting the people in those regions to buy the game. If JP doesn't have access to the whole Day of the Tengu event, then I guess the people who head up that part of NC don't think it's going to affect their sales too much. I don't even know if selling a preorder package in Japan would even make sense. Aren't most of them like Korea in that they go to PC Cafes and play there?
About the whole thing where NCJ isn't transfering Japanese from US/EU servers. It's just the way Japan is; they work ultra hard to make sure people don't get into their society and mess up what they've got going. And of course if they can't be sure that all these people claiming to be Japanese are really living in Japan, they don't want them in their servers.

Think again. It has to do with payment options, nothing more. Notice how you can't transfer to Korea or Taiwan either?

Meh, it was just a guess.

Well they have their special items like coke and max pre-orders its time for us to have something special for a change

Well, there're PC Cafes in Japan but most of Japanese players have their own PC and use them when in home/room.

As for account transfer, you needed to get Japanese PlayNC account in advance. You needed to give them personal information (address, phone etc.) to do so. As a rule, it was limited to those who lived in Japan ATM(similar rule is applied to take PlayNC account at NCSoft's US site). Besides, do you want to move to JP server if the only acceptable language is Japanese? If you can't understand/type Japanese, you'll have terrible communication problem there.

can I share some info?

since I'm in the online gaming business here in Asia, what I know may help as to what's happening in the business side of things.

early disclaimer, I may be right, I may be wrong since it is NCsoft's company and I'm not part of them (even if I am, Im not allowed to explain things coz I'm not the PR or CM for the company).

So here goes:
Base on past experiences and other Korean developers who have a partner in (using your example) Japan, the Japanese partner/subsidiary is most of the time independent from their parent company who's in Korea.

One example of it is one popular online game in asia (which I will not name). The Japanese counterpart of the company developed the "GM Tool" (ie GameMaster Tool) for the said online game. The Korean developers of the game still relied on commands to do GM stuff (ie ban accounts, track items, and so on).

Korea learned about it, their Japanese counterpart "SOLD" their software to the developer company. All rights now belong to the Koreans. Which then distributed it in all of their partners.

Another case is a *ahem* Philippine partner was allowed to develop (so-called) "avatar items" from this online game. The items became really popular in other regions of the game even in the international server. The developer company asked this Philippine company to also offer the exclusive Philippine avatar items to the rest of the online game's regional/country servers. (I'll end this story here, can't reveal the rest..)

THe point, there is 'independecy' between partners and subsidiaries when a company started in Asia. It may be related to 'nationalism', but I'd rather say, Asians show loyalty to the group they belong to. Richard Garriott has proven this himself when he studied why Lineage 1 is popular in Asia and not in the US and games like UO is not popular in Asia.

Unlike the West, mostly American companies (like EA), they keep strict control of things to all their partners and subsidiaries. Europeans are somewhat, example is Vivendi+Sierra, and Vivendi-Blizzard But I guess I'm revealing too much about the relationships of these companies to each other ^_^

I hope you got my point ^^


So I wouldn't be surprise if Asian GW Sites, regions, distributors, partners have more info about the game and is always advance than ANet (is btw, within North America only, NCsoft handles everything outside of North America).

Example, GW Asian sites have more info about the history, character backgrounds and what not than ANet and EU GW sites ^_^
Then GW Asian, and NCs EU announce stuff earlier than ANet (other than TimeZone difference of course).

But the West is still lucky, you get to play GW forever free. Here in Asia (well not in my country but we are pushing for it), there are two options. Buy the box and play like the rest of the world - forever free, or pay monthly subscription or hourly (aka prepaid cards) - no box and no box-cd-key (which is forever unlimited).

^_^

I know you cant get a Korean key because you dont have what would be equivalent to a Korean SS#