Guild Wars 2

Today I found some news that ArenaNet is taking over publishing Guild Wars 2. I am over the moon stoked! Congratulations, ArenaNet on this move! I have been more than a little down about the direction of the expansion and this is helping to change my outlook on things. I am still in a wait and see mode for Heart of Thorns, but I am really excited that you all will have total control. It worked with GW1 and hopefully it will work even better for GW2. Congrats!

What does mean Self Publishing? NCSoft will stop to code for the game?

Ha know TC, a link might help people believe ya more on here. ;P.

http://massivelyop.com/2015/09/01/pax-prime-2015-president-mike-obrien-addresses-rumors-about-business-model-and-the-arenanet-base-on-the-moon/?utm_content=bufferaa249&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

They took over publishing. They’re are still very much owned by NCsoft however.

What does this mean and why should I care? (not sarcasm)

I hope they don’t move any of their servers to the moon, I can only handle so much ping.

means the dev team and its lore dept will be making the content and deciding on how the story goes, instead of a distanced NCSoft… You should care because the game is about to get more immersive in the story department!

CorrynnStarr.7942:

means the dev team and its lore dept will be making the content and deciding on how the story goes, instead of a distanced NCSoft… You should care because the game is about to get more immersive in the story department!

^This is most definitely the hope. There are tons of things that are of benefit to the player base that can come of this. Mostly it means ArenaNet is in charge. If things stay rosy for them financially they will be operating fairly autonomously. That went very well during GW1 and hopefully we will see more of that with GW2 now because of it. They released a ton of permanent playable content at a breakneck speed in GW1. My hope is that we will see more of that and less gem shop content for 8+ months this year with no content to go along with it. I always wanted the gem shop to subsidize playable content being released at the same time as the gem shop content. For some reason the living story seasonal content stopped. It shouldn’t have. Those teams should have kept on making content for players while the x-pac was being developed by wholly different teams. Heck, they could have done side stories with characters not involved int he main story. Instead they put all hands on deck and we got a boatload of nothing for the better part of this year.

yea… the content drought has killed alot of players in this game. I hope to see more content released alot sooner from this. Hopefully NCSoft has gotten all the money they think they can get from us here and is turning it over to Anet to see what they can do with it. Hopefully we will see alot of new events and story things to come!

This is definitely good news!

I think how will it affect a development of GW2 in the future. Actually has NCSoft ever had any decision makin power over GW2?

nehezbegar.1065:

I think how will it affect a development of GW2 in the future. Actually has NCSoft ever had any decision makin power over GW2?

I don’t think so, at least none we are aware of. I remember quotes from devs saying NCSOFT let them get on with things and they felt quite lucky to have a company who wasn’t as intrusive as many publishers.

The Cantha situation might be an exception mind you, but Im sketchy on the facts surrounding that

Randulf.7614:

nehezbegar.1065:

I think how will it affect a development of GW2 in the future. Actually has NCSoft ever had any decision makin power over GW2?

I don’t think so, at least none we are aware of. I remember quotes from devs saying NCSOFT let them get on with things and they felt quite lucky to have a company who wasn’t as intrusive as many publishers.

The Cantha situation might be an exception mind you, but Im sketchy on the facts surrounding that

Soooo, does this situation mean…Cantha as next expansion?

nehezbegar.1065:

Randulf.7614:

nehezbegar.1065:

I think how will it affect a development of GW2 in the future. Actually has NCSoft ever had any decision makin power over GW2?

I don’t think so, at least none we are aware of. I remember quotes from devs saying NCSOFT let them get on with things and they felt quite lucky to have a company who wasn’t as intrusive as many publishers.

The Cantha situation might be an exception mind you, but Im sketchy on the facts surrounding that

Soooo, does this situation mean…Cantha as next expansion?

Omg please!

nehezbegar.1065:

I think how will it affect a development of GW2 in the future. Actually has NCSoft ever had any decision makin power over GW2?

I heard not long after release that giant hole in DR is a result of ncsoft banning cantha (asian) district. No idea if it is true though.

I was hoping the surprise was ArenaNet was buying out NC Holdings West and act as NCSOFT’s publishing arm for their games here as well as owning Carbine. Okay, they might have needed some outside investors to pull that off. Anyways.

NCSOFT was their “bank” during the development of both games. There influence was limited to when ANet was looking for an advance during development.

ANet hired it’s own ad agency for the launch of GW2 and not use the one NCSOFT had been using (what they run ads?).

ANet contracted a different company to run GW2 in China from the one NCSOFT uses.

As for the EULA, WildStar’s EULA was already NCSOFT free.

Actually I think some law about internet privacy went into effect today, Sept 1st as I’ve encountered a number of EULA/Privacy updates in the last week on older online game software.

Hmmm, NCSOFT stock got hammered today by 8%. I guess investors none to happy about F2P/P4F/Shareware version of the core game of a significant IP and income source.

Cantha please! /15char

think of it this way…. say you have a rich uncle, who provides you with your housing and college funds to get you thru college…. you tell him that you want to study art, theatre, musical arts as your major. The rich uncle says “thats fine, but I will only give you 1/10th of the money I was going to give you unless you study Business management, accounting, Math, Economics,” you say to him “I cant afford to go to this college without that money though”, Uncle says “Then We will be seeing you as the new intern at the company I own then in the fall…” You say “ok” , but dont tell your friends as you are to embarassed to admit that your uncle owns you liek a kitten…

This is how I see their relationship. While Anet has some freedom to study and do what it wants, the purse strings still belong to NCSoft who might also own certian software licenses and copyrights etc, to make life very hard if they choose to…. You are smart enuff to figure out the rest from here I think!

videoboy.4162:

Cantha please! /15char

NCSOFT still owns, indirectly, ArenaNet and has since 2002.

CorrynnStarr.7942:

think of it this way…. say you have a rich uncle, who provides you with your housing and college funds to get you thru college…. you tell him that you want to study art, theatre, musical arts as your major. The rich uncle says “thats fine, but I will only give you 1/10th of the money I was going to give you unless you study Business management, accounting, Math, Economics,” you say to him “I cant afford to go to this college without that money though”, Uncle says “Then We will be seeing you as the new intern at the company I own then in the fall…” You say “ok” , but dont tell your friends as you are to embarassed to admit that your uncle owns you liek a kitten…

This is how I see their relationship. While Anet has some freedom to study and do what it wants, the purse strings still belong to NCSoft who might also own certian software licenses and copyrights etc, to make life very hard if they choose to…. You are smart enuff to figure out the rest from here I think!

That’s why i prefer CD Projekt RED approach. Start small, but end big. With Witcher 3 they invested basically all their money, but the work from the ground over they years payed them twice.

Self publishing is a great thing. You are not constraint in design decisions, but on the other hand, You are constraint by the money.

Yeah I had a suspecial something like this was happening. Mainly because of the changed to the agreement.. NCSoft was changed to ArenaNet I noticed.

So maybe we will then go truely B2P?

See: https://www.diffchecker.com/bpigie8g

( And: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/New-EULA/first )

Devata.6589:

Yeah I had a suspecial something like this was happening. Mainly because of the changed to the agreement.. NCSoft was changed to ArenaNet I noticed.

So maybe we will then go B2P?

As I said Carbine was that way already. The EULA changes were just legal housekeeping since ArenaNet is a subsidiary and thus really it’s own company and always has been.

Behellagh.1468:

Devata.6589:

Yeah I had a suspecial something like this was happening. Mainly because of the changed to the agreement.. NCSoft was changed to ArenaNet I noticed.

So maybe we will then go B2P?

As I said Carbine was that way already. The EULA changes were just legal housekeeping since ArenaNet is a subsidiary and thus really it’s own company and always has been.

But why then suddenly change the name NCSOFT in the License Agreement to ArenaNet. That is not “just housekeeping” imho.

As I said earlier, I’ve been getting a lot of updated EULAs and Privacy revamps in the last week or so. That and the changes dealing with Germany specifically in the EULA, I assume that there was a new legal requirement in the EU about internet privacy and that you can’t hide behind a parent company (or more likely the parent company wants to firewall themselves from legal action if their subsidiary is caught with it’s hand in the browser cookie jar).

Legal housekeeping. Our previous one was from early 2013, Carbine’s from late last year and likely knew about the requirements and deadline so why not get it right immediately.

True, it’s supposition on my part based on dates and what I’ve seen recently in the last two weeks but I’m too lazy to look it up and see if I’m right.

NCSoft was Publisher, Anet was a developer. The Publisher in most cases is the boss, setting deadlines, criteria and have a major influence on what direction they want the game to go via gem pricing, items, expansions etc.

Self Publishing is like being self employed. You are your own boss. You still have to run a good business to stay afloat but you have more liberty in what you want to do with your project, which is positive because now they (and us) will be able to create more exciting things WE want, not what a publisher standing over you wants to do best to make their Q4 numbers look good.

Mmmm, now it’s time to see if it’s just NCSoft holding a tight leash or if Anet is the one to blame now.

I hope all the weird thigns Anet did (lots of mistakes in wvw, like superior much promises, then over a year Silence of Devon Carver), are because of ‘Ncsoft’ and not themselfs, and In that case i hope this shift, is actually a shift of decision power. Still up to them to make mistakes. We’ll see.

CorrynnStarr.7942:

yea… the content drought has killed alot of players in this game. I hope to see more content released alot sooner from this. Hopefully NCSoft has gotten all the money they think they can get from us here and is turning it over to Anet to see what they can do with it. Hopefully we will see alot of new events and story things to come!

NCSoft wasn’t stopping Anet making content all the decisions for the live game are up to Anet NCSoft only had a say in the boxed content at release.

Wwefan.4982:

CorrynnStarr.7942:

yea… the content drought has killed alot of players in this game. I hope to see more content released alot sooner from this. Hopefully NCSoft has gotten all the money they think they can get from us here and is turning it over to Anet to see what they can do with it. Hopefully we will see alot of new events and story things to come!

NCSoft wasn’t stopping Anet making content all the decisions for the live game are up to Anet NCSoft only had a say in the boxed content at release.

actually they did, read the prior scenario…. they may not have had a public role in the decisions, but you can bet your sweet bottom anet knew who held the purse strings and catered to that… all it takes is a whisper in the riight persons ear…

It just struck me in another thread: Could this mean ANet might find it easier to make licensed merchandise? TShirts, cell phone covers, all the things suggested in the “Please sell us this cool stuff” threads?

CorrynnStarr.7942:

means the dev team and its lore dept will be making the content and deciding on how the story goes, instead of a distanced NCSoft… You should care because the game is about to get more immersive in the story department!

Read this and immediately searched the thread for the word Cantha. I was not disappointed. Cantha? Cantha please.

Anet is now directly responsible for the funding they receive to pay their staff. I don’t think this is going to give them the kind of freedom people think it will.

And NCSoft still owns them so if they wanted to pull strings, they presumably still could. This actually sounds like more work and risk for Anet themselves.

While true, NCSOFT’s ownership, as a subsidiary ANet’s real contribution to NCSOFT is the folding of their financials into NCSOFT’s for reporting purposes. As long as ANet continues to make money and has significant annual sales, NCSOFT really has nothing to complain about.

The biggest change for ANet is I think this means they lost their banker/sugar daddy support from ANet unless the two wish to reestablish the relationship. Meaning that future development costs have to be paid for by the GW2’s income.

It’s also possible that the original financial arrangement for funding GW2 was that ANet was obligated to release one expansion. And with it’s release on the horizon, that obligation is met.

NCSoft still has Anet by the kittens. Nothing has changed really. Anet will still get less funding than what they have made, as most of it will go for Aion and other korean crap.

Serval.6458:

I hope they don’t move any of their servers to the moon, I can only handle so much ping.

What is the problem? All you need is a quantum entagl…oh, right, umm, forget I said that exists.

CorrynnStarr.7942:

means the dev team and its lore dept will be making the content and deciding on how the story goes, instead of a distanced NCSoft… You should care because the game is about to get more immersive in the story department!

Not just physical distance either. The two companies are in parts of the world that could not not be further apart culturally. It will be interesting to see how it plays out as some things were removed because they did not work as well to an Asian audience as to players from NA and Europe.

Iason Evan.3806:

CorrynnStarr.7942:

means the dev team and its lore dept will be making the content and deciding on how the story goes, instead of a distanced NCSoft… You should care because the game is about to get more immersive in the story department!

^This is most definitely the hope. There are tons of things that are of benefit to the player base that can come of this. Mostly it means ArenaNet is in charge. If things stay rosy for them financially they will be operating fairly autonomously. That went very well during GW1 and hopefully we will see more of that with GW2 now because of it. They released a ton of permanent playable content at a breakneck speed in GW1. My hope is that we will see more of that and less gem shop content for 8+ months this year with no content to go along with it. I always wanted the gem shop to subsidize playable content being released at the same time as the gem shop content. For some reason the living story seasonal content stopped. It shouldn’t have. Those teams should have kept on making content for players while the x-pac was being developed by wholly different teams. Heck, they could have done side stories with characters not involved int he main story. Instead they put all hands on deck and we got a boatload of nothing for the better part of this year.

What would be interesting is if new gem store items kept pace with the LS and other things going on in the world (which skins and so forth) which tighter integration could give us. I would love to see that as right now what is offered is pretty random.

Character xyz leads a uniformed army into the new maps? Guess what skins and outfits appear on the gem store.

CorrynnStarr.7942:

think of it this way…. say you have a rich uncle, who provides you with your housing and college funds to get you thru college…. you tell him that you want to study art, theatre, musical arts as your major. The rich uncle says “thats fine, but I will only give you 1/10th of the money I was going to give you unless you study Business management, accounting, Math, Economics,” you say to him “I cant afford to go to this college without that money though”, Uncle says “Then We will be seeing you as the new intern at the company I own then in the fall…” You say “ok” , but dont tell your friends as you are to embarassed to admit that your uncle owns you liek a kitten…

This is how I see their relationship. While Anet has some freedom to study and do what it wants, the purse strings still belong to NCSoft who might also own certian software licenses and copyrights etc, to make life very hard if they choose to…. You are smart enuff to figure out the rest from here I think!

Or the parallel after getting my physics degree. Wanting to study computational physics, my parents never having heard of the field, them assuming it was an excuse to goof off, so my settling for studying computer science instead because they knew what it was.The point is the entity with the power/$$ sets the rules. You may not like it but once something is changed it has ripple effects all the way down the line.

Hopefully this will give anet a chance to decide what they want to do. They will make some bad choices, sure, but they can learn from them and make a better choice next time.

Lets hope they use their new opportunties to create something good and that NCSoft dont cut their budget.

In my mind, I see it as possibly being related to the phone number requirement for play-for-free accounts. Perhaps there are some laws and regulations related to the collection of phone numbers by a foreign company (the publisher previously being NCSoft), and changing the wording and background paperwork to all indicate ArenaNet instead of NCsoft would likely be the easiest way to meet such a requirement.

To me, this points toward no real changes from how things have always been and was just a minor swap of names to abide by some international laws and data collection restrictions.

Just speculation, of course.

Bigsexy.8302:

NCSoft still has Anet by the kittens. Nothing has changed really. Anet will still get less funding than what they have made, as most of it will go for Aion and other korean crap.

And that’s not how subsidiaries work but thank you for playing.