pet peeve thread

[Cyberyeti]

NCSoft.

 

NCSoft are a Korean MMO publisher that know what they're doing in the Korean market but are clueless when dealing with westerners. They took over and probably at the time saved City of Heroes, a MMO I've played for more than 8 years. Out of the blue, a month ago they sacked all the staff and disbanded the US studio and said the game was closing in 3 months as it didn't fit the new company vision. Earlier in the day, the developers were talking about what their plans were for the next 2 years, so this was a huge shock to them too. The game is still profitable. They won't now sell the IP, even though several consortia want to buy it and NCSoft will never use it again.

 

Efforts are continuing to save the game, but there's little we can do if they won't release the IP although it looks like there's going to be a serious fan led attempt to build our own superhero MMO as the others are crap. The campaign on social media however to save the game is a new phenomenon in the industry. A petition with more than 20,000 signatures was started and a vigil was held (and thoroughly reported in the MMO internet press) where we managed to fill 2 servers and overflow onto a third. It will be interesting to see if any western studio will deal with NCSoft or any other Korean publisher in the future, as there is a real sense of outrage among the MMO community and press, and a growing group who won't touch anything NCSoft has anything to do with.

 

If anybody feels like signing the petition, it's at:

 

http://www.change.org/petitions/ncsoft-keep-ncsoft-from-shutting-down-city-of-heroes

[dwar0123]

NCSoft.

They shut down a profitable game that was wholly run by an outside subsidiary that did nothing else but run that game under the premise that it didn't fit their vision going forward?

 

That really sounds like a top guy in paragon studios got pissed and said this happens or else and a top guy in NCSoft got even more pissed and said or else indeed.

 

This really smacks of a personal feud that got way out of hand and that will likely destroy this community and will definitely badly damage NCSoft vital reputation with their consumers, forever, perhaps fatally.

 

My condolences for your community.

[Cyberyeti]

They shut down a profitable game that was wholly run by an outside subsidiary that did nothing else but run that game under the premise that it didn't fit their vision going forward?

 

That really sounds like a top guy in paragon studios got pissed and said this happens or else and a top guy in NCSoft got even more pissed and said or else indeed.

 

This really smacks of a personal feud that got way out of hand and that will likely destroy this community and will definitely badly damage NCSoft vital reputation with their consumers, forever, perhaps fatally.

 

My condolences for your community.

NCSoft posted a loss due to their Korean MMO revenue falling off a cliff. Paragon studios was a wholly owned subsidiary that originally only did CoH but were latterly also working on an unknown other project with different IP. Recently a Japanese company took a sizable shareholding in NCSoft and the guess is that they put the pressure on to give up on the west. I suspect had Guild wars 2 not been about to release, that might have been canned too. I believe NCSoft when they say they were refocussing, but think they're handling it in a particularly stupid way that is standard for Korea but unacceptable in the west.

 

Your theory of a personal feud is not one I've seen before having read a lot of press and forum posts from people who know the Paragon people well (the author Mercedes Lackey for one), so I don't think it's that likely.

 

NCSoft then posted something saying "we've done all we can but can't sell the IP" and we know several other consortia are interested but haven't even been spoken to, so NCSoft just wants to bury the game, the community still has other ideas, and I'm not sure what will happen next.

[Fluffy]

what does IP stand for in this context?

[Antrax]

Intellectual Property.

[Cyberyeti]

Intellectual Property.

Indeed, in this case the lore and characters in the setting as well as the actual code.

[mycroft]

Translation: If we sell the game, we lose our customers. If we kill the game, we lose most of our customers, but some may spend their CoH time on one of our games.

 

Lovely.

[Cyberyeti]

Translation: If we sell the game, we lose our customers. If we kill the game, we lose most of our customers, but some may spend their CoH time on one of our games.

 

Lovely.

This is pretty much it, but I think they've misjudged it. The CoH closure has caused enough of a storm that not only will many of the CoH players not touch anything with NCSoft's stamp on it with a 10' pole, they'll also shout about it and NCSoft will lose other non CoH customers worried about NCSoft just closing it down (they have a terrible record on this, Auto Assault, Exteel, Dungeon runners, Tabula Rasa among others). As it is, many people with CoH accounts also buy other NCSoft stuff, I played GW and was wondering whether to buy GW2 when they announced the closure.

 

The CoH community is also publicising a little legal case where NCSoft forged a resignation letter from Richard Garriott to force him to exercise stock options at a very bad time when he couldn't immediately do anything about it as he was in quarantine having just completed a space flight. That cost NCSoft $28M and less bad publicity at the time than they're getting now.

 

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/10/25/richard-garriott-wins-lawsuit-against-ncsoft-again/

[onoway]

I didn't check my email for a day or so and found three PAGES of junk on it this morning.It's very annoying that anyone can track where you go and what you do on the internet but nobody seems to be able to keep track of what emails in the inbox get marked as junk and deleted time and time again.

 

Someone told me that marketers can track if you even delete a message so then they know it is a "live" email address and redouble their messages. Hotmail SAYS they intecept and prevent messages marked as junk from getting into the inbox but it certainly doesn't seem to be the case. And if they can track what stores I visit even if I don't buy (and they can and do) then why can't they simply stop messages I've marked as spam from coming in to either my inbox or my junk mail at all??? If the providers could spend a little more time actually doing something productive for their CLIENT with all the info they collect it would be a welcome change.

[Antrax]

Someone told me that marketers can track if you even delete a message

He was wrong. There are some tricks to find out if someone opens an email (though they can be circumvented) but not deleting unread emails.

Gmail has pretty good spam protection. What kind of spam do you get?

[onoway]

He was wrong. There are some tricks to find out if someone opens an email (though they can be circumvented) but not deleting unread emails.

Gmail has pretty good spam protection. What kind of spam do you get?

The whole gamut from the usual male enhancement crap to incessant messages from the university of Phoenix. I know where some of it comes from.. a site I signed up with for some information almost definitely sells the email addresses. So mailing lists that get sold over and over spawn emails from new suckers who buy the things and annoy people. Most privacy policies are worth almost as much as most Canadian politicians' campaign promises.

[Antrax]

Okay, so the simple stuff gmail usually handles well.

[kenberg]

It's been a long time since I have received advertisements for male enhancement. Probably the nude photos I posted on Facebook convinced them I have no need for their products. Or that I am beyond hope. One or the other. My wife insits that I explain here that I am joking.

 

I used to get high class spam. Stuff written in Russian that invited me to give a mathematics talk in St. Petersberg or something like that. Sort of the academic version of the Nigerian needing help to move his fortune. Or maybe they are all sitting there anxiously awaiting my arrival.

 

Anyway, gmail indeed seems to be quite adept at dumping this stuff. I really should check my spam folder more often On rare, really rare, occasions gmail has identified something as trash which really wasn't. It has never done this for anything important, but sometimes there have been messages that I probably want to read and trash rather than just trash unopened.

[gwnn]

Does your wife proofread all your posts kenberg? :)

 

Gmail has a pretty good spam filter but it has happened that semi-important messages got lost that way.

[kenberg]

Does your wife proofread all your posts kenberg? :)

 

 

Sure. She finds my political analyses extremely incisive and my humor brilliant. She has a flair for sarcasm.

[barmar]

Is it really necessary for every mention of Myanmar in the media to include the phrase "also known as Burma"?

 

Back when they renamed Boylston Street in Harvard Square to John F. Kennedy Boulevard, the new street signs had "Formerly Boylston St" in small print, and my group of geeky friends liked to refer to the street by the latter name as a joke. But we weren't doing it on professional newscasts.

[BunnyGo]

Is it really necessary for every mention of Myanmar in the media to include the phrase "also known as Burma"?

 

Back when they renamed Boylston Street in Harvard Square to John F. Kennedy Boulevard, the new street signs had "Formerly Boylston St" in small print, and my group of geeky friends liked to refer to the street by the latter name as a joke. But we weren't doing it on professional newscasts.

 

Yes, and I have to change planes in Idlewild next month.

[kenberg]

Yes, and I have to change planes in Idlewild next month.

 

That airport serves New Amsterdam, right?

[barmar]

Well, apparently the difference is that this is not just a "formerly known" situation; many countries, including the US I think, have not officially recognized the name change and still refer to it as Burma.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma#Etymology

[ggwhiz]

Is it really necessary for every mention of Myanmar in the media to include the phrase "also known as Burma"?

 

I believe it is "formerly known as" not "also". That has been confirmed by Prince.

[barmar]

I believe it is "formerly known as" not "also". That has been confirmed by Prince.

The newscasters here always say "also", not "formerly". But maybe it's just an NPR policy -- that's where I get most of my news.

[kenberg]

Possibly I am fantasizing or maybe just not paying close attention, but I think that I have recently also heard "Burma, also known as Myanmar". Maybe even on NPR, since that is also where I most often hear radio news.

[Vampyr]

Possibly I am fantasizing or maybe just not paying close attention, but I think that I have recently also heard "Burma, also known as Myanmar". Maybe even on NPR, since that is also where I most often hear radio news.

 

That's what it is here, although the "also known as Myanmar" is often omitted.

 

Mind you, we still use "Bombay" over here.

[gwnn]

It is an interesting phenomenon, though. Alma Ata changed its name to Almaty and asked all countries to change. Also Czech Republic used to insist on being called Chechia. But why can't I call your country in my language whichever way I please? Of course I can understand why Belarus doesn't like being called "Whiterussia" as it is in many languages. But our language is our language, we decide what we call your land (as long as it's not openly offensive, like Fascist Puppet State of Masochistan or something), thanks.

 

edit: on that note, "the Ukraine" is quite insulting to my ears. Please stop it.

[barmar]

But our language is our language, we decide what we call your land (as long as it's not openly offensive, like Fascist Puppet State of Masochistan or something), thanks.

I have exactly the opposite opinion. Our name is our name, why can't you call us what we want to be called? You don't translate people's names into your own language -- it's Jacque, not Jack or John. So why should it be different with countries? At most you may need to adjust the pronunciation to fit your own phonology.

 

Much of it is traditional, the names we use for other countries goes back hundreds of years. At the time, we weren't chatting with people in other countries, so no one really noticed what we called each other. But the world has gotten smaller, and everything is global now, so it's more noticeable. We're unlikely to change age-old habits, but newly-formed and renamed countries should be called by their chosen names.