A quote for you from the EQ2 forums:
It seems that not every US MMO developer regards its European playerbase in quite the same way that SOE do:-
“NCSoft reports that Guild Wars 2 is at the number one sales spot for UK, Germany, France, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, and Belgium. And as the saying goes, when you win over Finland, you’ve won over the world.
ArenaNet President Mike O’Brien is bowled over by the accomplishment: “Our games have always been well-received in Europe, but this level of enthusiasm is both awesome and humbling. It also impresses upon us the responsibility we have to our players and explains why we’ve taken steps recently to constrain sales of Guild Wars 2 to ensure the highest quality of service. Of course, we hope to remedy this in the near future.”"
This post with its quote is used in the Pro Sieben Sat+ feedback thread on the EQ2 forums by one of the more active critics of the EU playerbase sell-off, Seffrid. I agree with the post whole-heartedly of course, the contrast between SoE’s repeated neglect of Europe as a region (1 previous sell-off attempt to Ubisoft that failed, never any equivalent of Fan Faire in Europe, lack of SoE cash cards in shops in some countries) is in stark contrast with other developers approach to the region.
However, taking a step back from my current nerdrage over this forced migration, I can see that personal perspective has a big impact on how we – as players – see MMO developers. For the sake of balance there is a lot of hate for NCSoft (publisher of GW2, Aion and City of Heroes/Villains) since the closure of CoH/V has been announced recently.
So NCSoft, in second place to ArenaNet in bringing us Guild Wars 2; may be a hero to many GW2 fans – it certainly is the villain where CoH/V is concerned. I guess there may well be plenty of EQ/EQ2 players in other regions who do not follow the news or blogs and are blissfully happy with Sony Online Entertainment at present. For them the ‘whinging’ of Euro players is a distant murmur.
In playing Guild Wars 2, I am (at present at least) very ready to heap praise on ArenaNet the developer. But I will remain wary of NCSoft as publisher because it seems in the MMO world publishers have a lot of clout and can really screw with a games future.
This leads me to pondering whether it is better to have one company as both developer and publisher (e.g. SoE currently) or whether having two companies involved (e.g. ArenaNet and NCSoft) might make extreme decisions like the PSS deal either less likely or at least not so rushed?
Great piece, enjoyed reading it.