I don't know if anyone else has seen it yet. But it did catch my attention for one major reason....I was not aware of the recent change at one of the head spots at NCNA.
At least I don't think there was any announcement on any of the NC pages, that I recall. Although the article date says it was just posted today.
Did anyone else catch this one? Or did I miss the billboard soemwhere along the big information highway?
with some luck it will makes things a lil better for us as the previous director had no interest in L2 and at least this one has some history with the game, who knows he might give more funding to the NA L2 team ^^"
I got that PM too....still I find it interesting that the change was nothing more than a byline in one tiny corner of the NC webpages. Usually this type of thing gets at least a mention on the main pages.
My cynical side says this is a result of rumblings on the Korean side of NC by those unhappy with Taek Jin Kim and current NC performance.
how could they be unhappy? NCNA has adhered to every update and not faltered to bring EXACTLY what KR has given.
the only thing i could see KR being unhappy with would be the amount of requests for game changes BY ncna.
Game change requests by NA? Since when NCKr *ever* so much as acknowledged the NA community? You sure can't see it from the NCNA actions/community relations. From experience, we get whatever Kr gets, with some sloppy translations on top.
Every piece of 'interaction' we get has all the hallmarks of a corporate PR 'puffpiece'. Even the various 'Discussion' articles/interviews are completely devoid of any content whatsoever.
If I remember the old articles correctly, L2 is/was not doing well in Korea, losing subs, devs and mindshare significantly and combine that with the significant amount of money being dumped into the Gariotts/Tabula Rosa without any real indication or promise of recouping that investment and you have some pretty unhappy investors/share holders.
They didn't mention much about L2 in NA, so the impression was that the status of L2 was fairly steady or low enough that it wasn't worth consideration. It was more about income going down in Korea at the same time you have all these big expenses in NA. (Need I mention the articles about all the non-NC/game related stuff in the news about the Gariotts as well?)
And now that Tabula Rasa is out....is there *any* hype about it at all? Or was it more of a 'Stealth release'? I know I tried it and didn't like it at all, but I haven't heard much in favor of it by other people either. Compare that to WoW (which I don't care for either) and you can hear the fanboys loud and clear.
Tabula Rasa became free to play for a reason, hehe.
Aion is NC's most advertised/hyped product atm, and frankly I have high expectations as well. Once Aion is released L2 will have trouble, since its genre and target audience are the same as L2; basically replacing it.