Yidao i got some questions for you:
how much control have NCKorea over NCWest, i mean can they make them do stuff or they can only suggest?
And how is third party soft situation on korea? They work and GM's ban abusers or they don't work at all?
I'm really curious.
NCKorea has total control over NCWest; it's a fully owned "overseas subsidiary", as they call it themselves. You will find details about the company structure in the quarterly reports here:
http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx
The more interesting question is, inhowfar does NCKorea exercise this control. Basically they don't interfere in the day-to-day operations of the NA branch. You could for example write an e-mail to
[email protected], asking them to ban player xyz for having done this and that, but if you get an answer, they will tell you to contact the NCWest GMs. Enforcing the End User License Agreement is NCWest's sole responsibility, and when a failure to enforce the EULA leads to a noticeable reduction in revenue, the NCWest Producer gets fired, not Executive Producer Chae Gi-byeong in Seoul.
As far as events are concerned, things like double exp weeks or the guide writing contest some time ago are purely conceived and executed by NCWest (basically Sace), without any help or interference from Seoul. Scripted events, however, where you have in-game event NPCs, are sent over as ready-made packages by NCKorea, almost always recycled stuff from over there. You can get an impression about the recent events in Korea from here:
http://power.plaync.co.kr/lineage2/%EC%9D%B4%EB%B2%A4%ED%8A%B8
The development department will not change any aspect of such scripted events to suit the specific situation on our servers, apart from a sometimes very creative translation. Like for example previous Zodiac animals (Rats, Pigs ...) were in Asia the result of failed genetic engineering experiments at the Ivory Tower, while over here they were cursed crew members of Zaken. The only thing we can do about the Dragon Year event, which is Tersi's Light all over again, is to ask to never ever send it over to NCWest.
As far as business planning is concerned, this is the responsibility of Lee Seong-gu in Seoul. He will certainly listen to any suggestion NCWest makes (the purpose of having local staff is to gain an insight into things like the significantly lower purchasing power of the customers "beyond the ocean"). But ultimately it's his backside which is on the line, and the final decision is in any case made by Chae Gi-byeong. The wishes of players do not come into this. As EvaSummoner once put it, NCsoft is not your friend - they only want your money :)
As far as the 3rd party software situation is concerned, they do have adena-farming bots, called "autos" over there (from "automated character"), and there is Real Money Trading. But since NCKorea has far more GMs per 1000 players, they do hunt the bots down, remove items which have been purchased for real money from the buyer's inventory/warehouse and slap the buyer with a temp ban. This sometimes leads to innocent bystanders getting sanctioned, but due to the large staff such misunderstandings get cleared up quickly. Around a year ago there was a similar policy here at NCWest and Nuku, who is a 100% legit player, was caught up in such a purge. You might want to send him a PM if you are interested in the details of the procedure.
As far as PvP software is concerned, that is virtually unknown in Korea. They simply see no point in it. This probably has to do with e-sports which is very popular over there - you only have a chance at getting recruited into the top teams if you have real skill, as measured in actions-per-second. Automated PvP is something for losers hiding in their parents' basement where nobody can see them :D