(Hypothetical) So NA PSO2 never releases...

[Zipzo]

Blade and Soul, a typical Korean-focused MMO by a Korean company, failed *miserably* in the market and was absolutely DESTROYED by the competition. Tides are changing to where even many Asian gamers are not willing to put up with shoddy quality and crappy support.

Where on earth are you getting your information? This is blatantly false. Blade & Soul has been a massive success in Korea, matched and in competition only with Aion and Diablo 3. As of the beginning of 2013, BnS was ranked #2 most played game in Korea based on both internet cafe statistics user tracking compiled on by subscription counts...second only to League of Legends which by the way is the most played online game in the world. Currently, it is the #2 most played MMORPG in Korea second only to Aion, and the running is incredibly close.

You should do your research before spouting off absolutely false nonsense. BnS has been anything but a failure, you could consider it a grand slam. A hit. An utter success.

And the final bit to all this is ego. Many Asian developers have this fucking ego that says they have to have X profit projections in order to even consider a market viable. They don't care about the fans or catering to a niche market. They aren't worried about it. Many Japanese developers and gamers in particular have been infected with a dire case of Xenophobia. Their tightly-homogenized society is one that feels comfortable and familiar to them so they don't bother with anything else. Why bother? :P

Boy do I get tired of hearing this one. While I don't think these pure assumptions based on stereotype are random or aren't at least somewhat generated through a certain observation & perception of the actions of Japanese company conduct, all statements like this ever amount to is a heaping pile of ignorance.

Kick all the Mexican people out of your country and call it border control. You don't get every single foreign developed video game and it's xenophobia? The logic just eludes me, but more notably the hypocrisy is blinding.

[Masakan]

Man....you laid down da truth. Im gonna buy you a beer

So Let me see if I got this right.

Western Players are too verbal with complains, We will point out flaws will will point out problems. Will will openly say when something is making a big issue. And rather than deal with that, They rather just not bring the game to the west at all?

[AgemFrostMage]

They won't do this until we get our own game. Like someone said earlier, they keep us around because money. They know we buy AC, and they know there's enough of a foreign population that they would notice losses if they kicked us out. Of course the game would still prosper without us, but we all know by now that they want to milk PSO2 for all it's worth, which includes that bit of foreign income.

Come on, it's obvious based on their ToS and culture that they technically don't want us, and they have the power to mass IP block at any time. But they can't, not until we have a place to give them money. And right now that place is their own servers, the only ones in existence.

If I were them, I'd probably do the same thing. Ban when my Japanese ego gets the best of me, but keep the ones that pay.

At least provincially Japanese companies like Sega don't try being anything else whereas American companies always try being international and catering to everyone. But didn't foreign markets like Baywatch when it only thought Americans were watching? Try being international and you lose certain somethings. Sega did mass ban Chinese gamers though =( In Wonderland Online, a Taiwan based MMO, even the translation was terrible in many quest, but it still kept its flavor and IGG makes major changes, like grossly overcharging ($200 USD over for a completely upgraded item mall sword including strong scrolls. Yes you read that correct!)
and no need for element beads to use dragon soul skill.

You also needed alchemy to make weapons and armor, and was very RNG heavy. Look up Wonderland Online's alchemy process, many players would hate this game and reading what many say on Asian MMOs I understand why, the west and east have very different gaming cultures.

I think only western version had bursting though (people buy weights to get speed down so they can combo with pets, dismiss pets, then repeat process until 180 unpromoted), which is a glitch that allowed fast leveling. Even I did it, three fire alts, one water. Sometimes I let wind or earth friends join to help them level too. I did like their tent and selling system, no central trading post but set up tents and manufacture your own shelves and vending machines and must visit other players' tents to buy. Customizing tent was a good part of the game, when I went to WoW I was disappointed in no player housing or adding stat points to wherever you wanted per level. PvP is max out strength, rest into agility, PvE no agility since you can never outright the hard bosses, but max strength or INT, rest into constitution for HP/Defense.

[EXPFULL]

plz remove 'hypothetical' from thread title

thx

This.

[Shinamori]

Wasn't the change in the ToS due to people hacking in open beta?

[Golto]

SoJ has 100% of the blame for this. I don't know why some people here thinks SoA has the power over bringing games to NA.

[gigawuts]

Wasn't the change in the ToS due to people hacking in open beta?

That might have been the excuse they'll give, but I'm sure they wanted to put it in either way. That was just a happy accident that kept them from looking bad when they did it.

When the game shifted from being announced as an international title to being a regional title it was pretty obvious that little footnote was going to be put in eventually, but they couldn't do it just out of the blue. Or, maybe they really did want to leave it out if things went smoothly, but when the hacking was going on they had to do something that would give them an assured reason to ban any foreigners.

Kind of like being pulled over for having your taillight out and a cop using this as a way to get closer to your vehicle to gain probable cause to search your car. On its own the rule isn't a big deal - it's even a good one in principle - but in combination with other factors it can make addressing a problem so much easier without technically breaking any rules. So troublemakers will get banned for being foreigners, and civil players might not.

[Karazykid]

IF it releases and IF it's as current as the JP version and IF it doesn't impose new bullshit restrictions to encourage cash shop spending I might consider eventually switching IF my friends do.

But really, the English patch is getting better and better and so far it's not like we're getting kicked for not knowing moonspeak, so I'll be staying on the JP side of things.

[darkwraith007]

*mindless ranting snipped*

I knew that someone might poke me as to where my sources are and so on. I figured at least one slow person might not be able to properly read what I typed when I specifically qualified my statements as not 100% covering everyone of X type and so on.
Apparently, you are the lucky winner, so here we go.
First, I'm just gonna point out the hypocrisy of someone who lambasts me for not linking sources when you have done the very same thing. Where are you getting your information, hmm? Hypocrite! :P

1 - Blade and Soul (B&S) cost a significant amount of money for NcSoft in order to produce. Gonna go all financials on ya now :P

The money B&S has made since launch has not been enough to offset the ridiculously high costs of production. That is why NcSoft considers it a 'failure'. If you look at their financial statements available here, then you'll see B&S had 10% of total sales in the 4th Quarter of 2012. However, in the 1st Quarter of 2013, you see that B&S dropped down to 9% of total sales, while both Aion and Lineage 1 (L1) were older games far inferior in graphic quality and cost but far more profitable. During the 1Q of 2013, Aion jumped to almost double the sales of B&S.

By sharp contrast, the massive overwhelming 4Q sales of GW2 was a fantastic boon for NcSoft. Almost HALF of the 4Q sales for 2012 were from ONE GAME, a game NOT aimed at the Korean market! That is amazing and just goes to show that a fantastic team (ArenaNet) that has been given enough freedom to do the best they can and the money to build something fantastic can reap fantastic and healthy profits.

2 - Now for your terrible no-source rambling about popular games in Korea. My source here shows that as of July 3rd of 2013, the most popular games had League of Legends in first place with 39.53%, Aion in 4th place with 3.99%, and B&S in 5th place with 3.97% of total Korean game market share. That 'Sword of the Spirit' is the Chinese name for B&S as seen in this article with the same information in English by 'Tech In Asia'.

Blade and Soul is considered a 'failure' by NcSoft because it hasn't become profitable enough to sufficiently recoup the cost of production (in financial speak the 'cost of goods sold').
Blade and Soul is such a failure that it is going Free to Play in China with significant benefits to those who do pay/subscribe!

Korean players are absolutely outraged and have threatened not to renew their subscriptions because of the way they feel completely ripped off. In addition to paying a subscription, the cash shop prices for the Korean version of B&S appear to be outrageously high. There was a great deal of controversy over the summer swimsuits (costing the equivalent of $45 in the Korean cash shop!) that were supposed to be available through an in-game event, but droprates and other stupidity on the part of NcSoft coerced most non-insane players to require them to pony up cash for the full outfit if they didn't have tons of time to play (excess of 12+ hours a day supposedly to earn it). Mind you this is in a SUBSCRIPTION Korean game in NcSoft's home market!

By contrast, China's players get far more reasonable prices to the point where they're absolutely stunned by it.

Now then. While you may be ok with babbling nonsense, hypocrisy, and accusing others of making stuff up, I believe that I've shown a small part of what I have in store in forum contributions. I don't take kindly to those who treat me poorly or show a nasty attitude without something to back it up.

My statements made toward how MANY Asian game developers treat the non-Asian market is something that is based on personal experience; something of which many people here can attest to from the likes of SEGA in their near-hostile apathy towards non-Asian customers in previous Phantasy Star games. I stand by the statements because I made sure that I didn't speak in absolutes. I used the terms many and most to indicate my observations from the behavior of SEGA and other development/publishing companies that hold their main headquarters in an Asian country. With those qualifiers in place, I didn't feel the need for a specific special disclaimer or similar wording. I'd already said 'in my belief' earlier in that post. I actually noticed that I should've included another 'many' in there before 'Asian developers' but I type too fast for that and I'd already made it fairly obvious by my other statements that I wasn't applying it to EVERY 'Asian developer'. I even qualified 'Asian developer' as being from any one of several countries in the East-Asian subcontinent region.

Now grab a towel and wipe yourself off; you got your stupid all over my forum posts.