Baek Byung-yeul is a journalist at The Korea Times focused on cultural content, including films and cultural events in South Korea. You can contact him at baekby@koreatimes.co.kr to share your insights.
Will NCSOFT be able to attract users again?
The poster for NCSOFT's upcoming game, “Lineage W” / Courtesy of NCSOFT
By Baek Byung-yeul
By Baek Byung-yeul
NCSOFT announced Thursday that its upcoming role-playing game, “Lineage W,” will debut around the world on Nov. 4. The company said that the new game can be played on gaming consoles, PCs and mobile devices, so will have a different pay-to-win business model.
The Lineage role-playing game franchise has been hugely popular for more than two decades. However, NCSOFT has recently faced criticism from users who claim that they must spend too much money to purchase items to stay ahead of other users in the game.
Such negative sentiment toward the company peaked when NCOSFT's new game, “Blade & Soul 2,” was released in August.
As a sequel to the fantasy game, “Blade & Soul,” based on Asian martial arts, the new game was expected to appeal to users seeking to play a role-playing game with action combat. But the company faced heavy criticism shortly after the sequel's release, because it prevented users from acquiring in-game items tradable between players unless they purchase what it calls a "Season Pass."
In response to the negative reaction, NCSOFT took the unusual step of issuing an apology and promised to revise its game system to improve user-friendliness. “Blade & Soul 2” currently ranks third in Google Play app store sales as of Friday.
In a virtual media event, Lee Sung-gu, head of the Lineage W Group at NCSOFT, said that the company will drastically reduce the probability-based, in-game items in “Lineage W,” which had been leading to people not always being able to get the in-game items they wanted.
Lee also said that the new game won't feature so-called “buffs” that increase the capabilities of in-game items. NCSOFT has been criticized for forcing users to pay too much for purchasing these buffs.
"The thrill of playing the game faithfully and users getting the items they really want was the most enjoyable part of playing Lineage games,” Lee said. He added, “We aim to provide this fun factor to users again and return to the basics."
The company said that “Lineage W” will be released on Nov. 4 (KST). The game will be launched in a total of 13 countries first, including Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Russia and the Southeast Asian and the Middle Eastern regions.
It remains to be seen if the new game will gain much attention from users. As the company previously said, the word “W” in the title stands for worldwide, as gamers in different countries can fight each other at the same time.
Since the announcement, the market has shown a positive response to the new game, as the stock price of NCSOFT, which had plummeted from over 1 million won per share in February to below 600,000 won in September, rose 5.05 percent to end at 603,000 won, on the day the company made the announcement.
“The biggest reason for the fall in NCSOFT's stock price was due to concerns over probability-based items and pay-to-win-based business models. It is positive that the company is trying to reorganize its billing system,” Ahn Jae-min, a researcher at NH Investment & Securities, said.