NC All

[Venkman]

The interview we were discussing here prompted me to read another interview with Richard Garriot over at GameDaily. This one also focused on Tabula Rasa, but covered the genre as well.

The most interesting part to me was the announcement of the "NC All" pass.

BIZ: Along those same lines, with NCsoft coming out with such a diverse line of games, will the company be exploring options for multi-title access subscriptions?

RG: Absolutely. We're hoping to have that up in a couple months. I'm not sure exactly what we're going to call it, but we're leaning towards "NC All." We have some debate on that, but basically it'll be an account where, for one price, you can play absolutely everything that NCsoft has to offer. We're trying to integrate all of our products through a launcher system, which says if you install one of our products, the NCsoft launcher will keep that product updated all the time in the background. It will allow you to see and load all of our products automatically if you want that to be done. It will allow you to pay for any products you've decided to buy, even all the products through NC All at one time and then surf through the whole thing at your leisure. So we're trying to integrate all of our products in a very positive way that provides more content to customers that do want that.

This may be common knowledge but is the first I'd read confirmation that it was coming. I've long hoped they would be able to pull this off. No word on pricing. Considering this launcher will need to handle everything from microtrans-based games like Exteel to flat-fee games like City of Heroes, I wonder if this launcher will be mostly just a Steam-like launcher with a global account management system.

[Signe]

The launcher appears when you open the DR shortcut,  with a list of all the NCSoft games I sub to, a list to the ones I don't in case I want to buy them, a link to News for each game and a link to the store.  Unfortunately, it only launches DR and I get an error when trying to use it to start up anything else. 

[Simond]

So what games (besides the obvious ones) do NCSoft run?
I'm too lazy to check.  :-D

[HaemishM]

Nothing besides City of Heroes worth playing. Well, Guild Wars, but you wouldn't need an NCAll pass to play that anyway. Maybe it gives you the GW expansions free or something. But other than COH/COV and GW, there's Dungeon Runners (shit), Auto Assault (Shitty shit) and eventually Exteel and Tabula Rasa.

[Nonentity]

I might pay for an NC All pass once some decent games come out for it.

Moreso then I'd pay for a Station Pass.

[Venkman]

City of Heroes/Villains
Auto Assault
Lineage 1
Lineage 2
Exteel (soon)
Tabula Rasa (someday)
Guild Wars
Dungeon Runners
Soccer Fury (someday)
Aion (someday)

If NC All launches today you've got a generic comic book, crappy driver, two grinds, the freebie everyone has installed but probably hasn't launched in months, and a Diablo 2 clone with Warcraft III graphics.

edit: Grinds is spelled with a d, not a second g

[Lum]

The launcher appears when you open the DR shortcut,  with a list of all the NCSoft games I sub to, a list to the ones I don't in case I want to buy them, a link to News for each game and a link to the store.  Unfortunately, it only launches DR and I get an error when trying to use it to start up anything else. 

Yeah, that's the new global NC launcher. Dungeon Runners is the first game supported by it... it'll detect and launch other games (at least on my machine it launches them... the guys who wrote it are 2 offices down from me so if you have any debug logs on why it didn't launch a game they'd like to know!) but for now it'll only autopatch Dungeon Runners. Tabula Rasa uses it as well, so if you get beta access to that it'll keep that patched as well.

It's only on the first revision right now, eventually it'll do a lot more than what it does currently.

[Cheddar]

I am sold.

[HRose]

This reminds me I still have to write updates to the subs numbers...

Anyway, they say they are going to unify the launcher for all their games and support other services, somewhat similar to the thing on the 360.

[Signe]

I rebooted my computer today and when I checked (which I did JUST FOR LUM and not some bloke down the hall who I don't know), I no longer get errors.  After closing DR, it launches the other games.  If they ever decide to do the NC All thingy, I would consider buying it.  Every now and then I have the urge to play some dreadful Asian game for the glorious and joyful hell grind.  Sometimes I even miss Lineage's ant caves and their wonderful b-tele drops.  I had a bajillion!

[Koyasha]

This sounds rather nice to me.  I've been hoping NC would do something like this, since they have a lot of games I sort-of-like, but none of them enough to pay a subscription to only that game.  Exteel and Tabula Rasa are upcoming ones I'm kinda interested in, City of Heroes/Villains I still occasionally pick up for a bit when I'm bored of EQ and WoW and FFXI and whatever else...and Lineage II is that game I once in a while get this crazy desire to play because maybe someday, I'll actually be high enough level to have cool armor and be in a siege.  Eventually.  In 2048.