ncsoft-west posts

NCsoft's biggest Western product launch in two years will have to do without two of its key executives. MMORPG.com is reporting that Jeff Strain, the co-founder of NCsoft's ArenaNet developer, has left the company. NCsoft's president of publishing David Reid has also left the organization but a spokesperson for NCsoft said Reid's departure was "an unrelated and separate event" from Strain's.

Strain helped to found ArenaNet in 2000 after working at Blizzard as the early lead programmer of World of Warcraft. ArenaNet was later bought by NCsoft and launched the highly successful Guild Wars series of fantasy online RPGs starting in 2005. In 2008 Strain was named the President of Product Development at the newly revamped NCsoft West.

The company plans to launch its next major MMO game Aion in late September. A spokesperson for NCsoft states that the departure of Strain "does not change our plans or negatively impact our upcoming launch of Aion." However many might be speculating over the fate of ArenaNet's long-in-development Guild Wars 2 which was announced over two years ago but which NCsoft has kept under a cone of silence since then.

Last week MMO publisher NCsoft announced restructuring plans that would move its US headquarters from its current Austin, Texas base to Seattle, Washington (the home of its Guild Wars developer ArenaNet) under the new name NCsoft West. Many people assumed that the Austin, Texas offices would be cut significantly. However, company president David Reid says that they have plans to actually expand the 250 member Austin offices.

In a new chat with Edge Online Reid states, "We really do believe that Austin is going to grow at a fairly dramatic pace over the next few years." Currently the offices hold the Tabula Rasa development team along with QA and customer support personnel. Reid states that Austin will grow thanks to upcoming launches of their fantasy MMO Aion in the US along with other unnamed projects. Tabula Rasa has been rumored for months to be shut down due to reported poor sales but Reid stated the game is still going strong, although he declined to give subscription numbers.