So now after seeing Aion's success in Korea with all of the Korean servers and stuff.

After seeing the Chinese Open Beta and it's success.

What do you think Aion's subscriber count is going to be after the Chinese retail?

1 million?

2 million?

a WoW KILLER!??!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!

November 14th 2008:

Kotaku states "http://kotaku.com/5086956/koreans-flock-to-aion-beta-in-record-numbers

Korean gamers love their MMO games, but apparently they're loving on one more than most. That one is Aion: The Tower of Eternity from NCsoft. The open beta test for the game launched earlier this week over in the land of...Korean things, and already they've surpassed 170,000 players - and that's concurrent. 170,000 players all at once, all for Aion. Knowing Korean gamers, they're still playing right now, or at least the survivors are.

April 8th:

So, Aionsource: http://www.aionsource.com/forum/news-announcements/12819-more-quick-news.html

stated that "Editor's Note: According to an industry insider, Aion's peak concurrent user (PCU) total reached 250,000 in the first two hours of open beta testing. Aion began open beta testing at 8 am on April 8"

So, by North American release, are they at least going to pass 1 million active subscribers?

UPDATE! April 21st

Aion has well over 1 million subscribers. This game ROCKS!!!!

1 million in China, and growing?

We knew Aion was a hit in Korea (currently the most popular MMO on the market there), but Aion's success in China was something of a wildcard...until now.

Quote:
Shanda's (Nasdaq:SNDA) licensed pay-for-time western fantasy MMORPG AION recorded more than 1 million paying users by April 19 in the five server farms in commercial operation. The game began charging RMB 0.48 per hour with the release of its first commercial operation version 1.0, "Yao Sai Pan Long," on April 16.
Source: JLM Pacific Epoch - Shanda's "AION" Hits 1M Paying Users

(Source: Aionsource.com)

All I know is china servers are packed, They open up a few more in each region and they get filled up in a day. They probably got over 60 now.

It's wall to wall from what I'm seeing.  I log on, once I get through the epic queue that hits me with headache for 10,000,000 damage.

Thing is there's tons of people, and the server is in Asia and the game plays smooth as hell for me.

With their 75 servers up with 10k people apiece (not including waiting in the lobby to get a spot): 750,000 people currently playing the COB. So most likely taking in the waiting line (800k-900k people)

Originally posted by duri13

With their 75 servers up with 10k people apiece (not including waiting in the lobby to get a spot): 750,000 people currently playing the COB. So most likely taking in the waiting line (800k-900k people)

I like :D

Oh man I can't wait for this game to release in NA. It's gonna be sweet! I know people think it might flop like AoC or WAR but you forget this is an asian MMO with a dash of western thrown in. I think that's gonna make for a perfect combo with my tastes at least.

The Korean and Chinese numbers are really encouraging, I'm glad they're doing well and I think they deserve to be.

Be careful not to have an overblown expectation for the American release though.  Those are open-beta numbers, which means it was/is completely free to play, and it has a heavy asian/anime oriented art style, which I think the majority of Americans are not comfortable with or associate with children-specific games.

Originally posted by k11keeper

Oh man I can't wait for this game to release in NA. It's gonna be sweet! I know people think it might flop like AoC or WAR but you forget this is an asian MMO with a dash of western thrown in. I think that's gonna make for a perfect combo with my tastes at least.

This game will not flop...by the time it debuts in the US a lot of the bugs will be worked out and the game will be westernized.  It WILL steal players from WoW (probably quite a few), but also on the horizen is SWToR and THAT could have an impact on AION.   We shall see ...it will be interesting.

Originally posted by k11keeper

Oh man I can't wait for this game to release in NA. It's gonna be sweet! I know people think it might flop like AoC or WAR but you forget this is an asian MMO with a dash of western thrown in. I think that's gonna make for a perfect combo with my tastes at least.

Aion is not a flop, it has been successful in both China and Korea. All I'm saying is that there won't me as many players in Europe and North America as there will be in Asia. Basically, even if Aion isn't successful in North America doesn't mean it'll get shut down because of all the support from the overseas.

AKA Tabula Rasa.

As a chinese open beta player i can guarentee you! This game wont flop! Its a freaking masterpiece and im gonna play it for years and years!

Aion is probably the best and most detailed and beutiful and AWESOME mmorpg ever!

I love it! And so will you my friend ;)

Originally posted by aranha

As a chinese open beta player i can guarentee you! This game wont flop! Its a freaking masterpiece and im gonna play it for years and years!

Aion is probably the best and most detailed and beutiful and AWESOME mmorpg ever!

I love it! And so will you my friend ;)

it seems pretty standard so far..maybe it gets better as you move up the foodchain.

Till this moment, i'm sure to tell the game wont flop.

But it will remain to be a question when Aion turns to be a P2P mmo on April. 16.

Is the game socalled the eternity of tower as players always should be packed in a eternal queue? if the problem remains after its transformation to a P2P mmo, a part of people will leave it and back to WOW, i think

The game won't flop,it will not have the same number of subs like in Korea & China but it will rock.

I like the anime style a lot and the world is beautiful,combat is very dynamic with good sound dubbing.So AION is my next MMO and I hope I`ll play this game for quite some time.

Originally posted by waterag

Till this moment, i'm sure to tell the game wont flop.

But it will remain to be a question when Aion turns to be a P2P mmo on April. 16.

Is the game socalled the eternity of tower as players always should be packed in a eternal queue? if the problem remains after its transformation to a P2P mmo, a part of people will leave it and back to WOW, i think

Nothing new here really, When Aion launched in Korea there was a lot of queuing also.  Servers will be added and queuing will fade away just like it did in Korea.

Over 70 servers in China and still they have queuing.  lol  wow. <<<just logged on (peak hours in China and I did not get a queuing line this time).

So total:

- Korea

- China

- North America

- Europe

- AU

Are we talking over a million subscribers? Because if not, it'll just shut down like Tabula Rasa. I'm serious, I don't want to put in 3,000 hours just to have the game shut down the next year. I love NCSoft games, but my fear of shut down is inevitable. But, Lineage, Lineage II, and Guild Wars have all managed to surpass 1 million subs.

Originally posted by Syno23

So total:

- Korea

- China

- North America

- Europe

- AU

Are we talking over a million subscribers? Because if not, it'll just shut down like Tabula Rasa. I'm serious, I don't want to put in 3,000 hours just to have the game shut down the next year. I love NCSoft games, but my fear of shut down is inevitable. But, Lineage, Lineage II, and Guild Wars have all managed to surpass 1 million subs.

I highly doubt this game will ever shut down, one it's not a major and I mean major flop like Auto Aussault and it does not come with the baggage and failed high hopes of Tabula Rasa. (however I disagree with it's shutting down..)

And if it does shut down in NA I am going on a bet that we won't see NCsoft in the west again after that.

Originally posted by Syno23

So total:

- Korea

- China

- North America

- Europe

- AU

Are we talking over a million subscribers? Because if not, it'll just shut down like Tabula Rasa. I'm serious, I don't want to put in 3,000 hours just to have the game shut down the next year. I love NCSoft games, but my fear of shut down is inevitable. But, Lineage, Lineage II, and Guild Wars have all managed to surpass 1 million subs.

MMOs shut down when they're no longer profitable and/or the studio completely crumbles.  Depending on the payment structure in each region, the number of subscribers don't translate directly into revenue.  ArenaNet, for example, is heavily dependent on the sales of their expansion packs, 2 million Guild Wars players that never buy any expansion packs would still spell trouble for ArenaNet.

Obviously a MMO that has 0 players will undoubtedly fail, but keep this in mind when throwing around numbers:  The Chinese Aion charges by the hour via time cards, so one player that pays for 150 hours a month is equally profitable to 3 players that buys 50 hours each.

That being said, there are a lot of L2 and FFXI players that are looking for something new, but familiar.  I higly doubt Aion would go the route of TB and Auto Assault, it's more polished, it's set in an established genre, iterating on proven methods that work.

I agree with Cynthe,too.  If I am horribly wrong and Aion flops in NA, it will be really interesting to see whether NCSoft will back up a little from the NA market.

There is no question in my mind that if Aion were to have an abysmal release in NA you might as well wave goodbye.  There is a part of me that thinks that if it weren’t for Aion NCsoft would already be done in NA and Europe.  It may even be part of the reason for such a huge delay for the English countries.

Pessimism aside, Aion will do fine on this side of the ocean.  Something would have to go terribly wrong from the Korean version that I played for it to fail here.

hope its no longeer a insane queue after tomorrow, when we must pay to play

Anyone remember open beta of L2 in NA? all the servers packed, you could spend 30min trying to log on with netcon and every area was packed, adding new servers every couple of days.

once it launched? 2 busy servers, the rest empty.  Free MMOs get a LOT of buisness, and open betas get packed, that doesn't mean they'll see the same success when it launches.

however AION does look far better than Lineage2, which is incredibly successful in asia, and still hanging on in NA.  my person opinion is that it will do very well, I really doubt it will see WoW-like success but no one in NA does, so putting them aside it could be a huge contender, at the very least seeing numbers a good bit larger than lineage2 saw in its early days.

So anyone who played early L2 should know that things will be busy, more so because the game is less of a grind, but it is going after the same group of people, so its going to see a similar amount of success, slightly more due to less-grind and a larger MMO playerbase to draw from than back when L2 launched.... 5 years ago?