Originally posted by Nazradin

 

 CB 6 and they stil havnt fixed thier server lag/rubber banding issues, unplayable ....again

that is fixed in later patches no idea why they used the 1.0 for all the CBs we played. if we're getting 1.5 at lauch why have us try out an out dated model? it made no sense, it would have quieted alot of the bitching i saw about teh game. then again china had it for a long time now and they JUST got 1.2 and not all the servers had it implimented yet.

NO!, you said at the end of your article that people who enjoy Wow will enjoy Aion. That's alot of people. That's not a fail, that's a win. I personally don't like Wow and I think Aion is a blast!

Originally posted by rr2real

Curious cause I don't want to buy another doomed MMO 

Did you turn out to be just like your mom and dad?  Quit asking stupid questions and play the game.  I think you'll have a good idea of it's success or failure with time just like everyone else.  Personally I think the game has enough of a solid foundation to really be a top competitor in this market, but that's just me.

Jesus.  Can we just get a merge of all the threads like this?  I'd love to see all the "doomed to fail" and "WoW-clone" threads in one place.  Let the flames burn themselves out.

Originally posted by junzo316

Everyone keeps saying that the new patches will be launched when Aion goes live.  Has anyone tested these yet?  Everyone knows that new patches bring a few bugs....If it hasn't been tested, I don't think it will be as smooth as people claim it will be.  Especially a new patch which hasn't even been released in the Eastern market.  I could be wrong, and, according to my husband, I usually am.  I'm happy to see other games released.  It broadens the market, but the claims of the holy grail seem a bit far fetched.

yeah its been live on korean for awhile now, no english speakers have been playing korean anymore tho since they added ip bans to the korean.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

To those saying AoC and War didn't fail ....

Explain why their Directors were BOTH fired few months after launch.

I never saw anything that said they were 'fired'; you inferred that.

It seems more realistic to me that those directors had skill sets in developing games and a passion for developing games, not necessarily for running games.

It seems more realistic that they burned the midnight oil for years, burned the candle at both ends to get the game out the door, and after burning out they determined that once the game was on the shelves, they would take a well deserved break and then move on to the next thing. It seems more realistic that these directors have a passion for creating games but not necessarily running games.

Example: George Washington had every right to run for and probably would have received a 3rd term for president. But, he said that he had certain goals for his presidency, he accomplished them, and chose to step down. Would you now say he was fired and a failure?

I know from personal experience that I have left jobs after working hard to accomplish a certain goal, telling myself, as soon as I finish this project, I'm looking for something new. Isn't that a likely scenario for those directors?

Explain why they had several server merges and dropped populations of 750 K at launch to ... 100K/150K now.

First a fact check, where are you getting the 100k to 150k numbers for AoC and WAR? You have a reliable source on that? Because 'guessing' won't cut it for me. Even the mass 'guessing' leans toward 200k to 300k for both these games.

But to more directly answer your question:

Because they were trying to learn from WoW's launch mistake. Remember the queue's? AoC and WAR knew they had 750k people that were going to 'try' those games on launch - through their market research, some based upon the data they collected from the number of people who wanted into their betas. Are you suggesting that knowing they'd have 750k try on launch date and also knowing their projections showed only 300k retention, they should have openned with 4 or 5 servers? Leaving 450k people not able to play? Leaving the 4 or 5 servers so clogged that crashes would be ubiquitous? They wanted all of those people to be able to play, but likely knew they would not all stay. It is possible that the server merges were pre-planned. Would you suggest they publicly state: we know 750k are going to try, but you all won't like it, so expect us to merge your servers a few months down the line, because we know we aren't really going to match WoW's numbers? Who would hire that PR rep? But maybe with their roll of the dice, all of them would stay and they'd have the servers ready to accomodate them.

Fact is, and this is important: no one knows how many have tried WoW but didn't subscribe. What if you found out that 30 million have tried WoW but only 12 million have stayed with it? Percentage-wise, WoW's retention rate may actually be the same as WAR or AoC's. Truth is, I love WoW, play it religiously. Found it after being disillusioned with EQ2. Convinced my 5 rl friends who were still playing EQ2 to try WoW and they hated it. So what if 9 to 12 million people all have 5 friends that are the same? That would put WoW in the same loss percentage as AoC and WAR. That huge loss may be industry standard. It certainly is true with junk mail. You think publisher's clearing house believes that every single person who receives their letter will subscribe to a magazine? Of course not, their entire tactic is to oversaturate the mail in the hopes of maybe 2% actually subscribing to a magazine thru them. In business, that is a tactic for success, not failure.  And if 30 million have tried WoW and only 12 million stayed, then we could also say that more people have tried WoW and hated than any other mmo in history. Applying your retention failure scenario to WoW, WoW, by your own philosophy may be the greatest mmo failure in history. WAR only lost 350k while WoW may have lost MILLIONS of potential subscribers. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

In all likelyhood, there were people in both Mythic and Funcom who believed their product would compete with WoW, at the same time there were those in those companies that were more realistic. Mythic and Funcom may not have been an internal united front; publically they were, and justly enthusiastic about their products as good PR reps should be, behind closed doors however they may have planned for a more realistic contigency like server merges. If I owned a company and a PR person made a public statement that their projection models showed they wouldn't really be able to compete with WoW, I'd fire them. And so would you. Advertising and PR are professions of hype not professions of reality, no company ever won subscriptions by saying publically that their product was 'ho-hum'. Personally, If I were to develop the game of my dreams, I believe it would blow WoW out of the water, and I'd be proud to say it. Privately, I would prepare for a contigency plan, as I understand reality.

You try to paint a black and white picture of success and failure when like truth it is a lot more grey. They may have predicted that 300k subscribers would be a sufficient model for success, but publicly they would tout their games as the best thing since sliced bread. That's what PR and advertising are. Tell people its great because you believe it is great; while in reality knowing that only 300k will share your opinion of your products' 'greatness'.

Explain why both ex Directors said they would be ... number two in the mmorpg market in the west and they are not even in the top 10.

Could you link the list of the top 10 mmo's to which you are referring? What is your criteria for the list? Is it all mmo's or is it sub based mmo's? how did you parse the western hemi subs from the eastern? I would be surprised if you could provide a list of the top 10 subscriber based mmo's in the western hemisphere that did not include AoC and WAR in the list. If you are including f2p games as well; then maybe - but how could you gaurentee that those are just going according to western subs? Someone playing in Asia could be subscribed to xfire, so not sure how you even get this list without having insider information that no one has access to.

Now more to the point: are you suggesting that those two former directors should have instead publically stated "our mmo's will make a profit acceptable to our share holders but in no way compete with WoW? In fact, I remember that publicly, WAR said they were NOT trying to be the next WoW. Remember the Led Zeppelin, Beatles scenario? And remember the comparative success of the Beatles to Led Zeppelin? both considered great, both considered genious, but the Beatles blew Zeppelin out of the water in terms of total album sales.  If I had a director that said publicly they couldn't compete with WoW, I'd fire him. If I had a director that even believed that, I'd fire him. I'd only hire a director with a strong belief that their product would be the best and I'd only hire a director that would publicly state that belief. And if you were smart, you would to.

Whether the directors beliefs turn out to be correct is a matter of hindsight. I would let the bean counters in my company develop the 'contigency plan' to ensure success, but I'd want the directors and developers to believe whole-heartedly in their product and state that publicly.

-------------

For the Aion fans: just pray it won't happen to Aion, but forget the Asian "free to play" internet café accounts already.

The HARD competition is here out in the west with those 180 dollar subscriptions for a year.

I know already the launching figures of Aion by tracking Beta Xfire. And forget the initial 700K figures of War and Aoc. Those games gathered much more intrest from the "mmorpg hoppers".

The current Director of Aion clearly stated his goal: become the second most played mmorpg after WoW.

So when - after 6 months - they don't go to EVE numbers (300K subscribers NOT "copies sold") , I guess you can say it failed.

I bet against it and it is as easy as taking candy from a baby. :))))

The answer is simple: post Wow -----> no one can deliver a million subscribers that pay ... 180 dollars each year just to play it....

And if you think WOW was just a lucky fluke, you don't know anything about succesful game designs.

All that said; know that I too am an avid WoW player. I too believe it is the best designed and executed game on the market. I too have more fun in WoW than any other mmo I've played. But I'm not so myopic as to assume that AoC and WAR are failures. Simply put, they are solidly in the category of 'average'. In terms of mmo's their success is an average success, while WoW's is an unprecedented, unbridled success. Isn't that a bit more realistic than the doom and gloom scenario you've painted?

Well for myself ,I realy enjoyed the closed beta and I hope it will remain a good gaming experience for years to come,I allready have friends from other games joining me and invited more =] .Live the moment ,get laid ,stop bitching and everything.

Didn't know either game have failed. Only failure here is the OP and his wild statements taken from nowhere. Aion not even out yet..jeez...Too early to enter the fail wagon no?? Only way to figure out that question is to bloody go and play it, or read some business notes on the release. /thread now plx...

i doubt aion will fail like warhammer . age of conan is pretty busy at the moment so i would nt call that game a complete faliure just not a huge success . aions a totally different beast its already a huge success in the asian market ( lets not forget that market accounted for half of wows subs ) whether that will be repeated in the west is yet to be seen . i think its a fair assumption to make that it will be second only to warcraft and it will take bored players away from that game . i see this game having the potential to go head to head with wow  . the competition for blizzard will be good . maybe they ll start taking notice as to why they are losing players and make changes to bring them back . warcrafts far too easy now in general and obviously aimed more at younger children . i think blizzard have failed to acknowlage a vast number of thier subs come from adults and huge number have already left or are about too. maybe aion will fill that void.

Aion will be fine till around 2011. By that time we will have star wars old republic, FFIX, Starcraft 2, and Diablo while everyone is signing up for Blizzards new MMO :-p

Still Aion should last a while with its high popularty abroad(outside US) it will have no problem. Aion will last above the average thats for sure.

Games I do worry about are AoC and War(sometimes I wish they could just combine these two mmos ;) ), along with some others. Champions Online comes to mind, Marvel and dc universe to come. Makes it easy to predict for that one. But I am a gamer at heart and hate to see any game fail hard.

I am currently in the Aion beta and I must say that besides the wings, it brings nothing extaordinary to the table. I have given up on trying to find the "perfect" mmo. I keep leaving WoW in search of something that gives me that pre-CU feel that SWG gave me long ago, but there is no such game. So, I am going to give up and stick with WoW. At least with it, you can count on Blizzard cranking out new content like clockwork. 

And...I don't think SW:ToR is going to be the WoW killer (not sure why everyone wants to kill it)  that everyone is predicting.

I have been following and watching Aion for a while now, trying to see the appeal of it, and I'm still having difficulty figuring it out.

Is it the fact that it's familiar and comfortable that makes it so appealing? Because other than a few key features it seems to do nothing new or interesting, maybe I'm just bitter because other than spell effects I hate the graphics or something (mind you it is quite a turn off alone, the animations and stuff just seem stale to me) but as far as a 'new' 'killer' game I've yet to see it in general and have yet to see it in Aion..

Every forum post you read about an MMO is - "Oh Aion will own this game" - "Aion is going to kill WoW" - "We're leaving this game for Aion"..

I also see a ton of people mindlessly bashing it, I'm not trying to do that.. I'm just simply saying that despite it's success in asian regions, all of you are falling into the same situation as every MMO that's come out in the past few years HOPING and OVER-HYPING that indeed it is the next big game, granted it will have a large playerbase and will most likely do decently but it's not adding anything overly new.

I guess my confusion and misunderstanding all comes down to childish posts, there are those who bash the game unknowingly and those who praise and hype it in the same manner.

If someone can please explain to me what makes Aion amazing and what makes it so new and exciting, please enlighten me, I'm here to discuss and to learn so if anyone is willing...go ahead.

Wel.. AoC failed because it was full of bugs, had the worst control system ever developed for a game [ they tried to reeinvent the weel and came up with a square.. ].

AoC did fail due to Nazizst Forum moderators whose job was basically to ban everyone not licking the AoC dev and staff shoes.

WAR failed due to several factors, mainly related to the playability of it and game server lack of quality provider in Europe [ GOA ]. The RvR system is awful, wich is a pitty because it has a large fan base. WAR did forgot that todays market has a big share of single players who like to play online games.

If Aion can avoid the mistakes made by theese games, might be an hit..

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by bigsmiff

I am currently in the Aion beta and I must say that besides the wings, it brings nothing extaordinary to the table. I have given up on trying to find the "perfect" mmo. I keep leaving WoW in search of something that gives me that pre-CU feel that SWG gave me long ago, but there is no such game. So, I am going to give up and stick with WoW. At least with it, you can count on Blizzard cranking out new content like clockwork. 

And...I don't think SW:ToR is going to be the WoW killer (not sure why everyone wants to kill it)  that everyone is predicting.

 

As a Wow fan I can think of only one game that could take any significant numbers from it and that could be SW:ToR because perhaps that game could bring something new to the table (Lore wise but certainly roleplaying wise)... IF they can avoid the standard questing of killing "boars" with "light sabres".

Aion is the worst that could happen to WOW haters as this Korean only reinforces the grip of Wow on the market. The reason is very simple: you can't outperform the original, you can't outcopy the already perfect copy of a fantasy mmorpg.

It astonished me every time people don't see the boost games like AoC, War and now Aion give to Blizzard. Ok, they need to adapt a little WOW, but in fine tuning it they make immediatly victims from those so called Wow killers. The latest being the leveling through PvP Bg's and joining Bg's from anywhere in Wow 3.2.

As a fan of WOW I was even more a fan from that beautiful lore of WH tabletop and what Mythic did was absolutely killing any intrest of even trying new and other mmo's in the near future.

Most people will want Aion to succeed NOT because it is a good game, no, most think that it should succeed in offering something alternative to play against the hated "giant".

The problem is by promoting Aion they promote the Blizzard game through the roof. Just like War and Aoc did. Polishment has nothing to do with it. Copycat products ALWAYS fail in creating their own distinctve markets.

Perhaps SW:Tor makers can finally see through this mechanism (I hope it for the WOW haters as they will finally leave my beautiful game alone).

 

 

 

Only time will tell :P

Although....Aion has a lot of things going well for it at the moment ...which AoC and WAR didn't at launch.....

1) Good feedback from released versions in Korea and China (mind you....a lot of those feedbacks come from western players who've played the game for atleast a month or so)

2) The game is noticeably polished...unlike the half baked versions of WAR and AoC at release.

3) It has decent lore/story driven missions...besides the grind quests...but you'd hardly notice the grind (as many compare this game to a typical F2P Korean MMO)....lvling to max should take u less than a month....with just a few hours invested in a day..

4) The RvRing here is slightly sanboxish unlike those found in WAR....due to the flight combat.....somewhat similar to GW..

5) Whether u like it or not......the graphics look amazing.....atleast thats what most of the MMO gamers and potential Aion fans think about this game :)

6) The game's marketing never intended for this game to compete against WoW....its just the regualr Fanboys who do this crap. The game's promotion was almost unnoticed even after its release....It was only after the release of the Chinese version...and many westerners gained access to that.....that player's truly understod how good a game this is.

  I will disagree with you with ToR having the potential to take over from WoW......According to me it will be Guild Wars 2.....you'll prolly comeback by saying it doesn't even have a subscription based setup...and all that....but who gives a rats ass about that logic to defend WoW.....

Guild Wars 2 will become much more popular than WoW in a year or so (popularity in this case is based on the TREND...not existing WoW subs during that period)....

The only other game which has potential to beat WoW (based on your idea...thats subs) is Blizzard's next MMO....but we don't have any legitimate news about that do we?? 

Coming back to Aion.....I'd prefer to consider this as a game which will bring back hope to this Genre of PC gaming...so that it isn't dominated by just ONE game all the time....If Aion can somehow sustain a total of 750k + subscribers in NA and EU...then thats job well done :)

Originally posted by rr2real

Curious cause I don't want to buy another doomed MMO 

I have an idea... don't buy it and wait a year to decide whether or not it will fail. Pretty damn good idea, eh?

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by EduardoASG

Wel.. AoC failed because it was full of bugs, had the worst control system ever developed for a game [ they tried to reeinvent the weel and came up with a square.. ].

AoC did fail due to Nazizst Forum moderators whose job was basically to ban everyone not licking the AoC dev and staff shoes.

WAR failed due to several factors, mainly related to the playability of it and game server lack of quality provider in Europe [ GOA ]. The RvR system is awful, wich is a pitty because it has a large fan base. WAR did forgot that todays market has a big share of single players who like to play online games.

If Aion can avoid the mistakes made by theese games, might be an hit..

 

It is not that simple.

How do you explain Lotro then ?

The MOST and best known lore -  the best polished product at launch...

A  launching campaign that was very succesful and had the title: "THE game that rules them all".

So best lore, best polish, most recognizable and ...... 200K subs ater 6 months ....

I also think Turbine has more control over its hackers and bots than the track record of NCsoft.

I think a lot of other factors play than "polish". Too cumbersome and too vast to explain it all, but polish is not even a deciding factor I think.

 

After the WOW bunny hoppers leave, LOTRO numbers are about what i expect Aion to have. Maybe a few more as they will pick up a lot from War and AOC for the PVP aspect of the game. I think a game will fail due to Aion, namely Warhammer, but Aion will not fail.

Originally posted by grandpagamer

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by EduardoASG

Wel.. AoC failed because it was full of bugs, had the worst control system ever developed for a game [ they tried to reeinvent the weel and came up with a square.. ].

AoC did fail due to Nazizst Forum moderators whose job was basically to ban everyone not licking the AoC dev and staff shoes.

WAR failed due to several factors, mainly related to the playability of it and game server lack of quality provider in Europe [ GOA ]. The RvR system is awful, wich is a pitty because it has a large fan base. WAR did forgot that todays market has a big share of single players who like to play online games.

If Aion can avoid the mistakes made by theese games, might be an hit..

 

It is not that simple.

How do you explain Lotro then ?

The MOST and best known lore -  the best polished product at launch...

A  launching campaign that was very succesful and had the title: "THE game that rules them all".

So best lore, best polish, most recognizable and ...... 200K subs ater 6 months ....

I also think Turbine has more control over its hackers and bots than the track record of NCsoft.

I think a lot of other factors play than "polish". Too cumbersome and too vast to explain it all, but polish is not even a deciding factor I think.

 

After the WOW bunny hoppers leave, LOTRO numbers are about what i expect Aion to have. Maybe a few more as they will pick up a lot from War and AOC for the PVP aspect of the game. I think a game will fail due to Aion, namely Warhammer, but Aion will not fail.

Yeah, I follow your sentiment more or less. I think Aion may fare a bit better than Rings simply because the lore of Aion is something you learn as you go whereas with Rings if you haven't seen the Rings movies or read the books you can be a bit lost and Rings lack of PvP.  

 I do think with Aion and CO coming in September that Warhammer is in a lot of trouble.

I wouldn't be surprised if even DDO yanks some from Warhammer once it goes f2p. 

*gets pelted with rotten tomatoes*

Originally posted by Wickedjelly

Originally posted by grandpagamer

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by EduardoASG

Wel.. AoC failed because it was full of bugs, had the worst control system ever developed for a game [ they tried to reeinvent the weel and came up with a square.. ].

AoC did fail due to Nazizst Forum moderators whose job was basically to ban everyone not licking the AoC dev and staff shoes.

WAR failed due to several factors, mainly related to the playability of it and game server lack of quality provider in Europe [ GOA ]. The RvR system is awful, wich is a pitty because it has a large fan base. WAR did forgot that todays market has a big share of single players who like to play online games.

If Aion can avoid the mistakes made by theese games, might be an hit..

 

It is not that simple.

How do you explain Lotro then ?

The MOST and best known lore -  the best polished product at launch...

A  launching campaign that was very succesful and had the title: "THE game that rules them all".

So best lore, best polish, most recognizable and ...... 200K subs ater 6 months ....

I also think Turbine has more control over its hackers and bots than the track record of NCsoft.

I think a lot of other factors play than "polish". Too cumbersome and too vast to explain it all, but polish is not even a deciding factor I think.

 

After the WOW bunny hoppers leave, LOTRO numbers are about what i expect Aion to have. Maybe a few more as they will pick up a lot from War and AOC for the PVP aspect of the game. I think a game will fail due to Aion, namely Warhammer, but Aion will not fail.

Yeah, I follow your sentiment more or less. I think with Aion and CO coming in September that Warhammer is in a lot of trouble.

I wouldn't be surprised if even DDO yanks some from Warhammer once it goes f2p. 

*gets pelted with rotten tomatoes*

I didnt play DDO much so I cant comment on that but Turbine knows how to patch free content from what i see in LOTRO. They seem to listen to their fanbase better than some, so you could be correct.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by nomraw

 

Only time will tell :P

 

Although....Aion has a lot of things going well for it at the moment ...which AoC and WAR didn't at launch.....

1) Good feedback from released versions in Korea and China (mind you....a lot of those feedbacks come from western players who've played the game for atleast a month or so)

2) The game is noticeably polished...unlike the half baked versions of WAR and AoC at release.

3) It has decent lore/story driven missions...besides the grind quests...but you'd hardly notice the grind (as many compare this game to a typical F2P Korean MMO)....lvling to max should take u less than a month....with just a few hours invested in a day..

4) The RvRing here is slightly sanboxish unlike those found in WAR....due to the flight combat.....somewhat similar to GW..

5) Whether u like it or not......the graphics look amazing.....atleast thats what most of the MMO gamers and potential Aion fans think about this game :)

6) The game's marketing never intended for this game to compete against WoW....its just the regualr Fanboys who do this crap. The game's promotion was almost unnoticed even after its release....It was only after the release of the Chinese version...and many westerners gained access to that.....that player's truly understod how good a game this is.

  I will disagree with you with ToR having the potential to take over from WoW......According to me it will be Guild Wars 2.....you'll prolly comeback by saying it doesn't even have a subscription based setup...and all that....but who gives a rats ass about that logic to defend WoW.....

Guild Wars 2 will become much more popular than WoW in a year or so (popularity in this case is based on the TREND...not existing WoW subs during that period)....

The only other game which has potential to beat WoW (based on your idea...thats subs) is Blizzard's next MMO....but we don't have any legitimate news about that do we?? 

 

Coming back to Aion.....I'd prefer to consider this as a game which will bring back hope to this Genre of PC gaming...so that it isn't dominated by just ONE game all the time....If Aion can somehow sustain a total of 750k + subscribers in NA and EU...then thats job well done :)

 

The total number of Eastern Aion players is now accepted 1.9 M, not the wrongly cited 3.5 million from June. The number of servers rose with ... 2 in the last 8 months in Korea. Meaning WOW is still outperforming Aion X2 .... in its own homeland.

Server count is clear: 43 Korean and 153 Chinese (against 41 Korean and 113 Chinese when the game had around 1.5 M players according to NCSoft reports from MAy 2009).

That's telling much.

Most of these numbers were attained through internet café play, hardly comparable with the 180 dollars yearly western subs.

Xfire showed that the intrest in Beta (that could be acquired) was significantly less than both AoC and War. Meaning it will probably launch at significantly less players than those 2 games initially.

Since ALL MMORPG's in the west had around 30% retention rate, your 750 K sustained subs would mean it would sell around 2 million(!) copies in NA/EU in its first year.

Impossible for this lore and unknown gaming world.

GW2 is indeed free to play and can't be compared in revenus with paid mmo's.

The moment Blizzard calls 'booh" everyone is back in again. A Korean game or even a free to play game is not going to change that.

Only a complete different game design (like SW) could change the current situation.

 

Source on the "accepted 1.9 M"  subscription statement? Can you link to a official statement or pressrelease?

To answer the original question simply and cleanly, no
 
War failed due to many reasons a major one was the piss pore job that was done on it, Mythic is/was a damn good dev but for some reason War was unpolished and seemed to be held together with glue and toothpicks

AoC was a revolutionary game and rarely do revolutionary games do well as they take far to many risks and the majority of thous risks don't pan out some do some don't game dies.

Aion is an evolutionary game like EQ2, WoW, and DAoC nothing hugly new here but rather a refinement and evolution of things that have worked in the past. This was the main thing I loved about WoW, they didn't do any thing really new but they did every thing really well in particular the UI. AoC had its combat system which was very cool and it had the linear 1-20 which was not (neat idea over all bad) War . . . War was just a mistake sad really because Mythic is still to this day my fav MMO developer even after the crap which is War DAoC classic is my idea of a perfect MMO though it has been chewed up since
 
Disclaimer before the flaming begins, I call DAoC evolutionary not revolutionary because it did not present any thing particularly new RvR is simply PvP with 3 factions an evolution on good old PvP not a revolution, I do love RvR in DAoC or rather did but them the facts. You may also say WoW to be revolutionary because you for some reason think its a cut ont eh game to not be revolutionary but WoW again presented nothing particularly new to the genre and did not take any major risks in its design but rather focused on perfecting the established and spinning it in a new light.

Aion does not need to destroy WoW to be a success. Why do people speak of these two as if they go hand to hand?

Aion is huge success in Asia as of now. Aion will be successful in the western world, but probably not as much as it is in Asia.

The game will have more subscribers than LotR in my opinion, but we will see. The only thing that really worries me is the development responses to western concerns. Honestly, I will enjoy playing this game for a year or more most likely until we see Star Wars Old Republic which 99% of us hope is a huge success comming from Bioware.

Originally posted by LodenDSG

To answer the original question simply and cleanly, no
 
War failed due to many reasons a major one was the piss pore job that was done on it, Mythic is/was a damn good dev but for some reason War was unpolished and seemed to be held together with glue and toothpicks

AoC was a revolutionary game and rarely do revolutionary games do well as they take far to many risks and the majority of thous risks don't pan out some do some don't game dies.

Aion is an evolutionary game like EQ2, WoW, and DAoC nothing hugly new here but rather a refinement and evolution of things that have worked in the past. This was the main thing I loved about WoW, they didn't do any thing really new but they did every thing really well in particular the UI. AoC had its combat system which was very cool and it had the linear 1-20 which was not (neat idea over all bad) War . . . War was just a mistake sad really because Mythic is still to this day my fav MMO developer even after the crap which is War DAoC classic is my idea of a perfect MMO though it has been chewed up since
 
Disclaimer before the flaming begins, I call DAoC evolutionary not revolutionary because it did not present any thing particularly new RvR is simply PvP with 3 factions an evolution on good old PvP not a revolution, I do love RvR in DAoC or rather did but them the facts. You may also say WoW to be revolutionary because you for some reason think its a cut ont eh game to not be revolutionary but WoW again presented nothing particularly new to the genre and did not take any major risks in its design but rather focused on perfecting the established and spinning it in a new light.

 

 

 

 

Besides the combat system (which wasn't even the case for some classes) I really don't see what was revolutionary about AoC.  I pretty much agree with everything else you said and think you hit the nail on the head but with AoC i just don't see what some thought was so special about that game. 

It certainly had potential to do much better than it did if it would have been managed and updated properly but I hear people say this about AoC at times and I gotta say I don't get it.  The main reasons that game ended up doing terribly from what I saw was due to: abhorrent mismanagement by Funcom,  poorly tested/designed patching, insanely fast leveling curve, lack of end game content, poorly scripted/overly simplistic crafting design, and no real draw incentive since stats and itemization in general didn't mean anything outside of the certain gem sets that could make you a one shotter or basically invincible (although I did hear the stat/item system was revamped and they did eventually nerf the gems). It has nothing to do with the risks (whatever those were-still don't see it) the game took unless you consider releasing the game before it was even close to being ready for launch or having things in place to deal with customer service issues/concerns.

Besides that, however, I do agree with you completely.

Heh, lots of psychics in this thread. Gonna follow the crowd like a mindless sheep and do a little 'phsyciccy' myself. I hereby prophesy this game will start up with close to a million and end up in the 300k-500k numbers here in the west after all the migration and the mmo-hoppers gone back to whatever mmo they're playing. The character creation will draw in quite a few people as it seems to be the best thing since City of Heroes, barring Champions Online but that game got company funded RMT so it's out the window in an awful hurry.

As a sidenote, someone mentioned you can level in WoW's BG's now. What he failed to mention is that you will be destroyed by, what WoW call, twinks and get few kills/damage and uptime. Sure you can level in BG's but my guess is it's faster and more painless to level in PVE as WoW always been about PVE and it's PVE is actually quite good.

Seems to me Aion is close to the RvR game that WAR should have been so I'd expect it to soak up a lot of the PvP crowd. That on its own should be enough to make it reasonably successful in the west - especially if it's already doing better than break even in asia.

I'd imagine also that it will attract a significant number of PvE players purely for the graphics and a change from WoW. How that works out depends on how well the game prevents the RvR side causing problems for the PvE side and vice versa.

So potentially i think Aion could get a big chunk of the RvR crowd (who don't hate the art style) plus a chunk of the WoW-style PvE crowd who prefer the art style to WoW's.

So in the short term i'd expect a decent win, financially and otherwise. In the longer term i think it depends on how well they can keep both the PvP and the PvE players happy at the same time.

Sir, this game will not fail, infact it is my assumption that this game will be amazing in every aspect of gaming. this will be so phenominal that no other rpg will beable to touch it. it is my belife that we are lookin at a new age of gaming one that will be untouchable.

THank you

~dark3n3dsoul