Aion has been hyped just as much as any other mmo before it. Warhammer was hyped to be great, Age of Conan was hyped to be great, they all were, and they all did some things right, but many things wrong. Aion is in many ways no different.

Let me talk about Age of Conan and Warhammer first. What was the issue with these games that caused them to fail as they did? I think that most people unanimously agree that both games were not polished, lacked content, and were released too early. Both warhammer and Age of Conan did some things well. Most would agree that AoC had an innovative and entertaining combat system despite some flaws, and many would agree that Warhammer had fairly good PvP gameplay, and that the ability to level through PvP made the process of leveling much less of a bore.

Both games had potential from the start. What killed them both was the fact that both products were released before they were ready, and that both games were in an "infant" state so to speak. Realistically nobody expects a new game to have the same levels of content as an established game like world of warcraft, and age of conan and warhammer did not have content that could compare to WoW. I think we all understood that both games could compete with WoW if more promising content was added as the game aged, but players are presented with a choice. Does a player want to play WoW, or Warhammer/Aoc. We all have access to all mmos if we pay the price, so why would we choose warhammer and Aoc over established, polished, and content rich games? The only answer that makes sense is "Because warhammer and AoC show promise in the future, and X player is willing to wait it out and see what content is added".

This is what kills new games. WoW was no different when it was released. It lacked content, and it was bug filled, but it and EQ2 were the first of a new generation of mmos, and therefore there were really no other games with richer content for players to choose. This gave developers precious time to expand their games and polish them eventually leading to the solid games that exist today.

Is Aion different? This is a question that every knowledgeable gamer has been asking him or her self. Aion has an advantage that AoC and War did not have. Aion was released in korea and china, and has been polished and expanded there before being introduced to the North American market. This is a huge advantage and eliminates the issues that plagued AoC and Warhammer, but does that mean Aion will succeed? In my opinion it does not. Aion has good content, Aion is polished, but Aion is not original. Warhammer and AoC both had a lot of original concepts, they both offered something new. Aion does not. While flying and PvPvE have been marketed as innovation, they simply are not. Flying only offers so much excitement, and creates a plethora of balancing issues that would not othwerwise exist. PvPvE is simply a term created to label a previously existing concept that exists in most other mmos. PvPvE is a PvP enabled zone... nothing more. The abyss is a zone filled with mobs in which you can PvP. It is not an amazing new concept dont let yourself be convinced otherwise.

All of those points do not make Aion a bad game, Aion is not a bad game. Aion is a niche game. Why? Because Aion is grindy. Why did Aion have such success in eastern markets? Because eastern gamers enjoy grinding far more than us westerners. This is a general statement please do not give me individual cases as I understand that there are americans who enjoy grinding more than some koreans. That being said,  it is essentially fact that most NA players do not like to grind for long periods of time. In Aion you will HAVE TO grind for long periods of time. Level 30-50 involves extensive amounts of grinding. It is not nearly comparable to games like lineage 2, but it is still grindy, and that will still deter many many players. Aion will fail for this reason alone.

The future of mmos does not involve grinding. In the future grinding will be nonexistant. What the genre needs is a way to level that is entertaining, but does not sacrafice the sense of accomplishment that you get from leveling. There are many ways to accomplish this, one of which has already been introduced by warhammer.

The next mmo that will become as succesful or nearly as succesful as WoW will involve several ways for characters to level all of which are appealing to different types of players. Grinding doesn't need to be eliminated as many players enjoy it, there simply needs to be alternatives. On top of this the games need to be developed and launched with more care and patience. We all know from AoC and War that releasing a product too early leads to disaster. Developers need to take more time to both polish their game, and expand it's content. The combination of patience, polish, content, and diverse paths to leveling will lead to a great mmo, and a next generation mmo.

Oh gawd wall of text run.

These threads crack me up. We should get paid every time someone posts their opinions as proof that a game is going to fail.

What a Huge post! Let the flames beggin! IS just me or most post in MMORPG.com forums is about how and why games will fail..

I'm not saiyng its proof. But I would bet all of the money I have that it will not be highly successful. Only players who have played to 30+ understand that the game is quite grindy. Those who haven't made it that far will tell you "I quested to level 20 so stfu"... 1-20 is a walk in the park. 30-50 is when the grind begins, and the time require really grows exponentially  from level 25 onward.

Are you excited?

As for it becoming grindy at level 30, there are not 60 levels in the game, so you are reaching a higher level at that point so yes you will progress slower. But there have been many players who have already reached the 30s and are not complaining about it.

I FORSEEE THE FUTURE! AND LET IT BE KNOWN THAT [insert game here] SHALLLL FAAAIIIIILLLL!!!!!!

Originally posted by Josexph

I FORSEEE THE FUTURE! AND LET IT BE KNOWN THAT [insert game here] SHALLLL FAAAIIIIILLLL!!!!!!

rofl..

zathoral, how often do you polish your crystal ball

i think a smudge is ruining your vision

nah games gonna be just fine. Its mainstream pvp with faction against faction against insane npc faction. The only downside people have found is that its nothing revolutionary.

Originally posted by Corthala

What a Huge post! Let the flames beggin! IS just me or most post in MMORPG.com forums is about how and why games will fail..

Nah, it's not you. It's rampant here. If it isn't exactly what one person is looking for, it's a game doomed to failure, despite any existing statistics or data to the contrary.

Originally posted by LynxJSA

Originally posted by Corthala

What a Huge post! Let the flames beggin! IS just me or most post in MMORPG.com forums is about how and why games will fail..

 

Nah, it's not you. It's rampant here. If it isn't exactly what one person is looking for, it's a game doomed to failure, despite any existing statistics or data to the contrary.

I guess you do have a point

I really haven't seen Aion as anymore grindy than say, WoW. In fact, I find leveling has been pretty quick.

You actually had some very good points for the first 2/3 of the post but then you attempted to convince everyone that mmos will become purely level oriented and lose the grind.  Dude, the grind is what makes a mmo a mmo.  Any single player game can offer you a story and a leveling experience, but only mmos offer a player a high level of perpetual advancement.  Without the grind the game ends and is no longer a mmo.  Developers simply CANNOT create content faster than people chew it up.  Until that happens, you will ALWAYS grind in some form when playing a mmo; and the majority of your gametime will be on that grind whether it be leveling, gaining faction, gathering materials, building a player city, killing bosses, or whatever the heck else it is that you want to do in a mmo.  It's ALL a grind for the next level, more money, more achievements, kill the next boss in the chain, etc etc etc.

That being said I think you're spot on in nearly every other aspect.  It's all about variety, which is where crafting, politics, pvp, and other game mechanics add alternative methods of advancement.  Basically, it's the hybrid sandbox/themepark that I always preach about.  :)

I doubt Aion will be doing as bad as warhammer and aoc.  It's more quality and polished.

The main concern is Ncsoft have plans to release many new mmorpg the next few years.  Most of them will probably look and play exactly like aion. 

No one knows how this game will fare but i think the OP makes some good points. Grind is something each person has to define on his/her own judgments. To me, grinding is killing mobs for reasons of xp or drops. To someone else, questing is a grind. I know i grew tired of this game half way through my third CB weekend, others seem to love it.  I said awhile back the game will have decent numbers somewhere between 200 and 500K and i stand by that, we will know better after the first 30 days or so.  I dont think the game will fail but i doubt it will do any better than lotro or eq2 numbers.

Originally posted by zaxxon23

You actually had some very good points for the first 2/3 of the post but then you attempted to convince everyone that mmos will become purely level oriented and lose the grind.  Dude, the grind is what makes a mmo a mmo.  Any single player game can offer you a story and a leveling experience, but only mmos offer a player a high level of perpetual advancement.  Without the grind the game ends and is no longer a mmo.  Developers simply CANNOT create content faster than people chew it up.  Until that happens, you will ALWAYS grind in some form when playing a mmo; and the majority of your gametime will be on that grind whether it be leveling, gaining faction, gathering materials, building a player city, killing bosses, or whatever the heck else it is that you want to do in a mmo.  It's ALL a grind for the next level, more money, more achievements, kill the next boss in the chain, etc etc etc.

Imagine an MMO made by the people that beat down these games, wow.....it would fail so hard

Originally posted by Zathoral

I'm not saiyng its proof. But I would bet all of the money I have that it will not be highly successful. Only players who have played to 30+ understand that the game is quite grindy. Those who haven't made it that far will tell you "I quested to level 20 so stfu"... 1-20 is a walk in the park. 30-50 is when the grind begins, and the time require really grows exponentially  from level 25 onward.

What are you talking about? It is already highly successful...

I don't know if the numbers are still right, but they got like 4-5 mill accounts already in Asia, how can this not be considered successful?

I love how people look at a game like WOW and think that is the industry standard.

First I ask you how many subscribers it takes to make a game a sucess?

100,000?, 200,000?, 500,000?, 1,000,000?

Would you consider EQ a failure?  It capped at around 700,000

DAOC: capped at about 350,000

EvE: currently at around 300,000 and growing

I don't think anyone will say these games failed in fact, they are considered monsterous successes and they do not stand alone.

So to the modern age

AOC and WAR both capped at over 500,000 players and now both sit around 200,000.  Why are they failures? Because WOW made it to 1,000,000 in its first year?  So what.  One game in the history of MMORPG's had had multiple millions of players, don't count Lineage since no one has ever been able to confirm subs.  How did this become the yard stick of sucess or failure?  LOTRO is a very sucessful game, but it has never broken 1,000,000 subscribers.

Both WAR and AOC made, and continue to make tons of money.  Just because they do not have millions of subscribers does not make them failures.  The MMORPG market has always been a niche market and WOW is the only game that broke that niche.  Just because no other game has been able to do it break the niche, does not make them failures, it makes them MMORPG's.

Originally posted by Loira

I love how people look at a game like WOW and think that is the industry standard.

 

First I ask you how many subscribers it takes to make a game a sucess?

100,000?, 200,000?, 500,000?, 1,000,000?

 

Would you consider EQ a failure?  It capped at around 700,000

DAOC: capped at about 350,000

EvE: currently at around 300,000 and growing

I don't think anyone will say these games failed in fact, they are considered monsterous successes and they do not stand alone.

 

So to the modern age

AOC and WAR both capped at over 500,000 players and now both sit around 200,000.  Why are they failures? Because WOW made it to 1,000,000 in its first year?  So what.  One game in the history of MMORPG's had had multiple millions of players, don't count Lineage since no one has ever been able to confirm subs.  How did this become the yard stick of sucess or failure?  LOTRO is a very sucessful game, but it has never broken 1,000,000 subscribers.

Both WAR and AOC made, and continue to make tons of money.  Just because they do not have millions of subscribers does not make them failures.  The MMORPG market has always been a niche market and WOW is the only game that broke that niche.  Just because no other game has been able to do it break the niche, does not make them failures, it makes them MMORPG's.

Are you in the wrong thread or something????

Someone needs to tell the OP that this game has already had 4 million ACTIVE subs in Asia already... for almost a year.

Whether it does well or bombs in the U.S. or Europe (which it won't) doesn't matter. The Asian subs alone are enough to prove his prediction wrong.

Research would have helped before this post and grand prediction unfortunately.

no, the OP basically said AION will fail because it won't match WOW's numbers.

No game in the history of MMORPG's has ever matched WOW's numbers.  Many of these games a huge succeses to the devolopers and publishers.  just because a game does not break multiple millions of subscribers does not make it a failure.

Doom! Doom!

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!

Seriously though, I predict it'll do fairly well. Looks reasonably well polished for what it is, and I don't think people mind a bit of grind here and there. So long as it's fun, that is.

Originally posted by Loira

AOC and WAR both capped at over 500,000 players and now both sit around 200,000.  Why are they failures? Because WOW made it to 1,000,000 in its first year?  So what.  One game in the history of MMORPG's had had multiple millions of players, don't count Lineage since no one has ever been able to confirm subs.  How did this become the yard stick of sucess or failure?  LOTRO is a very sucessful game, but it has never broken 1,000,000 subscribers.

Are you sure war and aoc have 200,000 sub now.  I thought aoc was lossing money for a few month.

Let's summarize that wall of text:

I played more of Aion than any of you, therefore I know all about the game.  You WILL not like it because I didn't.  The genre is a mess because I haven't liked any of the games I've played recently.

Unless developers start making games that *I* like, the genre is doomed and no one will want to play their games.

Signed,

Yet another member of MMORPG.com who belongs to the Psychic MMO Network of Negativity.

Originally posted by Zathoral

             Aion has been hyped just as much as any other mmo before it. Warhammer was hyped to be great, Age of Conan was hyped to be great, they all were, and they all did some things right, but many things wrong. Aion is in many ways no different.

 

Let me talk about Age of Conan and Warhammer first. What was the issue with these games that caused them to fail as they did? I think that most people unanimously agree that both games were not polished, lacked content, and were released too early. Both warhammer and Age of Conan did some things well. Most would agree that AoC had an innovative and entertaining combat system despite some flaws, and many would agree that Warhammer had fairly good PvP gameplay, and that the ability to level through PvP made the process of leveling much less of a bore.

 

Both games had potential from the start. What killed them both was the fact that both products were released before they were ready, and that both games were in an "infant" state so to speak. Realistically nobody expects a new game to have the same levels of content as an established game like world of warcraft, and age of conan and warhammer did not have content that could compare to WoW. I think we all understood that both games could compete with WoW if more promising content was added as the game aged, but players are presented with a choice. Does a player want to play WoW, or Warhammer/Aoc. We all have access to all mmos if we pay the price, so why would we choose warhammer and Aoc over established, polished, and content rich games? The only answer that makes sense is "Because warhammer and AoC show promise in the future, and X player is willing to wait it out and see what content is added".

 

This is what kills new games. WoW was no different when it was released. It lacked content, and it was bug filled, but it and EQ2 were the first of a new generation of mmos, and therefore there were really no other games with richer content for players to choose. This gave developers precious time to expand their games and polish them eventually leading to the solid games that exist today.

 

Is Aion different? This is a question that every knowledgeable gamer has been asking him or her self. Aion has an advantage that AoC and War did not have. Aion was released in korea and china, and has been polished and expanded there before being introduced to the North American market. This is a huge advantage and eliminates the issues that plagued AoC and Warhammer, but does that mean Aion will succeed? In my opinion it does not. Aion has good content, Aion is polished, but Aion is not original. Warhammer and AoC both had a lot of original concepts, they both offered something new. Aion does not. While flying and PvPvE have been marketed as innovation, they simply are not. Flying only offers so much excitement, and creates a plethora of balancing issues that would not othwerwise exist. PvPvE is simply a term created to label a previously existing concept that exists in most other mmos. PvPvE is a PvP enabled zone... nothing more. The abyss is a zone filled with mobs in which you can PvP. It is not an amazing new concept dont let yourself be convinced otherwise.

 

All of those points do not make Aion a bad game, Aion is not a bad game. Aion is a niche game. Why? Because Aion is grindy. Why did Aion have such success in eastern markets? Because eastern gamers enjoy grinding far more than us westerners. This is a general statement please do not give me individual cases as I understand that there are americans who enjoy grinding more than some koreans. That being said,  it is essentially fact that most NA players do not like to grind for long periods of time. In Aion you will HAVE TO grind for long periods of time. Level 30-50 involves extensive amounts of grinding. It is not nearly comparable to games like lineage 2, but it is still grindy, and that will still deter many many players. Aion will fail for this reason alone.

 

The future of mmos does not involve grinding. In the future grinding will be nonexistant. What the genre needs is a way to level that is entertaining, but does not sacrafice the sense of accomplishment that you get from leveling. There are many ways to accomplish this, one of which has already been introduced by warhammer.

 

The next mmo that will become as succesful or nearly as succesful as WoW will involve several ways for characters to level all of which are appealing to different types of players. Grinding doesn't need to be eliminated as many players enjoy it, there simply needs to be alternatives. On top of this the games need to be developed and launched with more care and patience. We all know from AoC and War that releasing a product too early leads to disaster. Developers need to take more time to both polish their game, and expand it's content. The combination of patience, polish, content, and diverse paths to leveling will lead to a great mmo, and a next generation mmo.

 

Oh gawd wall of text run.

There are some noticable flaws with your logic and I will point them out one by one.

The first one is saying that Aion won't be successful because it isn't original.
First of all why is WoW part of a new generation of mmorpgs while Aion is not?

If Everquest was a game of the previous generation and WoW was one of the next, there is a difference between 5 years those two games. Aion is now released 5 years after WoW so if WoW and EQ2 were a new generation, than so is Aion.
The reasons why WoW became so popular are many, which I won't go into great detail right now but one of the reasons is that it was it was simply a better game than Everquest. It was more polished, the world was better designed and the overal gameplay just more entertaining but that does not take away that WoW didn't go far off the beaten path.

Now the reason why Aion will be a successful game is the same reason why all successfull mmorpgs have been success: Because it's a good game. It has a lot more polish and quality to it than both Warhammer and Age of Conan. To say Aion is a grind is downright incorrect. It's very quest driven and the time it takes to reach the cap is comparable to WoW. If Aion is a grind, then so is WoW,  EQ2 and Lotro.