But if you read the WOW forums back at release, it wasn't a flame fest.  It was generally posititve when you weeded out the trolls..  

The quality of gamers was higher back then.  Aion is a much better game now than WoW was back then. However between expectations rising tenfold and the MMO player base being saturated with absolutely pathetic human beings... well, you get the picture.

Anywho... Aion was pretty much assured the niche game market(in the west) because its a Korean grinder.  Nothing wrong with that, it will always have a solid fan-base of people who like to dump a lot of time into a game and get heavily rewarded for it.  That's one thing Aion does right... it really rewards players for time spent.  

 It never had a shot of beating WoW, and anyone who thinks its an overall better game than WoW is lying to themselves.  I don't think it will crash and burn like WAR, its just far too polished and the setting is uniquely different.  

We're doing a running story on the problems of Aion at www.angryguildleader.com and the worst and most glaring problems are coming within the next few days.

 Aion will NEVER win over WoW period, WoW will continue to grow no other MMO has ever sold as many boxed units as WoW in the mmorpg history!

I'm about to quit because of umbalanced classes and bots.

ok i have  90% true response to the OP . the reason the aionsource forums are littered with FLAME and HATE is because all the players that LOVE aion are in the game playing and feel no time to waste telling every one how much they love the game, because they are playing with the people that love the game and know that they share the same feelings. im only here because im a forum whore and love to see what type of hate spawns up next, and i just got home so i havnt gotten lost in the Aion world yet cuz i havnt started the program. lol but now im gonna go get lost good bye people and i hope you all relise, Forums will allways be littered with tons of people that hate the games, the reason, people who like the games are playing them. get used to seeing flame if u havnt alrdy.

pro tip: didnt bother to fix gramma cuz im gonna go play aion now. oh and to make sure people dont find me as a aion fan boi, i love wow and respect its power 100% and relise aion has many faults, but with this large community that they have built these problems will be fixed when the solution is found. not every thing comes in a day

Originally posted by Kyleran
/Snip blah blah wow fanboi rant

Compared to the performance of L1/L2, Aion is a big hit in the West, but it ceertainly is no WOW.

Actually I remember the wow launch it had around 200k sales at the time - so yeah Aion thus far is in better shape.

You have to love Zorndorf for thinking Xfire stats are in any way accurate.

And oh look at todays ratings. Aion is the only non - WoW game to be in the top 10 list and is apparently even more popular than Countrstrike, just like Call of Duty 2 is apparently more popular than countrstrike because if Xfire says so, it must be true.

Also, source where Blizzard mentioned they have sold 4 million boxes? Because they didn't had 4 million western subscribers 6 months after release.

Blizzard announced they had 8 million subscribers somewhere around january 2007.
2 million players were in North America and 1.5 million players were in Europe. WoW didn't had 4 million western subscribers in 2 years, nevermind in 6 months.

I really hoped Aion would have been a low profile game so we didn't have to deal with the usual trolls that seem to make it their lifeworks to bash any popular new game that doesn't live up to their unrealistic expectations over and over again.

You realise of course both Age of Conan and WAR both held the #4 spot for quite some time as well, right - and these weren't even being sold on xfire? These games showed the same tendency as Aion does now with its downward curve, and look at them now - complete turds on the xfire stats. WAR bragged with having sold 1.2 million copies at the first month mark. History is repeating itself with Aion.

Originally posted by RendRegen

You realise of course both Age of Conan and WAR both held the #4 spot for quite some time as well, right - and these weren't even being sold on xfire? These games showed the same tendency as Aion does now with its downward curve, and look at them now - complete turds on the xfire stats. WAR bragged with having sold 1.2 million copies at the first month mark. History is repeating itself with Aion.

No it isn't. Ofcourse numbers drop after a while, this happens with most mmorpgs. The game doesn't have a free trial so a lot of people play it and find out they don't like it.

The difference between War and Aion is that Aion is a high quality title. It's already been released in asia for over a year and it has great staying power.No reason to assume it will be any different here,especially when there is not going to be any competition anytime soon.

Originally posted by Gameloading

You have to love Zorndorf for thinking Xfire stats are in any way accurate.

And oh look at todays ratings. Aion is the only non - WoW game to be in the top 10 list and is apparently even more popular than Countrstrike, just like Call of Duty 2 is apparently more popular than countrstrike because if Xfire says so, it must be true.

Also, source where Blizzard mentioned they have sold 4 million boxes? Because they didn't had 4 million western subscribers 6 months after release.

Blizzard announced they had 8 million subscribers somewhere around january 2007.
2 million players were in North America and 1.5 million players were in Europe. WoW didn't had 4 million western subscribers in 2 years, nevermind in 6 months.

I really hoped Aion would have been a low profile game so we didn't have to deal with the usual trolls that seem to make it their lifeworks to bash any popular new game that doesn't live up to their unrealistic expectations over and over again.

The XFire stats ARE accurate. But they're not the complete picture, since not everyone actually uses XFire.

And that last comment of yours made me laugh pretty damn hard. You're actually glad Aion is bland? Wow. Alright, tastes differ, but come on...Oh well.

Originally posted by Regnevanz

Originally posted by Kyleran
/Snip blah blah wow fanboi rant

Compared to the performance of L1/L2, Aion is a big hit in the West, but it ceertainly is no WOW.

 

Actually I remember the wow launch it had around 200k sales at the time - so yeah Aion thus far is in better shape.

Just to put your comment in perspective.  Before WoW, most gamers didn't even know what an MMORPG was.  No game ever had a launch of more than 150k subscribers before WoW.  When WoW sold out their 175,000 initial boxs within the first week of release, it was a shockwave that PC Gaming world had not seen before in regards to MMORPGs.  Thanks to the success of WoW, games like WAR, AoC, AION, etc are able to sell many several hundred thousand more than WoW did.
The difference is that while WoW initially sold 175k copies, it has steadily grown to over 12 million subscribers we have today.  For what ever reason, new released games are failing miserably at concurrent subscriber rates.  Some of the rare exceptions to this include WoW, LOTRO, and EVE.  It's obvious that Blizzard, Turbine, and CCP are doing something right and the rest of these companies are having difficulties duplicating their success.

The Xfire stats give in no way an accurate representation of gaming habbits or subscribers. Do you seriously think Call of Duty 2 is played more than 3 times as much as Counterstrike, like the Xfire numbers suggest? Ofcourse not.

I'm glad that Aion is bland? what? How did you spin the part about me saying I wanted Aion to be a low successful game so we didn't have to bother with the trolls that attract every big game to me saying anything about Aion being bland?

Originally posted by Gameloading

The Xfire stats give in no way an accurate representation of gaming habbits or subscribers. Do you seriously think Call of Duty 2 is played more than Counterstrike? Ofcourse not.

I'm glad that Aion is bland? what? How did you spin the part about me saying I wanted Aion to be a low successful game so we didn't have to bother with the trolls that attract every big game to me saying anything about Aion being bland?

 Please read what I type: XFire stats are accurate when considering XFIRE USERS. However, not everyone uses XFire. Get it?

______________________

I was referring to your comment about "unrealistic expectations". You see, it is my opinion Aion hasn't brought anything new to the table. Thinking that it might would be unrealistic? But I guess your hostile tone instilled some hostility inside myself as well :). I'lle leave it at that.

Lastly, if we stop raising our expectations and keep paying for mediocracy, things will never change. You may quote me on this one in the future :P.

Originally posted by BizkitNL

Originally posted by Gameloading

The Xfire stats give in no way an accurate representation of gaming habbits or subscribers. Do you seriously think Call of Duty 2 is played more than Counterstrike? Ofcourse not.

I'm glad that Aion is bland? what? How did you spin the part about me saying I wanted Aion to be a low successful game so we didn't have to bother with the trolls that attract every big game to me saying anything about Aion being bland?

 Please read what I type: XFire stats are accurate when considering XFIRE USERS. However, not everyone uses XFire. Get it?

______________________

I was referring to your comment about "unrealistic expectations". You see, it is my opinion Aion hasn't brought anything new to the table. Thinking that it might would be unrealistic? But I guess your hostile tone instilled some hostility inside myself as well :). I'lle leave it at that.

Lastly, if we stop raising our expectations and keep paying for mediocracy, things will never change. You may quote me on this one in the future :P.

Ofcourse Xfire stats are accurate for Xfire users only, What I argued was that Xfire stats are not a representation of success of a game in any way, isn't it obvious?
 

Expecting innovation of a high profile game is pretty close to an unrealistic expectation. the mmo genre has a terrible track record as far as innovation goes. The games that are most successful are all games that have done the same thing over and over again.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Aion is SOLD by NCsoft on Xfire.

Meaning every copy sold of it through Xfire has Xfire installed on Aion.

So it's 5th or 6th place on Xfire is meaningless, when you compare that place with other games NOT sold through Xfire.

Like WOW, EVE, LotrO.

The fact the number of Aion Xfire players was DOWN with 50% (first high weekend 14.5K players , now as you can see ... 7.3 K players shows .... Xfire players drop off like flies.

http://www.xfire.com/games/aion/Aion/

The only truth about Aion is that it has ... 14NA/18EU servers and those servers are not filled on max, high or locked capacity.

The rest is unsold packages sitting at dealers shelves as can be seen here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_n_4?rh=n%3A468642%2Cn%3A%2111846801%2Cn%3A229575&bbn=11846801&ie=UTF8&qid=1257758370&rnid=11846801

and here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_p_n_feature_browse-b_2?rh=n%3A300703%2Cp_n_feature_browse-bin%3A671468011&bbn=300703&ie=UTF8&qid=1257758410&rnid=671465011

So a LOT of barking but no substance.

 

You seem to be making a lot of assumptions here. First you say that the game isn't selling and then you say it is sold on Xfire and that every copy has Xfire installed and use this to somehow show that the game is not selling without being able to show any sales figures for Xfire at all for any game let alone for Aion.

Also, as an Xfire user you know quite well that Xfire is not a part of Aion and is not needed for game play so even if a customer decided to buy the game from Xfire it doesn't mean that they would use it but I grant you that this is probably unlikely.

The point though is that Xfire is a self-selecting sample and is only representative of a specific market segment and not the overall segment and to make broad sweeping generalizations based on Xfire reports is simply unreliable at best.

As to the links to Amazon this proves what? The sort link says to sort based on best selling but what other criteria is used? How much a company's marketing department has paid to be promoted actually has an impact on this and if it was simply the most units sold then WoW with the millions of units sold would be there at the top so obviously there are a number of factors used by Amazon when they create this list. A list whos main goal is to sell you something not to provide you with marketing data.

You might be right about the sales and decline of interest in Aion but you do nothing to help support your position by using information that is so contorted to fit your thesis.

Right now neither side of this discussion has much in the way of substantive information and it is all based on conjecture and what position you are attracted to. Personally, I suspect the truth as usual is somewhere in the middle. Sales are good not horrible/great, retention is good not horrible/great, the game is good not horrible/great, the future is good not horrible/great.

Blatant advertisement of xfire yet again ... sigh.

Originally posted by spiritoso

If you visit the Aionsource forums, the players are very ticked off. They have an entire section for Reviews and Critiques and the entire section is negative. The one post there that was supposed to be positive on the 5 reasons Aion will dethrone WoW has also turned into a massive flame war and bicker fest. There are a few who do still enjoy it, however there is an overwhelming tone of negativity about the game in general.

 

http://www.aionsource.com/forum/reviews-critiques/

 

Most of the people I know who left WoW to play Aion have returned and can't stand the game (Aion). This is probably one of the better reviews they have there. It's one that is not designed to incite a riot, however it realistically lays out the issues with the game.

 

http://www.aionsource.com/forum/reviews-critiques/86313-my-long-awaited-sarcasam-review-if-youre-looking-buy-read.html

 

Aion had potential. It's release couldn't have been better timed since WoW has some pretty serious content issues going on. However, the game's long term success looks as though it's going to be non existent.

 

discuss...

You have forgot one thing , 98% of the gamers love the game, the 2 % that dont like it is flaming it all they can. and are writing in forums.

The ppl that likes the game , is to ocupied playing the game.

Imop Aion is the most incredeble game ever made.

PS . Aion is the second biggest mmorpg out there, atm and are doing realy "Realy" well

After seeing Xfire mentioned so often I thought I would take a look at some of the numbers that they do have and see what if anything can be gathered from them.

The number one listed game as I type this is WoW with:

Users: 58,869

Time: 18,768,369 minutes

Average: 313.5 minutes per day per player or 5.22 hours per day.

Aion comes in at number 6 with:

Users: 7,258

Time: 2,466,896

Average: 340 minutes per day per player or 5.66 hours per day.

So what can one take from this? Yes there are fewer people playing Aion than WoW which is pretty much not a surprise but that the people playing Aion actually play longer than the people who are playing WoW.

The other thing we can take away from this is that people who use Xfire don't have much of a life. 5 hours a day playing an online game doesn't leave much time for anything else.

Originally posted by rwmiller

After seeing Xfire mentioned so often I thought I would take a look at some of the numbers that they do have and see what if anything can be gathered from them.

 

The number one listed game as I type this is WoW with:

Users: 58,869

Time: 18,768,369 minutes

Average: 313.5 minutes per day per player or 5.22 hours per day.

 

Aion comes in at number 6 with:

Users: 7,258

Time: 2,466,896

Average: 340 minutes per day per player or 5.66 hours per day.

 

So what can one take from this? Yes there are fewer people playing Aion than WoW which is pretty much not a surprise but that the people playing Aion actually play longer than the people who are playing WoW.

 

The other thing we can take away from this is that people who use Xfire don't have much of a life. 5 hours a day playing an online game doesn't leave much time for anything else.

 

As far as x-fire data goes....I think this conclusion is best.  It made me giggle with glee.

Exactly, Xfire Aion users which as we have already established, do not represent the total subscribtions or playerbase which makes the entire point you were trying to make useless.

It doesn't matter if the Xfire numbers are dropping because we know Xfire is not in any way an accurate representation.

You're making too many assumptions. You assume that Aion server capacity is the same as WoW server capacity, when Lineage 2 servers could host more people, even back then. If Aion and Lineage 2 share the same capacity (and it's a big if), then it's safe to assume that the servers can hold much more players than you assumed.

Zorndorf, seriously, I think it's better off you just not waste time trying to explain with your little pee sized brain. 

Your assumptions, and I do say assumptions, are always lacking in variables when it comes to reliable numbers. 

Things aren't as straightforward and easy as couple pluses and minuses in life, as it seems to be the analytical limit of your brain.  Seriously man, I took BMA/ECON, but if numbers behind your hypothesis could be as simple as xfire alone, we would have millions of billionaires from the stock market. 

If you don't understand what I'm trying to explain, simplay put, your brain is extremely narrow-minded.  You clearly don't see, or even try to see the whole picture.  And with that kind of attitude, would you even try to see anything by the whole in real life?  You're probably busy cutting off other people's discussions in real life, making a poor reputation for your personality.

For one, I still remember you crying and stating your false case that NCsoft was officially lieing about boxes being sold. 

Back then you were claiming there is no way NCsoft's Aion could have 400k concurrent users in NA/EU due to the lack of servers, which I believe were 12 for NA at the time.

You were claiming that each server as stated by NCsoft could only handle 10k users simultaneously, thus in your pee sized brain's calculation, there was absolutely no way 400k boxes were purchased. 

So the whole forum took the time to explain to your retarded brain that there are more users dedicated to servers, however the capacity of max number of players who can log in at the same time was indeed 10k.  If there weren't more users in comparison to the server capacity, why would there be queue times in the first place?

Then again, if I remember correctly, you would not release yourself from denial and couldn't accept the fact that you were made a fool by hundreds of people on the forum. 

Seriously, you being the idiot that brought up the idea, concurrent users = max server capacity, I wouldn't be surprised if the only argument you could bring to the table for the last month and a half was your hypothesis in correlation to xfire numbers...

Go to school man, and stop making a fool out of yourself.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Gameloading

Exactly, Xfire Aion users which as we have already established, do not represent the total subscribtions or playerbase which makes the entire point you were trying to make useless. Besides, who the heck buys their games through xfire?

It doesn't matter if the Xfire numbers are dropping because we know Xfire is not in any way an accurate representation.

 

That's simply not true ... and proven in the past as well.

IN game you can trace the activity because simply 7K users 24/7 traced is a TOO big sample to be ignored.

We saw that in War, we saw that in AoC.

Once you had a reference point of actual subscriptions you could trace the player activity in the game. Both AoC and WAR had several "checking points" where you had official player numbers and then relate those playing numbers to the Xfire players.

For example War"s 750K players after 3 weeks statement and that related to an Xfire number. You could very easely trace actual WAR players by it (and the downfall of that game).

Of course it was very easy for WAR, as that game was ALSO coupled to its RvR realm (server) status). 

EACH time Xfire almost predicted another server "merge"  months in advance.

----

The problem now is that NCSoft was the very first MMO player that collaborated with Xfire to .... SELL its game through Xfire.service.

Meaning oversampling and ASSURE your game would be UP there (and before games that do not sell through Xfire).

Also they refuse to give subs numbers so they do the "hide and seek out" game. Because IF they gave subs, it would relate directly to current Xfire samples.

Smart asses these Koreans.

BUT: there is always that stone of truth hanging around the neck of Aion .... and that's the number of servers: 14NA/18EU, which simply can't host more than 300K subs.

And those servers are no longer running at full capacity, every player logging in can see this.

So it makes sense to view the Xfire stats of each game seperately EVEN when it is being OFF balance with other games that don't sell through Xfire.

 Be glad we have tools to view these trends. If they didn't exist (like the amazon hourly updated sales), FunCom would have still let you believe they had 700K players.

 

 

We can completely ignore the sample of 7k users because as we already established, the Xfire community in general is not in any way a representation of the actual gaming industry. We know Call of Duty 2 does not have nearly 3 times as many players as Counter strike does, yet Xfire still portraits it as more played.

 

You make all sorts of claims without any evidence whatsoever. You claim the only reason Aion is so high is because the game is purchable on the Xfire website but you do not provide any numbers to how many percentage of those people have actually bought the game on Xfire because, I remind you once more, you don't have any actual numbers.

I don't know if NCsoft was the first to sell games through Xfire, nor does it matter because they are not the only one. Champions, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Warhammer are all avaible through Xfire yet not played anywhere nearly as much as Aion is nearly 2 months after release.

Number of servers? You have seem to have forgot once more that you don't have any numbers. You don't know how many people can play on the servers or how many people are on at any given time. You have this strange idea that more than 300k subscribers is impossible on 32 servers. It isn't at all. Lineage 2 hovered around 100k subscribers in the west for quite a long time. It now has 8 servers. That equals 300k people on 24 servers, or 400k on 32 servers, and anybody who has played Lineage 2 can tell you the vast majority of servers in Lineage 2 aren't anywhere near full.

Also, while i know you'd love to think Ncsoft won't release numbers because of your little Xfire theory, the reality is that they release numbers when they make their anual report, not because they have to "prove" it to some random forum poster.

But why are we still discussing this? Let's be honnest here: The only reason you keep bringing up the Xfire numbers is because they represent what you want to believe. You hate every MMORPG that isn't WoW. What we're really seeing here is nothing more than a Fanboy tirade.

Aion can avoid server merges because it has a really small world to start with. Just 200 players per faction in the abyss and it would seem really busy.

And how much of those servers are used at any given time and how much of those are filled up?

Woops. I forgot, you don't actually have those numbers.