with aion reputedly having 3.5 million subs in the asian market already it looks like blizzard may finally be up against some real competition of course how aion will do in the west remains to be seen , but all indications are that it offers a westernised leveling model and is not your basic asian grinder . of course it offers a different approach to fantasy than the standard tolkienesque setting we see in a lot of mmos such as warcraft , everquest and of course lord of the rings online . that does nt actually mean it wont be a success in the west . after all single player games from asia have been massivly successful . there is no reason at all that an mmo with the right elements should nt be .

i ve not played aion but most of what i ve heard about it has been possative . this is pretty much unheard of in mmo forums .

so if it is a game that offeres mass appeal what could this mean for warcraft .

well it ll be interesting to see how wow is doing in asia at the moment for a start . if aion really does have as vast a userbase as has been reported it means we shall soon see a decline in warcraft subscriber numbers in the asian market . it would be interesting to hear from someone that plays on an asian server to find out what is happening there .

warcraft obviously has enough dedicated and addicted players to keep it going for many years to come . but from the sounds of it aion may offer blizzard its first serious challenge .

if thier is any truth in how well aion is doing and how good it is blizzard may be facing thier first serious challenge to date . proberbly not a wowkiller but maybe a wowmaimer .

Some WoW players are going to hate it, other will love it.

-XP Loss Death
This will alienate some players, more so If WoW was their 1st MMO.
Tho it's mild compare FFXI.
3 to 5% on death (tho you can't level down) and you buy back about 60% of what you lost, with their from of gold
You have to buy back what you lost before you can level.

-No PvE Only Servers.
It's an RvR Game, tho there are way to avoid PvP in the game, at some point you going get forced into it.

Aion - take away the wings and you have a very generic asian MMO.. it might do as well as L2 in the west but no better.

Originally posted by coffee

Aion - take away the wings and you have a very generic asian MMO.. it might do as well as L2 in the west but no better.

 

Are you sure about that, or are you just guessing ?  www.youtube.com/watch

Originally posted by coffee

Aion - take away the wings and you have a very generic asian MMO.. it might do as well as L2 in the west but no better.

 

thats interesting . totally different from what i ve heard elsewhere . you ve obviously played it so perhaps you can offer us some of your insights .

of course if you hav nt  played it your really just saying what  you think the game is about .

if thats the case you  ve just made yourself look stupid .

Originally posted by lornphoenix

Some WoW players are going to hate it, other will love it.

-XP Loss Death
This will alienate some players, more so If WoW was their 1st MMO.
Tho it's mild compare FFXI.
3 to 5% on death (tho you can't level down) and you buy back about 60% of what you lost, with their from of gold
You have to buy back what you lost before you can level.

-No PvE Only Servers.
It's an RvR Game, tho there are way to avoid PvP in the game, at some point you going get forced into it.

 

Very good post Lorn. I gotta agree with you and as much as I am hoping this game doesn't turn into a dud I also face the facts. Forcing all members of a MMO community will turn away some people that will simply want the choice of RvR not being forced into it. Other than that although I think it's a little old school the whole XP loss death thing seeing as Everquest started that concept back in 1999 it isn't as big a crack in Aion's armor as the point I brought up earlier. 

Originally posted by stayontarget

Originally posted by coffee

Aion - take away the wings and you have a very generic asian MMO.. it might do as well as L2 in the west but no better.

 

Are you sure about that, or are you just guessing ?  www.youtube.com/watch

My concerns revolving around Aion are very basic. I just cringe at the thought of another graphically pleasing game's economy getting messed over by chinese gold/adena farmers ala Lineage II. That is my big red flag of concern regarding this game.  

And did not WOW have the same problems early in the game before they fixed it ?  Besides Aion servers will not be international.

The figure of "3.5 million subs in six months for aion" keeps getting thrown out by its fans, but somehow they seem to skip the figure from WOW  where they sold 2.8 million for the expansion pack for WOW in one *DAY*.

You do lose EXP from dieing via PvE and if you die from falling, you can buy it back if you want to. But the statement above is incorrect "you can lvl up without buying the exp back".

One of the main differences between Aion & WoW is aion is focused mainly towards PVP and there is no option to chose not to pvp, and some people chose not to partake in that aspect.

AION rocks! What affect it has on WoW is not relevant at all. Anyone who has played it will agree it will do well on its own no matter what and WoW won't go away overnight either.

I've played both extensively and do prefer AION over WoW many times over and I'm sure there will be others who feel the opposite.

Both games are more similar then different, it's just that AION is more recent, sort of an upgradeed version of WoW. AION has considerably better graphics and gameplay, its more responsive and faster but it does not have as much content being a newer game. Content will come with time however.

In my opinion what AION does have over WoW though that's the most significant is the companies that make them. Blizzard has a god complex. NCSoft does not. The differences in customer service are night in day. AION isn't killing WoW, Blizzard is killing it themselves.

Originally posted by stayontarget

You do lose EXP from dieing via PvE and if you die from falling, you can buy it back if you want to. But the statement above is incorrect "you can lvl up without buying the exp back".

I read that somewhere, I believe a in player written review of the time he played in the korea version.
Basically he said if you're xp bar was grayed out you had to buy back the xp to level...

Anyway I've preorder my CE copy of Aion. If my current guild doesn't decide to pick it up, I'll have to find a good US guild.
 

Originally posted by lornphoenix

Some WoW players are going to hate it, other will love it.

-XP Loss Death
This will alienate some players, more so If WoW was their 1st MMO.
Tho it's mild compare FFXI.
3 to 5% on death (tho you can't level down) and you buy back about 60% of what you lost, with their from of gold
You have to buy back what you lost before you can level.

-No PvE Only Servers.
It's an RvR Game, tho there are way to avoid PvP in the game, at some point you going get forced into it.

 

Actually, you don't half to buy back the exp before you can level. But you do half to reach the leveling point with the lowered XP then the XP loss just transfers into the new bar. I personally tested this ingame when I was too lazy to port back to soul healer lmao.

Originally posted by lornphoenix

Originally posted by stayontarget

You do lose EXP from dieing via PvE and if you die from falling, you can buy it back if you want to. But the statement above is incorrect "you can lvl up without buying the exp back".

 

I read that somewhere, I believe a in player written review of the time he played in the korea version.
Basically he said if you're xp bar was grayed out you had to buy back the xp to level...

 

Maybe it was an early CB version !

Originally posted by coffee

Aion - take away the wings and you have a very generic asian MMO.. it might do as well as L2 in the west but no better.

 

Aion's unique art direction, skills, and lore, are all very non-generic. It is also non-generic to do a "Good" job implimenting flight.

Not to mention fantastic music. I've played alot of western and asian MMO's. Aion is far from the boring "Generic" that you label it as.

Originally posted by Hammertime1

The figure of "3.5 million subs in six months for aion" keeps getting thrown out by its fans, but somehow they seem to skip the figure from WOW  where they sold 2.8 million for the expansion pack for WOW in one *DAY*.

After it already had a user base over over 9 million!! You need to compare the "launches" of WoW and Aion, Not the expansions!!! Aion has yet to have an expansion!

Originally posted by denshing

Actually, you don't half to buy back the exp before you can level. But you do half to reach the leveling point with the lowered XP then the XP loss just transfers into the new bar. I personally tested this ingame when I was too lazy to port back to soul healer lmao.

Oh I get it, and what the guy said would make sense if you didn't level once the bar hit the end. The guy thought you had to buy it back but really you just have push thru the lost xp too.

Originally posted by Hammertime1

The figure of "3.5 million subs in six months for aion" keeps getting thrown out by its fans, but somehow they seem to skip the figure from WOW  where they sold 2.8 million for the expansion pack for WOW in one *DAY*.

because the expansions to WoW are completely optional and you can keep playing the game without buying the latest one.  well, if you enjoy nerfed content and no other people to play it with.

of course WoW sells tons on its expansion days.  the first week after the expansion is going to be 90% of its sales to current players.  i got wrath 3 days after it came out, i got BC at a midnight release with some friends.  waiting 2 months to get wrath would have meant that it would take me 3 days to get a nexus group (poor gul'dan server) vs the first week where there were tons of them.

honestly, I think Aion is going to have an incredible number of subscribers.  and just a prediction, but I don't think most of those are going to come from WoW.  either people will play both WoW and AION, or they will come to AION from different games, Lineage2, WAR ect, games with a bit more PvP.

sadly, the faction combat is a big turnoff for me.  I loved how policits worked in lineage2 (ruined by ebayers and exploiters of course, but when isn't it) and when you have 1 faction vs another, it just makes it so much less.... open.

 

honestly, I think Aion is going to have an incredible number of subscribers.  and just a prediction, but I don't think most of those are going to come from WoW.  either people will play both WoW and AION, or they will come to AION from different games, Lineage2, WAR ect, games with a bit more PvP.

 

Probably, I mean if you think about 3+ millions subs and then figure how much word of mouth that creates, and then so on. Just in asia within the new few months, these current figures could tripple. And we are not even talking western launches or japan yet.

Personally the one thing that worries me is how long the current content can keep players into the game. Content is a big lack in aion atm, they really need to push it out alot.

some interesting points would a second very popular successful mmo mean that warcraft cant maintain its success . i mean there really is nt anything to say that you could nt have two games with several million players . i cant see that happening at present myself . i think warcraft is popular because its THE game to play for a number of younger players when its stops being THE game of the moment it ll see a large fall in subs . its success cant last forever .its really only maintained it this long because all the other mmos released int he last 4 years have failed to achieve anything more than niche in the market . it realaly is  ( maybe was ) a matter of tirme till somehing comes along ( came long ) to take its place . i m not sure if its aion hence the brackets . but if i was a betting man i would say by the sounds of it aion stands a very good chance of becoming THE game of the moment .

Before World of Warcraft was a juggernaut, Lineage and Lineage II had 2 million subscribers.. a piece. So you think that Aion having 3.5 Million which is 500k less subscribers, that it is a fair chance it might be competitive? Let's just pretend they get the same numbers as WoW in the West.  Which approx. 6 million subscribers, and that would lead Aion to a playerbase of around 9.5 million subscribers. Blizzard is working on releasing WotLK in China, which will no doubt bring a healthy increase in their numbers and would they be competitive?

Yes, those numbers suggest they would be, but are they going to sustain those numbers in Asia, and will they produce WoW-like numbers in the West? That's to be seen, and I wouldn't assume they will, that's asking a lot and it's really unfortunate that people hype up games like this. It is no wonder games are considered failures. 

For those of you all who are interested in AION, go check out the AION forums on here. It actually is possible to play AION now even from the US but does require creating a Chinese childs account and playing the game in Chinese now. There is a English patch that can be installed but installing it is against AIONs terms and agreements and the patch really is not remotely finished yet. The game has not been 'properly' converted to English yet (You can see many threads debating this on the forums now). Also the game has a good half a second to a second lag when played from the US as the servers are in China so melee toons are a bit more hard to play. Spell slingers are playable as they are a bit more forgiving.

Surprisingly, the game still plays extremely well even with the long ass delay to talk to the servers.

AION's release date is Sept 2009 in the US and EU. Earlier for Japan and Auzzie land. It's been in Korea for awhile now and China just was released.

AION's forums:

www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/253/view/forums/forum/770/General-Discussion.html

Right now, Aion is simply another grinder imported to the US and EU along the same lines of Lineage and Lineage 2. Sure the game play is different, it has some unique features but it has one major issue:

IT HASN'T LAUNCHED.

It can make all the promises it wants too, people can link all the videos they want, and they can hype the game all the want by talking about how many numbers it has in this country of that country. Those country's are not the US and EU and history has shown that many games that are termed "grinders" have a difficult time making it in the Western part of the MMO world. Why this is the case is debatable but I seriously think people need to wait until we see what the game markets like in the US and EU beofre they start making predictions about the number of subs and the number of people it will take from WOW.

Case in point: The same arguments were made about Age of Conan and Warhammer and I think the results speak for themselves.

Originally posted by templarga

 

IT HASN'T LAUNCHED.

 

Case in point: The same arguments were made about Age of Conan and Warhammer and I think the results speak for themselves.

except it has launched, just not in NA or EU.  so you can't speak about it like WAR or AOC.  the truth is its a very successful korean MMO.  it was made grinder-lite to actually try and get the NA/EU market, instead of just an afterthought like Lineage2.

based on L2 numbers, and the fact that this game has a larger market to pull on now, and is slightly more geared to western players, we can predict (just predict) it will do decently.  it should have wider appeal than Lineage, which actually did decently in NA/EU, not great, but decently.

About the XP loss.  You can just pay a fee and it's wiped out?  This is pretty much the same as WoW's model is it not?  The only real death penalty is to pay some coin.  I wonder if the same people who bring this up about WoW will cry foul with Aion, lol.  I doubt it.  I was interested in it until I heard it was another PvP based game.  It will be interesting to see if one can pull big numbers.

Z