Originally posted by vickies

Aion has now 42 Korean servers for .... 400 K Korean players (they only added one server during the whole of 2009).

They had in May 113 servers to serve ... 1 M Chinese players.

That's an average of 10K players per server.

The 12 US and 12 EU servers are targetted to host a maximum of around max capacity 300K servers at launch. See the proper Aion website.

Today Aion has around 1/3 less players then the newly launched (and free to play) Dungeons1Dragons onlne.

http://www.xfire.com/genre/mmo/massively_multiplayer_online/

See for yourselves.

Also the present day server parc in the Korea/China of Aion is 154 Chinese and 42 Korean. Meaning a max of 1.9 M players ....

Both AoC and WAR each had 500 K players in open Beta 3 days before launch. Almost double that of Aion.

DDO is a bad comparison. They include my account in those numbers and I havent even played the game. Accounts are automatically converted to unlimited -- years of accumlating trials, etc. Not really a fair comparison to a game that has not launched. On the flip side, I would consider this a positive for Aion...
 

AoC and War are widely considered two overhyped games that both had a mass exodus in the first 1-3 months. This will be a diificult mark to consider in relation to open beta turnout...I would like to see a comparison of headstart numbers though. That might actually mean something.

As far as stated max capactiy at launch, do you have a link for that by chance? That would be an average of 12,500 accounts per server. This seems a little low to me, expecially when talking about max capacity. Then again, they may have a low target number of concurrent users...I dont know that for sure.

Originally posted by soufigo

activated preorders are the ones prepurchased from ncsoft or steam. those who pre-ordered from amazon, ebgames, blablabla still have not activated theirs. the total number should be more than 300k. trust me

True, also, NCsoft said they where putting out 50,000 physical preorder (CE). They said a while ago they have almost completely sold out on physical CE, so that puts the total actual transactions for preorder at around 350k. Plus you half to take in the physical standard edition and who knows how many of those where preordered. We honestly could be looking at 400k+ figures if we add the physical coppies.

That and the fact that there is always a huge crowd that just buys the game after release having not preordered it. They probably make up the majority, in fact. I have never heard of a release where the "Majority" was on pre-orders. All that and added to it, word of mouth is at it's "highest" right after release when the hype is skyrocketed as high as it will get.

Originally posted by spikers14

Originally posted by vickies

Aion has now 42 Korean servers for .... 400 K Korean players (they only added one server during the whole of 2009).

They had in May 113 servers to serve ... 1 M Chinese players.

That's an average of 10K players per server.

The 12 US and 12 EU servers are targetted to host a maximum of around max capacity 300K servers at launch. See the proper Aion website.

Today Aion has around 1/3 less players then the newly launched (and free to play) Dungeons1Dragons onlne.

http://www.xfire.com/genre/mmo/massively_multiplayer_online/

See for yourselves.

Also the present day server parc in the Korea/China of Aion is 154 Chinese and 42 Korean. Meaning a max of 1.9 M players ....

Both AoC and WAR each had 500 K players in open Beta 3 days before launch. Almost double that of Aion.

DDO is a bad comparison. They include my account in those numbers and I havent even played the game. Accounts are automatically converted to unlimited -- years of accumlating trials, etc. Not really a fair comparison to a game that has not launched. On the flip side, I would consider this a positive for Aion...
 

He's talking about xfire numbers not actual data provided by Turbine.

300k Purchased copies of Aion is quite a feat, I do hope the game is successful and that people enjoy it for a long time.

Originally posted by LtJohnnyRico

Originally posted by vickies

Originally posted by LordDevil

Forget the numbers, 300k preorders from a game many people even didnt know about a few months ago is just awesome! You will see that Aion numbers will rise instead of dropping... simply because they didnt have a hype 3 years before release...! Aion mostly spread itself by word of mouth...

I for one cant wait for the game since  I already played it a long time in korea - and I am pretty sure we will see easily 500k+ and rising numbers after release.

I know so many people which didnt preorder but waiting to buy, so just have some patience...

 

The problem is that only 250K are playing Aion right now, that is half of War pre launch. And as games as the newly launched Ad&D on line have around 30% more players (and are free to play), the hard facts show Aion will have a very hard time to reach those western 500K ever.

History shows that a lot of pre orders are in just for the try and will drop their 10 dollars (or free to play trial).

I don't believe in massively growing MMO's past the launch period of 4 weeks. Retention rate has always been much lower than the number of new players coming in. You can't expect the second wave being as large as the first 3 week launch period.

 

 

Tread carefully, for you tread on fanboi dreams. They are going to scream and yell soon about how this game is going to be the biggest thing since television but soon, they will see, that not everyone likes Asian grinds like they do.

Cool story bro
 

You are pretty much the only exadurated and unrealistic person in this thread so far. Think im fan raging? I'd even defend people on the DF forums if it wasnt filled with fan rage

i enjoy the game and im sure it will be number 2 till ToR just way to many star wars fanboi's out there. and if you think aion is a grinder then you havent played it thats like saying wow is a grinder or war is. yes it is a asian game but it's not like alot of the ones you have played. i just cant wait to get 50 and start running abyss

Pre closed/open beta 300K would have seemed low.  After having played, that's pretty good number.  I personally was excited from the hype train and videos but actually playing it was a bleh feeling.  Didn't pre order, very happy I didn't now.  Ah well back off to CO that is kicking my butt at finding that ideal dual blade build ;)

I expect Aion numbers in NA to settle around AoC/WAR numbers.  And frankly I preferred AoC from a PvE PoV and WAR for constentual PvP.  Too bad since I usually like NCSoft., hell I liked TR more than Aion :O

AoC was just crap that looked pretty. i thought war was alot of fun till endgame since you could run all your instances in less then hour and a half  then not have anything to do for 3 days. cause there was no pvp on my server. but aion has pve and has pvp hell in the abyss you get both at once. i think it will outlast war or aoc. war only been out a year and look at it. hell i think L2 did better then War

Originally posted by ABRaquel

 

He's talking about xfire numbers not actual data provided by Turbine.

300k Purchased copies of Aion is quite a feat, I do hope the game is successful and that people enjoy it for a long time.

My mistake -- I meant to say subbed. I have indeed played DDO Unlimited, but I have not subbed. My apologies, still it's a comparison to a (now) F2P game.

I think the game will have a good retention rate. I'm sure the subs will drop after the first free month, but I doubt it will be the exodus the AoC or WAR saw. And Subscription retention is the name of the game in this genre. The game will last, might not be the super mega hit the fans want it to be, but at least the servers we play on will be full enough.