The editorial staff here at MMORPG.com has made their decisions, and today we continue to unveil the winners of the 2009 MMORPG.com awards by naming our Best New Game of 2009.

This year's Best New Game has the distinction of having been released and thriving in another market before making its way to the ravenous gamers of the West. While normally games launch in the North American market, are improved and then released in other markets, this year's winner had the benefit and hindsight of having been released in the East before hitting our local Best Buys.

Read Best New Game of 2009.

I managed to stay online for three weeks then I quit. The bots, kinah spammers and the insane grinding was the last straw.

It is a beautiful game I agree to that but it was not for me.

I think this sort of award will always go to the one with the biggest ADV budget.

lol, this site is a joke. especially since aion has gotten mediocre scores everywhere else, received most disappointing game from massively.com, and overall has a bad rep.

Nothing epitomizes the sad state of the industry better than the notion that these five pitiful offering could be considered the "best" of anything.

So strange, I have no doubt that Aion is a decnt enough game (I've not played it) but from looking at the general feedback from the people who do play their repective game it would appear Fallen Earth is a much better game, or at least has had a much better reception.

Are the reader base at mmorpg.com so jaded and out of touch or is it the people choosing the winners?

Originally posted by Thillian

I think these sort of prices will always go to the one with the biggest ADV budget.

exactly

Just a friendly reminder before this gets out of hand:

If you disagree with our choice of Aion as Best New Game of 2009, that is fine. Negativity about Aion is more than welcome in this thread, but please make sure you back up your opinions with some substance and don't simply post what essentially amounts to "Aion sucks!" as this is considered trolling.

Let's keep it civil and on topic guys, I'd appreciate it!

 

On the surface, Aion is one of the most graphically impressive MMORPGs created to date, sporting visuals that are thus far unmatched in the MMO genre.

 

What?

The graphics are decent in a cartooney/anime way, but certainly not unmatched in the mmo genre.  Aion may have an incredible character creator but so does Champions online.  In terms of general graphics AoC and LotR both blow this game out of the water, especially if you run them in dx10.

Fallen Earth really should have won this category.  Innovative gameplay, non-standard fantasy setting, decent graphics, humor and an amazing crafting system.  Icarus studios really went out of their way to create a great game, while NcSoft copy and pasted a half dozen other games and added timed flight.

I'd even put Darkfall ahead of Aion simply for trying something different.

How much of a kickback does mmorpg.com receive for consistently promoting Aion?

Originally posted by wilberg

lol, this site is a joke. especially since aion has gotten mediocre scores everywhere else, received most disappointing game from massively.com, and overall has a bad rep.

While I didn't read the massively article giving it the award, but their could be reasons why it recieved the award even though it could be a good game. They might have had more hype and higher hopes for the game, and when it came out it was just another mmo much like all the others made. This would certainly be a disapointment to someone who was a follower and looking for something truely amazing. So just because the game was disapointing doesn't mean that the game was really bad.

I do know a few people that play Aion and enjoy it very much, and I also know some that play champions online and seem to enjoy it. While I have not given any of the games released this year a try, I would probably pick Aion if I had to choose one. It just seems like it has some good potential to me, and has the biggest chance of correcting some of the problems. I am looking forward to the future more and the upcoming games instead.

I totally agree with the verdict.

It's not a ground breaking 3rd gen MMO. But it looks nice and it works. I'm enjoying it a lot (currently level 41).

I hate to be boring but the fact it actually works is a pretty important fact that some games forget in their race to release.

  I understand why this game was chosen, I do not agree with it...because 2009 was an off year for MMO's that were released - but Aion?  Seriously?   They game brought nothing new to the table at all and it was just more of the same Asian grinding games we've seen in the past.    I'll be so glad when a game comes along that actually deserves the title of Best New Game.

It's good to see Fallen Earth being mentioned as a close runner up. Fallen Earth couldn't really compete with well, millions of $ poured into Aion's marketing campaign that made it sell nearly one million copies in North America and Europe.

NCSoft spent a fortune advertising the game, and alot of it was here on mmorpg.com, so I'm guessing they win because they padded the coffers most.  Makes sense with today's economy.  It sure couldn't win for outstanding game play, innovation or player retention as countless posts here on these forums demonstrate :P

Its just funny reading all of these doom comments. " Asian Grinder" ... AION may not be for everyone , but the Game works , looks good and has a huge potential.

People still love to compare a lets say 1 year old Game {AION} to a 5 year old Game like WoW which is just not very smart. No matter what you wanna say but the freshly launched base AION is far superior to the freshly launched WoW from 5 years ago.

 I agree 100% with the decision. Aion was the only game that came out in 2009 that i actually played more than 2 weeks (and im still playing now). The game JUST came out and it really isn't doing that bad. Give it a few years and it will be even better.

so do the fanboi's get nailed for "trolling" too ("Aion rocks, I agree with this award" posts) or are they given a free pass for agreeing with the award choice and the huge advertising revenue it's paid to this site?  I'm just wondering.

It is sad to see that the biggest attack on the game winning the award is that they won because they paid the most to the website. I don't really feel that they would stop advertising if they did not win. I have also seen a lot more free to play games advertised a lot more here than I have Aion. Even Eve -Online, a game that I felt was very good is advertised a lot more and has fewer people playing it than Aion does. I am not attacking eve as it is a nich game, but just making a point that advertising on this site doesn't always lead to doing better.

These attacks and saying it won by buying the award are just silly, and a good way to get the topic closed. Try to find other reasons to say why other games are more diserving of the award. That way we have a more interesting topic, and don't have to see the same people repeating themselves over and over complaining about them buying it.

Just to give a little background on my experiences with MMO as a basis for my opinion that Aion is the best new MMO of 2009.

I played FFXI for 2 years, WoW for 4, Age of Conan for 1 week, and War for one month.  I've since left WoW for the last 6 months and have no plans on returning.  During the last 6 months I've tried certain MMO'S and then settled on Aion.

A lot of the bad press and "hate/flame" Aion gets is either misinformation, purely subjective, or about issues that no longer exist.

The fact remains that Aion, as a game, has very few bugs compared to other newly released MMO's.  It has a smooth combat engine.  I have been playing it since Sept. 22, 2009 and absolutely love it.

Though I admit the first few weeks there were rampant bots and chat spamming, those issues have been largely resolved.  For example,  I get a maximum of 2-3 chat spams for gold selling on a 4-5 hour stretch of gaming.   That's on par with games like WoW.    In areas where I would see 10 bots farming, I only see 2-3 now.   Where the economy was largely regulated by the botters, it has come down to reality.

As for it being an "Asian Grinder."  That's a purely subjective opinion shaped largely by people's experiences from games like WoW.  In WoW, currently, you can get to max level in two weeks of play, and be completely epicced out by having friends run you through naxx or heroic grind.  It's not  a bad thing, that's just how WoW is currently designed.  In WoW you didn't get any xp for gathering, crafting or PvPing.

In Aion, you DO get xp for gathering, crafting, and pvp.  Which means, it was a design concept that people would take advantage of ALL the opportunities while leveling.  It's not Aion's fault that people came in thinking they should be able to quest to 50 or grind to 50.   When people ran out of quests, it's because they dueoed the quests marked as individual, thus effectively cutting their xp from  quest in half.  And then they complained about not enough quests.

For people, like me, who went into Aion without any expectations, without any unfair comparisons to games that are out on the market for 5+ years, YES AION WAS THE BEST NEW GAME IN 2009.  I continue to play it and enjoy it immensely.

Edit:  As a side note, 11 of my 47 levels came from leveling up Armorsmithing and gathering the mats for armormsmithing.  My friend, on the same server used his Ranger alt purely for Alchemy to supply his 40+ Assassin.  He told me went from 10 - 40 purely from crafting large amounts of high level potions on Double XP weekends.  To each his own.

instead we'd have the same people repeating themselves about how aion's the only game they've personally played for more than 10 seconds that came out last year every time someone mentioned a different game.  Topics don't evolve on this forum at all, they rot, fester, and flame until locked or forgotten :P