Interesting read, and mostly true.

WoW took Aion's stigma system and added the glyph system, which is almost an exact replica. If you like through the discussions during Wotlk launch you,l see lots of talk of making Hunters more melee focused. Aka Aion style, i assume but not certain that Death knights Death grip skill was also 'Borrowed' from Aion's templar.

Flying mounts were made way cheaper after years of insignificant changes, all to counter 'Aion has flying' marketing gimmick. 

Ofcourse, this shouldnt come as a surprise, infact this is how all MMO developers should work. Innovation equals success is a rarity, copy and improve is much proven concept.

We,l see if Diablo3 copying God of War works out too.

Originally posted by Xasapis

Who says that the changes demonstrated on this video will be offered to the Aion subscribers for free?

If the changes are gradual, they probably wont charge it. If its released as an expansion then maybe yes. 

 After this, Blizzard should offer Cataclysm for free.

 I can understand the skeptism demonstrated in here, its no wonder that some people see this as a montage of pre-rendered scenes. 

The problem stems from WoW, Blizzard lowered people's expectations for what to anticipate in a patch, and is actually offering recycled content as an expansion and charging for it, making it hard for people to comprehend that an MMO can have such upgrades released in patches and probably free, even if gradually.

Its like how console gamers consider voice-chat, online gaming and custom soundtracks such awesome features that are worthy to pay for. Unaware that these 'features' and more were always available to PC gamers for free.

I feel refreshed, i was loosing faith in the MMO industry, 5 years and the domimant western MMO developer Blizzard, couldn't invest in improving there netcode to accomodate a battleground zone like Wintergrasp.

 The funniest part is people responding seriously to a clearly trolling thread.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by Zorndorf

 

And those boxes sit now on western dealer's shelves.

And they sit and sit ...

Just like the rest of those unsold 1.2 M WAR boxes with 5/5 servers to support the unsold units :)

Get a grip Aion has 14NA/18EU non full servers.

That's the equivalent of 250K western subs... and rapidly declinging according to Xfire.

You really have to be blind to believe this Korean is going to stay in player's minds.

 

 

Where do you get 250k from? The 18+14 = 32 servers are about half full (I take that from half of them listed as full and half as recommended).

One Lineage 2 server had a maximum capacity of 5000. Since it is the same company, and a newer game, one would assume that Aion servers has atleast that high max capacity. So half full servers would be 2500 concurrent players. 2500x32 = 80.000 concurrent subscribers.

A typical number used is that 15% of subscribers is the peak concurrent subscribers. So that gives us 80.000/0.15 = 533.000 subscribers.

With 970.000  boxes sold that is (533.000-970.000)/970.000 = -0.45 which is a 45% drop of subs which coincidently is about the same drop as XFire shows.

So the current subscriber base is around 525.000, give or take 50.000, not 250.000.

 

 

You have a little problem there...

Because NScoft bragged that ... at launch ... that 60% of their player base was playing at the same time ... :)))

http://uk.aiononline.com/board/notices/view?articleID=164&page=2

I'll quote ... to make it easy on you:

"In preparation for Aion’s launch, we ran calculations of our presale numbers with historical conversion ratios and expected concurrency numbers, which led to our determination of launch day server needs. In addition, we had a 25 percent additional capacity in hardware reserve and the ability to increase server population. We’ve further responded to the overwhelming demand by adding additional server worlds in all languages, and still we are working around the clock to address the incredible demand. For example, we’re seeing timeframes where 60 percent or more of our players are playing at any given time. This is a significant event by any MMO standard. Another surprising development is how long players are staying in game—I think that’s a testament to the enjoyable nature of the product. "

---------

Now some technical info: 12NA/12EU servers were not enough to solve those 60% of the players logging in. Aion launched with "almost" 400K pre-orders (including those that always pre order and "forget" to collect the real thing so they have a few days of trial).

12NA/12EU means around a 200K max capacity. Clearly not enough for the 400K of which (NCOSFT SOURCE ITSELF) said 60% was trying to get in ...

So they upped it to 14NA/18EU (I myself predicted BEFORE launch they would need 16NA/18EU), having a nice 240K possibilty.

 

----> I don't know where you get that ridiculously low 15% average in btw. As Mark Jaobs himself said that at the launching month around 1/3 players are logged in in a new MMO concurrently time).

For older mmorpg's the ratio is between 1/3 and 1/4 , so between 25 and 33% logging in.

You can see this from AIon itself btw: Korean had 400 K subs (with 41 servers) and China at the launching week had 113 servers for 1 M (free! at the time) playing players.

Take your (extreme low) 15% (see the bragging of NCsoft 60% themselves)  to 30% and you come up with the exact same figures of me: 250K.

Edit: those 970K were shipped to shops (at the end of the quarter). FAR from every box was sold to customers too at this time. They sell it to the retailers, but those boxes still sit on dealers shelves today.

 In no way are 14US/18EU servers enough to hold the subs you mention (see above the Korea and China Aion situations at launch).

Aion sold 450k before launch:

http://us.ncsoft.com/en/news/press-releases/aion-launch.html

After launch and with all the Qeues, 500k is the minimum logical sale figure, the launch period saw login issues where Qeues exceeded the maximum display limit of 3000 for Qeues, at which time 60% of players tried to login. But, no one knows how many were trying to login. Liv mentioned a percentage not a figure.

The maximum concurent player capacity for servers is not the total number of subscribers, capacity which was greatly reduced from all the players abusing Private shops to stay logged in. And NCsoft locking factions to preserve balance.

After about 2 weeks, NCsoft added a 30min auto-dc timer to private shops, increased server capacity by 25%. And added new servers with the increased capacity.Then there is the normal reduction of the percentage of players trying to login at any given time, which is expected after 2 weeks of the launch of any MMO, where the time and length of playing sessions normalizes. These factors resolved Qeue issues.

The point to be made is simple. You can't estimate the number of subsribers from max server capacity, its a flawed logic. 60% refers to an unknown number of players at a timeframe where server capacity was not fully efficient. No one knows what is the percentage of concurrent players 2 weeks after launch and now. It could be anything from 10% to 30%.

I know for sure i only play 1 or 2 hours per day and mostly at off-peak time, not everyone plays 4 hours+ for sure. Some even only play the game every couple of days. But they pay the full subsctiption.

This propagnda is getting quiet boring, people who dislike Aion should leave to Blizzards pet-shop and enjoy paying 10$ for a few pixels.

Originally posted by -Zeno-

Originally posted by supbro

Just relaying some fantastic news about the success of Aion in the West ;)))

"As part of its third-quarter earnings announcement today, NCsoft said that Aion has now sold more than 500,000 units in North America and 470,000 copies in Europe. Aion's popularity propelled NCsoft to another quarter of triple-digit year-over-year gains. The Korean publisher reported revenues today that were up 112 percent to KRW166 billion ($142 million). Net income during the July-September period soared to KRW46.9 billion ($40 million), a whopping 836 percent year-over-year rise. "

 

Straight from the horses mouth, not bad for a Korean game.

LINK

 

 

Funny.  Age of Conan sold more than this.

AoC sold 700k after 40 days.

http://kotaku.com/5020731/age-of-conan-+-a-million-shipped-700k-registered

 There are always alternatives, don't expect any company to not be greedy.

The best reaction to this is simply to stop supporting them, regardless of whether this will have a major impact on them or not. This is the start of a trend, and the only reason Blizzard could do this is a semi-domination on the western market.

The only counter is to stir competition.

Originally posted by Consensus

not interesting in playing aion at all but interesting news. the less wow dominates the market the better.

This is an example of a smart gamer, even if he dislikes the game, he realizes that there are great benefits for gamers from competitive market.

 Careful when using those tranquilizers dear haters, overdose and they mighty kill you.

 For the sake of a healthy market with competition, let us hope Aion becomes a wide success. This is the responsibility of every mature gamer who wants the genre to break from its current boring game formula.

 You need people's view? from this place?

 Glad to see your liking Aion, but make sure not to praise it too much in here. Lots of sensitive trolls mind you. 

Check the guide in my sig if you like to tweak some of the games settings.

 Obviously, most people in here prefer an MMO market with only one game in it. Surprisingly, with all the talk about innovation being key to success, the most successful MMO in the west commercially, also happens to be the one that tends to 'borrow' most of its ideas from other games.

BTW, Halo ODST (released last month) was reported to have already sold 1.5 million copies in its first month. Major innovation there comrades.

 Stop taking this thread seriously, it exists for entertainment. The OP has perfected the role of this forums clown.

I,m surprised the mods let a thread with this title continue to exist. 

 Ello there gentelmen, its been awhile. Did i hear someone say empty servers ?

Ofcourse not...

My apologies.

Originally posted by Gameloading

A lot of it has to do with cultural bias.

A lot of people hate the game simply because it's an asian game. You can tell by the hypocrisy of their posts.

When World of Warcraft, Warhammer or Lotro has tons of go kill XX quests or go find XX quests, that's fine.
When Aion does it, it's suddenly a game with repetitive quest that plays like a free to play asian grindfest.

When it takes about a month or two to reach the cap level in World of Warcraft or Lotro the first time around, that's fine.
When Aion doesn't let you reach the cap level the first week you're playing, it's an asian grindfest.

 

 

 

Pretty much  the main reason, its important to say though that this a natural human behavior.

Are you calaculating using Incremental XP need per level, or just using total XP and subtracting it from Quest XP ?

Originally posted by raykor

I don’t have much PvP experience in fantasy-themed MMOGs as I’m not a big fan of the whole auto-targeting style of combat. Nonetheless, I love MMOGs and the lack of a decent PvP-centric Sci-Fi title convinced me to give WAR and Aion a test spin since both claimed to offer a strong focus on PvP.

There are a lot of possible comparison which could be made between these two games but I only want to address the actual PvP combat.

I tried WAR at release but only played for two months. There were plenty of mistakes made with that game BUT I was very surprised at how much fun the actual PvP combat was. My main made it to 33 and I leveled several other classes into the high teens and a few into the 20s. In those two months, I spent dozens and dozens of hours in the RvR lakes and scenarios and while there were certainly some class balance issues, the actual PvP combat was a blast!

I remember following the development of WAR and reading that there were several very important decisions being made to ensure a fun PvP experience.

1. Losing control of your character. The WAR devs said they didn’t like it when players lost control of their characters during PvP combat and I agree with them wholeheartedly. Now sure, WAR had plenty of knockbacks, roots, and slows but no sleep, fear, or stun-locks. In Aion, you can die in PvP without ever being able to fire-off a single skill. Aion is swamped with abilities that cause you to lose control over your character and I can’t say I enjoy it at all.

2. Level difference. War did a good job of offering a fair PvP experience for characters of all levels. I had a crapload of fun in tiers 1 & 2 with a variety of characters. Aion is the classic race to reach high levels so you can gank players that are much lower than you. I realize that this is a temporary problem until the majority of the playerbase reaches the level cap; however, given the extreme level grind in Aion, this will be a problem for quite some time. It also makes the prospect of leveling alts very unappealing when an army of 50s will dominate the Abyss.

3. Gear dependence. Gear in WAR mattered but not nearly as much as it does in Aion. There are some incredibly game-breaking golds in Aion and that doesn’t even begin to address the incredible grind required for Abyss-level gear that gives even greater advantages in PvP combat. If you don’t have a whole lot of time to throw at this game, you should fully expect to face players with significant gear-based advantages and you will lose a whole lot more often than you would if it were based primarily on your skill.

4. Performance. Aion is currently experiencing a big problem with a memory leak in the Cry engine. I have tried to participate in several fortress sieges but it turns into a 10-15 FPS slideshow that crashes the client in short order. (Yes, I have a strong PC and anyone familiar with the game knows this problem has nothing to do with a user’s system specs.)

 

The bottom line for me—your mileage may vary—is that after five weeks in Aion, I have had very little fun PvPing whereas in the same timeframe in WAR I had a whole lot of fun. I’ll probably keep playing for a while and see if it gets any better but at the moment, I feel like I am just grinding in hopes that a fun game will materialize somewhere down the line.
 

Ugh... try to get people who barely escaped with there lifes back do we. I,l keep it short:

1- Dont even compare Aion's perfomance to Warhammer's performance, and dont bother comparing them graphically either. Warhammer is well know-known to perform poorly, you only need to check there forums and make a census of Performance related opinions. A recent poll at Warhhameralliance stated Client/Server performance as the thing that is mostly in need of fixing in addition to Class balance.

2- Warhammer is known to have lots of snares and CC, only one class has this CC potential in Aion and that is a Spiritmaster in One on One situations. Most of Aion's Ranged CC break on damage. And more importantly, you can't win in Aion by spamming AOE attacks that are as powerful as single target spells.

Finally, Aion is much better from a design point of view, in relatation to Zone design, to how Sieges/World PvP work to crafting and general polish.

Originally posted by Vinterkrig

it is a zerg fest, that is all

A good player will never participate in a Zerg unless he wants to lose tons of AP points.

Group PvP is where it is at.

As for Assasins, they have no in-combat stealth, and they cant stealth and stun lock someone. non-combat stealth is also temporary.