Mind you a game can still be succesful even though it shows a steep decline, WAR has reportedly 250k subscribers now, and that is in no way a failure, it is just not a success that they expected.
Uh, no. There is no way Warhammer has 250,000 subs now. Nothing even close to that. The 'official numebr at the end of December was 300,000.
If it has more than 100,000 now, I would be VERY surprised. I would not be surprised if it was less than 50, 000.
War's 5 NA and 5 EU servers means it has a maximum capacity now of around 100K players. Less on Xfire.
At launch War had 113 NA/EU servers. In fact 106 but 7 servers ... were added because people had ... hours long queing lines the first 7 days... Does that ring a bell ?
War had a max population of around 800K which dwindled after the first and second month (not as fast as AoC but that was purely because it was the Hollidays season and new people ran in in Dec tx to the FREE trial introduction for Xmas). Something Aion could profite from too, but EA's distribution was MUCH more steamlined than NCSoft.
Aion first free month ends around the 28th (for EU it could be a day or two later).
Wanna see and watch the Xfire sinusoide (and remember there is around 100% oversampling error already between Aion and other mmo's like EVE, so the actual % losses could easely mean double the real pop values...).
For tomorrow (not today), the Xfire trend is that Aion is now already UNDER the 5th launching day.
Worse than War but better than AoC , despite the 100% Xfire oversamples.
It is in fact a normal trend with ALL launched mmo's these past 3 years. IF the game will be a succes it will level off after 3 months at 30% retention rate of the first inital boost play. Meaning around 150 K subs.
Just like ol' Zorndorf always predicted. As I predicted the max number of servers too on Sep 17th ... (16NA/18EU and in the end it was... 14NA/18EU, not a bad shot I might say...).
There is some mistakes to your calculations there.
First, the NA free month ended yesterday, not at the 28th, Europe finishes in the 25th
Second, many ppl had to stop using XFire at least until the next update, since XFire is causing crashes in the game to some ppl, me included, so its normal that the numbers show a decrease on the last few days. Lest wait for the next update to XFire.
I advise you to wait a few more days before flapping your arms that Aion is dieing
BTW folks, just 2 days ago character creation for asmodian was blocked on Lumiel server. This mean there are still people out there playing. Some people in here really have no clue what they are talking about.
believing in Xfire is like Believing in a religion. Its not real .
I dont know anyone,or have known anyone,thats ever used Xfire.
i hated aion and never played.i tried to play,but gave up. currenty playing Global Agenda since 2007 nov Alpha 1.
Like im not very religious or anything but, what an asshole thing to say. Seriously really low class to knock people who do believe in religion, for no reason and without it being the topic of discussion.
Anyway, you are spot on about the Xfire numbers. All it shows are trends amongst xfire users, which tend to be younger.
There is truth in the population dropoff. Most games losed some portion of their origional subscribers after a month, this game will be no diffrent.
This game is not "the holy grail", "wow killer", or "the next big game" therefore its going to lose some players, instead of snowballing in size.
However aion does have the advantage of no major releases dropping anytime soon, so people who are bored with everything might stay a bit longer.
I think you can expect Aion to lose a bit of it's subscriber base during November but I think it will bounce back up around Christmas. As long as NCSoft does it right and markets Aion for the holiday season it should do fine. It's still a successful game and a major feat if it tops the PC game sales charts and outperforms The Sims and WoW who usually and still do dominate those charts on a regular basis.
But really, how can you copy so much from WoW and then excepct a huge success? WoW is WoW and no copycat will topple it so devs better get their shit together and start being innovative.
You can't be innovative when there is so much $ at risk when developing an MMO. The economy is horrible and investors who put up the millions of dollars would rather the game sell boxes well and collect the first few months of subs. I don't think game design is limited by the imagination of those working on it, but instead by the budget they are allowed to work with.
So until dev companies aren't on the verge of bankruptcy you might as well stop hoping for anything ^_^/
When these games start, they aren't really looking at: Are we in a recession?
It usually takes three to six years to produce an MMO and three to six years ago was the world in recession, did the mainstream economic throught process believe so? Unless Austrian economist are giving advice to these men, I don't think they thought a recession was incoming.
Another thing, almost every country around the world has interest rates below 5%, which is VERY good for long-term projects. Innovation should be more prevelant, and more risks taken, since interest rates are so low (not that they should be). Although, the fact that people don't understand why they have been so low for so long might explain why people might not want to take risks, or just that they want the easy dollars.
Yeah.. its a fun game but lol not really much to keep some playing. Good pvp but for ME WAY to much like FREE2PLAY. After one year they have not done much to change that.
Exactly ! one year and they have added nothing,you know why?They have adopted a real scam of only giving you part of the game to start,then bank on selling you xpacs.They already admitted this very thing by saying they were already working on the next two expansions,this was before Aion was even released.This is the same formula they are using with Guild Wars,it may seem free but after you buy 3 xpacs to get the rest of the game,it's so not free anymore.It is not the same as adding xpacs at a later date,when you already have more content and are holding it back from the player base.
To anyone that pays attention at all,you may have also noticed Lineage..castle seige....Aion abyss..Fortress seige,so you can see they lack the creativity to expand beyond what is basically the exact same PVP idea,only they added flying.
Aion is not alone,i am noticing a real trend in all games being released,they are giving us the bare bones for content.It is so bad,that if these games remove one more piece of content,there is literally no game left,that is how weak the content is in most games released over the last 5 years.It is like the developer comes up with one idea and goes with it.Imagine if Aion removed one race?lmao,there is no game anymore,maybe a single player game.
In case of Aion i also believe NCSOFT was terrified of Aion not being a success and losing their shirt like they did with TR,so they chose to wait and see what the public would accept for the bare bones game.I believe they could easily pan off those xpacs as a new game,after all it would just be new maps,maybe a new race to up the total to an amazing 3 lol.You have to also notice they released it in Asia first,witch again confirms they were afraid of this market,and wanted to make sure the game was being released acceptable,also confirmed by their 1.05 update.
So IMO NC basically has little confidence in their own product.Also you can take this to the bank,i will NEVER play a game ,because someone tells me the customization is great ,i want a "GAME" not a makeover kit.I will also NEVER play a game with 2 races,i mean there is a post right now in the forums complaining about Alganon i think it was.They complained it only had 4 races,well that is double what Aion has lol.I played FFXI and it had 6 race,and that i considered to be the minimum i would accept.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Yeah.. its a fun game but lol not really much to keep some playing. Good pvp but for ME WAY to much like FREE2PLAY. After one year they have not done much to change that.
Exactly ! one year and they have added nothing,you know why?They have adopted a real scam of only giving you part of the game to start,then bank on selling you xpacs.They already admitted this very thing by saying they were already working on the next two expansions,this was before Aion was even released.This is the same formula they are using with Guild Wars,it may seem free but after you buy 3 xpacs to get the rest of the game,it's so not free anymore.It is not the same as adding xpacs at a later date,when you already have more content and are holding it back from the player base.
To anyone that pays attention at all,you may have also noticed Lineage..castle seige....Aion abyss..Fortress seige,so you can see they lack the creativity to expand beyond what is basically the exact same PVP idea,only they added flying.
Aion is not alone,i am noticing a real trend in all games being released,they are giving us the bare bones for content.It is so bad,that if these games remove one more piece of content,there is literally no game left,that is how weak the content is in most games released over the last 5 years.It is like the developer comes up with one idea and goes with it.Imagine if Aion removed one race?lmao,there is no game anymore,maybe a single player game.
In case of Aion i also believe NCSOFT was terrified of Aion not being a success and losing their shirt like they did with TR,so they chose to wait and see what the public would accept for the bare bones game.I believe they could easily pan off those xpacs as a new game,after all it would just be new maps,maybe a new race to up the total to an amazing 3 lol.You have to also notice they released it in Asia first,witch again confirms they were afraid of this market,and wanted to make sure the game was being released acceptable,also confirmed by their 1.05 update.
So IMO NC basically has little confidence in their own product.Also you can take this to the bank,i will NEVER play a game ,because someone tells me the customization is great ,i want a "GAME" not a makeover kit.I will also NEVER play a game with 2 races,i mean there is a post right now in the forums complaining about Alganon i think it was.They complained it only had 4 races,well that is double what Aion has lol.I played FFXI and it had 6 race,and that i considered to be the minimum i would accept.
Sounds like you're fed up with MMOs. And Aion has 3 races, not 2. Two are playable by humans and 3rd races, the balaur, are used as a stabilizing mechanism in case the other race ends up being underdog.
The game is bleeding players? This just has to be because there was a bit of queuing that first week after release, if only they had listened to the community and opened up opened up several new servers at once. That would surely have kept anyone from discovering the real issues the game has.
But really, this is a bit premature, the free month isn't even over for most people, give it another two weeks. Or better yet, another two months. The power of denial is too strong for fanboys to recognize a trend this early on.
hm interesting. all and i mean ALL major internet gaming magazins gave aion atleast 8/10 and all of them said it has astonishing graphics and is fun. those r the people that played, and im sure of that, 100x more games then all of us together and fot them aion is refreshing and fun game.. and one thing doesnt make sense. they r adding more servers every 2 weeks and they r bleeding players.prolly to cut back qeue times but that is surely not the only reason. ah.sometimes this forum makes laugh pretty damn hard cause of wow/aoc/war players.
and for the love of god. wow literally stole all its components out of others mmos. just was better advertised. even his lore is stolen.
ps. ppl who r saying aion looks like f2p r mentally ill or shouldnt play aion on pentium 3
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.
Improve Aion's Graphics with a simple text file that you can create by yourself:
-Increase in-game Field of View to 175% or more
-Increase view distance for players to 100 meters with camera at max distance
I quit this retarded mess... and someone said people were quitting because it was "too hard." Are you insane? What is so hard about pressing 1-2-2-2-3-1-3-2-2-... over and over in the same sequence for every mob? Reee-diculous.
Anyway, after this mess I am not paying for playing any MMO that is not developed in EU or NA.
The fortress crashing is really what's going to be the death of the game in the long run if they don't get it fixed. There is no point anymore if the main endgame isn't even functional to participate in. That will chase off the die-hard Aion supporters. They can deal with the other shortcomings (or benefits as they see them) but not that.
There were threads like this with WoW five years ago . Massive quitting due to bugs bots ques etc etc etc . We all know how that turned out . People i know that are quitting Aion arnt quitting it for good but they are fed up with the ques and Ncsofts lack of action in compensating them for a months play they ve paid for which they dont feel they ve been able to use . Lots of people are planning on returning if and when Ncsoft sort this mess out . They have a very small window which could make all the difference between another 300-500k game or one thats second only to WoW . Can they do it ? Well maybe but thier past record is nt very good . Time is running out for Aion and this is from someone who thinks it could be one of the best most successful mmos around . If it fails it wont be down to Aions quality but Ncsofts incompetance .
On my server (Trinel) the number one legion (legacy) recently all quit and formed a WoW guild. The first month game time ends in couple of days. It will be interesting to see the impact of the mass canceled accounts. NCSOFT made a horrible misscalculation about non asian markets accepting bots/spam.
Did they quit or just make a ragepost somewhere? A lot of them were online and playing yesterday, including TPZ.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Comments
Uh, no. There is no way Warhammer has 250,000 subs now. Nothing even close to that. The 'official numebr at the end of December was 300,000.
If it has more than 100,000 now, I would be VERY surprised. I would not be surprised if it was less than 50, 000.
War's 5 NA and 5 EU servers means it has a maximum capacity now of around 100K players. Less on Xfire.
At launch War had 113 NA/EU servers. In fact 106 but 7 servers ... were added because people had ... hours long queing lines the first 7 days... Does that ring a bell ?
War had a max population of around 800K which dwindled after the first and second month (not as fast as AoC but that was purely because it was the Hollidays season and new people ran in in Dec tx to the FREE trial introduction for Xmas). Something Aion could profite from too, but EA's distribution was MUCH more steamlined than NCSoft.
Aion first free month ends around the 28th (for EU it could be a day or two later).
Wanna see and watch the Xfire sinusoide (and remember there is around 100% oversampling error already between Aion and other mmo's like EVE, so the actual % losses could easely mean double the real pop values...).
For tomorrow (not today), the Xfire trend is that Aion is now already UNDER the 5th launching day.
Worse than War but better than AoC , despite the 100% Xfire oversamples.
It is in fact a normal trend with ALL launched mmo's these past 3 years. IF the game will be a succes it will level off after 3 months at 30% retention rate of the first inital boost play. Meaning around 150 K subs.
Just like ol' Zorndorf always predicted. As I predicted the max number of servers too on Sep 17th ... (16NA/18EU and in the end it was... 14NA/18EU, not a bad shot I might say...).
There is some mistakes to your calculations there.
First, the NA free month ended yesterday, not at the 28th, Europe finishes in the 25th
Second, many ppl had to stop using XFire at least until the next update, since XFire is causing crashes in the game to some ppl, me included, so its normal that the numbers show a decrease on the last few days. Lest wait for the next update to XFire.
I advise you to wait a few more days before flapping your arms that Aion is dieing
believing in Xfire is like Believing in a religion. Its not real .
I dont know anyone,or have known anyone,thats ever used Xfire.
i hated aion and never played.i tried to play,but gave up. currenty playing Global Agenda since 2007 nov Alpha 1.
BTW folks, just 2 days ago character creation for asmodian was blocked on Lumiel server. This mean there are still people out there playing. Some people in here really have no clue what they are talking about.
Like im not very religious or anything but, what an asshole thing to say. Seriously really low class to knock people who do believe in religion, for no reason and without it being the topic of discussion.
Anyway, you are spot on about the Xfire numbers. All it shows are trends amongst xfire users, which tend to be younger.
There is truth in the population dropoff. Most games losed some portion of their origional subscribers after a month, this game will be no diffrent.
This game is not "the holy grail", "wow killer", or "the next big game" therefore its going to lose some players, instead of snowballing in size.
However aion does have the advantage of no major releases dropping anytime soon, so people who are bored with everything might stay a bit longer.
I think you can expect Aion to lose a bit of it's subscriber base during November but I think it will bounce back up around Christmas. As long as NCSoft does it right and markets Aion for the holiday season it should do fine. It's still a successful game and a major feat if it tops the PC game sales charts and outperforms The Sims and WoW who usually and still do dominate those charts on a regular basis.
Cool, guess this makes you better than the rest of us.
This thread is full of fail.
My server is just as populated as it was yesterday.
Yeah I don't post much here... but Aion in no way lost 50% of it's subscribers. Probably not even 5%.
Smart people don't pay $50-$60 to play for a month to not even reach the full potential of the game.
So if you are one of those people... you are an idiot.
Oh as for reviews... you can't honestly review an mmorpg because it's all opinionated.
Now now, no need to insult lego like that.
Currently Playing: Nothing
Have Played: UO, WoW, GW, FFXI, L2, LotRO, WAR, Aion
Looking Forward To: SW:TOR
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.
Improve Aion's Graphics with a simple text file that you can create by yourself:
-Increase in-game Field of View to 175% or more
-Increase view distance for players to 100 meters with camera at max distance
-Lots of other settings
Learn how by reading this guide at Aionsource
http://www.aionsource.com/forum/general-guides/84379-definite-guide-aions-graphical-settings-performance-tips.html
You can't be innovative when there is so much $ at risk when developing an MMO. The economy is horrible and investors who put up the millions of dollars would rather the game sell boxes well and collect the first few months of subs. I don't think game design is limited by the imagination of those working on it, but instead by the budget they are allowed to work with.
So until dev companies aren't on the verge of bankruptcy you might as well stop hoping for anything ^_^/
When these games start, they aren't really looking at: Are we in a recession?
It usually takes three to six years to produce an MMO and three to six years ago was the world in recession, did the mainstream economic throught process believe so? Unless Austrian economist are giving advice to these men, I don't think they thought a recession was incoming.
Another thing, almost every country around the world has interest rates below 5%, which is VERY good for long-term projects. Innovation should be more prevelant, and more risks taken, since interest rates are so low (not that they should be). Although, the fact that people don't understand why they have been so low for so long might explain why people might not want to take risks, or just that they want the easy dollars.
Exactly ! one year and they have added nothing,you know why?They have adopted a real scam of only giving you part of the game to start,then bank on selling you xpacs.They already admitted this very thing by saying they were already working on the next two expansions,this was before Aion was even released.This is the same formula they are using with Guild Wars,it may seem free but after you buy 3 xpacs to get the rest of the game,it's so not free anymore.It is not the same as adding xpacs at a later date,when you already have more content and are holding it back from the player base.
To anyone that pays attention at all,you may have also noticed Lineage..castle seige....Aion abyss..Fortress seige,so you can see they lack the creativity to expand beyond what is basically the exact same PVP idea,only they added flying.
Aion is not alone,i am noticing a real trend in all games being released,they are giving us the bare bones for content.It is so bad,that if these games remove one more piece of content,there is literally no game left,that is how weak the content is in most games released over the last 5 years.It is like the developer comes up with one idea and goes with it.Imagine if Aion removed one race?lmao,there is no game anymore,maybe a single player game.
In case of Aion i also believe NCSOFT was terrified of Aion not being a success and losing their shirt like they did with TR,so they chose to wait and see what the public would accept for the bare bones game.I believe they could easily pan off those xpacs as a new game,after all it would just be new maps,maybe a new race to up the total to an amazing 3 lol.You have to also notice they released it in Asia first,witch again confirms they were afraid of this market,and wanted to make sure the game was being released acceptable,also confirmed by their 1.05 update.
So IMO NC basically has little confidence in their own product.Also you can take this to the bank,i will NEVER play a game ,because someone tells me the customization is great ,i want a "GAME" not a makeover kit.I will also NEVER play a game with 2 races,i mean there is a post right now in the forums complaining about Alganon i think it was.They complained it only had 4 races,well that is double what Aion has lol.I played FFXI and it had 6 race,and that i considered to be the minimum i would accept.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Exactly ! one year and they have added nothing,you know why?They have adopted a real scam of only giving you part of the game to start,then bank on selling you xpacs.They already admitted this very thing by saying they were already working on the next two expansions,this was before Aion was even released.This is the same formula they are using with Guild Wars,it may seem free but after you buy 3 xpacs to get the rest of the game,it's so not free anymore.It is not the same as adding xpacs at a later date,when you already have more content and are holding it back from the player base.
To anyone that pays attention at all,you may have also noticed Lineage..castle seige....Aion abyss..Fortress seige,so you can see they lack the creativity to expand beyond what is basically the exact same PVP idea,only they added flying.
Aion is not alone,i am noticing a real trend in all games being released,they are giving us the bare bones for content.It is so bad,that if these games remove one more piece of content,there is literally no game left,that is how weak the content is in most games released over the last 5 years.It is like the developer comes up with one idea and goes with it.Imagine if Aion removed one race?lmao,there is no game anymore,maybe a single player game.
In case of Aion i also believe NCSOFT was terrified of Aion not being a success and losing their shirt like they did with TR,so they chose to wait and see what the public would accept for the bare bones game.I believe they could easily pan off those xpacs as a new game,after all it would just be new maps,maybe a new race to up the total to an amazing 3 lol.You have to also notice they released it in Asia first,witch again confirms they were afraid of this market,and wanted to make sure the game was being released acceptable,also confirmed by their 1.05 update.
So IMO NC basically has little confidence in their own product.Also you can take this to the bank,i will NEVER play a game ,because someone tells me the customization is great ,i want a "GAME" not a makeover kit.I will also NEVER play a game with 2 races,i mean there is a post right now in the forums complaining about Alganon i think it was.They complained it only had 4 races,well that is double what Aion has lol.I played FFXI and it had 6 race,and that i considered to be the minimum i would accept.
Sounds like you're fed up with MMOs. And Aion has 3 races, not 2. Two are playable by humans and 3rd races, the balaur, are used as a stabilizing mechanism in case the other race ends up being underdog.
The game is bleeding players? This just has to be because there was a bit of queuing that first week after release, if only they had listened to the community and opened up opened up several new servers at once. That would surely have kept anyone from discovering the real issues the game has.
But really, this is a bit premature, the free month isn't even over for most people, give it another two weeks. Or better yet, another two months. The power of denial is too strong for fanboys to recognize a trend this early on.
hm interesting. all and i mean ALL major internet gaming magazins gave aion atleast 8/10 and all of them said it has astonishing graphics and is fun. those r the people that played, and im sure of that, 100x more games then all of us together and fot them aion is refreshing and fun game.. and one thing doesnt make sense. they r adding more servers every 2 weeks and they r bleeding players.prolly to cut back qeue times but that is surely not the only reason. ah.sometimes this forum makes laugh pretty damn hard cause of wow/aoc/war players.
and for the love of god. wow literally stole all its components out of others mmos. just was better advertised. even his lore is stolen.
ps. ppl who r saying aion looks like f2p r mentally ill or shouldnt play aion on pentium 3
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.
Improve Aion's Graphics with a simple text file that you can create by yourself:
-Increase in-game Field of View to 175% or more
-Increase view distance for players to 100 meters with camera at max distance
-Lots of other settings
Learn how by reading this guide at Aionsource
http://www.aionsource.com/forum/general-guides/84379-definite-guide-aions-graphical-settings-performance-tips.html
I quit this retarded mess... and someone said people were quitting because it was "too hard." Are you insane? What is so hard about pressing 1-2-2-2-3-1-3-2-2-... over and over in the same sequence for every mob? Reee-diculous.
Anyway, after this mess I am not paying for playing any MMO that is not developed in EU or NA.
The fortress crashing is really what's going to be the death of the game in the long run if they don't get it fixed. There is no point anymore if the main endgame isn't even functional to participate in. That will chase off the die-hard Aion supporters. They can deal with the other shortcomings (or benefits as they see them) but not that.
There were threads like this with WoW five years ago . Massive quitting due to bugs bots ques etc etc etc . We all know how that turned out . People i know that are quitting Aion arnt quitting it for good but they are fed up with the ques and Ncsofts lack of action in compensating them for a months play they ve paid for which they dont feel they ve been able to use . Lots of people are planning on returning if and when Ncsoft sort this mess out . They have a very small window which could make all the difference between another 300-500k game or one thats second only to WoW . Can they do it ? Well maybe but thier past record is nt very good . Time is running out for Aion and this is from someone who thinks it could be one of the best most successful mmos around . If it fails it wont be down to Aions quality but Ncsofts incompetance .
WoW was pretty much playable after the first month....how is Aion doing?
Pretty much playable as well.
Fortress siege crashing I wouldn't characterize as playable. And yes, it is happening to a substantial number of people.
On my server (Trinel) the number one legion (legacy) recently all quit and formed a WoW guild.
The first month game time ends in couple of days. It will be interesting to see the impact of the mass canceled accounts.
NCSOFT made a horrible misscalculation about non asian markets accepting bots/spam.
Cancelled my subscription for the time being. Lack of support and the bot situation just reeks of Lineage 2 all over again.
We'll see in the coming months if they're willing to make the investment needed to make Aion a viable contender in the West.
Did they quit or just make a ragepost somewhere? A lot of them were online and playing yesterday, including TPZ.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?