If NCsoft would get on the ball and add content to the game, I think you would see it go in the other direction. The game is full of potential that isn't being reached right now.
I had tremendous fun with Aion, but at some point before my 30 days were up, my client kept crashing, and they werent answering my petitions, no devs ever responded on their tech forums, so what could I do? I quit.
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
Based on Xfire - the game went from 90000 hours played daily to 18000, which is an 80% drop of activity.
Aion is the second highest rank MMO behind WoW on xfire.
So if the only standard for success is WoW type numbers, then WoW is the only "successful" mmo ever made. Give me a break.
I play Aion, I have a lvl 49 Templar, my server Ariel is filled with people. As early as last week we had 200 vs 200 Fortress raids. The main city is always full, and I never have a problem finding a party.
The only time reduced population numbers become a problem is when they effect your gameplay. Are you having trouble finding groups? Are there not enough people to play?
XFIRES NUMBER ARE RETARDED SKEWED AND MANIPULATED. ANYTHING BASED OFF OF XFIRE IS COMPLETE AND UTTTER BULL.
PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE XFIRE. THEY HAVE BEEN PROVEN WRONG TIME AND TIME AGAIN.
THEY HAVE BEEN CAUGHT MANIPULATING THE NUMBERS AS WELL.
WoW from last year vs WoW from today just shortly after an bigger contentupdate. Does that mean WoW lost like 1/3 of its userbase? Or is it just the case that people play differently? (btw ignore the 11M subscriber number as that one includes asian subs and is irrelevant to xfire) Maybe a big conspiracy and NCsoft paid them to dump the xfire numbers of WoW...
Yes, they did lose 1/2 of their sub numbers do to the current china government vs. WOW argument. My guess is about 1/2 of that 1/2 probably moved to other servers while the other 1/2 either moved to a different game or are waiting to come back.
Why would players suddenly play differently when the devs have not made any sweeping changes to WOW?
Xfires numbers are in no way a definitive fact of information on population, but they do show a general trend, and is to be expected by taking a small 1/2 random sample of a population.
Based on Xfire - the game went from 90000 hours played daily to 18000, which is an 80% drop of activity.
Aion is the second highest rank MMO behind WoW on xfire.
So if the only standard for success is WoW type numbers, then WoW is the only "successful" mmo ever made. Give me a break.
I play Aion, I have a lvl 49 Templar, my server Ariel is filled with people. As early as last week we had 200 vs 200 Fortress raids. The main city is always full, and I never have a problem finding a party.
The only time reduced population numbers become a problem is when they effect your gameplay. Are you having trouble finding groups? Are there not enough people to play?
Guess my server (one of the 2 newer ones) was no where near as populated as yours. In fact, the Abyss is almost empty most of the time. I did see alot of twinks (alts of high level toons) geared in max crafted, til 30 then they used the Deava armor and weapon. Not very many true new players. And the server just seemed to lose it's steam, of course that's what I saw.
They may need some server merges soon to fix it, because a MMO without people is so boring.
I also agree with some PvPers here, that the Devs need to work on the PvP part of the game, because the PvE is so suck arse in Aion. I don't think they can fix it with just patches. They will need an expansion for that. The hard-core of Aion are PvPers, cater to them.
Somehow it stills seems to be flying over the heads of some posters in this thread....that XFire only counts people who actually USE XFire.....
That has got to be the absolute worst way of measuring anything.
Unless you know exactly how many players of "Game X" are always using XFire....then it measures a great big NOTHING, other than what that FRACTION of people are doing.
Let me give you an equally illogical form of measurement....
Say Google had some app that you could download songs from iTunes on....and it measured the number of songs downloaded from iTunes, only via their Google app. And you went around proclaiming that, "Statistically David Archuleta is the most downloaded artist on iTunes," because this Google app says that he's been download more on their app than anyone else in the whole wide world!!!
Well....that would be ignorant. Because the Google app....only measures iTunes downloads that are done THROUGH the Google app. It doesn't measure iPod downloads, or downloads to PC directly from iTunes using iTunes itself, or downloads via iPod Touch, or any other iPod application.....etc, etc. How stupid would those "statistics" be? Pretty stupid.
Is it STILL too complicated to understand? It doesn't even show an overall "trend" like some of you are saying. It shows a "trend" ONLY AMONG LOYAL USERS OF XFIRE. What percentage of players is that, exactly? Unless you can say exactly how many AION players use XFire all the time....your "statistics," "trends," etc....are a JOKE. This really isn't rocket science here.
Somehow it stills seems to be flying over the heads of some posters in this thread....that XFire only counts people who actually USE XFire..... That has got to be the absolute worst way of measuring anything. Unless you know exactly how many players of "Game X" are always using XFire....then it measures a great big NOTHING, other than what that FRACTION of people are doing. Let me give you an equally illogical form of measurement....
Say Google had some app that you could download songs from iTunes on....and it measured the number of songs downloaded from iTunes, only via their Google app. And you went around proclaiming that, "Statistically David Archuleta is the most downloaded artist on iTunes," because this Google app says that he's been download more on their app than anyone else in the whole wide world!!! Well....that would be ignorant. Because the Google app....only measures iTunes downloads that are done THROUGH the Google app. It doesn't measure iPod downloads, or downloads to PC directly from iTunes using iTunes itself, or downloads via iPod Touch, or any other iPod application.....etc, etc. How stupid would those "statistics" be? Pretty stupid. Is it STILL too complicated to understand? It doesn't even show an overall "trend" like some of you are saying. It shows a "trend" ONLY AMONG LOYAL USERS OF XFIRE. What percentage of players is that, exactly? Unless you can say exactly how many AION players use XFire all the time....your "statistics," "trends," etc....are a JOKE. This really isn't rocket science here.
Most people will try to argue this with samples from "polls" to estimate the current trend of votes.
What allignore in this case, is that the samples for votes are choosen randomly out of the TOTAL potential questionaries. They dont ask just people who buy the NYT or only people who live in Texas and claim its representative for the presidental election next week.
The samples of xfire are not choosen randomly, but only include those who use xfire in first place, not a random sample of the total ammount of player. Xfire is used by personal choice, this choice changes from usertype to user type. And with cathering to different usertypes also the overall preferences of games changes by the xfire community.
Thats just one of many flaws of these simplified xfire "calculations" I also mentioned further above.
*shrugs* This is exactly the way the Nielsen ratings system works for gauging television ratings. Nielsen participants are volunteers who allow a special device to be attached to their televisions, so that their viewing habits can be monitored. TV shows either sink or swim based on these ratings. Not exactly a perfect subset of the total population, but not completely ineffective either. Xfire may not be entirely accurate, but that doesn't mean it won't demonstrate a real trend - whether something is steadily rising or declining.
Tivo does something similar. It gauges only the viewing habits of Tivo users. But I don't think it is a stretch to say that the explosion of people using Tivo to play back Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" was an accurate representation of what most people would have done, lol.
So yes, the game is defintiely reaching a maturity model we've seen with almost all MMO's outside of WOW and EVE, a huge number of people give it a go, 75-80% quit and leave the game somewhere betwween 150-300K subs.
Which is about where it should be.
The people who play Aion at this point are people who, for the most part, enjoy the style of game that it is. I love the somewhat harder lvling curve though truth be told it's so easy compared to L2 that it is extremely hard for me to commiserate with those who come from easier games.
I love the game design and I know others that do as well. Players that come from easier games are just not going to warm up to Aion.
These two post are your answers. I can always depend on Sovrath to give it like it is. A ton of people played the game at the start, then you see people leave and usually its a big drop. Thats the way it goes. Most people think if you don't have a million + subs then the game is fail. Well obviously you don't know the market well. 200-300k subs is a success period. Even AOC is still coming out with expansions. I can't wait for Startrek and Starwas somes out so people can complain about thing else.
Disclaimer: Ok, its an assumption. If the game is growing please enlighten me. I have been reading the Aion forums from time to time and read many oppinions on the game. However I have the impression that the playerbase is slowly being reduced. When Aion launched it was hailed as one of the most polished MMO releases in a long long time and the fans were besides themselves over how good it ran and how much fun it was. Nowadays there is not much positive feedback. From what I read Aion has a couple of problems 1) Grind - many enjoy it, while even more people hate it.
Now my question to the community is: Will this decline stop? And if so, how can it be stopped?
I cannot tell you why other people are quitting Aion. I can tell you why I quit Aion -
1) The bots. The gold spammers. It was ridiculous. It annoyed me.
2) You can't really get involved in PvP until you level up to that point, and I prefer a game like Warhammer Online where I can PvP from the start if I wish - and level to the top that way.
3) I despised the crafting system; it was luck based. Occasionally you get a superior result. I love the crafting system in Fallen Earth - it's not random; if you put the work in and find the materials you can craft the item. You don't get an Uber Super Dooper Sword of Awesomeness by a drop or by grinding materials and crafting the same item over and over again until you finally get that "special" item - you can craft the best gear in the game if you put the time in to crafting it, and there's nothing random about it.
4) The monsters were too cartoony for me; it just wasn't my style. I felt like I was killing Pokemon over and over again.
5) Lack of communication from the developers, etc. I had gotten used to Fallen Earth, where my customer service emails were answered within 24 hours and live GM's monitored chat. There's no way you could spam a chat channel on Fallen Earth - a real, live, breathing GM would simply ban you. The website didn't offer much in terms of communication with the players, either - they tossed that "Future of Aion" video bone at us and then stayed quiet on everything else. One monthly state of the community article isn't enough for me; I want developers to interact on the forums, etc. Like I said, Fallen Earth spoiled me.
6) Leveling and advancement seemed slow and boring to me. I personally couldn't get into the PvE and the PvP portion of the game requires you to do a lot of PvE (or cheat, buy kinah, or use a hack) in order to compete. A casual player wanting to enjoy PvP in Aion is probably going to be disappointed; you can't logon for a 15 minute scenario ala WAR!
I guess you summed it up - poor customer service, lack of communication, feeling of a non-fun PvE grind in order to get to the "good stuff"... as for it being such a stellar release, let me remind you it was out in Korea for over a year. Give any MMO a year on the market and it becomes relatively polished if it's going to succeed at all.
No fly limits. I think a lot of people got angry over that. All the hype with wings etc. Can it be fixed? No, don't think so. Less grind. Better system against farmers and other cheating people. Other games can stop it, so why not the asian games?
The flying system was a huge disappointment to me as well. I wanted to have fun flying, not have to "rest" every few minutes - and I wanted flying in every zone. I think that's when my wife lost her enthusiasm for the game as well; when she learned those cool wings she just got only worked for a very short time and only in a few places. City of Heroes had a much better flight system, and it was an older game.
I played aion from pre-order collectors edition thru to a lvl 36 sorc on asmo side on the oceanic server, (which is hosted in the US still...) had to download some tunneling programs to get a decent ping tho.
Throughly enjoyed the game, left wow after 3yrs to play aion
HOWEVER: Currently the grind is insane and a serious lack of decent exp rewards from the current quests has made me stop playing until.................... they release this major content update:
9 min trailer highlights some seriously good stuff: Riding mounts, player housing, underwater citys , major graphic update,(game already looks amazing, but look at the before and after pan over views, HD texture updates etc).
PVP side they have kinda copied some of warhammer's city seige ideas.
Near the end theres a mage class, possibly a guild leader? summons a absolutely enormous siege golom that proceeds to squash houses in an enemy city where defenders are firing huge pirate style cannons etc at a bunch of goloms while many attacking players are storming a city by air and ground.
Also from what i read this update is supposed to add tons of new higher lvl quests with a lot better exp rewards and reduce the grind.
Im sure i also read the lvl cap increases to either 80 or 120 like the korean version.
So im keeping my acct active due to the veteran rewards as i want my free lvl 40 wings and will re-try playing when and if we see the english converted version major content update. crosses fingers. ( don't miss the trailer if u have tried aion before)
I actually enjoyed the ride to 50, while leveling with friend and doing the instances. Unfortunately, once you're 50, the real grind begins. Now, grind is subjective and doesn't bother be, as i came from FFXI. But the place that you grind at 50, the Abyss, is so unfriendly to anything but ranged damage, that it sucks the fun out of it.
As i'm sure most people that have played it know. Flying combat is horrendously broken for melee. "Your target is out of range" flashes in my sleep. As it stands, almost everyone i know is rerolling ranger just to have some fun and take advantage of the "fantastic flying combat". The game is actually pretty fun low level rifting on a ranger/assassin.
Don't even get me started on the ridiculous Fenris/Miragents quest line at 50 that has had more people quit over than anything. It should have never been introduced into the game to begin with.
*shrugs* This is exactly the way the Nielsen ratings system works for gauging television ratings. Nielsen participants are volunteers who allow a special device to be attached to their televisions, so that their viewing habits can be monitored. TV shows either sink or swim based on these ratings. Not exactly a perfect subset of the total population, but not completely ineffective either. Xfire may not be entirely accurate, but that doesn't mean it won't demonstrate a real trend - whether something is steadily rising or declining.
Tivo does something similar. It gauges only the viewing habits of Tivo users. But I don't think it is a stretch to say that the explosion of people using Tivo to play back Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" was an accurate representation of what most people would have done, lol.
No, actually it's not. I have a friend whose family is a "Neilsen Family." They actually had to fill out just ridiculously specific questionnaires about their family before being "chosen" as a Nielsen Family. In other words, Nielsen tries to get a very broad spectrum of different "types" of viewers based on this assessment. Vicki's family, for example, is a family of 3 with a single mother, and 2 teenage boys, ages 17 and 19. Their typical viewing habits will differ from a family that is perhaps made up differently. So there is some amount of planning for FAIR assessment that goes into the Nielsen polls, whereas XFire has no such screening, at least as far as I am aware....
But yeah...sorry for the topic derail. We'll never all come to a broad agreement on the accuracy of XFire. It's been a debate on these forums for years. I probably shouldn't have even gotten started on it, because neither "side" will budge on the issue. Nonetheless, I respect your opinion and respectfully disagree with it.
Originally posted by Alders . Don't even get me started on the ridiculous Fenris/Miragents quest line at 50 that has had more people quit over than anything. It should have never been introduced into the game to begin with.
Honestly, it's a single step in the entire line that's anything worthy enough to complain about. If you get lucky on that, you can end up doing the entire line in 1-2 weeks of relatively casual play, for a very nice full gold set of armor + a weapon. Yeah, easy solo questing your way to gear progression past 50... such a damn grind this game is, and they make you do it right after straight questing up to 50!
Originally posted by Alders . Don't even get me started on the ridiculous Fenris/Miragents quest line at 50 that has had more people quit over than anything. It should have never been introduced into the game to begin with.
Honestly, it's a single step in the entire line that's anything worthy enough to complain about. If you get lucky on that, you can end up doing the entire line in 1-2 weeks of relatively casual play, for a very nice full gold set of armor + a weapon. Yeah, easy solo questing your way to gear progression past 50... such a damn grind this game is, and they make you do it right after straight questing up to 50!
I know few of my friends who were 50 at the time already quit over this and the lack of content at 50. Some may think, it's dumb or smart, but at the end it really doesn't matter right. It's one less person playing, one less person paying to help improve the game with updates.
*shrugs* This is exactly the way the Nielsen ratings system works for gauging television ratings. Nielsen participants are volunteers who allow a special device to be attached to their televisions, so that their viewing habits can be monitored. TV shows either sink or swim based on these ratings. Not exactly a perfect subset of the total population, but not completely ineffective either. Xfire may not be entirely accurate, but that doesn't mean it won't demonstrate a real trend - whether something is steadily rising or declining.
Tivo does something similar. It gauges only the viewing habits of Tivo users. But I don't think it is a stretch to say that the explosion of people using Tivo to play back Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" was an accurate representation of what most people would have done, lol.
No, actually it's not. I have a friend whose family is a "Neilsen Family." They actually had to fill out just ridiculously specific questionnaires about their family before being "chosen" as a Nielsen Family. In other words, Nielsen tries to get a very broad spectrum of different "types" of viewers based on this assessment. Vicki's family, for example, is a family of 3 with a single mother, and 2 teenage boys, ages 17 and 19. Their typical viewing habits will differ from a family that is perhaps made up differently. So there is some amount of planning for FAIR assessment that goes into the Nielsen polls, whereas XFire has no such screening, at least as far as I am aware....
But yeah...sorry for the topic derail. We'll never all come to a broad agreement on the accuracy of XFire. It's been a debate on these forums for years. I probably shouldn't have even gotten started on it, because neither "side" will budge on the issue. Nonetheless, I respect your opinion and respectfully disagree with it.
The thing about xfire is that there are so many reasons why it should not be a trusted source for trending a game. Really, there are numerous valid well thought out reasons why the mechanics and operation of xfire should not produce accurate results. Personally I am in this camp and I just do not want to buy into xfire having valid data.
Despite that, xfire was spot on accurate in detailing the decline of Age of Conan and Warhammer. We can list a million valid reasons why the method of xfire are not scientific or diverse enough to be credible, but that doesn't change what happened. For whatever reasons, xfire seems to be pretty accurate with certain pvp mmos.
I am not making any guesses about aion, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss xfire in this case.
Is it me or whenever a new MMO seems to go down the path of PVP primarily they just don't hold the subs. Maybe these companies should learn to cater to both crowds equally to get a better market share. Just something I've noticed.
*shrugs* This is exactly the way the Nielsen ratings system works for gauging television ratings. Nielsen participants are volunteers who allow a special device to be attached to their televisions, so that their viewing habits can be monitored. TV shows either sink or swim based on these ratings. Not exactly a perfect subset of the total population, but not completely ineffective either. Xfire may not be entirely accurate, but that doesn't mean it won't demonstrate a real trend - whether something is steadily rising or declining.
Tivo does something similar. It gauges only the viewing habits of Tivo users. But I don't think it is a stretch to say that the explosion of people using Tivo to play back Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" was an accurate representation of what most people would have done, lol.
No, actually it's not. I have a friend whose family is a "Neilsen Family." They actually had to fill out just ridiculously specific questionnaires about their family before being "chosen" as a Nielsen Family. In other words, Nielsen tries to get a very broad spectrum of different "types" of viewers based on this assessment. Vicki's family, for example, is a family of 3 with a single mother, and 2 teenage boys, ages 17 and 19. Their typical viewing habits will differ from a family that is perhaps made up differently. So there is some amount of planning for FAIR assessment that goes into the Nielsen polls, whereas XFire has no such screening, at least as far as I am aware....
But yeah...sorry for the topic derail. We'll never all come to a broad agreement on the accuracy of XFire. It's been a debate on these forums for years. I probably shouldn't have even gotten started on it, because neither "side" will budge on the issue. Nonetheless, I respect your opinion and respectfully disagree with it.
The thing about xfire is that there are so many reasons why it should not be a trusted source for trending a game. Really, there are numerous valid well thought out reasons why the mechanics and operation of xfire should not produce accurate results. Personally I am in this camp and I just do not want to buy into xfire having valid data.
Despite that, xfire was spot on accurate in detailing the decline of Age of Conan and Warhammer. We can list a million valid reasons why the method of xfire are not scientific or diverse enough to be credible, but that doesn't change what happened. For whatever reasons, xfire seems to be pretty accurate with certain pvp mmos.
I am not making any guesses about aion, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss xfire in this case.
You completely mistook my disagreement with the MODE of measurement for me thinking AION isn't in decline.
I definitely think AION's in decline in the Western market. I definitely do NOT think that XFire is an accurate measurement to determine that by, however.
*shrugs* This is exactly the way the Nielsen ratings system works for gauging television ratings. Nielsen participants are volunteers who allow a special device to be attached to their televisions, so that their viewing habits can be monitored. TV shows either sink or swim based on these ratings. Not exactly a perfect subset of the total population, but not completely ineffective either. Xfire may not be entirely accurate, but that doesn't mean it won't demonstrate a real trend - whether something is steadily rising or declining.
Tivo does something similar. It gauges only the viewing habits of Tivo users. But I don't think it is a stretch to say that the explosion of people using Tivo to play back Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" was an accurate representation of what most people would have done, lol.
No, actually it's not. I have a friend whose family is a "Neilsen Family." They actually had to fill out just ridiculously specific questionnaires about their family before being "chosen" as a Nielsen Family. In other words, Nielsen tries to get a very broad spectrum of different "types" of viewers based on this assessment. Vicki's family, for example, is a family of 3 with a single mother, and 2 teenage boys, ages 17 and 19. Their typical viewing habits will differ from a family that is perhaps made up differently. So there is some amount of planning for FAIR assessment that goes into the Nielsen polls, whereas XFire has no such screening, at least as far as I am aware....
But yeah...sorry for the topic derail. We'll never all come to a broad agreement on the accuracy of XFire. It's been a debate on these forums for years. I probably shouldn't have even gotten started on it, because neither "side" will budge on the issue. Nonetheless, I respect your opinion and respectfully disagree with it.
The thing about xfire is that there are so many reasons why it should not be a trusted source for trending a game. Really, there are numerous valid well thought out reasons why the mechanics and operation of xfire should not produce accurate results. Personally I am in this camp and I just do not want to buy into xfire having valid data.
Despite that, xfire was spot on accurate in detailing the decline of Age of Conan and Warhammer. We can list a million valid reasons why the method of xfire are not scientific or diverse enough to be credible, but that doesn't change what happened. For whatever reasons, xfire seems to be pretty accurate with certain pvp mmos.
I am not making any guesses about aion, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss xfire in this case.
You completely mistook my disagreement with the MODE of measurement for me thinking AION isn't in decline.
I definitely think AION's in decline in the Western market. I definitely do NOT think that XFire is an accurate measurement to determine that by, however.
Agree Aion as a whole isn't declining. However, the western version of the game is declining. Also Xfire only shows you those who use xfire. Majority of gamers don't use or even know what xfire is. That alone should be enough to discredit it.
It doesn't matter how many people use it or even if you know any of those people.
Despite everything that says xfire shouldn't be accurate, for some reason it has been. For Aion I have no real idea.
It wouldn't surprise me, because I just don't think NCSoft understands the western market. It was the same with lineage 1 & 2, so it woulnd't be abnormal for aion to follow suit.
It doesn't matter how many people use it or even if you know any of those people. Despite everything that says xfire shouldn't be accurate, for some reason it has been. For Aion I have no real idea.
It wouldn't surprise me, because I just don't think NCSoft understands the western market. It was the same with lineage 1 & 2, so it woulnd't be abnormal for aion to follow suit.
I agree. That and the fact that my little time in Aion just didnt show me anything different than many other games that came before it.
It wouldn't surprise me, because I just don't think NCSoft understands the western market. It was the same with lineage 1 & 2, so it woulnd't be abnormal for aion to follow suit.
Well, apparently they understand this market better than all other Western MMO developers bar Blizzard, cpp, and maybe turbine?
Also it's already obvious it's not going down the L1 and L2 way: Bots, gold sellers are constantly taken care of, its exp curve is more similar to WoW than L2 and sadly it's gonna keep on getting easier.
The only NON-western things in Aion are probably being able to open shops and the art style, and the "grind" to a lesser extent (there are ALOT of Western players that prefer it / don't mind it).
Comments
If NCsoft would get on the ball and add content to the game, I think you would see it go in the other direction. The game is full of potential that isn't being reached right now.
I had tremendous fun with Aion, but at some point before my 30 days were up, my client kept crashing, and they werent answering my petitions, no devs ever responded on their tech forums, so what could I do? I quit.
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
Aion is the second highest rank MMO behind WoW on xfire.
So if the only standard for success is WoW type numbers, then WoW is the only "successful" mmo ever made. Give me a break.
I play Aion, I have a lvl 49 Templar, my server Ariel is filled with people. As early as last week we had 200 vs 200 Fortress raids. The main city is always full, and I never have a problem finding a party.
The only time reduced population numbers become a problem is when they effect your gameplay. Are you having trouble finding groups? Are there not enough people to play?
XFIRES NUMBER ARE RETARDED SKEWED AND MANIPULATED. ANYTHING BASED OFF OF XFIRE IS COMPLETE AND UTTTER BULL.
PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE XFIRE. THEY HAVE BEEN PROVEN WRONG TIME AND TIME AGAIN.
THEY HAVE BEEN CAUGHT MANIPULATING THE NUMBERS AS WELL.
Yes, they did lose 1/2 of their sub numbers do to the current china government vs. WOW argument. My guess is about 1/2 of that 1/2 probably moved to other servers while the other 1/2 either moved to a different game or are waiting to come back.
Why would players suddenly play differently when the devs have not made any sweeping changes to WOW?
Xfires numbers are in no way a definitive fact of information on population, but they do show a general trend, and is to be expected by taking a small 1/2 random sample of a population.
Aion is the second highest rank MMO behind WoW on xfire.
So if the only standard for success is WoW type numbers, then WoW is the only "successful" mmo ever made. Give me a break.
I play Aion, I have a lvl 49 Templar, my server Ariel is filled with people. As early as last week we had 200 vs 200 Fortress raids. The main city is always full, and I never have a problem finding a party.
The only time reduced population numbers become a problem is when they effect your gameplay. Are you having trouble finding groups? Are there not enough people to play?
Guess my server (one of the 2 newer ones) was no where near as populated as yours. In fact, the Abyss is almost empty most of the time. I did see alot of twinks (alts of high level toons) geared in max crafted, til 30 then they used the Deava armor and weapon. Not very many true new players. And the server just seemed to lose it's steam, of course that's what I saw.
They may need some server merges soon to fix it, because a MMO without people is so boring.
I also agree with some PvPers here, that the Devs need to work on the PvP part of the game, because the PvE is so suck arse in Aion. I don't think they can fix it with just patches. They will need an expansion for that. The hard-core of Aion are PvPers, cater to them.
Somehow it stills seems to be flying over the heads of some posters in this thread....that XFire only counts people who actually USE XFire.....
That has got to be the absolute worst way of measuring anything.
Unless you know exactly how many players of "Game X" are always using XFire....then it measures a great big NOTHING, other than what that FRACTION of people are doing.
Let me give you an equally illogical form of measurement....
Say Google had some app that you could download songs from iTunes on....and it measured the number of songs downloaded from iTunes, only via their Google app. And you went around proclaiming that, "Statistically David Archuleta is the most downloaded artist on iTunes," because this Google app says that he's been download more on their app than anyone else in the whole wide world!!!
Well....that would be ignorant. Because the Google app....only measures iTunes downloads that are done THROUGH the Google app. It doesn't measure iPod downloads, or downloads to PC directly from iTunes using iTunes itself, or downloads via iPod Touch, or any other iPod application.....etc, etc. How stupid would those "statistics" be? Pretty stupid.
Is it STILL too complicated to understand? It doesn't even show an overall "trend" like some of you are saying. It shows a "trend" ONLY AMONG LOYAL USERS OF XFIRE. What percentage of players is that, exactly? Unless you can say exactly how many AION players use XFire all the time....your "statistics," "trends," etc....are a JOKE. This really isn't rocket science here.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Most people will try to argue this with samples from "polls" to estimate the current trend of votes.
What allignore in this case, is that the samples for votes are choosen randomly out of the TOTAL potential questionaries. They dont ask just people who buy the NYT or only people who live in Texas and claim its representative for the presidental election next week.
The samples of xfire are not choosen randomly, but only include those who use xfire in first place, not a random sample of the total ammount of player. Xfire is used by personal choice, this choice changes from usertype to user type. And with cathering to different usertypes also the overall preferences of games changes by the xfire community.
Thats just one of many flaws of these simplified xfire "calculations" I also mentioned further above.
*shrugs* This is exactly the way the Nielsen ratings system works for gauging television ratings. Nielsen participants are volunteers who allow a special device to be attached to their televisions, so that their viewing habits can be monitored. TV shows either sink or swim based on these ratings. Not exactly a perfect subset of the total population, but not completely ineffective either. Xfire may not be entirely accurate, but that doesn't mean it won't demonstrate a real trend - whether something is steadily rising or declining.
Tivo does something similar. It gauges only the viewing habits of Tivo users. But I don't think it is a stretch to say that the explosion of people using Tivo to play back Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" was an accurate representation of what most people would have done, lol.
Just another WOW killer dud......
Which is about where it should be.
The people who play Aion at this point are people who, for the most part, enjoy the style of game that it is. I love the somewhat harder lvling curve though truth be told it's so easy compared to L2 that it is extremely hard for me to commiserate with those who come from easier games.
I love the game design and I know others that do as well. Players that come from easier games are just not going to warm up to Aion.
These two post are your answers. I can always depend on Sovrath to give it like it is. A ton of people played the game at the start, then you see people leave and usually its a big drop. Thats the way it goes. Most people think if you don't have a million + subs then the game is fail. Well obviously you don't know the market well. 200-300k subs is a success period. Even AOC is still coming out with expansions. I can't wait for Startrek and Starwas somes out so people can complain about thing else.
I cannot tell you why other people are quitting Aion. I can tell you why I quit Aion -
1) The bots. The gold spammers. It was ridiculous. It annoyed me.
2) You can't really get involved in PvP until you level up to that point, and I prefer a game like Warhammer Online where I can PvP from the start if I wish - and level to the top that way.
3) I despised the crafting system; it was luck based. Occasionally you get a superior result. I love the crafting system in Fallen Earth - it's not random; if you put the work in and find the materials you can craft the item. You don't get an Uber Super Dooper Sword of Awesomeness by a drop or by grinding materials and crafting the same item over and over again until you finally get that "special" item - you can craft the best gear in the game if you put the time in to crafting it, and there's nothing random about it.
4) The monsters were too cartoony for me; it just wasn't my style. I felt like I was killing Pokemon over and over again.
5) Lack of communication from the developers, etc. I had gotten used to Fallen Earth, where my customer service emails were answered within 24 hours and live GM's monitored chat. There's no way you could spam a chat channel on Fallen Earth - a real, live, breathing GM would simply ban you. The website didn't offer much in terms of communication with the players, either - they tossed that "Future of Aion" video bone at us and then stayed quiet on everything else. One monthly state of the community article isn't enough for me; I want developers to interact on the forums, etc. Like I said, Fallen Earth spoiled me.
6) Leveling and advancement seemed slow and boring to me. I personally couldn't get into the PvE and the PvP portion of the game requires you to do a lot of PvE (or cheat, buy kinah, or use a hack) in order to compete. A casual player wanting to enjoy PvP in Aion is probably going to be disappointed; you can't logon for a 15 minute scenario ala WAR!
I guess you summed it up - poor customer service, lack of communication, feeling of a non-fun PvE grind in order to get to the "good stuff"... as for it being such a stellar release, let me remind you it was out in Korea for over a year. Give any MMO a year on the market and it becomes relatively polished if it's going to succeed at all.
The flying system was a huge disappointment to me as well. I wanted to have fun flying, not have to "rest" every few minutes - and I wanted flying in every zone. I think that's when my wife lost her enthusiasm for the game as well; when she learned those cool wings she just got only worked for a very short time and only in a few places. City of Heroes had a much better flight system, and it was an older game.
I played aion from pre-order collectors edition thru to a lvl 36 sorc on asmo side on the oceanic server, (which is hosted in the US still...) had to download some tunneling programs to get a decent ping tho.
Throughly enjoyed the game, left wow after 3yrs to play aion
HOWEVER: Currently the grind is insane and a serious lack of decent exp rewards from the current quests has made me stop playing until.................... they release this major content update:
http://gamerblips.dailyradar.com/video/aion-vision-trailer-english/
9 min trailer highlights some seriously good stuff: Riding mounts, player housing, underwater citys , major graphic update,(game already looks amazing, but look at the before and after pan over views, HD texture updates etc).
PVP side they have kinda copied some of warhammer's city seige ideas.
Near the end theres a mage class, possibly a guild leader? summons a absolutely enormous siege golom that proceeds to squash houses in an enemy city where defenders are firing huge pirate style cannons etc at a bunch of goloms while many attacking players are storming a city by air and ground.
Also from what i read this update is supposed to add tons of new higher lvl quests with a lot better exp rewards and reduce the grind.
Im sure i also read the lvl cap increases to either 80 or 120 like the korean version.
So im keeping my acct active due to the veteran rewards as i want my free lvl 40 wings and will re-try playing when and if we see the english converted version major content update. crosses fingers. ( don't miss the trailer if u have tried aion before)
People keep falling asleep somewhere around lvl 40 and accidently hitting the "Cancel Subscription" Button. That's my theory.
lol yeah the current grind had me nodding off at the keyboard many times
I actually enjoyed the ride to 50, while leveling with friend and doing the instances. Unfortunately, once you're 50, the real grind begins. Now, grind is subjective and doesn't bother be, as i came from FFXI. But the place that you grind at 50, the Abyss, is so unfriendly to anything but ranged damage, that it sucks the fun out of it.
As i'm sure most people that have played it know. Flying combat is horrendously broken for melee. "Your target is out of range" flashes in my sleep. As it stands, almost everyone i know is rerolling ranger just to have some fun and take advantage of the "fantastic flying combat". The game is actually pretty fun low level rifting on a ranger/assassin.
Don't even get me started on the ridiculous Fenris/Miragents quest line at 50 that has had more people quit over than anything. It should have never been introduced into the game to begin with.
*shrugs* This is exactly the way the Nielsen ratings system works for gauging television ratings. Nielsen participants are volunteers who allow a special device to be attached to their televisions, so that their viewing habits can be monitored. TV shows either sink or swim based on these ratings. Not exactly a perfect subset of the total population, but not completely ineffective either. Xfire may not be entirely accurate, but that doesn't mean it won't demonstrate a real trend - whether something is steadily rising or declining.
Tivo does something similar. It gauges only the viewing habits of Tivo users. But I don't think it is a stretch to say that the explosion of people using Tivo to play back Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" was an accurate representation of what most people would have done, lol.
No, actually it's not. I have a friend whose family is a "Neilsen Family." They actually had to fill out just ridiculously specific questionnaires about their family before being "chosen" as a Nielsen Family. In other words, Nielsen tries to get a very broad spectrum of different "types" of viewers based on this assessment. Vicki's family, for example, is a family of 3 with a single mother, and 2 teenage boys, ages 17 and 19. Their typical viewing habits will differ from a family that is perhaps made up differently. So there is some amount of planning for FAIR assessment that goes into the Nielsen polls, whereas XFire has no such screening, at least as far as I am aware....
But yeah...sorry for the topic derail. We'll never all come to a broad agreement on the accuracy of XFire. It's been a debate on these forums for years. I probably shouldn't have even gotten started on it, because neither "side" will budge on the issue. Nonetheless, I respect your opinion and respectfully disagree with it.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Honestly, it's a single step in the entire line that's anything worthy enough to complain about. If you get lucky on that, you can end up doing the entire line in 1-2 weeks of relatively casual play, for a very nice full gold set of armor + a weapon. Yeah, easy solo questing your way to gear progression past 50... such a damn grind this game is, and they make you do it right after straight questing up to 50!
Honestly, it's a single step in the entire line that's anything worthy enough to complain about. If you get lucky on that, you can end up doing the entire line in 1-2 weeks of relatively casual play, for a very nice full gold set of armor + a weapon. Yeah, easy solo questing your way to gear progression past 50... such a damn grind this game is, and they make you do it right after straight questing up to 50!
I know few of my friends who were 50 at the time already quit over this and the lack of content at 50. Some may think, it's dumb or smart, but at the end it really doesn't matter right. It's one less person playing, one less person paying to help improve the game with updates.
*shrugs* This is exactly the way the Nielsen ratings system works for gauging television ratings. Nielsen participants are volunteers who allow a special device to be attached to their televisions, so that their viewing habits can be monitored. TV shows either sink or swim based on these ratings. Not exactly a perfect subset of the total population, but not completely ineffective either. Xfire may not be entirely accurate, but that doesn't mean it won't demonstrate a real trend - whether something is steadily rising or declining.
Tivo does something similar. It gauges only the viewing habits of Tivo users. But I don't think it is a stretch to say that the explosion of people using Tivo to play back Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" was an accurate representation of what most people would have done, lol.
No, actually it's not. I have a friend whose family is a "Neilsen Family." They actually had to fill out just ridiculously specific questionnaires about their family before being "chosen" as a Nielsen Family. In other words, Nielsen tries to get a very broad spectrum of different "types" of viewers based on this assessment. Vicki's family, for example, is a family of 3 with a single mother, and 2 teenage boys, ages 17 and 19. Their typical viewing habits will differ from a family that is perhaps made up differently. So there is some amount of planning for FAIR assessment that goes into the Nielsen polls, whereas XFire has no such screening, at least as far as I am aware....
But yeah...sorry for the topic derail. We'll never all come to a broad agreement on the accuracy of XFire. It's been a debate on these forums for years. I probably shouldn't have even gotten started on it, because neither "side" will budge on the issue. Nonetheless, I respect your opinion and respectfully disagree with it.
The thing about xfire is that there are so many reasons why it should not be a trusted source for trending a game. Really, there are numerous valid well thought out reasons why the mechanics and operation of xfire should not produce accurate results. Personally I am in this camp and I just do not want to buy into xfire having valid data.
Despite that, xfire was spot on accurate in detailing the decline of Age of Conan and Warhammer. We can list a million valid reasons why the method of xfire are not scientific or diverse enough to be credible, but that doesn't change what happened. For whatever reasons, xfire seems to be pretty accurate with certain pvp mmos.
I am not making any guesses about aion, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss xfire in this case.
Is it me or whenever a new MMO seems to go down the path of PVP primarily they just don't hold the subs. Maybe these companies should learn to cater to both crowds equally to get a better market share. Just something I've noticed.
*shrugs* This is exactly the way the Nielsen ratings system works for gauging television ratings. Nielsen participants are volunteers who allow a special device to be attached to their televisions, so that their viewing habits can be monitored. TV shows either sink or swim based on these ratings. Not exactly a perfect subset of the total population, but not completely ineffective either. Xfire may not be entirely accurate, but that doesn't mean it won't demonstrate a real trend - whether something is steadily rising or declining.
Tivo does something similar. It gauges only the viewing habits of Tivo users. But I don't think it is a stretch to say that the explosion of people using Tivo to play back Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" was an accurate representation of what most people would have done, lol.
No, actually it's not. I have a friend whose family is a "Neilsen Family." They actually had to fill out just ridiculously specific questionnaires about their family before being "chosen" as a Nielsen Family. In other words, Nielsen tries to get a very broad spectrum of different "types" of viewers based on this assessment. Vicki's family, for example, is a family of 3 with a single mother, and 2 teenage boys, ages 17 and 19. Their typical viewing habits will differ from a family that is perhaps made up differently. So there is some amount of planning for FAIR assessment that goes into the Nielsen polls, whereas XFire has no such screening, at least as far as I am aware....
But yeah...sorry for the topic derail. We'll never all come to a broad agreement on the accuracy of XFire. It's been a debate on these forums for years. I probably shouldn't have even gotten started on it, because neither "side" will budge on the issue. Nonetheless, I respect your opinion and respectfully disagree with it.
The thing about xfire is that there are so many reasons why it should not be a trusted source for trending a game. Really, there are numerous valid well thought out reasons why the mechanics and operation of xfire should not produce accurate results. Personally I am in this camp and I just do not want to buy into xfire having valid data.
Despite that, xfire was spot on accurate in detailing the decline of Age of Conan and Warhammer. We can list a million valid reasons why the method of xfire are not scientific or diverse enough to be credible, but that doesn't change what happened. For whatever reasons, xfire seems to be pretty accurate with certain pvp mmos.
I am not making any guesses about aion, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss xfire in this case.
You completely mistook my disagreement with the MODE of measurement for me thinking AION isn't in decline.
I definitely think AION's in decline in the Western market. I definitely do NOT think that XFire is an accurate measurement to determine that by, however.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
*shrugs* This is exactly the way the Nielsen ratings system works for gauging television ratings. Nielsen participants are volunteers who allow a special device to be attached to their televisions, so that their viewing habits can be monitored. TV shows either sink or swim based on these ratings. Not exactly a perfect subset of the total population, but not completely ineffective either. Xfire may not be entirely accurate, but that doesn't mean it won't demonstrate a real trend - whether something is steadily rising or declining.
Tivo does something similar. It gauges only the viewing habits of Tivo users. But I don't think it is a stretch to say that the explosion of people using Tivo to play back Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" was an accurate representation of what most people would have done, lol.
No, actually it's not. I have a friend whose family is a "Neilsen Family." They actually had to fill out just ridiculously specific questionnaires about their family before being "chosen" as a Nielsen Family. In other words, Nielsen tries to get a very broad spectrum of different "types" of viewers based on this assessment. Vicki's family, for example, is a family of 3 with a single mother, and 2 teenage boys, ages 17 and 19. Their typical viewing habits will differ from a family that is perhaps made up differently. So there is some amount of planning for FAIR assessment that goes into the Nielsen polls, whereas XFire has no such screening, at least as far as I am aware....
But yeah...sorry for the topic derail. We'll never all come to a broad agreement on the accuracy of XFire. It's been a debate on these forums for years. I probably shouldn't have even gotten started on it, because neither "side" will budge on the issue. Nonetheless, I respect your opinion and respectfully disagree with it.
The thing about xfire is that there are so many reasons why it should not be a trusted source for trending a game. Really, there are numerous valid well thought out reasons why the mechanics and operation of xfire should not produce accurate results. Personally I am in this camp and I just do not want to buy into xfire having valid data.
Despite that, xfire was spot on accurate in detailing the decline of Age of Conan and Warhammer. We can list a million valid reasons why the method of xfire are not scientific or diverse enough to be credible, but that doesn't change what happened. For whatever reasons, xfire seems to be pretty accurate with certain pvp mmos.
I am not making any guesses about aion, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss xfire in this case.
You completely mistook my disagreement with the MODE of measurement for me thinking AION isn't in decline.
I definitely think AION's in decline in the Western market. I definitely do NOT think that XFire is an accurate measurement to determine that by, however.
Agree Aion as a whole isn't declining. However, the western version of the game is declining. Also Xfire only shows you those who use xfire. Majority of gamers don't use or even know what xfire is. That alone should be enough to discredit it.
It doesn't matter how many people use it or even if you know any of those people.
Despite everything that says xfire shouldn't be accurate, for some reason it has been. For Aion I have no real idea.
It wouldn't surprise me, because I just don't think NCSoft understands the western market. It was the same with lineage 1 & 2, so it woulnd't be abnormal for aion to follow suit.
I agree. That and the fact that my little time in Aion just didnt show me anything different than many other games that came before it.
Well, apparently they understand this market better than all other Western MMO developers bar Blizzard, cpp, and maybe turbine?
Also it's already obvious it's not going down the L1 and L2 way: Bots, gold sellers are constantly taken care of, its exp curve is more similar to WoW than L2 and sadly it's gonna keep on getting easier.
The only NON-western things in Aion are probably being able to open shops and the art style, and the "grind" to a lesser extent (there are ALOT of Western players that prefer it / don't mind it).