Home › Game Forums › Aion
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
is this a typical grind + forced cash shop Asian mmo?
ok, the game looks good, and thats why im waisting my time typing this.
i and many people have very bad experiences with korean/chinees mmos as they are known for massive planned scamming... they always lure people in first, hook them and then make items/mounts/XP scrolls available only for cash. so an average player ends up paying much more for the game than if he would have paid a monthly sub.
so my question is for those who have an idea on how this game is handled in korea and how it is gonna be here in NA, will it have a cash shop with any items other than social stuff?
Comments
This is a standard P2P MMO.
There is NO item mall, you don't pay for anything in-game, not even "fluff" items.
$15 monthly subscription and you can do as much as your gaming time allows you to do.
P2P, no cash shop. and so far, i felt like 1-10 went about as fast as it did in vanilla WoW, so not a big grind either.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
There is no cash shop. Its a typical subscription MMO like WoW, WAR, AoC ect. Cant comment on the grind to much because i didnt play in the last beta weekend to much, i heard its not that bad. Most exp will come from questing ala WoW, at least early on.
Never even heard of any kind of cash shop in this game to begin with atleast for the NA version. The grind is nothing bad at all. With 1.0 you had people getting 50 in 240 hrs played but in 1.5 patch they reduced the grind alot (basically once you got so high certain levels you had to grind because there wasnt many quest to do for them levels) with 1.5 they added so many quest you wont feel a real grind often but you will still have to xp and kill mobs to level.
in that case count me in !
glad to hear that
sorry, noob to this forum
In the past it was very like an Asian Grinder, but it suppose to change in NA.
As for the cash shop/RMT, knowing NCSoft, they will add stuff you can buy.
Get a life you freaking Gamer.....no no, you don't understand, I'm a Gamer, I have many lives!!
I think you're confusing this game with Champions Online (which has RMT on top of subscriptions). NCsoft does not change their subscription models, as far as I know.
Besides, there is no "In the past" part, this is a brand new game.
Maybe you should do some research on a company before making a fool of yourself.
Get a life you freaking Gamer.....no no, you don't understand, I'm a Gamer, I have many lives!!
Maybe you should be more specific before you resort to personal insults.
L2 has a very steep learning curve and that's it. Where's the item mall?
he may be confusing Guildwars as a game made by NCsoft, when it was only published by them. Guild wars has some cash-shop ish stuff (more char slots, more storage slots) but then again, it isn't a P2P MMO... or even a F2P MMO.
otherwise he just seems to not know what he is talking about. like you said, there is no "in the past" Aion has never been very grindy, cept the abyss point system, but I only say that from what i've heard, I havn't been able to get into that yet.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
Since I have to do the work for you:
Aion is not a brand new game, it has been out for almost a year in Korea November 25 2008 and 4 months in China April 19 2009, so for those of us who played other release, I can say in the past it was a grinder but since I don't play there anymore I can't say if it changed.
As for the item mall, just go on the NCSoft site and check their NCSoft Store, look in City of Heroes/Villains and Guild Wars (which has no monthly fee but you have to buy the game and expansion pack) and you will see the have RMT for fluff stuff too. It would be naive to think they won't do it with this game.
Get a life you freaking Gamer.....no no, you don't understand, I'm a Gamer, I have many lives!!
I think you are the one who doesn't know what your talking about as you clearly said.
Get a life you freaking Gamer.....no no, you don't understand, I'm a Gamer, I have many lives!!
i have nothing against a cash shop with SOCIAL and EXTRA stuff but when companies start selling items which are relevent to the core gameplay like monts/XP scrolls or potions etc... then i think it is a serious problem.
and sometimes they get even tricky, they launch the game with no cash shop or witha cash shop only for social clothing and extras but later they start selling XP stuff and unique mounts on the cash shop.
NO, might wanna do some reading.
Like the others already said, do some reading before you ask such basic questions as these.
It's a pay-to-play game, not free-to-play with an optional item mall. It's a huge success in Korea, and it is suspected that the game will do pretty well in US and EU regions also. At least it will be a "finished" product that is going to be released. Something that can't be said from numerous other releases from the past years.
Since I have to do the work for you:
Aion is not a brand new game, it has been out for almost a year in Korea November 25 2008 and 4 months in China April 19 2009, so for those of us who played other release, I can say in the past it was a grinder but since I don't play there anymore I can't say if it changed.
As for the item mall, just go on the NCSoft site and check their NCSoft Store, look in City of Heroes/Villains and Guild Wars (which has no monthly fee but you have to buy the game and expansion pack) and you will see the have RMT for fluff stuff too. It would be naive to think they won't do it with this game.
In CoH/CoV the boosters are actually a kind of expansion pack, but based on fluff rather than +10 levels and a new continent (does this remind you of anything?) and the content updates are completely free. It's not an item mall, you can't spend $1000 per month there to look cool and own everyone, you merely do a one time purchase and unlock all contained in that booster. If people QQ over that kind of "expansions", I can't see how Cryptic, having developed City of Heroes, would be making that idiot profit attempt called full money greed.
As for Guild Wars, where's the fluff items? I see extra storage, extra character slots and character renames/"barber", skill/pet unlock packs for the lazy ones. No in-game items, and they don't even have a monthly fee to begin with, just buy a campaign and play it forever.
There's Dungeon Runners, but it's F2P with an optional very cheap subscription to have some perks like stacking potions or using some items that above a rarity threshold may drop with membership requirement (or not).
There's Lineage 2, no item mall in there.
There's Exteel, but that isn't even a MMO and it's F2P, every third-person or first-person F2P shooter or anything like that offers an item mall with often some very gamebreaking options, but no one seems to care about those.
So, I fail to see a history of "item malls" in NCSoft, even fluff items are nowhere to exist. I actually highly support NCSoft because of this commercial approach with games, they rather shut down the game (Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault are examples) than change into F2P and give the power to those that want to spend money aka item malls.
This isn't Champions Online or Star Trek Online, there's no in-game items when you are already paying a monthly fee to access the game. NCSoft may even have ditched Cryptic because of their greedy view (speculation).
Since I have to do the work for you:
Aion is not a brand new game, it has been out for almost a year in Korea November 25 2008 and 4 months in China April 19 2009, so for those of us who played other release, I can say in the past it was a grinder but since I don't play there anymore I can't say if it changed.
As for the item mall, just go on the NCSoft site and check their NCSoft Store, look in City of Heroes/Villains and Guild Wars (which has no monthly fee but you have to buy the game and expansion pack) and you will see the have RMT for fluff stuff too. It would be naive to think they won't do it with this game.
You're like comparing apples with oranges I see.
Aion is a brand new game. Yes, it's been released in November in Korea. That makes it less than a year old. It's not released in the EU, and that's the version I'm going to be playing.
The only NCsoft game that was released in the west and had some steep exp curve was Lineage 2. The game has no item mall (and besides, the exp curve was lessened considerably since I last played it, 5 or so years ago). CoH and CoX do have an item mall for costumes and cosmetics. Never bothered with that game due to that. Guild Wars is not a subscription game, so as far as I'm concerned, they can strap on a item mall if they so wish.
Now, I would like to see some real argument regarding Aion and the possibility of item mall. Because, even if you look at NCsoft history, they are not known for changing their subscription methods (as opposed to SOE).
I will not continu to argue with you, because obviously you have something against CO. But reading your post make me laugh, CoX has RMT to buy fluff stuff, like wedding dress and emaote and CO has the same RMT model, fluff items and they both charge monthly fee. You are saying the same thing for CoX and CO but make CO look bad but it is the same. That's why I will not argu with you about this, people choose to understand what they want.
L2 is too old to change or add anything in a RMT store and all the other games are kind of free to play, but looking at the direction CoX took since Cryptic left, I will not be surprise if they a RMT shop in Aion like in CoX.
Get a life you freaking Gamer.....no no, you don't understand, I'm a Gamer, I have many lives!!
Actually, if you read the official announcement, CO is been confirmed to sell both cosmetic items and powers, so their item mall is a level beyond what the same company did with CoH/CoX.
with all due respect to posters in this thread, the big boy on the block, Wo_ (censored), didn't start out with beer steins, trading cards, miniature figures, casted players toons in pewter, hats, shirts, etc. Granted this isn't the same as in game scamming ala only available by purchase, but the trading card auction boom certainly seems to be in that direction.
Is the trading card game a US thing? I hardly see anything on gaming shops around me. Nor have I seen any special pet etc. from the card games when I was playing.
Any idea when the cash shop will be added? Is it going to be FTP when its implemented? Who do you know at NCSoft? What kind of stuff can we buy at the shop? Do you talk about things you know nothing about often?
I believe so, or you need to make a order to receive them outside of the US.
Thing is that for World of Warcraft TCG, there's "loot cards" that comes up on a X ratio from boosters and allows you to exchange the code in there for some vanity pet in WoW. It still isn't an item mall, and for me it looks more like an incentive to get the physical TCG (and make it popular) than to create an item mall as it isn't even close a direct in-game virtual item purchase. No cool armor or exclusive skills/equipment though, and no "game effect item that can also be acquired through normal gameplay".
I think we're getting too off-topic here, the guy tried to say NCSoft has a history on turning P2P games into item mall fests, but failed partially, NCSoft has no item mall in their MMOs, just the MTs I previously pointed out that in no way can drain money like an item mall in-game (direct in-game item sales) and most are common. So the answer for this topic still remains as "standard P2P" in the short and medium-distant future, especially because Aion is far from a "declining" state (it isn't even out here yet, heh).
I think you are the one who doesn't know what your talking about as you clearly said.
I was talking about the abyss point grind, not the level grind. The level grind itself is pretty much not there. its even eaiser to level in Aion than vanilla WoW. the fact that I got to 20 in 1 weekend, without ever having played the game before, shows there is no grind. and that was version 1.0, the original launch. so it never used to be a grind like you say. I just don't want to comment on abyss points (which are actually optional, you can PvP without ever farming for points) because i've only played the game to 25.
shoo troll.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.