Imo lots of games this size which will inevitably pull in large numbers of initial subscribers will bleed a lot of them like many games after the first few months. I read somewhere about the average mmo player sticking with their game for only 3 months, the question will be if they can level out at an acceptable number and get new recruits to replace the loses. I would hazard a guess that Aion also had a larger than average number of players that still play WoW try it out, which I think can only make it worse, noone leaves that wowcrack for good The reviews have all been pretty good and I hope they keep a loyal following it would be nice to see where they take the direction of the game in the future.
Our expectations are so low for MMORPG's these days. It's just assumed that you'll lose a huge chunk of your playerbase after the initial month.
I can't wait for an MMORPG that actually GROWS after launch. That has happened before, you know.
I think there's a parallel to be drawn with film. There was a time where all mmo's were cult and cult starts small and grows. But games with enormous budgets in the 10's of millions and way, way beyond beyond are like the block buster. They rely massively on that innitial surge on opening weekend, then sometimes it is genuinely a very good product and will get more people turning up after word of mouth has done its work. But more often than not word of mouth cancels out the insane advertising and marketing and most are just, meh.
There didn't used to be these blockbusters on the scale they are at now and we were just used to hearing what a game was like and joining if it sounded good. Now it's all marketing bs and finding the wheat through the chaff is that much harder.
----- The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
I think there's a parallel to be drawn with film. There was a time where all mmo's were cult and cult starts small and grows. But games with enormous budgets in the 10's of millions and way, way beyond beyond are like the block buster. They rely massively on that innitial surge on opening weekend, then sometimes it is genuinely a very good product and will get more people turning up after word of mouth has done its work. But more often than not word of mouth cancels out the insane advertising and marketing and most are just, meh. There didn't used to be these blockbusters on the scale they are at now and we were just used to hearing what a game was like and joining if it sounded good. Now it's all marketing bs and finding the wheat through the chaff is that much harder.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this post.
You know what is even more pathethic? People getting so obsessed and desperate, that instead of quoting you on the forum and come up with counter arguments, they resort to attack you through Personal Messages in a pathethic way: What a loser you seem to be. Do you think people will quit because of your Lies??
Now go back to playing war and don't worry what other people are enjoying. It's like you trolls think you get paid fir hating a game
Just received that in PM from the user XXXX . That is now the AION community.
LOL! You Troll you!
I have also been expecting this to happen (server pop decreasing). It is just unfortunate for it to happen so soon. Any chance NC Soft will bring back Richard Garriott to help fix it? (I kid I kid!)
- Case: Thermaltake Kandalf Black Chassis - CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2GHz (OC'd 4.2GHz on Water Cooling) - Memory: Mushkin 8Gb (4x 2Gb) DDR3 1600Mhz - HDD: Dual Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200 RPM - GFX: (2) XFX Radeon HD 5870 in CrossFire - New upgrade!
"I like wow, I like aion and I like AoC all for different reasons.....the later cause i get to see boobs, but still its a reason!!" - Sawlstone
It may lose a huge chunk of casuals tomorrow but I can tell you NCSoft aren't sweatin it. They got their money and profits from the initials sales and that's what counts to them in the end. What the players see as a failure often times isn't a failure to the sales department at a gaming company.
Why not suggest to the developers to remove the exp bar and make all the characters max level? Because thats what the exp bar is for to gauge how experienced you are with your character. Its like learning martial arts you get colored belts to represent your level in that discipline. If your a black belt right away do you think you can defeat a real black belt? Thats why some westerners suck in pvp coz you all lack the skills to handle your character well. You all want instant level ups, if thats what you want then you can always play WoW.
I think it's a combination of server increased capacity, people playing more normal hours than they used to when the game launched and a good portion of people starting to leave now that the box month is nearing over. The title of this thread is of course hilarious, since most MMOs can expect at best a 30% retention after the box month. 50% retention would have been a tremendous success, which I doubt NCsoft will achieve.
Maybe most recent MMOs, but I think that's because they all sucked. AOC had a 50% retention rate after 3 months and was reviled as a total failure. Suddenly that's a tremendous success?
Currently as of 7:06 EST every server is Recommended and Zikel is High. So 1 High server and now it's peak time on East Coast. This can be attributed to the fact NCSoft has increased the capacity for each server. Also it's midterms for me right now in Canada and I haven't had a chance to log in all week so maybe others are facing similar issues? Midterms and finals have been known to reduce the amount of players playing any game at this time, it would be a good idea to compare to WoW this week in comparison to a month ago.
True there are those who are going to quit after the free month and good luck to them but other MMO's in recent history have lost far more than what Aion might during it's first month. People are complaining they crash in highly populated areas whereas a normal MMO release nowadays you have much bigger problems than that.
Currently as of 7:06 EST every server is Recommended and Zikel is High. So 1 High server and now it's peak time on East Coast. This can be attributed to the fact NCSoft has increased the capacity for each server. Also it's midterms for me right now in Canada and I haven't had a chance to log in all week so maybe others are facing similar issues? Midterms and finals have been known to reduce the amount of players playing any game at this time, it would be a good idea to compare to WoW this week in comparison to a month ago. True there are those who are going to quit after the free month and good luck to them but other MMO's in recent history have lost far more than what Aion might during it's first month. People are complaining they crash in highly populated areas whereas a normal MMO release nowadays you have much bigger problems than that.
It would make absolutely no sense to increase server capacity days before the free month ends. It obviously really gives a very bad impression about how the game is doing.
BTW, the EXACT same thing happened at Warhammer, except Mythic lied and said they actually did increase capacity (they lied often). Big drop days before and around when free month ended.
I don't think it's going to be as bad as Warhammer, but then again I actually ended up subbing to that game for a few months and couldn't bring myself to play Aion for a week or so. Too grindy.
I tend to find that around about 9pm - 10pm EST is when the game and server information peaks. So get the information at those times instead of posting information taken midday or early afternoon. Also don't forget to take server information from the weekends too because most people do work and do have jobs.
If I read one more person saying that this game is "too hard" that you have to run around to find quests, I'm going to smack someone. This game is trash. There is literally no element of this game that is worth paying for. The quests are hard to find because there nearly isn't enough of them out there. The game has four zones to each race. The party aspect of this game is inadequate when it comes to any sort of PVE. This is why the numbers are dropping so fast, and yes we did see this coming. There are games out there that aren't rated 8.7 and put up on the table more than just "mass PVP." There plenty of games out there that offer mass PVP and they are all f2p and offer the same rareity of quests and grind.
In closing, this game is complete trash and not worth any one subscription. Unless, howver you just feel like sitting there grinding and occasioanly grinding into quests so you can advance that extra level to be more formiable in PVP combat.
As far as I know this game doesn't offer anything that rivals games already on the market. I.E. LOTRO, AOC, WAR, WOW. The population will indeed conitnue to drop, and I fear that the only reason why the MMO genre is dying like most people state is because of the players themselves. Riding the band wagon on any new release and then jump ship quickly and the cry about it for months to come if there are any issues slight or major. And no, I am not going to give AION time to completely revamp itself. What they could do and this would please most of the aion fan boys is rip apart the combat system and stick the models and textures on a completely new product.
"Everything the light touches is our kingdom" -- Mufasa ---
I would say pretty much all mmorpg's look like that at off times, except for WoW of course. You will find at least 10+ servers at high/full no matter what time of the day in WoW but that's a different beast. However looking at the other MMOs there's really no difference to what you're seeing with Aion's off hours.
I hate this message board, im really not sure why i come here anymore. Too much drama.
Anyways, if you like the game play it... if you dont, thats great, go do something else other than sit on the message forum for it bashing it.
Your free to voice your opinion, and everyone else is free not to care. I will continue to pay for this game every month until i dont like it anymore. Once i dont like it anymore i will stop paying for it and continue living my life, not yelling about the worst trash ever blah blah blah.
I pretty much quit Aion for a MMORPG thats like 15 years old, but I find it more fun than Aion has ever been for me. Anyway it seems my prediction was right in the fact that less than half the people playing their free month would actually stay once billing came around.
I pretty much quit Aion for a MMORPG thats like 15 years old, but I find it more fun than Aion has ever been for me. Anyway it seems my prediction was right in the fact that less than half the people playing their free month would actually stay once billing came around.
i played the beta and saw that Aion sucked and picked up eve again
I just checked the server list at 8:15 cst time. All the east coast servers are full except the new one they released to help with ques. The west coast server have zero that are full at this time but it's only 6:15pm pst and will check again in a hour or so.
I just checked the server list at 8:15 cst time. All the east coast servers are full except the new one they released to help with ques. The west coast server have zero that are full at this time but it's only 6:15pm pst and will check again in a hour or so.
LOL I was going to say the same thing. Several full atm.
I just checked the server list at 8:15 cst time. All the east coast servers are full except the new one they released to help with ques. The west coast server have zero that are full at this time but it's only 6:15pm pst and will check again in a hour or so.
LOL I was going to say the same thing. Several full atm.
Ofc every server is full. I wonder how some of this ppl still come here to say such idiocys when its so easy to prove their trolling.
Guess what guys, you are gonna have to "swallow" Aion's success, nothing you can say will change that
Comments
Our expectations are so low for MMORPG's these days. It's just assumed that you'll lose a huge chunk of your playerbase after the initial month.
I can't wait for an MMORPG that actually GROWS after launch. That has happened before, you know.
I think there's a parallel to be drawn with film. There was a time where all mmo's were cult and cult starts small and grows. But games with enormous budgets in the 10's of millions and way, way beyond beyond are like the block buster. They rely massively on that innitial surge on opening weekend, then sometimes it is genuinely a very good product and will get more people turning up after word of mouth has done its work. But more often than not word of mouth cancels out the insane advertising and marketing and most are just, meh.
There didn't used to be these blockbusters on the scale they are at now and we were just used to hearing what a game was like and joining if it sounded good. Now it's all marketing bs and finding the wheat through the chaff is that much harder.
-----
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Once the free 30 days are up the OP's topic will have some validity
I think you hit the nail on the head with this post.
LOL! You Troll you!
I have also been expecting this to happen (server pop decreasing). It is just unfortunate for it to happen so soon. Any chance NC Soft will bring back Richard Garriott to help fix it? (I kid I kid!)
- Case: Thermaltake Kandalf Black Chassis
- CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2GHz (OC'd 4.2GHz on Water Cooling)
- Memory: Mushkin 8Gb (4x 2Gb) DDR3 1600Mhz
- HDD: Dual Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200 RPM
- GFX: (2) XFX Radeon HD 5870 in CrossFire - New upgrade!
"I like wow, I like aion and I like AoC all for different reasons.....the later cause i get to see boobs, but still its a reason!!" - Sawlstone
It may lose a huge chunk of casuals tomorrow but I can tell you NCSoft aren't sweatin it. They got their money and profits from the initials sales and that's what counts to them in the end. What the players see as a failure often times isn't a failure to the sales department at a gaming company.
Why not suggest to the developers to remove the exp bar and make all the characters max level? Because thats what the exp bar is for to gauge how experienced you are with your character. Its like learning martial arts you get colored belts to represent your level in that discipline. If your a black belt right away do you think you can defeat a real black belt? Thats why some westerners suck in pvp coz you all lack the skills to handle your character well. You all want instant level ups, if thats what you want then you can always play WoW.
5:00 PM CST
When I said "we" I was talking about the people that live in occident...
it's pretty sad when I find Mafia Wars on Facebook more fun...
The OP and this thread just reminded me why I hardly come to this website anymore.
The Brave Do Not Fear The Grave
Maybe most recent MMOs, but I think that's because they all sucked. AOC had a 50% retention rate after 3 months and was reviled as a total failure. Suddenly that's a tremendous success?
Currently as of 7:06 EST every server is Recommended and Zikel is High. So 1 High server and now it's peak time on East Coast. This can be attributed to the fact NCSoft has increased the capacity for each server. Also it's midterms for me right now in Canada and I haven't had a chance to log in all week so maybe others are facing similar issues? Midterms and finals have been known to reduce the amount of players playing any game at this time, it would be a good idea to compare to WoW this week in comparison to a month ago.
True there are those who are going to quit after the free month and good luck to them but other MMO's in recent history have lost far more than what Aion might during it's first month. People are complaining they crash in highly populated areas whereas a normal MMO release nowadays you have much bigger problems than that.
It would make absolutely no sense to increase server capacity days before the free month ends. It obviously really gives a very bad impression about how the game is doing.
BTW, the EXACT same thing happened at Warhammer, except Mythic lied and said they actually did increase capacity (they lied often). Big drop days before and around when free month ended.
I don't think it's going to be as bad as Warhammer, but then again I actually ended up subbing to that game for a few months and couldn't bring myself to play Aion for a week or so. Too grindy.
Here is what the servers look like at 8pm EST.
I tend to find that around about 9pm - 10pm EST is when the game and server information peaks. So get the information at those times instead of posting information taken midday or early afternoon. Also don't forget to take server information from the weekends too because most people do work and do have jobs.
If I read one more person saying that this game is "too hard" that you have to run around to find quests, I'm going to smack someone. This game is trash. There is literally no element of this game that is worth paying for. The quests are hard to find because there nearly isn't enough of them out there. The game has four zones to each race. The party aspect of this game is inadequate when it comes to any sort of PVE. This is why the numbers are dropping so fast, and yes we did see this coming. There are games out there that aren't rated 8.7 and put up on the table more than just "mass PVP." There plenty of games out there that offer mass PVP and they are all f2p and offer the same rareity of quests and grind.
In closing, this game is complete trash and not worth any one subscription. Unless, howver you just feel like sitting there grinding and occasioanly grinding into quests so you can advance that extra level to be more formiable in PVP combat.
As far as I know this game doesn't offer anything that rivals games already on the market. I.E. LOTRO, AOC, WAR, WOW. The population will indeed conitnue to drop, and I fear that the only reason why the MMO genre is dying like most people state is because of the players themselves. Riding the band wagon on any new release and then jump ship quickly and the cry about it for months to come if there are any issues slight or major. And no, I am not going to give AION time to completely revamp itself. What they could do and this would please most of the aion fan boys is rip apart the combat system and stick the models and textures on a completely new product.
"Everything the light touches is our kingdom" -- Mufasa
---
"Everything the light touches is our kingdom" -- Mufasa
---
I would say pretty much all mmorpg's look like that at off times, except for WoW of course. You will find at least 10+ servers at high/full no matter what time of the day in WoW but that's a different beast. However looking at the other MMOs there's really no difference to what you're seeing with Aion's off hours.
I hate this message board, im really not sure why i come here anymore. Too much drama.
Anyways, if you like the game play it... if you dont, thats great, go do something else other than sit on the message forum for it bashing it.
Your free to voice your opinion, and everyone else is free not to care. I will continue to pay for this game every month until i dont like it anymore. Once i dont like it anymore i will stop paying for it and continue living my life, not yelling about the worst trash ever blah blah blah.
omg u all are retards...they increased server cap .....lol
Bamanen
Lords of the Dead
Manchutran
I pretty much quit Aion for a MMORPG thats like 15 years old, but I find it more fun than Aion has ever been for me. Anyway it seems my prediction was right in the fact that less than half the people playing their free month would actually stay once billing came around.
i played the beta and saw that Aion sucked and picked up eve again
I just checked the server list at 8:15 cst time. All the east coast servers are full except the new one they released to help with ques. The west coast server have zero that are full at this time but it's only 6:15pm pst and will check again in a hour or so.
LOL I was going to say the same thing. Several full atm.
LOL I was going to say the same thing. Several full atm.
Ofc every server is full. I wonder how some of this ppl still come here to say such idiocys when its so easy to prove their trolling.
Guess what guys, you are gonna have to "swallow" Aion's success, nothing you can say will change that