I seriously doubt this game will have anywhere near 100k players in the US and Eu in 6 months. More like around 50k. Is that successful? For most MMO companies it is.
Here's the quote from MMOdata.
"Because of this, I have set a new estimate for Aion worldwide at 3,6 million subscribers, this will be included in my upcomming version 2.1 of the MMOData charts."
"I believe this is a conservative estimate, and I would not be surprised that the actual number is larger, but since NCSoft is no longer providing subscription numbers in their quarterly reports, I have no choice but to be conservative."
Chew on that...
"MMOData.net cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here as it is based on various sources which could be incomplete, inaccurate or otherwise unreliable. Furthermore, all estimates are the opinion of MMOData.net and should be treated as such."
I can estimate a whole bunch of numbers too but without NCSoft releasing the actual numbers it's meaningless.
Just like when WoW releases their sub totals... but pads it for people who have multiple accounts or people who have de-activated their account. They don't actually count ACTIVE subscriptions in their totals...
You mean like that right?
No, I mean that numbers on MMOdata are just estimates and should not be used as gospel.
As far as WoW goes, if I remember correctly, Blizzard only counts active subscriptions and does not count deactivated or trial accounts.
Either way, what does WoW subscriptions and the way Blizzard reports them have to do with Aion and NCSoft? We're talking about Aion here. Blizzard could be outright lying about their numbers and it would still have no meaning in this discussion. Please stop trying to derail topics with your WoW hate.
You're just trolling now
I played WoW for years... I don't hate WoW at all. You were discrediting Maizee's comments because it wasn't officially released. I was saying, EVEN when a company does officially release something (such as Blizzard does with it's WoW numbers) it isn't 100% accurate either.
They don't take into account their free trials but they do with their subs... active, non active, doesn't matter. For example, I cancelled my sub a few months ago but Im still willing to bet that "my" sub would be counted towards their total "number of subs"...
No place has actual 100% hard-data/facts unless you actually work for the company and pull that information from their database on a regular basis... please stop trying to derail topics with your lack of logic.
They actually do take into account free trials and inactive subscriptions. At least Blizzard does. Either way, I'll take Blizzard's numbers over third party estimates.
We should all be happy that a game finally had a good lanunch. Hoep for the best with the Aion community
The problem is that the next coming mmo devs will look upon this and do the old ctrl-c, ctrl-v. Something that we mmo junkies have learned to hate (and that is why we have the most fun flame wars at this forum).
Originally posted by mmaize Please go back and read the entire thread and then if you still need to ask your question, I'll try to explain again. The sentence stated "Estimates are still estimates even when made by a professional" an argument made as a retort to the above points that based upon nearly all information sources (I just happened to use MMOdata as mine but I can source others if you like) and reviews, Aion is anticipated to break all initial assumptions on subscriptions including the ridiculous 100k assumption that started today's conversation considering that my guess is that it highly unlikely that the other 3 million plus projected subscriptions world wide are soley from the Asian market. The only issue I have with the rest of the post is that if we are all discussing our opinions then it's probably a good idea that people not post about Aion's failure without having some industry altering facts to base that opinion off of. Sure they can post it, but they are going to get slapped in the face with the reality of what is actually going on in the industry, educated estimates or not as that is the standard for measuring all MMOs.
If I remember correctly, the 3.5 million subscribers thing started with an IGN article. I haven't seen anything official from NCSoft stating that as fact. Although, to be honest, I didn't really look for it, so it may very well be the case.
While I agree that 100k subscribers is a bit silly at this point, it may very well become that, at least in the west anyway, if NCSoft doesn't address certain issues like bots and crashes, etc.
Originally posted by mmaize Please go back and read the entire thread and then if you still need to ask your question, I'll try to explain again. The sentence stated "Estimates are still estimates even when made by a professional" an argument made as a retort to the above points that based upon nearly all information sources (I just happened to use MMOdata as mine but I can source others if you like) and reviews, Aion is anticipated to break all initial assumptions on subscriptions including the ridiculous 100k assumption that started today's conversation considering that my guess is that it highly unlikely that the other 3 million plus projected subscriptions world wide are soley from the Asian market. The only issue I have with the rest of the post is that if we are all discussing our opinions then it's probably a good idea that people not post about Aion's failure without having some industry altering facts to base that opinion off of. Sure they can post it, but they are going to get slapped in the face with the reality of what is actually going on in the industry, educated estimates or not as that is the standard for measuring all MMOs.
If I remember correctly, the 3.5 million subscribers thing started with an IGN article. I haven't seen anything official from NCSoft stating that as fact. Although, to be honest, I didn't really look for it, so it may very well be the case.
While I agree that 100k subscribers is a bit silly at this point, it may very well become that, at least in the west anyway, if NCSoft doesn't address certain issues like bots and crashes, etc.
You won't see anything from NCsoft regarding the actual numbers anymore as they no longer post their subscription numbers in their quarterly reports.
As for your second point, I asked this question in another post but I'll repeat it here. What bots? The reason I ask this is because prior to the patch I would totally agree that there was a dire..yes dire..issue with regard to bots in fact I'd say nearly game breaking or at the least extremely disturbing. But post patch I may see one bot spam per login at most.
So do you mean the bots that exist in game that are no longer able to spam the chat channels but are still farming for gold and crashing the economy? Well you just described every MMO out there as they all have the exact same issue including WoW which is one of the most famous MMOs that probably spawned the gold farming industry. Companies spawned from WoW gold selling.
And no this isn't a defensive post, it's an actual question so I can clarify what the bot problem still is. Crashes? Absolutely a problem when your trying to raid and the fact that you are booted outside the fortress into a mob of the enemy is insult to injury.
I seriously doubt this game will have anywhere near 100k players in the US and Eu in 6 months. More like around 50k. Is that successful? For most MMO companies it is.
Here's the quote from MMOdata.
"Because of this, I have set a new estimate for Aion worldwide at 3,6 million subscribers, this will be included in my upcomming version 2.1 of the MMOData charts."
"I believe this is a conservative estimate, and I would not be surprised that the actual number is larger, but since NCSoft is no longer providing subscription numbers in their quarterly reports, I have no choice but to be conservative."
Chew on that...
Nah you chew on it, because I mentioned nothing about the Asian Internet cafe's that make up the bulk of Aion's customers. All I am concerned with is the US/EU market. Sorry to rain on your parade.
I seriously doubt this game will have anywhere near 100k players in the US and Eu in 6 months. More like around 50k. Is that successful? For most MMO companies it is.
Here's the quote from MMOdata.
"Because of this, I have set a new estimate for Aion worldwide at 3,6 million subscribers, this will be included in my upcomming version 2.1 of the MMOData charts."
"I believe this is a conservative estimate, and I would not be surprised that the actual number is larger, but since NCSoft is no longer providing subscription numbers in their quarterly reports, I have no choice but to be conservative."
Chew on that...
Nah you chew on it, because I mentioned nothing about the Asian Internet cafe's that make up the bulk of Aion's customers. All I am concerned with is the US/EU market. Sorry to rain on your parade.
Actually the parade marches on. If you would have read the entire thread your assesment of the US/EU market was pretty much debunked. But thanks for playing.
I seriously doubt this game will have anywhere near 100k players in the US and Eu in 6 months. More like around 50k. Is that successful? For most MMO companies it is.
Here's the quote from MMOdata.
"Because of this, I have set a new estimate for Aion worldwide at 3,6 million subscribers, this will be included in my upcomming version 2.1 of the MMOData charts."
"I believe this is a conservative estimate, and I would not be surprised that the actual number is larger, but since NCSoft is no longer providing subscription numbers in their quarterly reports, I have no choice but to be conservative."
Chew on that...
Nah you chew on it, because I mentioned nothing about the Asian Internet cafe's that make up the bulk of Aion's customers. All I am concerned with is the US/EU market. Sorry to rain on your parade.
Actually the parade marches on. If you would have read the entire thread your assesment of the US/EU market was pretty much debunked. But thanks for playing.
Let's talk in 6 months, until then...neither of us can say a word. I believe I did say in 6 months. This game will go the way of Lineage and Lineage 2, neither did well in the US/EU - at least not like most MMO's such as EQ, DAoC, AC and such. I am thinking that Aion will at the most hover between 50k and 75k if that...is that a bad thing...not for an NCSoft P2P game in the US/EU market. You people that think it will have upwards of 250k to 300k in 6 months are seriously delusional...the game does not have any staying power. It is shallow and there are much better games on the market than Aion - hell Perfect World is better than Aion.
I seriously doubt this game will have anywhere near 100k players in the US and Eu in 6 months. More like around 50k. Is that successful? For most MMO companies it is.
Here's the quote from MMOdata.
"Because of this, I have set a new estimate for Aion worldwide at 3,6 million subscribers, this will be included in my upcomming version 2.1 of the MMOData charts."
"I believe this is a conservative estimate, and I would not be surprised that the actual number is larger, but since NCSoft is no longer providing subscription numbers in their quarterly reports, I have no choice but to be conservative."
Chew on that...
Nah you chew on it, because I mentioned nothing about the Asian Internet cafe's that make up the bulk of Aion's customers. All I am concerned with is the US/EU market. Sorry to rain on your parade.
Actually the parade marches on. If you would have read the entire thread your assesment of the US/EU market was pretty much debunked. But thanks for playing.
Let's talk in 6 months, until then...neither of us can say a word. I believe I did say in 6 months. This game will go the way of Lineage and Lineage 2, neither did well in the US/EU - at least not like most MMO's such as EQ, DAoC, AC and such. I am thinking that Aion will at the most hover between 50k and 75k if that...is that a bad thing...not for an NCSoft P2P game in the US/EU market. You people that think it will have upwards of 250k to 300k in 6 months are seriously delusional...the game does not have any staying power. It is shallow and there are much better games on the market than Aion - hell Perfect World is better than Aion.
Kind of funny, leave this place for two weeks and the same people are complaining about the same issues as before.
It's a Jeep thing. . . _______ |___| \_______/ = |||||| = |X| \*........*/ |X| |X|_________|X| You wouldn't understand
Originally posted by mmaize Please go back and read the entire thread and then if you still need to ask your question, I'll try to explain again. The sentence stated "Estimates are still estimates even when made by a professional" an argument made as a retort to the above points that based upon nearly all information sources (I just happened to use MMOdata as mine but I can source others if you like) and reviews, Aion is anticipated to break all initial assumptions on subscriptions including the ridiculous 100k assumption that started today's conversation considering that my guess is that it highly unlikely that the other 3 million plus projected subscriptions world wide are soley from the Asian market. The only issue I have with the rest of the post is that if we are all discussing our opinions then it's probably a good idea that people not post about Aion's failure without having some industry altering facts to base that opinion off of. Sure they can post it, but they are going to get slapped in the face with the reality of what is actually going on in the industry, educated estimates or not as that is the standard for measuring all MMOs.
If I remember correctly, the 3.5 million subscribers thing started with an IGN article. I haven't seen anything official from NCSoft stating that as fact. Although, to be honest, I didn't really look for it, so it may very well be the case.
While I agree that 100k subscribers is a bit silly at this point, it may very well become that, at least in the west anyway, if NCSoft doesn't address certain issues like bots and crashes, etc.
You won't see anything from NCsoft regarding the actual numbers anymore as they no longer post their subscription numbers in their quarterly reports.
As for your second point, I asked this question in another post but I'll repeat it here. What bots? The reason I ask this is because prior to the patch I would totally agree that there was a dire..yes dire..issue with regard to bots in fact I'd say nearly game breaking or at the least extremely disturbing. But post patch I may see one bot spam per login at most.
So do you mean the bots that exist in game that are no longer able to spam the chat channels but are still farming for gold and crashing the economy? Well you just described every MMO out there as they all have the exact same issue including WoW which is one of the most famous MMOs that probably spawned the gold farming industry. Companies spawned from WoW gold selling.
And no this isn't a defensive post, it's an actual question so I can clarify what the bot problem still is. Crashes? Absolutely a problem when your trying to raid and the fact that you are booted outside the fortress into a mob of the enemy is insult to injury.
You're confusing bots with spammers. Spammers were dealt with for the most part. Although every once in a while they do manage to spam chat channels for a bit, they have now resorted to setting up private shops with their spam in all major hubs. Which, albeit a bit annoying is not as bad as the constant chat spam.
What I'm talking about is bots. Bots are player characters that are being controlled by a program which pretty much plays the game instead of the player. While some of the bots are legitimate players, most are gold farmers with gibberish names like "wqqeaD." You can tell if the player character is a gold farmer bot simply because most don't use titles and are usually much higher in level than the mobs they are farming.
What happens is there would be one or two, sometimes a whole bunch of these bots (I once saw a whole legion of like 10 people farming one area), usually gladiators, although I have seen a few assassins as well, and they would be farming mobs in a certain area. If the mobs they are farming happen to be the ones you need for a quest, good luck completing it as very often, they can somehow target the mob before it actually spawns and begin attacking it as soon as it appears. Even if you do manage to attack the mob first, because of the way kill rights work in Aion and because the bots are much higher level than you or the mob are, they do bulk of the damage.
You're confusing bots with spammers. Spammers were dealt with for the most part. Although every once in a while they do manage to spam chat channels for a bit, they have now resorted to setting up private shops with their spam in all major hubs. Which, albeit a bit annoying is not as bad as the constant chat spam. What I'm talking about is bots. Bots are player characters that are being controlled by a program which pretty much plays the game instead of the player. While some of the bots are legitimate players, most are gold farmers with gibberish names like "wqqeaD." You can tell if the player character is a gold farmer bot simply because most don't use titles and are usually much higher in level than the mobs they are farming. What happens is there would be one or two, sometimes a whole bunch of these bots (I once saw a whole legion of like 10 people farming one area), usually gladiators, although I have seen a few assassins as well, and they would be farming mobs in a certain area. If the mobs they are farming happen to be the ones you need for a quest, good luck completing it as very often, they can somehow target the mob before it actually spawns and begin attacking it as soon as it appears. Even if you do manage to attack the mob first, because of the way kill rights work in Aion and because the bots are much higher level than you or the mob are, they do bulk of the damage.
Well I'm not confusing the two so much as most people blend the two together since it's bots that are used to spam the chat list but yes I do appreciate the distinction..and I mean that sincerely because it helps me talk to the issue that your bringing to the table.
So now that we are talking about the bots that run around the world farming gold and other resources, I completely agree that it is a problem for a multitude of reasons from it's effect on the economy to unbalancing the game by providing/stealing items to/from players who either could have gotten said items or for those that buy the farmers gold/kinah, allows them to max out their stats to gain advantages over the average player.
My only issue is how can anyone's expectation for Aion or NCSoft be any different from any other MMO out there who has to deal, battle, tolerate, or (in some cases due to the additional accounts it generates) allow this to happen? Reason being is that it effects nearly every single major commerical MMO out there.
You're confusing bots with spammers. Spammers were dealt with for the most part. Although every once in a while they do manage to spam chat channels for a bit, they have now resorted to setting up private shops with their spam in all major hubs. Which, albeit a bit annoying is not as bad as the constant chat spam. What I'm talking about is bots. Bots are player characters that are being controlled by a program which pretty much plays the game instead of the player. While some of the bots are legitimate players, most are gold farmers with gibberish names like "wqqeaD." You can tell if the player character is a gold farmer bot simply because most don't use titles and are usually much higher in level than the mobs they are farming. What happens is there would be one or two, sometimes a whole bunch of these bots (I once saw a whole legion of like 10 people farming one area), usually gladiators, although I have seen a few assassins as well, and they would be farming mobs in a certain area. If the mobs they are farming happen to be the ones you need for a quest, good luck completing it as very often, they can somehow target the mob before it actually spawns and begin attacking it as soon as it appears. Even if you do manage to attack the mob first, because of the way kill rights work in Aion and because the bots are much higher level than you or the mob are, they do bulk of the damage.
Well I'm not confusing the two so much as most people blend the two together since it's bots that are used to spam the chat list but yes I do appreciate the distinction..and I mean that sincerely because it helps me talk to the issue that your bringing to the table.
So now that we are talking about the bots that run around the world farming gold and other resources, I completely agree that it is a problem for a multitude of reasons from it's effect on the economy to unbalancing the game by providing/stealing items to/from players who either could have gotten said items or for those that buy the farmers gold/kinah, allows them to max out their stats to gain advantages over the average player.
My only issue is how can anyone's expectation for Aion or NCSoft be any different from any other MMO out there who has to deal, battle, tolerate, or (in some cases due to the additional accounts it generates) allow this to happen? Reason being is that it effects nearly every single major commerical MMO out there.
No... just Aion.
Aion is the only MMO where gold sellers and bots exist. WoW certainly never had such things - especially at launch....
Originally posted by mmaize My only issue is how can anyone's expectation for Aion or NCSoft be any different from any other MMO out there who has to deal, battle, tolerate, or (in some cases due to the additional accounts it generates) allow this to happen? Reason being is that it effects nearly every single major commerical MMO out there.
I don't think anyone expects Aion to avoid the issue, but they expect NCSoft to take swifter action against them.
So far they are moving too slowly for player tastes, without even bothering to communicate to the players what might be the reason for delays of over a week to take an obvious spammer or bot out of the game.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Originally posted by mmaize My only issue is how can anyone's expectation for Aion or NCSoft be any different from any other MMO out there who has to deal, battle, tolerate, or (in some cases due to the additional accounts it generates) allow this to happen? Reason being is that it effects nearly every single major commerical MMO out there.
I don't think anyone expects Aion to avoid the issue, but they expect NCSoft to take swifter action against them.
So far they are moving too slowly for player tastes, without even bothering to communicate to the players what might be the reason for delays of over a week to take an obvious spammer or bot out of the game.
Ok so what was WoW's response that qualifies as quick action? And be careful because you should know based upon my posting that I already know and am ready to post this . So before you go there, again, the question is what has any other company done...REALLY...to swiftly and effectively deal with this issue? I think we all know the answer.
They actually do take into account free trials and inactive subscriptions. At least Blizzard does. Either way, I'll take Blizzard's numbers over third party estimates.
No they don't. It's current, active subscriptions.
Katsma is Lithuanian for 'he who drinks used douche fluid'.
They actually do take into account free trials and inactive subscriptions. At least Blizzard does. Either way, I'll take Blizzard's numbers over third party estimates.
No they don't. It's current, active subscriptions.
I will give heartless this...Blizzards sources are better than the majority of games out there with regard to making estimates on their subscriptions. That being said, it's still an estimate just a better one but when your waist, shoulders, and heads above the competition it doesn't really mean much considering it hold the number #1 spot with the best sources when everyone else falls far below that with fewer or less sound sources from which to compare.
But when there is nothing else to go on and the standard is what it is, so long as the standard is the same for everyone in terms of the methodology around figuring out MMO subscriptions then that's the measurement we have to go on and anything else not on that same level of analytics is just guess work and opinion...and personally I'll take analytics.
But seriously, the fact that everyone comes out and makes threads JUST to say, "Hey guys look the game still has people! LOOK LOOK SEE DO YOU SEE I TOLD YOU YOU SEE?!" says something. Either you are worried that the game is going downhill and want to prevent it by making people not leave, or you really care too much. If you love the game just play the damn thing instead of worrying about others saying its dying.
But seriously, the fact that everyone comes out and makes threads JUST to say, "Hey guys look the game still has people! LOOK LOOK SEE DO YOU SEE I TOLD YOU YOU SEE?!" says something. Either you are worried that the game is going downhill and want to prevent it by making people not leave, or you really care too much. If you love the game just play the damn thing instead of worrying about others saying its dying.
Someone could take these threads, take every post, and toss them into MS Word, and replace the word 'Aion' with 'WAR', and it would read exactly like some of the threads last year.
No lie.
Katsma is Lithuanian for 'he who drinks used douche fluid'.
It won't be a WoW killer, it's to hard for that. Most people who play WoW like the "click here and win" stuff. Having said that, I do think aion will do well. They are making a very valient attempt to fight bots and actually making progress. It's definately in a better position than any other mmo released since WoW.
It won't be a WoW killer, it's to hard for that. Most people who play WoW like the "click here and win" stuff. Having said that, I do think aion will do well. They are making a very valient attempt to fight bots and actually making progress. It's definately in a better position than any other mmo released since WoW.
Tell me what's so 'hard' about Aion, in comparison to WoW.
Katsma is Lithuanian for 'he who drinks used douche fluid'.
Aion is the only MMO where gold sellers and bots exist. WoW certainly never had such things - especially at launch....
/end sarcasm
There you go again bringing WoW into the conversation. The gold spam and bots in WoW were never as numerous as they are in Aion. They are also taken care of by Blizzard extremely fast. Whereas in Aion, I see the same bots farming the same spots days on end.
Look, the fact of the matter is that Aion has a bot and spammer problem. Whether or not WoW had it doesn't matter. We're discussing Aion and things that may influence the game's user base.
Edit: you know, I don't understand this mentality. People need to stop using WoW's shortcomings to excuse the problems with their game. WoW is a 5 year old game. Aion, as a game which was created after WoW, should have been designed to minimize the problems that WoW had. In other words, NCSoft should've learned from WoW's, and other MMOs, mistakes.
It may be successful, but it continues onward w/o my two subs. It failed to inspire me. Not a bad game, just not really what I'm looking for.
Personally i found it to be a piss poor game, a game that is made nearly 10 years after wow was first being developed and with a huge budget, and thats the best they could do?, next gen my ass.
That's because you wouldn't know 'next gen' if it was up your ass.
pretty sure Aion was the most sucessful game for bots gold sellers and ebayers in the last years... at least the first month.. lets see who stays after 2nd November..
Every night at primetime all servers reach that "full" orange text. This doomsday thing is really getting old. No matter how much made up crap is posted nothing will change the fact that Aion is a great game. It's only evident in posts such as "25-30 is such a grind" when a single run of NTC provides 75% of a level in 40 minutes. Comments such as "You can't PvP until 40+" make me laugh. By level 27 I had over 200 kills in the Abyss just from ganking with one other person, a Gladiator--myself a Ranger. The whole "It's an eastern game, we westerners don't like it" has to be the stupidest crap i've ever read. People over in Asia are humans too--if a game is grindy and dry, they wont like it either. I tire of the "L2 failed in the west which proves Aion will too" thing is equally stupid. L2 failed in the west because it failed in the east. Aion is doing great in the west because it is doing great in the east. Aion conintues to be successful in Korea--so even if the whole "aion has to die because it didnt kill wow" theory proves correct, anyone who enjoys this game can play on their extremly populated servers.
I'm tired of threads stating that the game is going to go down in flames. The people that do this blindly hate the game.
I'm tired of threads that act like Aion is an excellent game that everyone enjoys. The people that do this blindly like the game.
This thread is in the second one. I mean, why would you just start a thread in an Aion forum about Aion being successful? It's defensive. If this game was excellent, you would not have to feel defensive about it.
Good to know. Im sure there are plenty of AION players who are tired of people like you who dont even play the game constantly trolling the AION forums. If you are so tired of all the AION players talking about their game, stop coming here. its beyond simple.
Anyways the OP has a very valid point. The game is doing quite well and offers a good alternative to what has been out there for years now.
Comments
Here's the quote from MMOdata.
"Because of this, I have set a new estimate for Aion worldwide at 3,6 million subscribers, this will be included in my upcomming version 2.1 of the MMOData charts."
"I believe this is a conservative estimate, and I would not be surprised that the actual number is larger, but since NCSoft is no longer providing subscription numbers in their quarterly reports, I have no choice but to be conservative."
Chew on that...
"MMOData.net cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here as it is based on various sources which could be incomplete, inaccurate or otherwise unreliable. Furthermore, all estimates are the opinion of MMOData.net and should be treated as such."
I can estimate a whole bunch of numbers too but without NCSoft releasing the actual numbers it's meaningless.
Just like when WoW releases their sub totals... but pads it for people who have multiple accounts or people who have de-activated their account. They don't actually count ACTIVE subscriptions in their totals...
You mean like that right?
No, I mean that numbers on MMOdata are just estimates and should not be used as gospel.
As far as WoW goes, if I remember correctly, Blizzard only counts active subscriptions and does not count deactivated or trial accounts.
Either way, what does WoW subscriptions and the way Blizzard reports them have to do with Aion and NCSoft? We're talking about Aion here. Blizzard could be outright lying about their numbers and it would still have no meaning in this discussion. Please stop trying to derail topics with your WoW hate.
You're just trolling now
I played WoW for years... I don't hate WoW at all. You were discrediting Maizee's comments because it wasn't officially released. I was saying, EVEN when a company does officially release something (such as Blizzard does with it's WoW numbers) it isn't 100% accurate either.
They don't take into account their free trials but they do with their subs... active, non active, doesn't matter. For example, I cancelled my sub a few months ago but Im still willing to bet that "my" sub would be counted towards their total "number of subs"...
No place has actual 100% hard-data/facts unless you actually work for the company and pull that information from their database on a regular basis... please stop trying to derail topics with your lack of logic.
They actually do take into account free trials and inactive subscriptions. At least Blizzard does. Either way, I'll take Blizzard's numbers over third party estimates.
We should all be happy that a game finally had a good lanunch. Hoep for the best with the Aion community
The problem is that the next coming mmo devs will look upon this and do the old ctrl-c, ctrl-v. Something that we mmo junkies have learned to hate (and that is why we have the most fun flame wars at this forum).
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If I remember correctly, the 3.5 million subscribers thing started with an IGN article. I haven't seen anything official from NCSoft stating that as fact. Although, to be honest, I didn't really look for it, so it may very well be the case.
While I agree that 100k subscribers is a bit silly at this point, it may very well become that, at least in the west anyway, if NCSoft doesn't address certain issues like bots and crashes, etc.
If I remember correctly, the 3.5 million subscribers thing started with an IGN article. I haven't seen anything official from NCSoft stating that as fact. Although, to be honest, I didn't really look for it, so it may very well be the case.
While I agree that 100k subscribers is a bit silly at this point, it may very well become that, at least in the west anyway, if NCSoft doesn't address certain issues like bots and crashes, etc.
You won't see anything from NCsoft regarding the actual numbers anymore as they no longer post their subscription numbers in their quarterly reports.
As for your second point, I asked this question in another post but I'll repeat it here. What bots? The reason I ask this is because prior to the patch I would totally agree that there was a dire..yes dire..issue with regard to bots in fact I'd say nearly game breaking or at the least extremely disturbing. But post patch I may see one bot spam per login at most.
So do you mean the bots that exist in game that are no longer able to spam the chat channels but are still farming for gold and crashing the economy? Well you just described every MMO out there as they all have the exact same issue including WoW which is one of the most famous MMOs that probably spawned the gold farming industry. Companies spawned from WoW gold selling.
And no this isn't a defensive post, it's an actual question so I can clarify what the bot problem still is. Crashes? Absolutely a problem when your trying to raid and the fact that you are booted outside the fortress into a mob of the enemy is insult to injury.
Here's the quote from MMOdata.
"Because of this, I have set a new estimate for Aion worldwide at 3,6 million subscribers, this will be included in my upcomming version 2.1 of the MMOData charts."
"I believe this is a conservative estimate, and I would not be surprised that the actual number is larger, but since NCSoft is no longer providing subscription numbers in their quarterly reports, I have no choice but to be conservative."
Chew on that...
Nah you chew on it, because I mentioned nothing about the Asian Internet cafe's that make up the bulk of Aion's customers. All I am concerned with is the US/EU market. Sorry to rain on your parade.
Here's the quote from MMOdata.
"Because of this, I have set a new estimate for Aion worldwide at 3,6 million subscribers, this will be included in my upcomming version 2.1 of the MMOData charts."
"I believe this is a conservative estimate, and I would not be surprised that the actual number is larger, but since NCSoft is no longer providing subscription numbers in their quarterly reports, I have no choice but to be conservative."
Chew on that...
Nah you chew on it, because I mentioned nothing about the Asian Internet cafe's that make up the bulk of Aion's customers. All I am concerned with is the US/EU market. Sorry to rain on your parade.
Actually the parade marches on. If you would have read the entire thread your assesment of the US/EU market was pretty much debunked. But thanks for playing.
Here's the quote from MMOdata.
"Because of this, I have set a new estimate for Aion worldwide at 3,6 million subscribers, this will be included in my upcomming version 2.1 of the MMOData charts."
"I believe this is a conservative estimate, and I would not be surprised that the actual number is larger, but since NCSoft is no longer providing subscription numbers in their quarterly reports, I have no choice but to be conservative."
Chew on that...
Nah you chew on it, because I mentioned nothing about the Asian Internet cafe's that make up the bulk of Aion's customers. All I am concerned with is the US/EU market. Sorry to rain on your parade.
Actually the parade marches on. If you would have read the entire thread your assesment of the US/EU market was pretty much debunked. But thanks for playing.
Let's talk in 6 months, until then...neither of us can say a word. I believe I did say in 6 months. This game will go the way of Lineage and Lineage 2, neither did well in the US/EU - at least not like most MMO's such as EQ, DAoC, AC and such. I am thinking that Aion will at the most hover between 50k and 75k if that...is that a bad thing...not for an NCSoft P2P game in the US/EU market. You people that think it will have upwards of 250k to 300k in 6 months are seriously delusional...the game does not have any staying power. It is shallow and there are much better games on the market than Aion - hell Perfect World is better than Aion.
A LOT of people hit Abyss and /gamequit.
The quests are hard to find at that point, and you're in for a long grind.
Here's the quote from MMOdata.
"Because of this, I have set a new estimate for Aion worldwide at 3,6 million subscribers, this will be included in my upcomming version 2.1 of the MMOData charts."
"I believe this is a conservative estimate, and I would not be surprised that the actual number is larger, but since NCSoft is no longer providing subscription numbers in their quarterly reports, I have no choice but to be conservative."
Chew on that...
Nah you chew on it, because I mentioned nothing about the Asian Internet cafe's that make up the bulk of Aion's customers. All I am concerned with is the US/EU market. Sorry to rain on your parade.
Actually the parade marches on. If you would have read the entire thread your assesment of the US/EU market was pretty much debunked. But thanks for playing.
Let's talk in 6 months, until then...neither of us can say a word. I believe I did say in 6 months. This game will go the way of Lineage and Lineage 2, neither did well in the US/EU - at least not like most MMO's such as EQ, DAoC, AC and such. I am thinking that Aion will at the most hover between 50k and 75k if that...is that a bad thing...not for an NCSoft P2P game in the US/EU market. You people that think it will have upwards of 250k to 300k in 6 months are seriously delusional...the game does not have any staying power. It is shallow and there are much better games on the market than Aion - hell Perfect World is better than Aion.
Kind of funny, leave this place for two weeks and the same people are complaining about the same issues as before.
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You wouldn't understand
If I remember correctly, the 3.5 million subscribers thing started with an IGN article. I haven't seen anything official from NCSoft stating that as fact. Although, to be honest, I didn't really look for it, so it may very well be the case.
While I agree that 100k subscribers is a bit silly at this point, it may very well become that, at least in the west anyway, if NCSoft doesn't address certain issues like bots and crashes, etc.
You won't see anything from NCsoft regarding the actual numbers anymore as they no longer post their subscription numbers in their quarterly reports.
As for your second point, I asked this question in another post but I'll repeat it here. What bots? The reason I ask this is because prior to the patch I would totally agree that there was a dire..yes dire..issue with regard to bots in fact I'd say nearly game breaking or at the least extremely disturbing. But post patch I may see one bot spam per login at most.
So do you mean the bots that exist in game that are no longer able to spam the chat channels but are still farming for gold and crashing the economy? Well you just described every MMO out there as they all have the exact same issue including WoW which is one of the most famous MMOs that probably spawned the gold farming industry. Companies spawned from WoW gold selling.
And no this isn't a defensive post, it's an actual question so I can clarify what the bot problem still is. Crashes? Absolutely a problem when your trying to raid and the fact that you are booted outside the fortress into a mob of the enemy is insult to injury.
You're confusing bots with spammers. Spammers were dealt with for the most part. Although every once in a while they do manage to spam chat channels for a bit, they have now resorted to setting up private shops with their spam in all major hubs. Which, albeit a bit annoying is not as bad as the constant chat spam.
What I'm talking about is bots. Bots are player characters that are being controlled by a program which pretty much plays the game instead of the player. While some of the bots are legitimate players, most are gold farmers with gibberish names like "wqqeaD." You can tell if the player character is a gold farmer bot simply because most don't use titles and are usually much higher in level than the mobs they are farming.
What happens is there would be one or two, sometimes a whole bunch of these bots (I once saw a whole legion of like 10 people farming one area), usually gladiators, although I have seen a few assassins as well, and they would be farming mobs in a certain area. If the mobs they are farming happen to be the ones you need for a quest, good luck completing it as very often, they can somehow target the mob before it actually spawns and begin attacking it as soon as it appears. Even if you do manage to attack the mob first, because of the way kill rights work in Aion and because the bots are much higher level than you or the mob are, they do bulk of the damage.
Well I'm not confusing the two so much as most people blend the two together since it's bots that are used to spam the chat list but yes I do appreciate the distinction..and I mean that sincerely because it helps me talk to the issue that your bringing to the table.
So now that we are talking about the bots that run around the world farming gold and other resources, I completely agree that it is a problem for a multitude of reasons from it's effect on the economy to unbalancing the game by providing/stealing items to/from players who either could have gotten said items or for those that buy the farmers gold/kinah, allows them to max out their stats to gain advantages over the average player.
My only issue is how can anyone's expectation for Aion or NCSoft be any different from any other MMO out there who has to deal, battle, tolerate, or (in some cases due to the additional accounts it generates) allow this to happen? Reason being is that it effects nearly every single major commerical MMO out there.
Well I'm not confusing the two so much as most people blend the two together since it's bots that are used to spam the chat list but yes I do appreciate the distinction..and I mean that sincerely because it helps me talk to the issue that your bringing to the table.
So now that we are talking about the bots that run around the world farming gold and other resources, I completely agree that it is a problem for a multitude of reasons from it's effect on the economy to unbalancing the game by providing/stealing items to/from players who either could have gotten said items or for those that buy the farmers gold/kinah, allows them to max out their stats to gain advantages over the average player.
My only issue is how can anyone's expectation for Aion or NCSoft be any different from any other MMO out there who has to deal, battle, tolerate, or (in some cases due to the additional accounts it generates) allow this to happen? Reason being is that it effects nearly every single major commerical MMO out there.
No... just Aion.
Aion is the only MMO where gold sellers and bots exist. WoW certainly never had such things - especially at launch....
/end sarcasm
I don't think anyone expects Aion to avoid the issue, but they expect NCSoft to take swifter action against them.
So far they are moving too slowly for player tastes, without even bothering to communicate to the players what might be the reason for delays of over a week to take an obvious spammer or bot out of the game.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I don't think anyone expects Aion to avoid the issue, but they expect NCSoft to take swifter action against them.
So far they are moving too slowly for player tastes, without even bothering to communicate to the players what might be the reason for delays of over a week to take an obvious spammer or bot out of the game.
Ok so what was WoW's response that qualifies as quick action? And be careful because you should know based upon my posting that I already know and am ready to post this
. So before you go there, again, the question is what has any other company done...REALLY...to swiftly and effectively deal with this issue? I think we all know the answer.
No they don't. It's current, active subscriptions.
Katsma is Lithuanian for 'he who drinks used douche fluid'.
No they don't. It's current, active subscriptions.
I will give heartless this...Blizzards sources are better than the majority of games out there with regard to making estimates on their subscriptions. That being said, it's still an estimate just a better one but when your waist, shoulders, and heads above the competition it doesn't really mean much considering it hold the number #1 spot with the best sources when everyone else falls far below that with fewer or less sound sources from which to compare.
But when there is nothing else to go on and the standard is what it is, so long as the standard is the same for everyone in terms of the methodology around figuring out MMO subscriptions then that's the measurement we have to go on and anything else not on that same level of analytics is just guess work and opinion...and personally I'll take analytics.
Aeon is dieing!1!!@1
But seriously, the fact that everyone comes out and makes threads JUST to say, "Hey guys look the game still has people! LOOK LOOK SEE DO YOU SEE I TOLD YOU YOU SEE?!" says something. Either you are worried that the game is going downhill and want to prevent it by making people not leave, or you really care too much. If you love the game just play the damn thing instead of worrying about others saying its dying.
-Computer specs no one cares about: check.
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Someone could take these threads, take every post, and toss them into MS Word, and replace the word 'Aion' with 'WAR', and it would read exactly like some of the threads last year.
No lie.
Katsma is Lithuanian for 'he who drinks used douche fluid'.
It won't be a WoW killer, it's to hard for that. Most people who play WoW like the "click here and win" stuff. Having said that, I do think aion will do well. They are making a very valient attempt to fight bots and actually making progress. It's definately in a better position than any other mmo released since WoW.
Tell me what's so 'hard' about Aion, in comparison to WoW.
Katsma is Lithuanian for 'he who drinks used douche fluid'.
There you go again bringing WoW into the conversation. The gold spam and bots in WoW were never as numerous as they are in Aion. They are also taken care of by Blizzard extremely fast. Whereas in Aion, I see the same bots farming the same spots days on end.
Look, the fact of the matter is that Aion has a bot and spammer problem. Whether or not WoW had it doesn't matter. We're discussing Aion and things that may influence the game's user base.
Edit: you know, I don't understand this mentality. People need to stop using WoW's shortcomings to excuse the problems with their game. WoW is a 5 year old game. Aion, as a game which was created after WoW, should have been designed to minimize the problems that WoW had. In other words, NCSoft should've learned from WoW's, and other MMOs, mistakes.
Personally i found it to be a piss poor game, a game that is made nearly 10 years after wow was first being developed and with a huge budget, and thats the best they could do?, next gen my ass.
That's because you wouldn't know 'next gen' if it was up your ass.
You think Aion should be called a next-gen title?
Next-gen grind title for sure
pretty sure Aion was the most sucessful game for bots gold sellers and ebayers in the last years... at least the first month.. lets see who stays after 2nd November..
not
Good to know. Im sure there are plenty of AION players who are tired of people like you who dont even play the game constantly trolling the AION forums. If you are so tired of all the AION players talking about their game, stop coming here. its beyond simple.
Anyways the OP has a very valid point. The game is doing quite well and offers a good alternative to what has been out there for years now.