Just relaying some fantastic news about the success of Aion in the West ))
"As part of its third-quarter earnings announcement today, NCsoft said that Aion has now sold more than 500,000 units in North America and 470,000 copies in Europe. Aion's popularity propelled NCsoft to another quarter of triple-digit year-over-year gains. The Korean publisher reported revenues today that were up 112 percent to KRW166 billion ($142 million). Net income during the July-September period soared to KRW46.9 billion ($40 million), a whopping 836 percent year-over-year rise. "
Straight from the horses mouth, not bad for a Korean game. LINK
Wow.... a whole half mil in North America, Everyone I know who bought a box is already back playing WoW....same old story a MMO "may" have initial box sales *Cough* WAR & AoC *Cough* but once the shiney has worn off there are a lot of unused boxes and very few subsciptions..
Most of the ex-WoW players in my guild said they will never go back to that kiddy game ever again. They mentioned they prefer a more challenging game where you arent spponfed levels and epic gear. I guess when this very site surveyed its MMO players and WoW was rated as having the worst community of any current MMO they were completely right :)_)
Also have fun with that Asian Cash Shop that WOW is introducing HAHAHAHAHa ... Fail game is fail.
WoW this guy is trashing WoW when NC is practically sponsering all the gold sellers and bots in Aion that's some funny stuff right there. Not to mention he actually thinks this game is challenging lol. Another funny thing is him calling WoW the worst community when i keep reading from this site and other sites that the Aion community is even worse the WoW's. funny how people see things different huh op? I bet you think NC won't introduce a Cash Shop into Aion, guess you never seen the COH/COV game's cash shop? Don't worry your locust guild will migrate to the next game that comes out leaving Aion to die.
WOW has more RMT than any MMO combined, you might need to take those blinders off to see it. And now with their "Asian" style cash shop they are really turning F2P title - Graphically and Community wise their already there lol
If you look at the botting problems in WoW, for every 1 botter you have about 300 real players. Now look at an NCSoft game. For every player there is an equal number of botters (Be it L2, Aion, etc). If you take into account the size of each games population, then yes as a whole WoW beats out Aion in RMT. But if you were to average the whole Botter/RMT per player, you would see that Aion is actually a higher percentage per server than WoW.
Now if you want to compare complexity between WoW and Aion, you need to remember Grind does not equal complexity. Grind is grind.
Aion is just a wee bit more challenging than WoW if you dont factor in grind. The combat system is simple and designed to be a 3 to 4 button game. PvP in Aion is a copy/paste of L2 in that it requires no skill other than the ability to zerg (like a lot of MMOs out there).
As for the community, you are correct. The same chuckleheads who plague the trade and barrens chat in WoW are the same players who moved to Aion when the game came out. I sat there watching my girlfriends little brother play the game for almost 2 hours and it was like reading trade chat back in the day on 'anal joke tuesdays' where players would post an item and make some 6th grade anal joke involving said item. I watched him run around on his lil 26 temp smashing cute lil mobs in a graphical landscape similar in style as well as color to that of WoWs.
We all know you love your new game, but please. Aion is nothing new, nothing different and caters to the same people the overly hated WoW does. The only difference is you have wings, limited flight ability with said wings, worse support and customer service and is run by a company that pumps out more MMOs in the P2P market than everyone else (not to mention has probably closed more MMOs in a shorter time period than most other Dev companies in the P2P market.) And as always, they will boast High sales figures for the first few months even while people start seeing less and less people on the actual servers (L2 for example)
NCSoft is asias SOE.
There are 3 types of people in the world. 1.) Those who make things happen 2.) Those who watch things happen 3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
"The financial results for 3Q of 2009 have been prepared on an un-audited basis, and may be subject to change during independent auditing process.
Some of the information and data in the material have been prepared based on assumptions.There can be no assurance that the assumptions used by NCSOFT are correct and even if they are, that the effect of such assumptions on NCSOFT’s business and results of operations will be as projected.
Therefore, NCSOFT will not be responsible for individual investment decisions based solely on this material."
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
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"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
Just relaying some fantastic news about the success of Aion in the West ))
"As part of its third-quarter earnings announcement today, NCsoft said that Aion has now sold more than 500,000 units in North America and 470,000 copies in Europe. Aion's popularity propelled NCsoft to another quarter of triple-digit year-over-year gains. The Korean publisher reported revenues today that were up 112 percent to KRW166 billion ($142 million). Net income during the July-September period soared to KRW46.9 billion ($40 million), a whopping 836 percent year-over-year rise. "
Straight from the horses mouth, not bad for a Korean game. LINK
Funny. Age of Conan sold more than this.
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
Just relaying some fantastic news about the success of Aion in the West ))
"As part of its third-quarter earnings announcement today, NCsoft said that Aion has now sold more than 500,000 units in North America and 470,000 copies in Europe. Aion's popularity propelled NCsoft to another quarter of triple-digit year-over-year gains. The Korean publisher reported revenues today that were up 112 percent to KRW166 billion ($142 million). Net income during the July-September period soared to KRW46.9 billion ($40 million), a whopping 836 percent year-over-year rise. "
Straight from the horses mouth, not bad for a Korean game. LINK
"The financial results for 3Q of 2009 have been prepared on an un-audited basis, and may be subject to change during independent auditing process. Some of the information and data in the material have been prepared based on assumptions. There can be no assurance that the assumptions used by NCSOFT are correctand even if they are, that the effect of such assumptions on NCSOFT’s business and results of operations will be as projected. Therefore, NCSOFT will not be responsible for individual investment decisions based solely on this material." I'm just saying......
"The financial results for 3Q of 2009 have been prepared on an un-audited basis, and may be subject to change during independent auditing process. Some of the information and data in the material have been prepared based on assumptions.There can be no assurance that the assumptions used by NCSOFT are correct and even if they are, that the effect of such assumptions on NCSOFT’s business and results of operations will be as projected. Therefore, NCSOFT will not be responsible for individual investment decisions based solely on this material." I'm just saying......
I think that might just be the normal economy jargon and these numbers now published show atleast a general trend of things whether they are a little off or not. Nonetheless, the profits "soaring" after release of a game on a new market is nothing too strange. I could imagine that release of, say, Dragon Age shows a spike on revenues on the next Bioware financial result; you spend money to make money, simple as that. The long-term viability of ongoing investment is determined by the maligned retention rate, but atleast with the sales figures it is quite likely that they have more than covered their localisation costs. And the latest digital download statistics also show that Aion still has some interest on the market one month after the release.
On the actual issue of what this tells from the market, I'd say that of course releasing a game with one-year worth of polishing will always attract more players and will likely keep them longer. Whether this is a viable strategy for a Western developer is a totally different thing. Maybe if AoC and WAR would be released today without any previous history they would do as well if not better. The financial pressure on most developers is just too much to postpone the release when the first signs of trouble emerge likely somewhere during the beta. An additional year of development must cost in range of several millions if not tens of millions for a major release. Getting such money from the market and maybe losing the marketing momentum is too much of a risk for most of the developers to take.
Therefore, we would likely need more patient players in the Western market rather than more time; think of all the bad-mouthing from AoCs lack of mid-level content and reflect that to Aion pre-1.5 -- a patch that added numerous instances such as Nohusana Training Camp that quite a few use to alleviate the infamous grind. That pre-1.5 state was what Eastern gamers did put up with and support, for better or for worse. They didn't mind likely more bug-infested game with tedious grinding but rather kept on supporting Aion financially. Maybe it is due to different payment system or maybe just the gaming markets are totally different. I wouldn't know. It just comes to show that Aion at its release wasn't any more polished or better game than those triple-A games released in the Occident last year (AoC and WAR), it just so happened to have a less whimsical player-base.
Just relaying some fantastic news about the success of Aion in the West ))
"As part of its third-quarter earnings announcement today, NCsoft said that Aion has now sold more than 500,000 units in North America and 470,000 copies in Europe. Aion's popularity propelled NCsoft to another quarter of triple-digit year-over-year gains. The Korean publisher reported revenues today that were up 112 percent to KRW166 billion ($142 million). Net income during the July-September period soared to KRW46.9 billion ($40 million), a whopping 836 percent year-over-year rise. "
Straight from the horses mouth, not bad for a Korean game. LINK
Amazing Aion has outsold AoC, considering the hype and marketing behind AoC in the west. It goes to show a stable polished game made by a cutting edge Korean company will always be more successful than a game driven by hype and promised features.
About the news, hopefully the devs will get the message that to be succesful you have to: 1) don't lie to your future players about features 2) make a polished game So kudos to ncsoft for that.
And hopefully to be able to compete with Aion, they will create more interesting MMOs. Besides being polished.
I'm prepared to take this a bit further.
1) publish games in east 1st to get the capital and time for polish
2) make a polished game
And Aion is interesting for a MMO. It wouldn't be for SPRPG, that was what you were trying to say?
No I said MMOs and I'm not saying that Aion is not interesting, although it wasn't for me, not much. But next MMOs will have to be more (more, get it?) interesting to compete.
Can Someone show me where that is on this chart ? www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview NcSoft is losing money and has been in decline since octobober, the only spike they had was before launch, before pre-orders. The truth of the matte ris after Aions lack luster sale margians , ncsoft is not doing well. Great fluff article though, way to keep the spirits high for a title that is losing more subscriptions then Vanguard at launch. Here is another chart www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/ncscf Again, they have been in decline for over a month now. The stock only oprogressed to 40% in the release date and already has dropped back down to 0%. I'm baffled at how anyone can take any of Ncsoft's P.R. tactics seriously. All the information is online....
As a matter of fact, those links that you provided guided atleast me to sites that show their share price and its recent changes. I thought it was a common knowledge that profit and stock price don't go hand in hand. Also, on Reuters site they are giving a recommandation to buy the share which tells from its either currently too low a price or analysts seeing it as a lucrative investment in the foreseeable future. Hence, all the information is online but this one you provided had nothing to do with the news discussed in here.
Can Someone show me where that is on this chart ? www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview NcSoft is losing money and has been in decline since octobober, the only spike they had was before launch, before pre-orders. The truth of the matte ris after Aions lack luster sale margians , ncsoft is not doing well. Great fluff article though, way to keep the spirits high for a title that is losing more subscriptions then Vanguard at launch. Here is another chart www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/ncscf Again, they have been in decline for over a month now. The stock only oprogressed to 40% in the release date and already has dropped back down to 0%. I'm baffled at how anyone can take any of Ncsoft's P.R. tactics seriously. All the information is online....
Per what was just said, Stock price and profit are two different things. You can make a profit but have your stock price tumble because of bad news.
you can also lose a lot of money in a quarter but an announcement that your new product will provably turn gold to lead will make your stock price soar.
Stock prices are fickle. Remember all the hub bub about a year ago with all the bank crud, stock crashes and layoffs? I lost a little over half my worth yet my salary was still the same. A few months go by, my salary was still the same but one of my accounts increased by over 33%.
I imagine what will happen is tht the announcement of this profit surge will drive NC's stock up.
Also, as someone else stated, if you have a few low quarters, especially with no new prodcucts, you will have low profits. So it really is easy to see that Aion was NC's first major game that is arguably successful, so they sell all of those boxes and the profits went up.
But again, only time will tell about retention rates and again, my feeling is 250k to 300k subs.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Just relaying some fantastic news about the success of Aion in the West ))
"As part of its third-quarter earnings announcement today, NCsoft said that Aion has now sold more than 500,000 units in North America and 470,000 copies in Europe. Aion's popularity propelled NCsoft to another quarter of triple-digit year-over-year gains. The Korean publisher reported revenues today that were up 112 percent to KRW166 billion ($142 million). Net income during the July-September period soared to KRW46.9 billion ($40 million), a whopping 836 percent year-over-year rise. "
Straight from the horses mouth, not bad for a Korean game. LINK
Wow.... a whole half mil in North America, Everyone I know who bought a box is already back playing WoW....same old story a MMO "may" have initial box sales *Cough* WAR & AoC *Cough* but once the shiney has worn off there are a lot of unused boxes and very few subsciptions..
Most of the ex-WoW players in my guild said they will never go back to that kiddy game ever again. They mentioned they prefer a more challenging game where you arent spponfed levels and epic gear. I guess when this very site surveyed its MMO players and WoW was rated as having the worst community of any current MMO they were completely right :)_)
Also have fun with that Asian Cash Shop that WOW is introducing HAHAHAHAHa ... Fail game is fail.
WoW this guy is trashing WoW when NC is practically sponsering all the gold sellers and bots in Aion that's some funny stuff right there. Not to mention he actually thinks this game is challenging lol. Another funny thing is him calling WoW the worst community when i keep reading from this site and other sites that the Aion community is even worse the WoW's. funny how people see things different huh op? I bet you think NC won't introduce a Cash Shop into Aion, guess you never seen the COH/COV game's cash shop? Don't worry your locust guild will migrate to the next game that comes out leaving Aion to die.
WOW has more RMT than any MMO combined, you might need to take those blinders off to see it. And now with their "Asian" style cash shop they are really turning F2P title - Graphically and Community wise their already there lol
nice dodging there, can't admit about the bad things in Aion lol, wow has more RMT then any mmo combined? now i know this guy has the brain of an amoeba, sorry amoeba's.
With people like you in Aion, WoW's community looks like saints in comparison.
Then again you probably don't complain about the bots and gold sellers since you probably use them yourself.
No blinders from me by the way, RMT doesn't phase me one bit, i simply don't use it or by gold unlike yourself.
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand." - Lewis Thomas
Any company's quarterly financial release is a combination of required disclosure and a public relations event. You read these things and they always say things like "The leading maker of.....", "The most innovative producer of .....". So you have to take their emphasis with a grain of salt if not a complete salt shaker. However, the legal penalties for false statements are such that the truth is there and you can determine some facts.
So from this we can see that NCSoft revenues have been depressed for some time which considering the Tabula Rasa debacle and the recent lawsuit by Garriott that is not much of a surprise and we can see that the sales of their new game have improved both their revenue and profit which is not much of a surprise either.
It is good news though and does give them a bit of breathing room but they need to keep on selling and work on keeping their existing subscribers then when the next quarter results are out we can see how well they have done.
Is Aion a great game? Not yet but it has potential. The game does have issues as some people do run out of content at various times if only briefly (for me I struggled a bit at 29 until the level 30 content became available but that is because I had a bunch of campaign quests I had ignored in order to level). The distraction of gold sellers needs to be controlled and the lack of in game managers is starting to become obvious. Any company can start off good but if you fail to listen to your customers then you are ultimately going to lose them and right now NCSoft needs to decide if they want to listen to their Western customers and take action or not. The choice is theirs but customers are fickle and if they feel they are being ignored or taken advantage of they will take their business elsewhere.
NCSoft is in a better position at this stage with Aion than some other games recently released. There has been a fair amount of hype around the game but it has mostly delivered on what it promised if not completely or as well as many gamers would like. But, they have delivered well enough to buy time to fix the issues. They just need to do it.
It is still too soon to determine if either NCSoft or Aion has succeeded in their goals but the numbers next quarter should provide a much better indication of the fates of both the company and the game. Considering that half of the NCSoft's revenue this quarter came from Aion and only half of that was from the West then that means the US and EU only had about a 25% impact to the company and while that is nice chunk of change NCSoft has shown a willingness to close down products that don't meet their expectations.
Can Someone show me where that is on this chart ? www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview NcSoft is losing money and has been in decline since octobober, the only spike they had was before launch, before pre-orders. The truth of the matte ris after Aions lack luster sale margians , ncsoft is not doing well. Great fluff article though, way to keep the spirits high for a title that is losing more subscriptions then Vanguard at launch. Here is another chart www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/ncscf Again, they have been in decline for over a month now. The stock only oprogressed to 40% in the release date and already has dropped back down to 0%. I'm baffled at how anyone can take any of Ncsoft's P.R. tactics seriously. All the information is online....
It's not as bad as you make it sound, yeah i dislike aion and play it, but if u look at the 5 year, its up by almost 200% so course its gonna be going up and down with the market lol. I guess people r just looking for cheap entertainment these days :P
I am not surprised as it is a solid game. However if it is to keep its momentum they need to add way more content. Two mirror races and 8 classes with minimal customization (stigmas) is not enough to keep people busy for long.
I am not surprised as it is a solid game. However if it is to keep its momentum they need to add way more content. Two mirror races and 8 classes with minimal customization (stigmas) is not enough to keep people busy for long.
I would agree that more content would be nice but one has to assume that this is in the works but it would be nice to get an idea of where the developers see the game going.
I somewhat agree with only having two races and all the classes mirrored but with the high end being predominately PvP this makes a lot of sense and prevents one side from having any sort of significant advantage over the other if a particular class turns out to be out of balance with its mirror alternate. If they simply made them the same and changed the names and animations people would call it a cheat so I think they are better off with the current story line where the world was torn asunder and the single race has split into divergent lines. This is certainly something they should consider exploring once they get the current issues under control.
Just relaying some fantastic news about the success of Aion in the West ))
"As part of its third-quarter earnings announcement today, NCsoft said that Aion has now sold more than 500,000 units in North America and 470,000 copies in Europe. Aion's popularity propelled NCsoft to another quarter of triple-digit year-over-year gains. The Korean publisher reported revenues today that were up 112 percent to KRW166 billion ($142 million). Net income during the July-September period soared to KRW46.9 billion ($40 million), a whopping 836 percent year-over-year rise. "
Straight from the horses mouth, not bad for a Korean game. LINK
Amazing Aion has outsold AoC, considering the hype and marketing behind AoC in the west. It goes to show a stable polished game made by a cutting edge Korean company will always be more successful than a game driven by hype and promised features.
Too bad NCSoft can't figure out what to do with a good game like AION....Maybe they should have Blizzard operate it?
Can Someone show me where that is on this chart ? www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview NcSoft is losing money and has been in decline since octobober, the only spike they had was before launch, before pre-orders. The truth of the matte ris after Aions lack luster sale margians , ncsoft is not doing well. Great fluff article though, way to keep the spirits high for a title that is losing more subscriptions then Vanguard at launch. Here is another chart www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/ncscf Again, they have been in decline for over a month now. The stock only oprogressed to 40% in the release date and already has dropped back down to 0%. I'm baffled at how anyone can take any of Ncsoft's P.R. tactics seriously. All the information is online....
Per what was just said, Stock price and profit are two different things. You can make a profit but have your stock price tumble because of bad news.
Yes, SOE is a subsidiary of a multinational corporation based in Tokyo, Japan. But, the company Sony Online Entertainment was formed in 1995 as Verant studios in the US and later bought by a division of Sony Pictures that later became SOE.
So yeah, they may be an owned subsidiary of a mainly Japanese corporation, but the games they make are based out of and created in the US.
Meanwhile Aion is a game that was created in Korea by NCSoft, where they are based. NCSoft was started in Korea and has been making games for the asian market for many years before they even opened a US base of operations. Most of NCSofts games still come from Korea (Lineage, Lineage 2, Aion, etc).
So yeah, my point still stands valid.
There are 3 types of people in the world. 1.) Those who make things happen 2.) Those who watch things happen 3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Just relaying some fantastic news about the success of Aion in the West ))
"As part of its third-quarter earnings announcement today, NCsoft said that Aion has now sold more than 500,000 units in North America and 470,000 copies in Europe. Aion's popularity propelled NCsoft to another quarter of triple-digit year-over-year gains. The Korean publisher reported revenues today that were up 112 percent to KRW166 billion ($142 million). Net income during the July-September period soared to KRW46.9 billion ($40 million), a whopping 836 percent year-over-year rise. "
Straight from the horses mouth, not bad for a Korean game. LINK
And those boxes sit now on western dealer's shelves.
And they sit and sit ...
Just like the rest of those unsold 1.2 M WAR boxes with 5/5 servers to support the unsold units
Get a grip Aion has 14NA/18EU non full servers.
That's the equivalent of 250K western subs... and rapidly declinging according to Xfire.
You really have to be blind to believe this Korean is going to stay in player's minds.
Where do you get 250k from? The 18+14 = 32 servers are about half full (I take that from half of them listed as full and half as recommended).
One Lineage 2 server had a maximum capacity of 5000. Since it is the same company, and a newer game, one would assume that Aion servers has atleast that high max capacity. So half full servers would be 2500 concurrent players. 2500x32 = 80.000 concurrent subscribers.
A typical number used is that 15% of subscribers is the peak concurrent subscribers. So that gives us 80.000/0.15 = 533.000 subscribers.
With 970.000 boxes sold that is (533.000-970.000)/970.000 = -0.45 which is a 45% drop of subs which coincidently is about the same drop as XFire shows.
So the current subscriber base is around 525.000, give or take 50.000, not 250.000.
If it would be 250.000 then the drop would be (250.000-970.000)/970.000 = -0.74 which is a 74% drop and there is nothing to indicate that huge drop (including XFire trends that you like to use). Also I am playing the game and I think I would notice a 74% drop and I dont. The zones are full and the chat channels are constantly cluttered with people LFG.
Aion is not the next generation of MMORPG but it is a very solid one, very solid WoW clone to some extent but still very solid.
And those boxes sit now on western dealer's shelves. And they sit and sit ... Just like the rest of those unsold 1.2 M WAR boxes with 5/5 servers to support the unsold units Get a grip Aion has 14NA/18EU non full servers. That's the equivalent of 250K western subs... and rapidly declinging according to Xfire. You really have to be blind to believe this Korean is going to stay in player's minds.
Where do you get 250k from? The 18+14 = 32 servers are about half full (I take that from half of them listed as full and half as recommended).
One Lineage 2 server had a maximum capacity of 5000. Since it is the same company, and a newer game, one would assume that Aion servers has atleast that high max capacity. So half full servers would be 2500 concurrent players. 2500x32 = 80.000 concurrent subscribers.
A typical number used is that 15% of subscribers is the peak concurrent subscribers. So that gives us 80.000/0.15 = 533.000 subscribers.
With 970.000 boxes sold that is (533.000-970.000)/970.000 = -0.45 which is a 45% drop of subs which coincidently is about the same drop as XFire shows.
So the current subscriber base is around 525.000, give or take 50.000, not 250.000.
You have a little problem there...
Because NScoft bragged that ... at launch ... that 60% of their player base was playing at the same time ... ))
"In preparation for Aion’s launch, we ran calculations of our presale numbers with historical conversion ratios and expected concurrency numbers, which led to our determination of launch day server needs. In addition, we had a 25 percent additional capacity in hardware reserve and the ability to increase server population. We’ve further responded to the overwhelming demand by adding additional server worlds in all languages, and still we are working around the clock to address the incredible demand. For example, we’re seeing timeframes where 60 percent or more of our players are playing at any given time. This is a significant event by any MMO standard. Another surprising development is how long players are staying in game—I think that’s a testament to the enjoyable nature of the product. "
---------
Now some technical info: 12NA/12EU servers were not enough to solve those 60% of the players logging in. Aion launched with "almost" 400K pre-orders (including those that always pre order and "forget" to collect the real thing so they have a few days of trial).
12NA/12EU means around a 200K max capacity. Clearly not enough for the 400K of which (NCOSFT SOURCE ITSELF) said 60% was trying to get in ...
So they upped it to 14NA/18EU (I myself predicted BEFORE launch they would need 16NA/18EU), having a nice 240K possibilty.
----> I don't know where you get that ridiculously low 15% average in btw. As Mark Jaobs himself said that at the launching month around 1/3 players are logged in in a new MMO concurrently time).
For older mmorpg's the ratio is between 1/3 and 1/4 , so between 25 and 33% logging in.
You can see this from AIon itself btw: Korean had 400 K subs (with 41 servers) and China at the launching week had 113 servers for 1 M (free! at the time) playing players.
Take your (extreme low) 15% (see the bragging of NCsoft 60% themselves) to 30% and you come up with the exact same figures of me: 250K.
Edit: those 970K were shipped to shops (at the end of the quarter). FAR from every box was sold to customers too at this time. They sell it to the retailers, but those boxes still sit on dealers shelves today.
In no way are 14US/18EU servers enough to hold the subs you mention (see above the Korea and China Aion situations at launch).
After launch and with all the Qeues, 500k is the minimum logical sale figure, the launch period saw login issues where Qeues exceeded the maximum display limit of 3000 for Qeues, at which time 60% of players tried to login. But, no one knows how many were trying to login. Liv mentioned a percentage not a figure.
The maximum concurent player capacity for servers is not the total number of subscribers, capacity which was greatly reduced from all the players abusing Private shops to stay logged in. And NCsoft locking factions to preserve balance.
After about 2 weeks, NCsoft added a 30min auto-dc timer to private shops, increased server capacity by 25%. And added new servers with the increased capacity.Then there is the normal reduction of the percentage of players trying to login at any given time, which is expected after 2 weeks of the launch of any MMO, where the time and length of playing sessions normalizes. These factors resolved Qeue issues.
The point to be made is simple. You can't estimate the number of subsribers from max server capacity, its a flawed logic. 60% refers to an unknown number of players at a timeframe where server capacity was not fully efficient. No one knows what is the percentage of concurrent players 2 weeks after launch and now. It could be anything from 10% to 30%.
I know for sure i only play 1 or 2 hours per day and mostly at off-peak time, not everyone plays 4 hours+ for sure. Some even only play the game every couple of days. But they pay the full subsctiption.
This propagnda is getting quiet boring, people who dislike Aion should leave to Blizzards pet-shop and enjoy paying 10$ for a few pixels.
Improve Aion's Graphics with a simple text file that you can create by yourself:
-Increase in-game Field of View to 175% or more
-Increase view distance for players to 100 meters with camera at max distance
Comments
Wow.... a whole half mil in North America, Everyone I know who bought a box is already back playing WoW....same old story a MMO "may" have initial box sales *Cough* WAR & AoC *Cough* but once the shiney has worn off there are a lot of unused boxes and very few subsciptions..
Most of the ex-WoW players in my guild said they will never go back to that kiddy game ever again. They mentioned they prefer a more challenging game where you arent spponfed levels and epic gear. I guess when this very site surveyed its MMO players and WoW was rated as having the worst community of any current MMO they were completely right :)_)
Also have fun with that Asian Cash Shop that WOW is introducing HAHAHAHAHa ... Fail game is fail.
WoW this guy is trashing WoW when NC is practically sponsering all the gold sellers and bots in Aion that's some funny stuff right there. Not to mention he actually thinks this game is challenging lol. Another funny thing is him calling WoW the worst community when i keep reading from this site and other sites that the Aion community is even worse the WoW's. funny how people see things different huh op? I bet you think NC won't introduce a Cash Shop into Aion, guess you never seen the COH/COV game's cash shop? Don't worry your locust guild will migrate to the next game that comes out leaving Aion to die.
WOW has more RMT than any MMO combined, you might need to take those blinders off to see it. And now with their "Asian" style cash shop they are really turning F2P title - Graphically and Community wise their already there lol
If you look at the botting problems in WoW, for every 1 botter you have about 300 real players. Now look at an NCSoft game. For every player there is an equal number of botters (Be it L2, Aion, etc). If you take into account the size of each games population, then yes as a whole WoW beats out Aion in RMT. But if you were to average the whole Botter/RMT per player, you would see that Aion is actually a higher percentage per server than WoW.
Now if you want to compare complexity between WoW and Aion, you need to remember Grind does not equal complexity. Grind is grind.
Aion is just a wee bit more challenging than WoW if you dont factor in grind. The combat system is simple and designed to be a 3 to 4 button game. PvP in Aion is a copy/paste of L2 in that it requires no skill other than the ability to zerg (like a lot of MMOs out there).
As for the community, you are correct. The same chuckleheads who plague the trade and barrens chat in WoW are the same players who moved to Aion when the game came out. I sat there watching my girlfriends little brother play the game for almost 2 hours and it was like reading trade chat back in the day on 'anal joke tuesdays' where players would post an item and make some 6th grade anal joke involving said item. I watched him run around on his lil 26 temp smashing cute lil mobs in a graphical landscape similar in style as well as color to that of WoWs.
We all know you love your new game, but please. Aion is nothing new, nothing different and caters to the same people the overly hated WoW does. The only difference is you have wings, limited flight ability with said wings, worse support and customer service and is run by a company that pumps out more MMOs in the P2P market than everyone else (not to mention has probably closed more MMOs in a shorter time period than most other Dev companies in the P2P market.) And as always, they will boast High sales figures for the first few months even while people start seeing less and less people on the actual servers (L2 for example)
NCSoft is asias SOE.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
"The financial results for 3Q of 2009 have been prepared on an un-audited basis, and may be subject to change during independent auditing process.
Some of the information and data in the material have been prepared based on assumptions. There can be no assurance that the assumptions used by NCSOFT are correct and even if they are, that the effect of such assumptions on NCSOFT’s business and results of operations will be as projected.
Therefore, NCSOFT will not be responsible for individual investment decisions based solely on this material."
I'm just saying......
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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
Funny. Age of Conan sold more than this.
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
Funny. Age of Conan sold more than this.
AoC sold 700k after 40 days.
http://kotaku.com/5020731/age-of-conan-+-a-million-shipped-700k-registered
Improve Aion's Graphics with a simple text file that you can create by yourself:
-Increase in-game Field of View to 175% or more
-Increase view distance for players to 100 meters with camera at max distance
-Lots of other settings
Learn how by reading this guide at Aionsource
http://www.aionsource.com/forum/general-guides/84379-definite-guide-aions-graphical-settings-performance-tips.html
Quoting for emphasis, and prettier colors.
I think that might just be the normal economy jargon and these numbers now published show atleast a general trend of things whether they are a little off or not. Nonetheless, the profits "soaring" after release of a game on a new market is nothing too strange. I could imagine that release of, say, Dragon Age shows a spike on revenues on the next Bioware financial result; you spend money to make money, simple as that. The long-term viability of ongoing investment is determined by the maligned retention rate, but atleast with the sales figures it is quite likely that they have more than covered their localisation costs. And the latest digital download statistics also show that Aion still has some interest on the market one month after the release.
On the actual issue of what this tells from the market, I'd say that of course releasing a game with one-year worth of polishing will always attract more players and will likely keep them longer. Whether this is a viable strategy for a Western developer is a totally different thing. Maybe if AoC and WAR would be released today without any previous history they would do as well if not better. The financial pressure on most developers is just too much to postpone the release when the first signs of trouble emerge likely somewhere during the beta. An additional year of development must cost in range of several millions if not tens of millions for a major release. Getting such money from the market and maybe losing the marketing momentum is too much of a risk for most of the developers to take.
Therefore, we would likely need more patient players in the Western market rather than more time; think of all the bad-mouthing from AoCs lack of mid-level content and reflect that to Aion pre-1.5 -- a patch that added numerous instances such as Nohusana Training Camp that quite a few use to alleviate the infamous grind. That pre-1.5 state was what Eastern gamers did put up with and support, for better or for worse. They didn't mind likely more bug-infested game with tedious grinding but rather kept on supporting Aion financially. Maybe it is due to different payment system or maybe just the gaming markets are totally different. I wouldn't know. It just comes to show that Aion at its release wasn't any more polished or better game than those triple-A games released in the Occident last year (AoC and WAR), it just so happened to have a less whimsical player-base.
Funny. Age of Conan sold more than this.
AoC sold 700k after 40 days.
http://kotaku.com/5020731/age-of-conan-+-a-million-shipped-700k-registered
Quoted for the ownage
)
Amazing Aion has outsold AoC, considering the hype and marketing behind AoC in the west. It goes to show a stable polished game made by a cutting edge Korean company will always be more successful than a game driven by hype and promised features.
GW2 the future of MMO gaming
I'm prepared to take this a bit further.
1) publish games in east 1st to get the capital and time for polish
2) make a polished game
And Aion is interesting for a MMO. It wouldn't be for SPRPG, that was what you were trying to say?
No I said MMOs and I'm not saying that Aion is not interesting, although it wasn't for me, not much. But next MMOs will have to be more (more, get it?) interesting to compete.
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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As a matter of fact, those links that you provided guided atleast me to sites that show their share price and its recent changes. I thought it was a common knowledge that profit and stock price don't go hand in hand. Also, on Reuters site they are giving a recommandation to buy the share which tells from its either currently too low a price or analysts seeing it as a lucrative investment in the foreseeable future. Hence, all the information is online but this one you provided had nothing to do with the news discussed in here.
Per what was just said, Stock price and profit are two different things. You can make a profit but have your stock price tumble because of bad news.
you can also lose a lot of money in a quarter but an announcement that your new product will provably turn gold to lead will make your stock price soar.
Stock prices are fickle. Remember all the hub bub about a year ago with all the bank crud, stock crashes and layoffs? I lost a little over half my worth yet my salary was still the same. A few months go by, my salary was still the same but one of my accounts increased by over 33%.
I imagine what will happen is tht the announcement of this profit surge will drive NC's stock up.
Also, as someone else stated, if you have a few low quarters, especially with no new prodcucts, you will have low profits. So it really is easy to see that Aion was NC's first major game that is arguably successful, so they sell all of those boxes and the profits went up.
But again, only time will tell about retention rates and again, my feeling is 250k to 300k subs.
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Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
.jpg)
Wow.... a whole half mil in North America, Everyone I know who bought a box is already back playing WoW....same old story a MMO "may" have initial box sales *Cough* WAR & AoC *Cough* but once the shiney has worn off there are a lot of unused boxes and very few subsciptions..
Most of the ex-WoW players in my guild said they will never go back to that kiddy game ever again. They mentioned they prefer a more challenging game where you arent spponfed levels and epic gear. I guess when this very site surveyed its MMO players and WoW was rated as having the worst community of any current MMO they were completely right :)_)
Also have fun with that Asian Cash Shop that WOW is introducing HAHAHAHAHa ... Fail game is fail.
WoW this guy is trashing WoW when NC is practically sponsering all the gold sellers and bots in Aion that's some funny stuff right there. Not to mention he actually thinks this game is challenging lol. Another funny thing is him calling WoW the worst community when i keep reading from this site and other sites that the Aion community is even worse the WoW's. funny how people see things different huh op? I bet you think NC won't introduce a Cash Shop into Aion, guess you never seen the COH/COV game's cash shop? Don't worry your locust guild will migrate to the next game that comes out leaving Aion to die.
WOW has more RMT than any MMO combined, you might need to take those blinders off to see it. And now with their "Asian" style cash shop they are really turning F2P title - Graphically and Community wise their already there lol
nice dodging there, can't admit about the bad things in Aion lol, wow has more RMT then any mmo combined? now i know this guy has the brain of an amoeba, sorry amoeba's.
With people like you in Aion, WoW's community looks like saints in comparison.
Then again you probably don't complain about the bots and gold sellers since you probably use them yourself.
No blinders from me by the way, RMT doesn't phase me one bit, i simply don't use it or by gold unlike yourself.
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
- Lewis Thomas
Any company's quarterly financial release is a combination of required disclosure and a public relations event. You read these things and they always say things like "The leading maker of.....", "The most innovative producer of .....". So you have to take their emphasis with a grain of salt if not a complete salt shaker. However, the legal penalties for false statements are such that the truth is there and you can determine some facts.
So from this we can see that NCSoft revenues have been depressed for some time which considering the Tabula Rasa debacle and the recent lawsuit by Garriott that is not much of a surprise and we can see that the sales of their new game have improved both their revenue and profit which is not much of a surprise either.
It is good news though and does give them a bit of breathing room but they need to keep on selling and work on keeping their existing subscribers then when the next quarter results are out we can see how well they have done.
Is Aion a great game? Not yet but it has potential. The game does have issues as some people do run out of content at various times if only briefly (for me I struggled a bit at 29 until the level 30 content became available but that is because I had a bunch of campaign quests I had ignored in order to level). The distraction of gold sellers needs to be controlled and the lack of in game managers is starting to become obvious. Any company can start off good but if you fail to listen to your customers then you are ultimately going to lose them and right now NCSoft needs to decide if they want to listen to their Western customers and take action or not. The choice is theirs but customers are fickle and if they feel they are being ignored or taken advantage of they will take their business elsewhere.
NCSoft is in a better position at this stage with Aion than some other games recently released. There has been a fair amount of hype around the game but it has mostly delivered on what it promised if not completely or as well as many gamers would like. But, they have delivered well enough to buy time to fix the issues. They just need to do it.
It is still too soon to determine if either NCSoft or Aion has succeeded in their goals but the numbers next quarter should provide a much better indication of the fates of both the company and the game. Considering that half of the NCSoft's revenue this quarter came from Aion and only half of that was from the West then that means the US and EU only had about a 25% impact to the company and while that is nice chunk of change NCSoft has shown a willingness to close down products that don't meet their expectations.
/laugh - I was thinking the same thing! I'm still loving Aion also
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It's not as bad as you make it sound, yeah i dislike aion and play it, but if u look at the 5 year, its up by almost 200% so course its gonna be going up and down with the market lol. I guess people r just looking for cheap entertainment these days :P
I am not surprised as it is a solid game. However if it is to keep its momentum they need to add way more content. Two mirror races and 8 classes with minimal customization (stigmas) is not enough to keep people busy for long.
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I would agree that more content would be nice but one has to assume that this is in the works but it would be nice to get an idea of where the developers see the game going.
I somewhat agree with only having two races and all the classes mirrored but with the high end being predominately PvP this makes a lot of sense and prevents one side from having any sort of significant advantage over the other if a particular class turns out to be out of balance with its mirror alternate. If they simply made them the same and changed the names and animations people would call it a cheat so I think they are better off with the current story line where the world was torn asunder and the single race has split into divergent lines. This is certainly something they should consider exploring once they get the current issues under control.
SOE is an Asian company. In case you hadn't noticed ...
"Sony Corporation of America, based in New York, NY, is a U.S. subsidiary of Sony Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo."
www.sony.com/SCA/corporate.shtml
Also just in case you were really not sure
maps.google.com/maps
Funny. Age of Conan sold more than this.
AoC sold 700k after 40 days.
http://kotaku.com/5020731/age-of-conan-+-a-million-shipped-700k-registered
Quoted for the ownage
)
Amazing Aion has outsold AoC, considering the hype and marketing behind AoC in the west. It goes to show a stable polished game made by a cutting edge Korean company will always be more successful than a game driven by hype and promised features.
Too bad NCSoft can't figure out what to do with a good game like AION....Maybe they should have Blizzard operate it?
Per what was just said, Stock price and profit are two different things. You can make a profit but have your stock price tumble because of bad news.
Bad news like plummeting subs?
SOE is an Asian company. In case you hadn't noticed ...
"Sony Corporation of America, based in New York, NY, is a U.S. subsidiary of Sony Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo."
www.sony.com/SCA/corporate.shtml
Also just in case you were really not sure
maps.google.com/maps
NCSoft is based out of and HQ'd in Korea.
SOE is based out of and HQ'd in California.
Yes, SOE is a subsidiary of a multinational corporation based in Tokyo, Japan. But, the company Sony Online Entertainment was formed in 1995 as Verant studios in the US and later bought by a division of Sony Pictures that later became SOE.
So yeah, they may be an owned subsidiary of a mainly Japanese corporation, but the games they make are based out of and created in the US.
Meanwhile Aion is a game that was created in Korea by NCSoft, where they are based. NCSoft was started in Korea and has been making games for the asian market for many years before they even opened a US base of operations. Most of NCSofts games still come from Korea (Lineage, Lineage 2, Aion, etc).
So yeah, my point still stands valid.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
And those boxes sit now on western dealer's shelves.
And they sit and sit ...
Just like the rest of those unsold 1.2 M WAR boxes with 5/5 servers to support the unsold units
Get a grip Aion has 14NA/18EU non full servers.
That's the equivalent of 250K western subs... and rapidly declinging according to Xfire.
You really have to be blind to believe this Korean is going to stay in player's minds.
Where do you get 250k from? The 18+14 = 32 servers are about half full (I take that from half of them listed as full and half as recommended).
One Lineage 2 server had a maximum capacity of 5000. Since it is the same company, and a newer game, one would assume that Aion servers has atleast that high max capacity. So half full servers would be 2500 concurrent players. 2500x32 = 80.000 concurrent subscribers.
A typical number used is that 15% of subscribers is the peak concurrent subscribers. So that gives us 80.000/0.15 = 533.000 subscribers.
With 970.000 boxes sold that is (533.000-970.000)/970.000 = -0.45 which is a 45% drop of subs which coincidently is about the same drop as XFire shows.
So the current subscriber base is around 525.000, give or take 50.000, not 250.000.
If it would be 250.000 then the drop would be (250.000-970.000)/970.000 = -0.74 which is a 74% drop and there is nothing to indicate that huge drop (including XFire trends that you like to use). Also I am playing the game and I think I would notice a 74% drop and I dont. The zones are full and the chat channels are constantly cluttered with people LFG.
Aion is not the next generation of MMORPG but it is a very solid one, very solid WoW clone to some extent but still very solid.
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Where do you get 250k from? The 18+14 = 32 servers are about half full (I take that from half of them listed as full and half as recommended).
One Lineage 2 server had a maximum capacity of 5000. Since it is the same company, and a newer game, one would assume that Aion servers has atleast that high max capacity. So half full servers would be 2500 concurrent players. 2500x32 = 80.000 concurrent subscribers.
A typical number used is that 15% of subscribers is the peak concurrent subscribers. So that gives us 80.000/0.15 = 533.000 subscribers.
With 970.000 boxes sold that is (533.000-970.000)/970.000 = -0.45 which is a 45% drop of subs which coincidently is about the same drop as XFire shows.
So the current subscriber base is around 525.000, give or take 50.000, not 250.000.
You have a little problem there...
Because NScoft bragged that ... at launch ... that 60% of their player base was playing at the same time ...
))
http://uk.aiononline.com/board/notices/view?articleID=164&page=2
I'll quote ... to make it easy on you:
"In preparation for Aion’s launch, we ran calculations of our presale numbers with historical conversion ratios and expected concurrency numbers, which led to our determination of launch day server needs. In addition, we had a 25 percent additional capacity in hardware reserve and the ability to increase server population. We’ve further responded to the overwhelming demand by adding additional server worlds in all languages, and still we are working around the clock to address the incredible demand. For example, we’re seeing timeframes where 60 percent or more of our players are playing at any given time. This is a significant event by any MMO standard. Another surprising development is how long players are staying in game—I think that’s a testament to the enjoyable nature of the product. "
---------
Now some technical info: 12NA/12EU servers were not enough to solve those 60% of the players logging in. Aion launched with "almost" 400K pre-orders (including those that always pre order and "forget" to collect the real thing so they have a few days of trial).
12NA/12EU means around a 200K max capacity. Clearly not enough for the 400K of which (NCOSFT SOURCE ITSELF) said 60% was trying to get in ...
So they upped it to 14NA/18EU (I myself predicted BEFORE launch they would need 16NA/18EU), having a nice 240K possibilty.
----> I don't know where you get that ridiculously low 15% average in btw. As Mark Jaobs himself said that at the launching month around 1/3 players are logged in in a new MMO concurrently time).
For older mmorpg's the ratio is between 1/3 and 1/4 , so between 25 and 33% logging in.
You can see this from AIon itself btw: Korean had 400 K subs (with 41 servers) and China at the launching week had 113 servers for 1 M (free! at the time) playing players.
Take your (extreme low) 15% (see the bragging of NCsoft 60% themselves) to 30% and you come up with the exact same figures of me: 250K.
Edit: those 970K were shipped to shops (at the end of the quarter). FAR from every box was sold to customers too at this time. They sell it to the retailers, but those boxes still sit on dealers shelves today.
In no way are 14US/18EU servers enough to hold the subs you mention (see above the Korea and China Aion situations at launch).
Aion sold 450k before launch:
http://us.ncsoft.com/en/news/press-releases/aion-launch.html
After launch and with all the Qeues, 500k is the minimum logical sale figure, the launch period saw login issues where Qeues exceeded the maximum display limit of 3000 for Qeues, at which time 60% of players tried to login. But, no one knows how many were trying to login. Liv mentioned a percentage not a figure.
The maximum concurent player capacity for servers is not the total number of subscribers, capacity which was greatly reduced from all the players abusing Private shops to stay logged in. And NCsoft locking factions to preserve balance.
After about 2 weeks, NCsoft added a 30min auto-dc timer to private shops, increased server capacity by 25%. And added new servers with the increased capacity.Then there is the normal reduction of the percentage of players trying to login at any given time, which is expected after 2 weeks of the launch of any MMO, where the time and length of playing sessions normalizes. These factors resolved Qeue issues.
The point to be made is simple. You can't estimate the number of subsribers from max server capacity, its a flawed logic. 60% refers to an unknown number of players at a timeframe where server capacity was not fully efficient. No one knows what is the percentage of concurrent players 2 weeks after launch and now. It could be anything from 10% to 30%.
I know for sure i only play 1 or 2 hours per day and mostly at off-peak time, not everyone plays 4 hours+ for sure. Some even only play the game every couple of days. But they pay the full subsctiption.
This propagnda is getting quiet boring, people who dislike Aion should leave to Blizzards pet-shop and enjoy paying 10$ for a few pixels.
Improve Aion's Graphics with a simple text file that you can create by yourself:
-Increase in-game Field of View to 175% or more
-Increase view distance for players to 100 meters with camera at max distance
-Lots of other settings
Learn how by reading this guide at Aionsource
http://www.aionsource.com/forum/general-guides/84379-definite-guide-aions-graphical-settings-performance-tips.html