It's a good/fair choice, Aion is a good game dismissed all the trash comments around certain issues.
Just hope 2010 will bring the next gen MMOrpg, its time for some fresh air !
Yeah, lets ignore all trash comments about issues...no issues to see here, or anywhere, lets all settle on playing pacman and drive smartcars :P
Grouping in Old school mmo's: meeting someone at the bar and chatting, getting to know them before jumping into bed. Current mmo's grouping: tinder. swipe, hookup, hope you don't get herpes, never see them again.
The "site" does not review a game - a single writer that we assign to the article determines that score. Because they are MMOs we require that person to play the game 20-40 hours before writing. While the Editor does read over the review, the Editor did not play the game that duration and generally does not have the wisdom to second guess the writer assigned the review. It is not uncommon that reviews might be higher or lower than the average player feels the game deserves. This happens at all major gaming sites like ours...it is just the nature of the beast and more so with MMOs I think. I think that is the great thing about looking at reviews from many sites to form an overall opinion and not just looking at a numerical score, but reading the review and listening to pros and cons. Again, please stop to think what would be at stake if we "sold" reviews or other editorial content on this site. If this ever got out (and it would I assure you) it would ruin our reputation with our readers and with all other game companies - which would in effect destroy this website, which would be a loss 1000 times greater than any shady deal could bring us. I have actually played Aion for what might amount to 30 or so hours since launch, I think it is an OK game and I don't think it is a far stretch to say it was the best overall game launched in 2009 (not game of the year note this is a seperate award yet to come) - but still this was not my decision to make - it was the editorial team that will decide all the site awards.
I know I have beaten this horse to death, but you guys really need to drastically change this site's system for reviewing games. This is coming from someone who loves this site and has a lot invested in it. There are radical inconsistancies with the scores given to certain games and frankly the depth of many of the reviews are severely lacking. Aion getting the highest score ever received on this site is a testament to that, and it is sad when a site like Gamespot is nailing MMO reviews better than this one because most of the time they don't know wtf they are talking about.
Playing Aion for 20-40 hours may seem like a long time, but it really is not enough time to find out the major issues the game has because the early stages of the game are well done. I find most of the people who gush over the game do so before level 37 where the content drastically dries up, and the exp curve escalates at a rate that is beyond imagination. This is the case with a lot of the modern MMOs, where the late game really shows the flaws (see AoC classic).
The reviews for this site are written by people who by far and large have almost no credibility with the members here. With the exception of Stradden and maybe one or two others, I don't think most people take them seriously. You have these reviews written by people whose MMO background is unknown, and write maybe 2 pages and slap a score on it.
People want to know what type of MMOs a writer favors, and what their views are on other games. Reviews should be written by multiple people so that readers can identify which writer they can best relate to. These games are not cut and dry and different MMO gamers have different tastes.
As far as selling reviews, I agree that accusation is complete nonsense and doesn't hold any merit here. But please consider an alternate review system for the sake of this sites credibility.
Aion.. bahahhahah.... best... bahhahahah... mmorpg of 2009 bahahahahha
omg... I can't stop laughing. Are we talking about that game that just had a major bug and players suddenly received trillions of kinah? And they had to take the server down? It's not even a matter of an exploit or item duping, a seemingly random bug just triggered that in certain accounts in just 1 server. Guess weird coincidences really happen in Aion.
And this is not from an angry WoW fanboy. I pre-ordered, closed beta tested, open beta tested, subbed 1 month in that game. It's not the worst game of the year, far from that... but it's not the best of 2009 imho, even though it was a crappy year for mmorpgs and the other candidates weren't that great it still doesn't deserve the title.
Now just between us mmorpg.com staff, how much "kinah" did NCSoft put in your christmas stocking?? just kidding....
TU2 Closed Beta Testing... looking very good so far
I derived no enjoyment whatsoever from Aion. It was very apparent to me that the game was made on the cheap. Low investment, a lot of marketing, sell a lot of boxes from the hype and reap the profits. I didn't like any aspect of the game and thought the graphics were very poor. And that is not just a style preference, models and landscapes were poorly done, with very little detial. I think people confuse lots and lots and lots and lots of intense color with beauty.
Yea I'll agree that Aion is unique in that the early game gives the player (reviewer) a much different look of the game than say post level 35, which I think is impossible to achieve in only 30 hours played. It is no accident that a large amount of the playerbase burned out past that level due to the way the game is designed (Aion's own website reflects this).
That being said, I don't know what game I'd put above Aion as far as the year is concerned. Champion's Online could of been that game but it wasn't.
Yea I'll agree that Aion is unique in that the early game gives the player (reviewer) a much different look of the game than say post level 35, which I think is impossible to achieve in only 30 hours played. It is no accident that a large amount of the playerbase burned out past that level due to the way the game is designed (Aion's own website reflects this). That being said, I don't know what game I'd put above Aion as far as the year is concerned. Champion's Online could of been that game but it wasn't.
mm 3% of player at 50 says it all .most leave before reaching it
i dont mind grind ,wow had ton and have ton of grind.but its made by different quest.no 1 quest repetable 100 time lol
im at lvl 22 and the xp curve start to rise first instance and those can literally kill you gold making and your lvl in order to progress.i ll will try to do those only one time for quest .as long as didnt touch elite it was a fine game.aside from the grind of crafting.but now the grind is starting to show up .some item are better baught at ah then farm it.kroll food anybody?
i went at it all night 1 dropped lol.
and to top it all some player would rater grind in elite area then quest.let me tell you once a week its ok .but grinding for xp all day long in elite nope no ty i d rater wallk to the end of the map in verteron and search for the elusive quest then that even if there are no fp lol
I played Aion in beta, and Fallen Earth in Beta and for 2 months after. Fallen Earth is the better new game. Aion is just another WoW clone. Pretty but boring. Fallen Earth failed to entertain me as well after a couple months leveling up to 30 or 40. But it should win for uniqeness alone. Granted that is all I played in 2009, since EVE Online is still the best MMO out there.
Other than that it wasn't fun whatsoever for me (which is a matter of opinion), it really doesn't innovate much at all and most importantly: it does not deliver at all on the promises that were made before release.
Hell, even pvp is mediocre at best and non-existant at worst, when the whole game is portrayed as a pvp game.
Not to speak about bugs, bots and recently: hacks.
Although I did not enjoy Fallen Earth either, I think it would have been a better winner, because tbh, there are F2P mmo's that offer a similar experience as Aion (graphics aside) .
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Aion is winning awards, people are playing it, problems have been and are still being solved with spammers/bots and the like and still the desperate Aion hating trolls still moan. Funny.
Yup..makes me wonder what game all these haters are playing....? WoW is my guess.
The world of Aion is packed with people and NCsoft continues to fix any major issues until they come out with their big update early this year. My guess is all these folks who "hate" Aion havent even tried it. Those who have are likely just trying to make themselves feel better for not playing buy bitching and whining here....its laughable lol
Originally posted by Rabenwolf Risk isnt always a good thing, in fact, it can often be associated with a sign of stupidity if you do not know what you are doing and how the current market is reacting.
Keep in mind Aion is using the CryEngine for an mmorpg. Its own risk and innovation come on the form of art and sound playing a greater role along with the game engine and technology. The game also sought to appeal to all audiences with a mixture of western and asian design elements. Whether you can say this succeeded or not is debatable, but there was innovation and risk present and remember its not always a good thing.
For 2009, it is the best new game. Sorry, but its kind of obvious. Fallen Earth was interesting, but it was made for a small niche market and was riddled with bugs and aged graphics, partially due to its low budget. DarkFall was just a mess, badly designed and badly managed. In fact, im pretty sure you can say the people over at Aventurine are blithering idiots at this point, they had something with promise, but made all the wrong choices.
This one is the most rational argument about the subject.
Yup..makes me wonder what game all these haters are playing....? WoW is my guess.
The world of Aion is packed with people and NCsoft continues to fix any major issues until they come out with their big update early this year. My guess is all these folks who "hate" Aion havent even tried it. Those who have are likely just trying to make themselves feel better for not playing buy bitching and whining here....its laughable lol
Um, I played Aion for a few months, gave it a decent shot. It was too linear by far for me, and I could see no room for replayability (doing the exact same things all over (and over) again, or a reskinned version on the other side? Meh.). PvP was a zergfest, and didn't grab me. Playing on the other side, it would have been a gankfest which would be even more frustrating. If they beefed up the Balaur a bit it might fix that (if they already have, my bad).
I voted with my wallet, and have been playing FE for the past while. It's the most immersive world I've come across in a long long time, with the best crafting (bar none) and the most room for exploration and altolholism.
In terms of support and paying attention to their players Icarus beat NCWest hands-down. I couldn't even log a ticket with a GM for the first 6 weeks playing Aion (I'm in Europe), it drove me bananas.
I'm not one for conspiracy theories about ad revenues and whatnot, but immersion, crafting, exploration, replayability and support should surely be important criteria for picking a Game of the Year?
That's why I think the results should have been the other way around.
Reading through this I feel like I'm doing something wrong in Aion. I mean, here I am at level 50: Sonoko
The problem is that not only do I still enjoy this game, but I've not once felt the need to grind. Quite seriously, I did 1-50 doing absolutely nothing but questing. And no, not farming repeatables. At any given level there was more than enough quest content to get to the next level, so I'm a bit confused here. There's two things I can think of, either some people are utterly terrible and die so much they have to grind to make back lost exp, or they just selectively ignore large portions of the content in the game. "I want to exclusively solo, this level only has group quests, what a grind!" "I want to exclusively group, this level only has solo quests, what a grind!" "Oh, I don't like PVP so I'm not doing these spy quests/abyss quests worth millions of exp! Oh man, now there's no quests to do and I need to grind!" Yeah, newsflash, everything's intertwined and it's expected that you partake in all aspects of the game. In fact, so far the only thing I've seen resembling a grind is the Platinum Coin weapons, of which I actually own one. 2000 platinum coins, a quest can reward anywhere from 4-19 of them. What a grind, right? Oh wait, they're tradeable, and lots of people farm them, so you can just buy them on the broker and get your weapon without so much as killing a single monster related to it. And they're easily outmatched by dropped gold weapons anyway, so there's no necessity to go for one whatsoever.
As far as enjoyment of the game goes, this baffles me the most. Maybe some other classes aren't as fun to play, but Templar is a blast even while doing solo content. Unlike most other games I've played where you really do cycle one skill rotation for everything, that's not even close to what I do in Aion. Every different mob uses different skills at certain percentages, so I need to have a different rotation for practically everything in order to interrupt their skills and maximize my efficiency, and this is while taking time to weave autoattacks with split-second precision for maximum dps.
The group content is somewhat different. It starts off somewhat "meh" but grows into being really fun. The group dungeons like Mist Mane and Bakarma remind me highly of when I played EQ2 back in KoS, they have the same charm as SoS and PoA. Large areas capable of supporting tons of groups, plenty of quests taking you all throughout the zone, lots of rare monsters that can drop some nice loot, just all around group fun. The instances kind of go the same way, both Training Camp and Fire Temple are fairly lackluster, and to a lesser extent Alquimia Stronghold, but past that I've entirely fallen in love with them. Steel Rake is absolutely gorgeous and is the introduction of boss encounters that are scripted and involve a lot more than just tank and spank. Then Draupnir Cave and Adma Stronghold kick the bosses up a notch by having end bosses (Commander Bakarma and Lord Lannok) that you really have to learn and wipe to numerous times to come up with an effective strategy and execute it properly. It reminded me of pre-nerf Nizara in EQ2, essentially raid content restricted to only one group. And Dark Poeta, well, correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think anybody in the West has killed the S-Rank boss yet. I can only imagine I'm going to have a lot of fun trying to down that. :O
Reading though this topic I've also noticed a lot of people mentioning issues that are virtually non-existent now, which kind of makes me laugh. Bots? I remember a time when there were hundreds of bots running all over KSing mobs from people. That was... months ago? I still see bots occasionally but in the past month I'd say I've seen maybe 6, of which some I'm pretty sure have since been banned since I stopped seeing them. Crashing? This too was resolved quite awhile ago, I've had absolutely no issues on massive sieges with hundreds of people. I *DID* use to crash a lot early on and that really gave me a sour taste, but, geez, I can't even remember the last time I've crashed now. I also remember when chat was unreadable until you blocked 6 spammers every time you logged in. Now I can go days before seeing even one, which really isn't that annoying to right click and block. The last dozen times I've went into Pandaemonium I've also been surprised at the lack of RMT advertising shops up in front of the Temple of Gold. I kind of expected that to never be dealt with due to how easy it is to get a char up to level 10 and do it, and yet they're actually dealing with it. O.o
I'm also actually kind of annoyed that NCSoft has been listening to the complainers and had three double exp weekends in a row. I think it's entirely unnecessary. = But wow, they actually listened to people, what a lame company, right guys?
Anyway, can somebody fill me in on what I'm doing wrong? I feel like an outcast having a completely different experience with Aion than you guys. Help me hate it too so I can be part of your cool clique!
Reading through this I feel like I'm doing something wrong in Aion. I mean, here I am at level 50: Sonoko The problem is that not only do I still enjoy this game, but I've not once felt the need to grind. Quite seriously, I did 1-50 doing absolutely nothing but questing. And no, not farming repeatables. At any given level there was more than enough quest content to get to the next level, so I'm a bit confused here. There's two things I can think of, either some people are utterly terrible and die so much they have to grind to make back lost exp, or they just selectively ignore large portions of the content in the game. "I want to exclusively solo, this level only has group quests, what a grind!" "I want to exclusively group, this level only has solo quests, what a grind!" "Oh, I don't like PVP so I'm not doing these spy quests/abyss quests worth millions of exp! Oh man, now there's no quests to do and I need to grind!" Yeah, newsflash, everything's intertwined and it's expected that you partake in all aspects of the game. In fact, so far the only thing I've seen resembling a grind is the Platinum Coin weapons, of which I actually own one. 2000 platinum coins, a quest can reward anywhere from 4-19 of them. What a grind, right? Oh wait, they're tradeable, and lots of people farm them, so you can just buy them on the broker and get your weapon without so much as killing a single monster related to it. And they're easily outmatched by dropped gold weapons anyway, so there's no necessity to go for one whatsoever. As far as enjoyment of the game goes, this baffles me the most. Maybe some other classes aren't as fun to play, but Templar is a blast even while doing solo content. Unlike most other games I've played where you really do cycle one skill rotation for everything, that's not even close to what I do in Aion. Every different mob uses different skills at certain percentages, so I need to have a different rotation for practically everything in order to interrupt their skills and maximize my efficiency, and this is while taking time to weave autoattacks with split-second precision for maximum dps. The group content is somewhat different. It starts off somewhat "meh" but grows into being really fun. The group dungeons like Mist Mane and Bakarma remind me highly of when I played EQ2 back in KoS, they have the same charm as SoS and PoA. Large areas capable of supporting tons of groups, plenty of quests taking you all throughout the zone, lots of rare monsters that can drop some nice loot, just all around group fun. The instances kind of go the same way, both Training Camp and Fire Temple are fairly lackluster, and to a lesser extent Alquimia Stronghold, but past that I've entirely fallen in love with them. Steel Rake is absolutely gorgeous and is the introduction of boss encounters that are scripted and involve a lot more than just tank and spank. Then Draupnir Cave and Adma Stronghold kick the bosses up a notch by having end bosses (Commander Bakarma and Lord Lannok) that you really have to learn and wipe to numerous times to come up with an effective strategy and execute it properly. It reminded me of pre-nerf Nizara in EQ2, essentially raid content restricted to only one group. And Dark Poeta, well, correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think anybody in the West has killed the S-Rank boss yet. I can only imagine I'm going to have a lot of fun trying to down that. :O Reading though this topic I've also noticed a lot of people mentioning issues that are virtually non-existent now, which kind of makes me laugh. Bots? I remember a time when there were hundreds of bots running all over KSing mobs from people. That was... months ago? I still see bots occasionally but in the past month I'd say I've seen maybe 6, of which some I'm pretty sure have since been banned since I stopped seeing them. Crashing? This too was resolved quite awhile ago, I've had absolutely no issues on massive sieges with hundreds of people. I *DID* use to crash a lot early on and that really gave me a sour taste, but, geez, I can't even remember the last time I've crashed now. I also remember when chat was unreadable until you blocked 6 spammers every time you logged in. Now I can go days before seeing even one, which really isn't that annoying to right click and block. The last dozen times I've went into Pandaemonium I've also been surprised at the lack of RMT advertising shops up in front of the Temple of Gold. I kind of expected that to never be dealt with due to how easy it is to get a char up to level 10 and do it, and yet they're actually dealing with it. O.o I'm also actually kind of annoyed that NCSoft has been listening to the complainers and had three double exp weekends in a row. I think it's entirely unnecessary. = But wow, they actually listened to people, what a lame company, right guys? Anyway, can somebody fill me in on what I'm doing wrong? I feel like an outcast having a completely different experience with Aion than you guys. Help me hate it too so I can be part of your cool clique!
Haha! Well done sir! Finally a man with a brain and some time to explain how foolish half the complaints I see about Aion are. Half of you people quit after your 1 month and havent seen how Aion as come along since then.
I agree with everything this man said..thank god theres finally someone who sees Aion for what it is. THE best MMO of 2009 hands down. IMO its the easily the best pvp MMO right now and will continue to be if NCsoft does it right. I don't mean to hate on you all but this year once Aion has had afew updates added with awesome content you'll all come running back like sheep. Meanwhile keep whining and bitching about Aion here...honestly the folks who enjoy Aion could care less anyway. Most of us don't bother posting here as you can see :-)
I think this sort of award will always go to the one with the biggest ADV budget.
This is an interesting pick from my perspective because it's a bit harder for me to guage any game on the list as I've played none of them, and while I don't disagree with the editor's choice I would think there is some validity to this statement.
But I really don't think it's the fault of mmorpg, while you won't give "points" to a companiy that overadvertises how well known a game is almost has to come into consideration. I say this because while the percentage of folks happy with Fallen Earth could be even higher than the percentage of people happy with Aion, There are probably more satisfied Aion customers than the entire population of Fallen Earth maybe even twice over. I feel for the little guy who is going to have a hard time dealing with the advertising budgets of bigger companies but in the end I don't think Blizzard was quite the monster that it is today and that had more to do with the accesibility and joy people found in playing the game they made so that leads me to think in the end while Fallen Earth may not have disapointed as many people as Aion did they certainly didn't reach enough people for it to matter so it all works out in the end.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Reading through this I feel like I'm doing something wrong in Aion. I mean, here I am at level 50: Sonoko The problem is that not only do I still enjoy this game, but I've not once felt the need to grind. Quite seriously, I did 1-50 doing absolutely nothing but questing. And no, not farming repeatables. At any given level there was more than enough quest content to get to the next level, so I'm a bit confused here. There's two things I can think of, either some people are utterly terrible and die so much they have to grind to make back lost exp, or they just selectively ignore large portions of the content in the game. "I want to exclusively solo, this level only has group quests, what a grind!" "I want to exclusively group, this level only has solo quests, what a grind!" "Oh, I don't like PVP so I'm not doing these spy quests/abyss quests worth millions of exp! Oh man, now there's no quests to do and I need to grind!" Yeah, newsflash, everything's intertwined and it's expected that you partake in all aspects of the game. In fact, so far the only thing I've seen resembling a grind is the Platinum Coin weapons, of which I actually own one. 2000 platinum coins, a quest can reward anywhere from 4-19 of them. What a grind, right? Oh wait, they're tradeable, and lots of people farm them, so you can just buy them on the broker and get your weapon without so much as killing a single monster related to it. And they're easily outmatched by dropped gold weapons anyway, so there's no necessity to go for one whatsoever. As far as enjoyment of the game goes, this baffles me the most. Maybe some other classes aren't as fun to play, but Templar is a blast even while doing solo content. Unlike most other games I've played where you really do cycle one skill rotation for everything, that's not even close to what I do in Aion. Every different mob uses different skills at certain percentages, so I need to have a different rotation for practically everything in order to interrupt their skills and maximize my efficiency, and this is while taking time to weave autoattacks with split-second precision for maximum dps. The group content is somewhat different. It starts off somewhat "meh" but grows into being really fun. The group dungeons like Mist Mane and Bakarma remind me highly of when I played EQ2 back in KoS, they have the same charm as SoS and PoA. Large areas capable of supporting tons of groups, plenty of quests taking you all throughout the zone, lots of rare monsters that can drop some nice loot, just all around group fun. The instances kind of go the same way, both Training Camp and Fire Temple are fairly lackluster, and to a lesser extent Alquimia Stronghold, but past that I've entirely fallen in love with them. Steel Rake is absolutely gorgeous and is the introduction of boss encounters that are scripted and involve a lot more than just tank and spank. Then Draupnir Cave and Adma Stronghold kick the bosses up a notch by having end bosses (Commander Bakarma and Lord Lannok) that you really have to learn and wipe to numerous times to come up with an effective strategy and execute it properly. It reminded me of pre-nerf Nizara in EQ2, essentially raid content restricted to only one group. And Dark Poeta, well, correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think anybody in the West has killed the S-Rank boss yet. I can only imagine I'm going to have a lot of fun trying to down that. :O Reading though this topic I've also noticed a lot of people mentioning issues that are virtually non-existent now, which kind of makes me laugh. Bots? I remember a time when there were hundreds of bots running all over KSing mobs from people. That was... months ago? I still see bots occasionally but in the past month I'd say I've seen maybe 6, of which some I'm pretty sure have since been banned since I stopped seeing them. Crashing? This too was resolved quite awhile ago, I've had absolutely no issues on massive sieges with hundreds of people. I *DID* use to crash a lot early on and that really gave me a sour taste, but, geez, I can't even remember the last time I've crashed now. I also remember when chat was unreadable until you blocked 6 spammers every time you logged in. Now I can go days before seeing even one, which really isn't that annoying to right click and block. The last dozen times I've went into Pandaemonium I've also been surprised at the lack of RMT advertising shops up in front of the Temple of Gold. I kind of expected that to never be dealt with due to how easy it is to get a char up to level 10 and do it, and yet they're actually dealing with it. O.o I'm also actually kind of annoyed that NCSoft has been listening to the complainers and had three double exp weekends in a row. I think it's entirely unnecessary. = But wow, they actually listened to people, what a lame company, right guys? Anyway, can somebody fill me in on what I'm doing wrong? I feel like an outcast having a completely different experience with Aion than you guys. Help me hate it too so I can be part of your cool clique!
Haha! Well done sir! Finally a man with a brain and some time to explain how foolish half the complaints I see about Aion are. Half of you people quit after your 1 month and havent seen how Aion as come along since then.
I agree with everything this man said..thank god theres finally someone who sees Aion for what it is. THE best MMO of 2009 hands down. IMO its the easily the best pvp MMO right now and will continue to be if NCsoft does it right. I don't mean to hate on you all but this year once Aion has had afew updates added with awesome content you'll all come running back like sheep. Meanwhile keep whining and bitching about Aion here...honestly the folks who enjoy Aion could care less anyway. Most of us don't bother posting here as you can see :-)
The only complaints that are foolish are the ones from people who didn't even play the game. Everyone that played is entitled to an opinion. Hell, everyone is entitled to an opinion!
Pre-start in Europe plus 1 month sub = lvl 38. Man, if I hate the game in 38 lvls I'm going to hate in the next 12 no matter how much updates they've made since then.
To me (and I guess to a lot of people) if the game doesn't pull you in in that amount of time, then you're just wasting money. I'm not gonna keep paying for months and months just because I want to wait and see what the developers are going to do to improve the flaws I think it has.
And best PVP mmo? I'm gonna go ahead and guess this is your first NCsoft game right? L2 and GW are proof that NCsoft can do a lot better in terms of PvP than Aion. Aion's PvP is a joke when compared to L2.
You can go ahead and make a survey, it only takes two questions to prove my point
1 - "How many former WoW players are still playing Aion and liking it?" (answer is probably: a lot!)
2 - "How many former L2 players quit Aion after the first month, or didn't even give it a try?" (answer is probably: almost all of them!")
TU2 Closed Beta Testing... looking very good so far
I may have to agree with MMORPG on this one. After this non-stellar year of MMO releases, Aion was the most polished on release. Of course, I think that is due to, in large part, to being already released in Asia. I guess I'm gonna have to offer my congratulations to Aion, the highest floating turd in the toilet of 2009 MMO releases.
I had to LOL at this! In a few years, MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR games like SW: TOR, WoW Cataclysm, FREE Guild Wars 2, FFXIV, etc. will be out and in a few years, Aion will have less and less players.
Then also consider other MMOs that will come out in a few years.
To me it's same what game realy won this one cause realy 2009 didn't have any realy good mmo-games come out. Every one o them were kind of "meh". Now I have high hopes on this year on the mmo front. There is a chance the sw:tor comes out, final fantasy 14, star trek and there could be some other. So I want to think that there gonna be realy good games this year and I can easily leave last year behind. I realy don't care if Aion wor or fallen earth... Both of them are not realy that impressive.
Exactly.
2009 was a "meh" year when it came to MMOs. Aion winning is like myself winning MVP of a local / amateur league. I still suck compare the the "big players"
I know I have beaten this horse to death, but you guys really need to drastically change this site's system for reviewing games. This is coming from someone who loves this site and has a lot invested in it. There are radical inconsistancies with the scores given to certain games and frankly the depth of many of the reviews are severely lacking. Aion getting the highest score ever received on this site is a testament to that, and it is sad when a site like Gamespot is nailing MMO reviews better than this one because most of the time they don't know wtf they are talking about. Playing Aion for 20-40 hours may seem like a long time, but it really is not enough time to find out the major issues the game has because the early stages of the game are well done. I find most of the people who gush over the game do so before level 37 where the content drastically dries up, and the exp curve escalates at a rate that is beyond imagination. This is the case with a lot of the modern MMOs, where the late game really shows the flaws (see AoC classic). The reviews for this site are written by people who by far and large have almost no credibility with the members here. With the exception of Stradden and maybe one or two others, I don't think most people take them seriously. You have these reviews written by people whose MMO background is unknown, and write maybe 2 pages and slap a score on it. People want to know what type of MMOs a writer favors, and what their views are on other games. Reviews should be written by multiple people so that readers can identify which writer they can best relate to. These games are not cut and dry and different MMO gamers have different tastes. As far as selling reviews, I agree that accusation is complete nonsense and doesn't hold any merit here. But please consider an alternate review system for the sake of this sites credibility.
I completly agree. I actually read bloggers reviews over MMORPG.com's Staff Review because I can't "identify" myself with any of their writer. And I believe this is also shown a lot in this thread, as many users call this a conspiracy while others will say the reviewers are biased, etc. We have no background information about them, they are just .....there....pops out a new review which gets featured on MMORPG.com but....who are you? what kind of games do you play? what's your background in gaming? experience in the industry? Aside from a few Writers, we barely know anything about said reviewers other than the fact that he liked Aion and gave it a 8.7 (this is just one exemple out of many, hell I don't even know who made that review).
I also agree that 20-40 hours is not enough for a game. We are talking about an MMORPG where character progression matters. In no way have you tried enough of the game at level 20 to make a decent review when everyone agrees the "PvPvE" part only exists after Level 25-27(access to the Abyss). When the reviewer has not even scratched most of the real content and posts a review, I always wandered....does said reviewer really played this or that game? Many MMORPGs have very great starts and the first few levels are awesome.....but become something completly different later on that, if not reviewed, will mislead readers and destroy the credibility of said writer.
Seriously, this thread is the best exemple you can find.
b) While we did sell some Aion advertising in 2009 the campaign came out to 2.2% of our 2009 advertising sales, and believe it or not - Fallen Earth did just a little bit more than that.
And how much money did you get for all the other ncsoft titles? How much do you expect to get for all their future ones? Your statement is very misleading.
The real heart of this is not what % of advertising we do with NCSoft (which is really small compared to other clients) but that it would be completely stupid and foolish to risk our/my reputation by influencing the editorial team as the owner and person who books advertising. This site has been online for the better part of 8 years. We have had many different editorial staff and had we practiced policies like this you would have heard about it with facts by now. If we did this then somewhere, someplace there would be some staff member who would have leaked this about us. I would not risk letting this website go down the drain to make a few bucks on an ad deal - purely from a business perspective this would be a idiotic practice. And again, my team members have a long career to think about - getting caught up in something like this would ruin them, and they would not allow me to do it even if I were as evil as you think.
Again, if you find conspiracy theory fun, then go ahead and carry on - there is really nothing that I/we could do to convince anyone who is set on this mindset otherwise. The fact remains that there is zero proof of what is claimed other than you disagree with our editorial team so therefore the results must have been paid for. All fact and history points to this website being honest and ethical and I take pride in this fact and the way we have structured the business to prevent this.
What leads people to believe it is a conspiracy theory is not that it one best of the year but the huge coincidence that this site gave Aion the highest rating out of any mmo. It's pretty ironic that WoW( yes i went there) which has so many subscribers has attained a score lower than Aion. You can call it a conspiracy theory. I can call it a huge coincidence in the end it doesn't add up and when something doesn't add up it is not believable to anyone.
Another thiing is that sure each person has different opinions on whats awsome and whats not a good game. But people know a game's faults when they see it. When other gaming companies give an honest review and all companies give Aion a C grade level review and miraculously one company gives it a high score does that make any sense? I believe it leads to people not believing the review to be thought out in an appropriate manner.
About the game its starts off fun at the beginning but in the end the content is thin. it reminds me of when Age of conan launched and at high levels didnt have much content. We need sites to stop giving awards to whats the most popular game out there and start giving awards to the games that are polished with content and deserve it.
The "site" does not review a game - a single writer that we assign to the article determines that score. Because they are MMOs we require that person to play the game 20-40 hours before writing. While the Editor does read over the review, the Editor did not play the game that duration and generally does not have the wisdom to second guess the writer assigned the review.
It is not uncommon that reviews might be higher or lower than the average player feels the game deserves. This happens at all major gaming sites like ours...it is just the nature of the beast and more so with MMOs I think. I think that is the great thing about looking at reviews from many sites to form an overall opinion and not just looking at a numerical score, but reading the review and listening to pros and cons.
Again, please stop to think what would be at stake if we "sold" reviews or other editorial content on this site. If this ever got out (and it would I assure you) it would ruin our reputation with our readers and with all other game companies - which would in effect destroy this website, which would be a loss 1000 times greater than any shady deal could bring us.
I have actually played Aion for what might amount to 30 or so hours since launch, I think it is an OK game and I don't think it is a far stretch to say it was the best overall game launched in 2009 (not game of the year note this is a seperate award yet to come) - but still this was not my decision to make - it was the editorial team that will decide all the site awards.
So editor's choice is based on reviews of ppl who are required to play a game, not necessary aion, for 20-40 hours?
If thats true, do you really think this is an objective point of view?
In my opinion, reading through forums over the year, and awarding based on this experience would be a lot more representative.
No - actually if you read through the entire quote block you will see I was answering a user who was more "concerned" about our review score done months ago not so much this award. I was explaining our review process to him.
Editor's choice is based on the editorial team (Jon Wood, Garrett Fuller, Dana Massey, Mike Bitton) coming to a decision on what game they think deserves the award. I am not 100% sure on their entire process, since that is their department - but all I can assure you is that my department (ad sales) had zero to do with the decision since those guys have no clue about advertising going on at MMORPG.com.
- MMORPG.COM Staff -
The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive.
Reading through this I feel like I'm doing something wrong in Aion. I mean, here I am at level 50: Sonoko The problem is that not only do I still enjoy this game, but I've not once felt the need to grind. Quite seriously, I did 1-50 doing absolutely nothing but questing. And no, not farming repeatables. At any given level there was more than enough quest content to get to the next level, so I'm a bit confused here. There's two things I can think of, either some people are utterly terrible and die so much they have to grind to make back lost exp, or they just selectively ignore large portions of the content in the game. "I want to exclusively solo, this level only has group quests, what a grind!" "I want to exclusively group, this level only has solo quests, what a grind!" "Oh, I don't like PVP so I'm not doing these spy quests/abyss quests worth millions of exp! Oh man, now there's no quests to do and I need to grind!" Yeah, newsflash, everything's intertwined and it's expected that you partake in all aspects of the game. In fact, so far the only thing I've seen resembling a grind is the Platinum Coin weapons, of which I actually own one. 2000 platinum coins, a quest can reward anywhere from 4-19 of them. What a grind, right? Oh wait, they're tradeable, and lots of people farm them, so you can just buy them on the broker and get your weapon without so much as killing a single monster related to it. And they're easily outmatched by dropped gold weapons anyway, so there's no necessity to go for one whatsoever. As far as enjoyment of the game goes, this baffles me the most. Maybe some other classes aren't as fun to play, but Templar is a blast even while doing solo content. Unlike most other games I've played where you really do cycle one skill rotation for everything, that's not even close to what I do in Aion. Every different mob uses different skills at certain percentages, so I need to have a different rotation for practically everything in order to interrupt their skills and maximize my efficiency, and this is while taking time to weave autoattacks with split-second precision for maximum dps. The group content is somewhat different. It starts off somewhat "meh" but grows into being really fun. The group dungeons like Mist Mane and Bakarma remind me highly of when I played EQ2 back in KoS, they have the same charm as SoS and PoA. Large areas capable of supporting tons of groups, plenty of quests taking you all throughout the zone, lots of rare monsters that can drop some nice loot, just all around group fun. The instances kind of go the same way, both Training Camp and Fire Temple are fairly lackluster, and to a lesser extent Alquimia Stronghold, but past that I've entirely fallen in love with them. Steel Rake is absolutely gorgeous and is the introduction of boss encounters that are scripted and involve a lot more than just tank and spank. Then Draupnir Cave and Adma Stronghold kick the bosses up a notch by having end bosses (Commander Bakarma and Lord Lannok) that you really have to learn and wipe to numerous times to come up with an effective strategy and execute it properly. It reminded me of pre-nerf Nizara in EQ2, essentially raid content restricted to only one group. And Dark Poeta, well, correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think anybody in the West has killed the S-Rank boss yet. I can only imagine I'm going to have a lot of fun trying to down that. :O Reading though this topic I've also noticed a lot of people mentioning issues that are virtually non-existent now, which kind of makes me laugh. Bots? I remember a time when there were hundreds of bots running all over KSing mobs from people. That was... months ago? I still see bots occasionally but in the past month I'd say I've seen maybe 6, of which some I'm pretty sure have since been banned since I stopped seeing them. Crashing? This too was resolved quite awhile ago, I've had absolutely no issues on massive sieges with hundreds of people. I *DID* use to crash a lot early on and that really gave me a sour taste, but, geez, I can't even remember the last time I've crashed now. I also remember when chat was unreadable until you blocked 6 spammers every time you logged in. Now I can go days before seeing even one, which really isn't that annoying to right click and block. The last dozen times I've went into Pandaemonium I've also been surprised at the lack of RMT advertising shops up in front of the Temple of Gold. I kind of expected that to never be dealt with due to how easy it is to get a char up to level 10 and do it, and yet they're actually dealing with it. O.o I'm also actually kind of annoyed that NCSoft has been listening to the complainers and had three double exp weekends in a row. I think it's entirely unnecessary. = But wow, they actually listened to people, what a lame company, right guys? Anyway, can somebody fill me in on what I'm doing wrong? I feel like an outcast having a completely different experience with Aion than you guys. Help me hate it too so I can be part of your cool clique!
I have a lvl 47 Templar named Tyton on Ariel - Asmodian Side. I have had the EXACT same experience as you. Sometimes I wonder if people who complain about Aion are playing the same game. I can understand if it's not your cup of tea, but the visceral hatred for the game is really surprising.
For someone like me, who is an attorney in RL and only has 3 hours of playtime on any given weekday... I reached lvl 47 playing casually for the last 4 months. Grind my ASS! I have never once had a quest log not 30/30. 11 of my 47 levels came from crafting, gathering, and pvp.
Unlike other MMO's, i have 20+ abilities and there are fights where I USE EVERY SINGLE ABILITY. In pvp, you don't die in two shots, and there's an element of strategy and skill. The lower level instances/world zones are tank and spank, but you can't say that for Steel Rake and on.
I really feel that one of the other posters hit the nail on the head. People came into Aion thinking it was either WoW 2.0. I came into Aion having not played WoW for the previous 6 months. I came in with a fresh start, with zero expectations or preconceived notions. I let my experience in the game dictate whether or not I enjoyed it, verus EXPECTING to see or do certain things.
For those of you who complain about bots, you're 3 months behind. For those of you who complain about chat spams, you're 3 months behind. For those of you who complain about the lack of quests, you either didn't find the NPC's, or you grouped during solo quests, skipped on pvp quests, etc. For those of you complaining about lack of content, you forget the MMO'S like WoW which had UBRS/LBRS as "end game."
No one is asking you to like Aion, but I really don't see where this HATRED is coming from.
Why in the world do you feel the need to respond to people espousing these conspiracy theories. The reason you do is because the issue is close to your heart and you care about the integrity of this website.
From my personal experience, EVERY SINGLE prominent website has its conspiracy theorists, regardless of what you say or do. Please, don't respond to their idiotic theories of reviews being "bought."
I believe this is the best website for upcomming MMO's on the web. I check out the forums and articles on a daily basis. A vast vast majority of people who come to this site know the quality of work it produces.
There's no reason to feed the trolls. You're playing right into their hands.
Comments
Yeah, lets ignore all trash comments about issues...no issues to see here, or anywhere, lets all settle on playing pacman and drive smartcars :P
I know I have beaten this horse to death, but you guys really need to drastically change this site's system for reviewing games. This is coming from someone who loves this site and has a lot invested in it. There are radical inconsistancies with the scores given to certain games and frankly the depth of many of the reviews are severely lacking. Aion getting the highest score ever received on this site is a testament to that, and it is sad when a site like Gamespot is nailing MMO reviews better than this one because most of the time they don't know wtf they are talking about.
Playing Aion for 20-40 hours may seem like a long time, but it really is not enough time to find out the major issues the game has because the early stages of the game are well done. I find most of the people who gush over the game do so before level 37 where the content drastically dries up, and the exp curve escalates at a rate that is beyond imagination. This is the case with a lot of the modern MMOs, where the late game really shows the flaws (see AoC classic).
The reviews for this site are written by people who by far and large have almost no credibility with the members here. With the exception of Stradden and maybe one or two others, I don't think most people take them seriously. You have these reviews written by people whose MMO background is unknown, and write maybe 2 pages and slap a score on it.
People want to know what type of MMOs a writer favors, and what their views are on other games. Reviews should be written by multiple people so that readers can identify which writer they can best relate to. These games are not cut and dry and different MMO gamers have different tastes.
As far as selling reviews, I agree that accusation is complete nonsense and doesn't hold any merit here. But please consider an alternate review system for the sake of this sites credibility.
TwitchTV Partnered Streamer
MMORPG.com Spotlight Blog Writer
Co-Leader of Inquisition
Youtube Channel
Aion.. bahahhahah.... best... bahhahahah... mmorpg of 2009 bahahahahha
omg... I can't stop laughing. Are we talking about that game that just had a major bug and players suddenly received trillions of kinah? And they had to take the server down? It's not even a matter of an exploit or item duping, a seemingly random bug just triggered that in certain accounts in just 1 server. Guess weird coincidences really happen in Aion.
And this is not from an angry WoW fanboy. I pre-ordered, closed beta tested, open beta tested, subbed 1 month in that game. It's not the worst game of the year, far from that... but it's not the best of 2009 imho, even though it was a crappy year for mmorpgs and the other candidates weren't that great it still doesn't deserve the title.
Now just between us mmorpg.com staff, how much "kinah" did NCSoft put in your christmas stocking??
just kidding....
TU2 Closed Beta Testing... looking very good so far
I derived no enjoyment whatsoever from Aion. It was very apparent to me that the game was made on the cheap. Low investment, a lot of marketing, sell a lot of boxes from the hype and reap the profits. I didn't like any aspect of the game and thought the graphics were very poor. And that is not just a style preference, models and landscapes were poorly done, with very little detial. I think people confuse lots and lots and lots and lots of intense color with beauty.
Yea I'll agree that Aion is unique in that the early game gives the player (reviewer) a much different look of the game than say post level 35, which I think is impossible to achieve in only 30 hours played. It is no accident that a large amount of the playerbase burned out past that level due to the way the game is designed (Aion's own website reflects this).
That being said, I don't know what game I'd put above Aion as far as the year is concerned. Champion's Online could of been that game but it wasn't.
mm 3% of player at 50 says it all .most leave before reaching it
i dont mind grind ,wow had ton and have ton of grind.but its made by different quest.no 1 quest repetable 100 time lol
im at lvl 22 and the xp curve start to rise first instance and those can literally kill you gold making and your lvl in order to progress.i ll will try to do those only one time for quest .as long as didnt touch elite it was a fine game.aside from the grind of crafting.but now the grind is starting to show up .some item are better baught at ah then farm it.kroll food anybody?
i went at it all night 1 dropped lol.
and to top it all some player would rater grind in elite area then quest.let me tell you once a week its ok .but grinding for xp all day long in elite nope no ty i d rater wallk to the end of the map in verteron and search for the elusive quest then that even if there are no fp lol
I played Aion in beta, and Fallen Earth in Beta and for 2 months after. Fallen Earth is the better new game. Aion is just another WoW clone. Pretty but boring. Fallen Earth failed to entertain me as well after a couple months leveling up to 30 or 40. But it should win for uniqeness alone. Granted that is all I played in 2009, since EVE Online is still the best MMO out there.
Aion is well done, but finally it is just not fun !
I don't think the game deserves this,
Other than that it wasn't fun whatsoever for me (which is a matter of opinion), it really doesn't innovate much at all and most importantly: it does not deliver at all on the promises that were made before release.
Hell, even pvp is mediocre at best and non-existant at worst, when the whole game is portrayed as a pvp game.
Not to speak about bugs, bots and recently: hacks.
Although I did not enjoy Fallen Earth either, I think it would have been a better winner, because tbh, there are F2P mmo's that offer a similar experience as Aion (graphics aside) .
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Hmmm so out of 5 really low quality games, Aion wins an award for being less shitty than the rest. Yeah.....ermm......that really counts for a lot.
Yup..makes me wonder what game all these haters are playing....? WoW is my guess.
The world of Aion is packed with people and NCsoft continues to fix any major issues until they come out with their big update early this year. My guess is all these folks who "hate" Aion havent even tried it. Those who have are likely just trying to make themselves feel better for not playing buy bitching and whining here....its laughable lol
"I play Tera for the gameplay"
This one is the most rational argument about the subject.
...
Um, I played Aion for a few months, gave it a decent shot. It was too linear by far for me, and I could see no room for replayability (doing the exact same things all over (and over) again, or a reskinned version on the other side? Meh.). PvP was a zergfest, and didn't grab me. Playing on the other side, it would have been a gankfest which would be even more frustrating. If they beefed up the Balaur a bit it might fix that (if they already have, my bad).
I voted with my wallet, and have been playing FE for the past while. It's the most immersive world I've come across in a long long time, with the best crafting (bar none) and the most room for exploration and altolholism.
In terms of support and paying attention to their players Icarus beat NCWest hands-down. I couldn't even log a ticket with a GM for the first 6 weeks playing Aion (I'm in Europe), it drove me bananas.
I'm not one for conspiracy theories about ad revenues and whatnot, but immersion, crafting, exploration, replayability and support should surely be important criteria for picking a Game of the Year?
That's why I think the results should have been the other way around.
YMMV.
Reading through this I feel like I'm doing something wrong in Aion. I mean, here I am at level 50: Sonoko
The problem is that not only do I still enjoy this game, but I've not once felt the need to grind. Quite seriously, I did 1-50 doing absolutely nothing but questing. And no, not farming repeatables. At any given level there was more than enough quest content to get to the next level, so I'm a bit confused here. There's two things I can think of, either some people are utterly terrible and die so much they have to grind to make back lost exp, or they just selectively ignore large portions of the content in the game. "I want to exclusively solo, this level only has group quests, what a grind!" "I want to exclusively group, this level only has solo quests, what a grind!" "Oh, I don't like PVP so I'm not doing these spy quests/abyss quests worth millions of exp! Oh man, now there's no quests to do and I need to grind!" Yeah, newsflash, everything's intertwined and it's expected that you partake in all aspects of the game. In fact, so far the only thing I've seen resembling a grind is the Platinum Coin weapons, of which I actually own one. 2000 platinum coins, a quest can reward anywhere from 4-19 of them. What a grind, right? Oh wait, they're tradeable, and lots of people farm them, so you can just buy them on the broker and get your weapon without so much as killing a single monster related to it. And they're easily outmatched by dropped gold weapons anyway, so there's no necessity to go for one whatsoever.
As far as enjoyment of the game goes, this baffles me the most. Maybe some other classes aren't as fun to play, but Templar is a blast even while doing solo content. Unlike most other games I've played where you really do cycle one skill rotation for everything, that's not even close to what I do in Aion. Every different mob uses different skills at certain percentages, so I need to have a different rotation for practically everything in order to interrupt their skills and maximize my efficiency, and this is while taking time to weave autoattacks with split-second precision for maximum dps.
The group content is somewhat different. It starts off somewhat "meh" but grows into being really fun. The group dungeons like Mist Mane and Bakarma remind me highly of when I played EQ2 back in KoS, they have the same charm as SoS and PoA. Large areas capable of supporting tons of groups, plenty of quests taking you all throughout the zone, lots of rare monsters that can drop some nice loot, just all around group fun. The instances kind of go the same way, both Training Camp and Fire Temple are fairly lackluster, and to a lesser extent Alquimia Stronghold, but past that I've entirely fallen in love with them. Steel Rake is absolutely gorgeous and is the introduction of boss encounters that are scripted and involve a lot more than just tank and spank. Then Draupnir Cave and Adma Stronghold kick the bosses up a notch by having end bosses (Commander Bakarma and Lord Lannok) that you really have to learn and wipe to numerous times to come up with an effective strategy and execute it properly. It reminded me of pre-nerf Nizara in EQ2, essentially raid content restricted to only one group. And Dark Poeta, well, correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think anybody in the West has killed the S-Rank boss yet. I can only imagine I'm going to have a lot of fun trying to down that. :O
Reading though this topic I've also noticed a lot of people mentioning issues that are virtually non-existent now, which kind of makes me laugh. Bots? I remember a time when there were hundreds of bots running all over KSing mobs from people. That was... months ago? I still see bots occasionally but in the past month I'd say I've seen maybe 6, of which some I'm pretty sure have since been banned since I stopped seeing them. Crashing? This too was resolved quite awhile ago, I've had absolutely no issues on massive sieges with hundreds of people. I *DID* use to crash a lot early on and that really gave me a sour taste, but, geez, I can't even remember the last time I've crashed now. I also remember when chat was unreadable until you blocked 6 spammers every time you logged in. Now I can go days before seeing even one, which really isn't that annoying to right click and block. The last dozen times I've went into Pandaemonium I've also been surprised at the lack of RMT advertising shops up in front of the Temple of Gold. I kind of expected that to never be dealt with due to how easy it is to get a char up to level 10 and do it, and yet they're actually dealing with it. O.o
I'm also actually kind of annoyed that NCSoft has been listening to the complainers and had three double exp weekends in a row. I think it's entirely unnecessary. = But wow, they actually listened to people, what a lame company, right guys?
Anyway, can somebody fill me in on what I'm doing wrong? I feel like an outcast having a completely different experience with Aion than you guys. Help me hate it too so I can be part of your cool clique!
Haha! Well done sir! Finally a man with a brain and some time to explain how foolish half the complaints I see about Aion are. Half of you people quit after your 1 month and havent seen how Aion as come along since then.
I agree with everything this man said..thank god theres finally someone who sees Aion for what it is. THE best MMO of 2009 hands down. IMO its the easily the best pvp MMO right now and will continue to be if NCsoft does it right. I don't mean to hate on you all but this year once Aion has had afew updates added with awesome content you'll all come running back like sheep. Meanwhile keep whining and bitching about Aion here...honestly the folks who enjoy Aion could care less anyway. Most of us don't bother posting here as you can see :-)
"I play Tera for the gameplay"
This is an interesting pick from my perspective because it's a bit harder for me to guage any game on the list as I've played none of them, and while I don't disagree with the editor's choice I would think there is some validity to this statement.
But I really don't think it's the fault of mmorpg, while you won't give "points" to a companiy that overadvertises how well known a game is almost has to come into consideration. I say this because while the percentage of folks happy with Fallen Earth could be even higher than the percentage of people happy with Aion, There are probably more satisfied Aion customers than the entire population of Fallen Earth maybe even twice over. I feel for the little guy who is going to have a hard time dealing with the advertising budgets of bigger companies but in the end I don't think Blizzard was quite the monster that it is today and that had more to do with the accesibility and joy people found in playing the game they made so that leads me to think in the end while Fallen Earth may not have disapointed as many people as Aion did they certainly didn't reach enough people for it to matter so it all works out in the end.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Haha! Well done sir! Finally a man with a brain and some time to explain how foolish half the complaints I see about Aion are. Half of you people quit after your 1 month and havent seen how Aion as come along since then.
I agree with everything this man said..thank god theres finally someone who sees Aion for what it is. THE best MMO of 2009 hands down. IMO its the easily the best pvp MMO right now and will continue to be if NCsoft does it right. I don't mean to hate on you all but this year once Aion has had afew updates added with awesome content you'll all come running back like sheep. Meanwhile keep whining and bitching about Aion here...honestly the folks who enjoy Aion could care less anyway. Most of us don't bother posting here as you can see :-)
The only complaints that are foolish are the ones from people who didn't even play the game. Everyone that played is entitled to an opinion. Hell, everyone is entitled to an opinion!
Pre-start in Europe plus 1 month sub = lvl 38. Man, if I hate the game in 38 lvls I'm going to hate in the next 12 no matter how much updates they've made since then.
To me (and I guess to a lot of people) if the game doesn't pull you in in that amount of time, then you're just wasting money. I'm not gonna keep paying for months and months just because I want to wait and see what the developers are going to do to improve the flaws I think it has.
And best PVP mmo? I'm gonna go ahead and guess this is your first NCsoft game right? L2 and GW are proof that NCsoft can do a lot better in terms of PvP than Aion. Aion's PvP is a joke when compared to L2.
You can go ahead and make a survey, it only takes two questions to prove my point
1 - "How many former WoW players are still playing Aion and liking it?" (answer is probably: a lot!)
2 - "How many former L2 players quit Aion after the first month, or didn't even give it a try?" (answer is probably: almost all of them!")
TU2 Closed Beta Testing... looking very good so far
I may have to agree with MMORPG on this one. After this non-stellar year of MMO releases, Aion was the most polished on release. Of course, I think that is due to, in large part, to being already released in Asia. I guess I'm gonna have to offer my congratulations to Aion, the highest floating turd in the toilet of 2009 MMO releases.
I had to LOL at this! In a few years, MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR games like SW: TOR, WoW Cataclysm, FREE Guild Wars 2, FFXIV, etc. will be out and in a few years, Aion will have less and less players.
Then also consider other MMOs that will come out in a few years.
Exactly.
2009 was a "meh" year when it came to MMOs. Aion winning is like myself winning MVP of a local / amateur league. I still suck compare the the "big players"
I completly agree. I actually read bloggers reviews over MMORPG.com's Staff Review because I can't "identify" myself with any of their writer. And I believe this is also shown a lot in this thread, as many users call this a conspiracy while others will say the reviewers are biased, etc. We have no background information about them, they are just .....there....pops out a new review which gets featured on MMORPG.com but....who are you? what kind of games do you play? what's your background in gaming? experience in the industry? Aside from a few Writers, we barely know anything about said reviewers other than the fact that he liked Aion and gave it a 8.7 (this is just one exemple out of many, hell I don't even know who made that review).
I also agree that 20-40 hours is not enough for a game. We are talking about an MMORPG where character progression matters. In no way have you tried enough of the game at level 20 to make a decent review when everyone agrees the "PvPvE" part only exists after Level 25-27(access to the Abyss). When the reviewer has not even scratched most of the real content and posts a review, I always wandered....does said reviewer really played this or that game? Many MMORPGs have very great starts and the first few levels are awesome.....but become something completly different later on that, if not reviewed, will mislead readers and destroy the credibility of said writer.
Seriously, this thread is the best exemple you can find.
And how much money did you get for all the other ncsoft titles? How much do you expect to get for all their future ones? Your statement is very misleading.
The real heart of this is not what % of advertising we do with NCSoft (which is really small compared to other clients) but that it would be completely stupid and foolish to risk our/my reputation by influencing the editorial team as the owner and person who books advertising. This site has been online for the better part of 8 years. We have had many different editorial staff and had we practiced policies like this you would have heard about it with facts by now. If we did this then somewhere, someplace there would be some staff member who would have leaked this about us. I would not risk letting this website go down the drain to make a few bucks on an ad deal - purely from a business perspective this would be a idiotic practice. And again, my team members have a long career to think about - getting caught up in something like this would ruin them, and they would not allow me to do it even if I were as evil as you think.
Again, if you find conspiracy theory fun, then go ahead and carry on - there is really nothing that I/we could do to convince anyone who is set on this mindset otherwise. The fact remains that there is zero proof of what is claimed other than you disagree with our editorial team so therefore the results must have been paid for. All fact and history points to this website being honest and ethical and I take pride in this fact and the way we have structured the business to prevent this.
What leads people to believe it is a conspiracy theory is not that it one best of the year but the huge coincidence that this site gave Aion the highest rating out of any mmo. It's pretty ironic that WoW( yes i went there) which has so many subscribers has attained a score lower than Aion. You can call it a conspiracy theory. I can call it a huge coincidence in the end it doesn't add up and when something doesn't add up it is not believable to anyone.
Another thiing is that sure each person has different opinions on whats awsome and whats not a good game. But people know a game's faults when they see it. When other gaming companies give an honest review and all companies give Aion a C grade level review and miraculously one company gives it a high score does that make any sense? I believe it leads to people not believing the review to be thought out in an appropriate manner.
About the game its starts off fun at the beginning but in the end the content is thin. it reminds me of when Age of conan launched and at high levels didnt have much content. We need sites to stop giving awards to whats the most popular game out there and start giving awards to the games that are polished with content and deserve it.
The "site" does not review a game - a single writer that we assign to the article determines that score. Because they are MMOs we require that person to play the game 20-40 hours before writing. While the Editor does read over the review, the Editor did not play the game that duration and generally does not have the wisdom to second guess the writer assigned the review.
It is not uncommon that reviews might be higher or lower than the average player feels the game deserves. This happens at all major gaming sites like ours...it is just the nature of the beast and more so with MMOs I think. I think that is the great thing about looking at reviews from many sites to form an overall opinion and not just looking at a numerical score, but reading the review and listening to pros and cons.
Again, please stop to think what would be at stake if we "sold" reviews or other editorial content on this site. If this ever got out (and it would I assure you) it would ruin our reputation with our readers and with all other game companies - which would in effect destroy this website, which would be a loss 1000 times greater than any shady deal could bring us.
I have actually played Aion for what might amount to 30 or so hours since launch, I think it is an OK game and I don't think it is a far stretch to say it was the best overall game launched in 2009 (not game of the year note this is a seperate award yet to come) - but still this was not my decision to make - it was the editorial team that will decide all the site awards.
So editor's choice is based on reviews of ppl who are required to play a game, not necessary aion, for 20-40 hours?
If thats true, do you really think this is an objective point of view?
In my opinion, reading through forums over the year, and awarding based on this experience would be a lot more representative.
No - actually if you read through the entire quote block you will see I was answering a user who was more "concerned" about our review score done months ago not so much this award. I was explaining our review process to him.
Editor's choice is based on the editorial team (Jon Wood, Garrett Fuller, Dana Massey, Mike Bitton) coming to a decision on what game they think deserves the award. I am not 100% sure on their entire process, since that is their department - but all I can assure you is that my department (ad sales) had zero to do with the decision since those guys have no clue about advertising going on at MMORPG.com.
- MMORPG.COM Staff -
The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive.
I have a lvl 47 Templar named Tyton on Ariel - Asmodian Side. I have had the EXACT same experience as you. Sometimes I wonder if people who complain about Aion are playing the same game. I can understand if it's not your cup of tea, but the visceral hatred for the game is really surprising.
For someone like me, who is an attorney in RL and only has 3 hours of playtime on any given weekday... I reached lvl 47 playing casually for the last 4 months. Grind my ASS! I have never once had a quest log not 30/30. 11 of my 47 levels came from crafting, gathering, and pvp.
Unlike other MMO's, i have 20+ abilities and there are fights where I USE EVERY SINGLE ABILITY. In pvp, you don't die in two shots, and there's an element of strategy and skill. The lower level instances/world zones are tank and spank, but you can't say that for Steel Rake and on.
I really feel that one of the other posters hit the nail on the head. People came into Aion thinking it was either WoW 2.0. I came into Aion having not played WoW for the previous 6 months. I came in with a fresh start, with zero expectations or preconceived notions. I let my experience in the game dictate whether or not I enjoyed it, verus EXPECTING to see or do certain things.
For those of you who complain about bots, you're 3 months behind. For those of you who complain about chat spams, you're 3 months behind. For those of you who complain about the lack of quests, you either didn't find the NPC's, or you grouped during solo quests, skipped on pvp quests, etc. For those of you complaining about lack of content, you forget the MMO'S like WoW which had UBRS/LBRS as "end game."
No one is asking you to like Aion, but I really don't see where this HATRED is coming from.
To the ADMIN:
Why in the world do you feel the need to respond to people espousing these conspiracy theories. The reason you do is because the issue is close to your heart and you care about the integrity of this website.
From my personal experience, EVERY SINGLE prominent website has its conspiracy theorists, regardless of what you say or do. Please, don't respond to their idiotic theories of reviews being "bought."
I believe this is the best website for upcomming MMO's on the web. I check out the forums and articles on a daily basis. A vast vast majority of people who come to this site know the quality of work it produces.
There's no reason to feed the trolls. You're playing right into their hands.