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Server Merges for NA market
FYI & discussion
http://www.massively.com/2010/05/18/aion-1-9-patch-dated-server-merges-announced/#comments
NCSoft letter
http://na.aiononline.com/board/notices/view?articleID=288&page=
IMHO, I find it interesting they are announcing server merges before 1.9 goes live
Comments
Saw this coming.
People were asking for transfers the week this game launched (even with the server queues) due to all the talk about race population limits. This is a good thing.
Now if they take the path WAR took and started pushing people to populated servers to close them...that's a bad sign. But the population in Aion isn't that bad, it just looks bad compared to the amount at launch where you had to wait three hours to play.
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Ok it does look like they are doing merges but they don't give specifics which probably means it's not gonna be done in some time.
Make games you want to play.
http://www.youtube.com/user/RavikAztar
AOIN is not dying. It still has good xfire numbers. I tried the game and it was great to lvl 25. After that it has some issues. The Character animation is great and gameplay is good too. It's the PvP that really is not done right (that and the insane Korean grindfest). In any case this will help those that are on low pop servers.
Aion has good Xfire numbers thanks to its Korean playerbase. Overseas, and specifically here in the States, the game is in decline, and will be receiving a KO 1-2 combo from FF14 and GW2 (assuming neither of those 2 games suck).
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That's not true as eastern players don't use xfire. L1 and L2 are testaments to that, while L2 is much more popular than L1 in the west, worldwide they have similar successes. If you check their numbers on xfire, L2 is at #110, while L1 is at #1368 (with 0 users playing per day lol).
The reason Aion is still in the top 10 in Xfire is because it has good population overall in the West. Some of the servers are severely lacking in players thus the merges, and all it's going to do is consolidate the population in fewer servers.
And finally, bad news for the first time posters on AIon forums today (who are happy the game is "dying"): Aion's success doesn't depend on its success in the West even though it's been a moderate one so far. Servers are still going to get updated regularly even if it's down to one server.
If memory serves me right. Weren't more servers opened after launch because of all the whining?
All this is doing is balancing the populations that need balancing.
Your memory is serving you right
I think NCSoft only reduces the number of servers down to the original number they had at initial launch. The number of players are now somewhat stable, so they know now many servers they need, and which server has a good population, and which not.
Right now it's waiting for the same announcement for the EU servers, though last time I played, the population (even on lower levels) was pretty good.
The announcement was for both NA and EU, There are 2 UK servers that aren't doing too good which are Kahurn and Kalil. I wouldn't be surprised if those 2 were merged.
I have no idea about the FR and GER servers though.
Here is the top 10 MMO's as per Xfire
1 - WoW
2 - Aion
3 - Silkroad Online
4 - Guild Wars
5 - Eve Online
6 - Battle of the Immortals
7 - LoTR
8 - Age of Conan
9 - CABAL Online
10 - Atlantica Online
When games like Silkroad Online and CABAL are in the top ten, I tend to dismiss Xfire numbers as to what the true story is for the West. I think Xfire covers worldwide.
Aion's problem is the hype made it sound like it was going to be the clear 2nd best MMO where in reality (as far as the west is concerned) it's just another Lineage with a new coat of paint.
Why? most F2P games have a lot of players, it's nothing surprising. What's surprising is that there is no way L1 (which is getting more popular than L2 worldwide), has 0 played time per day on xfire while L2 has a considerable amount. Xfire covers worldwide, but there aren't many countries that use it let alone heard of it.
If you take out F2P games, then the list makes sense only in the West. You can't deny that L1, L2 and FFXI are 3 of the most played MMOs worldwide, yet they don't show as such on Xfire because they are mostly popular in the East.
While that may be the case, how is it that something like Runescape isn't on that list?
Yeah I didn't want to come across like I was trolling the game. I played the beta and I agree with you on that even back then unfortunately.
Good question. Runescape is an exception because xfire never supported Runescape before 2008, and even after they started supporting it people needed to manually download the client off the official site and go through some steps to make it work. That means that Xfire doesn't support the java version.
I think a huge number of players play the game directly from the browser, which Xfire doesn't support, thus the relatively low number of runescape hours played.
So what server are all the cool kids going to ?
I still want to pvp a bit!
Here is the statement of NCSoft :
"/....
One of the more recent concerns that we’ve heard is related to server populations, both in North America and Europe. Some of the specific concerns you’ve told us about deal with difficulty finding groups in game, having resources to contribute to the overall server economy, and being able to gather strong enough forces to enjoy the end game content, particularly the Abyss PvP zone and Fortress Sieges. We heard your concern about this and did a comprehensive examination of all of our servers across North America and Europe. After reviewing all of the game, character, and server data we found that certain level ranges or classes had healthy numbers, but across ALL level ranges and professions most of our servers didn’t have ideal populations. After a score of meetings, it was decided that the best thing to do is to merge some of our servers so that we have fewer, fuller servers with characters (and players) that are balanced better in population across all levels and classes. The primary goal of merging the servers is to create an environment that gives you the best possible experience in Aion.
I don’t relish the idea of mergers. (It takes a lot of work to make them happen!) However, once it is complete you should notice improvements in each of the new server economies, an abundance of players to group and run instances with, a number of great Legions to join or people to form new ones with, and a more tightly knit community. .../"
The above shows that Xfire is not a good tool in comparing mmorpg's and their populations. The X Fire samples are not representative and it is clear any ranking based on such a flawed system is unreliable.
Lotro could have double or triple the number of western subscritpions compared to Aion. No one knows since the samples are not equally spread over all games.
The only thing we know is in the blue above: Lotro never had server merges. Aion will have them within 9 months after the western launch.
----- > Does anyone have the number of western servers of Lotro and Aion (post merge)? Because this number would indicate roughly which game has more subscriptions.
Its embarrassing when an NPC compliments you in an MMo, the only relevant, cool and epic things come from players whispering you Grtz, mate, we did it. copyright Pilnkplonk
Xfire does show trends and it was proven time and time again. Aion's curve has been roughly stable for around 5months and its position changing from 8 to 10 throughout. It has stabilized.
I'm well aware that comparisons aren't very accurate, but taking into consideration that Aion has 32servers in the West and most of them are well populated (for example only 2 of the 7 UK servers have really low population), I'd expect them to still have around 21-22 well populated servers. Lotro has 22 if I'm not mistaken, and some of those are far from healthy so I still think Aion is above in the list.
Seeing as we don't know which servers and how many will be merged, most of what I said is just guesstimates, which is all we can do.
Same experience.. I enjoyed the game a lot till I reached my 20's, then BAM.. I play mostly in the day, so it's not like I'm on primetime during rush hours, this means I'm normally solo or pick up a partner.. Problem was that 90% that kept me from doing much of anything.. The game seem to become a group grindfest beyond 25th, and that just isn't for me.. so I cancelled my account.. Shame too, as I really enjoyed it till I hit the wall.. oh well..
Supposedly the next patch is going to improve the XP / level grind situation...
http://www.massively.com/2010/05/19/aions-1-9-patch-to-right-xp-wrongs/
LotRO has 25 Western servers (11 American, 14 European).
AION currently has 32 Western servers, I'm not sure how many it will have after the merge.
Keep in mind however that LotRO is a 3 year old game, it's population is the very definition of stable at this point.
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I think the number of players on the server of Aion and Lotro are quite different. Because Aion is tried to balance the PVP on Elyos and Asmos, therefore, the population seems to be less than Lotro for each server population. Combining servers could be difficult to keep such balance.
Players in Lotro are mostly lifetime free to play. Especially the European server, each guild has their own unique guild wensite. But the guild on EU Aion server, there is no social. It's same as Warhammer which guild is difficult to forming up in PVP game. I guess that was the downside of most PVP games. Because most of the game developers has been neglected how importance of the guild acts in the PVP conflict.
That said, if more and more subscribers cancel their accounts, Aion might have worser consequence than Lotro.
Have to say I second this statement and from what i've read alot of those lifetimers only log back in when new content is available, not sure how true this is but does make me wonder how the servers there would look if they didn't offer the lifetime sub?
I'm not sure what you mean by that, but if you mean that there's no point in being in a guild for PvP in Aion then you are so wrong.
Putting aside the fact that if the major guilds on a server don't team up, coordinate attacks together and assign specific positions and tasks to each party/alliance/guild, then there is little chance said faction would own even a single fort on a server. It is absolutely a must to keep healthy relationships with other guilds. You don't get anywhere in sieges without team-work with the members of your own guild, and the other legions on the server.
It also goes without saying that going into Dredgion solo means you're going to lose like... 80% of the time because you're up against premades most of the times. Being in a good guild and going with members of that guild increases your chances of winning dramatically.
In addition if you don't join a good guild, there's no chance you're getting any kind of medals from forts (which are needed for PvP gear). You could buy them, but they are very, very expensive.
I'm quite agreed upon with your points and the importance to have a guild if you wanna do group task. But I was talking about European servers. The EU servers are same as real life because it is played by Europeans. And you know Europe is a multi-cutures terriory.
Most games on the market today always splits Europe into 3 parts, Germany, France and English. Well, Europe is more than these 3 languages. Put aside the German and French servers, let's look at the English server. You don't find many original English speaking British in Aion. Instead, there are many people can't speak or type English so well (same like me), but they don't have other choice to choose English server because there is no other server for their own language.
In Lotro, there are more players speaks and chat English because Lotro is a matured game. Surprisingly, there are even more Britons playing Lotro at the time I was playing. Not to mention even Danish guild provides with English website.
In Aion, at least the server I was playing, players are from Slovenia, Russia, Portual, Spain, Greece, Estonia, Poland and a few Italians, people are spaking their own language on English server. It is difficult to forming up a guild because different language, besides, the guild leader may found it's too much troubles to interpret everytime when some guldies typed in non-English. Such kind of guild would easily corrupted or became a small guild.
What would leads to the end? It can be imagined that those non-guilded players are playing their own game. Especially, it is so easy to set up a guild for your own sake.
I have seen how the AOC trying to hold up players to stay playing. There are many guilds from Norway keep trying to recruit those from Scandinavian to join them. So I think the common language will be important for a guild.
In time, you may also seen some guilds advertising in the chat channel, English is a must.
In Aion, there are many conflicts between guilds because it always has a guild to take the credit to capturing the castle. And those have been participated before have lost interest in Abyss. More and more non-guilded players might canceled their account first and then the population will drop over time. That could be the reason for server merge. But now is only NA server. I think it will happened to EU server soon.