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Why did this game not do better in the East?
This game has been out in the East for a while now, and I always hear it talked about as doing fairly poorly there. From what I've seen it's fairly decent. Eastern players eat up MMORPGs like candy. Even Maplestory has millions of players. Why don't they like TERA?
Was it a buggy release there? Do they not like the Quest grind system? ( I can sympathize with them on that). The way Western players are talking this game up, one would think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Why didn't Eastern players feel the same?
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what I've heard.... it has a sub fee and a box price, which is very rare in the east.
Also it had to compete against Aion which had more content because it released earlier.
it was a pretty incomplete game at korean "launch". we as western players are very lucky as we are getting about a years worth of content and polish tacted onto the game for our launch, alot like ffxi. The biggest complaint i heard was that the game was to easy and the koreans just got to the end of available content way to fast.
Agreed. The game's been out for over a year now, so they've had a lot of time to fix and add to the game. From everything I've heard, it needed both, but is now becoming the game it should have been from the start.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
I can still see the Aion thing being an issue this time around. Not sure if I want to pay the box price + sub fee for TERA, when I already paid for Aion and can play it free.
1. It wasn't grind fest enough for Koreans
2. It was launched unfinished which means w/o the grind fest people capped in 2 week and had only 2 dungeons to run.
It launched with half the second continent closed off, level 50 max level and two endgame dungeons. It literally took two weeks to do everything in the game.
Nevermind the fact the subs are rising now and it's the #10 most played game in Korea, it hasn't failed, even with the most atrocious start ever.
Yeah these guys covered a good part of why it didn't do so well in South Korea and Japan.
Server Merge:
BHS Korea: 37 -> 35 -> 15 -> 13
NHN Japan: 10 -> 3
About a month ago I went and read up reviews on why the game didn't do so hot. One of the major sites I went to was 4gamer.net. They had at the time over 130 responses from gamers and I read through a good portion of them and came up with a top 10 list of what they liked and disliked about the game. Most of them were quite extensive and thorough in their answers. And yes: we know East =/= West but this is to keep it in topic.
GOOD:
01. Beautiful graphics (dungeons/cities/overall feel of the world/not taxing on your system).
02. Combat (fast paced as well as the non-targeting aspect of it).
03. Very fun in parties (especially for boss fights).
04. Cute/adorable/beautiful characters + Customization/creation of characters/races.
05. Beautiful music (as well as ambient/environment sounds).
06. Ease of leveling up.
07. Amount of quests to help with the leveling process.
08. Big ass monsters.
09. UI ease to use.
10. Ease of use of AH/sorting/finding items/size of shareable warehouse.
11. Very stable server/very responsive (little to no loss in connection).
BAD:
01. Tons of botting/other forms of cheating/RMT ads/BOT Heaven (also includes camps being overrun with them especially in the level 40+ areas).
02. Price(very high price even for Japan standards when compared to other MMO counterparts in service there toppled with the fact that many felt the product was unfinished at launch).
03. Taking too long to get GM response (also ties into lack of in game support/bad management of the game/updates etc.)
04. Boring quests/content is very basic/fetch Quests/gather Quests.
05. RNG and the fails that comes with it.
06. Lack of content (ties to in-depth content and endgame content).
07. Tough to make parties most of the time (directly connected to decreasing population).
08. Difference in party level even by a small amount has a big impact/penalty (exp rewards + rare item drops reduced: 4 level difference?) Limiting most if not all of the content to 5 players only.
09. There is only the main story quest (probably connected to heavy voiceover/cut scenes/storytelling?)
10. Too easy to level up.
11. The ! click NPC quests.
My thoughts on the BAD:
01. RED FLAG #1.
02. Well of the 500 or so MMOs out there about 40 of them are P2P within the $10-$15 range. I'm pretty sure this game will be around $14-$15, I highly doubt they will go above that.
03. RED FLAG #2.
04. Self explanatory: Yes most of them fall into this type of questing ***
05. Self explanatory: Too harsh of a RNG will make people leave your game. Don't be a Scrooge or a Douche Baggins and make it more lax.
06. Hopefully they add quite a bit of endgame content by the time it goes live here or at least a moderate amount.
07. Self explanatory: If a game sucks (especially if it is tied to a really bad launch/release) then yeah unfortunately this will happen. One of the major reasons people leave MMOs.
08. Think some of you guys said they are working on content to be more than 5 players so that is good. As far as the 4 level penalty, maybe they can change that before it goes live here?
09. I take it there is only the main story that has heavy use of cut scenes and voiceovers? I'm ok with this, I wasn't expecting more than that.
10. Aion took 4-5 weeks on some servers, while 5-6 on others to be server 1st. The exponential curve past level 35-40 was icky. TERA takes around 1-2 weeks. Some are happy about it, others not so much.
11. This is silly. Most NA/EU players don't care about a ! on top of a NPC.
Thanks much for this reply! This was what I was hoping for. Seems like typical problems that plague most MMORPGs today. Boring quest grind to end game, and then what? And I don't like the sounds of trying to make a group within that strict of a level range, it's hard enough finding people as it is.
Yeah...but Aion sucks.Even if its free,why would you wanna play a game that sucks?
I thought another MAJOR issue with the original version was the PvP system. You had to pay a lot of money for guild wars and there was no outlaw system. You essentually notified the person you wanted to attack and it gave them a 10 second warning?
We'll see how much attention the Rise of the Argon update gets in Korea coupled with the new PvP changes. Aion is the king there right now though, fir MMOs at least.
Just not worth my time anymore.
No problem Jimmy Dean!
Yes as with most MMO games things (usually) do get better over time. These comments were up to January of this year for NHN Japan only. I think the level range has been tamed a bit so it isn't as strict and there has been a few PVP or upcoming changes.
As far as the RMT issue is concerned, there was an interview between 4gamer and NHN Japan, and they even admitted that they did take a while to resolve this problem (RMT) and they agree that it did hurt their subscription numbers. Note that it is the #1 issue, hence one of the big reasons as to why it went from 10 to 3 servers.
Well i'm talking about launch its doing fine in korea, i mean its in the top 10.
Those reasons were from release, theyve scaled down botting, added over a year of content and another patch coming in 5 days, as for customer support, a totally different company handles that here, which is En Masse or Frogster, i've only got experience with En Masse and they have done everything right in terms of customer support, respond quickly and have been patching the game during each beta due to our complaints.
The party issue was probably tweaked by now, they have a LFD tool now so finding a party will also be easier, and if the level difference thing is a huge issue nobody has noticed it yet because it hasnt appeared in the complaints.
As for too easy to level up, thats obvious and was the biggest impact on the game, this is from release information for sure. Like I said, the game released with half as many dungeons as it has now, 10 less zones, no PvP.
After the patch on March 7th they will be getting yet another 4 more zones, two more dungeons and 20 man monster invasion events, as well as daily quests and some other things, I will be interested to see if TERA continues to sit in 10th or climbs higher on the most played list after this patch.
The most popular MMOs in Korea are Aion, Lineage and Maplestory, ask yourself how damn grindy are those? So it being to easy to level up is a good thing over here...since none of those three games have survived here due to the grind scaring everyone away.
Yes these complaints are probably from almost a year ago, before the Evolution and Queen of Argon patches.
The PvP system was indeed a huge issue back then as well, but has since been rectified to some extent in Korea and almost entirely here in NA/EU.
I think the reason this game is how it is in the East is simply because of Aion. For some reason that game is doing insanely well over in Korea it pretty much is thier version of WoW. Yet over here Aion is a huge flop. Especially now with the 4 servers on NA having under 1000 subs from players/bots/etc. 1 server cap is 6500 and with all the people left they do not fill one server. I don't think F2P will fix it with 3.0 because the Aion players in NA are looking forward to TERA. Maybe TERA will be abigger hit here while Aion is dead in the water.
Meh, I have gotten emails that they reactivated me for 14 days. It is just desperation here in the West to try to stay afloat because they know TERA is going to kick thier ass here in NA. 3.0 in concept was great but imo it is too little too late. Servers last I knew were all elyos dominated as well as have fun being ganked by the twinks with there full 30 pvp sets.
Also in Aion all you had to do was tab target someone then click a skill and magically your toon ran at the person and followed them until they attacked. That was so lame. It took no skill really in aion to pvp. TERA doesn't have that so it takes skill. PVP'rs want to be tested on how good they are and TERA's combat system allows for that. Aions does not. Aion failed too because of the factions with one always dominating. No factions in TERA is win.
After playing TERA it made me realize how bad Aion was and I loved Aion. Will I ever go back? Nope. I think for anyone who loves/d Aion TERA is the better choice and people will be extremely happy and be won over to TERA over Aion. At least here in the West.
Yeah I have to agree that TERA is a lot like Aion 2.0 with no flying but less of a grind and a LOT more features. I know I ton of people just from my Aion server that are beta testing and are excited to play.
I think Aion would have a healthy population if it weren't for the bot problem right off the bat. That and the wreckless approval of so many transfers after the server merges. It's a shame because Aion is a great game if you ignore the 40's grind.
I think TERA does it better all the way around TBH and I also have love for Aion.
Just not worth my time anymore.
All of that you mentioned I think I can sum up as mismanagement. It is what ultimately killed AION in the West. The game was poised to be succesful, but alas.
Different cultures, different mindsets which were not listened or catered to.
Here´s me hoping EnMasse/Frogster don't fall for the same traps.
Son of a... I've been playing Aion today. A lot has changed, for the better. It's really quite a good game now. Now I want to play Diablo 3, Aion, TERA, and Guild Wars 2 this year. Oh jeez, wtb more time! So many good games, and only 1 with a subscription!