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Aion: Paid Account Services Live
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
Earlier this year NCsoft discussed the addition of paid account services for Aion, services that would allow players to modify your character through "plastic surgery," change your name, your gender, or even your guild name. Those services are now live.
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Changing your name or giving your character a nip and a tuck will set you back $9.99, going for the full sex change will run you $14.99, and changing your guild name will cost $19.99.
More details on all the available services can be found here at the paid account services FAQ.
Comments
Glad they finally released this. Many people were wanting this for a long time. Can't tell you how many times you'd hear people ask how to get Plastic Surgery tickets in chat.
Pay for emotes... Paying for VDay items, $20 for a Legion name change haha this is just fail all over the place.
And still no server transfer option..
Glad to see they are working on more important affairs! Paid service options are MUCH more beneficial to the game than bug fixes, banning bots, and improving the overall gameplay experience. I'm sure the community will be thrilled to give NCSoft more money for their productivity.
[/sarcasm]
Currently playing: Star Wars: The Old Republic, World of Warcraft, Dota 2, League of Legends
Waiting on: Blade & Soul, Guild Wars 2, Tera, Kingdoms of Amular, Firefall
While I don't play Aion, it's these kind of "nickle and dime the customer" approaches that are turning me further and further away from this genre. It's one of the reasons that I walked away from WoW, and is keeping me from playing a lot of other games.
There has to be a way to develop a game that does not require you to bleed your customers of real-life money for what are automated, scripted process that do not actually require any manual intervention.
how is this fail? this is just like any other mmorpg.
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
There is a way to develop a game this way, in fact, all companies do develop games this way. Some of them simply choose to bleed their customers anyways. NCSoft is publicly traded on the korean stock exchange, you can freely view their financial details. You will see they are making plenty of money from Aion and putting very little back into it.
In addition, this announcement forgets to mention game altering items purchasable in the new cash shop, the first of these items is a potion with the valentines day package. You get 10 potions that restore a significant amount of hit points and mana, combine that with other potions in pvp and you have yourself an 'I Win' button.
Sigh!!!
For the 'fail/more important issues and crowd that thinks 'games should do everything for free' .
You purchase a game with X. People demand special abilities to ( in many cases) make up for oops character creations and whatnot. The game gives these options and while some like the idea of having options, others see a good reason to complain.
If you don't care for the new options then don't buy them. They are cosmetic and don't change game mechanics or give any advantages.You still have the game you originaly paid for. Bots have been hunted mercilessly but will forever be a part of a reasonably successful MMO. EVE,LOTR , WOW etc have gold sellers. Get used to it!
I don't know what the exact count of banned accounts but it is well over 10000. The folks who do sell in game gold will always find a way back. Thier livelyhood depends on it and they are very good at what they do.
Throwing microtransactions onto a subscription game=fail.
Double jeopardy, man, double jeopardy.
except for the valentine items, every other service is normal in other mmorpg >.>
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
Ok, the game is doing well. It doesn't mean they should shave profits. Any new game is very expensive to make and more than a few fail, somtime along with the producer. If you ever have a major winner of a job would you refuse the opportunity to make a better salery??? Guess what, no one with half a brain would either.
Bottom line is you still have the game you paid for. The potions are nice but for anyone over level 10 they aren't squat. Through level 10 the potions simply aren't needed. They can be bought in-game cheaply (actually the in-game potions are better).
I have to wonder if Slineer has played the game to think these potions are even close to an 'I win' button in PVP
I can understand players being upset of a company making money and fluffy features.
If you don't want to pay, nothing prevents you from rolling another character to change your name, sex, race and look.
Personally I would be glad to be avoided to regrind the whole ladder, to be able to customize my character body when it does not suits me anymore. And yes I'd rather have a free SWG image designer system but that does not removes the usefulness of the feature.
My initial point was: I'm looking for a new game, and I wish there was a game that included these basic things to some extent as service for your subscription.
To illustrate, using WoW as an example:
I bought WoW, got the expansions, leveled up a few characters to 80, and then the folks I played with up to 80 all basically moved on and the realm I'm on sucks. So do I pay $150 to move my six characters, that together make up almost all the maxed out crafting skills, to a new server that has some of my other friends on it? Or do I start leveling all over again on a new realm and hope that the same doesn't happen again?
The answer for me was: neither. Quit and move on. I didn't really want to move on, to be honest with you. I would have loved to have played on another server with my friends without starting over, and Blizzard could have been getting $15/month for the foreseeable future, as well as the $40 or so they're going to charge for Cataclysm. But the thought of PAYING them so that I could keep paying them monthly seemed a bit idiotic.
And lets face it: these days you can find ways to make your own real life money that more than covers anything you ever spent on the game. When you, cynically I admit, take that factor into consideration, it makes it very easy to move on.
If WoW allowed a reasonable level of server transfers I'd still be there. But for now, I've learned to stay away from companies that are looking to nickle and dime me like Blizzard did. I think it's a terrible business model, but that's just me. If Aion has embraced that model as well, then it's already further off my radar than it already was.
I really don't see any problem with this, recustomization is cheaper than WoW, sex change I think is similar, and the legion name change isn't bad. These are all things the korean servers have already had, so its more of just a quick implementation.
From a payment point of view it doesnt bother me too much I can see the justification for the fee's.
The one thing I am staunchly against within this is the ability to change your entire character basically giving asshats with some money free reign to act like a complete tool on there chosen server and then just drop some money for anonimity (seems to be word of the day 2 posts 2 uses
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First off the game isn't new, it has been out in korea for over a year and most likely they made there profit over there during the time it was released (So i don't know where your getting at that this game is new)
secondly all they did was put it threw a translation filter so there is nothing interesting about the nature of the game because it is still the same boring grind the Korean's have (Shows how little they are putting into it)
Third there is nothing wrong with triple dipping (Box+sub+MT) but at least have the decency to make a full fledged game (Meaning content with multiple paths to leveling) before you start doing this CO & this game suffer from greed and the open minded people responding about it notice it other than the fanbois who defend this practice with wallets wide open.
And last i actually liked this game until the grind set in and i just ended up being bored, yes it is very pretty (Running on the cry-engine--->farcry1) but that doesn't make up the fact that if you want to roll another alt your gonna have to go threw the same content as you did with your first and that's just lame for a game that has been out for over a year now.
On some of the purchases there's a limit per month on how much you can buy them for example the legion name change can be used 3 times a month on same legion.
Pretty the usual stuff in the paid services and yes race change gives you also recustomization.
I would have just paid the 150.00 if it meant that I was playing a game that I would continue to play and was playing with people I liked.
If you truly had 6 character then there is already an investment of money. 150.00 is not even 2 months subs for all those characters.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
These features have been in game since day 1. The npcs were there, but nobody could use them because they required a special item to activate. Ncsoft is now selling these items for real life money. It costs them nothing to produce these in game items but they have the gall to charge us 15 dollars to access the in game level editor? This is highway robbery.
These features have been in game since day 1. The npcs were there, but nobody could use them because they required a special item to activate. Ncsoft is now selling these items for real life money. It costs them nothing to produce these in game items but they have the gall to charge us 15 dollars to access the in game level editor? This is highway robbery.
No it's not, recustomization specially when you have a pretty good one like aion has shouldn't be free.
This is not a superhero game were customizing your character's look is a part of the game.
These features have been in game since day 1. The npcs were there, but nobody could use them because they required a special item to activate. Ncsoft is now selling these items for real life money. It costs them nothing to produce these in game items but they have the gall to charge us 15 dollars to access the in game level editor? This is highway robbery.
LOL! Want a tissue?
Do you know how many studios finished developing content that was supposed going live with the lauch of the game with players monthly fees AND inserting them in a paying expansion? WoW siege engines *cough* and they are far from the worst published. Not to say the one selling you expansions with quests broken, on purpose, as the content wasn't finished.
Unless they are obviously targeting mandatory features, theses RMT are in no way "highway robbery". Not only you can re-roll a character, but your survivability isn't affected at all. On top of that it's not like they are giving you choices you hadn't from start at the creation of your character.
In my opinion a good MMORPG has lots of fluff. Aion has hardly any fluff. When they finally decide to add some they charge a lot of money for it.
I often feel the need to revisit MMORPGs that I have quit, just to play a bit longer and see the new stuff. I have a very hard time seeing that I would ever return to Aion.
They are only really charging for character changes and stuff, most mmos charge for that to. As for the valentines day pack stuff, they are quite lame, and nothing to get angry about, just dont buy it
MMOs played: Too many
Watch List: FFXIV, CoH:GR, GW2, SWTOR, TERA, Earthrise
Got to agree with this, the replayability of Aion is virtually nil, something i saw from day one but hoped game would be interesting enough at higher levels to be able to ignore this but once i got there it was just more of the "same old same old" grind.
Combine that with the way NCSoft West are running the game (still no decent amount of GM's, if any on EU servers) and it is just not worth it
Aion will go exact same way as Lineage, very big in the east, where it suits their gaming style and they are getting decent support/feedback, small time in the west, something that many people have heard of, some have tried and very few actually play
I need a new MMO world to call home as Tom Chilton keeps destroying them