4). The PVP system has no real thought put into it.
5). The track record of this company is poor.
6). The community is very weak and losing players all the time.
7). Servers are very laggy at times, can make play difficult.
8). To many bots in the game.
9). Far to many gold farmers.
10). Theres better mmo's out there.
"2). This game is a grind trust me."
Name one MMO that isnt ? I have been playing MMOs since 1999 and they ALL have their own grind. ALL OF THEM. Some of you people need to get this through your thick heads. Understand it and accept it.
I think what people are asking for is a "grind" that is so well disguised that it doesn't FEEL like a grind. It's not a "grind" if you're having FUN doing it. "Grind" implies that it is not enjoyable due to the repetitive nature of it all. If I'm having fun doing something in a game....I don't refer to it as a "grind."
This statement is so true. If killing mobs or a purpose is well disguised teh feeling of grind isnt there. I felt when I played Aion I got to a point where I (cleric) Had to just kill random mobs to gain levels. My friend who got to 50 way earlier than I did (he had no job and lived at home duh) told me where to kill these mobs and omg what torture and to team as the healer with the weak team healing powes-- I say this in that when i cast a heal the player is dead already due to lag spike or castig delay. Then nerge rage follows lol. I have seen this not just as me a cleric but when on my high level sorc as well. Team is Aion was a lost--sure you get to kill bosses too difficult to solo but the xp was bad and everyone involved gets 1 rare drop to fight over--umm fail. Anyway these things are not fun. I found people making more enemies than friends due to fighting over drops which ultimately is why I left.
GRIND DOES NOT EQUAL MAKING A GAME CHALLENGING!! YES I AM YELLING LOL
Half that list isnt even valid anymore, if at all. The bot problem was resolved months ago. What server lag? Id be suprised if the OP ever played the game until 50, my bet is thats not the case. I like Aion, end game can be a lot of fun especially if you have a good guild with a clue
And no job, life and dont have to pay your bills--Time sink is terrible and kinah costy is so high no wonder the kinah sellers are having such a great market
GRIND DOES NOT EQUAL MAKING A GAME CHALLENGING!! YES I AM YELLING LOL
This statement is so true. If killing mobs or a purpose is well disguised teh feeling of grind isnt there. I felt when I played Aion I got to a point where I (cleric) Had to just kill random mobs to gain levels. My friend who got to 50 way earlier than I did (he had no job and lived at home duh) told me where to kill these mobs and omg what torture and to team as the healer with the weak team healing powes-- I say this in that when i cast a heal the player is dead already due to lag spike or castig delay. Then nerge rage follows lol. I have seen this not just as me a cleric but when on my high level sorc as well. Team is Aion was a lost--sure you get to kill bosses too difficult to solo but the xp was bad and everyone involved gets 1 rare drop to fight over--umm fail. Anyway these things are not fun. I found people making more enemies than friends due to fighting over drops which ultimately is why I left.
I have to agree with this. I also played a cleric till lvl 43. Too much drama when someone dies and/or people rolling on loot not for their class. The kinah sinks and crappy loot drops created a stingy and bad tempered game community. That is probably the main reason I quit after all my friends have left. I couldnt stand doing group missions anymore cause I dreaded the drama in group missions when things go bad.
Half that list isnt even valid anymore, if at all. The bot problem was resolved months ago. What server lag? Id be suprised if the OP ever played the game until 50, my bet is thats not the case. I like Aion, end game can be a lot of fun especially if you have a good guild with a clue
And no job, life and dont have to pay your bills--Time sink is terrible and kinah costy is so high no wonder the kinah sellers are having such a great market
The game is what you put into it. I have a job, wife, kid, home, etc. I dont play 16 hours a day, Im lucky if I get 3 hours in which is the same amount of time I spent in WOW and other MMO's *shrugs*. Not sure what your point is here other then yeah some people play more then others. As for the time sink which I believe you mean grind, yup it exists. They are working on making it better in the next patch but its there and I agree. Based on your post history you clearly hate Aion and Im not going to try to change your mind, the game isnt for everyone but I will step up and defend it when people post inaccurate information like saying that things like BOTS are a current problem when they are in fact not and havent been since December. Also server lag has never been an issue either. I think maybe the first week there were some issues and rubber banding, etc but thats also been gone for a long time. My point is if people want to complain about AIon, there are definitely valid topics to complain about but using problem that existed months ago and arent currently issues is pretty weak IMO. Here are the problems in Aion as I see it TODAY:
1) Grind
2) End Game content - needs more.
3) Manastone socketing failures can be ridiculous, although this is fixed in 1.9
4) Video lag in large scale battles, even with my GTX260 SLI setup my FPS drops low. Im hoping some of the new custom settings in 1.9 fix this.
Half that list isnt even valid anymore, if at all. The bot problem was resolved months ago. What server lag? Id be suprised if the OP ever played the game until 50, my bet is thats not the case. I like Aion, end game can be a lot of fun especially if you have a good guild with a clue
And no job, life and dont have to pay your bills--Time sink is terrible and kinah costy is so high no wonder the kinah sellers are having such a great market
The game is what you put into it. I have a job, wife, kid, home, etc. I dont play 16 hours a day, Im lucky if I get 3 hours in which is the same amount of time I spent in WOW and other MMO's *shrugs*. Not sure what your point is here other then yeah some people play more then others. As for the time sink which I believe you mean grind, yup it exists. They are working on making it better in the next patch but its there and I agree. Based on your post history you clearly hate Aion and Im not going to try to change your mind, the game isnt for everyone but I will step up and defend it when people post inaccurate information like saying that things like BOTS are a current problem when they are in fact not and havent been since December. Also server lag has never been an issue either. I think maybe the first week there were some issues and rubber banding, etc but thats also been gone for a long time. My point is if people want to complain about AIon, there are definitely valid topics to complain about but using problem that existed months ago and arent currently issues is pretty weak IMO. Here are the problems in Aion as I see it TODAY:
1) Grind
2) End Game content - needs more.
3) Manastone socketing failures can be ridiculous, although this is fixed in 1.9
4) Video lag in large scale battles, even with my GTX260 SLI setup my FPS drops low. Im hoping some of the new custom settings in 1.9 fix this.
Glad you like the game as is. What class do you play? It seems that makes a big differences for those that find pleasure as teh game stands now..
1) teaming is a harsh experience due to low drop rate and it leads to fighting (some drops can go with multiple classes and not so easy to say 1 class is entitled to the rare drop)
2) I hope they re-evaluate teh xp received while on a team. It goes down so much that most classes can solo lesser critters for more xp/ and skip teh fighting for drops.
I post comments because if things are not said then they wont change( probably wont anyways) Im glad you enjoy the game as it is and continued fun to you on that but don't brush over the comments of others that don't feel as you do for your view and mine is not teh ultimate answer just opinions that differ. Cary on playing your gladiator, sin or sorc LOL
GRIND DOES NOT EQUAL MAKING A GAME CHALLENGING!! YES I AM YELLING LOL
First of all Flight is limited first as a lore issue and second as a balance issue. Do you realize how nerfed a class like Gladiator is? Some idiot can just sprout their wings and kite me to death, what am I supposed to do then? If flight was unlimited, you might as well kiss melee classes goodbye because 3d kiting would mean a melee class would be worse than useless in anything but Mass fort PvP where it's chaotic enough to get some kills in. Limited flight brings classes to more even levels, and while the balance in this game isn't perfect it's far better than many games that have been out for years. Also, you can say what you want about Aion's problems, but the developers are actually DOING something about it. It took AoC how long to get its act together? Less than a year after a launch we've got major content planned to fix huge issues.
Yeah, Aion requires a lot of time invested, no question. Leveling is slow, I'd rather not talk about getting full Daevanion armor or Miragent's/Fenril's, because luckily i'm not there yet. This game requires a massive investment of time, no question. The Upside? Everyone and their f-ing grandma isn't running around with your supposedly unique weapon because it's ACTUALLY rare.
The main problem right now is grouping though. There is 1 REAL Tank class. Yeah, a Gladiator can tank, but honestly they're not nearly as good at it, especially pulling. There is 1 real HEAL class, chanter's will be discussed next. You should always bring a chanter for buffs, so that's 3 slots out of 6 filled. Then you have 5 classes left competing for 3 slots, not counting multiples of the same class. Each class is set in their role, they have no way out of it. Something akin to a talent system or additional advanced classes (Like Templar evolves into blank and blank) could probably solve this issue but I don't see this coming with the current level cap, it just doesn't make sense. Luckily groups are common, but it becomes increasingly hard to find a Templar or Cleric. One group we used 3 chanters and me as a Gladiator AoE tank. Not the best strategy...
Lag is still an issue, but it is mainly due to a horrible routing issue in the code or so I'm told. I used to have massive lag spikes that would last full minutes and disconnect me. I updated my router FW and reset my modem, it's been holding up for now, but tech support says the modem we have at fault (actually doesn't surprise me since I've always hated our modem)
Swimming...this would do what, exactly? In contrast the Aion team is tackling this in one of the better ways, looks like leveling content 50-x will all be underwater. Sure, WoW has dabbled with that in the past, but Aion's actually going full out.
The PvP system...major flaw with this is that AP gear isn't worth the cost/risk as opposed to Miragent/Fenril. Other than that I see no real problems with it, and Fortress Seiges are epic and fun.
Lack of content end-game. I'm sorry, have you taken every crafting profession all the way? Do you have full Gold AP gear for lvl 50? Full Fenril's? Full DP? And even then, their are still Fortress raids, leveling an alt, etc. Plenty of content, just not in the WoW sense of a bunch of instances with free lore rape.
Graphics aren't as good as AoC and Vanguard. Yep, and look where Graphics got them?
Community leaving...umm no? Aion's retention of Sub numbers is clear just by Xfire stats alone, not to mention they're the 2nd place MMO in terms of numbers. And with Veteran Rewards, 1.9 and 2.0 looming, and the fact that the game is frequently updated, there's really not a huge reason to quit if you're enjoying it now.
Poor Track record from NC? Let's see, L2, GW, CoX, are all well recieved and well remembered games. Their Fail? Tabula Rasa. 3-1 not counting their F2P sector is pretty damn good.
Community leaving...umm no? Aion's retention of Sub numbers is clear just by Xfire stats alone, not to mention they're the 2nd place MMO in terms of numbers. And with Veteran Rewards, 1.9 and 2.0 looming, and the fact that the game is frequently updated, there's really not a huge reason to quit if you're enjoying it now.
I am a self proclaimed Aion fan and after reading that part I felt like you weren't playing the same game as me. The community is already gone, a game that had 400k pre-orders (I do not know if this is NA/Oc. or EU) now has 14 servers (NA/Oc.) with only 1k~1.5k players on each at peak hours meaning only an average of 15k subs in NA/Oc. (That's terrible...)
Also you judging based on xFire is terrible. Alot of people don't use it and also Aion is struggling to stay in the top 10 which is horrible considering at launch it was #4 I believe.
I still play Aion and most Aion players consider me casual since I don't like to grind, by grind I mean kill mobs to rush to lv.50 skipping all quests other than campaign then AP grind to get good AP gear or repeatingly do select instances in hope of getting a drop that has 0.0x% chance of dropping.
I've been playing since CBT and was having tons of fun at launch with the immense amount of players the game had. I'm currently lv.38 and struggling with quests due to the lack of players so saying that the community hasn't left is complete and utter bullshit. Personally I think there should be a server merge. If there were 400k pre-orders and 6 servers at launch then that means each server can hold about 66k players; I actually think it could probably hold more like maybe 10k or even 20k per server though cause 66k seems kinda high. Also I'm sure at launch there was over 1mil players trying to connect to the game making those 9+hr queues we all suffered. Once server transfers come and enough people leave servers making them empty a merge will happen and some people will just be forced to leave their servers, until then I welcome all gamers to try Aion and hope for the worst, if your hopes are low you will enjoy it, if you expect a lot from the game then be patient and wait for more news to come out.
Originally posted by Frolly The community is already gone, a game that had 400k pre-orders (I do not know if this is NA/Oc. or EU) now has 14 servers (NA/Oc.) with only 1k~1.5k players on each at peak hours meaning only an average of 15k subs in NA/Oc. (That's terrible...)
Did you even read what you just typed? You're making several gigantic assumptions in order to reach that number:
1. That every single subscriber plays every day.
2. That every single subscriber plays at the peak time.
And both of these are blatantly false. And as anecdotal as this is, most of my own friends list is almost never online during peak!
Moreover, I play on Ariel and I'm inclined to say if there's a population problem it's that our Elyos side is overpopulated. As an Asmodian, there's no problem whatsoever getting a group for anything for any level. Even my friend who started to play recently is now pugging Fire Temple pretty often, so it's not like the population is strictly top-heavy either. And by watching LFG chat, since it's essentially the global chat channel, there's plenty of people grouping for even Black Claw at like 3 am.
And fortress sieges, the things that actually require a high peak population, are certainly not affected by this supposedly "gone community". Asmodians come with at least 100 people, which is so much that my computer wants to curl up and die even with shift+f12 on. Which alone would easily be enough to capture any fortress except Divine, and yet Elyos show up to everything with 2-3x the amount of people as us causing a beautiful slideshow of us being steamrolled by a sea of floating names. Bonus fun when an artifact like Kerubic wears off and my client stalls for a solid minute!
Clearly, I can't speak for your server, but I wish I could go and eject a large portion of my server's population so that sieges would start to actually be playable again. A server merge is the last damn thing I want.
You know bot farming is out of control when you recieve fake account fraud emails for your Aion beta account.
As for me I knew this wasn't the game for me when I beta tested, seemed to be a run of the mill gear grind to cap then join the pvp fest to grind more for "uber gear". Been there, done that, didn't feel compelled to do it again.
Also you judging based on xFire is terrible. Alot of people don't use it and also Aion is struggling to stay in the top 10 which is horrible considering at launch it was #4 I believe.
It has been 'struggling' to stay in the top 10 for 4months, right after the first free month finished. If that is horrible in your book then you don't know what you're talking about, considering all the dross that have launched since WoW. AoC and WAR's retention rates (among others) that started at #4 and right now even after the huge improvements they have undergone and the influx of players (for AoC at least), they still stand around #60.
I don't even believe xfire is a decent tool to verify sub numbers, but at least have some perspective. I agree with gordunk, the community hasn't left and has been settled since a few months. Population IS declining, though extremely slowly but will doubtless kick off again after the 2 huge patches later this year.
Population IS declining, though extremely slowly but will doubtless kick off again after the 2 huge patches later this year.
I hope it does kick off again once 1.9 and 2.0 come out cause atm on Azphel at peak hours there is about average 1.3k players. Sieges are practically non-existent, if a siege does happen it's either a legion is trying to defend their fort from Balaur or Elyos or simply just taking a fort from the Balaur. The actual PvPvE rarely ever takes place.
I'm sure for some of you having 1.3k players seems like a lot, but it really isn't. Games like World of WarCraft, Age of Conan, Ragnarok Online , and Final Fantasy XI have average server populations of 4k. For those of you who will try to prove me wrong, yes the server population had dropped during 2008~2009 on FFXI to about 1.5k average, this is why PlayOnline is planning to merge the servers once Abyssea Campaigns are released. It will be called World Integration, you can read about it here www.playonline.com/ff11us/event/vanafes2010/index.html
All I'm saying is that having 1k players on at all times imo is terrible from the list of retail MMOs I've played unless it was private servers, which I'm not playing.
@Sonoko: Your rig must be over 4 years old and if it isn't then it was probably not a gaming PC to begin with. Do you even have recommended or do you have minimum requirements? I'm above recommended with a computer I built last year and I'm having no problems with the game other than finding groups, when it comes to sieges I have no problems viewing them at all. And haven't had any lag caused by my computer only ping hick-ups at launch when millions were trying to connect.
Perhaps I didn't really elaborate on what I was getting at, because the performance itself isn't really an issue to me because my video card is indeed quite a few years old.
However, I enjoyed sieges in the first month of the game or so, back when both factions only had 2-3 alliances each down at the lower fortresses, with the highest levels being high 30s or low 40s. That population actually felt *perfect* for them. Artifacts were actually meaningful and were important in strategy, the generals themselves were actually capable of wiping the faction if not coordinated well enough. This feeling actually extended to the first upper abyss fortresses when people started hitting 50 and the siege turnout was about the same, just with higher levels. They actually ran well with my computer too, except for the occasional crashes, but whatever.
Now... now sieges are a freaking joke. And not because it's painfully obvious my faction is vastly outnumbered on sieges. Take for example the last time Elyos capped Krotan on my server. They had a good 11 or so alliance kisks plus a dozen group kisks set up in the artifact room. And that's clearly not some stupid diversion either, a simple glance around showed easily 300+ Elyos there. And quite frankly, nothing about that boss requires even half of that. They completely trivialized the encounter, with a terribly lame stupidly uncoordinated and unskilled show where every AOE on the boss was wiping out several dozen people, including plenty of high-ranked officers in full Miragent. But they didn't wipe. They weren't even remotely phased by popping the artifacts around the fortress. They just mass zerged it by having everybody kisk rez and run back to die over and over. Killing the boss in under half the allotted time window while having ~100 of their people doing nothing but barely fending our entire force off from the kisk room.
You know what would actually have been fun instead? If 2/3rds of their population was gone, and not because that would balance our forces, but because it would make it where a properly performed siege complete with fending off the opposing faction by utilizing transformations and strategic use of artifacts , as well as focusing on a fight where people are actually playing well and not dying to every damn AOE to kill the boss with maybe only 10-15 minutes to spare. Instead of "lol masszerg entirely defeat all the mechanics of a siege strictly with overwhelming numbers," which is solely the case now. But instead, you want MORE people... For what purpose, so that you can have a faction completely break and trivialize two upper inner fortresses at the same time? Yeah, that sounds fun. Not.
Moreover, if I use http://abyssrank.com/World/Stat as a guideline on how active servers are, my server's only 19th. Azphel is 8th. And hey, I'll admit perhaps this is a faulty way of ranking servers, but I don't know any way better to go on it. And let's see, on my server I've absolutely never had actual trouble getting a group for anything. I see people forming group for low level content (Black Claw, Training Camp, Fire Temple) all the time. During peak hours I can /who 50 and see 6-7 full groups doing Dark Poeta, and a few more in Adma, Steel Rake, and Asteria's fort instance. Given these circumstances I don't understand how someone could not get a group.
But apparently this is a pitiful amount of people because there's not 4k active users (as if this is needed to get groups for 6 man content?), and we need more people! When I farmed Boiling Balaur Bloodstains I had encountered PVP every few minutes, and I had to wait on top of the Balaur Guard respawn points for every. single. one. competing with way too many of my own faction regardless of where I farmed them at. The game world totally is designed to support over twice the concurrent users, and it's just so barren without that many! Wait, no. No, if anything it's the complete opposite, sorry.
Moreover, if I use http://abyssrank.com/World/Stat as a guideline on how active servers are, my server's only 19th. Azphel is 8th. And hey, I'll admit perhaps this is a faulty way of ranking servers, but I don't know any way better to go on it. And let's see, on my server I've absolutely never had actual trouble getting a group for anything. I see people forming group for low level content (Black Claw, Training Camp, Fire Temple) all the time. During peak hours I can /who 50 and see 6-7 full groups doing Dark Poeta, and a few more in Adma, Steel Rake, and Asteria's fort instance. Given these circumstances I don't understand how someone could not get a group.
Sadly those stats are all flawed due to the massive amounts of botters are the beginning. I'm beginning to feel like we just need more patience, everything's fucked over due to all the launch crap that happened, we can't base anything on current statistics since a lot of those botter legions are still around hogging the AP title with 1 member in them to hold on.
I'm beginning to get depressed about this shit. Btw if your server has 300+ players during a siege then congrats cause on Azphel that would mean that almost half the population is doing siege which clearly isn't the case ever... People beg for a siege group and simply don't get them...
Actually, the site has a daily statistic as well. "Incoming AP", it's a total of how much AP was earned by the top 100 legions of both factions. So if anything, having an inactive guild with millions of AP would lower this statistic as it would prevent legions with less total AP than the 100th rank from getting their increases picked up.
For the 14th to the 15th, Telemachus's is "+9,463,427" which is utterly insane. (But it's a Euro server, so I shouldn't be surprised.) Azphel is "+5,316,941", while Ariel is only "+3,925,831". Now I'm completely aware this can be skewed significantly by people hoarding the AP items to turn in, but the overall positions of the servers on a day-to-day basis is relatively consistent. (12th to 13th: Telemachus was 9.9 million, Azphel was 6.9 million, Ariel was 4.4 million. 13th to 14th: Telemachus was 10.4 million, Azphel was 7.2 million, Ariel was 3.9 million.) And with how the ways AP is actually primarily earned in this game, namely Dredgion and Fortress Instances, as well as the vast amount of AP that realistically requires hundreds of people to amass on a daily basis, I'm at a loss to how this can be explained aside from population differences.
So if Azphel's really as barren as you make it sound, I'm so utterly confused as to what's going on with the AP...
Well, I'm a quester, I don't enjoy running FT over and over again. I try to complete all quests I can find at least once and doing so is very hard. I just spent 2 days spamming LFG for help with <A Missing Father>, finally got it done, then people who helped me wanted to go do some runs somewhere else instead of keep going with the quests in the Malek Mines. I know it's easy to find groups for the common instances, but in general finding groups for quests is nearly impossible. If there was more players it would be easier. Also these stats on Abyssrank.com are only NA/Oc./EU and not include Kr/Tw/Jp which I am sure have much more crowded servers and probably surpass ours ten fold.
According to those statistics Azphel is the most active but I'm sure on the greater scale, it's nothing. I'm simply speaking from experience: An MMO with 1k users per server at peak hours is pathetic and usually the game is balanced towards having 3k+ per server. It's also what I believe to be the cause of why so many feel that success rates are too low and why there is so much inflation in the economy. Even with more players the success rates will till be low but more people will be succeeding than before bringing the prices down, also fluxes and stigmas are over priced, in Korea <Unwavering Devotion I> is worth 500k on broker, on Azphel 7mil. Due to this they are actually adding NPCs to fix the economy on our servers. There is actually NPC now on the Korean test server (patch 1.9) that sells UD for 600k and other stigmas as well. Also I do not know if it's like this on your server but on Azphel there is usually just one siege going on at a time but 4 vulnerable by this I mean that even with 4 vulnerable there's only enough players to defend or attack one at a time. That's not the case on the Kr servers, all of them go to war when they are vulnerable and it's hard for a legion to own more than one (which isn't the case here when all of them are owned by a single legion...)
Aion has consistently held between 6th to 10 place on Xfire which isnt the holy grail of gaming but it gives you a general idea how a game is doing in comparison to others. That being said Aion is holding its own in the market in NA which is impressive when you compare it to WAR, AOC, STO and other games that have come out over the past 2 years or so that have not done as well. IMO Aion has certainly lost people but it also appears to be getting a lot of new people as well. I play on Triniel, its a pretty active server and there are people LFG all day long for different things. Times I have made groups for stuff fill up pretty fast. Id say Im happy with the server overall but would be moreso if there was less in-fighting with my faction's prominent legions.
Aion has consistently held between 6th to 10 place on Xfire which isnt the holy grail of gaming but it gives you a general idea how a game is doing in comparison to others. That being said Aion is holding its own in the market in NA which is impressive when you compare it to WAR, AOC, STO and other games that have come out over the past 2 years or so that have not done as well. IMO Aion has certainly lost people but it also appears to be getting a lot of new people as well. I play on Triniel, its a pretty active server and there are people LFG all day long for different things. Times I have made groups for stuff fill up pretty fast. Id say Im happy with the server overall but would be moreso if there was less in-fighting with my faction's prominent legions.
xFire is not isolated to NA it spans from NA/EU/Oc./Asia anyone can use xFire thus not useful to know any statistics for market in any isolated area. There are currently no official statistics given out on any websites about what the MMO market is like in America or even the world. There used to be MMOCHART.com I believe but that is completely useless now since they haven't updated in 2 years. To be honest more people in Europe seem to play Aion than in North America and even more so in Asia, it's their WoW.
That's a reason why it's one to miss? If you know the reasons why it's like that you'd understand (i think). I'm not going to bother replying in details to such a bland thread though.
why do i need reasons why the flying cant be done it says flying on the box they made it look all nice and fun and in reality what you get isnt even close to what was stated i want to fly where i want when i want not "glide"
2). This game is a grind trust me.
A grind is always what you make of it. Diversify your game-play options and don't have insta-lvl50 as your one and only goal. Players make their own hell. my goal was to play the game it was still a fucking grind
3). The content is poor especially endgame.
Leveling content is good enough for one play through, save for a couple of levels. Endgame content is there but could be better. v2.0 in a few months is addressing this. dont know the grind made me quite at about lvl 35 and waiting around for some dungeon to open for a 17 hour timer is just pathetic and even when you do get in you could go through 14 times and still get nothing yea great content my ass
4). The PVP system has no real thought put into it.
It does have its problems, but I have no idea what you're talking about, and I doubt you do as well. lets see one group runs forward and then back same for the other side eveerytime i ever got into any action i was dead before i even got close so no i have to agree
5). The track record of this company is poor. Not a relevant reason. agreed this isnt relevant
6). The community is very weak and losing players all the time.
Community, by my experience, is pretty decent and mature for the most part. It may be losing players slowly, but that's true for all AAA MMOs except for 2. this game has a shitty community assholes that act like they are holier then thou because they can grind out some magnifecent armor
7). Servers are very laggy at times, can make play difficult. A general MMO problem. but a major issue in aion ive never had so much lag in a mmo in my life and ive played games with less lag that called for higher requirements
8). To many bots in the game. Wrong. did when i was in dk about now
9). Far to many gold farmers. Wrong. see above
10). Theres better mmo's out there. In your opinion. probably so
Sorry for not replying in detail, but I don't think any of those "reasons" deserve it.
Pvp with any more than 5 players is screwed up in this game with lag and rubberband jumps. For a melé character this is not fun and it's impossible to hit anything that runs or flies so it's all about the ranged classes.
That's a reason why it's one to miss? If you know the reasons why it's like that you'd understand (i think). I'm not going to bother replying in details to such a bland thread though.
why do i need reasons why the flying cant be done it says flying on the box they made it look all nice and fun and in reality what you get isnt even close to what was stated i want to fly where i want when i want not "glide" 2). This game is a grind trust me.
A grind is always what you make of it. Diversify your game-play options and don't have insta-lvl50 as your one and only goal. Players make their own hell. my goal was to play the game it was still a fucking grind
3). The content is poor especially endgame.
Leveling content is good enough for one play through, save for a couple of levels. Endgame content is there but could be better. v2.0 in a few months is addressing this. dont know the grind made me quite at about lvl 35 and waiting around for some dungeon to open for a 17 hour timer is just pathetic and even when you do get in you could go through 14 times and still get nothing yea great content my ass
4). The PVP system has no real thought put into it.
It does have its problems, but I have no idea what you're talking about, and I doubt you do as well. lets see one group runs forward and then back same for the other side eveerytime i ever got into any action i was dead before i even got close so no i have to agree
5). The track record of this company is poor. Not a relevant reason. agreed this isnt relevant
6). The community is very weak and losing players all the time.
Community, by my experience, is pretty decent and mature for the most part. It may be losing players slowly, but that's true for all AAA MMOs except for 2. this game has a shitty community assholes that act like they are holier then thou because they can grind out some magnifecent armor
7). Servers are very laggy at times, can make play difficult. A general MMO problem. but a major issue in aion ive never had so much lag in a mmo in my life and ive played games with less lag that called for higher requirements
8). To many bots in the game. Wrong. did when i was in dk about now
9). Far to many gold farmers. Wrong. see above
10). Theres better mmo's out there. In your opinion. probably so
Sorry for not replying in detail, but I don't think any of those "reasons" deserve it.
1. I agree, I mean i can see why they don't do it, but they made it one of the big things about the game, so it was very misleading...
2. No matter what you do, this game is a grind, please don't give the BS diversify your game, lvling is a grind, crafting is a grind, pvp is a grind (lol), hell even questing is a grind (referring to quest chains *cough*cough* Xeno & migrants)
3. Content is alright I guess, not much story if thats what your getting at, and all my friends say endgame is non-exsistant and I have over 50 friends, at least 15 being 50 so I'm a just side with you there.
4. PvP is basically SM OP, sin hide=win, Ranger hide=win but has better ranged attacks, cleric good vs melee...i guess chanter too, sorc good if your smart, n warrior classes usually fail.
5. /agree true and irrelavent, unless you have had 2 deal with customer service.
6.Yeah its losing more then gaining, prob will gain a lot when 1.9 comes out, n community is horrible, way to many people that think they r tough shit cuz they r in top guilds.
7. Ehh not to bad for me, but forts r BAD.
8. Still a lot of bots....
9. Barely any RTM left, which is nice.
10. Personal taste, not really gonna get into this lol.
First of all Flight is limited first as a lore issue and second as a balance issue. Do you realize how nerfed a class like Gladiator is? Some idiot can just sprout their wings and kite me to death, what am I supposed to do then? If flight was unlimited, you might as well kiss melee classes goodbye because 3d kiting would mean a melee class would be worse than useless in anything but Mass fort PvP where it's chaotic enough to get some kills in. Limited flight brings classes to more even levels, and while the balance in this game isn't perfect it's far better than many games that have been out for years. Also, you can say what you want about Aion's problems, but the developers are actually DOING something about it. It took AoC how long to get its act together? Less than a year after a launch we've got major content planned to fix huge issues.
Ahh... not quite.
It's been out less than a year in the Western market, sure. However, the game had been out for a year already in the East and a lot of things (such as the problems with botting and gold-spam which, frankly, NC should have been far more prepared for already due to their experience with the same problem Lineage 2 and Lineage 1 before it) should have already been ironed out.
They weren't re-developing the entire game for the US launch. The only thing they needed for the Western market was localization... the game itself was already 'complete' (as a MMO can be anyway).
So... they had substantially more than "less than a year".
What you're seeing is NC's characteristic way of dealing with problems... they wait until enough people start complaining about it, then they decide to take notice. I played Lineage 2 on and off since it launched and I know their pattern all too well.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
In my opinion, Aion is just funding for NCSOFT's next big project Blade n' Soul. In the 10 min Blade n' Soul interview the developers stated Aion's revenue is going towards development of Blade n' Soul and that even they were surprised how well Aion was currently doing - giving them even more capital and time to put into polishing their next AAA title.
They aren't trying to hide the fact the game is a giant grindfest, it's that obvious. The bigger the grind, the more time people will spend there.
I hope it does kick off again once 1.9 and 2.0 come out cause atm on Azphel at peak hours there is about average 1.3k players. Sieges are practically non-existent, if a siege does happen it's either a legion is trying to defend their fort from Balaur or Elyos or simply just taking a fort from the Balaur. The actual PvPvE rarely ever takes place.
I have a question:
Where do you see the average number of players on each server ? But if that number is true ...
and
If 1.3K is indeed the average, you have to multiply it with 3 to 4 times to arrive at the average number of subscriptions per server.
So in doing this count you have NA: 14 servers X 4.5 K = 63 K subs and for EU that would be 18 servers x 4.5 = 81 K subs.
Together for Aion west that would mean 144 K subscriptions.
This is around 25% of the 600K players from the first week at launch. That 25% retention was indeed confirmed by Xfire.
The only thing left is that statiscally more Aion players use Xfire, so the 144K subscriptions would place it under Lotro normally in those XFire charts (if representation was evenly spread among all the games - which of course it isn't).
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
I'd have to agree with Tryce430, the more I read on the different forums and all the issues and QQ'ing and the lack of real response from NCsoft just reinforces the facts.
This may or may not be a game breaker for some as there are reasons for this which are not only explained in the lore (though my feeling it is more for game play over lore ) but are also there because in certain areas so that one can make hard choices on when and where to use the wings (abyss) or so that content is not bypassed.
All in all, dumb decision.
2). This game is a grind trust me.
I can't trust you because I KNOW what a grind is. Lineage 2 was a grind. I played pretty hardcore and still never made top lvl. And you just went to spots and would grind mobs. End of story. There weren't a plethora of quests to do. Also in Aion you get xp for gathering and crafting. If you come from wow then you might think it a grind.
Its a grind and every mmo player knows it.
3). The content is poor especially endgame.
I think the content is hit or miss.
It's a swing then a miss.
4). The PVP system has no real thought put into it.
Because?
Best aspect of the game, and I thought it was done pretty well.
5). The track record of this company is poor.
Their track record for customer relations can be pretty poor. Their track record for making beautiful games is not poor. I would argue that there are things in Lineage 2 that make is a phenomenal game.
They are highly recognized in the MMO market, and just because they like to try different games doesn't mean they have a bad track record all in all.
6). The community is very weak and losing players all the time.
Community being weak is subjective but you do say it's your opinion. They are going to be coming out with 2 updates soon so perhaps that will help with losing some players.
It's pretty strong right now.
7). Servers are very laggy at times, can make play difficult.
I've never been in a game that didn't have laggy servers when there were a lot of players on.
never lagged when i played for that whole month.
8). To many bots in the game.
There are hardly any noticeable bots in game. Still some there though.
You can avoid the, , but yes, too many.
9). Far to many gold farmers.
Same as above. Also they are very active to remove gold spammers and gold selling advertisement shops in game.
Same answer as above.
10). Theres better mmo's out there.
I'm sure there are also worse.
Shame this game has so much more potential then most MMO's....
Comments
"2). This game is a grind trust me."
Name one MMO that isnt ? I have been playing MMOs since 1999 and they ALL have their own grind. ALL OF THEM. Some of you people need to get this through your thick heads. Understand it and accept it.
I think what people are asking for is a "grind" that is so well disguised that it doesn't FEEL like a grind. It's not a "grind" if you're having FUN doing it. "Grind" implies that it is not enjoyable due to the repetitive nature of it all. If I'm having fun doing something in a game....I don't refer to it as a "grind."
This statement is so true. If killing mobs or a purpose is well disguised teh feeling of grind isnt there. I felt when I played Aion I got to a point where I (cleric) Had to just kill random mobs to gain levels. My friend who got to 50 way earlier than I did (he had no job and lived at home duh) told me where to kill these mobs and omg what torture and to team as the healer with the weak team healing powes-- I say this in that when i cast a heal the player is dead already due to lag spike or castig delay. Then nerge rage follows lol. I have seen this not just as me a cleric but when on my high level sorc as well. Team is Aion was a lost--sure you get to kill bosses too difficult to solo but the xp was bad and everyone involved gets 1 rare drop to fight over--umm fail. Anyway these things are not fun. I found people making more enemies than friends due to fighting over drops which ultimately is why I left.
GRIND DOES NOT EQUAL MAKING A GAME CHALLENGING!! YES I AM YELLING LOL
And no job, life and dont have to pay your bills--Time sink is terrible and kinah costy is so high no wonder the kinah sellers are having such a great market
GRIND DOES NOT EQUAL MAKING A GAME CHALLENGING!! YES I AM YELLING LOL
I have to agree with this. I also played a cleric till lvl 43. Too much drama when someone dies and/or people rolling on loot not for their class. The kinah sinks and crappy loot drops created a stingy and bad tempered game community. That is probably the main reason I quit after all my friends have left. I couldnt stand doing group missions anymore cause I dreaded the drama in group missions when things go bad.
And no job, life and dont have to pay your bills--Time sink is terrible and kinah costy is so high no wonder the kinah sellers are having such a great market
The game is what you put into it. I have a job, wife, kid, home, etc. I dont play 16 hours a day, Im lucky if I get 3 hours in which is the same amount of time I spent in WOW and other MMO's *shrugs*. Not sure what your point is here other then yeah some people play more then others. As for the time sink which I believe you mean grind, yup it exists. They are working on making it better in the next patch but its there and I agree. Based on your post history you clearly hate Aion and Im not going to try to change your mind, the game isnt for everyone but I will step up and defend it when people post inaccurate information like saying that things like BOTS are a current problem when they are in fact not and havent been since December. Also server lag has never been an issue either. I think maybe the first week there were some issues and rubber banding, etc but thats also been gone for a long time. My point is if people want to complain about AIon, there are definitely valid topics to complain about but using problem that existed months ago and arent currently issues is pretty weak IMO. Here are the problems in Aion as I see it TODAY:
1) Grind
2) End Game content - needs more.
3) Manastone socketing failures can be ridiculous, although this is fixed in 1.9
4) Video lag in large scale battles, even with my GTX260 SLI setup my FPS drops low. Im hoping some of the new custom settings in 1.9 fix this.
And no job, life and dont have to pay your bills--Time sink is terrible and kinah costy is so high no wonder the kinah sellers are having such a great market
The game is what you put into it. I have a job, wife, kid, home, etc. I dont play 16 hours a day, Im lucky if I get 3 hours in which is the same amount of time I spent in WOW and other MMO's *shrugs*. Not sure what your point is here other then yeah some people play more then others. As for the time sink which I believe you mean grind, yup it exists. They are working on making it better in the next patch but its there and I agree. Based on your post history you clearly hate Aion and Im not going to try to change your mind, the game isnt for everyone but I will step up and defend it when people post inaccurate information like saying that things like BOTS are a current problem when they are in fact not and havent been since December. Also server lag has never been an issue either. I think maybe the first week there were some issues and rubber banding, etc but thats also been gone for a long time. My point is if people want to complain about AIon, there are definitely valid topics to complain about but using problem that existed months ago and arent currently issues is pretty weak IMO. Here are the problems in Aion as I see it TODAY:
1) Grind
2) End Game content - needs more.
3) Manastone socketing failures can be ridiculous, although this is fixed in 1.9
4) Video lag in large scale battles, even with my GTX260 SLI setup my FPS drops low. Im hoping some of the new custom settings in 1.9 fix this.
Glad you like the game as is. What class do you play? It seems that makes a big differences for those that find pleasure as teh game stands now..
1) teaming is a harsh experience due to low drop rate and it leads to fighting (some drops can go with multiple classes and not so easy to say 1 class is entitled to the rare drop)
2) I hope they re-evaluate teh xp received while on a team. It goes down so much that most classes can solo lesser critters for more xp/ and skip teh fighting for drops.
I post comments because if things are not said then they wont change( probably wont anyways) Im glad you enjoy the game as it is and continued fun to you on that but don't brush over the comments of others that don't feel as you do for your view and mine is not teh ultimate answer just opinions that differ. Cary on playing your gladiator, sin or sorc LOL
GRIND DOES NOT EQUAL MAKING A GAME CHALLENGING!! YES I AM YELLING LOL
First of all Flight is limited first as a lore issue and second as a balance issue. Do you realize how nerfed a class like Gladiator is? Some idiot can just sprout their wings and kite me to death, what am I supposed to do then? If flight was unlimited, you might as well kiss melee classes goodbye because 3d kiting would mean a melee class would be worse than useless in anything but Mass fort PvP where it's chaotic enough to get some kills in. Limited flight brings classes to more even levels, and while the balance in this game isn't perfect it's far better than many games that have been out for years. Also, you can say what you want about Aion's problems, but the developers are actually DOING something about it. It took AoC how long to get its act together? Less than a year after a launch we've got major content planned to fix huge issues.
Yeah, Aion requires a lot of time invested, no question. Leveling is slow, I'd rather not talk about getting full Daevanion armor or Miragent's/Fenril's, because luckily i'm not there yet. This game requires a massive investment of time, no question. The Upside? Everyone and their f-ing grandma isn't running around with your supposedly unique weapon because it's ACTUALLY rare.
The main problem right now is grouping though. There is 1 REAL Tank class. Yeah, a Gladiator can tank, but honestly they're not nearly as good at it, especially pulling. There is 1 real HEAL class, chanter's will be discussed next. You should always bring a chanter for buffs, so that's 3 slots out of 6 filled. Then you have 5 classes left competing for 3 slots, not counting multiples of the same class. Each class is set in their role, they have no way out of it. Something akin to a talent system or additional advanced classes (Like Templar evolves into blank and blank) could probably solve this issue but I don't see this coming with the current level cap, it just doesn't make sense. Luckily groups are common, but it becomes increasingly hard to find a Templar or Cleric. One group we used 3 chanters and me as a Gladiator AoE tank. Not the best strategy...
Lag is still an issue, but it is mainly due to a horrible routing issue in the code or so I'm told. I used to have massive lag spikes that would last full minutes and disconnect me. I updated my router FW and reset my modem, it's been holding up for now, but tech support says the modem we have at fault (actually doesn't surprise me since I've always hated our modem)
Swimming...this would do what, exactly? In contrast the Aion team is tackling this in one of the better ways, looks like leveling content 50-x will all be underwater. Sure, WoW has dabbled with that in the past, but Aion's actually going full out.
The PvP system...major flaw with this is that AP gear isn't worth the cost/risk as opposed to Miragent/Fenril. Other than that I see no real problems with it, and Fortress Seiges are epic and fun.
Lack of content end-game. I'm sorry, have you taken every crafting profession all the way? Do you have full Gold AP gear for lvl 50? Full Fenril's? Full DP? And even then, their are still Fortress raids, leveling an alt, etc. Plenty of content, just not in the WoW sense of a bunch of instances with free lore rape.
Graphics aren't as good as AoC and Vanguard. Yep, and look where Graphics got them?
Community leaving...umm no? Aion's retention of Sub numbers is clear just by Xfire stats alone, not to mention they're the 2nd place MMO in terms of numbers. And with Veteran Rewards, 1.9 and 2.0 looming, and the fact that the game is frequently updated, there's really not a huge reason to quit if you're enjoying it now.
Poor Track record from NC? Let's see, L2, GW, CoX, are all well recieved and well remembered games. Their Fail? Tabula Rasa. 3-1 not counting their F2P sector is pretty damn good.
[Mod Edit]
I am a self proclaimed Aion fan and after reading that part I felt like you weren't playing the same game as me. The community is already gone, a game that had 400k pre-orders (I do not know if this is NA/Oc. or EU) now has 14 servers (NA/Oc.) with only 1k~1.5k players on each at peak hours meaning only an average of 15k subs in NA/Oc. (That's terrible...)
Also you judging based on xFire is terrible. Alot of people don't use it and also Aion is struggling to stay in the top 10 which is horrible considering at launch it was #4 I believe.
I still play Aion and most Aion players consider me casual since I don't like to grind, by grind I mean kill mobs to rush to lv.50 skipping all quests other than campaign then AP grind to get good AP gear or repeatingly do select instances in hope of getting a drop that has 0.0x% chance of dropping.
I've been playing since CBT and was having tons of fun at launch with the immense amount of players the game had. I'm currently lv.38 and struggling with quests due to the lack of players so saying that the community hasn't left is complete and utter bullshit. Personally I think there should be a server merge. If there were 400k pre-orders and 6 servers at launch then that means each server can hold about 66k players; I actually think it could probably hold more like maybe 10k or even 20k per server though cause 66k seems kinda high. Also I'm sure at launch there was over 1mil players trying to connect to the game making those 9+hr queues we all suffered. Once server transfers come and enough people leave servers making them empty a merge will happen and some people will just be forced to leave their servers, until then I welcome all gamers to try Aion and hope for the worst, if your hopes are low you will enjoy it, if you expect a lot from the game then be patient and wait for more news to come out.
Did you even read what you just typed? You're making several gigantic assumptions in order to reach that number:
1. That every single subscriber plays every day.
2. That every single subscriber plays at the peak time.
And both of these are blatantly false. And as anecdotal as this is, most of my own friends list is almost never online during peak!
Moreover, I play on Ariel and I'm inclined to say if there's a population problem it's that our Elyos side is overpopulated. As an Asmodian, there's no problem whatsoever getting a group for anything for any level. Even my friend who started to play recently is now pugging Fire Temple pretty often, so it's not like the population is strictly top-heavy either. And by watching LFG chat, since it's essentially the global chat channel, there's plenty of people grouping for even Black Claw at like 3 am.
And fortress sieges, the things that actually require a high peak population, are certainly not affected by this supposedly "gone community". Asmodians come with at least 100 people, which is so much that my computer wants to curl up and die even with shift+f12 on. Which alone would easily be enough to capture any fortress except Divine, and yet Elyos show up to everything with 2-3x the amount of people as us causing a beautiful slideshow of us being steamrolled by a sea of floating names. Bonus fun when an artifact like Kerubic wears off and my client stalls for a solid minute!
Clearly, I can't speak for your server, but I wish I could go and eject a large portion of my server's population so that sieges would start to actually be playable again. A server merge is the last damn thing I want.
You know bot farming is out of control when you recieve fake account fraud emails for your Aion beta account.
As for me I knew this wasn't the game for me when I beta tested, seemed to be a run of the mill gear grind to cap then join the pvp fest to grind more for "uber gear". Been there, done that, didn't feel compelled to do it again.
It has been 'struggling' to stay in the top 10 for 4months, right after the first free month finished. If that is horrible in your book then you don't know what you're talking about, considering all the dross that have launched since WoW. AoC and WAR's retention rates (among others) that started at #4 and right now even after the huge improvements they have undergone and the influx of players (for AoC at least), they still stand around #60.
I don't even believe xfire is a decent tool to verify sub numbers, but at least have some perspective. I agree with gordunk, the community hasn't left and has been settled since a few months. Population IS declining, though extremely slowly but will doubtless kick off again after the 2 huge patches later this year.
I hope it does kick off again once 1.9 and 2.0 come out cause atm on Azphel at peak hours there is about average 1.3k players. Sieges are practically non-existent, if a siege does happen it's either a legion is trying to defend their fort from Balaur or Elyos or simply just taking a fort from the Balaur. The actual PvPvE rarely ever takes place.
I'm sure for some of you having 1.3k players seems like a lot, but it really isn't. Games like World of WarCraft, Age of Conan, Ragnarok Online , and Final Fantasy XI have average server populations of 4k. For those of you who will try to prove me wrong, yes the server population had dropped during 2008~2009 on FFXI to about 1.5k average, this is why PlayOnline is planning to merge the servers once Abyssea Campaigns are released. It will be called World Integration, you can read about it here www.playonline.com/ff11us/event/vanafes2010/index.html
All I'm saying is that having 1k players on at all times imo is terrible from the list of retail MMOs I've played unless it was private servers, which I'm not playing.
@Sonoko: Your rig must be over 4 years old and if it isn't then it was probably not a gaming PC to begin with. Do you even have recommended or do you have minimum requirements? I'm above recommended with a computer I built last year and I'm having no problems with the game other than finding groups, when it comes to sieges I have no problems viewing them at all. And haven't had any lag caused by my computer only ping hick-ups at launch when millions were trying to connect.
Perhaps I didn't really elaborate on what I was getting at, because the performance itself isn't really an issue to me because my video card is indeed quite a few years old.
However, I enjoyed sieges in the first month of the game or so, back when both factions only had 2-3 alliances each down at the lower fortresses, with the highest levels being high 30s or low 40s. That population actually felt *perfect* for them. Artifacts were actually meaningful and were important in strategy, the generals themselves were actually capable of wiping the faction if not coordinated well enough. This feeling actually extended to the first upper abyss fortresses when people started hitting 50 and the siege turnout was about the same, just with higher levels. They actually ran well with my computer too, except for the occasional crashes, but whatever.
Now... now sieges are a freaking joke. And not because it's painfully obvious my faction is vastly outnumbered on sieges. Take for example the last time Elyos capped Krotan on my server. They had a good 11 or so alliance kisks plus a dozen group kisks set up in the artifact room. And that's clearly not some stupid diversion either, a simple glance around showed easily 300+ Elyos there. And quite frankly, nothing about that boss requires even half of that. They completely trivialized the encounter, with a terribly lame stupidly uncoordinated and unskilled show where every AOE on the boss was wiping out several dozen people, including plenty of high-ranked officers in full Miragent. But they didn't wipe. They weren't even remotely phased by popping the artifacts around the fortress. They just mass zerged it by having everybody kisk rez and run back to die over and over. Killing the boss in under half the allotted time window while having ~100 of their people doing nothing but barely fending our entire force off from the kisk room.
You know what would actually have been fun instead? If 2/3rds of their population was gone, and not because that would balance our forces, but because it would make it where a properly performed siege complete with fending off the opposing faction by utilizing transformations and strategic use of artifacts , as well as focusing on a fight where people are actually playing well and not dying to every damn AOE to kill the boss with maybe only 10-15 minutes to spare. Instead of "lol masszerg entirely defeat all the mechanics of a siege strictly with overwhelming numbers," which is solely the case now. But instead, you want MORE people... For what purpose, so that you can have a faction completely break and trivialize two upper inner fortresses at the same time? Yeah, that sounds fun. Not.
Moreover, if I use http://abyssrank.com/World/Stat as a guideline on how active servers are, my server's only 19th. Azphel is 8th. And hey, I'll admit perhaps this is a faulty way of ranking servers, but I don't know any way better to go on it. And let's see, on my server I've absolutely never had actual trouble getting a group for anything. I see people forming group for low level content (Black Claw, Training Camp, Fire Temple) all the time. During peak hours I can /who 50 and see 6-7 full groups doing Dark Poeta, and a few more in Adma, Steel Rake, and Asteria's fort instance. Given these circumstances I don't understand how someone could not get a group.
But apparently this is a pitiful amount of people because there's not 4k active users (as if this is needed to get groups for 6 man content?), and we need more people! When I farmed Boiling Balaur Bloodstains I had encountered PVP every few minutes, and I had to wait on top of the Balaur Guard respawn points for every. single. one. competing with way too many of my own faction regardless of where I farmed them at. The game world totally is designed to support over twice the concurrent users, and it's just so barren without that many! Wait, no. No, if anything it's the complete opposite, sorry.
Sadly those stats are all flawed due to the massive amounts of botters are the beginning. I'm beginning to feel like we just need more patience, everything's fucked over due to all the launch crap that happened, we can't base anything on current statistics since a lot of those botter legions are still around hogging the AP title with 1 member in them to hold on.
I'm beginning to get depressed about this shit. Btw if your server has 300+ players during a siege then congrats cause on Azphel that would mean that almost half the population is doing siege which clearly isn't the case ever... People beg for a siege group and simply don't get them...
Actually, the site has a daily statistic as well. "Incoming AP", it's a total of how much AP was earned by the top 100 legions of both factions. So if anything, having an inactive guild with millions of AP would lower this statistic as it would prevent legions with less total AP than the 100th rank from getting their increases picked up.
For the 14th to the 15th, Telemachus's is "+9,463,427" which is utterly insane. (But it's a Euro server, so I shouldn't be surprised.) Azphel is "+5,316,941", while Ariel is only "+3,925,831". Now I'm completely aware this can be skewed significantly by people hoarding the AP items to turn in, but the overall positions of the servers on a day-to-day basis is relatively consistent. (12th to 13th: Telemachus was 9.9 million, Azphel was 6.9 million, Ariel was 4.4 million. 13th to 14th: Telemachus was 10.4 million, Azphel was 7.2 million, Ariel was 3.9 million.) And with how the ways AP is actually primarily earned in this game, namely Dredgion and Fortress Instances, as well as the vast amount of AP that realistically requires hundreds of people to amass on a daily basis, I'm at a loss to how this can be explained aside from population differences.
So if Azphel's really as barren as you make it sound, I'm so utterly confused as to what's going on with the AP...
Well, I'm a quester, I don't enjoy running FT over and over again. I try to complete all quests I can find at least once and doing so is very hard. I just spent 2 days spamming LFG for help with <A Missing Father>, finally got it done, then people who helped me wanted to go do some runs somewhere else instead of keep going with the quests in the Malek Mines. I know it's easy to find groups for the common instances, but in general finding groups for quests is nearly impossible. If there was more players it would be easier. Also these stats on Abyssrank.com are only NA/Oc./EU and not include Kr/Tw/Jp which I am sure have much more crowded servers and probably surpass ours ten fold.
According to those statistics Azphel is the most active but I'm sure on the greater scale, it's nothing. I'm simply speaking from experience: An MMO with 1k users per server at peak hours is pathetic and usually the game is balanced towards having 3k+ per server. It's also what I believe to be the cause of why so many feel that success rates are too low and why there is so much inflation in the economy. Even with more players the success rates will till be low but more people will be succeeding than before bringing the prices down, also fluxes and stigmas are over priced, in Korea <Unwavering Devotion I> is worth 500k on broker, on Azphel 7mil. Due to this they are actually adding NPCs to fix the economy on our servers. There is actually NPC now on the Korean test server (patch 1.9) that sells UD for 600k and other stigmas as well. Also I do not know if it's like this on your server but on Azphel there is usually just one siege going on at a time but 4 vulnerable by this I mean that even with 4 vulnerable there's only enough players to defend or attack one at a time. That's not the case on the Kr servers, all of them go to war when they are vulnerable and it's hard for a legion to own more than one (which isn't the case here when all of them are owned by a single legion...)
Aion has consistently held between 6th to 10 place on Xfire which isnt the holy grail of gaming but it gives you a general idea how a game is doing in comparison to others. That being said Aion is holding its own in the market in NA which is impressive when you compare it to WAR, AOC, STO and other games that have come out over the past 2 years or so that have not done as well. IMO Aion has certainly lost people but it also appears to be getting a lot of new people as well. I play on Triniel, its a pretty active server and there are people LFG all day long for different things. Times I have made groups for stuff fill up pretty fast. Id say Im happy with the server overall but would be moreso if there was less in-fighting with my faction's prominent legions.
xFire is not isolated to NA it spans from NA/EU/Oc./Asia anyone can use xFire thus not useful to know any statistics for market in any isolated area. There are currently no official statistics given out on any websites about what the MMO market is like in America or even the world. There used to be MMOCHART.com I believe but that is completely useless now since they haven't updated in 2 years. To be honest more people in Europe seem to play Aion than in North America and even more so in Asia, it's their WoW.
Sorry for not replying in detail, but I don't think any of those "reasons" deserve it.
Pvp with any more than 5 players is screwed up in this game with lag and rubberband jumps. For a melé character this is not fun and it's impossible to hit anything that runs or flies so it's all about the ranged classes.
Sorry for not replying in detail, but I don't think any of those "reasons" deserve it.
1. I agree, I mean i can see why they don't do it, but they made it one of the big things about the game, so it was very misleading...
2. No matter what you do, this game is a grind, please don't give the BS diversify your game, lvling is a grind, crafting is a grind, pvp is a grind (lol), hell even questing is a grind (referring to quest chains *cough*cough* Xeno & migrants)
3. Content is alright I guess, not much story if thats what your getting at, and all my friends say endgame is non-exsistant and I have over 50 friends, at least 15 being 50 so I'm a just side with you there.
4. PvP is basically SM OP, sin hide=win, Ranger hide=win but has better ranged attacks, cleric good vs melee...i guess chanter too, sorc good if your smart, n warrior classes usually fail.
5. /agree true and irrelavent, unless you have had 2 deal with customer service.
6.Yeah its losing more then gaining, prob will gain a lot when 1.9 comes out, n community is horrible, way to many people that think they r tough shit cuz they r in top guilds.
7. Ehh not to bad for me, but forts r BAD.
8. Still a lot of bots....
9. Barely any RTM left, which is nice.
10. Personal taste, not really gonna get into this lol.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
In my opinion, Aion is just funding for NCSOFT's next big project Blade n' Soul. In the 10 min Blade n' Soul interview the developers stated Aion's revenue is going towards development of Blade n' Soul and that even they were surprised how well Aion was currently doing - giving them even more capital and time to put into polishing their next AAA title.
They aren't trying to hide the fact the game is a giant grindfest, it's that obvious. The bigger the grind, the more time people will spend there.
I have a question:
Where do you see the average number of players on each server ? But if that number is true ...
and
If 1.3K is indeed the average, you have to multiply it with 3 to 4 times to arrive at the average number of subscriptions per server.
So in doing this count you have NA: 14 servers X 4.5 K = 63 K subs and for EU that would be 18 servers x 4.5 = 81 K subs.
Together for Aion west that would mean 144 K subscriptions.
This is around 25% of the 600K players from the first week at launch. That 25% retention was indeed confirmed by Xfire.
The only thing left is that statiscally more Aion players use Xfire, so the 144K subscriptions would place it under Lotro normally in those XFire charts (if representation was evenly spread among all the games - which of course it isn't).
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
I'd have to agree with Tryce430, the more I read on the different forums and all the issues and QQ'ing and the lack of real response from NCsoft just reinforces the facts.
Pepsi1028
PEPSI!!!!!
Get out of your box already...