Aion’s great start?
Aion’s great start and the tentative nose dive?!?
Well it seems as if Aion, the highly anticipated MMO from NCsoft, had a great start. The initial western launch went well enough if you can forgive the horrible server waiting lines which were annoyingly common during the first few weeks. The graphics are great, the game play is great, the lore and classes themselves are also fairly good and well thought out. Based on these comments you’d think this was set to be a contender in the MMO market, it was heralded as being the one to dethrone World of Warcraft even during its development period. Bold claims which would prove difficult to live up to and as time passes quickly by we begin to see the telltale signs of the direction it will take and the heights it will achieve.
The free month of game play is up and the player base has shrunk considerably. Exact numbers are not given and if they had been I’d likely not trust the data to be accurate based on their need to spin it for pR purposes. Now based solely on the nature of forum posts, independent polls, and player comments it is fairly obvious that players are not all that thrilled about what Aion turned out to be. The biggest reason currently being given for the frustration with the game seems to be the ridiculous amount of grinding needed once you get into the 25+ level range in order to continue advancing. All veterans of MMO’s are aware of grinding being a part of the whole “personal achievement and promise of reward = motivated ongoing MMO customer”strategy employed by the MMO developers in today’s MMO market. The problem here is that Aion seems to have taken the “GRIND” to the extreme and turned off a solid chunk of their fledgling player base.
Some people quote missing features or a lack of mid-level game content options, which curiously enough seems to tie in with that critical mass grind point post level 25. Add more content and quests and lessen the grind perhaps? Obviously the BIGGEST issue previously was the lines to get onto the servers which NCsoft of course claims credit for resolving fully. One has to wonder though, how much of that was from their efforts and how much of it was simply a thinning of the masses trying to login?!?
We’ll keep watching Aion to see how they ride the storm they seem to be currently drifting around in with eager eyes. I think that in today’s MMO landscape many of us circle around like vultures waiting to get a good view on yet another MMO carcass, Aion may be the next if they don’t overcome their issues quickly and find a way to retain their subscribers. They are truly fortunate that there are no other high budget MMO’s releasing around this time frame, if that was the case they’d be in far more dire straits than they currently are in.
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