Aion is the single most pre-ordered MMO this year
by Krystalle Voecks 
Sep 17th 2009 at 8:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, Aion, Launches, New titles, News items
With highly polished graphics, over two million words of quest text, and a series of tweaks to make Aion more Western-friendly, NCsoft seems to have finally hit the right stride with Western MMO gamers. That said, as we've learned from all the other games that have come before it, the real numbers that count are the retention numbers after the initial launch. Whether or not Aion is the goose that lays the golden egg - at least in terms of the Western markets - we'll have to wait and see.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Satn said on 8:20PM 9-17-2009
And the only significant one (available for pre-order) sofar this year.
Yay, they won the one man race!
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M said on 8:23PM 9-17-2009
much ado about nothing
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nic4rest23 said on 8:27PM 9-17-2009
stop whining!
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PeterD said on 8:28PM 9-17-2009
And they're competing against how many AAA releases so far this year? Just Champions Online really, and that's a niche title due to the setting.
Still, Aion is a solid game, I wish them success.
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Pedro said on 8:55PM 9-17-2009
This game interests me relatively because of the shiny graphics and the PvP premise of the endgame. I will wait some months before touching it though to see how it behaves on the long run.
I dislike NcSoft behavior.
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Aganazer said on 8:59PM 9-17-2009
Hey maybe more Korean developers should make some games exactly like this one. That would be great.
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primetime said on 8:59PM 9-17-2009
http://www.massively.com/2008/09/16/war-marches-into-retail-with-1-5-million/
Sweet, sweet, memories.
Let's wait 6 months and see how Aion is doing then, capisci?
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Jess said on 6:45AM 9-18-2009
War had 0 subscribers before its Launch. Aion has already been out for 8 months and has 3.5 million players. Totally different.
pot said on 11:52PM 9-20-2009
Uh those were copies shipped to retailers. Not preorders, do you even read the article you linked? They even mentioned shipping and selling are two different things. Shipping does not equal preorders.
John said on 9:03PM 9-17-2009
Aion will stand the test... its quality..runs great and they listen to the players...the last patch in the OB was shot out quickly and made changes that people were asking for during that beta. Sorry to tell everyone but Aion will be here and doing well. If you don't appreciate that..its ok....we have enough players and you can go back to your AoC or WAR...I hear they need players SUCKA"s
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Bluefunk said on 7:22AM 9-18-2009
Only sucker is you. Aion is a boring grind-fest, utterly over-hyped and over-rated. So yes I think I will stick to AoC thank you very much - which is a now in top shape!!!
Aion is a boring pile-o'sh1te.
Haohmaru (PSN - DimmuBurgerKing XBL - A Real Puppet ) said on 4:38PM 9-18-2009
@ Bluefunk
Over-hyped, overrated, and underwhelming pretty much describes both Aion and Age of Conan, yeah.
Jason said on 9:15PM 9-17-2009
When I looked for dungeon videos of Aion online I found a raid on a black dragon in a cave filled with lava, and it didn't even leave the ground or do anything interesting. Just play WoW if you want that, their dragons at least fly around and roast you with giant flame jets from the sky and walls of lava from the sides. The Aion dragon just sits there and takes it. Same thing with the big outdoor slug raid in Aion. Looks like they have pretty terribly designed PvE and it's all about PVP or fighting other players for bosses in the Abyss, which will be frustrating as hardcore guilds move to establish kill trading pacts in the Abyss where one guild kills players while the other kills the boss -- and vice versa, trading kills each week.
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Weez said on 9:23PM 9-17-2009
lol Honestly, I don't see a bit of comparison between a game that overshipped boxed units and a post about nearly half a million pre-orders.
I can tell you the difference. Aion's SOLD 400,000 copies prelaunch. War shipped 1.5 million units...WOO~!
But I get your thrust, retention is important and it'll be interesting to see how it stacks up. Sell 30 million boxes, all that matters is how many keep paying after the free month. I know I'll be there, I just hope there are a lot of people still with me :) /shrug MMO launches are just a crap shoot anyway, really, kinda always have been.
I don't know how many honestly. I have this theory about the MMO market not really being as exponentially bigger than say, 2002, as it seems. Granted, WOW has a lot of lot of subs and is far and away the P2P Leader in the clubhouse, but with a Great GREAT portion of those players having WoW as their first and only mmo, is that really new people in the market? Are people drawn to their first MMO via the huge WOW Word of mouth and marketing campaigns, easy learning curve and quick gratification, going to be drawn to a PVP-centric game like Warhammer? Or a crazy grindfest like a Lineage 2, with their open-pvp? What about games like Crimecraft, Fallen Earth, APB? Eve Online?
I just don't think so, personally.
I think retention can/has been a problem with some games because the "market" seems huge and alive with a bazillion players, but in actuality there is a very small percentage of the "market" that are "MMO players". The Rest are "WoW Players". Nothing against "WoW Players" (and I would haphazard a guess at around a quarter of the Wow subs being "MMO Players". I just think there aren't nearly as many "MMO Players" as their are "WOW Players" in the West.
Sorry, I just had a thought pop into my head and ran with it lol. Don't mistake my theory as Wow-bashing, because its not intended to be. I was just making the example to show my thoughts that with all the titles coming out, clamoring for a market much smaller than anticipated, is shooting itself in the foot.
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maika said on 11:49PM 9-17-2009
By 'wow players' you seem to be meaning people who only play the game for gratification, and are 'not real gamers' (only stated that way since it's actually the least insulting phrase I could think of offhand). I do agree, but then again Wow was my first MMO and I clearly saw the need to leave it, and have been searching for a better one ever since. So, I'd like to think, there are also people like me.
Liking WoW was compared to liking the Beatles on Massively at one point (as in, everyone likes the Beatles so it's not special to say it)...so what you're saying is many people don't really like music, they just 'like the Beatles'.. :p
Ivasen said on 9:22PM 9-17-2009
I would like to note that Aion will be releasing without GameGuard at launch.
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myr said on 9:45PM 9-17-2009
And this is the sweetest news I've heard from them since the game's NA release was announced.
Mr Lee said on 10:12AM 9-18-2009
Wow that's really really surprising and also pretty amazing. There was a LOT of feedback on GG during the beta so it shows that they do actually listen to the players and that the beta was in fact very useful to discover these kind of problems and fix them before launch.
Nice job NC Soft West and thanks.
I wonder if they will tell us how to uninstall the rootkit that GG put on our machines from the beta ;)
Jason said on 9:28PM 9-17-2009
The height of absurdity, the boss is a crab that took 40 minutes to kill. They time lapse the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXN5lBAbiUQ
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Ivasen said on 9:35PM 9-17-2009
I'm sorry, but your insight into this is...Lackluster.
Everything you have said is mostly just general things between both Aion; WoW, WAR, AoC and pretty much every other MMO out there.
If you like Aion, play Aion.
If you Like WoW, play WoW.
ect..
That is all that needs to be said really. (Jason, go away)