Fallen Earth beats out Aion in D2D sales last week

"Now is the part where you tell us all about the horrible experiences you've had with Direct2Drive and/or Steam. Ready, go!"

MY TURN!

Steam lost all of my games! Been playing Counter-Strike since day one and jumped on the Steam bandwagon when it came out. A few months I later I logged on to have no games active. Emails and calls galore got me nothing and I was eager enough to join some old friends that I bought the games again but no more.

Boxed games only. Just recently had a similar issue with a "digital copy" from Amazon.

Never again.

(Psst, there's two SKU's for Aion...)

There are going to be a lot of disappointed people is my only reaction.

The fallout of this is should be fairly epic, I can't wait to read all the pre-order bunnies and their meltdown post.

The problem with FE is that the models do not look good in motion at all, and are animated in two distinct parts that appear to have been created without caring what the other side would look like. What I am talking about is the torso + legs animations, which look downright horrid and fake when anyone twists while moving.

The other problem is that the world art assets do not blend well together. Buildings go from looking really downtrodden and fitting for the setting, to almost plastic-esque textures that just look out of place.

The last problem is many of the mob spawns when 'out in the wild' are generated on demand. What this means is you will be running around with nothing in sight, and suddenly it's like someone turned the faucet on and mobs start spawning out of nowhere.

That's not touching on some of the gameplay elements which don't really work well at all, but those aren't felt by all the different types of players so it's not a big deal. The big problem is this is being rushed to retail when it still has another 3-4 months worth of work to be done to make it release ready.

Yeah, I'm not sure why but the gameworld inside FE and the screenshots I've seen just dont match up... not sure what the diff is there, but it looks much better on my system. *shrugs*

The only problem I have is the character models and animations arent that great, but it does have a lot of the things I'm looking for in an MMO. I'm a bit worried that crafting is TO much of an emphasis, and I'm someone who really generally gets into the crafting aspect of any MMO I play. FRom what I've played, I'm worried that the rest of the game might not be as fully fleshed out as the crafting system, or at least its too dependent on that part of the game.

I've played all three betas now (Aion, CO, and FE)... I'm on the fence about which ones are gonna grab my time over the next few months, and I'm not convinced any of them are a long-term winner at my house. I'm guessing I'll start off with Aion and CO.

Aion is gorgeous, but I'm worried it's just a really polished generic MMO, and the PVP emphasis... I'm not convinced thats gonna be a long term pull for me. Didn't get to try it too much with the limited beta weekends.

CO is kinda fun, but I'm hesitant because I'm worried its too casual and might end up being just a bit shallow. But I'm gonna try it out for awhile, hoping I can get more than a month or so without getting bored. I ran into that with CoX...

FE... definitely something I'm thinking might be a fall purchase.

And I'm not surprised by those numbers, esp considering that the other games seem to be split among different retailers. But I do think it's gonna be better than people think.

I tried Fallen Earth, but I couldn't get past the controls and the combat (this was two-three months ago). It wanted to be a first/third person shooter, but the controls and the overall feel of combat felt way off. I was at least looking for passable, like Mass Effect.

I got into beta last night and it was a blast to play. I felt like I was in a single player game with the tutorial. I had very low expectations for this MMO but it has turned out to be quite different. Even though the graphics aren't the most amazing they are quite good and there is plenty of fine detail to the game.

The tutorial was exciting and fun and I felt like was back in Fallout 3. Once in the main world I was off running across the countryside traveling to another town to complete a quest. Combat has a total different feel that is really fun and you don't want to stand still unless you want to die.

There is a depth to the gameplay that actually makes this game fun. I am looking forward to getting a horse as you have to do a bit of traveling to get from place to place. On my way back to another town there was a beautiful sunset. I stopped at a run down garage along the way with people and found that I can't shoot friendly NPCs but when I shot different things like glass it actually hit and made the sound of glass being shot. So the developers did take the time to work on the details.

This MMO is so different from the rest out there that I think it will do quite well. I suggest if you like this theme you give it a shot and test it out while it is in beta. You might actually like it and enjoy not being an elf.

A game doesnt have look good for me to personally enjoy it. I think back to many hours lost in my life playing Civilization II, granted there were prettier games than that but it was just so much durn fun. Same thing with fallen Earth, it may not look as beautiful as Aion Online but if they can pull off soem good mechanics, good dungeons, interesting world I think it would do very well indeed.

Does it really mean anything to lead in pre-orders for a single week through a single outlet? I mean, meaningful enough to deserve an article? Now, who leads in subs after the first few months of launch, that might be a bit more noteworthy...

And to be fair, the lead order is the same order of their launch dates (Sept. 1st for CO, Sept. 15th for FE, Sept. 22nd for Aion), and I would imagine the urge to get into the "head start" launch would be greater as their respective launch approaches...

Oh well... slow news day I guess.

On a side note/rant, having been in the betas for all 3 of these titles, I'm confident post-launch sub leaders will look like this after 3 months:

Aion by a landslide, CO in a comfortable 2nd, FE in a distant 3rd.

I personally didn't care for any of the above, and I'll be cancelling preorders for all 3, but that's just my take based on quality and what they offer...

Aion is a highly polished "me too" that will cater to many players/guilds who are bored with WoW--having played for so many years--and are looking for a new, albeit similar experience, as well as those looking for a more meaningful/different, but at the same time familiar PvP experience. I think it will do very well, because very much like WoW did, it doesn't really bring anything new to the table, but what it does do, it does exceptionally well.

I feel CO will go the way of AoC and WAR. Much ado out the gates, but due to an unfinished product, associated problems/bugs, and not much to do after a few months, people will get bored once they've exhausted the character creator, and discovered that underneath all that "customization", it's just another "me too" with a super-hero paintjob. Keep in mind, like AoC and WAR, I'm not saying it will fail. Neither of these titles have failed, despite what many people think. Failure is Tabula Rasa and the like, i.e. shut down. AoC and WAR, as far as anyone can tell, are still profitable and doing O.K., they're just nowhere near where all the launch-hype thought they would be. Cryptic might be able to prevent or assuage the mass exodus that are inherent to such premature launches, but I think it will require triple-time development within the first few months.

Finally, FE is niche, and I don't think it pretends to be anything but. Niche games will get niche audiences, and just aren't intended to compete with the big boys (and that's perfectly fine), so they won't garner the large populations. I think it'll do well enough to stay afloat for the forseeable future, but never rise from niche status, so comparing it to the likes of Aion and CO is pretty pointless.

lol, this comment turned out to be much more than I intended when I hit that "reply" button...

TL;DR version: My comments are just as pointless as this article.

Regardless of what I read about this game I will pick it up. The developers seem to have listened to the MMO community and addressed alot of issues many gamers posses. And they did this as an "indy". Even if it dosen't grab my attention and keep me playing, I want the dev's to have my small chunk of change for theeir efforts in bringing inovation to the genre.

Eh, the graphics aren't great. But it's trying to do something new, and whether they can build on that niche with a strong live team similar to EvE will remain to be seen. Aion... well Aion is the same old EQ with a dash of DAoC and anime thrown in for good measure. It does surprise me, but Aion's pre-orders are probably very fractured between a lot of different sources.

Despite FE's lackluster polish it is indeed a welcome change to the pre-formed MMO experience. It has made incredible changes from alpha to beta but I feel it will ship as an incomplete game like so many other titles. In 4-6 months this game could be amazing but the unfinished product they are selling could leave a bad taste in many investors mouths like so many other games (AoC, WAR, etc)

If Fallen Earth really isn't fun, I'd like to hear more about the gameplay. Instead, I get a bunch of semi-literate complaints that all it has is better graphics than EverQuest, rather than better graphics than FarCry 2.

I think more of the games I consistently want to play more of have worse graphics than FE, and that's not uncommon.

I would say this is because, Fallen Earth has already entered Open Beta some time ago, and people had the chance to test it 1st hand, while AiON is still in Closed Beta, and Chinese one is a big bother to get into, I know I'm in it.

Like an article you had here yesterday or so.. I believe that this is simply because the fact that people want to try before buy, like the article suggested, people don't want to waste money on a product before trying it.

So I would urge you to check the D2D numbers for both games a week or so after AiON has gone Open Beta in the North American Sector.