Cyspeth

Other then to inflame people what is the point of the news stories on this? Giving organizations like this press seems silly and clearly they are not mainstream or anything close.

I mean, people who believe in witches get their own news stories now?

When people on the forums complained about AOC they were called the "Vocal Minority".
Everyone and every article and every review stated that the game was fine and all changes were changes the majority of the playerbase was happy with.

When people on the forums complained about WAR they were called the "Vocal Minority".
Everyone and every article and every review stated that the game was fine and all changes were changes the majority of the playerbase was happy with.

When the playerbase on CO forums complained they were called the "Vocal Minority".
Everyone and every article, interview stated that the game was fine and all changes were changes the majority of the playerbase was happy with. (The reviewers were ahead of the blogs and fansites in realizing after 2 failures they needed to be a bit more honest maybe?)

Now WOW has millions of players, however they have millions less then they did awhile ago because you can't play the game in China or couldn't last I read if i'm mistaken well good for Blizzard getting that income back.

I'm sure most players are happy in wow, and in this case perhaps the author is correct and it is the "Vocal Minority" but at the same time clearly a lot of people are irritated.

This article promotes the mindset that the players < the Dev's of MMO's and that isn't how it is. As long as MMO companies keep believing they can make a game, publish it, and then tell players how it is going to be they will continue to fail.

The days of that are O V E R. The next successful MMO is going to listen to the playerbase, not quote stat's, accuse paying customers of being a minority to try and ignore the issue's. People are done with treating MMO dev's like gods that should be worshiped in hopes that maybe they will make decisions that might benefit them someday in the future.

Players pay for the MMO's, they pay for the monthly fee. Players > MMO Dev's.

First company that drops gets off the soap box and puts articles like this up on the company fridge as a example of what not to do is going to have a nice MMO success.

Keep believing the world works like it did 5/10 years ago when games like EQ1 and WOW were the only game in town at your own peril.

If this article had any effort to actually speak the truth then it would cover the history of the retcons.

How Cryptic said they were going to lower the price but never did. How at least for the first while after the launch day patch when tons of powers were nerfed the retcons were pretty much impossible to afford without leveling to max then earning the money.

Even Massive had staff that said in articles they couldn't play characters for over a week due to them being ruined by launch day patch. Time estimates were at around 900 hours with the cash drops to earn that much money.

Everyone that paid and specificly went out of the way to purchase the pre-order that included the headstart that picked certain powers was left losing the entire HS of playtime due to not having a working character for a week.

The Retcons are totallly dependant on what Cryptic decides to patch, they cost almost as much as a single month.

How much you want to bet the game has massively swinging balance changes every few months when they need cash flow? Nerf the 5 most popular power sets and have tons of players be forced to retcon and bang loads of cash!

Whats amazing is that a gaming site dedicated to bringing more people into the MMO genre then says that anyone that needs a retcon is saying things like :

"And, to be very honest, don't let people kid you -- the only reason you might screw up your character in Champions is because you didn't do your homework"

So a new player to the MMO genre has to do homework or end up with a ruined character? Is the purpose of the MMO genre to bring in new players or to just feed off a static playerbase? Guess what new MMO players don't do homework because they are new MMO players.

Entire reason WOW is so successful is due to being open to new MMO players. The future growth of this gamesite is dependant on a stream of new readers which come from *Gasp* new MMO players?

But why would anyone come here to not only not be informed so as to spend money wisely but in fact be just flat out lied to and deceived?

Grats you lost a reader. Try informing your audience instead of just pushing product so you can get more ad revenue.

I would love to see CO's preorder and initial sales numbers vs the amount of subs they actually had after 1 month.

Want to know what MMO that launched in the last year was successful? The one that isn't offering free everything all the time to new players.

CO isn't even 2 months old, if it was a success by any means they would not be doing the promotions they are doing, like free weekends and lowering the games selling price.

Aion has a community that has been in pretty much every MMO that has come out that I've played in the last few years (AOC/WAR) and from what I can tell most have settled here.

My advice play this like it's old school and you'll do ok. Play it like it's WoW your gonna end up broke with crappy gear.

Best reason I can give to try Aion: The classes are tight. 0 Indication that NCSoft plans any massive balance adjustments in the future either.

If your tired of playing MMO's with sweeping class changes that alot of new MMO's have this one what you see is pretty much what you get. From the class forums no one really seems to be horridly unhappy either.

Game is good enough that when I have time to play I hardly view the forums unless looking for something specific. Far cry from AOC and CO where the issue's in game required reading the forums to figure out if I was going to keep subing.

Originally all you could do was grind, questy types wanted to quest all the way up.

Now we have just grind quests.

My utmost hope is that Bioware does something with MMO quests that makes it almost impossible for MMO dev's to return to this current formula and changes the genre.

SO sick of quests that are nothing but a time waster/money waster meant to control and in some cases impeed my progress and in almost all cases are insanely boring as well.

So, after all this they finally do it.

RetCon's for the cost of a monthly fee almost while still being astronomical in price in game.

Justification for huge cost in game: They don't want everyone to be able to retcon they want peoples choices to have meaning.

Cost of RetCon with real $$$: 12.50

Had assumed this was the entire goal all along, how else do you make money when your entire subscriber base has Lifetime memberships?

Now they can patch and do "Balance Changes" to powers and it will result in a free windfall of cash for them as people spec out of powers that were made useless for no other purpose then to make money!

A million things a company could do with MC's to actually improve their game and give the customers options but no, this is how they do it.

Disgusting.

I love the game for the most part. Graphics are superb, engine runs great, has good money sinks, the economy appears to be working.

Only thing I can't shake is the feeling I've done all this many times before.

Also that working on grinding/quest grinding for 50 levels just to be able to experience the "Fun" part of the game.

Grinding be it from quests or just mobs isn't as fun as it was in EQ1 when it was new.

The gold spam in Aion is the worst I've seen in a MMO at launch. AOC/WAR/CO had nothing as bad.

Whats super strange is it really doesn't seem like the Gold Farmers are actually looking for business. With the Phishing and the constant spam it often feels more like the game is under assault from Gold Farmers. Probably some of the worst attempts to gain customers I've ever seen, since supposedly Gold Farmers want to sell gold I just don't get it.

Glad to see NCSoft is doing something about it now to wait and see if it improves.

Aion's launch issue's are due to high popularity.

Server queue's and lag due to a high volume of players is a problem CO wishes it had.