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World of Warcraft: I'm Sorry WoW, I've Found Someone Else
In this correspondent editorial, Robert Duckworth analyzes the five reasons that he has decided to leave WoW in factor of the newer, younger, sexier Aion.
Editorial By Robert Duckworth on August 04, 2009
Whenever a new big MMO was announced many people would start to talk about how it was going to kill WoW, how it would come in and take away all the subscribers. I think by now most people have realized that the strengths of WoW, those which allowed it to grow so large as an MMO, were the exact reasons nobody could ever steal away massive quantities of the subscription base. WoW has an entire culture built up around it, so many people invested in it, that attempting to just supplant them all at once and shovel them into a new culture, a new MMO that they have nothing invested in, is an impossibility. There is no doubt that games have chipped away at some previous subscribers of WoW, but most often the new MMO turns out to be highly niche based rather than a new all encompassing world. Even with all these new MMO games coming into the market, Blizzard loves to point out that their subscription base continues to grow.
advertisement I have played WoW since its release. I have loved the game for years. Even before the release, during the WoW beta which I never got into, I would follow the forums daily. You could call me an early addict. My love for WoW started to wane about half way through the TBC expansion; Guild drama, real life, major game overhauls such as the raid numbers issue, and general burnout from playing the same game for three years. I started to shop around, looking for other MMOs to play: Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lineage 2, Lord of the Rings Online, and many smaller production MMOs. None of them had enough grab for me that could take me away from WoW.
;)
Then along came Aion. I am not suggesting that Aion is a WoW killer, just that what I used to love about WoW feels so prevalent in Aion. I must admit that I originally thought nothing of the game. To me, Aion was just another MMO on some random website with pretty screenshots. Perhaps I have been spoiled by Blizzard in that regard, but the scarcity of anything existent on many game websites turns me off. One of my friends, on the other hand, became engrossed immediately and pushed me to research the game further. I started watching the class videos on AionOnline.com, and the graphics looked amazing in motion, not just the perfect screen shot capture. I later learned that it was actually being produced by NCsoft as their next big thing, rather then an MMO from some company I had never heard of, and that made me perk up. Addition: After writing this article I headed back to AionOnline and discovered that they have recently updated their website. It is now fleshed out and I suggest anyone who has not seen the updated site should check it out.
After participating in the Aion beta, I have decided to give up WoW. There is not just one reason for my decision, nor can it all really be confined to a list such as this one. Everyone has their own opinions, but these are my major reasons for finally deciding to commit to a new MMO.
#1 Combat
Aion uses a combo system where certain abilities are chained together and the player must decide whether they want to go for more damage, protection, or something else such as a debuff or a knock back. Age of Conan touched on this, but their combat system was based around getting off the same sequential attack in order for a devastating ending while trying to not get interrupted in the middle. Aion, on the other hand, gives the combo chain a couple branching options, giving the player both flexibility and a choice in how to use their cool downs. Aion's system is much more engrossing then WoW's. Obviously WoW is an older game and Aion's combo system is built on top of the same structure WoW uses, but the higher level of interactivity is a much needed plus. Hopefully Aions dungeons and raids will really work to compliment the games combo system.
#2 Niche Gaming
As I mentioned above, one of WoW's strengths over its competitors was how the game was all encompassing. Recently WoW feels like it is turning itself into a niche game. The only PvP that matters is 3v3 arena, the only PvE that matters is 25 man hard modes. WoW feels like it is trying to smash two different niche games into one. Aion, on the other hand, feels all encompassing, it has the same draw that Vanilla WoW did. In Aion, PvP and PvE are not fighting each other, they just sort of flow together. While that is one of the great traits of an MMO in its youth, Aion looks like the game was built around such a philosophy and will hold to that philosophy in the future.
;)
#3 PvP
WoW's PvP system has degenerated to arenas. World PvP was too hard for Blizzard, so they got rid of it. Wintergrasp was too hard for Blizzard, so they got rid of it. Battlegrounds were to fun for Blizzard (WSG and AV anyway), so they took all the fun out of those. Battlegrounds were originally a place for enjoyable PvP, but were then turned into just another part of the grind. Blizzard turning their PvP system into a quality e-sport has ruined large scale PvP battles. They did succeed at making an e-sport, to a point. While anyone can watch an FPS tournament and know what is going on, watching a WoW tournament takes some serious knowledge about the game. It succeeded, but it still ruined WoW PvP.
On the other hand, Aion PvP is open world, large scale battles in the Abyss, a large PvP zone. There are not any forced arenas for progression (there is an arena players can mess around in), and players actually have room to maneuver. One of the worst things about WoW arenas is the lack of space. Aion does have a "battleground", but it is a PvPvE battleground that revolves around achieving a PvE objective against the Balaur NPC race while preventing, or attempting to interrupt the other side from doing the same thing. The PvPvE concept for balancing servers is a great draw as well.
#4 Turnover
You make a good profit in a restaurant by getting people in, fed, happy, and out. Turning over the tables so you can get people who are finished eating out, and fresh customers in. WoW takes this turnover concept and applies it to game content. Raids turn over every few months, arena seasons turn over every few months, players are supposed to be happy with the continual churning. Unfortunately, it is very mechanical and rather rapid as well. Before the majority of the interested player base can finish collecting their arena set, a new one has come out. Before the majority of the interested player base can complete a raid, a new one has come out. The raid thing did not happen for Naxx, but it is for Ulduar. With all the turnover, you end up with a system where time invested does not feel worthwhile. WoW is an old game trying to put out enough content to satisfy customers. This type of practice is not a bad thing on their part, it just is not that enjoyable to play in. Aion on the other hand is a new game. They are in their first incarnation, not their second expansion, and they do not feel like a giant machine copy-pasting content. WoW feels incredibly rushed and un-blizzard like these days.
#5 The New Kid
Aion is a new game for me, and that sensation, of exploring a new richly crafted world, is wonderful. Taking the boat or zeppelin to Northrend felt this way, but the feeling disappeared shortly after. With Aion, because it is a new game, the sensation just sticks with you. There is no way to fault WoW for this, but it is one of the reasons I am leaving the game. Aion is deep enough that I want to explore it. I want to see where it takes me. Most games cannot accomplish the feat of making the player want to see what is coming next. The same can be said regarding graphics and atmosphere. Aion's graphics are top notch, and with them the game paints some amazing locations. It isn't really Blizzard's fault, and honestly many WoW zones are still beautiful. Stranglethorn Vale and Winterspring come to mind when I think on the most beautiful locations in WoW. The amazing graphics of Aion will eventually wear off, but the landscapes will still be just as picturesque.
;)
And those are my five reasons. I did not list raiding as a reason because I have not gotten to experience any of it in Aion. WoW is still a good game for hard core raiding, from what I have seen anyway, but I have not been able to muster the dedication. As it says in reason number four, the way Blizzard appears to manufacture content these days has destroyed any drive for me to experience the raiding that they have to offer. I do enjoy raiding, but it requires more pre-planned time then I am willing to set aside.
The way I see it, one of the hardest things for any WoW player to leave behind are the other people they have met while playing. There is a not so hidden obligation that you have to be there. You have to show up, or else you will let everyone down. WoW has remained so large because of its community, but it feels more and more fractured as time goes on. Blizzard is in the process of tearing down one of the last walls of inherent community with their new faction change. At one point in WoW's history, you could feel a part of something. You were Horde or Alliance. You were in this guild or that guild. You were on this server and not that server and we do it better over here! All of the ties that made a player feel as if they were a part of something have been removed, and all that is left are the relationships players have made with each other. A guild is not even a great source of community anymore. So many of them collapse then regroup, only to fall apart again. As a player's community grows smaller, they disappoint less people when they leave, or they can even bring all of their closest friends over to a new game with them.
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Good for him.
But nearly every "I LOVE DIS GAME!" post I've seen could be labeled under "honeymoon period". Mainly, the beginning of the game is so fun and polished, and you may or may not be so sick of your previous MMO, that you fall in love with it. See AoC; Tortage. I'm going to wait 6-12 months after release and see if the majority seem pretty content with how the game is after playing that long. No, I'm not going to listen to people who play 24/7 and burn themselves out after a month or two. Average, normal gamers.
I've seen the game, and it doesn't particularly impress me. That might be because I've seen it, but haven't played it. Many things look mediocre or lame when you're watching, but when you get to play, your opinion changes rather quickly. I'm not a huge fan of the art style (ballerina combat and having to asking whether that's a dude or a girl is how I see it... nevermind ridiculously unrealistic armor and weapons) but I can get over it if the game's good enough.
I absolutely agree what he said about the PvP, though. Blizzard is pigeonholing everyone who wants to be able to compete in PvP via the gear into doing arenas. I can pretty mugh guarantee that the majority of the WoW population doesn't really like arenas - they can stomach it because they know that stupid rating is the only key to unlocking the best PvP gear. It's an e-sport, and it fuels obnoxious e-peens like nothing else. One thing which does attract me to Aion is its Faction vs. Faction system of PvP (RvR is Trademarked by Mythic, so I'm calling it FvF). But, like I said, we'll see.
It's not even honeymoon period yet since the game is not out for EU. I'm purposely staying outside the beta events, I liked what I saw, but beta events show a distorted aspect of the game when viewing something beyond game mechanics (like the recent lvl 30s camping the rifts, in the normal game people will have better things to do than that).
Im sure people who play WOW will or have been playing Aion. If they stay with Aion or not is another question. I like Aion myself and will continue in beta and be playing it at release. If i decide Aion isnt the game for me i will move on but will not be moving back to WOW. That game has degenerated since TBC and is not an option for me.
As much as i find WoW to be fun some of what is said in the articale is true. Besides i have been foloowing Aion since 2007 and can't wait for it to release. I've done PvE and PvP in WoW and i find the PvE more fun than the PvP side. Hopefully the PvP in Aion will reignite a passion in me again.
Good read, mostly true.
WoW is just showing it's age, it really can't do anything "new" and Blizzard wouldn't dare try at this point as I'm sure whatever "new" additions are plans for their next MMO project. WoW is now a back-burner priority for Blizzard, they can do absolutely nothing for the next 2 years and still milk it for all it's worth whole developing something new. ANYWAYS.....
The flip side, while Aion is new, shiny, all sorts of ... something.. In the first 20 levels I was bored to tears realizing, "This is the same deal as every other game, level up, chase that "carrot on a stick' they call gear, etc.." Maybe I'm just not into MMO's anymore, because (and this is my opinion only) it is all the same, an endless time sink of effort to be wasted at the next patch, expansion, or some epeen'in 15 year old with more time than I have :)
I think Aion is still a good thing. There needs to be a contender out there, more competition, something to break up really the "only option" game, WoW. (I know of WAR, AOC, LOTRO, etc.. But they've all settled into the niche, they've had their launch, their patches, their time, etc .. and none will really all of a sudden "break out" into ridiculous wild success from this point forward.
I have hope for Aion, even if I don't play it.!
The "Someone Else" Robert has found is an out-of-date client for a closed beta of an unreleased game. I like AION too, but judging it against WoW based on what we've seen so far is ludicrous. Let them release it, let the players try 1.3 or whatever they end up using, let some real servers fill up with real customers, and do your comparison then.
I'm a WoW player that has now had a chance to see what Aion is like and I will not be buying the game because it seems so - let's try to be something cool and they just miss it. The graphics are good in some areas, yes, but in others they lack polish and seem like they were done quickly and haphazzardly. The static sky. You can keep that. The combat, though more in depth then say WoW, is still not much different and to be honest I feel WoW's is more fluid than what we see in Aion. The quest are the same old, same old so I do not see anything new there. The PvP part of the game got old really fast. So no...I think I'll stay with WoW and EvE. Aion just doesn't do anything for me at all. It's as if, and I say this will all honesty, that I was playing a rehashed version of Lineage 2 but my character has wings. Just my opinion. If others like it...hey, knock yourselves out and have fun.
Honestly, the only people who are allowed to like Aion are 15 yr old girls. It's so amazingly "Asian-trite" as I like to call it. If you like it, and you're not a 15 yr old girl, well, sorry, you have issues.
Heres your cookie.
I'm not sure what the previous poster is getting at. The Op is very clearly stating he is writing an opinion piece, making it very clear that his current knowledge base is very limited and highlighting a number of concerns about WoW that are felt by many and contrasting them against his very limited experience of Aion in a way I could follow.
I'm pleased that the beta appears to be sufficiently polished that he can get this excited. This is much better than some recent releases. It's got me a little more excited about a new (to europe/USA) game which is always good. it also suggests NCSoft has done what they suggested they were trying to do in terms of adding content to make the game less grindy and more suited to a western market. We still do not know if it includes fun and challenging pve end-game content and I guess that will decide this game's future but I'll keep my fingers crossed, wish the devs well and continue to follow the MMORPG forums.
Patch 3.2 in WoW tomorrow. W00t!
Heres your cookie.
you forgot the milk...
Yes, but he also said
"After participating in the Aion beta, I have decided to give up WoW."
That decision is premature.
I don't know what all the fuss is about. It's just another Korean MMOG.
I'm sorry, but this part of your post really cracked me up.
Blood Elves, anyone? Those are hands-down the most effeminate men ever to grace a gamer's screen. And having played Aion and worked with its character creator it's clear to me that you really haven't seen anything other than the stock footage. You can make the men girly, but you can also make them extremely masculine. It's a matter of personal taste, rather than a game limitation.
As for the armor - when has WoW's armor EVER been realistic? Especially at the higher levels, when you get into the various raid sets?
I like Aion, I hate WOW. That said Aion is not gonna have a long staying power beyond a key dedicated bunch. Rolling alts will be painful as its the same linear path and same race type. I think 6 months will be the average time a person puts into Aion. NC Soft is very slow about getting the new content to the western audience in any decent time. The world is very very small. It has all the things going for it he mentioned but in the end unless they can churn out patches at a quick rate then NA retension I believe will be low.
Depends. It looks to me that he was facing the same situation like me, only I have already left WoW (even to the point that I'd rather play nothing than return). If all he was looking for was an excuse to leave, then the beta events could be just that. Because lets face it, people that are already happy with what they are currently playing will not bother checking other MMOs (unless really curious).
I played Aion in the first Beta week end and had enough...
I was feeling playing a merged game of WOW and Guild Wars.
Yes AION got very nice graphics, the no lag, even with hundreds of players in the same window was amazing BUT... that's it.
I read many reviews on this game and that simply not MY game.The quest system is very bad, nothing innovating there, WOW quests system is so much advanced, I know 4 years old game bla bla/.... I dont think AION will last that long.
Blizzard release the new content patch today, and this company know how to keep their fans interests.
New mouths, gears! all ,lot of new stuffs ect...
Like it or not this game will live forever like Diablo, Starcrat and Warcraft, and the WOW killer is far to be made.
Yes im a WOW Fanboy and happy to be!
What I quoted is exactly the reason you can't relate to what the OP is saying. You're happy with WoW, he's tired of it. It happens when playing for multiple years ;)
stop cloning wow.
YOU CAN NOT OUT WOW WOW.
can I get some enovation here?
How is wows quest system so much more advanced, infact tell me of one mmo that doesnt have you go out and collect X amount of items or kill so many of Y mob, that is how quests work. The point of you being a WoW fanboy, good for you I hope your kind stays in WoW, I much rather prefer quality over quanity and that is what Aion is already providing even before there first content patch.
I too have been tired of WoW for some time now, the past year I have cancelled and reactivated several times, but I am pretty much done with it now.
I have played the Aion beta every weekend and I just have to say I am not really into it like I should be if I am going to dedicate a lot of time to it. So I won't be getting it, people say the graphics are great but they are not next-gen worthy to me and the game has already been out overseas for awhile so they are 'dated'. Don't get me wrong Aion is a great game but it just isn't updated enough from previous games to take me into it.
I am holding my cards until FFXIV comes out I guess.
I didn't care for the way the mage class spells looked in Aion and since WoW does mage stuff better imo it isn't worth the switch. Now if FFXIV can pull off the mage stuff like they have in the past (all their different mages, black mage, red mage, summoner etc) then it will be my new game.
WoW was a great game, however, I agree with most of the things stated in the OP. Aion in my opinion still needs some work in PvE balancing. Even with a dps melee class in the low levels in painful. The time it takes to kill a single mob and the down time afterwords is too much.
Unfortunately many of us have been influenced and even spoiled by Blizzard's innate ability to make things easy, hold us by the hand telling us it's going to be okay, and making it a game for everyone. Aion is not to that point where everyone new to MMO's or longtime veterans can pick it up and say with certainty "this is the game for me."
Just my two cents
P.S. No I'm not playing WoW at the moment, and have been clean for a few months, there are problems that stem ferther then just class balancing that Blizzard hasn't addressed, but these promblems may be the very thing that makes the game what it is.
Static sky? I take it you mean the lack of a real day/night cycle? Because storms rolling in and cloud cover moving by is awe inspiring! And I honestly can't understand people saying that the graphics aren't that great but they continue to play WoW with its absolutely horrendous graphics.
There isn't much downtime in Aion, the mechanics are just different, ie you need to actively contribute to regen instead of just wait for the bars to refill. It's a different approach to the post combat regeneration.
Also the mobs not being paper thin is a subjective preference. Personally I like them that way, they felt really weak in other games.
Edit: To the poster above me. There is a day night circle, in fact certain quests can be completed only during the day or night, because that's the only time the relevant mob appear.
I don't understand where you are coming from. How about elaborating on your as of so far, worthless point please.
I'm curious, why do people have to write these types of things up about leaving WoW, do people do this in other games or is it just a WoW thing?
The guy sounds burnt out in WoW, that happens after doing something for years, but then again it depends on how much you play the game. Some people over due things so they eventually burn themselves out.
While i'm sure Aion will be nice and all, but i see no reason to switch. I love PVE and i know Aion has it, from what i read it makes me feel like PVE is just something tacked on and their main focus will always be PVP, thats the similar complaint about WoW, mainly PVE with PVP tacked on. I'll stick with WoW and their main focus on PVE.
I agree it is a different approach, it just may not appeal to the masses which is both good and bad.
Whoaaa..couldn't disagree more. I've found nothing different or new in Aion save a nicer graphics engine. It's gorgeous, the music is wonderful, the character animation is smooth as butter. The game is fantastic to look at..wow!
At its core it has retained every single feature of WoW, including the annoying ones.
Flight....for all of one minute if so much.
Realm Vs Realm Vs Environment...that you're practically forced to do. There is no separation of the two, so if you don't like PVP, too bad. Some player is going to come along and gank you to ruin your day.
The storylines? The starting areas were rather childish in their stories, and in the dialogue.
The great Passion of Namus for the Nymph...I mean come on..please.Tuppy the little fungus mushroom that ran away, although the old man loved it and huggggeeddd it sooo much.
All the annoyances:
Run RUn Run Forest Run, even with Wings you have to run from one NPC to the next. Then you have to sit through minutes of watching a bird take you through the same landscape over and over and over again as you level in any one area. So out of an hour's play session you might spend 30 minutes traveling. Yup..just like World of Warcraft.
Then there is the downtime. Mana regenerates at an appallingly low rate, requiring you to sit and rest, or down potions after every fight or so. Yup...just like World of Warcraft, and just as annoying. I'm out of combat....boost my mana and health back to full and let me get on with it!?
You're fooling yourself if you think you are doing anything different playing Aion. You're still playing World of Warcraft, with all its flaws and decades old game mechanics. LOL! They even kept the artificial limits on flight. Remember after fighting to get your flying how you were prevented from flying in Northrend? Same rubbish with the 1 minute flight time limit in Aion!
You want something new?
Try Champions Online, DC:UO, Star Wars The Old Republic....Secret World,Jumpgate Evolution even. Some games that are actually advertising different approaches to the Genre. Even Runes of Magic has more innovative features than Aion!
as far as the day/night cycle...
I KNOW there is a day and night, its just not NEARLY as pronounced as it is in other games, I was only trying to understand where the person that said it had a static sky was coming from. I've played all the beta events to date and realize these things.
I just was trying to understand where they were coming from.
Yeah, everyday we get a new Korean P2P no item mall MMO in the west... oh, wait... Asia and P2P without item malls in the same phrase?
September is coming... =)
Those that dislike MMOs because they have experience bars, monsters, skills, and quests should take a break from the genre, or wait until some MMO promisses to do something new (though I'm sure you will try to find something repeated in these "next-gen MMOs", so take a damn break from the genre to see if you will enjoy it again someday). Aion never promissed anything new in these aspects, it is delivering what it promissed for many people - PvPvE, aerial combat and FUN.
Oh and one last thing, (sorry bout the double post) The person that said Aion had unrealistic armor. Have you PLAYED WoW at end game? LMAO Shoulder armor in WoW is absolutely the MOST unrealistic things ever created in an MMO and I LOL'd at your statement. =)
Excellent article with some very real situations, I actually felt almost everything that you describe there, and thats why i also left the game recently.
I like wow, i played it for over 3 years, but for now im out, and i actually feel Blizzard needs a big punch on the chin by loosing a good amount of people to make then go back to develop new content to this game and stop the damn copy pasting
I agree with him totally. WoW is dieng very VERY slowly but it is. Its just like germany. Germany was pumping money in to the banks pumping and pumping it all they were doing is post poning whats coming and they knew whats gonna happen sooner or later and u know what happened?! money was nothing people would rather eat and burn it bread cost millions of dollars. Thats whats going on with WoW there just slowing down whats gonna happen slowly and its might take years but its happening very slowly though.
Oh Ya guys plz dont attack my gramar i know its sucks so u dont have to comment on how my grammar sucks im a Hungarian speaking English so just keep it to urself
Don't worry, we keep the grammar police in check when a non native English speaking person is trying to communicate.
I'm sorry, but this part of your post really cracked me up.
Blood Elves, anyone? Those are hands-down the most effeminate men ever to grace a gamer's screen. And having played Aion and worked with its character creator it's clear to me that you really haven't seen anything other than the stock footage. You can make the men girly, but you can also make them extremely masculine. It's a matter of personal taste, rather than a game limitation.
As for the armor - when has WoW's armor EVER been realistic? Especially at the higher levels, when you get into the various raid sets?
Blood Elves are stupid.
I never said WoW armor was realistic.
If you can make guys look more masculine, that's fine. I bet they still stand, walk, and fight like they're girls. Similar to Blood Elves, you're right. Again, it's just from my first impressions and once I play it I might either grow to accept that art style or realize I'm wrong.
I pretty much agree with the remarks about WoW. I've been in since late beta, and I'm just burned out on it. I've not tried Aion yet, so I reserve judgement. It certainly looks pretty from the screen shots and videos I've seen, and the combat sounds like fun. But these types of things can only be determined first hand, over a period of time. Spellborn also looked like fun, but its combat interface turned out to be clunky, and the quests just more of the same old, same old. The company has now gone bankrupt, much less than a year after launch.
But I'll tell you one thing for certain. I and many, many others that are currently out of WoW, will VERY likely be drawn back in when the next expansion comes out. At least for another four or five months any way. I had four characters to 70 when Wrath launched. I managed to get two of them to 80 before burning out. I may eventually go back and run the other two up, but not for months. I'm looking forward to Alganon as well as Jumpgate Evolution. Not to mention Section 8(FPS). I doubt any of them will grab me the way that WoW once did. But perhaps I've moved beyond that. Only time will tell.
So when Mr. Duckworth comes back to WOW after the "fresh new smell" period in Aion fades will we see a follow-up article? Sorry Aion I'm leaving you for my ex.....Nope because it's much cooler to be against WOW and write a meaningless "article" about how great a game is that has not even been released yet. This was just a I'm leaving post that made it to the front page for some reason.
Even in writing post like this all the author is doing is saying...WoW is the king...no the god that is unlikely to be dethroned anytime soon. it won't be until they stop comparing and stop talking about the 500 lb Gorilla will the Gorilla disappear .
I got out of this article the same thing I get out of all I’m leaving post…a lot of noise and a unspoken promise that they will be back in less than two months.
People used to do it in EQ1 as well - as you say people burn out eventually but sometimes they carry on playing past that point because they're addicted or because of friends. I think people who do that can sometimes end up really hating the game - it becomes their precious and they can't let it go, but they grow to hate it.
These games can have weird effects on people.
I've been playing aion on china's servers for the past 3 months and i still can't wait for NA. I tried AoC, and i didn't last a month before my interest was lost. I tried WAR and the same thing occured. Aion, on the other hand, really seems to be getting it right.
I can make my character look however i want, every npc and mission has voice, there's multiple options for pvp, there's multiple options for pve, and the world seems large enough without dwarfing your character. Too many games tried to make the largest world possible but that only spread the user base so thin you never really noticed anyone else was playing. This was a huge mistake that Aion seems to have found a nice balance for. Definately a must try for those who rightfully believe that wow is getting a bit stale.
"There is a not so hidden obligation that you have to be there. You have to show up, or else you will let everyone down. WoW has remained so large because of its community, but it feels more and more fractured as time goes on. Blizzard is in the process of tearing down one of the last walls of inherent community with their new faction change. At one point in WoW's history, you could feel a part of something. You were Horde or Alliance. You were in this guild or that guild. You were on this server and not that server and we do it better over here! All of the ties that made a player feel as if they were a part of something have been removed, and all that is left are the relationships players have made with each other. A guild is not even a great source of community anymore. So many of them collapse then regroup, only to fall apart again."
I Agree Completely, Well Said. I Have Played As long As You. From The Beginning. And I Don't Have Any Bad Feelings For My Time With WoW. But I Also Have Decided For Many of Your Reasons To Try Out Newer Waters After Such A Fantastic Series of Beta Testings Of AION. Global Agenda Looks Nice Maybe An Injection Of Sci-Fi Will Be Good.:)
I personally have played since wow's release as well and have been, since BC, finding myself wandering off in search of what was lost. I keep canceling only to reinstate my account again because of one person or another who wants me to play. ( I have a lot of family members who are wow addicts.) Also, I keep coming back because I can't really find a "home" in any of the newer games, or older for that matter as I had a stint in Guild Wars. I'm hoping to finally find something reminiscent of vanilla wow but better as there have been features of games like AoC that I really enjoyed but that weren't enough to keep me there. I have been following Aion for about a year and am really excited it will finally be released. I never got into any of the beta phases unfortunately so I can only go by what media has been released thus far but I'm still hell bent on getting the collector's edition. Hopefully this time I will finally be free of WoW.
I just hope the author of this article writes as long of an article when he comes crawling back to WOW.
The same thing happens with every game release, there are a few people who get enamored with the graphics (aoc), or get psyched because pvp is integrated with pve (warhammer) or get excited because it's a new, more open world (darkfall).
And the part about WOW pvp being all about 3v3 arena is crazy. I'm on a fairly medium server, and our Wintergrasp battles are always 100v100 every 2 hours and they continally are adding more battlegrounds. They added a very advanced seige battleground with WotLK ( Strands of the ancients) and they added another 40v40 battleground today with the 3.2 patch.
In any event, I'm glad the author is enjoying his little weekend fling, but I have no doubt he'll come back to wow, just like they all do. Go back to the betas forums from AOC and Warhammer, and you'll see this is nothing new.
I don't see the point in this article.
The words "hopefully" and "maybe" were used frequently enough to know this is based on wishful thinking and should be confined to the writer's personal blog. We all have MMO history and we don't need to know about yours.
Post something useful.
Does that mean if one likes AoC (such as yourself) with all those big sweaty men hoisting their mighty axes then that implies something else?
Please.
Hi Folks, my first post ever? (or at least in a long time). I left WoW after 3.5 years, many characters at the cap on both sides. I dabbled with Age of Conan, liked it ...then some folks I met there moved to WAR, so I did too. Honestly, I got completely hooked at Warhammer and cancelled WoW. I've played WAR ever since. Previously I've played SWG, EQ2, etc. I'm not a kid; matter of fact, I'm probably the oldest person on this board. I write gaming articles for a gaming magazine besides my 'real' job as a musician. I've been in Aion beta since the first weekend. I only go back to WAR when Aion beta is inactive. It's pretty seductive, graphics lovely to look at and while some of the comments about it looking 'juvenile' are close to the truth, it's still a great game (so far). I've yet to proceed to the pvp areas, but the Pve area is a lot of fun. SO.....I agree with the writer. It's time to look for the "new WoW". I've been looking for a year, haven't exactly found it yet, but Aion might be what a lot of us are looking for. (Star Trek Online and next year's SW game are still on my 'must try' list).
I don't know why so many ppl are looking for WoW killer. Maybe becouse they were disapointed in some point in WoW that they can't get their set or something. Or they were so attracted to the game that they lost their real life, lost some irl friends etc. And, so, now they hate Blizzard and of course are desperatelly looking for someone who can kill it :)))
I, myself, am MMORPG player, and being this I am interested in every well done game and I try it. So far I've tried WoW, AoC, WAR, Lotro, DDO, EQ, Runes of Magic, GW... of all this when I want to raid I play WoW, when I want PvP I play WAR, when I want PvE I go Lotro and so on. Every one of these games has it own good stuff that is worth playing for.... including friends in every game :) Of course, u can't play all the games at the same time... but playing for two months (if u buy game cards) is more than enough to see and feel the game for yourself.
Now I'm looking forward to try on Earthrise, SW: ToR, Aion, Final Fantasy XIV, Mortal Online, Star Trek, ALB etc.
And I think there won't be WoW killer at all. But every game that is coming will get their own player base came from WoW.
-Hey all long time reader first time poster-
After playing wow since is early days I really have to agree with some of what the OP has to say. WOW is really suffering by trying to please too many players at the same time. The original driving force to get into end game guild was raiding, bragging rights and the armour and weapon rewards but now with new dungeons being made so frequently, the loss of end boss complexity and items becoming disposable (I am struggling to remember the last time I wore a full set of armour ...maybe BWL?). It seams that blizzard has decided to now cater for the ADD market and in doing so has chipped away at what originally made it so strong, the community. When a player can hit 80 and start getting t8.5 drops in the same week it really takes away the sense of accomplishment those armour pieces once stood for. As for AION, well I have been playing the beta and I do enjoy it but it has raised some concerns regarding its survivability. Any game that kick off with your very first quest being a grinding quest really feels like its ignored a lot of what the mmo community has been shouting out for the last year or so. For me, AION also has a big issues with quest repetition and it seems that despite your level or even what zone you are currently questing in your still asked to do the same very same quests you did in the starter zone... go to location that look the same, killing mobs that despite being 20 levels higher have the same name and attacks and even drop the same quest drops.
Perhaps for me the perfect mmo isn’t out yet but I can’t see WOW maintaining its monopoly for much longer as its player community becomes increasingly tired of watching blizzard beat the old milking cow over and over again.
Oh look, another internet Tough Guy with his sexual identity wrapped up in a video game. What a petty, shallow way of viewing the world.
Wow is better because you can swim.
The exact reason why I disliked Aion was because of how similar to WoW it was. I felt like I was just playing an asian inspired version of WoW.
And, end game just is too shallow in Aion for my tastes.. it needs to have more "sides" to it. DF and Warhammer is proof that trying to build end game strictly on PVP doesn';t work so well.
Wow this article was so SPOT ON it's not even funny! I'm right there with the OP after playing the Aion beta this past weekend! I cringe logging into WoW as I just want to play Aion, but alas, have to wait til next week friday :(.
Oh look, another internet Tough Guy with his sexual identity wrapped up in a video game. What a petty, shallow way of viewing the world.
I dont understand it myself. I think games like Aion, Lineage 2 and GW along with a lot of FTP games have a very fresh art look compared to the "realistic" art we have seen so much of. I guess not all of us are insecure about our masculinity. I mean, look at my profile pic. :)
I dont understand it myself. I think games like Aion, Lineage 2 and GW along with a lot of FTP games have a very fresh art look compared to the "realistic" art we have seen so much of. I guess not all of us are insecure about our masculinity. I mean, look at my profile pic. :)
Yea but I find it creepy that an old man is into anime...........
I dont understand it myself. I think games like Aion, Lineage 2 and GW along with a lot of FTP games have a very fresh art look compared to the "realistic" art we have seen so much of. I guess not all of us are insecure about our masculinity. I mean, look at my profile pic. :)
Yea but I find it creepy that an old man is into anime...........
How do you know im an old man? Perhaps am a young nubile asian girl?
Yea but I find it creepy that an old man is into anime...........
How do you know im an old man? Perhaps am a young nubile asian girl?
I dont think young girls would want to roleplay a man as old as yourself.
Yea but I find it creepy that an old man is into anime...........
How do you know im an old man? Perhaps am a young nubile asian girl?
Why is it strange for an old man to be into anime?
For god sake, a comment like that could only come from an american.... i know that from your point of view an old man should be into drinking bear and get fat in front of the tv watching football, but that is only in america, the rest of the civilized world is way beyond it now
I have to agree.
My first exposure to AION wasn't very good through pre-purchase and the supposed assurance of getting to play in the beta events...then them not having the client bug-free enough to even be able to ever LOG IN to the beta events, sort of soured me a bit. So I have fallen back into the...."we'll see how things go and where it's at about six months AFTER release" crowd.
After what I went through with Warhammer....I'm just not so quick to jump on the "piss off Blizz, I'm filing for a divorce" bandwagon.
Time will tell.....for ME.
That article represents exactly how I feel about WoW and Aion. I just quit WoW hopefully for the last time. Great job writing that up.
I am a very casual WoW player (yeah the vile scum that ruining the game) and have played all the CB events for Aion so here are my thoughts.
Things I like about Aion:
+ I do like how Aion has actual cutscenes for some of the quests and missions. WoW looks like it will be doing more of this in the future as well.
+ Character customization is amazing and I really like how you can choose what your armor can look like and what stats it will have. I really hope the next WoW expansion has something like this.
+ The skill chains do add some variety to combat.
+ The music is great.
Things I am iffy on:
~ The voice acting is sub-par in several areas.
~ The animations are fluid but some of them are a little over the top and goofy.
~ There does seem to be a lot of running back and forth across the zone in some quests.
~ The broker is nice but could use some better sorting and functionality.
Things I do not like:
- The level and money grinds are unacceptable for NA/Euro markets. I know exp is being increased for the NA/Euro but it still feels painfully slow. If PvP in the Abyss in the whole point of the game then let me get there in a timely fashion. As someone who can only play for maybe ten hours a week it will take a several months for me to level and gear up enough so that I am even somewhat useful in PvP.
- It also feel like winning in PvP comes down to who has the biggest numbers. One of the reasons I avoid direct PvP in WoW is I usually get smeared in two or three hits and many times I am either dead or stun locked before I can even do anything.
- Low level combat for some classes is painfully slow and boring. Like Vanilla and BC WoW Paladin bad.
- XP loss at death? Nothing like a bad lag spike or monster train to negate a couple hours worth of work.
While Aion does improve some aspects of the genre WoW still feels so much more polished and cohesive.
1) Aion and WoW are both MMO's, similarities were not cloned.
2) People state wow is pve orientated with pvp tacked on to it. This might be true. But, while Aion has been described as a pvp orientated game with pve tacked onto it (like warhammer), NCSoft has stated that it realizes that any type of mmo needs a PvE orientated fan base to survive. On top of the many instances that are in there, I've read that 16 more are to be implimented at release. This goes to show you that NCSoft understands, at least the basics, to entertain a wide fan base (especially since a lot of us like PvP too).
Not only will Aion have pve dungeons/raids, they've talked about PvP dungeon instances. Something I'm LOOKING to try out myself.
3) There are complaints that there isn't a lot of diversity at beginning-game. So? Having played wow since release, I can tell you that by that month 4 during year 1 I was well versed in all the starting areas of the all the classes. And even if I was a newb at various other starting zones, you tend to get people rolling a class, then moving that toon to a starting area they're familiar with.
point: Familiarity in starting zones is common, get over it.
4) And a final note: WoW may be more 'polished' (overused term) but it was terrible at release for all you wow bandwagon jumpers. So, while I have not had the opportunity to try Aion in beta, and probably won't, I'm looking forward to starting a new game from release.
P.S. If Aion does go belly up, D3 and SC2 are around the corner. ^_- While they are blizzard games, it's hard to ignore how good they'll be.
Dying in Aion does not equal a couple hours worth of XP lost. It's nowhere near that bad... I like that death has consequences... it doesn't make it so meaningless.
I was innitially a bit leary about Aion.. I have been watching it since 2006 yet what could it really give me that games such as AoC and WAR couldn't? I was pretty much sure it would be same ol same ol. Another boring game with little to offer past an imitation of the giant WoW. What happened when I actually tried it? I fell in love.
It really doesn't recreate the wheel but in my opinion it really does do many things better than any mmo game released(not across the board but the end effect is impressive). The animations are well stylized, the armor and weapons droolable, the quests(at least the storyline ones) impressive. I know what to expect from nc, I played L2 for four years and yes I've seen a large difference. At release we'll be but one month behind from Korea in updates. The old grandour of style mixed with a winning formula. If you havn't tried it your doing yourself a diservice.
I mostly agree with the OP. However, I do not think the early PvE in Aion is that amazing. It is the PvPvE that I am looking forward to. Open world PvP with dynamic objectives - fortresses and relics. Along with world bosses that compete for loot rights through PvP and damage.
Many features that I have liked in other games, including vanilla WoW, seems to be in Aion. It looks good on a paper, so I have pre-ordered, but reserve my judgement until I have participated in the end-game for some time.
Plus, it not typical high fantasy setup with dwarfs, trolls, orcs and elves. It feels fresh and that is the most important thing for most jaded MMO players.
Yea but I find it creepy that an old man is into anime...........
How do you know im an old man? Perhaps am a young nubile asian girl?
I dont agree with the creepy comment. But i do agree that it is creepy that a person named Grandpagamer would try to open the option that it is a nubile asian girl. First nubile asian girls dont advertise( I've checked), 2nd what kinda Nubile asian girl would name herself Grandpagamer. No really what kind i would really love to meet her ROFL.
Ps. More to the point WoW is like Crack with really good marketing. Sure its a great way to spend your time at first but then comes all the problems associated with doing drugs. Silly WoWTard dont you know its bad for you.
Pss. Counter Strike is like methadone for Tards of anygame. Play it Love it & then wait for the next game that is suppose to be great mmo
Yea but I find it creepy that an old man is into anime...........
How do you know im an old man? Perhaps am a young nubile asian girl?
I dont agree with the creepy comment. But i do agree that it is creepy that a person named Grandpagamer would try to open the option that it is a nubile asian girl. First nubile asian girls dont advertise( I've checked), 2nd what kinda Nubile asian girl would name herself Grandpagamer. No really what kind i would really love to meet her ROFL.
Ps. More to the point WoW is like Crack with really good marketing. Sure its a great way to spend your time at first but then comes all the problems associated with doing drugs. Silly WoWTard dont you know its bad for you.
Yeah you found me out. Im an old grandpa....might be asian though :)
How do you know im an old man? Perhaps am a young nubile asian girl?
I dont agree with the creepy comment. But i do agree that it is creepy that a person named Grandpagamer would try to open the option that it is a nubile asian girl. First nubile asian girls dont advertise( I've checked), 2nd what kinda Nubile asian girl would name herself Grandpagamer. No really what kind i would really love to meet her ROFL.
Ps. More to the point WoW is like Crack with really good marketing. Sure its a great way to spend your time at first but then comes all the problems associated with doing drugs. Silly WoWTard dont you know its bad for you.
Yeah you found me out. Im an old grandpa....might be asian though :)
Whats even funnnier is that ive been a member since 06 and this is my 3rd post and all 3 were today. I read and usually keep my opinions/comments to myself . Not so much in real life so I decided to play it diffrent in gaming life.
PS. If i find the tard that took my name in Aion He's DEAD. IM A THE ORIGINAL RECKER. I HAVE BEEN USING RECKER FOR THE LAST 15 YEARS. So if you ever see Recker in a game and its not me KILL HIM( to know if its me or not just ask) you will know if its me or not by my reply HEHE.
How do you know im an old man? Perhaps am a young nubile asian girl?
I dont agree with the creepy comment. But i do agree that it is creepy that a person named Grandpagamer would try to open the option that it is a nubile asian girl. First nubile asian girls dont advertise( I've checked), 2nd what kinda Nubile asian girl would name herself Grandpagamer. No really what kind i would really love to meet her ROFL.
Ps. More to the point WoW is like Crack with really good marketing. Sure its a great way to spend your time at first but then comes all the problems associated with doing drugs. Silly WoWTard dont you know its bad for you.
Yeah you found me out. Im an old grandpa....might be asian though :)
Whats even funnnier is that ive been a member since 06 and this is my 3rd post and all 3 were today. I read and usually keep my opinions/comments to myself . Not so much in real life so I decided to play it diffrent in gaming life.
PS. If i find the tard that took my name in Aion He's DEAD. IM A THE ORIGINAL RECKER. I HAVE BEEN USING RECKER FOR THE LAST 15 YEARS. So if you ever see Recker in a game and its not me KILL HIM( to know if its me or not just ask) you will know if its me or not by my reply HEHE.
Ok but i might not have time to ask him lol.....if you preordered and get in on the two day head start you might be able to beat him to it if you take the name first.
I dont agree with the creepy comment. But i do agree that it is creepy that a person named Grandpagamer would try to open the option that it is a nubile asian girl. First nubile asian girls dont advertise( I've checked), 2nd what kinda Nubile asian girl would name herself Grandpagamer. No really what kind i would really love to meet her ROFL.
Ps. More to the point WoW is like Crack with really good marketing. Sure its a great way to spend your time at first but then comes all the problems associated with doing drugs. Silly WoWTard dont you know its bad for you.
Yeah you found me out. Im an old grandpa....might be asian though :)
Whats even funnnier is that ive been a member since 06 and this is my 3rd post and all 3 were today. I read and usually keep my opinions/comments to myself . Not so much in real life so I decided to play it diffrent in gaming life.
PS. If i find the tard that took my name in Aion He's DEAD. IM A THE ORIGINAL RECKER. I HAVE BEEN USING RECKER FOR THE LAST 15 YEARS. So if you ever see Recker in a game and its not me KILL HIM( to know if its me or not just ask) you will know if its me or not by my reply HEHE.
Ok but i might not have time to ask him lol.....if you preordered and get in on the two day head start you might be able to beat him to it if you take the name first.
Yeah i did preorder even though i wasnt going to. I want the extra stuff/ early access. I better get my name or its off with his testicles with a splintered wooden spoon.
Gee it sounds from the article that Aion is a lot like WoW used to be. Give it time and Aion will make the same mistakes and follow the same path to stop players from moving on to the next game.
<shrug> I left WoW when it ceased to be fun and not long after that (over the next six months) most of the people I played with left too. I'm now happily playing a game I enjoy that doesn't make demands on my time to progress or raid or anything else, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. A good story, fun play and good looking graphics if not top of the line are more then enough for me.
Fantasy games...bleh EQ beta to six months ago I'd played most of them. I'm an older more mature gamer now and a lot more discerning in what I want from a game. After being involved with over 30 betas in 11 years I don't even bother trying to get involved in betas. Companies will release what they want to and rarely if ever listen to beta testers. I have better things to do with my time.
Bring back paid beta testers and we'll get product that actually is worth the money we pay to play. This majority of players fanboi's or wanting an early chance to play simply isn't working.
Aion may look pretty but honestly what game doesn't these days. They've done a nice job of taking combos from EQ II and LotRO and incorporating them intot heir combat system but at the end of the day it's the same old rat and the same old intermittent reward system. No longer enough. A few games are getting the reward system right but at the end of the day I want my game time to be enjoyable AND productive so I can complete the things I want to complete.
All new mmo should take after Eve online. I'll admit that eve online has its faults(you cant please everybody) but it has something that no other game does. I dont like explaining what that is but to understand you would have to spend some time playing Eve. To understand what EVE has to offer in its entirety would take atleast 6months to a year or hardcore gaming.
Yeah so I was checking out this new WoW patch with my bro and jesus christ!!!! I took one look of that stupid freaking one room 5 man dungeon with the horses and made fun of him for an hour for playing such a crappy game. The god damn thing drops Epics, can they make this bastard any easier?
Blizzard has lost it, thank god they have enough addicts to keep it going.
OP i dont blame you for leaving lol.
GL with Aion
Same for me. Well, I've actually stopped playing WoW awhile ago, but with Aion on the horizon, I don't think I'll be resubbing to WoW.
............................................ Lineage 2 is a much harsher world ..... lol how long did you even play lineage2?
I really can't believe you're going to say this with a straight face comparing it to WoW LOL.. WoW Has some of the over-the-top designs for Armor and weapons in the industry... and some of the weapons don't even look like they would do any damage, they're just crazy designs lol.
Ah.. most do this for a new mmo. For those that have played WOW, EQ2,AoC, War will be someone disappointed. Aion is a very simple game. The one starting area, and then just wait till you hit 25+ the game really takes a twist.
As for Anime and creepy.. What guy does not like a young girl running around in a very short dress, big boobs blah blah. Then the twisted thought that.. omg I bet its a real girl playing her. LMAO.. "Yea but I find it creepy that an old man is into anime".. yet its ok if the the guy is what 20? then its ok to be in to little girls? Because thats just what it is.. thats the kind of ANIME your talking about. And Aion plays right in to ALL guys. Please.. theres sick old .. young lol get over it. HELP or shut up.
You've gone from being spotlighted as a blogger to being spotlighted as an obvious troll, I guess you feel threatened.
I dont agree with the creepy comment. But i do agree that it is creepy that a person named Grandpagamer would try to open the option that it is a nubile asian girl. First nubile asian girls dont advertise( I've checked), 2nd what kinda Nubile asian girl would name herself Grandpagamer. No really what kind i would really love to meet her ROFL.
Ps. More to the point WoW is like Crack with really good marketing. Sure its a great way to spend your time at first but then comes all the problems associated with doing drugs. Silly WoWTard dont you know its bad for you.
Yeah you found me out. Im an old grandpa....might be asian though :)
Whats even funnnier is that ive been a member since 06 and this is my 3rd post and all 3 were today. I read and usually keep my opinions/comments to myself . Not so much in real life so I decided to play it diffrent in gaming life.
PS. If i find the tard that took my name in Aion He's DEAD. IM A THE ORIGINAL RECKER. I HAVE BEEN USING RECKER FOR THE LAST 15 YEARS. So if you ever see Recker in a game and its not me KILL HIM( to know if its me or not just ask) you will know if its me or not by my reply HEHE.
Ok but i might not have time to ask him lol.....if you preordered and get in on the two day head start you might be able to beat him to it if you take the name first.
Yeah i did preorder even though i wasnt going to. I want the extra stuff/ early access. I better get my name or its off with his testicles with a splintered wooden spoon.
I also have that feeling, man. I need to secure the super-original-and-unique-game-name "Eric".
I hate to say it, but the op will be back to playing WoW in a month when he realizes that Aion is a huge grind fest with a really poorly done flying system. (one of the main focal points of the game) Not saying WoW isn't a grind fest, but the questing is at least enjoyable and the grinds are usually pretty small compared to other games. (casual) Why jump ship from an already polished game with tons of content to a game that is trying to redo what the polished game has already succeeded at doing. Aion is just going to ride the coat tails of WoW just like every other MMORPG will in the forseeable future.
Yea but I find it creepy that an old man is into anime...........
How do you know im an old man? Perhaps am a young nubile asian girl?
Why is it strange for an old man to be into anime?
For god sake, a comment like that could only come from an american.... i know that from your point of view an old man should be into drinking bear and get fat in front of the tv watching football, but that is only in america, the rest of the civilized world is way beyond it now
Well im an american and used to like my beer (diabetes stopped that :( but i do like the anime art style. Hell im so old i remember the original astro boy. Never cared much for football though. Ive tried a few FTP games due to liking the art and while i dont really call Aion, anime i do like the asian influence.
No? Personnaly i will try Aion when it will release in Europe and i never come back to WoW.I'm not saying Aion is better game than WoW but i just dont want to play game with "Unbalanced PvP system" , "Lack of model design"(new gear models same for every class, only colors different lol ) etc. like WoW...
It's ok, you don't understand the OP because you're not yet bored from the game to the point where you don't want to even see the login screen, let alone play the game. When you reach that point, there is no turning back. If there is nothing better, personally, I'll just stop playing MMOs.
If there is nothing but boring shows on the TV, I'll close the TV and go do something else. I'm not going to stubbornly keep on watching, just because I used to really enjoy the shows in the past.
The same principle applies with MMOs, in my opinion.
2.5 years ago I played wow for 2 years till at TBC. I rather stopped playing it cause the arguments that people realised years later :p
Anyhow watching Aion since day 1. Not gonna waste a lot of words here. I cant wait :)
I'm playing World of Warcraft for 4 years. I'm playing MMO's for 8 years. I played a lot of games. Every game is good. We don't find bad game. No. WoW and Aion. On polish sites Aion is first game that is higher in rankings then WoW. Really.
A lot of people will say that PvP in WoW is bad, and a lot of another things is bad and etc. I can say it to. PvP. Okey. DK and Pala is OP. Everybody know that. But. Some class was always imba. In TBC? Private servers exist so long time that now they just have tactics for imba Classes. All. About graphic. Sorry. 2004 year. Aion. 2009. Normal.
Maybe some players will go play Aion but WoW don't have to worry. So many people. "Oh, Paul! Come on. Buy WoW. We will play together!" <- And this is the power of WoW. But. You don't see that all games like Warhammer, Age of Conan, Aion i good... They make good for WoW (Nice :P). Maybe they don't have to worry, but they should and they are ^^. That's why they still work on WoW.
I played Aion for a few hours... sure it's pretty, but it's not a WoW killer. All of you leaving WoW for Aion will be back to WoW in a month or two. I really doubt that any Korean Playstyle game can kill the WoW Behemoth. I chuckle on articles like this comparing " * " to WoW and then kicking WoW in the teeth, and then a month later WoW is still on top. I fell for the Age of Conan Failtrain, and i'm not about to fall for another fail again.. Cheers.
BTW, I'm not dissing Aion, it's a beautiful game from what i've seen and i'm sure it's gonna amass about 200,000 faithful followers but to say WoW is failing and Aion will take it's place is a HUGE overstatement.
Smart gamers don't want the WoW phenomenon to be repeated. Diversity and choices is what we should all be looking for.
Personally, I'd prefer that Aion becomes successful and WoW remains popular. That's the only way to repel the crowd of developers wannabe gold farmers.
I think that Aion is first game that can be at the same lvl of quality (I count here gameplay too) with WoW. GW is good game, but a lot of people get bored. Age of Conan is epic fail imo. Warhammer... I have some hope with this game but... We know what happend. But I have hope that WoW will be still one of the best game. ;]
Aion is the new king on the MMO throne.
Everything that WoW does, Aion does better with a flash of brilliance. Aion has brought back that Open World PvP that gamers have been dying for, with real world meaning attached. None of the this meaningless instance garbage that can be afk grinded with 0 risk or consequence (boring, yes it is). Aion's gameplay has risk and complexity, it's a game made for the competitive gamer that will rewards success, rather than giving it with 0 effort.
Aion has garnered a huge subscriber base already in Asia after only 8 months of release, while WoW's numbers have nosedived since Aion came to town (look at the MMO data graphs). How much of a impact will Aion have in the West? the writing is on the wall ....
Long live the king.
P.S. amazing article i agreed with it entirely, gl with Aion!! :)))
Nicely written article, at last someone who can put his point across with out resorting to "wow sux, aion rox".
I have played AION beta (to level 10) and I was not impressed. same old same old. The fact I hate Asia style gfx does not help.
I hope AION does well so people will lay off the WoW basing. Go AION for that reason alone.
AION is a new game, same old mechanics (with gimiky wings) but new, Id be more interested if the OP and the fan boys feel the same about AION a month after release.
8 months? It's still fresh.We have to wait longer and we will see. but we cant concentrate on east. We will what will be happend on west.
I am sooo disappointed by "Aion". I thought it was something new but it is the same ol thing. I guess I am just burnt out on Fantasy MMO's. Please someone do something different ... Space ... Modern Fantasy ... Mass Effect like ... anything other than swords and sorcery ... PLEASE!
You's trollin'!
Everyone is out to get WoW? mmorpg.com must be on NCsoft's payroll, since Blizzard can't afford it.
or,
Somebody bored with WoW wrote an article about why they find Y game more appealing than X game, at this point in time. I hope people will excuse him if he later changes his mind. It happens.
Edit: All this controversy is what's bumping threads up.
I don't agree on the "nicely written" part brother.
here is the OP's extract on WOW :
WoW's PvP system has degenerated to arenas. World PvP was too hard for Blizzard, so they got rid of it. Wintergrasp was too hard for Blizzard, so they got rid of it. Battlegrounds were to fun for Blizzard (WSG and AV anyway), so they took all the fun out of those. Battlegrounds were originally a place for enjoyable PvP, but were then turned into just another part of the grind. Blizzard turning their PvP system into a quality e-sport has ruined large scale PvP battles. They did succeed at making an e-sport, to a point. While anyone can watch an FPS tournament and know what is going on, watching a WoW tournament takes some serious knowledge about the game. It succeeded, but it still ruined WoW PvP.
The day patch 3.2 comes out - rather very good and even game altering PvP patch - it is the typical Wow trolling content we always see at our doorstep.
Supported by that dreadful Chief editor of mmorpg.com with such words as "sexy" shows it all.
Stradden was the man who found Warhammer "a very good game" btw. Remember?
Same hype same tasteless pushing of duds ...
In fact they just don't realise it ... they push WOW even to bigger heights with promoting these kind of bad copycats.
Stating that LAke Wintergrasp is ... 'get rid of it". LW is for certain the MOST and VASTLY played PvP zone in ANY MMORPG world wide.
How pathetic.
Zorndorf, let me ask you something, do you have a right to bash editors of the website? Actually, it's quite unprofessional behavior from you. Their opinion doesn't have to match with your one. Good/bad is a point of view and if you love wow and hate other games accusing them of being copycats or something that doesn't mean everyone else should do the same.
By saying that Blizzard is getting rid of Lake Wintergrasp, OP most likely wants to say that Blizzard put the limits 120 v 120. What do you mean by telling that "LW is for certain the MOST and VASTLY played PVP zone in any MMORPG?" Are you serious? Have you seen sieges of Lineage 2 in Korea where ~500-700 players fight for castles. Let's look at eve. Lots LOTS of ships. Not the set number of 240.
By the way. Tell me, how patch 3.2 is going to alter the game's PVP system. Is it going to revive world PvP? Is it going to give the meaning for pointless battleground and arena fights?
And finally I'm not a AION fanboy. To be honest, I think it will flop in US due to poor management. That thing killed L2 in the west too.
When i see stuff like Aion i start to ask myself why should i invest again all the time to lvl a toon to max lvl to enjoy pvp when it is basically the same as wow? And the answear to that is that imo it's not worth it.
Arenas especially 3vs3 in wow are the best part of the game for me. Playing competively with some friends in arenas is way more fun than dealing with the random zerg & the lag in open pvp/bgs. (Small group open pvp is fun tough)
Not everyone gets the back up of the Editor in Chief and use really "trolling language".
Not on the same day as the famous WOW PVP patch 3.2 gets published.
Just as if a Korean game will make a difference to what people were USED to in these last 4 years of QUALTY gameplay.
The wording of the OP is nothing short of disgusting ("LW they got rid of") What a sad state of mind coming from editors of mmorpg.com.
BLIZZARD doesn't deserve this kind of opinions from official editors.
BOOOOH to the Editors.
Ummm, QQ much?
Not everyone gets the back up of the Editor in Chief and use really "trolling language".
Not on the same day as the famous WOW PVP patch 3.2 gets published.
Just as if a Korean game will make a difference to what people were USED to in these last 4 years of QULAITY gameplay.
The wording of the OP is nothing short of disgusting ("LW they got rid of") What a sad state of mind coming from editors of mmorpg.com.
BLIZZARD doesn't deserve this kind of opinions from official editors.
BOOOOH to the Editors.
I didnt say I agree'd with the OP just it was well written without resorting stupid sound bits.
Yes what he says about LakeWintergrasp is wrong and exgragerated, LWG is massivly popular and that was its downfall. It was a lag feast (for many), Blizzard tried a few things to make it less popular or to spread its population around the zone but nothing helped so blizzard took the route to limiting the battle to 120v120 (hardly small scale). I have yet to try LWG in 3.2 but in 3.1 it was like playing WAR id click an ability and wait 5seconds for it to go off.. it was unplayable.
I applude blizzard for the change. and the EXP in battle grounds, time to roll me a Druid.
I only enjoyed WoW for the early world PvP on PvP servers. Everything else was too shallow and boring. Aion is the same for the early game PvE, but quickly the Rifts and the Abyss take the game in a whole new direction that is just fun as hell for me. I can see myself playing Aion for a long time.
NCSoft went the exact oppossite direction as Blizzard with PvP/World PvP. Blizzard killed it in favor of lame BG's and Arena while NCSoft built an entire game around it. This is why I will be playing Aion.
You've gone from being spotlighted as a blogger to being spotlighted as an obvious troll, I guess you feel threatened.
Umm...no...I am a gamer and I, like many, like to discuss MMORPG's. I have an opinion and though it may not be the same as yours I still have one, and this is a forum where we share those opinions. If you think this is only a forum to praise games and that no other opinions of a game can be made then maybe you're looking in the wrong place.
LOL!
Zorn you're too much.
3.2 isn't anything special.
The raid/dungeon they added is basically one room and the rest of the crap is anti twink shit they should have put in a very long time ago.
I do like the druid graphic changes however lol!
keep crying man, sooner or later the addicts will see behind blizzards con job and realize they get near no content considering the amount of money they dish out to blizzard.
To each their own. Everyone likes different things than everyone else. There is no need to fight or argue over it. What WoW doesn't do for me it does well for millions of others. What Aion does for me won't necessarilly impress or captivate others.
It still pisses me off when people make gross stereotypes and assumptions when they've clearly not put in the effort to try or even research a game before juding it. This is the type of crap MMORPG.com is famous for, and it's nice to see it isn't as bad as it used to be.
Hahahahahahaha ... OMG Teala, I just shot coffee outta my nose!
All this from the girl who got all pie-eyed for Vanguard? I remember the "disagreements" we used to have over on the Vault boards ... those were the days ...
Anyway ...
AIONs character models do not look plastic, and the game is FAR more polished than Vanguard is. Also, I think it's safe to say that everything in Vanguard was thrown together haphazardly. As far as "Eve and WoW" ... you must of smoked yourself stupid if you think either of those games holds a candle graphically to AION.
Please, WoW more fluid? Put down the bong before the damage is permanent!
The pvp is much, much better than VGs, or WoWs pvp. And besides, you wouldn't know good pvp if it jumped up and kicked the bowl outta your mouth.
Hahahahahahaha ... OMG Teala, I just shot coffee outta my nose!
All this from the girl who got all pie-eyed for Vanguard? I remember the "disagreements" we used to have over on the Vault boards ... those were the days ...
Anyway ...
AIONs character models do not look plastic, and the game is FAR more polished than Vanguard is. Also, I think it's safe to say that everything in Vanguard was thrown together haphazardly. As far as "Eve and WoW" ... you must of smoked yourself stupid if you think either of those games holds a candle graphically to AION.
Please, WoW more fluid? Put down the bong before the damage is permanent!
The pvp is much, much better than VGs, or WoWs pvp. And besides, you wouldn't know good pvp if it jumped up and kicked the bowl outta your mouth.
I wish you themepark babies would get Eve out of your mouths already.
If aion had the complexity of Eve it would kill WoW.
And yes Eve fucking owns Aion in graphics.
Im in the beta.. played for 2 weekends. All i saw was crappy graphics made to look nice with light blur effects. Invisible walls over everything... railings, bushes, small ledges and walls. Its the same... click and spam skills formula so no difference there. The flying can be replicated easily, just make wow flying mounts insta cast and u can fight on them and they only last one minute...
I honestly didnt see anything that made it any different from wow.. u cant even use your wings in most area cause there are no fly zones. Wow had the excuses that they didnt have flying mounts in azeroth and that why u can fly there. What is aions excuse for the multiple areas that u cant fly in.
The game lacks any form of immersion, the character creation is cool unless u want to make a young character then the youngest voice u can get is the guy who did Prince Zuko on avatar the last airbender.
If anything the game is a step backwards from the RPG part of mmorpg. You start feeling cool when you get wings and your like "im gonna jump this rail and glide down to the water" so you try only to smack into an invisible wall over this tiny rail which wouldnt matter cause for some reason your character doent float but rather can walk on the bottom of a lake so he can drown.
It's the same story all the time. Some new game gets ready to be released and we start seeing articles on how great this new game is in beta and how it will be the WoW killer and me and my 100 guildmates are quitting WoW and joining 'new game'. Then 6 months passes, the new game isn't so new anymore, there isn't as much content being added, it's not as much fun playing an alt, etc. Meanwhile, Blizzard keeps on chugging along, Blizzcon or some other trade shows comes along and they tease with a new expansion. Little by little that guy who moved over with his 100 guildmates starts to see less and less of his guild online. Then Blizzard releases a major patch prior to the expansion, more guildies start coming back. Then the expansion is launched and what was once 100 guildmates is now 10-15 (you know, those that are the hardcore PvP'ers).
It amazes me that there are people to come to this website still being delusional that somehow, someway it will be different this time. And that you can make that determination by just playing the beta. Never played the end-game, where a successfull game retains a majority of it's players. We saw this with WAR (remember, that was supposed to be THE GAME, you know, because it's Warhammer). We saw it with AoC (forgetting it was Funcom running the game). Now we see it with Aion. I'm sure we'll see it Star Wars whenever Bioware gets around to releasing it.
I'm happy the OP likes Aion. I'm not surprised that he's bored with WoW, most are. But lets not kid ourselves. It's just temporary. It's ALWAYS temporary. It's been temporary for 5 years now. It's going to continue to be temporary for the forseeable future. The haters don't want to hear that. They want a replacement NOW. That fine. Good luck with your replacement. When the next WoW expansion launches with new races, a new continent and a bunch of other stuff, I'm sure Blizzard will welcome you (and your subscription dollars) back. Remember, it's not personal.
dont forget darkfall and their awesome double charges
The OP isn;t saying the game will kill WoW.
He's just saying Aion is a much better game for him and tbh WAR is a better game than WoW.
If they got rid of the shitty stability issues the game would be fantastic, it has better classes, better instanced pvp and better world pvp and the quests are similar and graphics are better.
Nothing is going to kill wow, we all know the average sub for every MMO is around 150k and thats where every game falls with the exception of FFXI and Eve (300-400k subs).
Alot of the games people called "wow killer" are actually alot better than world of warcraft its just these games are a niche and not a jack of all trades that appeals to non-gamers.
I had the same feeling. I joined Aion beta after friends showered tons of praise on it. The first weekend, I enjoyed playing with them, but the game itself was not immersive to me. I played Wow years ago for maybe 6 months, and it never really hooked me either. My friends loved Wow, so I was thinking they liked Aion as Wow in a different setting. I wasn't even going to try the next beta weekend, but I wanted to like the game to play with my friends and figured maybe crafting would get me hooked. The second beta weekend sealed it. It just doesn't appeal to me.
I can understand the Wow lovers liking it, but I don't see it as anything new or different aside from being able to fly without a mount. I'll pass for now and hold out for KOTR and FFXIV.
And Ultima Online pre-trammel owns any MMO you've ever played ...
Next ...
First off, I am not a Wow player anymore, I have 5 60's sitting on a server, most drapped in raid gear for that period, never was convinced to try it again when the various expansions came out.
Aion, while it looks great and seems to offer new things to the MMO mix is probably not the answer. Flight mechanics are extremely limited, you want flight, go play Perfect World, they actually made a game where flght works. Secondly, we are talking NCSoft here, bots incorporated. as most of us call them. What makes you think they will actually attempt to control them in their new game?
I do agree that Aion seems to blend pve and pvp better than most games. The game has decent lore and a host of quests. I wish NCSoft success. It would be nice to have a real competitor for Wow out there.
Personally, you want the next big game in the genre, look at the unannounced MMO that Blizzard is working on. Blizzard is the one of the few companies that really understands this genre so far. Of course Bioware could surprise us with the Star Wars version.
Oh and Drakken, I could not agree more, early UO has never been surpassed.
The OP isn;t saying the game will kill WoW.
He's just saying Aion is a much better game for him and tbh WAR is a better game than WoW.
If they got rid of the shitty stability issues the game would be fantastic, it has better classes, better instanced pvp and better world pvp and the quests are similar and graphics are better.
Nothing is going to kill wow, we all know the average sub for every MMO is around 150k and thats where every game falls with the exception of FFXI and Eve (300-400k subs).
Alot of the games people called "wow killer" are actually alot better than world of warcraft its just these games are a niche and not a jack of all trades that appeals to non-gamers.
niche game is a nice way of saying that the developers were too poor or too lazy to implement more than few interesting game mechanics. For instance u have eve, the developers just put in more zones with a copy paste backround and call in content. If they took some time and money and put in some immersions it would be alot better. The same things is with aion. They took the face maker from oblivion and the graphics design of fable, and then they made a crappy world full of invisible walls and blured light effects. Its not even open world. Have you seen the starting area or played through it? Its a long S shaped path and when you make it to the end of it you get your wings. You wanna fly from the starting area over the mountains to some other area... well guess what u cant cause there is a huge invisible wall over the mountains and u can only fly for a minute. This game is far more theme park like and linear than wow ever thought about being. At least in wow if wanna climb the mountains in crossroads and jump to your death in duskwallow marsh you are free to do so. In aion u can even jump over some step rails.
not to mention that u cant swim and the youngest male voice is done but the guy that did prince zuko of avatar the last airbender.(both of these really get me)
And Ultima Online pre-trammel owns any MMO you've ever played ...
Next ...
I agree thats why I still play Pre trammel :)
Was that supposed to hurt me or something lol!
The OP isn;t saying the game will kill WoW.
He's just saying Aion is a much better game for him and tbh WAR is a better game than WoW.
If they got rid of the shitty stability issues the game would be fantastic, it has better classes, better instanced pvp and better world pvp and the quests are similar and graphics are better.
Nothing is going to kill wow, we all know the average sub for every MMO is around 150k and thats where every game falls with the exception of FFXI and Eve (300-400k subs).
Alot of the games people called "wow killer" are actually alot better than world of warcraft its just these games are a niche and not a jack of all trades that appeals to non-gamers.
But that's the thing, WAR is not better than Wow, not when you compare the entire package. Does it do PvP better than WoW. Yes it does. But as a whole it doesn't do a whole lot of other things better than WoW. See here is the problem and this applies to the OP. He says he's been playing WoW for 3+ years. Well when you been playing something for that long, you get used to the way things are in that game and expect that some type of polish in the next game. You expect the game to not be a grind because it never felt like a grind in WoW. If it did you wouldn't have played WoW for 3+ years.
My point is how does the OP make the determination that Aion is a better game than WoW when he's only played the beta? He played and (obviously) enjoyed WoW for 3+ years and all of a sudden a game with flashy graphics is going to be the end all because he played it on a weekend? What happens when he gets into the meat of the game in Aion and realizes that there isn't much more substance to what he saw in the beta? What happens when he's 6 months into Aion and realizes that PvP in the Abyss is boring as hell since it's the same crap over and over? Maybe that won't happen, but it usually does because we've seen it now with every other game that has launched since WoW launched.
niche game is a nice way of saying that the developers were too poor or too lazy to implement more than few interesting game mechanics. For instance u have eve, the developers just put in more zones with a copy paste backround and call in content. If they took some time and money and put in some immersions it would be alot better. The same things is with aion. They took the face maker from oblivion and the graphics design of fable, and then they made a crappy world full of invisible walls and blured light effects. Its not even open world. Have you seen the starting area or played through it? Its a long S shaped path and when you make it to the end of it you get your wings. You wanna fly from the starting area over the mountains to some other area... well guess what u cant cause there is a huge invisible wall over the mountains and u can only fly for a minute. This game is far more theme park like and linear than wow ever thought about being. At least in wow if wanna climb the mountains in crossroads and jump to your death in duskwallow marsh you are free to do so. In aion u can even jump over some step rails.
not to mention that u cant swim and the youngest male voice is done but the guy that did prince zuko of avatar the last airbender.(both of these really get me)
Copy and pasting content? you play WoW and you say eves developers copy and paste content? how many times have you fought the same mob skin over and over again? how many lame dungeons will blizzard release with reused raid strats?
LOL I don;t even care for Aion tbh, What i can relate to is the OPs dislike for WoW wich I totally agree with.
And no niche isnt a cop out, Certain developers want to make a pvp focused game or a crafting heavy game or a game with freedom and exploration. Not every game wants to be average like WoW in every way.
Jack of all trades may get more subs but sooner or later players that like pvp more will leave and players that like crafting or raid content more will leave since WoW is average in all areas.
Sorry but games like DAoc, WAR and AOC have better pvp. Games like EQ2, Lotro and others have better pve and games like Vanguard have much better crafting systems. when you decide to focus on a few mechanics and make a niche MMO its not a cop out.
its like no one is trying
But that's the thing, WAR is not better than Wow, not when you compare the entire package. Does it do PvP better than WoW. Yes it does. But as a whole it doesn't do a whole lot of other things better than WoW. See here is the problem and this applies to the OP. He says he's been playing WoW for 3+ years. Well when you been playing something for that long, you get used to the way things are in that game and expect that some type of polish in the next game. You expect the game to not be a grind because it never felt like a grind in WoW. If it did you wouldn't have played WoW for 3+ years.
My point is how does the OP make the determination that Aion is a better game than WoW when he's only played the beta? He played and (obviously) enjoyed WoW for 3+ years and all of a sudden a game with flashy graphics is going to be the end all because he played it on a weekend? What happens when he gets into the meat of the game in Aion and realizes that there isn't much more substance to what he saw in the beta? What happens when he's 6 months into Aion and realizes that PvP in the Abyss is boring as hell since it's the same crap over and over? Maybe that won't happen, but it usually does because we've seen it now with every other game that has launched since WoW launched.
WAR is a pvp game!
WAR is three things, pvp, PQs and the tome of knowledge.
WAR kicks WoWs ass in pvp, in questing (due to PQs) and the ToK destroys the WoW achievements system.
does wow do dungeons and raids better? yeah because WAR isnt a god damn pve game it only has the crap as a side game similar to how pvp was before blizzards awesome Idea to make wow an esport.
I do agree with the getting used to a game thing however. But imo I feel players hold WoW to high up on the mmo totem pole. It really isnt as good as everyone tries to make it out to be.
A game thats average in everyway gets really stale after a while. I would rather a game focus on something and keep refining it.
niche game is a nice way of saying that the developers were too poor or too lazy to implement more than few interesting game mechanics. For instance u have eve, the developers just put in more zones with a copy paste backround and call in content. If they took some time and money and put in some immersions it would be alot better. The same things is with aion. They took the face maker from oblivion and the graphics design of fable, and then they made a crappy world full of invisible walls and blured light effects. Its not even open world. Have you seen the starting area or played through it? Its a long S shaped path and when you make it to the end of it you get your wings. You wanna fly from the starting area over the mountains to some other area... well guess what u cant cause there is a huge invisible wall over the mountains and u can only fly for a minute. This game is far more theme park like and linear than wow ever thought about being. At least in wow if wanna climb the mountains in crossroads and jump to your death in duskwallow marsh you are free to do so. In aion u can even jump over some step rails.
not to mention that u cant swim and the youngest male voice is done but the guy that did prince zuko of avatar the last airbender.(both of these really get me)
Copy and pasting content? you play WoW and you say eves developers copy and paste content? how many times have you fought the same mob skin over and over again? how many lame dungeons will blizzard release with reused raid strats?
LOL I don;t even care for Aion tbh, What i can relate to is the OPs dislike for WoW wich I totally agree with.
And no niche isnt a cop out, Certain developers want to make a pvp focused game or a crafting heavy game or a game with freedom and exploration. Not every game wants to be average like WoW in every way.
Jack of all trades may get more subs but sooner or later players that like pvp more will leave and players that like crafting or raid content more will leave since WoW is average in all areas.
Sorry but games like DAoc, WAR and AOC have better pvp. Games like EQ2, Lotro and others have better pve and games like Vanguard have much better crafting systems. when you decide to focus on a few mechanics and make a niche MMO its not a cop out.
War, DAoc, and AOC have crappy pvp and the only time it starts to get good the game lags like it just had hip replacement. I played an EQ2 trial once and it sucked. I tryed Lotro and i found myself feeling a little gayer for having thrown my hat in with that fellowship hobbit crap.( oooo look at my scary furry little feet) and vangaurd is worst running game out of all of them, It has great potential except when you have to run into a door like 10 times to get it to open. What is pathectic is for someone to make a "niche" mmo were there arnt that many features and have it run like crap. How bad does friggin jita lag and there is what make 800 players in that zone tops and u cant even see most of them, just their very prescence in the zone lags u out.
Wow may reuse mob skins and raid strats and gear skins and stuff and yet it sucks. but im talking about eve.. you know where one side of a zone has the same backround as the other side.
Copy and pasting content? you play WoW and you say eves developers copy and paste content? how many times have you fought the same mob skin over and over again? how many lame dungeons will blizzard release with reused raid strats?
LOL I don;t even care for Aion tbh, What i can relate to is the OPs dislike for WoW wich I totally agree with.
And no niche isnt a cop out, Certain developers want to make a pvp focused game or a crafting heavy game or a game with freedom and exploration. Not every game wants to be average like WoW in every way.
Jack of all trades may get more subs but sooner or later players that like pvp more will leave and players that like crafting or raid content more will leave since WoW is average in all areas.
Sorry but games like DAoc, WAR and AOC have better pvp. Games like EQ2, Lotro and others have better pve and games like Vanguard have much better crafting systems. when you decide to focus on a few mechanics and make a niche MMO its not a cop out.
War, DAoc, and AOC have crappy pvp and the only time it starts to get good the game lags like it just had hip replacement. I played an EQ2 trial once and it sucked. I tryed Lotro and i found myself feeling a little gayer for having thrown my hat in with that fellowship hobbit crap.( oooo look at my scary furry little feet) and vangaurd is worst running game out of all of them, It has great potential except when you have to run into a door like 10 times to get it to open
You just called being into Lord of the rings Gay one of the greatest freaking Fantasy novels of all time yet its not gay to play WoW with little hoppity elves and gnomes?
Sorry but your crazy if you think WoWs Esport is better than DAoc or even WAAR. i may agree with AoC and its shitty preformance though but at its core the combat is much better.
Edit: as for WAR it kicks WoWs ass in Instanced and world pvp so i dont know how its better. You like arenas or something? play Guildwars that game owns wows pvp also.
Wait. First he says he got bored of wow half way into the first exp. and now he's quitting because of Aion??? Seems like he gave up on wow long before this new game so this isn't much of a tribute.
Yeah he's pushing all the right buttons of bored wow players--better pvp than wow, the tug to explore a new world and for that I may try the game. But I'm not falling for it so far.
Of course,
What you wrote Sir is about the exact synthesis of what makes Blizzard having 60% of the marketshare with western subs based MMO's (not even talking about the inflated almost free to play internet café numbers on that strange planet called China).
The so called WOW competitors are making it Blizzard SOOOOO easy to maintain momentum.
It is as if these guys are PAID by Blizzard to push the duds over to the players one by one.
And in fact it gets ... worse and worse.
Instead of opening up NEW MMO games, they make exact copies of the perfect game that is already being made for >5 years.
Every single person that plays WOW KNOWS what the best game is out there.
The rest is peanuts. We are talking of 0.1 to 1.3% of WOW markets.
And still people (like the OP) think they could be taken seriously.
Comon guys: stop fooling yourlselves: YOU ALL play WOW and stop being frustrated by it.
It is the best you can get. Period.
Or ... is there somebody else hiding in the closet BETTER and with MORE money than Blizzard. Of course not.
We all know why Blizzard has more subs, because the game is average at everything and very easy for the non-gamer and Wii crowd.
This doesn;t mean WoW is a better game just appeals to more. Shit dude I prefer WAR and Lotro over WoW.
You use sub numbers all the time but if we broke down the games bit by bit everyone would see how lame WoW is.
Forced Arena pvp for gear and Forced 25 man raiding are the only ways to really get good shit in the game. How many stale dungeons or instance pvp arenas can we fight in before we get fucking bored? Atleast WAR has different pvp instanced mini-games and world pvp to keep me from getting bored what does WoW offer?
5 Bgs and some boxed arenas? its limited. Oh and wintergrasp looking at the same fucking zone all day doesnt get lame nope!
Copy and pasting content? you play WoW and you say eves developers copy and paste content? how many times have you fought the same mob skin over and over again? how many lame dungeons will blizzard release with reused raid strats?
LOL I don;t even care for Aion tbh, What i can relate to is the OPs dislike for WoW wich I totally agree with.
And no niche isnt a cop out, Certain developers want to make a pvp focused game or a crafting heavy game or a game with freedom and exploration. Not every game wants to be average like WoW in every way.
Jack of all trades may get more subs but sooner or later players that like pvp more will leave and players that like crafting or raid content more will leave since WoW is average in all areas.
Sorry but games like DAoc, WAR and AOC have better pvp. Games like EQ2, Lotro and others have better pve and games like Vanguard have much better crafting systems. when you decide to focus on a few mechanics and make a niche MMO its not a cop out.
War, DAoc, and AOC have crappy pvp and the only time it starts to get good the game lags like it just had hip replacement. I played an EQ2 trial once and it sucked. I tryed Lotro and i found myself feeling a little gayer for having thrown my hat in with that fellowship hobbit crap.( oooo look at my scary furry little feet) and vangaurd is worst running game out of all of them, It has great potential except when you have to run into a door like 10 times to get it to open
You just called being into Lord of the rings Gay one of the greatest freaking Fantasy novels of all time yet its not gay to play WoW with little hoppity elves and gnomes?
Sorry but your crazy if you think WoWs Esport is better than DAoc or even WAAR. i may agree with AoC and its shitty preformance though but at its core the combat is much better.
Edit: as for WAR it kicks WoWs ass in Instanced and world pvp so i dont know how its better. You like arenas or something? play Guildwars that game owns wows pvp also.
i dont play alliance in Wow cause it ya know gives you a choice whether to run around looking like a fag or not. I played DAoc back in its prime i remeber the castle vs castle mega zergs where you captured your opponents castle by bringing shere numbers and lagging them out i did play a WAR trial and it looked and ran like crap and Guildwars isnt an mmo is just a multiplayer game that looks like and mmo and if u want world PVP all u have to do is play on a pvp server. Then run around in one of the non noob zones and kill ppl all day if u want
War, DAoc, and AOC have crappy pvp and the only time it starts to get good the game lags like it just had hip replacement. I played an EQ2 trial once and it sucked. I tryed Lotro and i found myself feeling a little gayer for having thrown my hat in with that fellowship hobbit crap.( oooo look at my scary furry little feet) and vangaurd is worst running game out of all of them, It has great potential except when you have to run into a door like 10 times to get it to open
You just called being into Lord of the rings Gay one of the greatest freaking Fantasy novels of all time yet its not gay to play WoW with little hoppity elves and gnomes?
Sorry but your crazy if you think WoWs Esport is better than DAoc or even WAAR. i may agree with AoC and its shitty preformance though but at its core the combat is much better.
Edit: as for WAR it kicks WoWs ass in Instanced and world pvp so i dont know how its better. You like arenas or something? play Guildwars that game owns wows pvp also.
i dont play alliance in Wow cause it ya know gives you a choice whether to run around looking like a fag or not. I played DAoc back in its prime i remeber the castle vs castle mega zergs where you captured your opponents castle by bringing shere numbers and lagging them out i did play a WAR trial and it looked and ran like crap and Guildwars isnt an mmo is just a multiplayer game that looks like and mmo
Because you play Horde you call people that like Lotro Gay? you're a messed up dude. you dont happen to live in the South US or one of the middles states do you?
Also sorry but Horde has little hopity elves also.
Edit: sorry but Guild wars is more of an MMO than most out today. You have massive amount of players in cities and you can easily Run quests and dungeons with players and chat, join guilds and have an open marlet to sell shit. sure its instanced but that doesnt make it not an MMO or atleast some wierd mmo hybrid and yeah it has better pvp.
Im glad you agree with me that DAoC has a better pvp system yes it lagged but didnt all games back then?
War, DAoc, and AOC have crappy pvp and the only time it starts to get good the game lags like it just had hip replacement. I played an EQ2 trial once and it sucked. I tryed Lotro and i found myself feeling a little gayer for having thrown my hat in with that fellowship hobbit crap.( oooo look at my scary furry little feet) and vangaurd is worst running game out of all of them, It has great potential except when you have to run into a door like 10 times to get it to open
You just called being into Lord of the rings Gay one of the greatest freaking Fantasy novels of all time yet its not gay to play WoW with little hoppity elves and gnomes?
Sorry but your crazy if you think WoWs Esport is better than DAoc or even WAAR. i may agree with AoC and its shitty preformance though but at its core the combat is much better.
Edit: as for WAR it kicks WoWs ass in Instanced and world pvp so i dont know how its better. You like arenas or something? play Guildwars that game owns wows pvp also.
i dont play alliance in Wow cause it ya know gives you a choice whether to run around looking like a fag or not. I played DAoc back in its prime i remeber the castle vs castle mega zergs where you captured your opponents castle by bringing shere numbers and lagging them out i did play a WAR trial and it looked and ran like crap and Guildwars isnt an mmo is just a multiplayer game that looks like and mmo
Because you play Horde you call people that like Lotro Gay? you're a messed up dude. you dont happen to live in the South US or one of the middles states do you?
Also sorry but Horde has little hopity elves also.
i never said those exact words.. i never said people that play lotro were gay ( sounds like some kinda guily conscience to me) all i said was that i felt gay playing it. None of the race or classes make me feel powerful, they make me feel like a gay little hobbit bandit or some crap. At least with wow if u dont want to be a human, gay elf, faggy dwarf, or pussy halfling, u can be a tauren or undead or an orc or something
and no DAoc didnt have a better pvp system. cause it didt work. if a car came out that had some great new designs on it that didnt work would you still say it was a good car. no dummy its a piece of crap that shakes like a black girl booty when you get over 55mph and so did Daoc
Woah. A pretty broad stroke. Is it because there is less gayness in those places?
Woah. A pretty broad stroke. Is it because there is less gayness in those places?
No, its probably because those places stll live in the 19th century......
We all know why Blizzard has more subs, because the game is average at everything and very easy for the non-gamer and Wii crowd.
This doesn;t mean WoW is a better game just appeals to more. Shit dude I prefer WAR and Lotro over WoW.
You use sub numbers all the time but if we broke down the games bit by bit everyone would see how lame WoW is.
Forced Arena pvp for gear and Forced 25 man raiding are the only ways to really get good shit in the game. How many stale dungeons or instance pvp arenas can we fight in before we get fucking bored? Atleast WAR has different pvp instanced mini-games and world pvp to keep me from getting bored what does WoW offer?
5 Bgs and some boxed arenas? its limited. Oh and wintergrasp looking at the same fucking zone all day doesnt get lame nope!
WoW not just appeals to the Wii crowd it appeals to the hard core gamer. You're also incorrect that you are forced to do 25 man raiding. And don't start getting into the comparisons of what WoW offers vs. what WAR offers because you will lose that argument all the time. All I need to know about Warhammer is this. A good chunk of my server (I'm talking high end raiders) stopped playing WoW when WAR launched. For two months it was the greatest thing ever. Then after awhile Ulduar came out and alot of those playing WAR came back. What's funny is alot of the good things in WAR (PQ's for example) were actually it's downfall, since some servers were such ghost towns that players gave up in disgust. Not to mention the grind at higher levels.
It's funny you mention boredom because that was the chief complaint of why people left WAR in droves.
No it doesn't and people saw it and people left.
People left due to stability issues and the lack of pve something that was going to happen if they didnt want to pvp 24/7.
7 US WAr servers now from the initial 43 ....
Again its a pvp game, not everyone is going to want to pvp all day. Mythic was incredibly stupid with releasing so many servers they didnt make a jack of all trades mmo to support that many.
A Pvp game has .... fast controlled and fluid responsive actions of YOUR avatar. War didn't.
That's not true at all. war does have good combat system it enforces the rock,paper ,scissors mechanic where you have to know what targets you can fight and others you avoid. its alot better than everyone being a hybrid and OP.
A PvP game has a hard rated ladder competition with 200.000 dollars price money. Competition in and OUT of the game. War hadn't.
No thats a FPS Esport, these are MMOs and Blizzards push for an esport has ruined WoWs world pvp and BGs.
War didn't have the data mining from competitve Arena play... and the benefit of analysing class interactions of 3vs3 or 5vs5 in a FIXED setting.
WAR is a massive pvp game it doesnt have arena combat the classes arent designed for 1 on 1 or even small skirmish fights so that shit doesnt matter.
War didn't have those balancing data tools. And it showed.
People complain about WAR because they want to solo pvp and own everyone, its the same shit in every pvp game.
War didn't have the beautiful BG's. They had post stamped scenarios.
Are you crazy the only good WoW BG is AV, the rest are complete failures compared to WARs scenarios.
They lacked EVERYTHING WOW had and then Blizzard added leveling through PvP and Sieges WITHOUT knocking on a single door and with MOUNTED tanks.
WoW has one siege area thats already increadibly lame and boring! if they were smart every zone would have a wintergrasp in it. WAR siege is alot better you should have spent more time in the game and not on the forums blasting a game you really didnt play.
See?
No, You think arenas and real pvp and since wows characters can run faster you can it a real pvp game lol
See Already why WOW was by FAR the best game over WAR even in PvP.
Nope WAR stomps WoW into the ground in pvp, questing (PQs own phasing) and thwe Tok.
See? If you don't... you are blind.
No I don't WoW is a simple jack of all trades MMO and doesnt stack up to other pvp games.
PAID subs already speak the truth.
No it doesn't WoW is a jack of all trades fluke and very popular, shit most of the kiddies never played mmos before and now WoW is "cool" to play lol.
I'm disapointed in you zorn what an easy post to dismantle you're losing your touch.
Next time lets talk real game mechanics.
Why are raiders leaving WoW ( a clearly dominant pve game compared to WAR) for WAR?
Jesus do WoW players have a brain?
Again people left WAR due to stability issues and not really liking to pvp 24/7.
You dont create a mostly pvp game if you want jack of all trades sub numbers mythis was dumb for thinking they could reach the wow kids.
No, its probably because those places stll live in the 19th century......
I live in NYC we like everyone here and wouldnt call fans of a beloved fantasy franchise GAY!
JGMIII does NOT only have problems with Wow, that's very clear.
But aside from this.... it is always the same.
They are called JGM or the OP.
They play (and supposedly enjoy) WOW for many many moons and then they need to spit the game (and its players !) in the face.
Sad really.
Blizzard deserves respect for delivering FUN to us.
I don't have ANY respect for people who spit in the face of old loves.
Zorndorf. Can you stop spiting at other forum users? They don't even insult you. It seems that you hate all the world. Firstly the editor then the OP and JGM. If they have other opinion than you, they are bad/evil/troll and so on. Zorndorf, that's pathetic. Stop littering the forums with such "hate" posts because they may damage the reputation of the forum in the long run.
I am not defending JGM specifically, but actually I'm tired of pointless flaming and claiming that WOW is the HOLY GRAIL of MMO's. And actually everyone is. No, I'm NOT a WoW hater, but please respect others. Thank you.
JGMIII does NOT only have problems with Wow, that's very clear.
But aside from this.... it is always the same.
They are called JGM or the OP.
They play (and supposedly enjoy) WOW for many many moons and then they need to spit the game (and its players !) in the face.
Sad really.
Blizzard deserves respect for delivering FUN to us.
I don't have ANY respect for people who spit in the face of old loves.
Zorndorf. Can you stop spiting at other forum users? They don't even insult you. It seems that you hate all the world. Firstly the editor then the OP and JGM. If they have other opinion than you, they are bad/evil/troll and so on. Zorndorf, that's pathetic. Stop littering the forums with such "hate" posts because they may damage the reputation of the forum in the long run.
I am not defending JGM specifically, but actually I'm tired of pointless flaming and claiming that WOW is the HOLY GRAIL of MMO's. And actually everyone is. No, I'm NOT a WoW hater, but please respect others. Thank you.
LOL me an zorn get into this shit everyonce in a while.
Normally ill own his face and he will leave with a sub number remark.
Zorndorf. Can you stop spiting at other forum users? They don't even insult you. It seems that you hate all the world. Firstly the editor then the OP and JGM. If they have other opinion than you, they are bad/evil/troll and so on. Zorndorf, that's pathetic. Stop littering the forums with such "hate" posts because they may damage the reputation of the forum in the long run.
I am not defending JGM specifically, but actually I'm tired of pointless flaming and claiming that WOW is the HOLY GRAIL of MMO's. And actually everyone is. No, I'm NOT a WoW hater, but please respect others. Thank you.
LOL me an zorn get into this shit everyonce in a while.
Normally ill own his face and he will leave with a sub number remark.
I know. I'm a long time forum reader. I told him my arguments of WoW superiority. Yet they remained unanswered. Anyway, such an attitude of Zorn is unacceptable in normal forums and it should be dealt with.
You just called being into Lord of the rings Gay one of the greatest freaking Fantasy novels of all time yet its not gay to play WoW with little hoppity elves and gnomes?
Sorry but your crazy if you think WoWs Esport is better than DAoc or even WAAR. i may agree with AoC and its shitty preformance though but at its core the combat is much better.
Edit: as for WAR it kicks WoWs ass in Instanced and world pvp so i dont know how its better. You like arenas or something? play Guildwars that game owns wows pvp also.
i dont play alliance in Wow cause it ya know gives you a choice whether to run around looking like a fag or not. I played DAoc back in its prime i remeber the castle vs castle mega zergs where you captured your opponents castle by bringing shere numbers and lagging them out i did play a WAR trial and it looked and ran like crap and Guildwars isnt an mmo is just a multiplayer game that looks like and mmo
Because you play Horde you call people that like Lotro Gay? you're a messed up dude. you dont happen to live in the South US or one of the middles states do you?
Also sorry but Horde has little hopity elves also.
i never said those exact words.. i never said people that play lotro were gay ( sounds like some kinda guily conscience to me) all i said was that i felt gay playing it. None of the race or classes make me feel powerful, they make me feel like a gay little hobbit bandit or some crap. At least with wow if u dont want to be a human, gay elf, faggy dwarf, or pussy halfling, u can be a tauren or undead or an orc or something
and no DAoc didnt have a better pvp system. cause it didt work. if a car came out that had some great new designs on it that didnt work would you still say it was a good car. no dummy its a piece of crap that shakes like a black girl booty when you get over 55mph and so did Daoc
It's freaking lord of the rings!!!! your not supposed to feel all powerful your power comes in the form of your group or fellowship!!!
Seriously how does a game make you feel gay? i still think your messed up. You act like being gay is a bad thing or something live in the 2000's buddy.
No it doesn't and people saw it and people left.
7 US WAr servers now from the initial 43 ....
A Pvp game has .... fast controlled and fluid responsive actions of YOUR avatar. War didn't.
The only thing that wasn't fluid for me was sometimes id hit a special abilitiy and it wouldn't work. All my other quickbar attacks worked fine. I never did see a difference between WAR and WoW's controls other than that.
A PvP game has a hard rated ladder competition with 200.000 dollars price money. Competition in and OUT of the game. War hadn't.
Does Darkfall have competitions with 200 dollar prize money? I don't think so and its a PvP game. WoW is the only game Ive known to have comps with real money as a prize.
War didn't have the data mining from competitve Arena play... and the benefit of analysing class interactions of 3vs3 or 5vs5 in a FIXED setting.
War didn't have those balancing data tools. And it showed.
War wasn't supposed to be balanced. One class was supposed to beat the other just about every time. I still don't think WoW has balance and never will.
War didn't have the beautiful BG's. They had post stamped scenarios.
They lacked EVERYTHING WOW had and then Blizzard added leveling through PvP and Sieges WITHOUT knocking on a single door and with MOUNTED tanks.
So I guess you like PvP that isn't realistic. " Hey can you leave your gate wide open for us to attack you next friday"? lol The gates just made it more fun to me, what do you guys want next one level keeps and one boss? How much more easier do you want things to be?
See?
See Already why WOW was by FAR the best game over WAR even in PvP.
See? If you don't... you are blind.
PAID subs already speak the truth.
Paid subs just show what the mainstream people want but, that don't mean its the best for everyone. I can think of a ton of bands I like better than all these guys that sell a billion records. The sheep of the world always get catered to while people like me that like to think outside of the box always get the short end of the stick.
I'm going to put that in my .sig file.
You made a big mistale by even trying to defend WAR.
WAR is the equivalent of failure these days.
And a pity for Aion lovers perhaps, but I think WAR even has a negative impact on all newly published MMORPG's this year.
It will be 2010/11 before we will see something fresh and good (I hope Kotor, Diablo or much later the new mmorpg from Blizzard).
And blame Mythic for that btw.
WAR isn't a failure the expectations of mythic was the failure.
WAR as a pvp game is very good and if by failure you mean sub numbers according to mmo charts around 150k subs is the norm for near all mmos so WAR isnt that bad it just needs less servers since its so dependant on Group activities.
Its not a solo paradise like WoW.
You made a big mistale by even trying to defend WAR.
WAR is the equivalent of failure these days.
And a pity for Aion lovers perhaps, but I think WAR even has a negative impact on all newly published MMORPG's this year.
It will be 2010/11 before we will see something fresh and good (I hope Kotor, Diablo or much later the new mmorpg from Blizzard).
And blame Mythic for that btw.
WAR isn't a failure the expectations of mythic was the failure.
WAR as a pvp game is very good and if by failure you mean sub numbers according to mmo charts around 150k subs is the norm for near all mmos so WAR isnt that bad it just needs less servers since its so dependant on Group activities.
Its not a solo paradise like WoW.
Yeah WoW getting that many subs was just a fluke, they put the right game out at the right time. I don't see another game ever coming close to having WoW's subs even another game put out by Blizz.
Do you remember a time before WoW when games that had 500k subs and it was amazing? Just because WoW has a bagillion subs doesen't mean its the best and just because all these other games have low subs mean they suck ass. Subs just show the most popular game and the opinions of those people. Now the rest of us have to suffer because every company is trying to compete with WoW and I don't want a game to compete with WoW I want something the exact opposite of WoW.
God I hope FFXIV can be my savoir again, Im so glad SE is one of the few major companies that have the balls to make a game that isn't like any game on the market. Maybe except for their own.lol
You made a big mistale by even trying to defend WAR.
WAR is the equivalent of failure these days.
And a pity for Aion lovers perhaps, but I think WAR even has a negative impact on all newly published MMORPG's this year.
It will be 2010/11 before we will see something fresh and good (I hope Kotor, Diablo or much later the new mmorpg from Blizzard).
And blame Mythic for that btw.
WAR isn't a failure the expectations of mythic was the failure.
WAR as a pvp game is very good and if by failure you mean sub numbers according to mmo charts around 150k subs is the norm for near all mmos so WAR isnt that bad it just needs less servers since its so dependant on Group activities.
Its not a solo paradise like WoW.
No man, it failed as a 'PVP' game (the type of game it was created as). When you got PvP'ers (not WoW carebears) disgusted with the game after a couple of months something is wrong. There are those that played DAoC (and never played WoW) that thought the game was garbage after the 'newness' wore off (see my initial post about 'newness'). You're right, Mythic did have huge expectations, but they are also a business and with as much money as they spent developing the game they needed to retain a certain number of subs. If your going to secure a huge license such as Warhammer you better try to make your game to cater to as many subs as possible. They wanted a chunk of WoW's subscriber base (just like Aion does). But they don't understand why that subscriber base stays with WoW.
You think NCSoft does?
I don't know why it's so hard for people to understand that WoW isn't the perfect game for everyone.
Some people want more out of Pvp than WoW offers, some people want more freedom and larger game worlds to explore and some people want a more mature social game with a crafting base.
A game that focuses on pvp isnt shit because it has bad pve dungeons and a game focused on pve isnt shit because it doesnt have pvp.
These games that focus on certain mechanics give us options in the mmo genre.
Wow is a jack of all trades game, sure its good if you want to do a little bit of everything but what if you want more?
What happens when you play Wow and don;t like every mechanic? lets say you hate questing (dailies) and raiding? you really get to see how average WoWs pvp is and same goes for every other feature in WoW.
This is the only genre that gives such critical acclaim to a game thats average across the board. In the Sp videogame genre if a GTA clone was developed that did everything average it would be rated a 6 out of 10 on gamerankings.com and people would forget about it.
But in the MMO genre WoW gets 9s across the board? Something is really screwed up.
So if the OP like Aion good for him.
WAR isn't a failure the expectations of mythic was the failure.
WAR as a pvp game is very good and if by failure you mean sub numbers according to mmo charts around 150k subs is the norm for near all mmos so WAR isnt that bad it just needs less servers since its so dependant on Group activities.
Its not a solo paradise like WoW.
No man, it failed as a 'PVP' game (the type of game it was created as). When you got PvP'ers (not WoW carebears) disgusted with the game after a couple of months something is wrong. There are those that played DAoC (and never played WoW) that thought the game was garbage after the 'newness' wore off (see my initial post about 'newness'). You're right, Mythic did have huge expectations, but they are also a business and with as much money as they spent developing the game they needed to retain a certain number of subs. If your going to secure a huge license such as Warhammer you better try to make your game to cater to as many subs as possible. They wanted a chunk of WoW's subscriber base (just like Aion does). But they don't understand why that subscriber base stays with WoW.
You think NCSoft does?
the "pvpers" that got tired of WAR came from games like WoW or AoC these players bitch and moun and leave a game when thier classes get nerfed. WAR is just fine, could it be improved? yeah but is it better than WoWs pvp? yes!
Edit: I could understand the DAoC players hate fro WAR, DAoC is a fucking masterpiece compared to WAR. DAoC is another game that completly owns WoW in pvp.
I tried to like Aion, much like I tried to like Conan and a half dozen other games.
It's just... the game isn't compelling for ME in any quantity. It's very very pretty, one of the best looking games on the market, but over all... it just doesn't provide anything that WOW or Warhammer isn't already providing.
If I could get my rl friends to play eq2 I'd probably play that, but I'm not even enthusiastic about that game anymore and it was my favorite of that generation.
The mmo genre is stagnating much like the fps genre did about 5-6 years ago and until there is some innovation I don't think any of the games are really going to 'get peoples attention' en mass.
Shrug.
The OP sums up what *many* former WoW subscribers feel took the fun out of WOW. If you still like WoW no one is forcing you to play Aion, stick with it, but no reason to get all defenisve about WoW and slam Aion in the process.
The MMO market is big enough for both to do well and no need for the my game is better than your game. I am just happy that a new game is going to release that is not a POS out of the box. That alone I am excited for.
The point of the article is that he's leaving WoW for Aion and then proceeds to list the things that Aion does better. He qualifies himself by saying that he played WoW for 3 years. Let me ask you this. How many people do you know that played WoW for as much time as that and then jumped ship proclaming that 'this was it'? Out of those people, how many returned to WoW? You just said yourself that alot of people who left WAR were people who played WoW. How will this be any different?
No, WAR is NOT "just fine". It is deeply flawed. I am still playing it, but mainly in the lower tiers with alts, and only because WoW doesn't have as good PvP.
That's fine, but what exactly are those WoW subscribers looking for? Why do you think people who played WoW long term are going to find that in Aion, when it's been proven that Aion is not the same type of game. It always cracks me up when I hear those that played for a long time say they're looking for a better PvP experience, but yet they tolerated the 'pvp' in wow for that long? If you're are hardcore PvP'er, you never played wow for any considerable amount of time.
Having played WoW and beta Aion i do see the differences in both PvE side WoW has the edge, PvP side Aion. What Aion does is bring the best of both worlds into one and it does work, WoW tried to this but failed and decided to make the game easier as most MMO's do after so many years, hell even L2 has gotten easier. Tried WAR trail and just couldn't seem to get into either side, it felt way to simple and not enough forethought.
So if the OP has decided to leave WoW for Aion then good for him, i'm sure there are others that feel the same way, and in no way is the OP bashing WoW but giving his reasons for leaving.
I'd be interested to play this Aion, howerver the Gfx scare me, i use a moderate pc (3-5 yr old)
i doubt i could get the most out of it.... sadly.
this is the thing that wow is good at... i wont kill my pc ;-p and certainly wont make me want to buy upgrades for it.
I dont believe Aion will be a WOW killer either. But i do think Aion will take some subs from WOW and a few other games. AOC and Warhammer as well were both broken at release. If Aion released today it would be a better launch than either of these games had. I havnt played AOC for a few months so i dont know how it is now but can say that AIon is more "finished" today than Warhammer is nearly a year after release.
No, WAR is NOT "just fine". It is deeply flawed. I am still playing it, but mainly in the lower tiers with alts, and only because WoW doesn't have as good PvP.
All I'm saying is WARs pvp is better than WoWs.
Of course WAR could use some improvments and revamps but imo its still an enjoyable game even if you only like the lower tiers ( something Ienjoyed also).
It ll be interesting to see how many players WoW has lost given they have not released what was once a quarterly statement on subscriber numbers since december 2008 . It has to be pretty bad . The vast majority of people i know from my 4 years of playing WoW have either given up or are about to give up to play Aion .People are generally fed up with how easy the game has become and cant be bothered to invest any more time in such a game .Blizzard are heading for a fall .
Wow has a sick turn over rate.
So many people get bored and leave but just as many join if they did lose subs its not much.
Wow is a well liked game because its everything to everyone (even though each system is mediocore at best).
So it sells well and people will play it until the graphics become extremely dated which will be a while from now since its artstyle keeps it looking fresh and clean.
Hahahahahahaha ... OMG Teala, I just shot coffee outta my nose!
All this from the girl who got all pie-eyed for Vanguard? I remember the "disagreements" we used to have over on the Vault boards ... those were the days ...
Anyway ...
AIONs character models do not look plastic, and the game is FAR more polished than Vanguard is. Also, I think it's safe to say that everything in Vanguard was thrown together haphazardly. As far as "Eve and WoW" ... you must of smoked yourself stupid if you think either of those games holds a candle graphically to AION.
Please, WoW more fluid? Put down the bong before the damage is permanent!
The pvp is much, much better than VGs, or WoWs pvp. And besides, you wouldn't know good pvp if it jumped up and kicked the bowl outta your mouth.
What?! What?! Vangaurd was good, until SOE came along. I played that game for a year - I just knew SOE would screw it up. As for EvE...back off! EvE is awesome. As for WoW...Aion is a WoW wannabe and fails meserably in so many ways. I can list them all but it would be useless since people are blinded by the honeymoon syndrome. We all know what that is and we're all guilty of it from time to time - even me. So I'm just going to sit back and watch another Korean grinder come to the US and crash and burn. Lineage 2 could have been awesome if they had made the game more for the NA and European market, and I'm going to say that about Aion as well. Aion is(no matter what som of you say) just another Lineage game with a new name and a few changes - the grind is still there - they just try to hide it and failed. Sorry.
Aion's graphics are cool to some extent, because I like anime, but I do not like the way the characters run...I've always hated that(even in Lineage 2). Plus all the flashy weapons effects(thank God WoW's are not so obnoxious). OMG don't get me going.
Drakkhen just stay away from me - k.
What?! What?! Vangaurd was good, until SOE came along. I played that game for a year - I just knew SOE would screw it up. As for EvE...back off! EvE is awesome. As for WoW...Aion is a WoW wannabe and fails meserably in so many ways. I can list them all but it would be useless since people are blinded by the honeymoon syndrome. We all know what that is and we're all guilty of it from time to time - even me. So I'm just going to sit back and watch another Korean grinder come to the US and crash and burn. Lineage 2 could have been awesome if they had made the game more for the NA and European market, and I'm going to say that about Aion as well. Aion is(no matter what som of you say) just another Lineage game with a new name and a few changes - the grind is still there - they just try to hide it and failed. Sorry.
Aion's graphics are cool to some extent, because I like anime, but I do not like the way the characters run...I've always hated that(even in Lineage 2). Plus all the flashy weapons effects(thank God WoW's are not so obnoxious). OMG don't get me going.
Drakkhen just stay away from me - k.
A wow player accusing any game of being grindy is laughable at best. By making it more for the NA EU market do you mean making it more like wow? Not every game is a wow wannabe. For gods sake woman where do you think wow got the idea for flying carpets, achievements and barber shops? I would not be surprised to hear about elves and gnomes with wings with tne next xpac.
What?! What?! Vangaurd was good, until SOE came along. I played that game for a year - I just knew SOE would screw it up. As for EvE...back off! EvE is awesome. As for WoW...Aion is a WoW wannabe and fails meserably in so many ways. I can list them all but it would be useless since people are blinded by the honeymoon syndrome. We all know what that is and we're all guilty of it from time to time - even me. So I'm just going to sit back and watch another Korean grinder come to the US and crash and burn. Lineage 2 could have been awesome if they had made the game more for the NA and European market, and I'm going to say that about Aion as well. Aion is(no matter what som of you say) just another Lineage game with a new name and a few changes - the grind is still there - they just try to hide it and failed. Sorry.
Aion's graphics are cool to some extent, because I like anime, but I do not like the way the characters run...I've always hated that(even in Lineage 2). Plus all the flashy weapons effects(thank God WoW's are not so obnoxious). OMG don't get me going.
Drakkhen just stay away from me - k.
A wow player accusing any game of being grindy is laughable at best. By making it more for the NA EU market do you mean making it more like wow? Not every game is a wow wannabe. For gods sake woman where do you think wow got the idea for flying carpets, achievements and barber shops? I would not be surprised to hear about elves and gnomes with wings with tne next xpac.
I don't care that WoW took the concept of flying carpets from EQ2 or where else they got stuff from. I have a love hate relationship with WoW myself - but even I am not blind to the fact that Blizzard produced one awesome game. So take that and smoke it in your pipe grandpa. :)
Wow has a sick turn over rate.
So many people get bored and leave but just as many join if they did lose subs its not much.
Wow is a well liked game because its everything to everyone (even though each system is mediocore at best).
So it sells well and people will play it until the graphics become extremely dated which will be a while from now since its artstyle keeps it looking fresh and clean.
that was true untill this year .things change .
that was true untill this year .things change .
What changed? WoW on high graphical detail still looks nice and that china thing is about over so they will get those subs back.
I don't see Aion changing anything imo Aion is more pvp focused I havent seen anything to say aion could compete with WoWs Pve endgame. if I'm wrong show my some video of the endgame pve content.
How about the brand new patch that released in Korea 1.5, and that we launch with? The one that added multiple end game PvE and PvPvE instances? Some also have an arcade like replayability with group scores affecting the final boss and rewards. Also many are from within fortresses that your faction must control in the Abyss.
The official trailer is here: www.youtube.com/watch
All of the footage is from new late to end game dungeons and instances. The one i'm most excited about is featured at 1:58. It's the Dredgion which is the ship the Balaur fly into fortress raids on when they assist random sides or attack both sides. It is 6v6 where each faction enters and competes to defeat the boss and steal points from the enemy team.
How about the brand new patch that released in Korea 1.5, and that we launch with? The one that added multiple end game PvE and PvPvE instances? Some also have an arcade like replayability with group scores affecting the final boss and rewards. Also many are from within fortresses that your faction must control in the Abyss.
The official trailer is here: www.youtube.com/watch
Thanks for the link.
Tbh i'm not hating on Aion I just dont know much about it.
I've seen alot of games say they will take WoWs subs and so far all we've seen are MMos that are niche (focus on a few mechanics). If you're going to beat WoW you will need a jack of all trades game and alot of cash behind you to get the word out.
A wow player accusing any game of being grindy is laughable at best. By making it more for the NA EU market do you mean making it more like wow? Not every game is a wow wannabe. For gods sake woman where do you think wow got the idea for flying carpets, achievements and barber shops? I would not be surprised to hear about elves and gnomes with wings with tne next xpac.
I don't care that WoW took the concept of flying carpets from EQ2 or where else they got stuff from. I have a love hate relationship with WoW myself - but even I am not blind to the fact that Blizzard produced one awesome game. So take that and smoke it in your pipe grandpa. :)
Kinda like smoking isnt it? Makes you sick but you cant quit. Played wow for a couple years myself then realized it wasnt fun just a habit i had gotten into. Aion didnt make me quit wow but i do like the game so far.
Games don't claim to take subs, but fans do usually. I don't know why. Who the hell cares when your server holds like 10-15k players? Sure there are 10.99 million other players playing the same game but you will never see them. Just give me 1 full server 24/7 (would have to be multiregional like FFXI) and a game that isn't shallow that I can get lost in and i'll be happy.
Anyway you are right about one thing. Aion is a PvPvE game and all servers are the same. The mid to end game focuses heavily on fortress sieging and factional warfare in the World. Now there is one instance where people can compete, but most of these instances are on timers so people don't get lost in them leaving little action in the real world. They even increased these timers in testing.
That shows how different NCSoft's approach is from Blizzard's. Blizzard does everything they can to take people out of the world and put them in instances while NCSoft tries to cater to both sides, but does what they can to keep people in the world fighting for their side.
This is the type of game I want to play. No offense to Blizzard because they make killer games. I just don't like WoW. Love Diablo, Starcraft, etc. I will buy their next MMO, and I will buy Diablo 3. I just wouldn't consider playing WoW again once I realized what their goal was with the game and it's PvP systems.
You just called being into Lord of the rings Gay one of the greatest freaking Fantasy novels of all time yet its not gay to play WoW with little hoppity elves and gnomes?
Sorry but your crazy if you think WoWs Esport is better than DAoc or even WAAR. i may agree with AoC and its shitty preformance though but at its core the combat is much better.
Edit: as for WAR it kicks WoWs ass in Instanced and world pvp so i dont know how its better. You like arenas or something? play Guildwars that game owns wows pvp also.
i dont play alliance in Wow cause it ya know gives you a choice whether to run around looking like a fag or not. I played DAoc back in its prime i remeber the castle vs castle mega zergs where you captured your opponents castle by bringing shere numbers and lagging them out i did play a WAR trial and it looked and ran like crap and Guildwars isnt an mmo is just a multiplayer game that looks like and mmo
Because you play Horde you call people that like Lotro Gay? you're a messed up dude. you dont happen to live in the South US or one of the middles states do you?
Also sorry but Horde has little hopity elves also.
i never said those exact words.. i never said people that play lotro were gay ( sounds like some kinda guily conscience to me) all i said was that i felt gay playing it. None of the race or classes make me feel powerful, they make me feel like a gay little hobbit bandit or some crap. At least with wow if u dont want to be a human, gay elf, faggy dwarf, or pussy halfling, u can be a tauren or undead or an orc or something
and no DAoc didnt have a better pvp system. cause it didt work. if a car came out that had some great new designs on it that didnt work would you still say it was a good car. no dummy its a piece of crap that shakes like a black girl booty when you get over 55mph and so did Daoc
It's freaking lord of the rings!!!! your not supposed to feel all powerful your power comes in the form of your group or fellowship!!!
Seriously how does a game make you feel gay? i still think your messed up. You act like being gay is a bad thing or something live in the 2000's buddy.
was gone for a while now im back... that why lotro should never have been anything more than a console game and yes being gay is a bad thing cause if u take it in the ass for long enough then you leak poo out your hole for the rest of your life and have to wear a butt plug all the time... look it up
They do not have to beat WoW. I personally have not seen them say that. Some player have, but aren't those people taunting every MMO that comes out? Just ignore the ignorant and make a judgement by yourself. Heck, even wait for official reviews to come out rather than listen people only on forums.
Aion has quite different end-game spectrum to WoW. It will appeal to different type of players and will most likely be a niche game. That does not mean that it cannot have a solid subscriber base in EU/NA - like 300-500k (and I am being generous here). It probably only needs 100-150k in EU/NA.
Two main things about Aion is that it is fresh and the core concept of gameplay that is build around PvPvE. None of us know whether it will have the pulling power to keep people playing for many years, but at least it is most exciting title coming any time soon.
LOL thats some funny shit dude. You made me spit water on my screen LOL!
Gay stuff aside I think its ok that your not this OP hero In Lotro and apart of something bigger.
We have enough games that let you do that already. I'm sure you will agree variety in the genre is good even if you disliked Lotro.
@thexrated spot on.
I just hope for entertainment until Final Fantasy XIV... or Diablo 3.. at least Dragon Age Origins. I think the end game is dynamic enough to keep people interested for quite a long time though.
If you look at the rate which they are releasing free major patches it is quite impressive. Since they release solid games like Blizzard they can build on them with content and expansion instead of fixing crap for the first year.
Yeah Diablo 3 is a must have for me. I like the idea of Dragonage but im scared it will be a console to PC port. Hope not but after the buggy PC version of Mass Effect im a bit gunshy.
LOLOL. Rarely has someone made me "lol" here on this mainstream site. What's so funny about it is he posted it on mmorpg.com-- PC central and always being banned for less. Props dude. "... look it up" LOL
Gotta stop with the 14 page quotes. My brain melting...
Wow are you retarded? I guess you didn't do it right.
I followed his advice and looked it up. By jove he's right!
"Moreover, the 'sexperts' warn that the practice also leads to fecal incontinence - loss of normal control of the sphincter muscles which leads to stool leaking from the rectum at unexpected times."
Source: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/feb/06021403.html
LMAO. Funniest thing I've read in a LONG time, lol.
I followed his advice and looked it up. By jove he's right!
"Moreover, the 'sexperts' warn that the practice also leads to fecal incontinence - loss of normal control of the sphincter muscles which leads to stool leaking from the rectum at unexpected times."
Source: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/feb/06021403.html
Haa haa. Well the guy did have his facts right but he needs to work on his delivery a bit.
We all know WoW can't be killed by an MMO now. Hell a year ago we knew that. To bring up the term 'wow-killer' anymore is dumb, unless we're talking about technology.
But a lot of us on this forum are ex-WoW players. Not ALL, but a lot of us. We won't go back to wow, because we accept that it's boring to us, we want something fresh, which is what Aion represents right now.
To be arrogant and declare that we will return to wow after a few months on Aion shows how blind you are to the passion true gamers have.
A true dedicated gamer does not stick it out with a game that does not satisfy their gaming needs anymore. WoW lost it's luster MANY months ago, subjectively speaking though, since the luster was lost for some people years ago, and for me only 6-8 months ago.
So here we are, talking about a new game with a lot of potential. Yes, we bring up the overly-compared WoW mmo, since it is the MMo that people tend to relate to (too much time played w/ it I guess).
A lot of people even state "wow is failing". I wouldn't use 'fail' as the word of choice, but it's definitly on the decline with veteran players. The problem is that it has TOO many players that it would take 2-3 years at a steady decline to see the difference in population numbers. Another problem is that at the same rate older players are leaving, newer players are only starting to play because they finally got their own computer or for other reasons they're just begining to play. So really, WoW, over the next 2 or so odd years will probably stay around the 11-13 million subscriber mark.
The biggest 'failure' that people are talking about is not the player base, not even close. It's the content. Vanilla wow was great. Tbc was ok, mostly because it was a huge shake up. But WOTLK did not provide the same kind of shake up TBC did compared with original WoW. So they copied and pasted TBC into WOTLK. A huge content failure with the veterans EVEN with TBC babies. Blizzards biggest success in WoTLK was Ulduar25 hard modes. HARD MODES, not just going through 25 man doing the bosses normally. But that was it. Even OS25 3D wasn't a big deal. Hell, even some ULD25 hard modes are not a big deal. From what I see of 3.2, Arthas is going to be a breeze if the difficulties don't increase.
So here we are, ex-mmo players of different games, some of us playing mutliple MMO's, and many coming from just WoW, all desiring a new, exciting game filled with new content, new style of play, and a new community to get involved with. Aion is a chance at that.
So if people are butt hurt that WoW is no longer getting praised with song and dance from the MMO community like it used to, get over it, we did.
How do you know im an old man? Perhaps am a young nubile asian girl?
Why is it strange for an old man to be into anime?
For god sake, a comment like that could only come from an american.... i know that from your point of view an old man should be into drinking bear and get fat in front of the tv watching football, but that is only in america, the rest of the civilized world is way beyond it now
Well im an american and used to like my beer (diabetes stopped that :( but i do like the anime art style. Hell im so old i remember the original astro boy. Never cared much for football though. Ive tried a few FTP games due to liking the art and while i dont really call Aion, anime i do like the asian influence.
i use to watch the original astro boy damn i loved that show as a kid it was so bad ass
We all know WoW can't be killed by an MMO now. Hell a year ago we knew that. To bring up the term 'wow-killer' anymore is dumb, unless we're talking about technology.
But a lot of us on this forum are ex-WoW players. Not ALL, but a lot of us. We won't go back to wow, because we accept that it's boring to us, we want something fresh, which is what Aion represents right now.
To be arrogant and declare that we will return to wow after a few months on Aion shows how blind you are to the passion true gamers have.
A true dedicated gamer does not stick it out with a game that does not satisfy their gaming needs anymore. WoW lost it's luster MANY months ago, subjectively speaking though, since the luster was lost for some people years ago, and for me only 6-8 months ago.
So here we are, talking about a new game with a lot of potential. Yes, we bring up the overly-compared WoW mmo, since it is the MMo that people tend to relate to (too much time played w/ it I guess).
A lot of people even state "wow is failing". I wouldn't use 'fail' as the word of choice, but it's definitly on the decline with veteran players. The problem is that it has TOO many players that it would take 2-3 years at a steady decline to see the difference in population numbers. Another problem is that at the same rate older players are leaving, newer players are only starting to play because they finally got their own computer or for other reasons they're just begining to play. So really, WoW, over the next 2 or so odd years will probably stay around the 11-13 million subscriber mark.
The biggest 'failure' that people are talking about is not the player base, not even close. It's the content. Vanilla wow was great. Tbc was ok, mostly because it was a huge shake up. But WOTLK did not provide the same kind of shake up TBC did compared with original WoW. So they copied and pasted TBC into WOTLK. A huge content failure with the veterans EVEN with TBC babies. Blizzards biggest success in WoTLK was Ulduar25 hard modes. HARD MODES, not just going through 25 man doing the bosses normally. But that was it. Even OS25 3D wasn't a big deal. Hell, even some ULD25 hard modes are not a big deal. From what I see of 3.2, Arthas is going to be a breeze if the difficulties don't increase.
So here we are, ex-mmo players of different games, some of us playing mutliple MMO's, and many coming from just WoW, all desiring a new, exciting game filled with new content, new style of play, and a new community to get involved with. Aion is a chance at that.
So if people are butt hurt that WoW is no longer getting praised with song and dance from the MMO community like it used to, get over it, we did.
People aren't butt hurt over others wanting to play another game, they are just tired of everyone for years constantly trashing WoW/Blizzard. It's really sad people have to trash another game, just to justify playing a new one.
Perhaps when others stop bashing WoW every chance they get, you won't see people coming around to defend the game?
We all know all these years later people are finally burnt out on WoW, why can't you all just move to another game without bashing WoW?
I played WAR, bought a CE and everything, the game was fun for what it was, i stop playing it a month later. I don't bash the game into the ground to justify going to another game or back to WoW.
You don't go into another games forum expecting most people to be encouraging another. In fact, if there wasn't any wow or war or any other MMO bashing, I wouldn't play the game. Albeit there's a point where passion can turn into OCD over a certain game(most people call them fan boys).
The point is, if you hate Aion, or don't plan on playing it, don't start the hate on others for listing reasons why Aion will be better then their previous mmo. Because that's what a 'wow bash' basically is.
Also, Aion fans shouldn't be putting the hate-on for wow lovers that want to stick their foot in the Aion doorway lol (although they are KIND OF asking for it).
Zorndorf, let me ask you something, do you have a right to bash editors of the website? Actually, it's quite unprofessional behavior from you. Their opinion doesn't have to match with your one. Good/bad is a point of view and if you love wow and hate other games accusing them of being copycats or something that doesn't mean everyone else should do the same.
By saying that Blizzard is getting rid of Lake Wintergrasp, OP most likely wants to say that Blizzard put the limits 120 v 120. What do you mean by telling that "LW is for certain the MOST and VASTLY played PVP zone in any MMORPG?" Are you serious? Have you seen sieges of Lineage 2 in Korea where ~500-700 players fight for castles. Let's look at eve. Lots LOTS of ships. Not the set number of 240.
By the way. Tell me, how patch 3.2 is going to alter the game's PVP system. Is it going to revive world PvP? Is it going to give the meaning for pointless battleground and arena fights?
And finally I'm not a AION fanboy. To be honest, I think it will flop in US due to poor management. That thing killed L2 in the west too.
I love the fact that you mentioned Eve Online. 500-700 HA try again try 2000-3000+++ So many that it crashes the node. Most battles are small skirmishes/hit and run 5v5 10v10 30v30. But when you add 500 diffrent fights of 30v30 etc.. it adds up. Once or twice a month the average player who isnt a carebare(eve term for non pvp players) will see a really nasty fight off a couple hundred ships on each side. And atleast a couple times a year you will see fight of thousands of ship on each side. Eve is the KING OF THE SANDBOX. Everygame should be sandbox. Not this of sorry buddy im already on this server not that one. 300000 paying suscribers all on the same server all fighting(except gay carebares)for supremecy. Corporation(guilds in eve are companies) get so big that they have sub guilds for new players/to prevent corporate spies. Get this one if you play enough make enough ingame money you can pay for the game with it.
PS. If you think most ppl use ingame money to pay the game i've checked the numbers and the 300000 counts only the paying suscribers not the guy who pay with ingame money everymonth. Which isnt an easy task. Real time training Booyah
Of course,
What you wrote Sir is about the exact synthesis of what makes Blizzard having 60% of the marketshare with western subs based MMO's (not even talking about the inflated almost free to play internet café numbers on that strange planet called China).
The so called WOW competitors are making it Blizzard SOOOOO easy to maintain momentum.
It is as if these guys are PAID by Blizzard to push the duds over to the players one by one.
And in fact it gets ... worse and worse.
Instead of opening up NEW MMO games, they make exact copies of the perfect game that is already being made for >5 years.
Every single person that plays WOW KNOWS what the best game is out there.
The rest is peanuts. We are talking of 0.1 to 1.3% of WOW markets.
And still people (like the OP) think they could be taken seriously.
Comon guys: stop fooling yourlselves: YOU ALL play WOW and stop being frustrated by it.
It is the best you can get. Period.
Or ... is there somebody else hiding in the closet BETTER and with MORE money than Blizzard. Of course not.
WOW Maybe the best thing out there but it shouldnt be. It sucks other games have done the same thing as WOW but better in one aspect or another. The WOW killer has yet to come because no one has taken WOW and made every part of it way better. WOW is a jack of all trades. Hence the only game that can KILL THE BITCH is a better JACK OF ALL TRADES. The WOW KILLER will have better Esport/World PVP/PVE/PVPVE/ETC..... I played wow for all of 6 months maxed out 2 character and was so bored just because i couldnt find anything better. What i dont understand is why this is still being mentioned. He said he was bored of WOW. Aion may not be the perma solution its just his next stop till something better comes along hopefully.
WOW is CRACK with great advertising. Just like IPOD its not the best in any aspect. Many other MP3 players have better sound quality/headphones/batery life etc... Just no one has put the whole package together. When it happens IPOD AND WOW WILL DIE FASTER THAN IT IS NOW.
Honestly im not shocked by the amount of intrest/hype Aion has generated new MMO's always do, I even bought into myself and pre-ordered the game and have since played in two closed beta events.
But honestly I wasnt impressed, despite the amount of polish the game has it just felt so very generic and boring. Now thats not to say its a bad game but it really brings nothing new to the table...it reminded me of a blend of world of warcraft and the perfect world (a F2P asian mmo with wings/flying combat).
World design: Overall very nice, some great set pieces but going from the world map the "world" is very small only 6 zones (total) per faction.
NPC design: This was really off putting for me, no matter were I was I ended up fighting some little cute animal...slaughtering apprently vicous hamsters for 2 hours was a drag.
Character creation: Its great, offers loads of customisation. But they do all have a very manga style look about them.
Gameplay: Tried and true, with a few combo chains. Good but not great.
Flying: Fun when its allowed, gliding can be effective if you master it.
1) Myth: Our savior the WoW-Killer will come.
Unless it's a technology, WoW can't be killed guys. Get over it. It's like counter-strike, it just won't go the fuck away. But eventually the population dwindles.
2) Myth: Aion is polished.
Aion is new, even WoW wasn't polished when it came out. And stop using the term 'polished' everytime you feel it's necessary, chances are it's not.
You guys just don't get it. Open your mind ... ask yourself "Why is every game compared to Wow?" It is THE 800 pound gorilla of MMO gaming. No matter what the reason for this is ... it is unrefutale.
So stop saying "WoW' sucks!!!
Because you would not and could not have a credible and valid opinion of "WoW' unless at one time you thought "WoW" was enjoyable enough play long enough to be able form a credible assement of the game.
You lose all your credibility when you scream "WoW sucks"! followed by "I played it for three years" do that, not to mention being a hypocrit.
Be honest with yourself (if no one else) and simply state the truth which prolly goes something like this:
"I played WoW and enjoyed it enough to take a character to 60+ but I'm burnt out now sooo... ; or I don't like the direction it's goinig: or I'm just ready for something new."
Screaming "WoW Sucks" after you played it to so long ... kinda makes you ... well ... unbelievable.
Think about it.
Your first myth will hopefully remain one. The gender does not need another WoW giant, but instead more diversified products. If another giant emerges, so will the army of copycats. End result, it will take us a considerable amount of years before people start producing something somewhat diversified.
As for the second, it's not a Myth. The strongest selling point for Aion at this point is not "innovation" or next-gen" or whatever the hype marketing machine was spewing, but stability and performance. You can see from the post on these forums and from the people experiencing the beta, that this is indeed the truth. Many find it boring, the looks too anime, PvP forced etc (various faults), but noone is complaining about performance, even when a considerable crowd is present on the screen.
Chances are it isnt polished? Does this mean you havnt played the game and if not where may i ask to you get your opinions? Well ive played in three betas now and if polished means that it runs smooth and is virtually bug free, then yes, the game is poished.
I'm a long time WoW player and an active endgame raider. This past six months my eyes have started to wander a bit and now with the latest content patch I've come to the point where I am actively looking for a new game so headlines like this grab my interest.
WoW doesn't suck, it's very successful. However 3 years is a lot of time to play a game and in the end you grow jaded, it's harder and harder for the game to surprise you and in the end you start hoping there's something new out there. It doesn't even necessarily have to be that much better, just a little bit different in those essential points that have started to annoy you more and more.
However it's hard to get a sense of what Aion is really offering when it comes to (endgame) PvE. Would you say there's any better alternatives out there?
Truth is, unless someone has played the game with the 1.5 patch installed we just dont know. It is a PVP game, they call it PVPVE but its basically a PVP game. That said, there is supposed to be a lot of PVE content added with this patch.
Like Queen Elisabeth I. always uses to say in such cases "How interesting for you." ;)
Really. Never liked WOW, don't like Aion much so far either. *shrug*
The Aion advocates amuse me in this thread. When you get down to it, it is just another asian grinder. They tried to innovate and offer more for the western audience, but in the end you just can't hide the fact of what it is.
I hope many of you get lots of enjoyment from this game, but in the end you can bet many of you will end up criticizing it on this board as it really does not offer anything different in the end. Just another fantasy themed MMO with the usual levels and classes nonsense.
Wow sucks...I guess I'll log in a bit more...god I hate WoW ooo look the new expansion collectors edition..Blizzard suxorz!!!! woot I scored tickets to Blizzcon!
I had a girlfriend like that once.....could not stand her but I always woke up in her bed.
Thank you OP & all the posters, It was a great read from two extremes.
I just don't understand why some people can't take one persons opinion at face value and wish him well on his future journeys.
P.S: See you in game OP.
From my beta time in Aion, I would say that Aion just hasn't got what it takes to contend. It will very quickly become a dead parrot.
I will give it 10/10 for boredom. :p
Maybe you should travel to asia to see how many subs Aion has taken from WoW only after a year of release :)))
3.5+ million and counting, not bad for a little Korean game.
Are blizzard worried? you bet they are.
Was Aion free to play in Asia or was there a subscription, If so do you know how much they were paying?
I'm right there with you, Robert! I've been playing WoW since closed beta in 2004 (when Warriors could use Charge in combat!), and it's been a hard MMO to replace. However, with the directions that WoW has gone, and my own personal interest in the game waning, I was really looking for something fresh and new, that was also a worthy successor. Aion is definitely that game.
I've been trying out the betas, and I've managed to avoid the temptation to level multiple alts in order to focus on one character and see the higher end content to see if the game was worth sticking with. It is, and I cannot wait for release.
LOL for all you fan boys I'll shout it in plain english:
AION is NOT the WoW Killer .... Nexxxxt
It's ok, you don't understand the OP because you're not yet bored from the game to the point where you don't want to even see the login screen, let alone play the game. When you reach that point, there is no turning back.
Thank you Xasapis. I couldn't have said it better myself.
Me and most of my guild will NOT be going back to WoW. I'll bet the ranch on that...lol. Most of us have "given" our accounts away for a nice sum of cash. We're taking the summer off and ready for Aion on Sept 20.
Heres your cookie.
*shows the ncsoft fanboi the way to HIS forum*
Calling people NCSoft fanbois is lame... but also a compliment to the company so the jokes on you really. You're saying a company is so good that it has such a big and loyal following. NCSoft thanks you.
But yeah WoW is getting old, Aion is newer and has gotten a lot of positive feedback... and a lot of the negative feedback has just been ignorance. Leaving WoW for Aion might be a good choice.. in a couple of year Aion could really be exciting and epic. I guess we will see.
personally i think he is a payed? fanboi because he hails to evrey single piece of crap that the ncsoft company is spitting out:
from aion in evrey facet over gameguard and blah-blah everything this company produces is like sliced bread.
such biased one sided stuff can only be continually pushed forward to nearly every forum by someone who is a FANBOI and nothing else.
My prediction is Aion will glide ( pun intended ) into 2nd place right underneath WoW. It's not going to tackle its subscription numbers. It will however remain strong long after WoW deminishes into the west. WoW did very very VERY well but I'm afraid it's lived long past it's usefulness as an introductory MMO. By that I mean it brought A LOT of new fans into the MMO genre and kept a lot of veteran MMO players happy for many years. EverQuest accomplished the same task back in 1999 and is still alive to this day, just with smaller numbers.
If Aion accumulates more than 2 million subscribers by the end of the first year, than WoW could very well see it's end coming sooner than we expected.
It was a paid hourly model. Dont remember the cost but there is a video review of aion on youtube that explained the chinese cost structure, it essentially cost him $9 for the first month he played given the amount of time he played the chinese release the first month.
The turnover section made me smile quite a bit...I think in the end (and what the realize now with revamping old content), is that they had plenty of wasted opportunity, but rushed to appease the top 5%. Even though now they "player-friendly" the hell out of everything (hence kinda of shunning the top 5%), the mix appeasement has created a mish-mash player base, most of which are content but not "eager to login" every night. Blizzard is attempting to make everyone happy and in the process is bringing about alot of mixed feelings (and veteran quitters, like myself).
Aion is a good game, I don't think its better than WoW (personally), but I can see why people are excited for something new - just as I am for the coming FFXIV. I just feel sorry for those still playing WoW that are only moderately happy or raiding for the sake of keeping their raid slot...tis a shame with the cache of new games coming about....
personally i think he is a payed? fanboi because he hails to evrey single piece of crap that the ncsoft company is spitting out:
from aion in evrey facet over gameguard and blah-blah everything this company produces is like sliced bread.
such biased one sided stuff can only be continually pushed forward to nearly every forum by someone who is a FANBOI and nothing else.
I played GW for a short time and will be entering my third Aion beta shortly. As for the GG scare, your right, i dont see spys everywhere be it in GG or Securom which started all the paranoia. Guess im a fanboi could you tell me where to pick up my check?
Edit: I forgot to mention, WOW sucks, it truyly does.