Aion Classic - The Death of An Era

[Mijuzdetia]

Hello everyone,

 

I thought I'd post this up since its been a while that I've written anything on the forums.  I wanted to bring up and mention how a certain pattern always seems to be repeated by the Aion management team for NA. If you all remember, on retail NA it started out progressively with  subscription, later a free 2  play model and finally a free 2 play  (true) as they called it and a full p2win schedule. NCSoft always thought it is the smart choice for the NA market to progress into the same degenerative state of P2WIN where they are left with less than 200-300 active players.

Fast forward to Aion Classic.  It started out great with a Level 50 cap and full availability of all in-game content and drops, manastones, enchantment stones and other goods being only available in the game. Game stayed subscription based P2P model.  Later they started introducing questionable events with sellable candies on the merchant NPC stores allowing players that paid them $$$ on top of the sub in order to  get ahead in kinah, therefore gearing quicker than other players.  Keep in mind NCSoft did this, not the players. They knowingly full well this pattern was simply going to repeat what they were doing in the past, chose the same steps in a desperate attempt to attack your wallet, and not to grow the community. They started to then slowly move away from the P2P model and simply adopt more monetary models into their money making machine they call Aion. They then moved on to remove all drop rates open world as an "anti-botting" mechanism, Aha! there it is, another lie and excuse from NCSoft to once again shift the paradigm towards more p2win and ultimately, attack your wallet once more.  NCSoft knew full well botting cannot be stopped, as botters will use any means to obtain kinah in order to sell it for $$$. To make things worse, NCSoft removed all drop rates open world, but left an area the UDAS area all mobs there still dropping kinah. In essence they simply allowed bots to have a designated area while robbing their own player base of being capable to farm open world for materials, gold items, kinah, manastones etc.  NCSoft once again took the steps to ensure bots succeed, and they have now new means to take your money.  Boom, here come the events.  Buy enchantment  stones and manastone bundles straight on the QUNA shop and other goods. Instead of putting in the work and leaving the game model with all needed materials, enchantment stones and manastones be available in the game, NCSoft once more shifted that paradigm from a  Pay2Play model to a  Pay2Play2Win2GetAhead model. Further they incentivized this by adding that if your gear is +15 you get godstone effect timer reduction, thus incentivizing the individual to want to spend more and more and more to want to +15 their gear.  This is rulebook number one on how to run an mmorpg into the ground and how to lose all your credibility and sustainability as a company as well as most of your subscriptions.  Wrong decision after wrong decision. Aion Classic had immense potential at the beginning, but once again, ruined by the same mentality that ruined Retail.   Why this happens  you may ask?  Is it the cultural differences between South Korean business mentality and North American business mentality? Maybe. Or could it be incompetence on management on all levels? Maybe.  Could it be Korean devs and management not understanding how the North American market works and operates? Most likely. What do you think? I look forward to players feedback as well as an analysis of what I wrote here.  Thanks everyone!

[2s65F09]

NCwest did indeed kill Classic.

If anyone is interested in playing a much livelier, better version, play GF/EU Aion Classic.

[Matsukamy-KT]

Quote

NCSoft once more shifted that paradigm from a  Pay2Play model to a  Pay2Play2Win2GetAhead model. Further they incentivized this by adding that if your gear is +15 you get godstone effect timer reduction, thus incentivizing the individual to want to spend more and more and more to want to +15 their gear.  This is rulebook number one on how to run an mmorpg into the ground and how to lose all your credibility and sustainability as a company as well as most of your subscriptions.  Wrong decision after wrong decision. Aion Classic had immense potential at the beginning, but once again, ruined by the same mentality that ruined Retail.   Why this happens  you may ask?  Is it the cultural differences between South Korean business mentality and North American business mentality? Maybe

All of that comes from Korea, not from NC west. Korea is far more p2w, always have been, and always will be, and it is how Koreans like their games.

It is really not about difference in business mentality. Now in Korea, is easy to take money from the players for maintenance and development because there is actuall an active playerbase, but here is not the case. Not only the game has no players, but also everyone wants a 100% free game where you can have everything by simply playing the game a few hours a day. Obviously this is not possible. Right now a good chunk of the playerbase is from south america, and you know, currencies on south america are not exactly strong, so they cant really support the game. The only way to do so is with whales, a few dudes who spend a lot of money in the game.

Dont get me wrong. While I do spend a little money on the game, if every player that there is right now spend as little as i do, the game would be closed already.