Israphel is dying - are there any ways to save it?

[Blademastaz]

based on this response from NCwest and not having the technical capacity to even find their own mob values in their system I do not see a merge ever coming, or even transfers, due to Aion Korea never implementing those features.

[Adla]

On 10/29/2021 at 10:04 PM, Zarbi said:

Elyon has got the same big flaw as Aion, you can't opt out of world PvP, so ganking everywhere, which means  it  will never have a broad player base.

OWPvP was the draw to Aion, and still is for almost all players here today; the reason many people came back to this game in its classic version was for its classic content, which was OWPvP.

 

The playerbase was broad in original Aion up until they added the fast track server, which was the first mark of a declining player base in larger terms.

[Arhangelos]

6 hours ago, Adla said:

OWPvP was the draw to Aion, and still is for almost all players here today; the reason many people came back to this game in its classic version was for its classic content, which was OWPvP.

The playerbase was broad in original Aion up until they added the fast track server, which was the first mark of a declining player base in larger terms.

Nope, people came for the nostalgia, old maps, professions etc and the dream to re-live the good old days forgetting how obnoxious those patches could be and how outdated old Aion can be in today's terms.

In original Aion I saw more people quit the game because of twinks ganging them than because they couldn't open-world pvp because that was never a issue in end game. The only thing FTS did was to fix the twinking problem. The vast majority of pvpers want to get to end game content and get maxed gear, those who didn't bother to get fast to end game never cared for pvp (unless of course they were the twinks). Nobody wants to pvp in white/green gear they got from drops. You either enjoy pvp while geared or you get ganged while you try to level.

Most players are somewhere in between, not too hardcore pvpers but not pve-only players either.

Aion's original appeal was the fact it was the first ever game to have such high quality of graphics and customization. There were even contests for making unique chars and people would post screenshots of their chars in the old days, the art portion of forums was pretty alive, nobody does that anymore because all other games have good or better graphics now so Aion lost this part.

Lineage II had an even more open world pvp... you could kill anyone with or without a war against their clan (legion). When people started ganging others then the normal players quit it. You wouldn't put Lineage II against Aion though because of open world pvp ability.

~~

Even WoW that is pretty alive has pve-only servers and those are full too! If Siel was normal and Israphel was pve only and it was like this from the beginning, trust me, IS might have been even more alive than Siel as most people care to do the instances and pve content.

[Adla]

18 minutes ago, Arhangelos said:

Nope, people came for the nostalgia, old maps, professions etc and the dream to re-live the good old days forgetting how obnoxious those patches could be and how outdated old Aion can be in today's terms.

In original Aion I saw more people quit the game because of twinks ganging them than because they couldn't open-world pvp because that was never a issue in end game. The only thing FTS did was to fix the twinking problem. The vast majority of pvpers want to get to end game content and get maxed gear, those who didn't bother to get fast to end game never cared for pvp (unless of course they were the twinks). Nobody wants to pvp in white/green gear they got from drops. You either enjoy pvp while geared or you get ganged while you try to level.

Most players are somewhere in between, not too hardcore pvpers but not pve-only players either.

Aion's original appeal was the fact it was the first ever game to have such high quality of graphics and customization. There were even contests for making unique chars and people would post screenshots of their chars in the old days, the art portion of forums was pretty alive, nobody does that anymore because all other games have good or better graphics now so Aion lost this part.

Lineage II had an even more open world pvp... you could kill anyone with or without a war against their clan (legion). When people started ganging others then the normal players quit it. You wouldn't put Lineage II against Aion though because of open world pvp ability.

~~

Even WoW that is pretty alive has pve-only servers and those are full too! If Siel was normal and Israphel was pve only and it was like this from the beginning, trust me, IS might have been even more alive than Siel as most people care to do the instances and pve content.

Honestly, it was this line of thinking that caused Aion to begin to die in the first place, IMO. The handful of players who cried the loudest wrought the destruction of one of the core components that made Aion what it was, and this is coming from someone who was a Beta player. Ya, the graphics were cool, but that was one of many selling points to the game. Learning you could rift, and you always had to look over your shoulders, was something the predominance of the people I knew loved about Aion. As always with online games, the group who cried the loudest, regardless of their size, were the ones who got catered to, that's why most of the community made fun of pve carebears (I'm not trying to do that here by using that terminology, but rather reminding people that's what it was).

The more Aion catered to that crowd, the worse things got from that point on. I remember it very clearly, but at this point that's just two perspectives and memories clashing. Me, my friends, and many that I associate with from then and now all came back for that experience. I don't think anyone came back to relive the glory of Aion's graphics... the nostalgia of Aion was everything I've mentioned in this post, and I think most people would be hard pressed to deny that.

What we do see though is the remnant of a crowd that is responsible, or was drawn in afterward, for the game turning into what it did on Retail at the time, and wondering why they don't like it now... 

 

[Squid]

8 hours ago, Adla said:

OWPvP was the draw to Aion, and still is for almost all players here today.

That is why the game has what 800 players across 2 servers, That is being generous as well(according to siege numbers).

Do not say it is because of the cash shop since BDO has a cash shop 600x worse than this cash shop and it is still populated AF in NA. 

Quote

Honestly, it was this line of thinking that caused Aion to begin to die in the first place, IMO. The handful of players who cried the loudest wrought the destruction of one of the core components that made Aion what it was, and this is coming from someone who was a Beta player.

Aion died because the game is crap compared to other polished MMORPG's that offer better PvP environments and have developers that ban cheaters and so on. However that does not change the fact that people who still come to the forums and people who still play understand that the MMORPG Aion is the game for them.

Even now when i play other MMORPG's and i have a decent PvP fight it makes me think of the awesome OW PvP fights i had in 2.X>4.X. Stopping/ruining peoples EB runs, Camping IS/besh entrance, Scrapping over world bosses like omega and so on. 

It is ok to enjoy something inferior but if you ask everyone who played classic what was the worst part of Aion classic for you and what level did you get to i can put money on it that there are more players who quit at level 30-40 due to twinks killing them than there are current players playing Aion classic right now. That does not mean your view is wrong i love open world as well and IMO the reason i quit aion classic is because everyone is friends with everyone and it is like you have to ask to attack someone or else you get stuck in a 6v1 situation when it should of been a 6v6 situation because your allies do not want to fight their friends. This killed the game for me since OW PvP is the reason i enjoyed Aion so much.

[19s19C5EB]

15 hours ago, Arhangelos said:

Nope, people came for the nostalgia, old maps, professions etc and the dream to re-live the good old days forgetting how obnoxious those patches could be and how outdated old Aion can be in today's terms.

In original Aion I saw more people quit the game because of twinks ganging them than because they couldn't open-world pvp because that was never a issue in end game. The only thing FTS did was to fix the twinking problem. The vast majority of pvpers want to get to end game content and get maxed gear, those who didn't bother to get fast to end game never cared for pvp (unless of course they were the twinks). Nobody wants to pvp in white/green gear they got from drops. You either enjoy pvp while geared or you get ganged while you try to level.

Most players are somewhere in between, not too hardcore pvpers but not pve-only players either.

Aion's original appeal was the fact it was the first ever game to have such high quality of graphics and customization. There were even contests for making unique chars and people would post screenshots of their chars in the old days, the art portion of forums was pretty alive, nobody does that anymore because all other games have good or better graphics now so Aion lost this part.

Lineage II had an even more open world pvp... you could kill anyone with or without a war against their clan (legion). When people started ganging others then the normal players quit it. You wouldn't put Lineage II against Aion though because of open world pvp ability.

~~

Even WoW that is pretty alive has pve-only servers and those are full too! If Siel was normal and Israphel was pve only and it was like this from the beginning, trust me, IS might have been even more alive than Siel as most people care to do the instances and pve content.

No. Without the OW PvP, Aion is a garbage game not worth any consideration.

OW PvP is the only thing Aion has going for it, because no other MMO gives players such strong incentives to do OW PvP. In other games it is optional and typically not worth doing. In Aion, you cannot opt out of it, which forces you to confront it, learn, grow, and become a better player because of it.

The only other MMOs that have/had OW PvP as good as Aion are DAoC and L2.

[Stormwing]

@19s19C5EB:
Assuming you know every MMO there is and its OW. 2moons used to have decent OW as well.

[Arhangelos]

@Adla @HealingSquid-KT @19s19C5EB

Well it looks we all made valid points and also we all see it on our perspective and speak of the people we played with. Open world pvp and pvp itself are never bad to have obviously but Aion's goal was always that predominantly and some time shoved in our faces when we didn't want it.

Aion lost its "looks" appeal because now you can play pretty much every game with far better graphics.
It lost its appeal of being an actual mmorpg with a little bit of more freedom (not full sandbox but not too strict like WoW was) becase the old patches were empty of quests and dungeons but over the years they did bring more of that and more content than aimless grinding to reach end game. But then they took content away.
It lost is RPG part, because of later changes (I am talking about original aion's route) that they removed the side things that made Aion fun.

I am still more than sure that if there was a pve only server it would defo be more crowded because people that would be there would enjoy the fact they do pve and do instances etc and do not care for paragons, or extra niche BCM OP items or fearing to go out of town because they are not perma geared. The person that plays a pve-only server is easier to please and they do not see any big competition, only enjoyment of the game's content.

If the game wanted, it could have been the next Sims Online if they didn't destroy or limit housing, skins, professions, role playing etc.

They tackled their own success by simplifying everything and simply giving one goal: get geared to do pvp.

[Adla]

2 hours ago, Arhangelos said:

@Adla @HealingSquid-KT @19s19C5EB

 

I am still more than sure that if there was a pve only server it would defo be more crowded because people that would be there would enjoy the fact they do pve and do instances etc and do not care for paragons, or extra niche BCM OP items or fearing to go out of town because they are not perma geared. The person that plays a pve-only server is easier to please and they do not see any big competition, only enjoyment of the game's content.

 

People would get so bored so quickly with Aion if this was the case... Aion's PvE was never that engaging, and questing is a drag (and this comes from someone who loves questing in ESO and FF14).

 

Whether people playing will admit it or not, they all loved the fear of being run over or ganked by someone. They may not have enjoyed the actual process of it, but the head turning anxiety of never knowing, then getting away with what you were doing, was rewarding. Straight pve in this game would put people to sleep.

15 hours ago, HealingSquid-KT said:

That is why the game has what 800 players across 2 servers, That is being generous as well(according to siege numbers).

Do not say it is because of the cash shop since BDO has a cash shop 600x worse than this cash shop and it is still populated AF in NA. 

 

No, the reason the population is so low is because of Ncsoft themselves, how they have mishandled (yet again) Aion, and the abuse of exploits and the same poor management and direction that drove people away from retail in the first place.

Lacking content is another thing, but that meant Dredge, which is run constantly (my team gets pops an hour after it opens?) better OWPvP, which is still quiet due to population but is out there, and hopefully cooler events, to which there were none unfortunately. There's a number of PvE things to do, but they get stale fast, and always have.

Unless of course they add a PvE dungeon that gives pvp benefits... like EB. The correlation to everything that has related to pvp was always the most ran content too... This just stacks up to what I was pointing out.

[Squid]

9 hours ago, Adla said:

No, the reason the population is so low is because of Ncsoft themselves, how they have mishandled (yet again) Aion, and the abuse of exploits and the same poor management and direction that drove people away from retail in the first place.

No people who are here are the true Aion fans. https://steamcharts.com/app/346110 This game goes though more problems than Aion has ever faced and it has been mismanaged since release. They legitimately told the community that they will keep patching creatures in broken because it was faster to code.

You can be a scumbag developer/publisher and still have players if people love the game but the reality is very few people in the MMORPG genre like Aion. The numbers do not lie. You can not blame the cash shop because BDO has a worse cash shop and it does very well compared to Aion. You can not blame hackers/cheaters because Ark does better than Aion and it has a community dedicated to DDos servers so you can not even play the game and the company does nothing about them. Beyond that it is filled with aimbotters everywhere you go. Players have gotten to the point where the only way you can build on official is if you pay monthly protection fees for all your allies or you will be wiped by cheaters. 

All in all blaming NCsoft is just being in denial of the facts and the fact is the MMORPG community dislike Aion and its open world gank fest systems. This does not mean that you and i can not enjoy the game still it simply means that the game will never have a large cult following like PvE games.

As for retail well i mean there is no point talking about that can of worms because this is the classic forums :D.

[Arhangelos]

17 hours ago, Adla said:

People would get so bored so quickly with Aion if this was the case... Aion's PvE was never that engaging, and questing is a drag (and this comes from someone who loves questing in ESO and FF14).

Of course because current Aion is designed with pvp in the center. It would have had to be so much richer in pve content in order for it to work by itself. I know a lot of people who currently avoid doing anything pvp oriented because it became impossible to beat the whales yet they still play a game that has pvp in the middle and avoid doing pvp, imagine having a game designed for more pve friendliness, not run PF for the last 2 years 1000x times to get one drop which will become obsolete in next mega patch so you have to run another 1000x PF for the next item.

Imagine people were visiting your house to water your plants! This is how much a pve oriented content can bring more people.

[Bonehunter]

Topic: "Israphel is dying - are there any ways to save it?"

Would have had......

can nobody bring any suggestions how to save it?
I read so many posts like what, when, why.
But please make active suggestions here to save the server.

Such as :
You can temporarily close the Siel server to create new characters only on IS.
And in addition, each created character once when reaching from level 48 ~ 49 as a reward the complete Battle Pass
give (once as I said).
If that doesn't convince the players then you can still think about a merge .. (which would be a shame).
Propose things that NC West can change to change fate.
Constructive criticism is good. Suggestions for changes are better for both parties!

live long and in peace

[Squid]

9 minutes ago, 66sB2F50 said:

Topic: "Israphel is dying - are there any ways to save it?"

Would have had......

can nobody bring any suggestions how to save it?
I read so many posts like what, when, why.
But please make active suggestions here to save the server.

Such as :
You can temporarily close the Siel server to create new characters only on IS.
And in addition, each created character once when reaching from level 48 ~ 49 as a reward the complete Battle Pass
give (once as I said).
If that doesn't convince the players then you can still think about a merge .. (which would be a shame).
Propose things that NC West can change to change fate.
Constructive criticism is good. Suggestions for changes are better for both parties!

live long and in peace

Israphel is dead because Aion classic is dead in our region, We only ever had the population for 1 server after day 1. Forcing someone who wants to pick up classic now on to a dead server is just cruel to those players.

The only fix is to merge the server so players get to at-least play on a server with a bit of a playerbase.

[Bonehunter]

33 minutes ago, HealingSquid-KT said:

The only fix is to merge the server so players get to at-least play on a server with a bit of a playerbase.

Well, with a merge, that's such a thing ...
I've already done several merges at retail ...
I know the problem behind it and that may be something for one or the other .... for me it is so much less fun if I can't take my name with me, especially if I know that my in-game name is taken on the server Siel.
Which is the case with mine.
Especially because I also created another character with the same name on Siel. Now should I decide which one to rename? or even delete?
Do you want to keep players or scare away many more?

[Stormwing]

@66sB2F50:
So you would rather have a server die entirely (aka not being able to play there at all) than deciding which of your characters keeps a name?

[Adla]

Well, the survey for our interest in a merge went out just moments ago. I'd recommend selecting "yes"

[Bonehunter]

@StormwingNo, I would appreciate it if those who do not pay their subscription lose theirs for it.

Why should I lose my character name who continues to pay the monthly fee?

@Adla Nice that you could decide.

Unfortunately I am not as sure as you are.

Will the servers then be put together to form a new one or will only the characters from Israphel be transferred to Siel?

[Adla]

6 minutes ago, 66sB2F50 said:

@StormwingNo, I would appreciate it if those who do not pay their subscription lose theirs for it.

Why should I lose my character name who continues to pay the monthly fee?

@Adla Nice that you could decide.

Unfortunately I am not as sure as you are.

Will the servers then be put together to form a new one or will only the characters from Israphel be transferred to Siel?

Typically one has merged into another in the past, creating servers like "New Siel" or "New Israphel", iirc.

[Bonehunter]

24 minutes ago, Adla said:

Typically one has merged into another in the past, creating servers like "New Siel" or "New Israphel", iirc.

if it were like that, gladly
But why wasn't it explained how NC West imagines it to be before the survey?

don`t be  surprised, I was also able to experience some of the merges in Europe ...
they weren't as nice "easy as one two three"....like you explain

 

[Adla]

7 minutes ago, 66sB2F50 said:

if it were like that, gladly
But why wasn't it explained how NC West imagines it to be before the survey?

don`t be  surprised, I was also able to experience some of the merges in Europe ...
they weren't as nice "easy as one two three"....like you explain

 

Well, I wouldn't say they were easy on NA, but I've been through almost all of them save the most recent. Otherwise I've experienced several.

There were imbalance issues with the first few, but population was much much higher then as well.
Names were taken, people were upset about that..
Some economies got pretty messed up, iirc... some got better too.

All in all, there wasn't a huge amount of issues, outside of faction balance.

[Bonehunter]

4 minutes ago, Adla said:

All in all, there wasn't a huge amount of issues, outside of faction balance.

Yes I agree with you.
And I have to admit, I totally forgot about this survey in the rush because I was so surprised ...
NC West makes it so easy (Hats off, I like it)

[Bonehunter]

59 minutes ago, 66sB2F50 said:

Unfortunately I am not as sure as you are.

Update: 

Well I decided to click  yes for you!

(it wouldn't matter to me so far) I would also play with only 5 Asmos players against 5 Elys on Israphel.

[Zarbi]

Back in Sep I would have said vote No, but since the first 90day sub expired, and they released Aion 8.0 just two weeks before Classic 1.5, which drew a lot of people back to retail, and lost a lot of people who were not prepared to wait so long for 1.5 to come out, I feel things have changed on IS, general world/abyss questing is still easier than Siel.

Dredge on the other hand, one of the key things in Aion Classic 1.5, is not going so well from the Elyos side.

We keep getting the same few high geared Asmo groups, mostly from Ate Ur AP, over and over every session, hardly any Asmo QE or other random PUGs to mix things up.

So now there are way more officer ranked Asmos than Elyos on IS, even though the Elyos population outnumbers them.

Daylight savings has lost a lot of people on IS for the 6:00 UTC session,  yesterday their was a total of 54 L46-L50 Elyos online.

On Siel there is much more Dredge variety, you get groups advertising right up to the last minutes of sessions.

 

 

[Meatloaf]

On 11/8/2021 at 6:04 PM, Arhangelos said:

Nope, people came for the nostalgia, old maps, professions etc and the dream to re-live the good old days forgetting how obnoxious those patches could be and how outdated old Aion can be in today's terms.

In original Aion I saw more people quit the game because of twinks ganging them than because they couldn't open-world pvp because that was never a issue in end game. The only thing FTS did was to fix the twinking problem. The vast majority of pvpers want to get to end game content and get maxed gear, those who didn't bother to get fast to end game never cared for pvp (unless of course they were the twinks). Nobody wants to pvp in white/green gear they got from drops. You either enjoy pvp while geared or you get ganged while you try to level.

Most players are somewhere in between, not too hardcore pvpers but not pve-only players either.

Aion's original appeal was the fact it was the first ever game to have such high quality of graphics and customization. There were even contests for making unique chars and people would post screenshots of their chars in the old days, the art portion of forums was pretty alive, nobody does that anymore because all other games have good or better graphics now so Aion lost this part.

Lineage II had an even more open world pvp... you could kill anyone with or without a war against their clan (legion). When people started ganging others then the normal players quit it. You wouldn't put Lineage II against Aion though because of open world pvp ability.

~~

Even WoW that is pretty alive has pve-only servers and those are full too! If Siel was normal and Israphel was pve only and it was like this from the beginning, trust me, IS might have been even more alive than Siel as most people care to do the instances and pve content.

I just came back for the group pvp. Dredge + Fort sieges.  Abyss pvp but also the PVP on leveling maps made it exciting! 

[Bonehunter]

2 hours ago, Meatloaf said:

Abyss pvp but also the PVP on leveling maps made it exciting! 

it is exactly like that.
  everything that was once beautiful in Aion can be found here in this sentence