NCsoft Q3 2009 Results - Aion looks to do well...

[UnSub]

You can see it here.

Aion responsible for 52% of NCsoft's overall sales revenue last quarter. Suggests that 970k Aion boxes were sold in NA and EU.

[gryeyes]

States explicitely and even breaks it down in NA/EU (500k in NA and 470k in EU). Not sure if that means sales to retailers or sold to consumers. Aion will have worse retention than AoC or WHO for certain. Im guessing 100k in two months.

[Triforcer]

I doubt that, its not as obviously flawed as those two games.  But we are still searching for the post-WoW juggernaut, and I think we will have to get to Bioware's baby before we have another MMO retain more than a million.

[Nebu]

I doubt that, its not as obviously flawed as those two games.  But we are still searching for the post-WoW juggernaut, and I think we will have to get to Bioware's baby before we have another MMO retain more than a million.

The next MMO to retain one million subs after the first 6 months will be made by Blizzard.  Anyone want to bet me?

[gryeyes]

I doubt that, its not as obviously flawed as those two games.  But we are still searching for the post-WoW juggernaut, and I think we will have to get to Bioware's baby before we have another MMO retain more than a million.

24-36hrs of grinding to go from 49-50, with almost no interaction with Devs or CS are pretty significant flaws. In fact the lack of glaringly bad problems is more damning. Of the 30 or players I knew or met only one went past the free month. People are going to hit the barrier of grinding in the mid 30's. And then quit or roll another character when the mandatory 12hrs or more of grinding to progress hits.

Nebu, whats the current next runner up? 200k-300k after 6 months? Don't think you are going to get any takers.

[sinij]

Aion shows that at this point there are tons of ex-WoW players willing to give a try non-WoW DIKU. Next one to release non-shit MMORPG has a good shot at getting and holding these subscribers.

[Threash]

States explicitely and even breaks it down in NA/EU (500k in NA and 470k in EU). Not sure if that means sales to retailers or sold to consumers. Aion will have worse retention than AoC or WHO for certain. Im guessing 100k in two months.

For that to happen they would already need to be doing badly and i see no signs of that.

[Merusk]

Aion shows that at this point there are tons of ex-WoW players willing to give a try non-WoW DIKU. Next one to release non-shit MMORPG has a good shot at getting and holding these subscribers.

I don't disagree with you, but until devs stop living up their own ass about what players want vs what the devs want to provide, it's not going to matter.  5 years later and we are still seeing games that were built to compete with EQ or DAOC, not WOW.   Devs are too hardcore for their own good and the good of their business.

[gryeyes]

For that to happen they would already need to be doing badly and i see no signs of that.

What signs would you expect with no concrete numbers beyond boxes sold? Friend list suffering massive attrition and knowing the mid-late grind is going to chew through subscriptions seems pretty solid grounds.

[Falconeer]

Aion shows that at this point there are tons of ex-WoW players willing to give a try non-WoW DIKU. Next one to release non-shit MMORPG has a good shot at getting and holding these subscribers.

LotRO was the one, wasn't shitty at all, and didn't work. Blizzard got too many things "right", some by fluke too. I agree with Nebu, of course. Next 1m will be Blizzard's. Sigh.

[tmp]

The next MMO to retain one million subs after the first 6 months will be made by Blizzard.  Anyone want to bet me?

Not sure Blizzard can pull it off at this point, either. It could be Pandaren Blowjobs Online and couple months down the road you can bet people are going to whine it's but repetitive grind with too few things to do.

Freshly launched games suffer from large disadvantages -- people already "been there and done/seen it all" in the previous titles, and a new game is lacking 'investment' anchor which develops after spending few years playing. So it's much easier to quit it as soon as there's anything that doesn't rub the player just the right way. And people got much whinier and picky about how the foozles for whacking should be served, too.

[DLRiley]

Aion shows that at this point there are tons of ex-WoW players willing to give a try non-WoW DIKU. Next one to release non-shit MMORPG has a good shot at getting and holding these subscribers.

LotRO was the one, wasn't shitty at all, and didn't work. Blizzard got too many things "right", some by fluke too. I agree with Nebu, of course. Next 1m will be Blizzard's. Sigh.

Didn't LotRO have an over reliance on grouping?

I think the quitting factor comes in when players realize that they have fully leveled and geared characters in another mmo + unlimited access to the end game content. Why do developers think that players want to spend the first 40 hours on noob land is beyond me.

[tmp]

Didn't LotRO have an over reliance on grouping?

People mostly complained (still do) about the 'sluggish' combat system caused by mandatory auto-attacks delaying execution of their skill key presses and such. Though originally they did have some stages mid-game designed for group play (both instanced and open world) with no solo alternative, that likely had impact too until they added new areas to address that.

[Venkman]

States explicitely and even breaks it down in NA/EU (500k in NA and 470k in EU). Not sure if that means sales to retailers or sold to consumers. Aion will have worse retention than AoC or WHO for certain. Im guessing 100k in two months.

For that to happen they would already need to be doing badly and i see no signs of that.

Their Q3 ended on Sept 09, which means these numbers are for the first three weeks of box sales. Back in September, the dissenters were relatively small, and mostly just wondered why people would play this (or any) diku over WoW. It was at the end of Sept and then into early Oct that the grind, the inconsistency, and the lack of PvP all started kicking in as a lot of the players reached that threshold between "fine I'll PvE for the good stuff" to "wth am I grinding this much to get smacked down by 35+somethings in the 25+ Abyss".

We won't see the results of that until the Q4 numbers are out. Which won't matter because I still think this game will not have much interest from here anyway

[UnSub]

What I find interesting from Aion's, AoC's and WAR's launch is that there about about 800k Western players who will get a MMO at the very start of its life. That's something all MMO developers who are looking to release AAA titles have to plan for - 800k players banging on your door for the week of launch.

[Nebu]

What I find interesting from Aion's, AoC's and WAR's launch is that there about about 800k Western players who will get a MMO at the very start of its life. That's something all MMO developers who are looking to release AAA titles have to plan for - 800k players banging on your door for the week of launch.

I wonder if that also demonstrates that MMO gamers enjoy the early arms race.  Speaking for myself, I loved starting on a fresh server in games where new servers would open periodically.  The opening of the classic servers in DAoC kept me around for another year or two just to replay the arms race.  ATitD was similar. 

[Malakili]

What I find interesting from Aion's, AoC's and WAR's launch is that there about about 800k Western players who will get a MMO at the very start of its life. That's something all MMO developers who are looking to release AAA titles have to plan for - 800k players banging on your door for the week of launch.

I wonder if that also demonstrates that MMO gamers enjoy the early arms race.  Speaking for myself, I loved starting on a fresh server in games where new servers would open periodically.  The opening of the classic servers in DAoC kept me around for another year or two just to replay the arms race.  ATitD was similar. 

Yeah, the early rush in any MMO, the level playing field of starting at level 1, is really a breath of fresh air when you are in the loot treadmill doldrums of the end-game somewhere else. The problem is that after that wears off, rather than spend years on the loot treadmill doldrums of that new game, people would rather just go back to their old one, where at least they are already built up and probably don't have to wade through quite as much entry level bullshit.

[Threash]

People like being ahead of the curve, i notice a severe drop in enthusiasm in new games as soon as someone falls slightly behind.

[waylander]

What I find interesting from Aion's, AoC's and WAR's launch is that there about about 800k Western players who will get a MMO at the very start of its life. That's something all MMO developers who are looking to release AAA titles have to plan for - 800k players banging on your door for the week of launch.

I do think there is an audience of 800K to 1.2 million subscribers who like RVR type content, fortress fights, and small skirmish PVP.  The problem though is that they don't want a boring PVE experience to slog through only to get to a broken end game.

AOC: Grind levels 21-80, busted siege game, poor client performance
War: Boring PVE, busted PVP end game, poor client performance
AION: Very boring PVE, unrewarding end game, poor RVR client performance

In order to keep these people as paying customers they have to:

1.
Make the PVE less boring, less tedious, viable solo and group PVE, and put in some sort of soft cap where you don't have situations of a level 48 always being pwned by a level 50.  If the intent it to allow people to PVP in a zone from levels 25-35, then level shouldn't be 99% of the deciding factor on who wins.

2.
The end game has to be rewarding, or people will feel like their efforts are wasted.  If they hear the end game sucks, then they may very well quit prior to that point (i.e. AION loses a lotta folks prior to level 25).  Gear, tokens, medals, realm points, etc all need to be obtained by people who actively participate, and there should be good individual and guild ranking systems.

3.
Poor client performance is harder to deal with if the sieging end game allows for unlimited people to flood an area.  In Warhammer the zone would crash, in AION people load and unload based on viewing distance and it reminds me a lot of how Shadowbane used to handle environment/player loading. In big fights you can be killed by people you NEVER see, and also get to enjoy crashes left and right.

This is a hard issue to address, but I don't see how you do it without instancing.


So yeah there is a big customer base out there for RVR type games, but the last three attempts have gotten one or all of those three issues wrong.  Folks won't wait around for 6-12 months waiting for Dev's to fix a game anymore, and if they new game sucks then they will just go back to their old one (usually WoW) until the next game comes out.

AION is just another MMO that has had a big launch, but is so bad in other areas that it is just as likely to fail as AOC and Warhammer.

[Ingmar]

fortress fights, and small skirmish PVP. 

If my 4 years or so of DAOC are any indication, the overlap between the groups of people who like these two things is actually very very small. There was constant tension in the community between the groups over it, actually.

[Malakili]

So yeah there is a big customer base out there for RVR type games, but the last three attempts have gotten one or all of those three issues wrong.  Folks won't wait around for 6-12 months waiting for Dev's to fix a game anymore, and if they new game sucks then they will just go back to their old one (usually WoW) until the next game comes out.

I don't think there is all that big a customer base for it to be honest.  There is a fairly large group that THINKS they want it, and will try a new game out if it boasts having it.  However, I think realistically speaking, there isn't enough room in the market to support a bunch of monthly fee 1 million subscriber games, no matter how good they are.  Assuming WoW keeps a huge population like it has, I think smaller MMOs are probably going to be in much heathier places. Hell, look at a game like Darkfall that we all lulzed about, it was made with a smaller audience in mind, and now has servers open in both EU and NA, and I think they are slowly growing.  Whether you like Darkfall or not isn't the point (i haven't even played it myself).  That business model is probably a lot more sustainable. Granted, I think Aventurine has large amounts of capital, and had a lot of years to make their game, so maybe it isn't the best example in those terms. 

[Sir T]

I agree with you. I think the model of being WOW beaters is just not going to happen and people are slowly realizing it. WOW is the big tumor on the hill, sucking up the available custom, and its gong to stay there because its blizzards game. Every game that has tried has failed. I think the model of the small niche game is the only one that can work in the present environment.

[March]

What I find interesting from Aion's, AoC's and WAR's launch is that there about about 800k Western players who will get a MMO at the very start of its life. That's something all MMO developers who are looking to release AAA titles have to plan for - 800k players banging on your door for the week of launch.

I rather agree... it has impressed my how easy it is to sell 1M boxes to a new MMO these days.

I wonder if the real answer is to reduce risk and go after the $100M incrementally via paid and validated limited releases.

In other words, what can you develop for $25M (1M x $25/box net) plus 6 mos of incremental revenue (perhaps via RMT/DLC) with only 50% retention... say $2M per month ($4 x 500k subscribers - keep the bar very low initially).

Prove-out the game in the initial release... tweak and improve for release next.... repeat ad infinitum.

The end of each phase would be some sort of soft-cap RvR holding area with near infinite player (re-)generated content.

If you make each Stage a short trip to the RvR holding area - more like the Death Knight starting area than TOA grind - to introduce new mechanics, skills, changes then folks would enjoy the experience rather than resent it.

Financially, the goal would be to capture increasing box sales (so, 250k box 1 plus 1.25M box 2) plus folks in phase 2 might be willing to invest, say, $6 per month (up 50%).

Who knows, perhaps this is what GW2 is looking at?

[Fordel]

Didn't LotRO have an over reliance on grouping?

People mostly complained (still do) about the 'sluggish' combat system caused by mandatory auto-attacks delaying execution of their skill key presses and such. Though originally they did have some stages mid-game designed for group play (both instanced and open world) with no solo alternative, that likely had impact too until they added new areas to address that.

For me it was two things, the combat like you said, and the fact my PC of they day simply could not run LotR satisfactorily.


All these new MMO's keep trying to amp up their graphical effects, often at the expense of Art and Design. Always at the expense of everyone with a old machine. Just another facet of trying to be "hardcore" I suppose.

[Malakili]

I think the model of the small niche game is the only one that can work in the present environment.

Not for any special reason either.  The big budget games just HAVE to try to get a lot of customers, and cast a wide net, and often times they basically just can't pull off doing that much stuff, and the whole projects suffers as a result.   The smaller games usually try to do less out of necessity, but actually end up being able to pull of doing that stuff well.  Fallen Earth comes to mind.

[Count Nerfedalot]

What I find interesting from Aion's, AoC's and WAR's launch is that there about about 800k Western players who will get a MMO at the very start of its life. That's something all MMO developers who are looking to release AAA titles have to plan for - 800k players banging on your door for the week of launch.

I do think there is an audience of 800K to 1.2 million subscribers who like RVR type content, fortress fights, and small skirmish PVP.  The problem though is that they don't want a boring PVE experience to slog through only to get to a broken end game.

UnSub (800k potential AAA early adopters) = correct.
Waylander (800 - 1200k RVR PVPers) = smokin crack.  (The rest of Waylander's post was full of great observation and analysis, but in no way supported his opening thesis)

There are more than a million Westerners itching to play a new AAA diku-type MMO with as much fun and polish as (but different from) WoW, and 800k of them are willing to pay money up front on hopes of finding that new fix. 

In attempting to provide that fix we have gotten:

LotRO - not quite as good (at release), not quite different enough.
AoC - different enough and actually much more fun for 20 levels, then crap with a lot of nothing interspersed with more crap.
WAR - promised something better for the end game, delivered crap for the 1 to max grind and nothing workable for the end game.
Aion - probably different enough, probably polished enough, but horrible levelling curve plus balance issues with PvP, gold farming, gold spamming, & etc. cripple the fun factor.
CO - *laugh*  wrong league.
EVE - not DIKU and thus too different.  Probably also too much boredom between bouts of fun for mainstream success.

um, who did I miss?

It seems to me that, when it comes to MMO's based on character development, PvP is likely at least as much a disadvantage as an advantage.  I suspect a lot of people tried out the more PvP-focused games listed above IN SPITE OF the PvP.   I know there are a large number of people who will refuse or strongly resist getting sucked into a game in which PvP is either unavoidable or in which avoiding PvP results in a restricted character or second-class gaming experience.  And PvP is inherently much harder to "do right" since it MATTERS if one player is more powerful than another, whereas balance in PvE is at least a little bit more forgiving.

The developer that comes up with the magic formula that produces an MMO with fun, balanced, cheat-free PvP available for all players from day one to end-game while still providing solid and fun PvE content for solo and group play from day one to end-game will make bank.

The developer that comes up with the PvP part without the PvE part will be competing with all the f2p FPSs out there.  Good luck with that.

The developer that comes up with the PvE part without the PvP part will make bank, give WoW a run for it's money, and have a year or two to fiddle with the getting the PvP part right (as long as their adjustments to balance PvP don't disrupt established equilibriums in PvE play).

So tell me, why do developers keep insisting on increasing their risk and their up-front expenses by pushing PvP as a major day-one selling point?

[MikeD]

The developer that comes up with the magic formula that produces an MMO with fun, balanced, cheat-free PvP available for all players from day one to end-game while still providing solid and fun PvE content for solo and group play from day one to end-game will make bank.

How well would you say Guild Wars did at this? Without having played it very much, my impression was that this is exactly what they delivered, or at least intended to.

[Count Nerfedalot]

The developer that comes up with the magic formula that produces an MMO with fun, balanced, cheat-free PvP available for all players from day one to end-game while still providing solid and fun PvE content for solo and group play from day one to end-game will make bank.

How well would you say Guild Wars did at this? Without having played it very much, my impression was that this is exactly what they delivered, or at least intended to.

ah - i didn't play GW, but my summary of impressions from reviews and discussions would be: fun PvP,  PvE not enough or not enough different to distinguish it.

It seems to fit in the same category as LoTRO in that it seemed to have done almost everything right yet was only a marginal success.

[DLRiley]

Guild War measurable success was box sales. Which so far surpass every game on that list in the west save WoW. Beyond that Guild Wars didn't have retention issues of sub based games so I don't think it can boost having "over xxx million subs" but it did manage to get +2 million box sales per expansion so calculate the playerbase from there. The funny this is, guild wars has statically greater pve playerbase than pvp. In fact the "high level" pvp area, Heroes Ascent, is mostly ghost town except for international districts. The most popular pvp is Random arena, Alliance Batttles, Guild vs Guild and now Seal deck (which is a new arena built to replace the Hero battle format and Team arena). And only Guild vs Guild is truly upper level pvp. Also helps to heavily support casual play GG.

A problem with the small niche route is that you will eventually be canablized by bigger mmo's offering what you do with a bigger playerbase, other niche mmo's offering exactly what you do with a new skin, and f2p games offering exactly what you do but free. This market isn't any less unfriendly to small games now than it was in EvE's time. Darkfall had a mass exodus once their big war was over with the remaining playerbase desperately attempting to fuel nonexistent excitement and the dev team is basically on extended vacation (in fact opening of the NA servers happened just before vacation). Another thing about niche games is that while they technically have more longevity then their block buster counterparts they also die often without making a dime. FE seems to be made for cheap enough that their target audience of 50k players will be happy that at the very least anymore than that can guarantee future development. The only problem is that if the population dips below that target they have a problem. They have to produce new content, but they can't produce it under the pressure of paying the light bill. EVE success was finding a "casual" niche to grow their game on, which was their empire carebears. Any future niche game is going to have to find that growth market.

[Falconeer]

Aion - ... balance issues with PvP...

What? You mean higher players ganking lower players, or something else which I would be very curious about?

[LC]

I know a lot of people who picked up Aion. Most of them quit after reaching the level cap.

[Shatter]

Aion will suffer from the same virus WAR did.  WAR could of created and sustained a lasting game if they moved quickly on the glaring issues and made them a top priority but we all know how that turned out.  Aion I suspect wont make the needed changes in a timely fashion either and TBH I get the feeling they dont want to.  To some degree they want Aion to be a grindy game that requires people to slug out grind levels to get to 50. They will soften it a little but it will never be for example close to a current WOW leveling curve. 

[Chimpy]

I know a lot of people who picked up Aion. Most of them quit after reaching the level cap.

It really sounds like the people you know are all the "Buy a new MMO, hardcore race to cap, then quit" types. I play more than your average, healthy person with a full time job should and I am still 9 levels short of the cap.

The game has major flaws, and NCSoft's veritable lack of customer service is definitely high on the list.

[Falconeer]

There's so few people at level cap right now in Aion that I'm not surprised they quit. The game is about massive battles, not getting up there and go gank lowbies until you're bored.

The game has flaws, but has many redeeming PvP qualities for those who care about it. 

[Threash]

I know a lot of people who picked up Aion. Most of them quit after reaching the level cap.

You know a lot of people who reached the level cap? i play a lot and i'm not even 40 yet.