[Grizzlebeard]

Originally Posted by Empedocles

but going from my experiences with both games I'd say there's more Europeans playing FFXI than WoW.

WoW has millions of EU players compared to the small fraction who play FFXI. There are over 100 English-language EU servers, in addition to the French, German, Spanish, and Russian servers. There are many reasons for this, partly the fact that Sony never launched the PS2 hard drive in Europe and as such S-E were denied a huge market there, partly the fact there was zero advertising for it in the UK at least, and also because it was already perceived as an old game by the time they did eventually release it in Europe. Oh, and the lack of regional servers also had a massive impact on peoples' decision to pick up the game or to remain in it once they realized their few fellow EU players were spread so thinly over all the servers.

[nanatsu]

Originally Posted by DakAttack

How can the amount of active players exceed the amount of accounts? Each player must have their own account, and it's impossible to count multiple players for any single account., that's guessing.

An account is simply a record for any number of players, but can't be considered one for multiple players because it has multiple characters. Accounts can either be active, or inactive, and if WoW has eleven million accounts that doesn't mean it has anywhere near that amount of active, subscribing customers. It can mean any number of things, besides the obvious, which is lolgoldfarmers.

It's simple to know how many multiple characters an account has and it shouldn't be difficult to know how many times those characters have been logged on in a certain amount of time. It's obvious that SE has their own idea of what an active character is. If you log onto that character for however many times in a certain time period, then SE can count it as an active character. Same thing goes for WoW. It's not that difficult of a thing to count.

[IfritnoItazura]

Originally Posted by DakAttack

doubt SE is going to aim for the LCD, as Blizzard has, with FFXIV, but they're definitely opening up more opportunities for more players. We've entered the prime time for ANYBODY to capitalize on the unrest growing within the WoW playerbase, and who better to do it than SE? I doubt any other company has the recognition and following SE does.

Name recognition does not necessarily translate to subscriptions, though.

EverQuest 2 had the "EverQuest" name (the biggest MMORPG at the time), Sony's backing, and a huge, huge ad campaign, but only barely managed to exceed EverQuest's subscription base--and that's mostly due to the decline in EverQuest itself.

Actually, the short history of MMORPG seems to be littered with failure of highly valued names: Star Wars Galaxies, Matrix Online, Sims Online, Age of Conan (is that failure official now?), D&D Online, PS2 EverQuest, Tabula Rasa (well, the designer or producer was famous, I think?), and probably more. (Is Warhammer considered a failure, yet? Looks like its subscription peaked early and then dropped fast.)

Blizzard had no history in MMORPG, but was able to leverage the popular Warcraft franchise IP. It's interesting to note that Warcraft wasn't Blizzard's most popular IP worldwide--Starcraft was. But, MMORPG players like sword and sorcery fantasy settings better than spaceship and laser blast, I guess.

[Grizzlebeard]

Originally Posted by IfritnoItazura

Blizzard had no history in MMORPG, but was able to leverage the popular Warcraft franchise IP. It's interesting to note that Warcraft wasn't Blizzard's most popular IP worldwide--Starcraft was. But, MMORPG players like sword and sorcery fantasy settings better than spaceship and laser blast, I guess.

Don't forget Diablo / Diablo 2.

[Malacite]

Originally Posted by Kaziel0

Unfortunately, approximately one year after the release of FFXI in the U.S., WoW hit the market and finalized a paradigm shift which had been in the works in other MMOs (e.g. CoHs using instanced zones and quests that gave XP), and put all these changes together into a polished package. If you want to look at it this way, FFXI was the last (and arguably best) of the old design, but the old design doesn't mesh well with a generally casual playstyle (wanting to hop on for an hour or two, a few times a week), thus is not the most successful business model.

And yet there are still people (idiots) who will argue with me until they're blue in the face that the reason FFXI didn't do so well was because of all the time sinks and general difficulty...

Umm... news flash, not everyone has hours upon hours every day to devote to a game, especially when you could potentially just sit there the entire time and get nothing accomplished in-game which was quite often the case years ago.

I'm glad SE has learned from this and is trying to make FFXIV appeal to as many people as possible. Time sinks and artificial difficulty are the poorest, laziest way to keep customers playing rather than creating new and engaging content.


And as for name recognition... you're not seriously comparing EQ to Final Fantasy are you? They're nowhere near the same level.

[InuTrunks]

I'm currently in the beta as well, and I'm enjoying Aion, which server you playing on? (I'm on the 2nd one), and currently a level 5 preist.

Uhh, the race taht was on the left, the human looking ones, not hte dark elf ones.

Nejiko (dur)

[Omniblast]

Originally Posted by InuTrunks

I'm currently in the beta as well, and I'm enjoying Aion, which server you playing on? (I'm on the 2nd one), and currently a level 5 preist.

Uhh, the race taht was on the left, the human looking ones, not hte dark elf ones.

Nejiko (dur)

Been playing on the first server Siel.
I have been trying to hit level 20 with my Sorcerer, currently at 18 with half exp done.

One thing I do like was when I was crafting, I had over 100 of an item, and I just set it to craft a item I needed and went afk.
When I came back everything was done, and I didn't have to sit there worrying about inventory space or clicking on to craft a new item over and over again.

I turned around made some potions with it, and sold the rest for some profit. Someone actually bought my entire stock because they didn't want to go to the AH and buy some more.

One thing that I do think that needs to be fixed is the search option. I couldn't find that item until I scrolled through 50 some odd pages for it.

[Verranicus]

I recently got a beta key. How long is this closed beta gonna be going for?

[Tickmeoff]

The beta is being done in stages and is currently unavailable. The next stage is:

Fourth Closed Beta
Friday, July 17, 2009 - Noon PT, Monday, July 20, 2009
Asmodians and Elyos, levels 1-25, and a first taste of the Abyss!

[Thoris]

Originally Posted by Omniblast

Been playing on the first server Siel.
I have been trying to hit level 20 with my Sorcerer, currently at 18 with half exp done.

One thing I do like was when I was crafting, I had over 100 of an item, and I just set it to craft a item I needed and went afk.
When I came back everything was done, and I didn't have to sit there worrying about inventory space or clicking on to craft a new item over and over again.

I turned around made some potions with it, and sold the rest for some profit. Someone actually bought my entire stock because they didn't want to go to the AH and buy some more.

One thing that I do think that needs to be fixed is the search option. I couldn't find that item until I scrolled through 50 some odd pages for it.

When they Release the game it will have patches 1.0-1.5 we are testing patch 1.0.

They add more search function to the party system and the broker

Originally Posted by Verranicus

I recently got a beta key. How long is this closed beta gonna be going for?

The next beta is on July 31st- Aug 3rd




Also new data came out, with Blizzard losing China

http://news.mmosite.com/content/2009...524231,1.shtml

World of Warcraft loses 6 million users | Games Brief


Aion is getting close to WOW and it has yet to be released Globally


Patch 1.1

[Translation] Aion Update 1.1 - AionSource.com

Patch 1.2

[Translation] Aion Update 1.2 - AionSource.com

Patch 1.5

[Patch Notes] v1.5 Update - Shadow of the Balaur - AionSource.com

[DakAttack]

Name recognition wont guarantee subscribers, but it will attract a lot more attention than if you're a lesser known company. My point being, who's heard of Risk Your Life, or Shattered Galaxy? Two great games that either sound only vaguely familiar or not familiar at all with a vast amount of the people I bring them up with.

I bet EQ2 garnered a lot of attention, but retained very little because it's kind of a crappy game. Many MMO failures are simply because they fail in so many different aspects of being an MMO. Put a valued name on EPO, and you're still eating poop online.

[Omecle]

Played a bit over the weekend, really like it and so do a lot of friends, so will most likely get it.