Aion : a possible competitive threat to WoW's future according to ActivisionBlizzard

[Carecup]

You guys won't believe it, but about a month ago in Worsley. I was talking on the phone when I realized that I was in love. You have probably had that experience before. I felt suddenly afraid, and I knew that soon I would have to make a decision. My friend Chelsie had called me the previous day, and told me all about Laurie's problem with the police, and I was a little worried about him. Then, all of a sudden, I saw in my mind what I realized was the awful truth, and right then I knew I was invincible! I remembered what my math teacher had told me about a situation like this. It was very important that I not panic. Very calmly, I picked up a big stick and knew I would do the right thing. Before I knew it, I was alone, and I discovered that I was happy. So you see, I really learned something, and I decided I had to tell you all about it.

[Vincire]

Originally Posted by Terpsichore

Vanilla wow pre nerf scholo or even dire maul, cthun, naxx and most of pre tbc pve was thousand times harder than the faceroll material wotlk is right now.

I had tons of fun during vanilla (started with 1.0), even tho the game has thousands of bugs and broken mechanics it was challenging and fun and the world actually felt alive, but even since activision bought blizzard (late vanilla patches (pvp purples for free) and tbc, the game started to decay, i guess they went the easy way: making something appealing to dumb masses and advertising the game roughly everywhere, ****ing off the original player base in process.

So they managed to kill ALL the core aspects that make a mmo what it is, the pvp, the hard pvm, the sense of archievement, the uniqueness of gear and a living world. Converting the game into some hellspawn of absolute nonsense, so now everyone can faceroll their way to 80, then faceroll their way into either "pvp" or "pve" and get the gears thats everyone else have, so they can uh... jump in capitol towns or afk on flying mounts, cause there is absolutely nothing to do.

THe vast majority of players were unable to participate in the so called 'hardcore' pve game in vanilla wow. When only 5% of your customers are able to see and experience the pinnacle of your game, that development becomes just a waste of resources. WOTLK isn't a failure because it's accessible to more players, it's a failure because Blizzard just rehashes the same old **** in pointless boring grinds.

[zorphon]

Originally Posted by Raazael

They are making billions. Not very confident? That's retarded. At an average of $14 a month(yes most people pay 14.99, but discounts are available and I'm going even lower for the point) that's $161,000,000 a month in subscription fees. $1,932,000,000 in monthly fees alone for a year time period. Add in costs for each game/expansion you have to buy, and all their $25 transaction fees for transfers and such, and it's a freakin' gold mine.

Who cares anyway? Competition is always beneficial for the end users.

You do have to remember that it isn't pure profit. The game is funded by a lot of money, sure. But the company also is building/maintaining the game. Which costs money, because who do you think do it? Employee's. Employee's get paid. Money comes out of the income. Also with the amount of news, patches, updates, and frequent maintenance to the game, majority of that money goes out to funded the game's employee's. Besides the game cost millions to make in the first place.

I personally hate the game, and hope Aion will be a WoW RIVAL not KILLER, and take many of the player base away from the monster that has become Blizzard. Yes, it used to be good. But times have changed, now it is a corporate monster which is a bully on the block towards other MMO's.... But the thing is, WoW sucks IMO so....

Basically, the game making that much money doesn't bother me. 14-15$ isn't going to break my bank, and they are a BUSINESS aren't they? Not like they do it just for fun and patch the game just for fun as a hobby, the hundreds of employee's have jobs at Blizzard. Besides they need the money to fund their other titles and the upcoming MMO.


Either way, Aion is better then WoW. Just don't bash blizzard for being a business. Bash away at WoW though!

Glory to the daeva's! Ascend my brothers!

[Terpsichore]

Originally Posted by Vincire

THe vast majority of players were unable to participate in the so called 'hardcore' pve game in vanilla wow. When only 5% of your customers are able to see and experience the pinnacle of your game, that development becomes just a waste of resources. WOTLK isn't a failure because it's accessible to more players, it's a failure because Blizzard just rehashes the same old **** in pointless boring grinds.

That was already fixed with tbc and 25man raids+no need to farm resis gears, but apparently that wasn't enough, they also decided to dumb down every encounter.

There's a difference between being "casual" and being bad, and wow caters to baddies.

[Untamed]

Originally Posted by Terpsichore

That was already fixed with tbc and 25man raids+no need to farm resis gears, but apparently that wasn't enough, they also decided to dumb down every encounter.

There's a difference between being "casual" and being bad, and wow caters to baddies.

I'm going to agree with the person I quoted. Even though I liked vanilla the best I thought they were doing the right things to make it more accessible in BC. Wotlk went a step to far.

[Qbert]

This is the first time anything like this has been posted on an upcoming MMORPG's forums.




Ever.

[Merele]

It's interesting to see them actually say they have competition for once. I think up until now they haven't really commented on expected competition from upcoming MMOs. It's really not a matter of people wanting to see WoW die... me personally, I'm just tired of seeing WoW hold the #1 spot since its existence. Really hoping Aion can break the mold here! If they can't then hopefully Star Wars or FF14 will :X

[bit]

Maybe a little competition will force Blizzard to start performing at their best again. So instead of really killing WoW I think Aion might actually help WoW. Then again from what I've been reading recently that just doesn't seem to be the case.

Just look at their latest Tier-9 armor that is coming out.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Tier9 please change before release

Ouch, people don't seem to happy about Blizzard recycling old armor and just changing the color. Their not even making a Tier set for every class now. Instead it's going to be a set per armor type (cloth, leather, mail, and plate).

How about making faction changes? Did someone say server imbalance?

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Faction-Change Service in the Works- 7/1

[Dafydd]

Originally Posted by bit

Maybe a little competition will force Blizzard to start performing at their best again. So instead of really killing WoW I think Aion might actually help WoW. Then again from what I've been reading recently that just doesn't seem to be the case.

Just look at their latest Tier-9 armor that is coming out.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Tier9 please change before release

Ouch, people don't seem to happy about Blizzard recycling old armor and just changing the color. Their not even making a Tier set for every class now. Instead it's going to be a set per armor type (cloth, leather, mail, and plate).

You fail to mention that they are making unique armour for each faction this time. They're making 8 unique armour designs instead of 10 but there are minor tweaks to each class to make it unique.

Previous tiers: 10 unique sets.
T9: 8 unique sets and minor class custmisations within those 8.

So overall the same amount of work, just apportioned in a way the playerbase isn't used to so they whine. You're parroting the exact same bollocks that makes the WoW forums so bad. To repeat a line I keep using these days "There are problems with WoW, this is not one of them".

How about making faction changes? Did someone say server imbalance?

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Faction-Change Service in the Works- 7/1

And WoW has server balance now? Have you looked at the Alliance faction on Magtheridon-EU recently? I don't think they have enough level 80s online to raid Naxx! Same goes for half the rest of the WoW "PvP servers" to a lesser extent, the faction imbalance is so great that they're PvE servers in all but name.

[bit]

Originally Posted by Dafydd

You fail to mention that they are making unique armour for each faction this time. They're making 8 unique armour designs instead of 10 but there are minor tweaks to each class to make it unique.

Previous tiers: 10 unique sets.
T9: 8 unique sets and minor class custmisations within those 8.

Basically their making less unique sets now. Sounds like someone is slacking off on their job.

Originally Posted by Dafydd

So overall the same amount of work, just apportioned in a way the playerbase isn't used to so they whine. You're parroting the exact same bollocks that makes the WoW forums so bad. To repeat a line I keep using these days "There are problems with WoW, this is not one of them".

Yeah, of course crappy tier armor isn't a problem.

Originally Posted by Dafydd

And WoW has server balance now? Have you looked at the Alliance faction on Magtheridon-EU recently? I don't think they have enough level 80s online to raid Naxx! Same goes for half the rest of the WoW "PvP servers" to a lesser extent, the faction imbalance is so great that they're PvE servers in all but name.

Yeah, and you think faction changing is going to help out? What do you think will happen when one-sided servers can change factions? I'm gonna guess that the side that has the least people is probably going to have the majority of the people transferring on over to the other more populated side in order to get more things done.

[Dafydd]

Originally Posted by bit

Basically their making less unique sets now. Sounds like someone is slacking off on their job.

Making 2 less unique sets and customizing an extra 18 sets, not quite so cut and dried as the whiners try and make out.

Yeah, of course crappy tier armor isn't a problem.

Nobody has criticised the designs for being crap, they've just whined because they can't get their heads around the concept of "change". The tournament is a factional competition, it makes perfect sense for the armour to differ by faction. Doubling the number of unique sets per tier is asking a lot so they had to come up with a way of dividing it up so there was about the normal amount of work to do which they did.

Yeah, and you think faction changing is going to help out? What do you think will happen when one-sided servers can change factions? I'm gonna guess that the side that has the least people is probably going to have the majority of the people transferring on over to the other more populated side in order to get more things done.

Nothing will happen, it's a nothing feature. It's cheaper to transfer than it is to change faction, anyone wanting to get away from a faction imbalance can already do so at any time.

Faction balance IS a real problem and they playerbase SHOULD be complaining about how badly Blizzard has mismanaged it, instead they whine about imaginary problems like a single tier of armour being differentiated by faction instead of class for lore reasons.

[NinjaJeean]

Almost my whole family plays WoW, and like most of us i don't 'hate' the game. But, hopefully with Aion being a threat to Blizzard they will continue to raise their bar in order to stay ahead of the other guy. Either way, the content keeps getting more and more creative - so we win anyway.

[Ryoku]

Originally Posted by bit

Maybe a little competition will force Blizzard to start performing at their best again. So instead of really killing WoW I think Aion might actually help WoW. Then again from what I've been reading recently that just doesn't seem to be the case.

Just look at their latest Tier-9 armor that is coming out.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Tier9 please change before release

Ouch, people don't seem to happy about Blizzard recycling old armor and just changing the color. Their not even making a Tier set for every class now. Instead it's going to be a set per armor type (cloth, leather, mail, and plate).

How about making faction changes? Did someone say server imbalance?

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Faction-Change Service in the Works- 7/1

Oh ewww.....
WoW armor is ugly o_O'
To be expected though....they have armor with like treehouses on their pauldrons with mini-planets orbiting their heads as "helmets" and little birdies flying around their waist for no apparent reason apparently adding to WoW's supposed "eye candy"...and, and, AND....uhh yeah lolz :/

[Livvy]

Had to jump in there to refute this quote :

Basically their making less unique sets now. Sounds like someone is slacking off on their job.

You can say a lot of things about WoW but saying the people that work there aren't dedicated enormously isn't one of them.You can like the game or dislike it but you can't say they're a bunch of slackers .

The service runs pretty much 24/7 , including customer support ,and developers actually take the time to come on forums to explain stuff that's in the works .There's not many developers out there bothering with that at all.

Oh ewww.....
WoW armor is ugly o_O'
To be expected though....they have armor with like treehouses on their pauldrons with mini-planets orbiting their heads as "helmets" and little birdies flying around their waist for no apparent reason apparently adding to WoW's supposed "eye candy"...and, and, AND....uhh yeah lolz :/

That's a matter of personal taste though and has nothing to do with the effort itself .

[zalbard]

Originally Posted by bit

Maybe a little competition will force Blizzard to start performing at their best again. So instead of really killing WoW I think Aion might actually help WoW. Then again from what I've been reading recently that just doesn't seem to be the case.

Just look at their latest Tier-9 armor that is coming out.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Tier9 please change before release

Ouch, people don't seem to happy about Blizzard recycling old armor and just changing the color. Their not even making a Tier set for every class now. Instead it's going to be a set per armor type (cloth, leather, mail, and plate).

How about making faction changes? Did someone say server imbalance?

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Faction-Change Service in the Works- 7/1

Isn't Blizzard working on a new MMO? I recall some people saying some of their devs and even lead designers being redirected from WoW to that new unannounced MMO.