Man, that Aion intro theme in the beginning really hit me in the nostalgia feels. Used to love the music and the aesthetics even more than the game itself.
Hopping into Aion as my first real MMO, ready to "step" into a new world and enjoy a game with my guildies from another game I played... starting in Poeta and hearing that music as I see tons of ugly and deformed toons run around trying to figure out what they need to do... Yep, hearing that Tower of Eternity theme always sends me right back to that memory and god damn, the hit in the nostalgia feels is always real.
I feel that's true for a lot of people who don't get really into MMOs. They often have great ideas and cool concepts but are married to boring grinds, terrible UIs, bad animations and other things that fail to sell the idea.
The killer for me was restricted fly zones and limited flytime. You launch a game with the most awesome feature only to limit it to an absolute minimum? wth
YES OMG!! Not even the pay to win aspect is the worst, but exactly what you said. Seriously, they are absolutely lazy developers! The best feature is flying with your majestic wings, but JOKES ON YOU, you never truly do that. Only like 5% of the game, maybe even less.. I am still sad, because aion has such incredible potential, great story, wonderful ost, stunning character creation, beautiful scenery or just world overall... Truly a shame. Oh and its community could be better, but that is just my personal experience.
Everytime you see the word "Soon" used as a meme after a company name it originates with NCSoft and Aion. Trust me I was there and it was a nightmare waiting for content that was always being pushed back. We found out NCSoft West was not actually a dev team at all. It was just a bunch of GM's and translators. I knew one of the CM's and e-mailed him after he went to Rift and he told me it was horrible.
If you're looking for an MMO with unrestricted actively used flight, Perfect World is an option. However, it's also F2P/P2W with a PvP focus. Caveat emptor.
Aion was such a beautiful game when it came out... grindy but fun and beautiful... i loved playing it and i loved just standing around admiring the scenery or rping even more then ncsoft sold it and it gone to shit (gameforge version that is)
Belgian Sebastian True but Final fantasy xiv is doing great. If you want to play an mmorpg play ffxiv. Square enix really cares about the genre, specifically Yoshi P who single handedly saved it. May not have big WoW numbers but they constantly pump out genuine and enjoyable content.
Very similar to my situation. I hope you are fine now, Aurora. If you will ever want to play a game similar to Aion, try Final Fantasy XIV Online. It's with P2P subscription model (with first month for free). But it's worth every price.
Indeed. I've been playing Aion on and off since the launch of 3.5 (or 3.7? Can't remember) - the biggest pull for me is always the music and the lore that's hidden in the game.
@@neqzu115 Sadly, I left Metin2 to focus entirely on my 4story characters as I had better relations with the players on it. Even more sadly, 4story died shortly thereafter, the guild that I founded died little by little and more than 90% of the players left the game in one and half year. Gameforge... Why you are like this? :(
@@blairalquia98 first time to see 4 story mentioned, i really loved that game especially the sorcerer where you could revive monsters and make them your own pet like that's so awesome, i am still looking for a game that has that skill but never found it
As someone who played Aion heavily for 3 years, I just want to point out something that I saw directly leading to the death of the game in America. The server balancing was AWFUL. During the initial 6 months, there were approximately 12 servers, split between east and west coast servers. For a game about high intensity pvp, playing on your localized servers was a huge issue for ping. The problem is, you could find on their website stats about the two races along with results from their abyss wars. The end result? After about 6 months around 3 servers had remained equal and competitive (roughly 50/50 population balance, and within a 10% success rate in abyss wars) The rest of the servers had become laughably imbalanced between the two factions. Most servers tended towards one faction dominating, with the other faction completely suppressed, and as the community suggested for one server, completely given up. At around the 8 months mark, ncsoft pulled a huge "Server balance pass" and combined multiple servers together. These server mergers lead to huge issues. First off, you can't take multiple servers out of balance and throw them onto a balanced server, and expect the balanced server to stay healthy. For example, if you take a 500 vs 500 fight, add in 300 people to one side and only 100 to the other side, suddenly you've got a near unstoppable imbalance with the 800 vs 600. But that wasn't even the biggest issue. Due to the huge importance of the ping, the fact ncsoft took the east coast servers and moved them from the east coast and moved them to Houston Texas (hardly the east coast at this point) a large number of players took a hit to their ping. For certain classes that lived and died by their ping (refer to nerdslayers segment about melee players trying to fight in the air, after servers moved to Houston, I basically just never tried to air fight again, it was a lost cause). The last big death knell for this game was the fact that, even before Aion went free to play, they started selling various items for an advantage for real money. The idea that after the game went FTP and had unhealthy pay to win mechanics wasn't just accurate, it was already in place. It just got worse. I truly enjoyed playing Aion in the first year, but watched the slow heat death of the game. I didn't play through to the bitter end, the game was dead to me before then, but it was sad to see it go, in large part due to mismanagement on the part of ncsoft.
Aion was the first MMO I dug my teeth into after FFXI.. I loved it but the server balance was, indeed, the absolute worst. Israphel never was the same once the Asmodian exodus to other servers.
I also hated when they removed like 4 end game pvp maps and added two new pvpve maps that crammed both high and low level players in to smaller spaces which of course resulted in ganks of the lowbies who were just trying to do quests. Plus the endless grind to get decent pvp gear, stupid looking bunny costumes, lag issues, mostly empty maps made me say goodbye to this old friend.... rip
I freebie'd Aion for a while. Other than Guild Wars 2 it's the only MMO I've ever been in danger of liking. A lot of what AION has to offer is really compelling. Its unique world, stellar graphics, interesting art direction, exciting fast paced combat for a tab target system. It's one of the few MMOs where I've gotten seriously invested in my characters. Generic though it may be beyond its stylings, AION is a pretty sweet and fresh tasting offering. But after many long hours the grind just wore me down. Really, all this game has to offer is grind. There is nothing else. Hardly any of the story is interesting. Traversing the world is its own adventure but the combat is just so repetitive and dull after a while. While characters really seem to expand and flesh out in ability as you level up, no variety is ever added to the combat and character builds are pretty much the same for whatever class you choose (only clerics seem to offer multiple build types: all both of them). AION seems to start off with a unique and compelling premise but then just devolves into your standard sloggy MMO grindfest and wears itself out.
What killed Aion for me was ZERO interaction on the developers/publishers part. An official forum for bug reports that never got solved, for ideas that were never listened to, for discussions that never got further than other frustrated players. And then they announced Blade & Soul before focusing on their then current subscription based game. Yeah, that killed the game for me. NCsoft has since then been a curse-word that means avoid-at-all-cost.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss On the other hand, the game died in Korea because of pay2win again. Most Koreans are now so tired of this repeating trend in game taking off and then going pay2win as soon as it gains enough popularity, they consider any Korean mmo releases to be pay2win automatically.This type of thing happened to countless MMOs and even in fps games with OP guns coming out as cash items. Koreans absolutely hate games made in their own country and since the rise of Steam/LOL/OW they have moved on with handful of idiot whales still playing same pay2win games to this day. I also don't like the fact that EA gets all the credit when it comes to pay2win. Because NC soft and Nexon are the true OG when it comes to milking players with micro-transactions, which EA and bunch of foreign companies saw and started copying. This began to spread as early as days of Maplestory and Lineage's release. I really hope all gaming industry dies in Korean even though I am Korean.
This is pretty common amongst MMO's, sadly. They cobble everything together to be as "bare bones functional" as possible at low cost, which usually means that servers start at v1.0, rather than whatever version the game currently is in its own country, even if the game is a decade old. I don't know if it's a contractual thing with the proprietary owners of the game (not being able to change the core product, for example), or just them being lazy, but most companies never fix anything, unless the bug hinders the ability to log into servers. This is why when people say things like "the game will eventually get better over time", I usually don't hold my breath, as after a game is released, the primary concern of a company is establishing microtransactions, over stabilizing/optimizing the game or creating new content. This is why [in my opinion] subscription-based games are a waste of money. I really liked what I did play of Aion, back in the day, though. Then I just kind of forgot about it, I had no idea it was still a thing, until I saw this video, and another recently talking about how their making Aion 2 (but I think it's only for Mobile devices).
Yeah, I remember the Western team selling themselves as legit developers. They were supposedly taking an already established game and "making it better" for us. Unfortunately they seemed like little more than a skeleton crew that translated the game into English and maintained basic server operations. They couldn't make significant changes because they were (A) incapable of doing so and (B) unauthorized to do so. I felt completely scammed when I realized this. Their absolute lack of control over the product even spilled over to the official forums, were frustrated players went nuts with venomous posts, viciously criticizing NC soft, just to prove the forums weren't being monitored by "devs" whatsoever. Eventually they did hire a community manager to try and calm people down, but by then it was WAY too late.
Well for me AIon killed by Gameforge ridicolous Gold pack system... I still remember how i worry about my gold in the end of the month... That thing just give me an another grinding fest, and if u cant manage it to collect the money just in time u are fucked (becouse without the market u cant do closely anything). Furhermore the game didnt able to handle the Siege PvP which give an another nail to the coffin. And no, if u think the NCSoft treat poorly the customers i never have a chance to meet the Gameforge custom service.... thats a joke... Since that i NEVER play in EU servers, becouse not only the Gameforge treat the EU players just like this, closely everyone, Wargaming, Enmas even the Blizzard. I still feel a bit bad becouse the Aion, becouse its a promising game, just a little less grind content and better large scale PvP optimalsation and this game is great, but without these and with the current low playerbase this game just didnt worth the time.
This game was my teenage years. I sadly recently broke up with my partner that I met on Aion and wad with for years. This video triggered a lot of memories, thank you
Back at lvl 50 cap: You literally can't gear as a melee for pvp because pvp as melee in the abyss was a shitfest, and if you wanted to get ap through PVE it would take you YEARS to get enough. Playerbase too low, game doesn't function as intended. Can't find groups for content/pvp. With each and every update these symptoms got worse and worse. Not to mention most EU players needed to use a latency fix software to even be able to play the game normally, without it there would be 0,2sec delays before skill executions. Pve/ground smallscale pvp/general combat was so fucking good, it's such a shame.
I'd love to see a video about the differences in gaming cultures. I've always wondered why koreans are so crazy about MMOs, and especially grindy ones...
@Thomas Hobbes This is truth unfortunately. We prefer to be occupied than to be truly entertain. No idea why, but that's the truth. If an MMO doesn't have a grinding experience, it won't be a "game".
its because Koreans like grinding, while other Asians do but not as much, which is why KRMMORPGS are usually a grindfest, while JPMMORPGs are grindy but not as much as KR and tends to focus more on story and end game
I disagree about Aion not looking as good as newer mmorpgs. Graphics, yes I agree with you, but the art and locations look so much better and fantasy vibes are everywhere.
Aion was the best mmo i ever played. Vanilla to 3.0 were some of the best experiences you could have in an mmo. No p2w. Just grinding for gear to compete. 2.5 was the best patch man. Gelk pvp for life!
1.5-3.0 was the golden age. the best mmo at that time. played both NA and some private servers. beyond 3.0 the game lost its charm then they added the crap new classes.
This video is just making me sad, I remember being 10 years old getting this game on christmas 2009, I was so excited to just start playing and god I did, best MMO that ever has or will ever be, it was just perfect.
I played this game for almost 10 months. I can give a few tidbits of what I remember. The community was pretty friendly, as you needed each other to do dungeons and abyss content. The insane amount of skills actually forced me to learn how to keybind instead of being a clicker. So in a way, Aion made me the player I am today in other mmo's. Melee was incredibly frustrating to play, and the damage you did was abhorrent compared to ranged classes. It was one of the major factors in me quitting as I mained a rogue. Pvp always felt a bit unfair in general. As twinks with their + attack socket builds would go into lower level zones and gank people trying to level to endgame. Faction imbalance would ultimately be the deciding factor in why I stopped playing. As we struggled to get into the abyss zones to farm the hearts (I think they were hearts) for the endgame armor set. Which ultimately discouraged my small group of friends from even trying. And eventually quitting.
@@MIGAS32000 I know that many people like them, but honestly i didn't find FFXIV musics that good. To me Aion and Lineage 2 is the best.. and even some random MMOs. Dragon Nest SEA version had some amazing tracks for example. FFXIV doesn't have these deep soundtracks.
@@TheScure it does, i guarantee you that it's best MMO soundtrack there is from a music theory perspective. Probably for you it's not as good while others like you mentioned are better and deep because you played those games and you have memories/emotions attached to the songs, while if you haven't played FFXIV, it's normal that you don't feel that attachment to the music.
@@MIGAS32000 I didn't play much with Aion and never played Lineage 2. Still think the same way. I even commented in some Lineage video that i never played it and i can't even imagine these musics with added nostalgia. To me FFXIV missing something. Like the shadowbringer ost that was mentioned here. Like it tries to sounds good but it fails, there are soundtracks that try to sounds epic but it fails. I felt the same with Guild Wars 2 OST. While for Aion i can open a 2 hour long soundtrack mix and i enjoy them all.
@@TheScure that's weird, shadowbringers OST doesn't fail in any shape or form. It succeeds far better than any other MMO OST and it's easily the most epic and the best soundtrack in an MMO. You can prefer other soundtracks and don't enjoy FFXIV OST as much ofc but you can't really say that it fails due to the amount of success it has.
Hello everyone. Thanks for watching, and we have a big announcement video coming next month (complete with live event footage + skits and the like :) ). So much stuff in store :). I hope you enjoyed my take on Aion, and why it never quite saw the same success in the West that it did in the East. And, well it's current status as an MMORPG. Make sure to pay attention to the hint at the end, and if you are right I will heart it. Oh, and I realize I didn't really explain fully my personal thoughts of Aion (or criticism), but ultimately I try to not make these play like a review and more like an investigation of sorts. I don't want to put too much of my opinion in this series ultimately :D. Edit: I realize Blade & Soul is closer to a "action hybrid with tab target elements" than a "tab target" game. It requires an active camera, which at least gives it some semblance of aiming. edit edit: I realize I didn't mention Aion Russia at all, but to be honest, I couldn't find much about it. Not even from NCSOFT themselves. But I certainly regret not mentioning them, and how they actually aren't doing too bad there business model wise and reception wise. I've heard claims of EU audience having "thousands of players because people don't use steam" and haven't seen any facts to back up this claim. Basically non-official data is skewed in many ways, and people are postulating that to mean "concurrent" players. One thing is for sure, we can check the revenue from NCSOFT the source. And Aion despite having a good Q1 2017, has been largely declining. This is in their financial data, it's about as accurate as a metric as it gets. Not to mention, the Korean audience dwarfs the EU audience. Which means, really in the end for NCSOFT, if Aion can't be successful in Korea (it's been slowly losing success to B&S in both markets), it will 100% be chopped by NCSOFT. Also, CryEngine 1 has been said to be used for this project. But I have also seen conflicting reports, showing they actually used CryEngine 2. Hard to know for sure (both credible sources), but we do know both aren't really nearly as different as say for example CryEngine 2 and 5.5.
I remember a lot of people leaving because of the pvp and refusing to participate in the fortress battles. I also remember the lag- New Vaizel Crows secret weapon was the wall of lag. I also remember the grind, I think there's an article about it being too grindy for korean players and their protest.
Love your content huge fan since dark age of camelot i think. Was watching this with a friend and he asked "Did he do a video on Phantasy Star Online (PSU)" and I didn't see a video. Ever heard/had interest in it? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
I played this game when I was still 10 years old. I'm 18 already. I feel very nostalgic and I miss the times where I played with friends at a computer shop.
there was a flight MMO where it plays like crimson skies, but unfortunately that shutdown pretty quick, cuz one of the biggest issue was that nobody knew it existed, I only found it by chance and even then it took a long time to even find a match, unfortunately I forgot the name of it and I am having a damn hard time trying to find it
Absolutely loved this game. Everything about it. Visually stunning with the coolest armors and awesome skill effects. Wish it didnt have to go to shit..
Thank you..I needed this! I left Aion a year ago. And there is nothing left for me now. Mmo's Are as good as Dead. Too much Greed. I have now subscribed to your channel..Keep up the great Work !!
Being pay to win with extremely punishing gear upgrade and stat slotting systems (unless you paid) and also having PvPvE zones being a mandatory part of progression was a deadly combination for me personally. I got nothing done struggling against highly geared people who would jump me in stealth any time I tried to pick up or do a quest. Aion was the first 3D mmo I ever really played and got into and I'm glad I played it, but it wasn't a game for me.
I played in those years. I started playing when f2p was first released and continued to play on and off for years. I was really attached to the game despite its flaws because, again, it was the first 3D mmo that I got into. It started feeling like an abusive relationship, I put up with it for longer than anyone should put up with a game they don't actually enjoy anymore, and I finally moved onto better games. I'm not going to lie, I sometimes want to check in on Aion and see what changed, but I don't want to PLAY Aion anymore.
This was my first mmorpg that I truly played and got super in to. So sad :( still have yet to find another that brings me so much joy and keeps me playing for so long.
I played it around 2014-2015 and loved it! Revisited the game I'm 2016 and it was.. So disappointing. It didn't feel free to play at all and half my characters were gone, including the guy I Mained. It was such a let down
The first "WoW Killer" I remember my entire guild which had been raiding since Vanilla abandoned WoW to be the best on Aion. Holy shit I think half of us didn't make it passed level 30 before we were back on WoW.
Really enjoy how well researched, scripted and paced this series is. Often gamer channels try these types of videos, but rarely are they as professional and insightful. I'd love to see you branch out and do non-MMO/RPGs too.
I just opened the youtube page and it recommended me this, it is so strange, normally it recommends only soccer or shitty videos ( I don't watch soccer or shit videos since january '-').
Good video my dude! I played Aion since it's launch in 2009 on NA (Gameforge was a no no for me) and I continued to play till patch 5.0. I did move to a payed Russian server in 2012. It was a great game, full of so many fun features and combat. Met so many of my friends there and we had so much fun. the grind was good for us, because we had things to do and kept us entertained. For 7-8 years I didn't play anything else (except Tera for a month) and as much as I love the game, I can't play it anymore. After the original Aion team left the company around patch 4.5 the game started dying super fast. The new team didn't have the ideas and vision the old did and started removing stuff. Patch 4.0 (dark Betrayal) was my favourite ever and the new maps were gems. The pvp there was interesting and the dungeons were nice. 4.5 tho, deleted allllll of these nice stuff and gave players stupid new maps were it was impossible to pvp unless you're only a pvp player, and some random transformations that, made classes even more unbalanced. After that shit went down super fast. I was so done with the pay to win thing, literally, people with (real) money could get the best gear in the game in like 2 days and destroy those who try to grind and get their gear the proper way. 6.0... A New Dawn... a.k.a A New Fuckup... By removing everything bad they did in the past 3 years, NC team thought that they can save the game! Still P2W tho... and it's back to dying. Aion 2 being on mobile was a huge disappointment. But don't you guys have phones?
Same exact reason I left.... Used to be a Rank 4 Star Officer Maxed Geared Glad at 5.0. Even so game at that time was pretty much shit I endured it, because at the time I managed to hang in by grinding 24/7 and + I was geared at the time (without p2w), but became harder and harder to continue the trend. Afterword's it was impossible to keep up at all. So today I'm actually grateful to my self that I left that loop of a hole Aion.
Aion killed itself right at launch IMO with not dealing with all the damn botters. The game was already a grind but all channels (thing was 10?) had dozens botters every area. And Aion didn't do anything about banning them for at least a month+. Was a fun game though when I played. The flying combat was def a challenge for me.
Got to agree, I played Beta and 6months after in the EU-West, the game was totally and utterly flooded with Korean Bots, seriously unbelievable botting. NCSoft had no answer to Korean bots ( as an example the map chat was would continuously scroll with gold sellers etc pretty much stopping contact with other real players). This must have improved after the first 6 months otherwise the game would never have lasted more than a year. Never seen a game so destroyed by botting. Why no mention of this problem where a game is launched first in Korea then months later in the West? Frankly the game had good promise and was fun for a wee while and for me a refreshing change coming from WoW, factional balance maybe another problem but gawd those K-Bots. GW2 player now (6 years since dumping Aion) and one of the best games I have played with most definitely the best non-toxic player base. No grind unless you want too, no hard sell, top prizes are skins rather than muscle which might explain the very low toxicity. For casual players with limited game time like myself, excellent.
@@RR-gm1fp The only thing you could do about bots was greif em but even that was futile since even if you wiped one bot pair enough that they stopped coming back anther group would replace them immediately.
Yeah the botters killed it for me. I hammered the game pretty hard at launch, getting pissed a bots collecting all the aether or whatever all the time. Took a break after 35ish, came back and they told me my account was banned, wouldn't give a reason, and told me to buy the game again. So apparently I got knocked out in a ban wave while my sub was inactive and they wouldn't give me any information or appeals. I essentially just swore off NCSoft titles at that point.
Aion was the best mmo I have ever played, but it changed so much, I can't stay for longer than a few days at a time. The music is still the best and I'll continue to listen to it while crying :) goddammit.
I'm early, and I've watched exactly 2 seconds of the video, but I just want to say: Dude, you put out good shit. Like *really* good content, and I appreciate all the effort you put into your videos along with everyone else. Looking forward to all future videos with anticipation. My only request is that you do Metal Gear Online, one day (talk about "death" of a game, yikes). Love, Big Boss.
This game was years of my life, I miss it so much.
6 лет назад+106
Why do most Koreans have such low standards for MMO's? They don't seem to care about content or meaningful gameplay in the slightest. To them, it's all about spending dozens of hours trading hits with the same enemies just to get that next "ding!".
I'm going to copy/paste something I wrote for another comment because I think it applies here. I'm half Korean, visit my family and friends there every year, and I can't quite wrap my head around it either. I know a lot of people go to PC방 (PC bang) to play games (those business where you rent a gaming PC in Korea, and other East Asian countries). Of course most guys you'll see in them are definitely neets, not all but definitely most of them. So they want spend their time playing a game they can truly waste their life to. I really don't know for sure though, I never bothered talking to any of them. Most of my friends play StarCraft, Overwatch, and Diablo.
@Firebrand Most online games as a whole is about grinding, grind is the developers' answer to a prolonged gameplay experience. Imagine if they made online multiplayer games with the game design of single-player games: The player would start the game, follow an exciting and engaging story without any form of grind, and then reach the end of the game in what, 3 days? One week? And then what? Though single player games, especially nowadays, have mechanics in place to add replayability such as multiple endings and new game+, they still don't have anywhere near an online game's lifespan, because online games depend on maintaining a large enough playerbase, so there are mechanics in place to arrange that. This applies to more than MMO's. In a competitive game such as Overwatch or League of Legends, you grind for rank; in a card game like Hearthstone you grind for new cards, and in an MMO you grind for gear. Truthfully, the concept of grind gets a bad rep because of Korean MMO's that put such low effort into it. Any online game is gonna have grind in some way or another, the developer's challenge is to make that grind interesting, engaging, and in general just make it not feel like a grind, western MMO's do that a lot better in my opinion.
It seems strange to me as well. Funny enough I read a Korean Book series called Legendary Moonlight Sculptor where they play a huge VR game called Royal Road Online. And the game is just a fucking Grindfest. Like the grind is laughtable and for some reason everyone still plays it and takes it matter of factly.
Great video. Really brings back memories. In the time leading up to Aion's launch I can recall a tremendous amount of desperation from the MMORPG community to anoint the next "WoW killer." The term was thrown around frequently and people put all their hopes and expectations into games like Warhammer and Age of Conan only to be disappointed. I remember the hype surrounding Aion as the next "WoW killer was insane." I myself was super drawn in because I had never seen such a visually striking game before - art design, the world, the characters, the music, everything was gorgeous. After the initial honeymoon period though I feel like western audiences were shocked at how grindy and linear the gameplay was. Probably a lot of people moving to Aion from WoW hadn't experienced an "Korean style" MMO before and it was a bit of a rude awakening.
you missed out on a huge point where the first editions of the game only displayed one of the 2 factions during character creation and you had to push a button to view the dark faction, which lead to overpopulation of Elyos compared to Asmodians (about a 80%-20%, 90%-10% ratio IN A FACTION PVP GAME!) and to make it SO MUCH worse, the NA publisher REWARDED the winning faction with pvp gear, leading to there being no pvp for the winning light faction and no way to play for the dark faction (throughout all servers), so ofcourse people left shortly after starting because for elyos the game became pve and asmodian players rightfully felt like there was no reason to play 1v10.
@@GodOfPlague Yep. There was one server that got to be the Asmodian server cause, if memory serves, there was a very large and organized guild that started Aion together as Asmodian and basically just rolled over everything. Anyone who wanted to play Elyos in any remotely serious fashion abandoned ship and the server became a magnet for anyone who wanted to play a blue person.
@@oliviawilliams6204 Agreed but it will be hard to top EA with what they have done to both dungeon keeper and C&C recently. In C&C's case they actually killed it a few years back just to reserect it and kill it again this year, just to make sure its extra dead I guess.
@@YcleptCrazy Oh you don't get me, Fallout 76 did not kill Fallout, Bethesda did, years ago, Fallout 4 was a nail in the coffin, 76 is an insult, sure the franchise is popular. But when Bethesda brought it, it lost it'S soul they never understood what Fallout was about. They completely missed the point. Fallout was a game a bout choice and consequences with multiple path to victory for all quest. Bethesda offer one, shoot your way to victory. Also Fallout was a critic of American exceptionalism and a critic of nuclear proliferation. Bethesda made American exceptionalism cool again, and now in 76 make the players nuke other players for loot, MISSING THE POINT MUCH!! And finally it's about building a better future in the wasteland, and Fallout 76... Remove permanence, everything you build will be put back in your inventory each time you disconnect, so what are you rebuilding? Bethesda don't understand what made Fallout, they never did, and it's long dead, Fallout 76 is not what killed Fallout, it's a Zombie
Regional content delays absolutely plague Asian MMOs. I honestly believe one of the reasons why FF14 remains so popular worldwide is because they aim for simultaneous global release for every patch, and, conversely, this is one of the things that killed PSO2's official NA release. I understand translation takes time, but if there's more than a month or two between regions, then this is a massive problem. Even back in 2007, Blizzard was doing near-simultaneous worldwide releases for their content save for mainland China where expansions had to be significantly modified to pass the muster of local censors (and even in that case, it was only like a 6 month delay).
Old Aion is one of my favorite MMORPG played it with my friend also meet a lot of people specially in our Legion WICKED, I'm their cleric but I also built a Cleric Dps. Miss those old days
This video made me realize that it's been like 10 years since i actually played aion and Not a few years ago like i thought, That made me upset :( im getting old lmao.
I played at launch and I can pretty easily tell you what my reason was for quitting: the grind. Almost all MMOs are time wasters, but Aion was a monotonous grind like I hadn't seen in years. I played for 2 days with friends and then we all abandoned it for a game that was actually fun moment to moment. Related to this, but also the section at the end: I have kind of quit playing MMOs. I play GW2 occassionally, mostly when new chapters come out, but I feel like right now the whole industry is overly exploitative. It feels like games stopped trying to be more fun or engaging years ago, now they just aim for addicting. Get players stuck in a loop and then offer them a shortcut for real money.
As always, excellent video! I just have to say though - you played that fabulous AION music in the background and gave me 'Teh Feelz' fr fr. Also, RIP Origa *salutes*
I bet this one would be hard to investigate and not too interesting for Nerd's audience, but i definitely would be glade to see that video. I would easily play Allods over WoW now, i there were any players on subscription server, last year it were already barren.
@@painwheel_1337 The game itself plays decent but the notorious cash grab turns the entire player base off. I even remember they were throttling even experience to f2p players. Making the already hard grind next to impossible and forcing you to pay for sub.
@@MukuonChannel F2P version was horrible yeah, you couldn't do anything without cash, but the sub server were great and the sub were cheap. But russian audience would rather play shitty F2P server over paying small sub fee. Not sure how this game was published globally.
I'd love to see this actually, this game showed alot of promise early on and was very fun take on the WoW clone genre specially with its boat system. But then quickly took the hard p2w path with the perfume system which gave massive pvp advantage which was a large part of the endgame or endgame pve as well
im get so many nostalgia feelings when i hear about this game, i was so in love with this game, made so many friends and i spent so much time having time, but when time passed, the amount of players lowered, so sad
"Korean MMO" even then was synonymous with "Too grindy" and "Too PVP focused" . This continued , and added " Scummy Cash Shop , Pay To Win" to it. That is why they fail outside Korea.
Aion drew me in just with the ability to fly. The gameplay stuff looked interesting enough as well... however, once I started playing Aion what I found was why I never stuck to World of Warcraft, the gameplay bored me since you basically stayed in one spot and pressed a few buttons, as well as the same type of busywork quests like being required to collect 10 bear asses. The one thing that completely lost me for good was when I went through a solo dungeon on the Asmodean side. I was unable to fly, only glide. However, when I defeated the boss (who was a Daeva and had wings like me), he was able to just fly away through the window while I was still unable to fly myself. Flight was always super restrictive, even in the Abyss with the short flight time, but a boss I defeated being able to fly away while I'm stuck on the ground just reiterated my annoyances and I stopped. Based on how the game ended up, that was the right decision.
For me the first 30 levels in Aion were the best experience i ever had in an MMO, unfortunately it fizzled out after that with no story or context and just pure grind for no real reason (they could have just ended the leveling at 30 instead of adding 20 more levels with no real content). In addition to that the PvP gameplay had some problems because it was very slow in terms of cast animations (an instant cast in WoW worked very smooth while in Aion it still had a long wind up animation even though it was an 'instant' cast) and the problem with melee classes because of flying and internet connection made a lot of problems for those classes.
When it came out, I thought Aion was one of the most beautiful, artistically developed games at the time. It also had a certain style to it that I can best describe as regal or perhaps the exact opposite of gritty. The small scale rift PvP was tons of fun. The game also had a phenomenal soundtrack. What turned me off was a lot of what you mentioned - I hated flying because it was so easy for your fly timer to run out. The end game content - specifically PvP in the Abyss, was so difficult because of the zerg vs zerg and because of the game's inability to handle large scale PvP. Additionally, server balancing, as mentioned below, was a big problem for PvP.
I'd really enjoy a 'state of the genre' type video for the current mobile mmorpgs and maybe a prognosis for the future. Since a lot of thwm are popping up and to have a go to video to link to people when I argue with them over it. Or maybe you'll change my mind if it somehow ends up positive. I personally dislike them. Also, gameforge kills my favorite mmorpgs. Rest in peace AION and Tera PepeHands
11/10 Solid content. Looking forward to your future videos. Incredibly informative for a prospective MMORPG developer. Market trends are certainly important to keep an eye on. Keep up the good work!
I played on the Nezekan server (Oceanic server) with my guild that was primarily Aus/NZ based. One of the things that contributed to grievously killing the Oceanic server was, despite the dedicated guilds on both sides, if one side (Elyos in Nezekan's case) was stronger than the other in either numbers or quality of players the opposite side (the Nezekan Asmos) would struggle to hold the Abyss which led to a lot desire a server transfer when they opened the servers...which compounded the weaker side's problems, especially player population. This was also apparent in Balaria when the Asmodian's map was more often overran by Elyos during a castle take over. Nezekan was the first to close in NA, and the grind, slow content release, and overall feeling that we were being disparaged for the Korean population's interests kicked in overdrive. That jump from base Aion to Balaria took a while to get there. Content release was soo slow...the love for NA/EU Aion side of the company was not felt. NCSoft Korea and NCSoft NA felt kind of at odds, in NA we wanted different things and it took eons to get us this content. Guilds in NA long abandoned the game onto fresher titles as the massive MMO drought we experience to this day wasn't in full force yet. There were new titles on the horizon all the time. My guild went to Tera and eventually FF14. In fact Blade n Soul was still a while away and there were many other competing titles that came and chipped at Aion's player base. While I think nerdSlayer's video did a good job trying to fit in 10ish years of history, Aion's death was well felt around Balaria's release (way before BnS came into the picture for NA players), if not even before. NCsoft significantly improved the grinding problem but the grind still existed at the end of the game, and it was a painful one...seriously, screw Balaur bloods. It was still an overall very enjoyable experience. We had gripes but the visuals were stunning and I am still friends with a few people from that golden era of MMOs...it's too bad that a 'new title' (which many were coming out at the time) was more appealing than having to sit and rot in Aion while its Korean's daddy company gave us a poor allowance.
I played Aion since launch in the west. For years, it was my go-to MMO, and it still holds a dear, special place in my heart. Seeing what it's become now though..I can't say I didn't see it coming or didn't expect it, but it still kills me inside. Thanks for the memories, Aion. You deserved everything, but like so many others, were given nothing and left to rot.
damn im sad i missed being able to play this game.. the skill animations are fucking awesome and the wold looks amazing! the weapons are unique too for a western player like me
7:35 "Shadowbane Closes" FUCK that hit hard. Shadowbane was the first game my family and I got together and formed a guild in, the game has such a huge place in my heart.
Aion was ... huff.... something. I will never forget the first time I experienced that game, in both factions. The graphics, musics, the atmosphere. It was wonderful, like ... magical. The colors the gameplay the people in it. I will definitely miss this game and instances in this game
I don't know why but for me Aion has the best combat system of all mmo games I've played. Could be because I kinda grew up with Aion but how often did I tried to find an alternative to Aion but every other game disappointed me.
You touched upon that cultural differences are also likely to be the cause for monetization dissonance. In the West, there's huge pushback against paying for power and other "predatory" practices. I'd wager this is probably due to the different approaches to gaming, and the different expectations both groups have. I wager that people in the West tend to play games as a form of relief and escapism. No matter what you may do for your day job, you can become someone else in a game. No matter how poor or rich you are, the playing field is level when you start playing a game. It's the encapsulation of the "American Dream" in it's purest form, that you, the player, can become great no matter your background. All you have to do is put in the time, effort and skill to get there. Now, in Asian countries, gaming is more integrated with your life, in that your achievements and your abilities should reflect what you do in real life. If you have money and power, why can't you also leverage that in a game? If you can do that in real life, through lobbying and whatnot, why can't we extend this into gaming? Why can't you spend your hard earned money to make yourself more powerful? To not be able to do that would truly separate your achievements in real life from your achievements in-game.
Okay so i lived in Korea for 2 years, they don't call them 'PC Bangs', they pronounce it 'PC Bong'. Every time you say 'Bang' I wince a bit as it reminds me of the noob I was when I first went to live there -_-
I'll have to watch this. been a fan since your vid on APB Reloaded. If youre running low on ideas for vids, its possible you could do one on Marvel Heroes the ARPG by David Brevik (Diablo 2). It was a F2P ARPG that had a poor start, started to do really well, but shut down because of poor management.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss Can't wait to see it :) I was one of MH players for most of the game's run. And it wasn't bad game, really. Too bad the same can't be said about the management side :(
0:35 Just so everyone knows, the information here is inaccurate. The game was launched in NA at version 1.5 which uses the original 'Cry Engine' from the original "Far Cry 2004" game. Later on, at Aion 3.0 the devs upscaled the game a little bit by moving it into the 'Cry Engine 2' used in "Crysis".
@@CRUSADER078 Oh its alright man, glad we could show and help you, sometimes its hard to catch everything, I work as an editor and it happens all the time to me haha (Sadly my youtube has no good example footage) , let me know if you need someone to watch and help. I don't mind.
Aion was my first MMO and it remained the only one I've invested so much time into. It won't be an exaggeration to say that I've been growing up playing this game. Having first played it when I was 12, I still revisit it even now 13 years later. I can also add that although the game is more or less dead on retail servers, private servers with fixed versions between 3.5-4.6 are still very much alive and can be a great place to come back when nostalgia is eating you. I still believe that Aion has the best combat in an MMO. I've spent years trying out other MMOs to replace the hole that quitting Aion left in my heart but I was not able to find anything. I still have a vague hope that one day something will come out to engage me so much as Aion did...
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
If you're serious about doing a video about the differences between the Japanese, Korean, and Western markets I would watch the hell out of that.
me too
Move upovtes for this guy guys!
I'm already preparing popcorn dude
Agreed.
Just adding my support for this idea.
Aion was my first MMO, lots of nostalgia.
It wasn't my first but it was my favorite
And so do I, since 2013... I've played for 4 years. Such a wonderful memory i've ever had...
Sucks to be you XD
@darcia because Aion came really late to the MMO party, there was so many bether ones to start with
I feel sorry for you lads
Man, that Aion intro theme in the beginning really hit me in the nostalgia feels. Used to love the music and the aesthetics even more than the game itself.
Hopping into Aion as my first real MMO, ready to "step" into a new world and enjoy a game with my guildies from another game I played... starting in Poeta and hearing that music as I see tons of ugly and deformed toons run around trying to figure out what they need to do... Yep, hearing that Tower of Eternity theme always sends me right back to that memory and god damn, the hit in the nostalgia feels is always real.
The soundtracks are up on youtube. the one in the financial district is still really good :)
I feel that's true for a lot of people who don't get really into MMOs. They often have great ideas and cool concepts but are married to boring grinds, terrible UIs, bad animations and other things that fail to sell the idea.
Saaaaaaame. I didn't get into WoW, but AION was the MMO that got me into MMOs.
To this day it still sends Chills down my spine... There's just something about it that screams Grandiose
The killer for me was restricted fly zones and limited flytime. You launch a game with the most awesome feature only to limit it to an absolute minimum? wth
Exactly the reason why I left the game before even getting to the Abyss.
YES OMG!! Not even the pay to win aspect is the worst, but exactly what you said. Seriously, they are absolutely lazy developers! The best feature is flying with your majestic wings, but JOKES ON YOU, you never truly do that. Only like 5% of the game, maybe even less..
I am still sad, because aion has such incredible potential, great story, wonderful ost, stunning character creation, beautiful scenery or just world overall...
Truly a shame.
Oh and its community could be better, but that is just my personal experience.
Flying might look cool, but its absolute dog shit, its cancer in pvp and pve.
Everytime you see the word "Soon" used as a meme after a company name it originates with NCSoft and Aion. Trust me I was there and it was a nightmare waiting for content that was always being pushed back. We found out NCSoft West was not actually a dev team at all. It was just a bunch of GM's and translators. I knew one of the CM's and e-mailed him after he went to Rift and he told me it was horrible.
If you're looking for an MMO with unrestricted actively used flight, Perfect World is an option. However, it's also F2P/P2W with a PvP focus. Caveat emptor.
It's pronounced aion not aion
I always called it Aion. May it be wrong i'm so used to it that I won't change it anymore.
no no, it's aion
yer wrong filthy casual it's pronounced AION! 😜
All this time I thought it was called aion, thank you!
Ai didn't know Aion was produced Aion.
Aion was such a beautiful game when it came out... grindy but fun and beautiful... i loved playing it and i loved just standing around admiring the scenery or rping even more
then ncsoft sold it and it gone to shit (gameforge version that is)
gameforge did not deserve aion
Nothing deserves gameforge
@@CErra310 bless does
@@arturgarlacz4439 I guess
why not?
Belgian Sebastian True but Final fantasy xiv is doing great. If you want to play an mmorpg play ffxiv. Square enix really cares about the genre, specifically Yoshi P who single handedly saved it. May not have big WoW numbers but they constantly pump out genuine and enjoyable content.
I can say that Aion saved me from deep sadness, that's why I can't leave this game.
Aion will always have a place in my heart.
Aion Forever
Same here, made some true friends there, and i really hope they get aion 2 right and revitalize mmorpg
Same, Aion was such an amazing game before Gameforge came ruining everything.
Aurora Walcry agree
Very similar to my situation. I hope you are fine now, Aurora. If you will ever want to play a game similar to Aion, try Final Fantasy XIV Online. It's with P2P subscription model (with first month for free). But it's worth every price.
same hihi i always compared aion into other game but in my mind aion still best
The music in this game was/is incredible; I saw a trailer with some gameplay and music, and fell in love. I knew I had to play it.
SirChocula rigth? Aion pvp music are awesome.. I even mod other game pvp with this aion abyss battle, just to feel the rush
I regret not playing it when I was young. I played crappier free games instead.
Indeed. I've been playing Aion on and off since the launch of 3.5 (or 3.7? Can't remember) - the biggest pull for me is always the music and the lore that's hidden in the game.
@@buschfelix4723 i no longer have it, if i remember correctly i downloaded it from a site, full aion ost album. Now u could grab some from youtube tho
I survived Metin 2 as a teen. ama
Never touch Gameforge, kids. *Never.*
Same here, Metin 2 and 4story...
Metin2 will live long dont forget about private servers
@@neqzu115 Sadly, I left Metin2 to focus entirely on my 4story characters as I had better relations with the players on it. Even more sadly, 4story died shortly thereafter, the guild that I founded died little by little and more than 90% of the players left the game in one and half year. Gameforge... Why you are like this? :(
@@blairalquia98 first time to see 4 story mentioned, i really loved that game especially the sorcerer where you could revive monsters and make them your own pet like that's so awesome, i am still looking for a game that has that skill but never found it
who plays metin2 classic? Just play private servers, there are some amazing out there.
As someone who played Aion heavily for 3 years, I just want to point out something that I saw directly leading to the death of the game in America.
The server balancing was AWFUL. During the initial 6 months, there were approximately 12 servers, split between east and west coast servers. For a game about high intensity pvp, playing on your localized servers was a huge issue for ping. The problem is, you could find on their website stats about the two races along with results from their abyss wars. The end result? After about 6 months around 3 servers had remained equal and competitive (roughly 50/50 population balance, and within a 10% success rate in abyss wars) The rest of the servers had become laughably imbalanced between the two factions. Most servers tended towards one faction dominating, with the other faction completely suppressed, and as the community suggested for one server, completely given up. At around the 8 months mark, ncsoft pulled a huge "Server balance pass" and combined multiple servers together.
These server mergers lead to huge issues. First off, you can't take multiple servers out of balance and throw them onto a balanced server, and expect the balanced server to stay healthy. For example, if you take a 500 vs 500 fight, add in 300 people to one side and only 100 to the other side, suddenly you've got a near unstoppable imbalance with the 800 vs 600. But that wasn't even the biggest issue. Due to the huge importance of the ping, the fact ncsoft took the east coast servers and moved them from the east coast and moved them to Houston Texas (hardly the east coast at this point) a large number of players took a hit to their ping. For certain classes that lived and died by their ping (refer to nerdslayers segment about melee players trying to fight in the air, after servers moved to Houston, I basically just never tried to air fight again, it was a lost cause).
The last big death knell for this game was the fact that, even before Aion went free to play, they started selling various items for an advantage for real money. The idea that after the game went FTP and had unhealthy pay to win mechanics wasn't just accurate, it was already in place. It just got worse.
I truly enjoyed playing Aion in the first year, but watched the slow heat death of the game. I didn't play through to the bitter end, the game was dead to me before then, but it was sad to see it go, in large part due to mismanagement on the part of ncsoft.
Aion was the first MMO I dug my teeth into after FFXI.. I loved it but the server balance was, indeed, the absolute worst. Israphel never was the same once the Asmodian exodus to other servers.
I also hated when they removed like 4 end game pvp maps and added two new pvpve maps that crammed both high and low level players in to smaller spaces which of course resulted in ganks of the lowbies who were just trying to do quests. Plus the endless grind to get decent pvp gear, stupid looking bunny costumes, lag issues, mostly empty maps made me say goodbye to this old friend.... rip
I remember that the Israphel server was full of elyos with only a 12% of asmodian population, way to balance the servers
I freebie'd Aion for a while. Other than Guild Wars 2 it's the only MMO I've ever been in danger of liking. A lot of what AION has to offer is really compelling. Its unique world, stellar graphics, interesting art direction, exciting fast paced combat for a tab target system. It's one of the few MMOs where I've gotten seriously invested in my characters. Generic though it may be beyond its stylings, AION is a pretty sweet and fresh tasting offering.
But after many long hours the grind just wore me down. Really, all this game has to offer is grind. There is nothing else. Hardly any of the story is interesting. Traversing the world is its own adventure but the combat is just so repetitive and dull after a while. While characters really seem to expand and flesh out in ability as you level up, no variety is ever added to the combat and character builds are pretty much the same for whatever class you choose (only clerics seem to offer multiple build types: all both of them).
AION seems to start off with a unique and compelling premise but then just devolves into your standard sloggy MMO grindfest and wears itself out.
you hit the nail on the head. I mentioned this in my own comment too. Nezekan met the same fate from server balancing issues.
The music is so..dam..good!!!
What killed Aion for me was ZERO interaction on the developers/publishers part. An official forum for bug reports that never got solved, for ideas that were never listened to, for discussions that never got further than other frustrated players. And then they announced Blade & Soul before focusing on their then current subscription based game. Yeah, that killed the game for me. NCsoft has since then been a curse-word that means avoid-at-all-cost.
I think it's worth mentioning how poor there customer relations is too I should have mentioned that.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss On the other hand, the game died in Korea because of pay2win again. Most Koreans are now so tired of this repeating trend in game taking off and then going pay2win as soon as it gains enough popularity, they consider any Korean mmo releases to be pay2win automatically.This type of thing happened to countless MMOs and even in fps games with OP guns coming out as cash items. Koreans absolutely hate games made in their own country and since the rise of Steam/LOL/OW they have moved on with handful of idiot whales still playing same pay2win games to this day.
I also don't like the fact that EA gets all the credit when it comes to pay2win. Because NC soft and Nexon are the true OG when it comes to milking players with micro-transactions, which EA and bunch of foreign companies saw and started copying. This began to spread as early as days of Maplestory and Lineage's release. I really hope all gaming industry dies in Korean even though I am Korean.
This is pretty common amongst MMO's, sadly. They cobble everything together to be as "bare bones functional" as possible at low cost, which usually means that servers start at v1.0, rather than whatever version the game currently is in its own country, even if the game is a decade old. I don't know if it's a contractual thing with the proprietary owners of the game (not being able to change the core product, for example), or just them being lazy, but most companies never fix anything, unless the bug hinders the ability to log into servers.
This is why when people say things like "the game will eventually get better over time", I usually don't hold my breath, as after a game is released, the primary concern of a company is establishing microtransactions, over stabilizing/optimizing the game or creating new content. This is why [in my opinion] subscription-based games are a waste of money.
I really liked what I did play of Aion, back in the day, though. Then I just kind of forgot about it, I had no idea it was still a thing, until I saw this video, and another recently talking about how their making Aion 2 (but I think it's only for Mobile devices).
Yeah, I remember the Western team selling themselves as legit developers. They were supposedly taking an already established game and "making it better" for us. Unfortunately they seemed like little more than a skeleton crew that translated the game into English and maintained basic server operations. They couldn't make significant changes because they were (A) incapable of doing so and (B) unauthorized to do so. I felt completely scammed when I realized this. Their absolute lack of control over the product even spilled over to the official forums, were frustrated players went nuts with venomous posts, viciously criticizing NC soft, just to prove the forums weren't being monitored by "devs" whatsoever. Eventually they did hire a community manager to try and calm people down, but by then it was WAY too late.
Well for me AIon killed by Gameforge ridicolous Gold pack system... I still remember how i worry about my gold in the end of the month... That thing just give me an another grinding fest, and if u cant manage it to collect the money just in time u are fucked (becouse without the market u cant do closely anything). Furhermore the game didnt able to handle the Siege PvP which give an another nail to the coffin. And no, if u think the NCSoft treat poorly the customers i never have a chance to meet the Gameforge custom service.... thats a joke... Since that i NEVER play in EU servers, becouse not only the Gameforge treat the EU players just like this, closely everyone, Wargaming, Enmas even the Blizzard.
I still feel a bit bad becouse the Aion, becouse its a promising game, just a little less grind content and better large scale PvP optimalsation and this game is great, but without these and with the current low playerbase this game just didnt worth the time.
I loved Aion so much.
I even modded the korean beta to english to be able to play it.
It kinda saved me, i had lost my mother the year prior.
This game was my teenage years. I sadly recently broke up with my partner that I met on Aion and wad with for years. This video triggered a lot of memories, thank you
I will be your new partner, I love red heads!
Oh my god... I got so excited when I saw this video on my thumbnail... Thank you sir. :D
p.s this game was my life for 7 long years
Back at lvl 50 cap: You literally can't gear as a melee for pvp because pvp as melee in the abyss was a shitfest, and if you wanted to get ap through PVE it would take you YEARS to get enough.
Playerbase too low, game doesn't function as intended.
Can't find groups for content/pvp.
With each and every update these symptoms got worse and worse. Not to mention most EU players needed to use a latency fix software to even be able to play the game normally, without it there would be 0,2sec delays before skill executions.
Pve/ground smallscale pvp/general combat was so fucking good, it's such a shame.
All hail OP Gladis back in 1.9
I'd love to see a video about the differences in gaming cultures. I've always wondered why koreans are so crazy about MMOs, and especially grindy ones...
I Agree, if there is any info about that, do it now!
Thomas Hobbes unacceptable
@Thomas Hobbes This is truth unfortunately. We prefer to be occupied than to be truly entertain. No idea why, but that's the truth. If an MMO doesn't have a grinding experience, it won't be a "game".
its because Koreans like grinding, while other Asians do but not as much, which is why KRMMORPGS are usually a grindfest, while JPMMORPGs are grindy but not as much as KR and tends to focus more on story and end game
This would be a nice video to watch. I'm unfamiliar with this, so it would be very educational.
I disagree about Aion not looking as good as newer mmorpgs. Graphics, yes I agree with you, but the art and locations look so much better and fantasy vibes are everywhere.
Aion was the best mmo i ever played.
Vanilla to 3.0 were some of the best experiences you could have in an mmo. No p2w. Just grinding for gear to compete.
2.5 was the best patch man. Gelk pvp for life!
Yeah, even 3.0 i enjoyed. But after that the downfall began.
Totally agree. I miss those good old days
Yes till. 3.0 it was so super it was Like u play a God if u hat end gear
1.5-3.0 was the golden age. the best mmo at that time. played both NA and some private servers. beyond 3.0 the game lost its charm then they added the crap new classes.
This video is just making me sad, I remember being 10 years old getting this game on christmas 2009, I was so excited to just start playing and god I did, best MMO that ever has or will ever be, it was just perfect.
I played this game for almost 10 months. I can give a few tidbits of what I remember.
The community was pretty friendly, as you needed each other to do dungeons and abyss content.
The insane amount of skills actually forced me to learn how to keybind instead of being a clicker. So in a way, Aion made me the player I am today in other mmo's.
Melee was incredibly frustrating to play, and the damage you did was abhorrent compared to ranged classes. It was one of the major factors in me quitting as I mained a rogue.
Pvp always felt a bit unfair in general. As twinks with their + attack socket builds would go into lower level zones and gank people trying to level to endgame.
Faction imbalance would ultimately be the deciding factor in why I stopped playing. As we struggled to get into the abyss zones to farm the hearts (I think they were hearts) for the endgame armor set. Which ultimately discouraged my small group of friends from even trying. And eventually quitting.
I probably sound like a broken record but my guy you put out like really good contents a shit ton of detail. Keep doing what you're doing man
Aion is still the best in one thing: soundtrack.
Not even close. You should listen to FFXIV soundtrack and give the game a try.
@@MIGAS32000 I know that many people like them, but honestly i didn't find FFXIV musics that good. To me Aion and Lineage 2 is the best.. and even some random MMOs. Dragon Nest SEA version had some amazing tracks for example. FFXIV doesn't have these deep soundtracks.
@@TheScure it does, i guarantee you that it's best MMO soundtrack there is from a music theory perspective. Probably for you it's not as good while others like you mentioned are better and deep because you played those games and you have memories/emotions attached to the songs, while if you haven't played FFXIV, it's normal that you don't feel that attachment to the music.
@@MIGAS32000 I didn't play much with Aion and never played Lineage 2. Still think the same way. I even commented in some Lineage video that i never played it and i can't even imagine these musics with added nostalgia. To me FFXIV missing something. Like the shadowbringer ost that was mentioned here. Like it tries to sounds good but it fails, there are soundtracks that try to sounds epic but it fails. I felt the same with Guild Wars 2 OST. While for Aion i can open a 2 hour long soundtrack mix and i enjoy them all.
@@TheScure that's weird, shadowbringers OST doesn't fail in any shape or form. It succeeds far better than any other MMO OST and it's easily the most epic and the best soundtrack in an MMO. You can prefer other soundtracks and don't enjoy FFXIV OST as much ofc but you can't really say that it fails due to the amount of success it has.
Hello everyone. Thanks for watching, and we have a big announcement video coming next month (complete with live event footage + skits and the like :) ). So much stuff in store :). I hope you enjoyed my take on Aion, and why it never quite saw the same success in the West that it did in the East. And, well it's current status as an MMORPG. Make sure to pay attention to the hint at the end, and if you are right I will heart it. Oh, and I realize I didn't really explain fully my personal thoughts of Aion (or criticism), but ultimately I try to not make these play like a review and more like an investigation of sorts. I don't want to put too much of my opinion in this series ultimately :D.
Edit: I realize Blade & Soul is closer to a "action hybrid with tab target elements" than a "tab target" game. It requires an active camera, which at least gives it some semblance of aiming.
edit edit: I realize I didn't mention Aion Russia at all, but to be honest, I couldn't find much about it. Not even from NCSOFT themselves. But I certainly regret not mentioning them, and how they actually aren't doing too bad there business model wise and reception wise.
I've heard claims of EU audience having "thousands of players because people don't use steam" and haven't seen any facts to back up this claim. Basically non-official data is skewed in many ways, and people are postulating that to mean "concurrent" players.
One thing is for sure, we can check the revenue from NCSOFT the source. And Aion despite having a good Q1 2017, has been largely declining. This is in their financial data, it's about as accurate as a metric as it gets.
Not to mention, the Korean audience dwarfs the EU audience. Which means, really in the end for NCSOFT, if Aion can't be successful in Korea (it's been slowly losing success to B&S in both markets), it will 100% be chopped by NCSOFT.
Also, CryEngine 1 has been said to be used for this project. But I have also seen conflicting reports, showing they actually used CryEngine 2. Hard to know for sure (both credible sources), but we do know both aren't really nearly as different as say for example CryEngine 2 and 5.5.
nerdSlayer can you do realm royale a game that just disappeared after awhile
please don't tell us the announcement is about you going to only mobile devices? lol
Um.... do hearts have monetary value?
I remember a lot of people leaving because of the pvp and refusing to participate in the fortress battles. I also remember the lag- New Vaizel Crows secret weapon was the wall of lag. I also remember the grind, I think there's an article about it being too grindy for korean players and their protest.
Love your content huge fan since dark age of camelot i think. Was watching this with a friend and he asked "Did he do a video on Phantasy Star Online (PSU)" and I didn't see a video. Ever heard/had interest in it? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
When I heard that soundtrack i felt a lot of nostalgia man :(( I played the game 6 years..
I played this game when I was still 10 years old. I'm 18 already. I feel very nostalgic and I miss the times where I played with friends at a computer shop.
Aion, Firefall... stop being a tease and give us unrestricted flight in an MMO. Hell, give us a Crimson Skies MMO.
Why is it so hard for devs to give us another good sky pirate themed game??? Crimson Skies and Skies of Arcadia are the only two good ones I know of.
Its bad when warframe has better flight and its not the main feature.
there was a flight MMO where it plays like crimson skies, but unfortunately that shutdown pretty quick, cuz one of the biggest issue was that nobody knew it existed, I only found it by chance and even then it took a long time to even find a match, unfortunately I forgot the name of it and I am having a damn hard time trying to find it
Ferrick, was it an eastern MMO with dragon mounts where you just sort of... floated in the air?
@Crunchy Chips no, it was a legit pvp dogfighting MMO with planes that look straight out of crimson skies, but with cartoony style of graphics
Absolutely loved this game. Everything about it. Visually stunning with the coolest armors and awesome skill effects. Wish it didnt have to go to shit..
It is pronounced levi-oh-sa.
Thank you..I needed this! I left Aion a year ago. And there is nothing left for me now. Mmo's Are as good as Dead. Too much Greed. I have now subscribed to your channel..Keep up the great Work !!
Being pay to win with extremely punishing gear upgrade and stat slotting systems (unless you paid) and also having PvPvE zones being a mandatory part of progression was a deadly combination for me personally. I got nothing done struggling against highly geared people who would jump me in stealth any time I tried to pick up or do a quest. Aion was the first 3D mmo I ever really played and got into and I'm glad I played it, but it wasn't a game for me.
But this pay2win shit started after a while
even after f2p release it was fine
I played in those years. I started playing when f2p was first released
and continued to play on and off for years. I was really attached to the
game despite its flaws because, again, it was the first 3D mmo that I
got into. It started feeling like an abusive relationship, I put up with
it for longer than anyone should put up with a game they don't actually
enjoy anymore, and I finally moved onto better games.
I'm not going to lie, I sometimes want to check in on Aion and see what
changed, but I don't want to PLAY Aion anymore.
This was my first mmorpg that I truly played and got super in to. So sad :( still have yet to find another that brings me so much joy and keeps me playing for so long.
6:25 Aion wasn't made on Crysis CryEngine 2, it used CryEngine 1 (far cry 2004)
I played it around 2014-2015 and loved it! Revisited the game I'm 2016 and it was.. So disappointing. It didn't feel free to play at all and half my characters were gone, including the guy I Mained. It was such a let down
The first "WoW Killer" I remember my entire guild which had been raiding since Vanilla abandoned WoW to be the best on Aion. Holy shit I think half of us didn't make it passed level 30 before we were back on WoW.
The beginning zones were amazing, the end-game zones where you spend most of your time looked like an ash tray.
Really enjoy how well researched, scripted and paced this series is. Often gamer channels try these types of videos, but rarely are they as professional and insightful. I'd love to see you branch out and do non-MMO/RPGs too.
I need to get me a highly produced and well thought out youtube series like this going. OH SNAP! 100k NICE!
SKYLENT IS HERE
I just wanna say, i love your videos bro, I fuck with you heavy. Keep it up
I just opened the youtube page and it recommended me this, it is so strange, normally it recommends only soccer or shitty videos ( I don't watch soccer or shit videos since january '-').
Yeah Man Those Top 10 vids kinda lacking but still great
Good video my dude!
I played Aion since it's launch in 2009 on NA (Gameforge was a no no for me) and I continued to play till patch 5.0. I did move to a payed Russian server in 2012. It was a great game, full of so many fun features and combat. Met so many of my friends there and we had so much fun. the grind was good for us, because we had things to do and kept us entertained. For 7-8 years I didn't play anything else (except Tera for a month) and as much as I love the game, I can't play it anymore. After the original Aion team left the company around patch 4.5 the game started dying super fast. The new team didn't have the ideas and vision the old did and started removing stuff. Patch 4.0 (dark Betrayal) was my favourite ever and the new maps were gems. The pvp there was interesting and the dungeons were nice. 4.5 tho, deleted allllll of these nice stuff and gave players stupid new maps were it was impossible to pvp unless you're only a pvp player, and some random transformations that, made classes even more unbalanced. After that shit went down super fast. I was so done with the pay to win thing, literally, people with (real) money could get the best gear in the game in like 2 days and destroy those who try to grind and get their gear the proper way.
6.0... A New Dawn... a.k.a A New Fuckup... By removing everything bad they did in the past 3 years, NC team thought that they can save the game! Still P2W tho... and it's back to dying.
Aion 2 being on mobile was a huge disappointment. But don't you guys have phones?
Anna P. А как тебе Айон Ледженд (сервер 3.0)?
Same exact reason I left.... Used to be a Rank 4 Star Officer Maxed Geared Glad at 5.0. Even so game at that time was pretty much shit I endured it, because at the time I managed to hang in by grinding 24/7 and + I was geared at the time (without p2w), but became harder and harder to continue the trend. Afterword's it was impossible to keep up at all. So today I'm actually grateful to my self that I left that loop of a hole Aion.
13:17
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUCKING GAMEFORGE
Aion killed itself right at launch IMO with not dealing with all the damn botters. The game was already a grind but all channels (thing was 10?) had dozens botters every area. And Aion didn't do anything about banning them for at least a month+. Was a fun game though when I played. The flying combat was def a challenge for me.
Got to agree, I played Beta and 6months after in the EU-West, the game was totally and utterly flooded with Korean Bots, seriously unbelievable botting. NCSoft had no answer to Korean bots ( as an example the map chat was would continuously scroll with gold sellers etc pretty much stopping contact with other real players). This must have improved after the first 6 months otherwise the game would never have lasted more than a year. Never seen a game so destroyed by botting.
Why no mention of this problem where a game is launched first in Korea then months later in the West?
Frankly the game had good promise and was fun for a wee while and for me a refreshing change coming from WoW, factional balance maybe another problem but gawd those K-Bots.
GW2 player now (6 years since dumping Aion) and one of the best games I have played with most definitely the best non-toxic player base. No grind unless you want too, no hard sell, top prizes are skins rather than muscle which might explain the very low toxicity. For casual players with limited game time like myself, excellent.
@@RR-gm1fp The only thing you could do about bots was greif em but even that was futile since even if you wiped one bot pair enough that they stopped coming back anther group would replace them immediately.
Yeah the botters killed it for me. I hammered the game pretty hard at launch, getting pissed a bots collecting all the aether or whatever all the time. Took a break after 35ish, came back and they told me my account was banned, wouldn't give a reason, and told me to buy the game again. So apparently I got knocked out in a ban wave while my sub was inactive and they wouldn't give me any information or appeals.
I essentially just swore off NCSoft titles at that point.
@@GeneisHavoc I got the same email but at that point I quit months ago and would never return anyway.
Aion was the best mmo I have ever played, but it changed so much, I can't stay for longer than a few days at a time. The music is still the best and I'll continue to listen to it while crying :) goddammit.
I'm early, and I've watched exactly 2 seconds of the video, but I just want to say: Dude, you put out good shit. Like *really* good content, and I appreciate all the effort you put into your videos along with everyone else.
Looking forward to all future videos with anticipation. My only request is that you do Metal Gear Online, one day (talk about "death" of a game, yikes).
Love, Big Boss.
*fist bumps*
@@nerdSlayerstudioss *CQC Slams*
"huh" "what was that?"
I put so many hours into MGO1 and MGO2.
I'd love to see a video on that. MGO3 could have been so good, but it just wasn't.
@robotrip M oof recognition jealousy
This game was years of my life, I miss it so much.
Why do most Koreans have such low standards for MMO's? They don't seem to care about content or meaningful gameplay in the slightest. To them, it's all about spending dozens of hours trading hits with the same enemies just to get that next "ding!".
DaLagga you just described all MMOs _more or less_
I'm going to copy/paste something I wrote for another comment because I think it applies here.
I'm half Korean, visit my family and friends there every year, and I can't quite wrap my head around it either. I know a lot of people go to PC방 (PC bang) to play games (those business where you rent a gaming PC in Korea, and other East Asian countries). Of course most guys you'll see in them are definitely neets, not all but definitely most of them. So they want spend their time playing a game they can truly waste their life to. I really don't know for sure though, I never bothered talking to any of them. Most of my friends play StarCraft, Overwatch, and Diablo.
@Firebrand Most online games as a whole is about grinding, grind is the developers' answer to a prolonged gameplay experience.
Imagine if they made online multiplayer games with the game design of single-player games: The player would start the game, follow an exciting and engaging story without any form of grind, and then reach the end of the game in what, 3 days? One week? And then what? Though single player games, especially nowadays, have mechanics in place to add replayability such as multiple endings and new game+, they still don't have anywhere near an online game's lifespan, because online games depend on maintaining a large enough playerbase, so there are mechanics in place to arrange that.
This applies to more than MMO's. In a competitive game such as Overwatch or League of Legends, you grind for rank; in a card game like Hearthstone you grind for new cards, and in an MMO you grind for gear.
Truthfully, the concept of grind gets a bad rep because of Korean MMO's that put such low effort into it. Any online game is gonna have grind in some way or another, the developer's challenge is to make that grind interesting, engaging, and in general just make it not feel like a grind, western MMO's do that a lot better in my opinion.
It seems strange to me as well. Funny enough I read a Korean Book series called Legendary Moonlight Sculptor where they play a huge VR game called Royal Road Online. And the game is just a fucking Grindfest. Like the grind is laughtable and for some reason everyone still plays it and takes it matter of factly.
I love that ding and I love korean mmos
Great video. Really brings back memories. In the time leading up to Aion's launch I can recall a tremendous amount of desperation from the MMORPG community to anoint the next "WoW killer." The term was thrown around frequently and people put all their hopes and expectations into games like Warhammer and Age of Conan only to be disappointed. I remember the hype surrounding Aion as the next "WoW killer was insane." I myself was super drawn in because I had never seen such a visually striking game before - art design, the world, the characters, the music, everything was gorgeous. After the initial honeymoon period though I feel like western audiences were shocked at how grindy and linear the gameplay was. Probably a lot of people moving to Aion from WoW hadn't experienced an "Korean style" MMO before and it was a bit of a rude awakening.
"Where's Tutty?" I often replied "in my belly" The mobile news makes me sad :(
you missed out on a huge point where the first editions of the game only displayed one of the 2 factions during character creation and you had to push a button to view the dark faction, which lead to overpopulation of Elyos compared to Asmodians (about a 80%-20%, 90%-10% ratio IN A FACTION PVP GAME!) and to make it SO MUCH worse, the NA publisher REWARDED the winning faction with pvp gear, leading to there being no pvp for the winning light faction and no way to play for the dark faction (throughout all servers), so ofcourse people left shortly after starting because for elyos the game became pve and asmodian players rightfully felt like there was no reason to play 1v10.
Asmos dominated my server
@@GodOfPlague Yep. There was one server that got to be the Asmodian server cause, if memory serves, there was a very large and organized guild that started Aion together as Asmodian and basically just rolled over everything. Anyone who wanted to play Elyos in any remotely serious fashion abandoned ship and the server became a magnet for anyone who wanted to play a blue person.
at 13:26 that is my steam review.... glad to be at your service :D
Dam really hurts knowing that aion died. So many memories in this game. RIP Tiamat
you should a death of a franchise series, plenty of source material this year.
Bethesda sure seem hell bent on killing Fallout
@@oliviawilliams6204 Agreed but it will be hard to top EA with what they have done to both dungeon keeper and C&C recently. In C&C's case they actually killed it a few years back just to reserect it and kill it again this year, just to make sure its extra dead I guess.
*dOnT YoU gUYs hAvE PHoNEs?*
@@oliviawilliams6204 Fallout 76 is fine and has a lot of potential if they listen to player feedback. It won't kill Fallout whatsoever.
@@YcleptCrazy Oh you don't get me, Fallout 76 did not kill Fallout, Bethesda did, years ago, Fallout 4 was a nail in the coffin, 76 is an insult, sure the franchise is popular. But when Bethesda brought it, it lost it'S soul they never understood what Fallout was about. They completely missed the point.
Fallout was a game a bout choice and consequences with multiple path to victory for all quest. Bethesda offer one, shoot your way to victory. Also Fallout was a critic of American exceptionalism and a critic of nuclear proliferation. Bethesda made American exceptionalism cool again, and now in 76 make the players nuke other players for loot, MISSING THE POINT MUCH!! And finally it's about building a better future in the wasteland, and Fallout 76... Remove permanence, everything you build will be put back in your inventory each time you disconnect, so what are you rebuilding?
Bethesda don't understand what made Fallout, they never did, and it's long dead, Fallout 76 is not what killed Fallout, it's a Zombie
Regional content delays absolutely plague Asian MMOs. I honestly believe one of the reasons why FF14 remains so popular worldwide is because they aim for simultaneous global release for every patch, and, conversely, this is one of the things that killed PSO2's official NA release. I understand translation takes time, but if there's more than a month or two between regions, then this is a massive problem. Even back in 2007, Blizzard was doing near-simultaneous worldwide releases for their content save for mainland China where expansions had to be significantly modified to pass the muster of local censors (and even in that case, it was only like a 6 month delay).
you are a great gaming journalist, can't wait your lineage video.
Better journalist than those so-called journalists who mostly use politics for clicks.
Old Aion is one of my favorite MMORPG played it with my friend also meet a lot of people specially in our Legion WICKED, I'm their cleric but I also built a Cleric Dps. Miss those old days
Plans for Lineage?
I REALLY hope so!
What would you do if you were about to go to heaven,
but god said..
"Ran out of glide timer".
This video made me realize that it's been like 10 years since i actually played aion and Not a few years ago like i thought, That made me upset :( im getting old lmao.
Aion ostmakes me cry every time
DEATH OF A GAME. RIFT.
Great work detective.
Thank you for making these videos, nerdSlayer. I love your content.
I played at launch and I can pretty easily tell you what my reason was for quitting: the grind. Almost all MMOs are time wasters, but Aion was a monotonous grind like I hadn't seen in years. I played for 2 days with friends and then we all abandoned it for a game that was actually fun moment to moment.
Related to this, but also the section at the end: I have kind of quit playing MMOs. I play GW2 occassionally, mostly when new chapters come out, but I feel like right now the whole industry is overly exploitative. It feels like games stopped trying to be more fun or engaging years ago, now they just aim for addicting. Get players stuck in a loop and then offer them a shortcut for real money.
So true
mmo = grind
doing the exact same things for over a thousand hours to max one of your many skills in runescape, thats the soul of mmorpg 🙃
As always, excellent video! I just have to say though - you played that fabulous AION music in the background and gave me 'Teh Feelz' fr fr. Also, RIP Origa *salutes*
Going mobile is great because the greedy wallet sucking games can go there and never come back.
Asian loves mobile games
Fun fact: if you see a game published by GameForge, run. It's not worth it. Run for the hills. There's still time.
Hey Nerdslayer, any chance of Allods online? Aka the Russian WoW clone?
I bet this one would be hard to investigate and not too interesting for Nerd's audience, but i definitely would be glade to see that video. I would easily play Allods over WoW now, i there were any players on subscription server, last year it were already barren.
@@painwheel_1337 The game itself plays decent but the notorious cash grab turns the entire player base off. I even remember they were throttling even experience to f2p players. Making the already hard grind next to impossible and forcing you to pay for sub.
Oh man, I remember trying that game a couple years back only to find a pretty much a ghost town of a starting area.
@@MukuonChannel F2P version was horrible yeah, you couldn't do anything without cash, but the sub server were great and the sub were cheap. But russian audience would rather play shitty F2P server over paying small sub fee. Not sure how this game was published globally.
I'd love to see this actually, this game showed alot of promise early on and was very fun take on the WoW clone genre specially with its boat system. But then quickly took the hard p2w path with the perfume system which gave massive pvp advantage which was a large part of the endgame or endgame pve as well
im get so many nostalgia feelings when i hear about this game, i was so in love with this game, made so many friends and i spent so much time having time, but when time passed, the amount of players lowered, so sad
Could you do Dirty Bomb next in this series?
It's on the list, and it's coming soon (TM).
Was Dirty Bomb ever alive?
@@nerdSlayerstudioss before or after Bless?
@@Blackfire459 Bless died in our arms on day 1
jeez, I totally forgot about Dirty Bomb LMAO
"Korean MMO" even then was synonymous with "Too grindy" and "Too PVP focused" . This continued , and added " Scummy Cash Shop , Pay To Win" to it. That is why they fail outside Korea.
4:35 "concurrently at the same time"
"I'm gonna go get the papers, get the papers."
Aion drew me in just with the ability to fly. The gameplay stuff looked interesting enough as well... however, once I started playing Aion what I found was why I never stuck to World of Warcraft, the gameplay bored me since you basically stayed in one spot and pressed a few buttons, as well as the same type of busywork quests like being required to collect 10 bear asses. The one thing that completely lost me for good was when I went through a solo dungeon on the Asmodean side. I was unable to fly, only glide. However, when I defeated the boss (who was a Daeva and had wings like me), he was able to just fly away through the window while I was still unable to fly myself. Flight was always super restrictive, even in the Abyss with the short flight time, but a boss I defeated being able to fly away while I'm stuck on the ground just reiterated my annoyances and I stopped. Based on how the game ended up, that was the right decision.
For me the first 30 levels in Aion were the best experience i ever had in an MMO, unfortunately it fizzled out after that with no story or context and just pure grind for no real reason (they could have just ended the leveling at 30 instead of adding 20 more levels with no real content). In addition to that the PvP gameplay had some problems because it was very slow in terms of cast animations (an instant cast in WoW worked very smooth while in Aion it still had a long wind up animation even though it was an 'instant' cast) and the problem with melee classes because of flying and internet connection made a lot of problems for those classes.
When it came out, I thought Aion was one of the most beautiful, artistically developed games at the time. It also had a certain style to it that I can best describe as regal or perhaps the exact opposite of gritty. The small scale rift PvP was tons of fun. The game also had a phenomenal soundtrack. What turned me off was a lot of what you mentioned - I hated flying because it was so easy for your fly timer to run out. The end game content - specifically PvP in the Abyss, was so difficult because of the zerg vs zerg and because of the game's inability to handle large scale PvP. Additionally, server balancing, as mentioned below, was a big problem for PvP.
I'd really enjoy a 'state of the genre' type video for the current mobile mmorpgs and maybe a prognosis for the future. Since a lot of thwm are popping up and to have a go to video to link to people when I argue with them over it. Or maybe you'll change my mind if it somehow ends up positive. I personally dislike them.
Also, gameforge kills my favorite mmorpgs. Rest in peace AION and Tera PepeHands
11/10 Solid content. Looking forward to your future videos. Incredibly informative for a prospective MMORPG developer. Market trends are certainly important to keep an eye on. Keep up the good work!
Congrats,100k !
I played on the Nezekan server (Oceanic server) with my guild that was primarily Aus/NZ based. One of the things that contributed to grievously killing the Oceanic server was, despite the dedicated guilds on both sides, if one side (Elyos in Nezekan's case) was stronger than the other in either numbers or quality of players the opposite side (the Nezekan Asmos) would struggle to hold the Abyss which led to a lot desire a server transfer when they opened the servers...which compounded the weaker side's problems, especially player population. This was also apparent in Balaria when the Asmodian's map was more often overran by Elyos during a castle take over. Nezekan was the first to close in NA, and the grind, slow content release, and overall feeling that we were being disparaged for the Korean population's interests kicked in overdrive.
That jump from base Aion to Balaria took a while to get there. Content release was soo slow...the love for NA/EU Aion side of the company was not felt. NCSoft Korea and NCSoft NA felt kind of at odds, in NA we wanted different things and it took eons to get us this content. Guilds in NA long abandoned the game onto fresher titles as the massive MMO drought we experience to this day wasn't in full force yet. There were new titles on the horizon all the time. My guild went to Tera and eventually FF14. In fact Blade n Soul was still a while away and there were many other competing titles that came and chipped at Aion's player base. While I think nerdSlayer's video did a good job trying to fit in 10ish years of history, Aion's death was well felt around Balaria's release (way before BnS came into the picture for NA players), if not even before. NCsoft significantly improved the grinding problem but the grind still existed at the end of the game, and it was a painful one...seriously, screw Balaur bloods.
It was still an overall very enjoyable experience. We had gripes but the visuals were stunning and I am still friends with a few people from that golden era of MMOs...it's too bad that a 'new title' (which many were coming out at the time) was more appealing than having to sit and rot in Aion while its Korean's daddy company gave us a poor allowance.
Still waiting for the Asheron's Call 2 vid
I played Aion since launch in the west. For years, it was my go-to MMO, and it still holds a dear, special place in my heart. Seeing what it's become now though..I can't say I didn't see it coming or didn't expect it, but it still kills me inside.
Thanks for the memories, Aion. You deserved everything, but like so many others, were given nothing and left to rot.
damn im sad i missed being able to play this game.. the skill animations are fucking awesome and the wold looks amazing! the weapons are unique too for a western player like me
7:35 "Shadowbane Closes"
FUCK that hit hard. Shadowbane was the first game my family and I got together and formed a guild in, the game has such a huge place in my heart.
They actually announced Aion 2 for mobile just an hour ago lol. 30 mins before the vid went up
Edit: Just saw the end. He's fast
It was announced days ago. So sad :(
Aion was ... huff.... something. I will never forget the first time I experienced that game, in both factions. The graphics, musics, the atmosphere. It was wonderful, like ... magical. The colors the gameplay the people in it. I will definitely miss this game and instances in this game
man, this makes me wanna play Aion.
Oh, Aion... how much fun I had playing it. I'm late to the party, but this video really brought up memories...
I don't know if anyone is reading this after so many
I feel the same.
So sad man :(
I don't know why but for me Aion has the best combat system of all mmo games I've played. Could be because I kinda grew up with Aion but how often did I tried to find an alternative to Aion but every other game disappointed me.
I played this game for almost 8 years. It was the best MMO experience I ever had. Sadly it is now so bad it's unplayable.
Shoutout to the Darkest Timeline
Jus commented that I hoped you had this, so I digged. Got the popcorn and ready to miss another icon in mmos past.
As soon as you read the PC Game part of Aion 2 teaser I thought it was weird why they were referencing Aion as being the PC game
NerdSlayer casually killing me with the feels by playing Aion soundtracks.
Aion 2 Mobile xD !!! RIP Aion.
I think Aion have the best game music ever created. So nostalgic.
You touched upon that cultural differences are also likely to be the cause for monetization dissonance. In the West, there's huge pushback against paying for power and other "predatory" practices. I'd wager this is probably due to the different approaches to gaming, and the different expectations both groups have.
I wager that people in the West tend to play games as a form of relief and escapism. No matter what you may do for your day job, you can become someone else in a game. No matter how poor or rich you are, the playing field is level when you start playing a game. It's the encapsulation of the "American Dream" in it's purest form, that you, the player, can become great no matter your background. All you have to do is put in the time, effort and skill to get there.
Now, in Asian countries, gaming is more integrated with your life, in that your achievements and your abilities should reflect what you do in real life. If you have money and power, why can't you also leverage that in a game? If you can do that in real life, through lobbying and whatnot, why can't we extend this into gaming? Why can't you spend your hard earned money to make yourself more powerful? To not be able to do that would truly separate your achievements in real life from your achievements in-game.
Sir let me tell you you have the best intro in the game right now I fucking LOVE it
Okay so i lived in Korea for 2 years, they don't call them 'PC Bangs', they pronounce it 'PC Bong'. Every time you say 'Bang' I wince a bit as it reminds me of the noob I was when I first went to live there -_-
To this day, I think Aion 1.0 and 2.0 had the most fun PVP in almost any MMO I’ve ever played. I miss that game and the friends I made there dearly
I'll have to watch this. been a fan since your vid on APB Reloaded. If youre running low on ideas for vids, its possible you could do one on Marvel Heroes the ARPG by David Brevik (Diablo 2). It was a F2P ARPG that had a poor start, started to do really well, but shut down because of poor management.
It's on the list :D
@@nerdSlayerstudioss Can't wait to see it :) I was one of MH players for most of the game's run. And it wasn't bad game, really. Too bad the same can't be said about the management side :(
The music of Aion by Kunihiko Ryo is absolutely unmatched. Give the soundtrack a listen!
Hey, Aion isn’t dead! I played it once 6 months ago.
0:35 Just so everyone knows, the information here is inaccurate. The game was launched in NA at version 1.5 which uses the original 'Cry Engine' from the original "Far Cry 2004" game. Later on, at Aion 3.0 the devs upscaled the game a little bit by moving it into the 'Cry Engine 2' used in "Crysis".
4:19 lmao that missing footage
It was in the last video also near the end, It been happening a lot lately for this guy >_> needs to watch video after export!!
How very embarrassing....
You're quite right, I should have had a more thorough watch through after my export. Thanks for pointing those out guys.
@@CRUSADER078 Oh its alright man, glad we could show and help you, sometimes its hard to catch everything, I work as an editor and it happens all the time to me haha (Sadly my youtube has no good example footage) , let me know if you need someone to watch and help. I don't mind.
Aion was my first MMO and it remained the only one I've invested so much time into. It won't be an exaggeration to say that I've been growing up playing this game. Having first played it when I was 12, I still revisit it even now 13 years later. I can also add that although the game is more or less dead on retail servers, private servers with fixed versions between 3.5-4.6 are still very much alive and can be a great place to come back when nostalgia is eating you. I still believe that Aion has the best combat in an MMO. I've spent years trying out other MMOs to replace the hole that quitting Aion left in my heart but I was not able to find anything. I still have a vague hope that one day something will come out to engage me so much as Aion did...