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On Transitioning To an Asian-Style MMO, Such As Aion
A. Harvey writes "Ten Ton Hammer has an interesting article about the transition to Asian-style MMO games, specifically Aion. 'In many ways, the West is catching up to the East in terms of gaming. Per capita gaming ... and broadband proliferation is markedly higher in Asian markets.
Gaming is much more social in the East as well; many players gather together in internet cafes to spend their game time with each other. Another surprising difference in most Asian-based games is that most functions of game control are mouse based.' I think the author hit the nail on the head that Aion will be a big success in North America and will introduce a lot of players to games with an Eastern feel."
For what it's worth, I think Bioware's KOTOR Online thing will have huge box sales and big initial numbers, and it will be a great Bioware RPG, but static content does not make for MMO subscriber retention.
What do you mean? The world in WoW is very static and we see how well that has done.
AoC was a terrible, shit game and flopped for many other reasons than you stated. One, a lot of stuff advertised was not in launch, I don't even know if DX10 is implemented yet, I stopped paying attention to that wreck a long time ago. Two, there were bugs upon bugs upon bugs. I've seen games in beta FAR more polished than AoC was. Three, the big attractions to the game, like sieges, just didn't work right. Four, the GMs were volunteers and were brats that didn't know what the rules and would suspend people on FFA PVP servers because they personally felt that people shouldn't gank lowbies, or such. WoW had a much better GM staff.
Warhammer just got boring after awhile and the questing world is no-where near as fun or as interesting as WoW's. Kind of ironic given that WoW's world (or at least elements from it) are obvious ripoffs from the Warhammer universe, and they didn't offer enough incentives for capturing areas. I don't know what the current state of the game is, I quit because of lack of interest and (college) classes.
A random aside: Of all the MMOs I played, WoW really was the best, and whether WoW was enjoyable or not is completely contingent on the people you play with. I had a lot of fun playing WoW back with my (old, now disbanded) guild, probably more fun than I'm having now. I still chat with people I met in the game years later. I don't really know where the game has gone now.
I have faith in KOTOR, though, because Bioware always seems to release truly great stuff. But only time will tell. As for Aion, I'm not really sure what is supposed to be unique about it. I have to say I doubt it will hit WAR's launch numbers...