Aion going free to play

There's good news for all Daevas and those who wish to become one: from February 2012, Aion will be switching to a free-to-play model. The monthly subscriptions will be dropped and the basic game content will be available to you for free from the start. Additionally, we will be offering special packs that offer you further liberties: for example, opening your own store and collecting an unlimited daily amount of aether and essences.
The existing players have special reason to be happy - they will be rewarded for their loyalty and can look forward to bonuses! More information on this can be found in the 'Free-to-Play Model' section.

At the same time as the switch to free-to-play comes a change in publisher. In Gameforge, NCsoft has a strong partner at its side in order to further develop and constantly improve Aion. The Gameforge team will not only be responsible for the new servers but will also take on responsibility for the operation and support of the game. We are always open to questions, suggestions and criticism, with the aim that we can mould Aion to incorporate your wishes.

You can find answers to many new features and any questions you may have in the FAQ. Information on many different topics has been gathered there with the hope of clearing any doubts you may have. If you have any questions that aren't answered, or should your expectations have not quite been met, you are more than welcome to send us an email to support@aionfreetoplay.com. Our support team will get back to you as soon as possible.

this is nice for me so i can now play this to

snow expected this long ago lol.

anyway have fun testing aion gen ^^

XD

Is okay, my gear sucks compare to existing players now, pointless =/

Shu wrote:

snow expected this long ago lol.

anyway have fun testing aion gen ^^

need to buy some time til i no the news when C9 comes out ^^

Probably wont play it since GW 2 open beta will probably be out by then..or not XD

Hoolilol wrote:

Probably wont play it since GW 2 open beta will probably be out by then..or not XD

i skip beta of GW2 i only want full release and C9 is higher on my list then GW2
but i wil see there so many mmorpg comming next year xD

I actually started to play this XD

yup me to great game

Shu wrote:

snow expected this long ago lol.

anyway have fun testing aion gen ^^

dont tell him that :P

ok i need to show you this vid of Aion it was on there Forum and its funny as hell
rely listen to that guy that speaks XD

Genlog wrote:

ok i need to show you this vid of Aion it was on there Forum and its funny as hell
rely listen to that guy that speaks XD

That cracked me up, but I'm drunk as fck while watching this

Snow wrote:

Genlog wrote:

ok i need to show you this vid of Aion it was on there Forum and its funny as hell
rely listen to that guy that speaks XD

That cracked me up, but I'm drunk as fck while watching this

I just finshed throwing up , and half of it finishhed out of the target if u kno what i mean

Snow is it poseble i saw you on aion :p

saw a charater on the server i am with the Name Snowy

on the asmo side server Telemachus

i switch server becouise to many on the orther and i change class to and asmo can use some help here XD

Naah Gen, I was done with Aion back when we stopped playing it as a guild
Not coming back to that game
In fact I really didn't enjoy it even though I tried to (grindfest, slow lvling char(templar) and little time with school totally ruined it)

Snow wrote:

Naah Gen, I was done with Aion back when we stopped playing it as a guild
Not coming back to that game
In fact I really didn't enjoy it even though I tried to (grindfest, slow lvling char(templar) and little time with school totally ruined it)

slow lvling ?? there so many quest that you dont no what to do XD
and if you lvl to slow you get a EXP buff from the game lol

the point was i saw a charater with the same name like you that you always use so thats why i ask
but i play this to buy some time till GW2 gets here

stil need to w8 for a SMS from game mania shop when they have it in there shop ^^
til then i play aion ^^

Yep it's a Korean grinder
Lvling till about lvl 35ish is still piss easy, but the game focuses around max lvl content

They probably did rework the fail lvling curve that we got back then, but the game already failed
That's why it is f2p now
f2p = pay to win so game is a failure

Also I did say lvling as a Templar was the worst thing you could do when you have little time
Tempars vs the Summoner class in lvling speed was laughable, but any other class could lvl faster too

The summoner could be max lvl by aoe dotting whole map without downtime
By the time the summoner is max lvl a templar would be lvl 40

Anyway back to the point, nope I'm not playing XD

Snow wrote:

Yep it's a Korean grinder
Lvling till about lvl 35ish is still piss easy, but the game focuses around max lvl content

They probably did rework the fail lvling curve that we got back then, but the game already failed
That's why it is f2p now
f2p = pay to win so game is a failure

Also I did say lvling as a Templar was the worst thing you could do when you have little time
Tempars vs the Summoner class in lvling speed was laughable, but any other class could lvl faster too

The summoner could be max lvl by aoe dotting whole map without downtime
By the time the summoner is max lvl a templar would be lvl 40

Anyway back to the point, nope I'm not playing XD

and GW2 have also a cash shop rofl
i think in this time not any mmorpg cant live with out a cash shop lol
wonder what they gone sell there

i only no from Aion EU they have limits so its not truly free to play
on the orther hand Aion NA have a buy is win cash shop

but no limits ^^ wonder when ad 11 april NA version going live truly free
how many pll gone jump from EU to NA

i no alot want to win only so i bet they go to NA only they wil have a higher ping
as long they are beter then orthers XD

Genlog wrote:

and GW2 have also a cash shop rofl

Major difference is GW2 so called cash shop will not have items that affect game fairness. Its mostly cosmetic. And an ez way to purchase character slots and bag space etc. Nothing other players cant get with ingame gold.

Yep, that's exactly my point

It's not so much about the money spent on cash shop as the effect it has in game
If you can buy power straight from the cash shop with money, and the more you spend the stronger you get. The cash shop is broken.
Broken cash shops means broken game.

Plenty of cash shops start out quite "OK" nowdays, but soon enough the companies get greedy and start selling power, and pretty much any new updated items through the cash shop.
Makes the game fail too.

GW2 as long as they don't magically become overwhelmed by greed won't be selling power in the cash shop and won't break the game (unless the selling of gems becomes uncontrolled)
On top of this the model is profitable, and won't be needing a switch to f2p or p2p it's the best of both worlds (for the company)
A prolonged full focus and update to the game will still earn plenty of money for them and this model almost assures that the game will be worth putting effort in (for the company)
If they keep putting a lot of effort into the game we ll have an amazing game for quite some time

P2P dont work well anymore in this time
so many P2P mmorpg switch to F2P ore semy F2P with limits

it seems companie only want more players in there game and with P2P they dont have it
and with that they try a cash shop so they stil get some mony

and most companies no players are power hunger so mostly they make a cash shop to make you better

Conquer Online is 1 of them but stil its a very very populated game
Perfect world is the same but also many many players online

then you gone think nobody want to pay for a P2P mmorpg but they do spend so much in a F2P mmorpg ??

i just hope GW2 dont sell ubber items to make you beter then i gone quit very fast again
time wil tell ^^

That's what we'r telling
GW2 is not making the "STANDARD" cash shop

Standard cash shop = Pay money get uber items, they release better items, pay more money, get more uber, if you pay more you get more power

GW2 cash shop does not affect game balance (outside of tiny convenience things, that we should be able to live with))
The only question is, will this stay like that
The idea was that it would, but knowing companies this might change
But as long as the model the way it is now doesn't change GW2 will be 10x better then an f2p, just a tad less balanced then a p2p, but more profitable for NCsoft then a b2p

With this balance I foresee that the game will be very enjoyable to play, not costly, yet very profitable for the company, thus it will have a lot of attention and love, which will give us an even better game

like you said how long they can keep it up so cash shop
and how many pll gone play GW2

there so many mmorpg out now that is hard to pick 1 XD
Aion P2P didt work well when they switch to a free model they have in 4 weeks 750.000 new register pll and now i saw more then 900.000

amazing how a a game can change that much when they going to free XD
now i must see how many pll gone buy GW2

if they get more then 1 mil then they doing it good
but you no as i no in this time of cyrsis many pll keep there hand on there wallet

am buying it anyways ^^
hope my comp can handle it to XD have some new upgrades so i must see ^^

here a difrent about Aion EU and Aion NA that dont have any limits so far i read i like the EU model beter

Feedback on Starter/Veteran/Gold payment modelPlease post all feedback about the starter/veteran/gold payment model in this thread from now on, other threads on this topic will be locked and linked to this one.

Please keep in mind that I'm not locking the threads to punish you, but rather so everything is kept to one thread, so if our game designer takes a look at it, he can simply check one thread instead of searching through pages to find the relevant threads.

Feel free to repost the posts you made about it here.



Some things you might want to know before posting anything in this thread:

Veteran Status - There will be multiple ways to achieve veteran status in the future, but this is currently not implemented and there is no eta on it yet. We will announce it when it's ready, so there's no point in asking when it's ready. I will tell you once I know!

Gold Pack - You can buy gold packs ingame as a starter. Please keep this in mind before posting feedback. More information here: FAQ about AION free-to-play



Reasons why we chose our payment model:

In F2P MMORPGs, two complaints are quite common.

First, there are too many bots / hackers / gold sellers. Obviously because nothing stops them and if they get banned they can simply make a new account completely for free. That's why we added the restrictions on starters. All restrictions have their purpose. Even if it might not be obvious to you, it opens an exploit gold seller can use.

The second major complaint is that F2P MMORPGs offer items that give advantages in PVP (so called Pay2Win items). These get added because in F2P MMORPGs they are usually them major income resource. We want to try to stay away from these items as good as possible and instead we introduced the gold pack. Through this system, everyone with a gold pack will have exactly the same chances in PVP. Even those without one simply need to invest more time to keep up, but can become as good as everyone else.

That model is just as bad as f2p Gen

Look the numbers you and they are throwing at us are completely irrelevant
It's been shown and proven more then once that f2p games gain lots of new customers
But % of those customers that play the game for a prolonged time are actually way lower then with a p2p model
Out of those 750000 there are not even 10% active beyond the starting areas

The essence is still the same as it is with p2p games
People make account, they try the game out, and they quit
Now with p2p less people can do this, as they would have to pay to try the game
Thus less people try it out and on top of that, you can see much clearer when they stop, as they cancel their subscription
With f2p more people can try it for free, and then never bother canceling anything, just leaving

The point is, the game is bad, if the game was good it would have very high % people that start it reaching end game content and play through all of the games features

You shouldn't look at xxx number of accounts made in the game
You should look at how many accounts that started at x date (when game went f2p) have logged on for over 8 hours in the past week, that number would be much more story telling then the total new account amount made

Here's the other point, the gold pack, gives a perfect distinction between paying and non paying players, thus making it pay to win
Basically it's still your old p2p game, anyone that pays is on equal footing, but what about those playing for free? They are left behind, thus not on equal grounds, thus it's not equal, thus it's pay to win and worse then pay to play as the balance with p2p was equal for everyone

It's a glorified demo of the game, not the game
That's why so many people made an account now, but those numbers still don't say a thing

And as for the NA cash shop that's just going to be pure buy to win and not even comparable to p2p