Good financial look for NCSoft!

Was tempted to start another thread for this, but I'll drop it here.

I recall a time, maybe a year ago, when subscriber numbers for MMORPGs were readily accessible. There used to be few websites that tracked and ranked MMORPGs based on subscriber numbers, though there were limitations to ranking MMORPGs solely on subscriber numbers.

Today, finding subscriber numbers is REALLY difficult (unless someone knows a place I'm not looking). Even NCSoft no longer includes it in it's quarterly earnings reports. Have subscriber numbers become completely obsolete for evaluating MMORPGs?

On a side note:

Personally, I would love to see CoH launched in a foreign market like India (where comic culture is closer to Western comic culture than, say Korea, where this game didn't take off) but it is probably much too late for something like that to occur.

(Answering seriously even though it's a joke.) Aion's hair IS animated. I don't recall if long hair blows in the wind all the time, but doing something active will make it swing. I know my pony-tailed Ranger's hair flips over her shoulder when she does her little intro-spin on the select screen.

Of course, the engines are rather different too. I suspect we won't see animated hair unless we see an engine overhaul. Ghost Widow's famously flowing hair is essentially a cape if I understood it correctly, and it only looks passable (not even that good) with that hairstyle.

Regardless of how the subscription numbers turn out, or what levels of profitability CoX continues to generate/affect for the company, I think it's great that the game - and the community - is still here 5 years after launch.

I hope that this presence continues on unabated.

Mechanics-wise Aion is nothing really special. I have not played Lineage but I'm told it's rather like that, if you haven't played it either then that won't help.

For me a game is all about the combat, and especially the Chanter is a lot of fun to play. They can use mace+shield, but they really shine when using a staff, which they wield like an actual martial artist would...and I'll leave it to more knowledgeable folks to name the style. They're front-line buffers and damage dealers, with fewer healing spells than Clerics but more offense. Awesome solo, as you might expect, PvE anyway.

PvP is a big part of the game, and frankly I haven't made it there yet. It really begins in the mid-20s. Supposedly, PvP is dominated by Sorcerers, the ranged damage dealers (think Blasters) and Assassins, Rangers close behind. Melee takes it in the shorts, and the Spiritmaster (pet class) is pretty much just screwed until very high levels, as they have only a few offensive spells and the pets are mostly ground-bound. Though some patches are on the way, and who knows what they'll bring. I haven't heard much about the two Priest classes, Cleric and Chanter, in PvP. There's a large PvP zone, the Abyss, but enemy forces can and do come through Rifts into regular areas and can attack people at will, although there's a system to discourage doing that for very long.

It's damn pretty, the world of Aion, and pretty friendly to PCs. Mine's probably 4 years out of date, and it runs Aion just fine. Biggest problem with the game is the fighting over spawns and resources out in the world. There's a particular quest-chain Asmodean side that ends with needing a particular spawn, a boss in a cave, and it's notoriously camped. Not unusual to hang around there waiting for it to pop up, and then it gets murdered out from under you by some high-level, or a random spawn aggros you whil you're waiting, and some other dude just waltzes in and takes your kill while you're preoccupied. Growl.

Crafting is time-consuming and expensive, frankly, I didn't bother much with it. You can buy some materials but others will need to be found in the wild or in auctions.