Aion Breaks Pre-Order Sales Records

NCsoft has announced that its upcoming MMORPG, Aion, has received almost 400,000 pre-orders, wiping the floor with competing MMOs.

The game, which has already won several awards including Gamescom 2009's "Best Online Game", goes on sale next week. Players who have pre-ordered Aion get to pre-select their servers tomorrow, and have access to the servers from Sunday through the Headstart period.

[Dorjan]

nice going Aion

[LoVeRSaMa]

I am one of them, collectors eddition, AION EU, playing as an Asmodian sorc.

[morganfell]

Well, threaten enough people and you may get your way...

[Maticus]

Most convincing evidence yet that Aion will fly off the shelves, literally :P

[Leord]

Oh, what a funny pun.

Well, as a WoW and gaming fan, I think it will be VERY interesting to see if it can get subscribes in the millions or not :)

[Myze]

Hmm, well I think the latest amount released was 3.5 million subs for the game already in Korea/China, and growing pretty fast. So unless, for some reason, you don't want to count those, I would imagine it won't drop below a million anytime soon.

This number is about the most amount of pre-orders this year, and against competing MMOs. WAR and AoC both released numbers sent to retailers, but I'm not sure either one ever released preorder numbers, only that they broke the record. (AoC was 700k to retailers, WAR was 1.5mil to retailers, but it was also released everywhere simultaneously) Either way, This game will likely have more staying power than WAR or AoC since it doesn't have the huge level of repetition that WAR has or the massive amount of launch bugs AoC had.

The game will thrive even if it doesn't sell great in the US simply because of the Asian market for it. However, it may draw in a few from WoW's side being that the game has pvp as one of its main points rather than tacked on and the graphics are obviously a lot better. AoC and WAR both got a lot of people to try their games (while still maintaining their WoW account), but neither one kept the large number of early subscribers. From my beta experience in Aion, it seems like it could retain customers a lot better. It feels familiar to WoW (especially the fluid character control, something AoC and WAR didn't have), but for the 2nd half of the game, it is quite different.

edit: That all being said, the only game I see that might surpass WoW in sub numbers is either the next Blizzard MMO or possibly SW:TOR.

[Malfurion]

Not a surprise really. But how many of them will keep the game? And didn't Warhammer have, like, a million pre-orders?

[hay]

Conan also had about 1m... But in the opposite to Age of Conan and Warhammer, I didn't stop playing Aion after few hours.
Comparing: I played Chinese beta of Aion with huge lags, and AoC and WAR retail, after several months from release.

The game is fun to play.

[Montrealien]

Thats the thing, there is a huge market for MMOs and people who love them will try them all. I am a huge wow player, I love the game, but I try every big MMO that comes out, I pre ordered it and will play it for the first month, the big question however is will it keep me and those people. Hundreds of thousands will at the very least try it, and even if half of those keep on playing it will be a success.

WoW is an exception atm since it was simply at the right place and the right time and made it so that everyobe including Mom and uncle Mauri would play. I doupt that anygame for a long time will ever dethrone it.

[Nikuma]

Difference between WAR and Aion is that Aion is actually a good game. WAR was just and awful mess.

[Leord]

That's similar to WoW back in the day when it started, right?

[Montrealien]

I am not sure about the pre-orders, but WoW was well over a few million subscribed players within a few months.

[AndyA]

The momentum just keeps building for this.

[Fyzzu]

Ye gods. Impressive.

[Pandamobile]

This should be the first game besides Crysis to use the CryEngine 2. Sweet.

[Myze]

The game looks really good, especially for an MMO. However, don't expect Crysis level graphics. The game is stylized and the characters look great, but some of the environments are low poly. It makes sense, of course, being an MMO it has to cater to a much larger audience than people trying to have a showpiece. Again, though, it does look really good, and even though not up there with Crysis, it's more than good enough when compared to it's competition (although AoC still looks really good, too bad the game is meh).

[Pandamobile]

I know, but it's still got those gorgeous CryEngine shaders and motion-blur.

[INehalemEXI]

Aion is using CryEngine 1

[Pandamobile]

No it's not...

This is CryEngine 1.

http://ui15.gamespot.com/16...

Only Far Cry 1 used it.

[champ21]

its nice.. i hope it can gain a good base like wow.

[Christopher]

World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online all had close to or greater than 1 million in pre-orders.

[Midgard228]

the game is amazing :) cant wait,

and just cuz this game wont sell better than wow doesnt mean its a fail, there is a such thing as 2nd place, and thats not a bad place to be ;p.

i mean over 3 mill in korea alone thatscrazy for such a small country

cant waait! me and my gf have been eagerly waiting ;p.

PS off topic but ninja gaiden sigma 2 is amazing! especially the team mode, its on the PS store

[zagibu]

Korea has a much more advanced gaming culture than western countries. Professional gamers over there are celebrities comparable to our pop stars and actors. Here, our hobby ist still viewed as child's play by a large part of the population.

[I_LOVE_MYSELF]

I may try it... But I doubt it will keep me off WoW...

[Medievaldragon]

Not surprising. It was expected with all the feedback that it would be a good seller.

[led1090]

actually thr are 5 million paying subscribers...read it in some developer interview...

[pr0digyZA]

Actually Pandamobile it is using CryEngine 1, for best fps, you seriously think it would use number 2 because then alot of people wouldn't be able to play it .go onto the aion site for proof.