Tag: Aion

Fun Facts From NCSoft’s Q1 2010 Report


I love earnings reports, more so because I am a huge number crunching nerd, but because it gives us an occasional glimpse into how MMO developers are doing. NCsoft finally got around to filing their Q1 reports, and there is plenty of information to be found, namely in what game is doing better than others.

I often hear complaints about NCsoft pushing North American and European players to the side, and quite frankly they might have good reason. The breakdown of NCsoft’s income paints a picture as to why NA and EU may take a back seat to other regions.

  1. Korea: 65%
  2. Japan: 11%
  3. N. America: 8%
  4. Europe: 7%
  5. Taiwan: 4%

Korea is still NCsoft’s biggest market by far, with NCsoft making almost as much from royalties (the remaining 6%) as they do from N. America or Europe.

As far as game sales themselves go, NCsoft pointed out at the top of the page that Lineage is continuing its growth momentum, which is quite impressive for a game hitting its twelfth birthday this September.

  1. Aion: 71,235
  2. Lineage: 47,507
  3. Lineage 2: 29,662
  4. City of Heroes: 3,348
  5. Others: 3,255
  6. Guild Wars: 2,382

Sales are down 5% from the last quarter, however the trend is continuing upward on a year over year scale. Profits have also increased due to what NCsoft referred to as cost cutting programs to improve efficiency. Arenanet looks like they are in some hot water, as their quarterly sales are down 33% from last quarter, and are plummeting on a year-by-year basis of 47%, making it the lowest operating NCsoft at this point. NCEurope did the worst this quarter with a 50% drop a sales, but is still riding a 180% year on year growth.

A few of the titles are disappointing, yet not all that unsurprising. Guild Wars, considering its age, is getting to the point where most of the people who will purchase it have already purchased it. Not to mention Guild Wars doesn’t exactly have a subscription to ride on for cash. City of Heroes is getting on in its age, although the game and its community are still going very strong. Lineage and Lineage 2 are still big sellers in Korea, no surprises there.

NCsoft is looking at a lot of potential in the next few years, what with their upcoming titles. Aion still appears to be selling strong, although the recent announcement of server mergers…well that’s for another story.

Welcome To The Crew: Aion Opens Test Server


With 16,000 accounts gone, less queues!
Let's test some Queues.

Test servers: Perfect for the developer who wants to publicly test things. Throughout history, or at least the past decade, test servers have been used for everything from stress testing to gauging player interest, to using player feedback to balance updates. In more recent years, a majority of developers have discovered the uses of a test server, and the number of MMOs that do not use these servers have dwindled substantially.

Surprisingly, however, players will not be given pre-made characters, and it appears that they also will not be able to copy existing characters over to the test server (a common practice in MMOs), but instead the characters that they do create will be placed in super-xp-mode, where leveling is quick and drops are jacked up for maximum efficiency. Whether or not this will slant feedback is up for grabs, but we will know that when the test servers launch next week.

More on Aion as it appears.

If You Buy Powerleveling, You'll Be Beaten By Mafia


Excellent job to the Aion team and Rooster Teeth for putting this video together.

If You Buy Powerleveling, You’ll Be Beaten By Mafia


Excellent job to the Aion team and Rooster Teeth for putting this video together.

Unsurprisingly: NCsoft Record Profits


With 16,000 accounts gone, less queues!
An indicator of high sales.

If MMO Fallout were a physical entity, I’d have a lot more fun searching through its records, what with the shelves of documents and that ladder on wheels I’d get to ride around. Going back to the earlier days of Aion’s coverage, I discovered an announcement that the MMO had hit the three hundred thousand preorder mark, along with a reminder that it’s all about the retention rate.

So it comes as no surprise that NCsoft is reporting record profits over the past quarterly report. Profits are up over one thousand percent, while sales are up nearly one hundred percent. Unsurprisingly, Aion made up 48% of those sales. Surprisingly, however, Lineage and Lineage 2 are still selling very well, at twenty seven and twenty percent respectively.

NCsoft’s rebound is very welcoming to the gaming community, especially after the company’s net income plummeted 50% in quarter 3 of last year, shortly before Aion was released, and even more so as NCsoft attempts to suppress the memories of Tabula Rasa, whose failure hit the company hard this past year.

So good work NCsoft. Keep being who you are, and keep that sweet sweet cash flowing in.

Excuse Me Aion, Have We Met Before?


This 9 minute trailer for Aion’s future is best viewed in HD. What you are seeing is a collection of projects NCsoft is working on for Aion, to be released at different times and not as a single update/patch.

Some of the features noted:

  • DirectX 10
  • Cryengine 2 upgrade
  • New zones
  • Dynamic weather and seasons
  • Player Cities
  • Mounts
  • More fluid combat
  • More weapon types (crossbows for starters)
  • New classes
  • City sieges
  • Player owned cities
  • More

No this video isn’t new, but it is a good indicator.

NCsoft Confirms "Character Hack" Via Packet Manipulation.


The saga of NCsoft account security continues with the confirmation that an existent exploit in NCsoft’s systems. Not too long ago, I reported on Scayth, an Aion player whose account was compromised while it was inactive. The account was looted, and one or more of the characters may have been used for gold farming purposes.

Thanks to Scayth’s ongoing updates over at Aionsource, he was able to procure a reply (finally) from NCsoft over the account issues. The full image is below, but I will summarize:

  1. The majority of accounts compromised have been through social engineering, viruses, fansites, and keyloggers.
  2. The account was never hacked, the individual characters were. The account itself was not in any danger.
  3. The hacker was able to use packet manipulation to access different characters at whim. The process is “very complicated” and did not give them full access.
  4. Few characters can be accessed in this fashion, Scayth just happened to be one of the unlucky few, among 10 others who were also restored.
  5. The process tricked the system into believing that the character belonged to that account.
  6. The servers were hotfixed to prevent this that same day.
This will explain it all.

What will come next in the NCsoft security saga? MMO Fallout will certainly be here to cover the events.

G-Unit Reports: No Critical Security Issues


G-Unit doesn't handles account theft.

Our game servers, account databases, and support sites are under constant attack and being probed for any vulnerability. It’s a war that by no means is over.
-Scott Jennings, NCsoft on Aion.

There may not be a fight between gold farmers and developers as intense what is going on between Aion and the gold farmers. Not simply definable as a growing feud, this battle has turned into all-out gang war, with NCsoft going as far as bringing in G-Unit (no, not that G-Unit) to fight off the hoard of bots and spammers. The gold farmers have also stepped up their part of the fight by doing their best to steal as many player accounts as possible, not to mention launching countless attacks against NCsoft’s security systems.

Scott Jennings, in a recent note to the community, affirms players that they are continuing the monitor systems, and have confirmed that there are currently no critical issues with the NCsoft account security. NCsoft will continue to audit their security systems, and players can expect changes to come this year, continuing the security updates Guild Wars and other NCsoft titles received last year.

Following the high profile, and very sobering (as described by Jennings) cyber attack that breached the systems of Google and a host of other companies, it is difficult for players to feel that their information is safe. Unfortunately all we can do is watch and try our best to keep our information safe, while at the same time hoping nothing happens over on the developer’s end.

More on Aion, Security, NCsoft, and more as it appears.