Despite a strong start in the West, Aion 2 apparently failed to meet NCSoft’s high expectations in the first days. The result is a crash in stock prices.
What about the stock? According to various Korean news sites like biz.chosun.com, NCSoft’s stock fell by more than 7 percent after the launch of Aion 2. The reason: The initial player numbers for the global version were reportedly below investors’ extremely high expectations.
Korean analysts like NH Investment & Securities have therefore lowered their price target for NCSoft from about $280 to about $240 per share. However, by the weekend, the price might calm down again as most MMORPG fans are likely to have time to storm the servers.
Aion 2 managed to attract over 400,000 players simultaneously on the servers in the first days. The peak on Steam stands at 397,905 simultaneous active players (via steamdb.info). In addition, there are players using Purple as a platform.
Everyone at NCSoft should actually be celebrating
How does MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz assess the stock crash? I am of course not a stock market expert, but I know the MMORPG genre quite well. As a genre fan who has been closely observing the market for 17 years now, I am dismayed at how out of touch the suit-wearers and number crunchers at the management levels set their forecasts and expectations for a game like Aion 2.
Yes, Aion 2 is the largest new theme park MMORPG with a PvE focus in many years. Because of this, many genre fans will likely use the free-to-play model just to take a look around. Aion 2 is also an Asian online role-playing game that has many of the peculiarities that deter many Western players from even downloading or quickly drive them away from the servers:
- the aggressive payment model with premium currency tied to player trading, a (not so) optional subscription, battle pass, and in-game shop
- the stylish yet typical Unreal Engine look, with many revealing or absurd skins that kill immersion
- a grindy character progression with countless systems, currencies, randomness, and time-gating
- elements like auto-play, the powerful macro system, and the often very short content that strongly screams “mobile” (Aion 2 has been released for smartphones in Korea and Taiwan)
At NCSoft, there’s also the fact that the publisher does not have a very good reputation among many MMO fans in the West. As soon as this name comes up, parts of the community automatically expect the worst when it comes to monetization. Additionally, there’s what they did with WildStar (namely taking it offline far too early).
Given all these factors combined, I believe NCSoft should be very pleased with the launch of Aion 2. I had expected that the game – in terms of player numbers on Steam – would land somewhere between Lost Ark and Throne and Liberty (which is currently the case), and that the player numbers would ultimately trend downward in similar fashion after the launch honeymoon.
By the way, this does not mean that I consider Aion 2 to be a bad game. Far from it! For what it aims to be – an Asia grinder – it does many things very right. It’s just not an MMORPG for every genre fan. Or do you see it differently? Feel free to tell me in the comments! You can find out more about it here: Aion 2 has the potential to be the best MMORPG in years, but that is only partly due to Aion 2
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