Do you think AQ3D will surpass AQW in popularity?

It's a high number but we have had higher player numbers before.

 

Where do you find the chart which shows the number of people that are online?

 

I'm not sure what the actual highest number was during the event, but when I checked their ServerList API, it was around 1,900 on both servers combined. That's about the same as the highest amount of players during the Ogre Live Event. I think the numbers could have been higher if the release was during the end of the week.

 

Makes me wonder how big numbers will be when AQ3D goes live.

 

Yea, because aqw is a old game and aq3d are so cool in this next years!

 

AE is focusing more on it so I can see it becoming popular.

 

I don't think they're focusing on AQ3D as much; it's still weekly releases, but the releases are still filled with bugs and other issues. Sure, they've hired a new animator, but I they plan to phase out Korin and give him another role (maybe on another side project). And there were some controversial stuff like the Kickstarter for their 8-bit game, the DungeonBorne game, and other extraneous things this year. I think their main goal is to make other games as side projects in case their main games take a hit.

The reality is that they've had a lot of backlash for both of their main games (AQWorlds and AQ3D) for some time. Last I checked Twitter to read anything controversial, there was huge backlash for AQWorlds' Blade of Honor Items for reusing assets and also for the daily quests for the Lord of Order set. And in AQ3D, I still see players complaining about the game's "waiting mechanic". It doesn't feel like a lot has changed to a lot of people.

 

The partner program and that battle concert event are what I meant with AQ3D being focused more on. When it comes to in game content, AQ3D isn't getting more focus than AQW.

 

I'm sure the battle concert events do bring more players, like fans of certain bands that probably have never touched an MMORPG before. It's not out of the ordinary to see something like that since they've done concert events in other games before featuring musical guests (e.g. Voltaire from Friday 13th, One-Eyed Doll, etc.). But even newcomers that are fans of those bands/musicians will need a motive to continue playing; otherwise, they'll just check out the game solely for the in-game concert event, maybe play a bit to see what the game is like, and leave after that. For instance, I've seen players that have enjoyed the in-game Korn concert, but aren't a fan of the game's grind content, waiting, and lack of extraneous activities (PvP, etc.). Guest events will probably give the game the popularity surge it needs for a good while, but the popularity tends to dwindle unless the game can maintain interest in its players.

 

They do bring in players and some amount of them will actually come back to play AQ3D and not just doing things that a battle concert provides.

 

Depends on each player. Some will check back after a month to see if anything huge has changed, some will exhaust their focus on the game by grinding until they grow extremely bored or stressed out, some will just park their character in an AFK map, some will focus solely on social media to talk about the game and so on. One thing that is clear is that the game doesn't generate as much traffic as some of its other times, if you check AE's ServerList API occasionally. Every peak seems to be on a release day, and very rarely does the player count even get close to 2,000 players. If there was a graph showing the highest concurrent players (y) for every day (x), then the line of best fit would be stagnant.

 

More players are playing when a new release has been released and shouldn't come out as a surprise. Of course there is going to be a peak in players that is higher than usual when new content is out. AE needs to find ways to keep players interested and PvP would be one of those things when they decide to focus more on that. PvE and PvP can get you to a certain point and having a different kind of gameplay that is connected or disconnected to either one someway would be something to think about and implement.

 

Even if PvP gets added (especially the way it currently is), I don't think that itself would entice new players to play as much since it's a lot of extraneous work just to compete in PvP. For example, you would still need to earn classes (via daily quests) and rank the classes up to 10... and then you would need to farm items with the best stats which could take days. Seeing trends from other games, daily quests tend to have a negative perception among players, and that's something you see with AQWorlds and most people just don't like being stalled from progress. And aside from that, PvP will most likely be heavily RNG dependent since it's unlikely that we'll have an open world battle royale style arena with skill playing a big part in combat. It might just be as plain as the Guardian-only PvP map, which gets boring after a while. Only way I can see PvP pushing the game to a success is competition... that includes leaderboards, skill rather than luck, vastness instead of enclosed space, balance (every class has a useful role), and fairness (no pay2win advantages). If those criteria are considered, then there's optimism for success.

 

That's what I hope for as well. When there's a PvP system in game, what would some players prepare for? For getting primed and ready to battle other players of course! There are players that will grind and get their character ready just for PvP combat because it frankly is more exciting than beating up monsters that have no player controlling them.

 

Well I think people don't really enjoy beating up monsters as much compared to fighting players, because monsters are pure RNG, but also because monsters are computer-controlled so they're always on target to you (i.e. they don't behave like players do). Sure, the skill combo you choose plays a bit of "skill" role, but ultimately it's luck on both ends of the battle. But even then, PvP will probably be similar, just that you're interacting with an actual person instead of a computer... the real fun part of PvP are the slip-ups and the small decision-making on skill combos, and being able to run away from players, but RNG from both side will be on par with each other more or less. The less RNG dependent PvP is, the more fun PvP becomes, and hopefully that's something to look forward to.

 

This is MMORPG PvP we are talking about which attends to have some RNG in it. AE could go for more PvP friendly approach to class design but they really don't have that many people working on that aspect of the game so that happening doesn't really feel likely to happen unless they really go ahead and push for it.

 

As long as they can think outside of the box and try something impressive that most MMORPGs don't do, then they stand a huge chance of making the game more engaging. I don't think the MMORPG genre necessarily limits creativity, but they'll need to stray away from ideas that influence them like World of Warcraft (especially since they won't ever be able to compete against that behemoth other than being able to market their game as free to play), and just let their imaginations run wild by envisioning the prospect of newer games and competitive gaming in general. I'm not sure myself how MMORPGs could revolutionize PvP, but I think anything is possible. I've already seen some games that fuse both MMORPG and MOBA elements.

 

I certainly would like to see AE experiment more with the combat system because the current one is basically just a slightly different version of AQW's combat system. MMORPG and MOBA elements being fused together honestly sounds like just like eating a toast sandwich, it's just more of the same.