The Importance of Localization and Culturalization
For the most part, Eastern MMOs are not popular in the west and Western MMOs are not popular in the east. In the west, the most often heard complaints are "Asian MMOs are grindy and horribly translated." Aside from a few features that are generally specific to area of the world (such as player vendors in the east and auction houses in the west), gameplay is usually pretty similar between and eastern and western games. Wednesday, MMOGamer put up an interview they had with Brian Knox, one of the producers at NCSoft, about "Bridging the Culture Divide".
If Aion gains mass popularity in the West, this will be one of the main contributing factors. So many Asian MMOs are very poorly translated when brought to the west. A lot of time the spelling and grammar will be very incorrect and other times games will have references to certain elements of Asian culture that do not make sense in America and Europe. With Aion, it seems they are going over the translation with a fine tooth comb and making sure that all the cultural references are westernized.
Not only that, but they have noticed the difference in features between most eastern and western MMOs and are working to give us the best of both worlds. For example, in the interview, Brian Knox talks about how they allow you to set up a player shop in town or use the auction house. So now the players have a choice in what they wish to do. As I have talked about in the past, I love having more choices.
I really hope this game delivers because I am getting more hyped up for as we get closer to launch and hype can often be very bad.
The second official beta test is starting later today and carries through this weekend so I plan on trying out quite a bit of it. I will most likely post my thoughts on Monday and try to have a video or two up of beta next week.