Aion - haven't played it

I've been meaning to write something since a commenter asked if I'd tried out Aion. The answer is"no, I haven't."

When NCsoft were doing their "pre-order the game and get access to the beta" thing, I seriously intended to do so - with the cynical intention of cancelling my pre-order if I didn't like what I saw in the beta, of course. But.. I just never got around to it. I'm not sure why not. The time leading up to Aion's launch was right when my WoW guild scattered, so I certainly wasn't doing much in WoW. I think I might have just been grumpy with MMORPGs in general.

Anyway, some of my WoW guildmates went off to try Aion at launch, as did a guy I work with. Everyone spoke well of it initially. And then, after a couple of weeks.. they just stopped talking about it. I asked my workmate how it was going a few times, the answer always seemed to be "haven't actually played any since last time you asked." Before writing this I asked "what happened?" on my guild forums, the one serious answer I got was:

“Lots of people i talked to leveled a gazillion alts to 20 then got bored and quit.

The few that went all the way quit because there was nothing to do and no one to do it with.”

So there you go, I guess. I'm not sure if I know a single person who bought the game and actually maintained their subscription beyond the free first month. To be honest, that squares up with the feeling I've gotten all over the internets. Aion just seems like a game that promised a lot but ultimately didn't really deliver anything that anyone wanted enough to make them stick around.