GotMMOG?

It seems there are people with so much time on their hands they can grind away until they reached the level 50 cap in Aion. An interview was posted on the Aion site by Amboss (German community manager, Martin Rabl).

You’ve gotta think the devs are a bit disappointed by the interview. They talk about chugging through and following the campaign quests but skipping other content. Not my style (even though I really have little patience for cut scenes and reading quest material completely) but I know Sanister would probably love it. Mr. Achiever Player.

I guess now, it’s all about who can do it the fastest and who manages to pull something off like completing all the quests or killing all the raid bosses or something. Meh.

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So, more than any other MMO I’ve used, Aion is getting slammed with chat spam from gold farmers. I’m not sure why it seems to be so easy for them to get through so easily (they whisper, spam the Find Group channel despite a stupid–YES STUPID–30 second limit on chat in that channel, try to phish by making it look like they’re a system message). Maybe it’s because the game engine’s already been out for a year in Asia so these gold farmers have had plenty of time to hack together tools to make the spam as simple as a single click.

Aion’s NA Community Manager says NCSoft is deploying GMs to monitor chat channels to ban accounts spamming chat channels with gold farming ads. The funny thing? I was playing last night and there were plenty of people spamming. Sure, you can block the four or five different accounts spamming the Find Group channel but then the whispers keep coming. You block one and 15 minutes later another one’s whispering.

It really takes away from the game (all those people complaining in the Find Group channel about the spam keeping them from seeing everything else in the channel falls on deaf ears).

Worse yet, some of the tactics used by NCSoft are more stupid and annoying than helpful. For instance, you can’t post a message to the Find Group channel more than once per 30 seconds. I don’t know about you but given the amount of traffic on the channel, 30 seconds is a LONG time…it’s enough time for your message to disappear (in 5-10 seconds) and require you to just sit there waiting for a chance to resend your LFM message…more waits…just like the queues.

On a related note, what the fuck is up with the 3 MINUTE waits on channel switching after “magical” transport? I returned to Altgard to clear some inventory and prep to join a group I just got invited to and I’ve got to wait for three fucking minutes to switch to the right channel so I can actually SEE my fucking group. Where the hell did this stupid limiter come from? Worried about server load? Who cares? Stop me from changing channels more than a minute at a time but don’t fucking spit on me because I just Returned and need to switch channels. It’s not like I elected to switch channels when I returned.

The many stupid limitations in this game are really hurting the experience. Maybe I missed it but I don’t recall seeing this sort of bullshit in any recent MMO. Your job as a game developer is to create an engaging and immersive enough environment to keep the gamer in the game and having fun.

Just like loading screens in any genre, as soon as you put artificial limits on normal activities that make no real sense, you start to lose the gamer and run the risk of having them bail on you. Gamers are fickle and, in this day and age, we only have so much time in the day to have fun with games (unless you’re the 10% of people who seem to have no job or school to worry about). You start making that a difficult prospect, I’ll head over to another game that doesn’t and stay there.

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Okay, calm down…the title has an exclamation mark but it’s not because I’m all excited. Brian Knox, producer for Aion in NA/EU, talked to Gamasutra about how Aion was set up from the get-go to be launched globally despite it’s initial Korean/Asian focus and launch a year ago. If you’ve got a short-attention span, read the highlights here.  If not, check out the full interview here.

On a separate note, I’m hearing some people complain that quests seem to run out at places so that you’re left to grind mobs to level up, especially in the teens. Can’t say that I’ve experienced this (my cleric is Asmod and is rampaging around Altgard without any rest for the weary). Anyone?

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It took a little time to put together but we’ve finally got our review of Aion up. Check it out!

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Sebastian Streiffert, Community Manager for Aion at NCSoft posted a new update about queues, server caps and additional servers.

We’ll see if it makes a difference tonight.

There’s also a great server statistics page with the breakdown of levels, factions, and classes…very cool.

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Brian Knox, producer for Aion at NCSoft, talked on mmorpg.com about queues. The spiel is the same though…server balance, queues being a necessary evil, etc.

Honestly, though, I don’t recall any queues on WoW at launch…sure it was slow authenticating and getting you in but there wasn’t a need for a queue right away…I remember queues kicking in later. Even so, the real trick was the outlay of new servers and hard population limits. I mean, c’mon. If I created a single character on a server, then I’ve got a committed slot. Sure, I might not use it (though I’m more likely not to use it if I have to queue up or if I put it on a low-pop server because of those same queues).

It’s like the solution is actually causing more problems in terms of predicting server pops?

It sounds more like someone didn’t think (which is ridiculous considering the fact that Aion’s been out for a year at least in Asia) of putting together a contingency plan for rolling out new servers to handle load. Who hasn’t done that? And if you think people will eventually leave and abandon those servers, so be it. You just do the character transfers over to existing servers that need people and consolidate the servers.

At this point in the “age” of MMOs, it’s inexcusable that this sort of planning isn’t part of the initial development. Even more so because they knew how many pre-orders they had and so could make some assumptions about how many would connect for the head start.

I haven’t had a chance (and probably won’t until late tonight) to log into Siel to see what the queues are like. Last night (before launch) people were talking about 1-3 hours of queue time. I logged in after midnight (thanks work!) without a queue…but that was a West coast server (Siel) and it was largely quiet. We’ll see…

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Seems the “queue” issue as people flood the servers to get in is bubbling to the top. While the idea of funneling people into the servers in an “orderly” fashion makes obvious sense the point is, if there are so many people trying to get in that you NEED a queue, is it possible there’s something you haven’t built for?

After all, if the queue is solely to limit authentication, then you really need to look at improving authentication speed. There’s no excuse there.

And, if the problem is server population (i.e. your servers can’t take more than 10k people per server and 20k people are trying to get in), you have to ask yourself why? Pre-selection told you just how many people were interested in getting in there for the Head Start since both events are for pre-orders only.

Beyond this, you can limit how many characters can be added to a particular server. If I can’t create a character, I can’t log into the server anyway.

Excuses aside, I think there’s a disconnect somewhere if you need to have a queue. Game or no game, you’re talking about software and networking. If everything is properly designed, you’ll have limited things where they need to be limited (at the start) and made sure the rest runs smoothly.

Ideally, you’ll have built a dynamic system that can allocate resources as needed to areas that are getting hit hard. So, during initial launch when everyone’s busting down the authentication and starter location gates, all your servers are allocated there with maybe a handful worrying about high level areas or auctions or whatever.

On another note, if you’re a CE owner or got some bonus gear with your pre-order, you need to “activate” it on your characters during the Head Start period only. After you’ve gotten your box and are “official”, you shouldn’t have to do this for new characters. Check here for instructions on how to gear up during the Head Start.

Alright, time to dig into the game…see you around Siel (if I can get in)!

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…which means the Head Start is almost upon us!!!

The NCSoft crew’s been keeping a status page on the preselections (and what servers are available or limited in any way). At this point, though, it’s a bit late to care.

If you’re having issues with your launcher or the game the first thing to try is to shut it all down (kill the game from your task bar and kill the launcher from the system tray on the right). Wait for a few seconds or if you’re tech savvy, go to your task manager and make sure there are no NCLauncher.exe or AionClient.exe processes running. If there are and they aren’t going away after about 10-15 seconds (unless you’re on a really slow machine), kill the processes.

Now, just launch the launcher. It should update itself and if you haven’t downloaded the patch, update the client. If you get an error about the launcher have an error the last time it ran, it’s probably because of your killing it.

If you’re having a different issue, check out Ayase’s (Sebastian the Community Manager) post on AionSource.com.

If you get a chance, feel free to let the Aion crew at NCSoft know you appreciate their efforts. They might not be having the smoothest of launches so far but they’re definitely a lot more responsive than previous MMOs at this stage.

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In a little over an hour, we’re supposed to be able to select up to two characters to create, thus reserving our names for the Head Start/Launch. If you haven’t already, launch the NCSoft Launcher and grab the small update now (it updates fast).

Brian Knox, one of Aion’s Producers, posted some updates for launch. The most interesting one is the decision NOT to use GameGuard for launch. I didn’t personally have any issues with it (I rarely do have issues with any of the DRMs out there) but I guess enough people did during beta to warrant the drop. Will it matter? Don’t know but the fact that they opted for it in the first place tells me there might be some sort of vulnerability they’re not happy about (unless, of course, we just patched it to oblivion).

Anyhow, after today, just two more days before the Head Start begins and the pre-orders flood the world of Aion, trampling the grass and leaving behind a wake of trash (and dead low-level mobs). Too bad it couldn’t have started on a Saturday or something. Would’ve given me more time to get away from the noob areas before the main onslaught on launch day.

Something tells me, I should consider not bothering to log in on that day…might be a lot of issues with authentication and just getting into the game in general. We’ll see…

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UPDATE: Got Tannis and Tolan onto Siel. Gotta wonder though…why oh why does EVERY MMO say Tanis is a forbidden name or is otherwise taken? I can’t imagine they have a DB filled with fantasy fiction characters. Or as the case may be, Egyptian cities?! So annoying…

By the way, it also took them 45 minutes to get the launchers patched properly and ready for this. Not a good sign. Head Start should tell us if the launch is going to be messy (i.e. they haven’t caught up or learned anything yet) or smooth (maybe they can beat WoW for smoothest MMO launch?).

One other tidbit: it seems pre-orders are going well. 400k. At an average of $49 a box (Amazon’s selling it for $46.99 so I figured they’re not getting the full $49.99 a box), they’re looking at $19.6 million in box sales before the rest of the peeps start to buy boxes off the shelves. Accounting for a 50% margin on the box, NCSoft is making $9.8 million day one. Not bad…though that’s probably all of 20% of their development costs for the NA/EU version (remember, they already launched Aion in Asia so a large part of the game engine and structure were already developed and is being paid for by the 3.5 million subscribers there already playing the game).

Let’s see how the game does in the next six months over here. And after Cataclysm is released.

Okay, I’ll cut down on all these updates at some point (maybe after launch?) but NCSoft posted an update about the updates they’re planning on posting (heh) in the coming days.

The changes are all related to community including a character viewer, Abyss rankings, forums and further updates to the Wiki.

Good to see them continuing to work on keeping the product competitive in this “age” of MMOs but with the launch days away, it seems a bit last-minute. I haven’t gotten far enough in the Betas but I’m wondering if level progression’s going to crawl at certain level blocks (40-50?) because of content that just wasn’t prepped for launch? Hard to say. The betas always limited the caps to 25-30.

Either they were prepping the content (maybe bypassing the cap so they could test it out without us knowing while the server was under load!) or they just didn’t worry about it. I mean, the Asian version already has content there so you have to assume it isn’t a complete wasteland.

I guess we’ll find out in a bit (sorry, I’m not a power leveler so we’ll have to see what those jobless, lifeless types that hit the cap in the first few days have to say).

Meanwhile, stay tuned for our “official” review of Aion. We’ll be putting the finishing touches on it around the time the masses will be hitting the servers and blotting out the sun (in-game) with lag and queues.

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