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.

g afk

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.

g afk

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?

g afk

g afk

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.

g afk

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…

g afk

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)!

g afk

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.

g afk

The real question is, what tanked it? Was it the lack of anything really interesting? (Check!) Or was it the fact that making it free to play diminished its perceived value anyway? (Maybe!)

Again, not having played it, it’s difficult to judge the gameplay but something tells me that’s usually it. I mean, c’mon, if there were a free game out there that was awesome, wouldn’t you play it? And you’d expect a percentage of you would be willing to shell out AT LEAST $5 a month to get access to something (assuming it was anything worthwhile), right?

I don’t get it. These MMOs get flung out there and they think just because they lowered the bar to zero so anyone can play it that they can compensate for something that just isn’t fun. Worse yet, why come back? It’s not costing you anything so there’s no “maybe I should try to play this thing since I’m paying for it.” Worried about cancellations? Worry about WHY they’re canceling not how MANY are canceling.

The MMO market has quickly taken on the gym membership model for business and people wonder why MMOs don’t “make it.” I’ve likened the gym membership model to a rowboat that’s leaking water like a sieve. The gyms are baling water out fast enough that they’re not sinking (new memberships) but not addressing the fact that the water’s still coming in (canceled memberships). Did you know there was this statistic a couple years back that gyms added 1.7 million membership in a given period…and lost 1.4 million to other gyms or attrition.

If a game is solid in terms of features and playability (both as a noob and as a vet) and isn’t ridiculously priced, it’s going to do well. Sure, you’ve still got to get enough people in the door to create a network effect so that the floodgates just open but build it well enough and market it right and you’ll get there. It’s not like WoW got 11 million subscribers year one. It’s taken FIVE years to get there…with a lot of that subscriber base being recent adds both by entering new markets outside the US (remember, they’ve got 6 million of those subscribers in Asia) and in recent years (it’s not like they were at 11 million by 2005).

I’m curious to see how Aion does. They’ve already got a chunk of Asian subs. According to Wikipedia, WoW’s 11 million includes about 2.5 million or more NA subs (2.5 million in early 2008 so I’m guessing closer to 3-3.5 million by now). If Aion can break a million in NA and another million in the EU, then I think we’d have a solid contender for the “WoW-killer” title everyone seems to want to bestow on someone. Wouldn’t it be funny if Blizzard’s next MMO is the one that kills WoW?

g afk

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…

g afk

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.