I took quite a thorough look at the early levels of Aion over the course of several weeks during its closed beta test, now I'm back to see how the live version of the game holds up. Are there any massive changes, is there any advice for new players and just how bad were those queues?
It's fairly clear from my previews that I enjoyed Aion, lets not beat around the bush. The game is aesthetically pleasing, so players from older games like WoW or EverQuest will be taken aback by its beauty, and I found plenty of things to do to keep me busy and to keep my character progressing. The world is somewhat linear, the zones don't flow into each other, they're actually completely separate, and travelling between them means teleportation, but this is done well and doesn't break immersion at all. The profession system is simple and rewards players with worthwhile items from early on.
Combine this with a flashy chain skilled combat system and, of course, the flying, and you've got yourself a pretty good all-round MMO. The experience kept me wanting more and I looked forward to each of my play sessions. I was actually a bit disappointed when the CBT ended and I mentally waved goodbye my main character, a modest level 16 Elyos. So it was with a mixture of emotions, the excitement of playing Aion again but with some reluctance to go through 16 levels of the same content all over again, that I began from scratch on the live servers this week.
I know it's terribly boring of me, and possibly a bit sad, but I took great pains to create the exact same character. After giving each class a brief spin on the beta, I'd picked out a Warrior as my favourite so, once the class selection was done with, I began the tremendously long and picky process of character customisation.
It's a credit to NCSoft and the customisation feature to see how hard it was to actually make a character that looked the same as my previous one. Even with a screenshot to guide me, it took an age to get anywhere close, by my standards anyway.
Some time later, I entered Atreia and set off in the now-familiar Poeta, the Elyos starter zone. Armed with my knowledge from the beta, I was able to get through this zone a lot quicker and I reached fresh challenges in no time.
Last week, NCsoft declared that a shiny brand new build of the game would be launching worldwide simultaneously with the western launch of the game, so I was curious to see if there were any glaring differences from my time in the beta. Apart from the finishing touches, such as voice-overs for all cut-scenes and some quests, I didn't really notice any in these early levels. Oh, there were some new character customisation options, which reflected western styles more. I'm all for more of those.
In terms of gameplay, I'd say that nothing has changed from the beta version in the first couple of zones. However, one big difference was the in-game community. I have to assume that it was mostly serious die-hard fans or us jaded journalists who were inhabiting the beta servers, because I can honestly say that I rarely saw a single person speak in the general chat channel during the beta, let alone speak to me or invite me to join a group. Oh how things have changed. I'll use a term most of you will be familiar with; Barrens Chat.
Call me immature, but I find it somewhat amusing to watch these discussions go on. It seems that to the Aion community on my server, it's a crime to have played WoW, although let's face it, the vast majority of players are likely to have done. I would guess that to be the case, simply by the number of WoW references that are constantly made. To sample a few; in answer to the question of the Auction House location, someone replied “Ironforge”, I have seen directions to Dalaran requested twice, along with the location of Mankrik's Wife.
and @ Jasdemi: I'm a WoW fanboy, well fangirl actually. Never interested in Aion until it was plopped on my desk. But if liking the game makes me a fan-whatever, so be it :)
Ignoring the fact that the EU servers have no queues. Open your eyes, fanboy.
I'd like to see these mythical European servers that you've been playing on. Or maybe you've avoided the English-language servers? Because those have been packing major queues every night of the past week.
The only time I was able to login on my main (pre-select) on Perento was at 6 AM before going to work! Otherwise the wait was anywhere between 4 hours (sunday) and queue-is-full (yesterday). Logging in anywhere after 17:00 (dayjob) meant certain queue for every server, even Castor.
On Wednesday I got lucky because I got on half an hour after the servers rebooted. Perento already had a massive queue again, but I could create a character and play on Gorgos for a while.
Today they fixed the horrid AFK-shop deal (30-minute limit) and further extended server capacity. It hasn't helped, even Castor has a 45 minute queue. Gorgos over an hour. Perento and Spatalos? 2+ hours. And it isn't even prime time anymore.
And yet NCSoft just claims they're worried about server merges six months down the road. Why aren't they worried about the message they're sending with that statement and this situation?
"Thanks for your money, but we don't think you'll be playing past the first month... or two. So we launch less than the bare minimum of servers, to prevent people from getting a good go at the game anytime soon. Maybe that will keep them around for an extra month."
I'm sure the game is good. Heck, I liked what I've seen in beta. But it'd be nice to actually get to friggin' play it.
Ignoring everything past the 2nd paragraph is not a good way to start a reply to someone who clearly did both read the article and check the facts. That you choose to ignore said facts does not mean they're not there for you to read.
But here's a summary in case you truly find the concept of 'facts' so difficult to grasp:
DATE OF COMMENT: 25th of September 22:31 (take note, Yarrion).
PLAY TIMES: The entire week prior, identical to this article, with times ranging from 17:00 to 02:00 (that's 3 hours prior to and 3 hours past prime time, which is 20:00 to 23:00, FIY Hamsterman).
SERVER QUEUES: with the exception of one half hour timespan on (I think) wednesday, all servers had major queues for the duration of the week at previously indicated play times.
ON THE 25TH: I made my comment, after trying to log in to any server for several hours but not getting anywhere. You can check my comment, it clearly states that on the day of writing (the 25th, Yarrion) there were queues, major queues, on all servers. This refutes your fairytale story of no queues on the 25th.
AFTERWARDS: The queues remained, and got worse on some servers (Telemachus included). Then ebbed away about 3-4 weeks after early access ended. Didn't matter. New servers > old servers anyway.
So I got to playing the game after the new servers arrived, finally, and it's good and the rest of the article was spot on. I never called the author a fanboy, but thought it was misleading to state 'no queues on European servers' when every Aion-related website and forum indicated otherwise. It may have been true for anyone capable of logging in in the morning or early afternoon, but that most assuredly is a minority group amongst gamers, especially PC MMO players, nowadays.
Not one gamer with an ordinary, full-time, dayjob would have had queue-free access to Aion that week of early access. Nor the subsequent week for that matter, not until the launch of the first new server anyway.
I mentioned server queues at the start, and I'll just mention that here on the European servers, I've not had to wait once to get online, nor heard of anyone else having to. The game launches from today though, so this may change, especially over the weekend. NCsoft has also said that it intends to add a server to both US and EU clusters if required.
Well, it's good you shared your experience even if it did differ from Bill's.