Aion (Open Beta, Launch Day Info too!)

[Pax]

Hi. My name is Falconeer. I fail at answering valid questions and consider money (sinks) as completely unrelated to time.

[Koyasha]

It's all displayed and recorded numerically.  You lose a specific number of exp, and when you pay the soul healer, you get the same number back.  Anything involving percentages would be easily exploitable.

[Draegan]

If you die at level 6, it's a portion of the experience you get from 1 mob at level 11 or so.  Just to give you an idea of how small the exp debt is.

Ok you die and lose 250xp (it's a locked value depending on your level).  You can see this by a discolored portion of your exp bar like rest exp in WOW.  You can then pay the soul healer to give you that exp back.  You get back the 250 exp.  If you level a few times that portion of the bar gets smaller as the amount of exp you need to fill it up increases.  

Example.  I died a few times at level 5 or so.  I never bought back the exp debt.  I hit level 10 and I couldn't even see the portion of my bar the debt represented because it was so small.  You end up just forgetting about it.

This is not your father's exp loss/debt.  You don't lose hours of work, you lose maybe 5-10 mins of work if you're too cheap to spend the little cash to get it back.

This is the last thing to rail against in this game.

[Falconeer]

I just can't wrap my brain around how forcing such negative time sinks on players can make people suck at their game of choice less.

...

Hi. My name is Falconeer. I fail at answering valid questions and consider money (sinks) as completely unrelated to time.

If you dig as deep as to expose that paying to repair your equip in a MMORPG is a time sink, then you just graduated and realized MMORPG *are* time sinks, they completely revolve around the concept of having you waste time. You don't owe me anything, I teach people like you for free.

But I see you have a personal grudge against moneysinks as they are (your valuable's) time expenders in disguise.
So, question, how would you make economy work without moneysinks in your own dream-like and non-EVE MMORPG?

[Rendakor]

Falc thanks for clearing it up. Exp debt ala EQ2 where you only earn half xp (which reduces your leveling considerably, and is MUCH worse than broken armor) is what I thought Draegan was talking about.

[sam, an eggplant]

Experience ransom as described sounds fine from a player standpoint. It's a markedly less effective money-sink than real experience debt or item durability. One question-- since it doesn't delevel players, what happens at max level?

[tazelbain]

EQ2/CoH style isn't bad at all with offline debt payment.
I'd like to see debt protection for mentoring players and helping others complete quests you have already completed to make it even better.

[Draegan]

Experience ransom as described sounds fine from a player standpoint. It's a markedly less effective money-sink than real experience debt or item durability. One question-- since it doesn't delevel players, what happens at max level?

When you die you get a 30s or 60s debuff that slows your movement.  The soul healer removes this debuff along with the exp debt.  I'm assuming just this debuff hits you at max level. 

I have a feeling that it's only from a PVE death.  At max level you can buy these portable spawn points for PVP sieges but I'm not sure if they come with a soul healer.  Why would they have these bind points and give you a debuff?

So we'll see.

[sam, an eggplant]

So then there's effectively no death penalty at all in PvE at max level? They only penalize leveling players? That seems backwards, somehow.

[Hawkbit]

So then there's effectively no death penalty at all in PvE at max level? They only penalize leveling players? That seems backwards, somehow.

That's where this comes into play:

[Draegan]

So then there's effectively no death penalty at all in PvE at max level? They only penalize leveling players? That seems backwards, somehow.

I'm against death penalties as the next guy, but the cost of removing the debt/debuff is so trivial that I can only think that it's there to prevent people from zerging something while leveling.

Shrug.

[DLRiley]

I feel backward game design coming from an mmo...it must be christmas.

[tazelbain]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameGuard
What about this thing?  Christ, does everyone need a rootkit on my machine?

[nurtsi]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameGuard
What about this thing?  Christ, does everyone need a rootkit on my machine?

The amount of software broken by the thing is impressive. I mean, Chrome? I have Daemon Tools on my Win7 and Aion worked fine with that (I don't think DT was running while I played the game though, but you can at least have it installed).

But hey, it's here to protect us from the evil terro^H^H^H^H^H cheaters!

[Koyasha]

I just disable GameGuard entirely for Lineage II, and I expect I will do the same with Aion.  I've seen workarounds already.  I refuse to either use a different browser or not browse while playing.

[chargerrich]

You can "try on" item by ctrl-left clicking.

There is also an NPC that lets you pay to change the appearance of an item to the appearance of a donor item.  So if you have a level 10 breastplate that looks fucking amazing and don't want to get rid of it, you can make your end game super rare raiding item look like it.

Should do away with the cookie-cutter looks.

Hey I like this idea... take notice Blizzard 

[Morfiend]

Anyone get their Beta key from Amazon? I preordered last week, and still havent got an email from them yet, while my friend who preordered the day after I did, got his beta codes on monday.

[Threash]

Anyone get their Beta key from Amazon? I preordered last week, and still havent got an email from them yet, while my friend who preordered the day after I did, got his beta codes on monday.

I pre ordered from amazon a few weeks ago and got my key about 3 days later.

[Arrrgh]

Anyone get their Beta key from Amazon? I preordered last week, and still havent got an email from them yet, while my friend who preordered the day after I did, got his beta codes on monday.

Ordered on 5th, got code on 14th. Would have been annoyed but I was already in the beta anyway.

[Draegan]

Or just go to the store.

[Morfiend]

Aion available to preorder on Steam.

I am tempted to cancel my Amazon preorder and go with this. I heard they wont have that crapy copy protection on the Steam version.

[Draegan]

That's tempting but I think I'm going to go with the boxed edition on this one.  I have a preorder at a Gamestop 5 minutes from my office.

[Xanthippe]

I ended up getting a collector's edition for $59 at the NCsoft store.  I am missing all the schwag however; I just get the in-game items.  Seeing as to how I'm trying to get rid of clutter instead of adding more things to my space, this is a bonus for me.

[Morfiend]

I already preordered on Amazon, the CE, or I totally would get a digital version. In fact I would have if I had known there was a digital CE version before ordering the boxed set.

Oh yeah, word is the Steam version does still use Gameguard.

[ghost]

Downloading beta now.  Should have it up and running about the time the game officially releases......

[Morfiend]

Downloading now, just started. Should be done in an hour. 

[ghost]

Downloading now, just started. Should be done in an hour. 

Must be nice.  My download is running about 60 kb/sec right now......only 800 hours left, haha.

[skrigg]

http://www.fileplanet.com/110591/0/0/0/1/section/Game_Clients


1.1mbs speed from fileplanet, don't need to be a member.

[Ceryse]

Just bit the bullet and pre-ordered it; even though I'm not really sure the game will be up my alley. Tended towards PvE far more in WoW (though I enjoyed non-Arena/BG PvP a fair bit, and did in Eve as well), so the game's focus on PvP may just not be for me, depending on how it plays. Still, its the only MMO either already out or soon to be so that I'm interested in, after getting tired of WoW (more precisely the direction the game was going, and herding cats as a guild/raid leader) awhile back.

Downloading quick, at least.

[Zetor]

Can you play on the US servers with an Euro client? I am in an international guild, but I can only buy the EU version on steam / in the ncsoft store due to my location.

I couldn't find any info on this anywhere...

[skrigg]

Can you play on the US servers with an Euro client? I am in an international guild, but I can only buy the EU version on steam / in the ncsoft store due to my location.

I couldn't find any info on this anywhere...

Pretty sure all you have to do is change your region from Europe to NA in the NC launcher. Could be wrong but that should work.

[Morfiend]

Got the game installed. It is now taunting me with not being able to log in.

[Tannhauser]

I bought the $5 pre-order disc and beta access card and installed it last week.  I'm ready to go when I get home tonight!  Man, that Gameguard is a POS though.  I'm going to try a cleric, I hear they are OP. 

[Draegan]

I believe the servers will come up live around 3pm EST today.  I'll be on the Israphel server.

Who wants a chart?

[Yegolev]

Dofus?