Aion (Open Beta, Launch Day Info too!)

[Falconeer]

WoW lost 5 millions customers?

[Threash]

WoW lost 5 millions customers?

Servers shut down in china.

[ghost]

WoW lost 5 millions customers?

More like misplaced for a bit, I think.  They'll be back eventually once all the legalese gets worked out.

[Vash]

WoW lost 5 millions customers?

Servers shut down in china.

A vast amount of Chinese WoW players have already shifted over to playing on Taiwanese servers after getting sick of waiting for WoTLK to launch in China.  Chinese servers shutting down just means any who haven't made that transition yet will now, don't see it making that drastic of an impact on their sub numbers.

All the "WoW loses 5 million players" stories popping up recently are just "internet journalism" using semantics to generate a headline, shocking I know.   

[sam, an eggplant]

More like misplaced for a bit, I think.  They'll be back eventually once all the legalese gets worked out.

Some will, some won't. This is very much like what killed AC2. All the players that were subscribed but not actually playing didn't come back.

Not that I'm prophesying WoW going out of business in the mysterious orient or anything, but this will be a huge hit.

Edit: forgot open quote tag

[Shatter]

Just like crack addicts they will find a way to get their fix

[ghost]

More like misplaced for a bit, I think.  They'll be back eventually once all the legalese gets worked out.

Some will, some won't. This is very much like what killed AC2. All the players that were subscribed but not actually playing didn't come back.

Not that I'm prophesying WoW going out of business in the mysterious orient or anything, but this will be a huge hit.
[/quote]

I dunno man, too many chinese were using this as a money maker. 

[sam, an eggplant]

The farmers were on US and EU servers, not asian. This only impacts actual players, not gold farmers.

[ghost]

It's gonna be interesting to see how this goes.  My computer doesn't seem to like Aion already.....

[Draegan]

Aion may not run on a computer that's 10 years old.

[Trippy]

Vivendi was making diddly squat, relatively speaking, from WoW in China when it was operated by The9. The9 basically shouldered all the risk so they got almost all of the reward. I haven't done any research to see what terms Vivendi negotiated with NetEase (the new China WoW operator) but I would assume Vivendi gets a bigger chunk of the profits now (once the game starts running again) but I would assume it's still not nearly close to what they get from their NA, Europe, and S. Korea operations (all operated by Blizzard themselves).

See this thread for more details:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=17340.0

[amiable]

First impressions after playing 2 hours as a mage:

1.  Beautiful game, terrific player customization.
2.  Skill delay is weird.  Combat feels clunky.
3.  You can't free turn with your mouse, you have to turn via keyboard.  Not sure if this matters though as I think you can cast spells from any facing and you will auto turn to face your target.  Pet peeve:  you cannot keybind camera zoom, meaning folks like me who use track balls  (I have limited space on my desktop) are screwed.
4.  You have to RIGHT ON TOP of a dead mob to loot.
5.  had my first bluescreen of death ever on this computer during the game.

Edit:  Windows did a diagnostic and said the error was due to gameguard.

[Draegan]

2.  Skill delay is due to lag I think.  The server I was on was riddled with it.  However they do some retarded shit where the next action can not be initiated until the animation is over.

3.  I control my character exactly like I do in wow.  Only difference is I can't mouse look with my left mouse button, it's shift-RMB.  You can steer your character with the RMB though.  Do you have click-to-move disabled?  That might be interfering with you.  I think they are adding more keyboard binding with the latest patch.  I could be wrong, but there is some retarded shit they left out with their keyboard binding options.

[Hindenburg]

nProtect Game Monitor has stopped working. Game freezes at login screen. GameGuard related crash. No fix on the official forums. Oh joy.

Trying to run it on xp64 killed xp64. 

[amiable]

\

3.  I control my character exactly like I do in wow.  Only difference is I can't mouse look with my left mouse button, it's shift-RMB.  You can steer your character with the RMB though.  Do you have click-to-move disabled?  That might be interfering with you.  I think they are adding more keyboard binding with the latest patch.  I could be wrong, but there is some retarded shit they left out with their keyboard binding options.

I can mouselook fine, what I can't so is remain stationary and turn my body using the mouse.  And yes the first thing I did was disable click to move.

[ghost]

Aion may not run on a computer that's 10 years old.

Apparently it doesn't like computers that are 5 months old, either.

Edit:  finally got it rolling.  Feels a lot like every other MMO.  I may not last through the month you get with buying the game.

[Draegan]

\

3.  I control my character exactly like I do in wow.  Only difference is I can't mouse look with my left mouse button, it's shift-RMB.  You can steer your character with the RMB though.  Do you have click-to-move disabled?  That might be interfering with you.  I think they are adding more keyboard binding with the latest patch.  I could be wrong, but there is some retarded shit they left out with their keyboard binding options.

I can mouselook fine, what I can't so is remain stationary and turn my body using the mouse.  And yes the first thing I did was disable click to move.

You can't hold down the right mouse button and turn your character?

[Ceryse]

Got a Priest to level 9, and a Warrior and Scout to level 7 thus far.. my initial impressions are somewhat mixed. Graphics are nice as these things go; but feel slightly off; maybe the lighting effects or something. By and large, however, my main issue was with the UI. If the game isn't going to allow third party mods; make whats there customizable to compensate. But the sheer lack of options for tweaking the UI is.. staggering. No transparency option for the chat box, for example; can make a lot of the text a pain in the ass to read in a good number of locations. No latency meter (seriously; how is that not a given?) and so on just shows a surprising lack of forethought into the UI design. Not as bad as I found AoC's at launch, so I guess that's a plus?

Game itself ran very well on my machine, even with everything maxed out; granted I only had a crowds of newbie areas to contend with, but still, its nice. The lag was.. disconcerting, as I've only dealt with worse lag at WoW's launch, and even then most of that was issues with the database than actual latency.

Not too bad, all around.. bunch more nitpicks, especially with skill usage/auto attack. A lot of minor stuff that just seems dumb to be in a diku MMO at this point.

[Draegan]

Yeah there are a lot of UI things, small things, that annoy me, especially with the keybinding.  I hate how I can't right click an empty space and clear my target.  There are some other things as well.  But the UI itself is serviceable.

[Morfiend]

Those are my impressions also. Lots of little nitpicky stuff, but overall a very solid Diku experience. I cant wait to hit 10 and try flying. Oh yeah, the way Rogues stand pisses me off. So much that I rolled a warrior.

[Ceryse]

Those are my impressions also. Lots of little nitpicky stuff, but overall a very solid Diku experience. I cant wait to hit 10 and try flying. Oh yeah, the way Rogues stand pisses me off. So much that I rolled a warrior.

I also noted how a lot of the characters stand seemed.. odd, and mildly annoying. Of the four main classes I've tried, only the Priest really appealed to me.

My biggest worry with the game right now is how a  lot of these small UI quirks and annoyances are going to fare at end game come release. Haven't even been in a group yet, so I'm possibly talking out of my ass, but with how the UI seems structured from a design aspect, I don't see healing/dispelling to be much other than a headache at end-game with how little there is I can tweak in the UI.

UI annoyances really bother me, especially after WoW. Whether all the addons bothered people or not, ruined gameplay or not, the ability to get the interface cleaned up and efficient really makes an impact on ease of use and my ability to enjoy the game.

[Draegan]

Those are my impressions also. Lots of little nitpicky stuff, but overall a very solid Diku experience. I cant wait to hit 10 and try flying. Oh yeah, the way Rogues stand pisses me off. So much that I rolled a warrior.

From what I've read, the version we get once it's released has most of these keybinding things fixed.  Even click to move will be disabled by default.  We'll see though.

Don't get too hyped up on flying.  In the first area from 10-20 you can only fly around the main fortress, and not in the leveling area, however you can glide which is awesome.  Double tap space.

[amiable]

You can't hold down the right mouse button and turn your character?

No.  It just mouselooks when I do that, I can only turn if I am moving.

[Draegan]

That's very odd.  Are you in combat?  It mouse looks if you're in combat.  There may be a option to take off autoface, that might fix your issue.

[Morfiend]

You can't hold down the right mouse button and turn your character?

No.  It just mouselooks when I do that, I can only turn if I am moving.

Thats odd, cause I dont have mouse look. I mean, I can spin the camera around with right mouse hold, but not while moving.

[Hindenburg]

If anyone gets nProtect crashes, uninstalling kaspersky solves the issue.

What faction are you all playing?

[Engels]

What is Kaspersky detecting that blocks nProtect? Kaspersky is a pretty good AV. I wonder if nProtect uses a vulnerability that Kaspersky protects against that other AV programs don't.

[Tannhauser]

Does anyone know what if any instances are in the game?  What level do you need to be?

[tmp]

What is Kaspersky detecting that blocks nProtect? Kaspersky is a pretty good AV. I wonder if nProtect uses a vulnerability that Kaspersky protects against that other AV programs don't.

From what i remember Kaspersky alert had to do with nProtect trying to launch some kind of virtual driver when running. I'd figure nProtect is doing its job through that driver. It's possible to tell Kaspersky not to freak over that particular file and things seem to work ok then.

[Hindenburg]

It's possible to tell Kaspersky not to freak over that particular file and things seem to work ok then.

I did. Didn't work.
Completely deactivated kaspersly. Didn't work.
Only uninstalling did the trick.

But yeah, kaspersky doesn't like what nProtect or GameMon do. Crashes the game monitor and alerts about gamemon.
-
On w7.

[tmp]

Hmm that's weird. It did work for me... well, i'd just use the "pause protection..." option before launching Aion and that seemed to solve it. It's on Vista and with Kaspersky 2009 though, maybe on different OS or with another version of the AV it goes to hell.

[Morfiend]

I had no problems with ESET Smart Securities, except Game Guard (the name of the product nProtect is running) wont let me use Chrome. I can launch it, but I can go to any websites. Very annoying.

Oh yeah, mouse look is Shift-Right Click.

[ghost]

I run Kaspersky and simply turned it off while I began the game and then turned it back on.  Seemed to fix things for me. 

[Hindenburg]

Hrm.
At level 8, 52k xp is required for level 9. A level 7 mob gives a bit more than 500 xp, and lvl 8 mobs give 600 and change. Blue quests give 1.5k -2k.

Having to kill nearly 100 mobs to ding 9 is 

[Ceryse]

Hrm.
At level 8, 52k xp is required for level 9. A level 7 mob gives a bit more than 500 xp, and lvl 8 mobs give 600 and change. Blue quests give 1.5k -2k.

Having to kill nearly 100 mobs to ding 9 is 

And I think experience is tuned to let us level faster in the beta; just what I heard someone grumbling on the betaboards. Hit level 18 with my Cleric today, finally, and the only real gaps in seeing the bar fill nicely were the few times I got turned around about where to go, or how to reach what I was looking for. And the time spent crafting. I do miss Rest Experience from WoW, though.

Lag is still my over-riding concern, though. Just stays bad for most of the day. And no latency meter to look sourly upon.