Aion (Open Beta, Launch Day Info too!)

[Xanthippe]

I just hit 25 on my templar and went to the abyss.  What a huge difference in xp gain and quest experience gain.  I can actually see my xp bar move when I kill a mob.  And DP gain too - it's nicely ramped up. Getting abyss points for xping in there? Bonus!

24 was a rather grim level for me.  The templar skills are not good at that level, but at 25 it's just fine.

Got ganked by a couple of 34s shortly after arriving last night (of course).  That will likely only get worse.

[Threash]

How do you know what level the people who ganked you were?

[Chimpy]

Just heard a new twist from the /3 morons "It is paid employees of Blizzard spamming fake sites and then referencing the spam as a game killer."

/sigh, people will believe anything on the internets

[Venkman]

To reiterate the level of spam in this game is far beyond average, calling it out is has nothing to do with inexperience. Really doesn't impact my gameplay beyond mild annoyance but to say that its par for the course is wrong.

No, it's par for the course at this stage of an MMO, pretty much been this way since LoTRO. Each company deals with it differently. No idea how NC will here, but really, the gold spam has been worse in some betas in my experience.

And of course, the "in my experience" part could be the difference. Maybe SIEL Asmo side just isn't that bad. Or maybe it's just my itchy trigger finger on /block.

[Threash]

The other day they were pretty public about GMs going around banhammering people and for that day i got no spam, but it started up again the next day. 

[Kail]

Gliding is a fun minigame in and of itself.

This has been bugging me for a bit.  Seems like all I can do when I'm gliding is steer left and right as I gradually descend (and occasionally bounce off the ground or something).  Is there more to it than this?  All the official info I can find seems to only cover "flying mode".

[Modern Angel]

Darniaq, you're one of the most worthwhile posters here I find but you're dead wrong about this.



That was taken by a friend. I was getting approaching that in beta. There was NEVER anything like that in WoW. Spam, sure, but not a perpetual wall of text.

[schild]

I want to shop with the guy that promises fast delivrey.

[Venkman]

Oh, I'm certainly not denying it's a problem. And again, I'll admit that it's possible SIEL Asmo is not as bad as whatever server your friend is on. But I paid my dues in IF on Icecrown in WoW, living through the process of crushing gold spam and Blizzard banning everyone. I got spammed to death in VG beta. The complaints were the same for WAR, Runes of Magic, and a lot of us quickly figured out putting ourselves /anonymous in LoTRO prevented getting /tells from gold spammers who relied predominantly on /who'ing the zone and sending /tells to everyone in it. It really seems as though this started becoming a realdeal problem with the success of WoW being the blue light to all the IGE wannabes out there.

So unless there's some sort of hard cap on the number of /blocks one can have in Aion, I still don't see the problem. My list was up to 42 as of last night. Your screenshot would add, what, another 40. It's certainly faster than waiting for NC to "do something about it".

Gliding is a fun minigame in and of itself.

This has been bugging me for a bit.  Seems like all I can do when I'm gliding is steer left and right as I gradually descend (and occasionally bounce off the ground or something).  Is there more to it than this?  All the official info I can find seems to only cover "flying mode".

I've been trying a bunch of different things, and so far the one that works for me the most is spamming W and S (forward and back). Not sure why. Either I'm only remembering when I'm moving along slightly down-sloping terrain, or there's something about lift in there. Prior I would spam W/S for a bit then S/D then A/D, and keep moving it around. But that didn't seem to be as consistent. I also wonder if spamming is the trick or if in my spamming I'm just hitting some triggers.

I'm also wondering why they can't just be clear with us about it

[Pringles]

Gliding is a fun minigame in and of itself.

This has been bugging me for a bit.  Seems like all I can do when I'm gliding is steer left and right as I gradually descend (and occasionally bounce off the ground or something).  Is there more to it than this?  All the official info I can find seems to only cover "flying mode".

I've been trying a bunch of different things, and so far the one that works for me the most is spamming W and S (forward and back). Not sure why. Either I'm only remembering when I'm moving along slightly down-sloping terrain, or there's something about lift in there. Prior I would spam W/S for a bit then S/D then A/D, and keep moving it around. But that didn't seem to be as consistent. I also wonder if spamming is the trick or if in my spamming I'm just hitting some triggers.

I'm also wondering why they can't just be clear with us about it

When you're going downhill press W to tilt forward and build speed, and before you hit flat ground press S to tilt back and create lift, eventually you will bounce.
When you bounce press W to tilt forward and build speed again and then press S to create lift before you hit the level ground and you will bounce again.

Keep it going and you can go like 20x as far as you would normally depending on the terrain design, you will stop flying no matter what as far as I can tell when you hit upward hills.

[Lantyssa]

And do not press forward when gliding near the ground.  It causes you to land.

[ghost]

Yeah..............there is a lot of gold spam.  Like, holy crap a lot. 

[Kageru]

A PvP game with a lot of grinding where a material advantage can help you "pwn noobs"?

There's probably a lot of gold spam because there's a lot of people buying it.

[gryeyes]

You solved the riddle!

[tmp]

There was NEVER anything like that in WoW. Spam, sure, but not a perpetual wall of text.

Until another game appears with automated lvl.1's mass-suiciding into shapes of url's to gold-seller sites, i think WoW has this particular competition still pretty much cornered.

[Jerrith]

I started a couple alts today, and noticed a couple interesting things.  Characters under level 5 can't send tells/whispers...  I thought they could, at release, so this might be one small change.

Also, it seems like there's something wrong with blocking people with multiple characters on one account.  There were a few times while playing an alt I'd get a spam and right click and pick block, and it would error out saying that person was already blocked...  Even though I just got a message from them.

Lastly, have any of you heard about the L30 Daevanion armor? :)  What an interesting concept...  Quick summary:  At level 30, you get a quest that lets you create 1 piece of this 5 piece set of blue, level 30 armor.  It has a really good look, and the set bonuses are so good, that you probably wouldn't replace it until you're at level 50, getting some of the really rare drops.  The hard part is, that 1 piece is all your character can ever get.  The armor is basically bound to your account, so if you want to get a full set, you have to level 5 characters to 30, and have them all give their piece to one character.   (It continues beyond this too, if you have a character with a full set, then you can do another quest for a Daevanion weapon...)

(Note: There is another way - these armor pieces were also made ultra rare drops in the abyss....  But your chances with this are just about zero, from what I understand.)

 

[Koyasha]

There's only 5 unique names in that picture.  It also doesn't represent fast-scrolling spam, as that's got a span of at least 2 minutes, 30 seconds showing on screen.  How can I tell?  The Find Group channel has a 30 second limit on how soon people can send another message. There's five different messages from the same person displayed, showing that if they are indeed sending out spam every 30 seconds on the dot, the window shows at least two and a half minutes of time on it.

I play most of the day every day, I block spammers, and have maybe 15-25 names on my ignore list.  I have yet to hit the ignore cap (50).  By the time I do, most of the names on my list will be of deleted characters, so I can clear it out and start again. 

The spam isn't horrendously bad, it doesn't even begin to approach bad.  There were occasionally times in WoW, during the worst periods, where I got so much spam it scrolled my chat window fast enough that it was difficult to click the names in order to block/report them.  And from a hell of a lot more than five unique names, too.

[Falconeer]

Threash, why no one wants to tell us their secret to know enemyplayers level?

Also, on Gorgos, overpopulated EU server, spammers are scarce and easy to ignore. They are focusing their fire on US servers apparently.

[gryeyes]

There's only 5 unique names in that picture.  It also doesn't represent fast-scrolling spam,

1. That is a single channel.

2. Each of those spammers message completely scrolls a normal sized chat screen. So lets just assume they are evenly spaced. That means every 5 seconds the screen is wiped. That is also a single channel, the spammers are broadcaster across them all. In fact now we have "normal" names ghosting messages to make it appear like an NCsoft global sending them to tainted websites.

There was insane lag that made playing impossible for a little while so I made a character on Siel/Asmodian to see if maybe my server was exceptionally bad. These are the results, I really dont understand the need to rationalize the problem. I have played probably a dozen MMO's at various points in time, I can not recall it being this intrusive. I am still having fun, this is an absolutely ancillary issue, but it does exist. I purchased the game 3 days ago or so, and i have 40 names blocked so far.



Why in the name of god does mordhein (sp) have a single channel? When much sparser regions have multiple, I was forced to skip over to the other zone brush something. Which was almost completely vacant and still has 2 channels.

[Koyasha]

Morheim has only one channel because it's a rift-enabled zone.  All pvp enabled zones have only one channel.  There's only one zone on each side past level 20 that has any channels, Brusthonin or its Elyos counterpart.  Those zones have no rift access and no pvp possible in them.

[gryeyes]

Ahhhh that explains it.

[Jerrith]

Threash, why no one wants to tell us their secret to know enemyplayers level?

I have a laptop open to the Aion website, next to my main PC.  If I see a target and I'm not attacked immediately (or after a battle if I lost) I type their name into it and it pulls up their record, showing me their class and level.

It's not automatic and in game, but it's useful. :)

Sadly, it does mean names like Ilililiilliili have another PVP advantage.

[Falconeer]

Thanks, Jerrith.

On a different note, this is not new (3 days ago) but I don't think it has been posted here before, and since this thread IS the Aion forum...

Greetings,

A lot has happened since I last addressed our community. We’ve launched our long awaited product Aion and have been pleased and challenged with keeping up with the massive player demand.

There’s no doubt that we’ve done some things very well with Aion: the product is polished and incredibly fun. We managed to deploy to North America and Europe within the same week and have experienced strong demand. As most of you are aware, this has come at a cost in the form of queue times. This is by far our biggest challenge and has led to some frustration as players wait to enter their server of choice.

In preparation for Aion’s launch, we ran calculations of our presale numbers with historical conversion ratios and expected concurrency numbers, which led to our determination of launch day server needs. In addition, we had a 25 percent additional capacity in hardware reserve and the ability to increase server population. We’ve further responded to the overwhelming demand by adding additional server worlds in all languages, and still we are working around the clock to address the incredible demand. For example, we’re seeing timeframes where 60 percent or more of our players are playing at any given time. This is a significant event by any MMO standard. Another surprising development is how long players are staying in game—I think that’s a testament to the enjoyable nature of the product.

I’m sure many of you are thinking, “That’s all fine-but how does that help me get in and play the game? What is NCsoft doing for me?” Fair question. First, we have already and will continue to increase server capacity to ensure that we have server space for every user. The reality of the situation is that some servers quickly become very popular servers, with lines queued up to enter, but other servers have plenty of space to accommodate players. Obviously, adding servers won’t help in this case. If you’re waiting to enter a full server, 100 extra servers won’t help.

So the next question may be “What about my character I’ve already spent time on?” Another good question.  I’m excited to confirm that we are currently working on implementing a server transfer service beginning next month. Specifically, we will offer every player a free one-time server transfer for a limited time to select servers. You can rest assured that addressing the demand for Aion is our biggest priority. And I know a big question is “Why did you not deploy more servers?” Most of you are savvy enough to realize that a healthy MMO server needs a robust population. We have to calculate our reasonable concurrency numbers in a week and in a month and beyond. The last thing we want to do to our players is spread them out so that the “massively” in “massively multiplayer” gets lost..

I read an interesting conversation about a safari hunter, and the question was posed to him: “Why don’t you take an Olympic sharpshooter that could hit a bulls-eye at 300 meters?” His response was: “I don’t care what he can do at 300 meters, what can he do at two meters?” And that’s definitely where we are now: the rhino is upon us. We’ve spent months planning and have researched multiple MMO launches, hoping to learn from previous success and failures. It is imperative to your long term enjoyment of Aion that we carefully manage the health of the servers. We’re looking at making sure the Abyss is alive with conflict and legions fighting for control in an EPIC war.

At this point,I would like to stress that you, our players, are our number one priority and that we are doing everything we can to ensure that Aion exceeds your expectations.

The community team and I will continue to provide you with progress updates as we receive them, and you can always continue to monitor issues, check on server status, etc. at http://www.aiononline.com.

In closing I’d like to say thank you to the worldwide Aion community. I am really excited about the response to Aion and I look forward to providing you with the best possible play experience for years to come.

Best regards,

Lance Stites

Executive Producer, Game Production Studio
NCsoft West

So, temporary moneyhats for them and, par for the course, free character transfers incoming.

[Tale]

Done enough stupid MMOG grinds for one lifetime. The end. Of grinds, not lifetime.

[Xanthippe]

How do you know what level the people who ganked you were?

I looked them up here:
http://na.aiononline.com/livestatus/character-legion/

(I play in a window and also look them up while playing after I die.)

With regard to gold spam and NCSoft - I have never played a game with part-time online customer support before.  The entire Petition system is fucked up.  I send NCSoft a list of goldspammers/phishers everyday.  I hear people complain very often in public channels about the spammers.  I cannot for the life of me figure out why NCSoft isn't on top of this situation.

WoW has raised the expectations of mmo players - and this is a good thing.  NCSoft needs to realize that annoying customers or allowing customers to be annoyed is not a plus when it comes to retaining customers.

[Morfiend]

Going back to gold spam. On Asmo / Azphel, the /3 Looking for Group channel is completely unusable due to the amount of spam. But whats odd is that I dont get hardly any spam in the general channel. Only FLG channel and in tell.

The pure volume of spam though is far and above any game I have played before.

[Nonentity]

Hit 25 and the Abyss over the weekend.

I love the Abyss and it's ganktastic glory. Need more Abyss points!

Hate aerial gathering still, though.

[Falconeer]

Hate aerial gathering still, though.

Yeah, but what about aerial fighting? 

[Nonentity]

I had turned off the auto-approach on ability use. Then after I got into aerial combat, I realized that was a dumb idea, because when people start flying around it's easy to lose track.

[waylander]

The game does feel grindy to me because you get more exp if you just grind than if you run around doing quests.  But the rifts are a nice mechanic that creates a little bit of that look over your shoulder feeling, and the RVR in the Abyss has a pretty epic feel. 

I am hoping to hit level 30 today, and at this point I plan to hang around for at least 90 days.

[Draegan]

Level efficiency changes per class and per level.  Sometimes it's grinding sometimes it's questing, sometimes it's both.

My SM just facerolls grinding no problem.  It's a nice relaxing class.

[Morfiend]

I have never been a fan of just mob grinding. I would much rather feel like I have some kind of direction in my leveling, ie questing or dungeons. I start grinding mobs, look down at my exp bar, look at my how much exp I need to level and how much exp the mobs are giving, and then log out and go watch TV. I just do not enjoy mindless grinding. And I am only level 20. I am hoping that if I can make it to 25 that the Abyss will make it much more fun. Otherwise I doubt I will last another month.

[tmp]

Crying about the gold spam on official forums is getting worse than the in-game spam itself. It's quite surprising to see such a big game launch getting sunk by what seems like inability to have one guy with a banstick per shift monitoring the chat channels. Or a round-the-clock GM coverage, for that matter.

[Ashamanchill]

I have never been a fan of just mob grinding. I would much rather feel like I have some kind of direction in my leveling, ie questing or dungeons. I start grinding mobs, look down at my exp bar, look at my how much exp I need to level and how much exp the mobs are giving, and then log out and go watch TV. I just do not enjoy mindless grinding. And I am only level 20. I am hoping that if I can make it to 25 that the Abyss will make it much more fun. Otherwise I doubt I will last another month.

Yeah this game practically requires a secondary form of entertainment in the meantime. My roomate and I moved our whole computer desk to get a better view of the tv.

The game does feel grindy to me because you get more exp if you just grind than if you run around doing quests.  But the rifts are a nice mechanic that creates a little bit of that look over your shoulder feeling, and the RVR in the Abyss has a pretty epic feel. 

Lol, this game feels grindy to me because LotD keep ganking me while I quest in the abyss. Please send a guild wide tell appealing for mercy on a poor Elyos Galdiator named Thunderchief 

[Venkman]

Crying about the gold spam on official forums is getting worse than the in-game spam itself. It's quite surprising to see such a big game launch getting sunk by what seems like inability to have one guy with a banstick per shift monitoring the chat channels. Or a round-the-clock GM coverage, for that matter.

Last night was brutal on SIEL. I had to block 13 people the moment I logged in and about 10 more over the successive 90 minutes. There was also a new wrinkle: one yutz figured out that most people don't change the default size of their chat window. He cleverly spaced out the text so that the word "[Prompted]" appeared on a new line as if it was an official message. As usual with such nonsense, the sentence that followed had enough grammatical and spelling errors to tip off the experienced; however, there were some people who got tripped up by it. As you'd expect, a phishing site. And while a simple window-resize fixed it (as in, exposed it), over that 90 minute session there were a lot of people wondering. Almost as many as complaining about the spam. And that itself was almost as many as people saying right-click/block.

It's a minigame unto itself!

And yes, LoTRO was as bad at one point, for me anyway.