Aion – Page 9 – MMO Fallout

Aion: 1 Million Copies, CAPTCHA, Patches

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The good news just keeps on rolling in for Aion, with NCsoft announcing that the title has reached nearly 1 million copies sold in North America and Europe. 600,000 of the copies come post release, we all remember Aion’s boasted four hundred thousand copies preordered. North America accounted for over half of the copies sold since Aion launched in September.

Where Aion has not excelled recently is in the most recent patch, whose community response can be summed up with a “…” Although experience rewards have been boosted in several areas, the community is lashing back against a new CAPTCHA system that randomly debuffs players during gathering that is removed by typing in a random word that displays on screen. The new system is set up to stop bots, an issue that has been plaguing Aion since launch. Players have also issued complaints that the patch did not address the main problems affecting the game.

So, good news this week for Aion and bad news as well.

Hunting Transgenders, the Chinese Way…

zombie-austin-powers — That's no baby, baby. -banned-

Imagine this, gentlemen: You’re walking through the streets, and at the corner you come across a beautiful woman, clad in nothing but a frilly bra and underwear. As she looks at you seductively, using the hottest /dance emote available, she says “4g 4 l4p d4nc3.” All of a sudden, you notice something about her is wrong. The chin, the hairy arms, the Adam’s Apple. IT’S A MAN, BABY!

If you’re a player who enjoys the occasional pixelated groping, or you work as a GM on Age of Conan, you’ll be glad to hear that, at least on King of the World that you won’t have to worry about that woman actually being a man behind the screen. Taking the phrase “pics or it didn’t happen” literally, and requires players to submit webcam pictures of themselves, otherwise male players playing as female avatars will be banned.

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With Scammers At Bay, The Players Will Play

This article has nothing to do with T-Mobile's Sidekick

All two of you who visited my message boards will see that I am not a big fan of being explicit with rules. In fact, there are three rules on the Orb Boards; Don’t incite a flame war, keep your account secure, and don’t be a spambot. Apart from those basic rules, I don’t think the rest needs to be explained. What it comes down to is: Anything you wouldn’t do in real life, don’t do here. Unless you make a living out of stealing people’s identities, in which case…still don’t do that here.

I often like to see Game Masters getting intuitive when it comes to removing problems that may not warrant a complete rule, or that may be such a special case that putting a rule would be far too generalizing. Say, for example, the issues Aion had when it launched last month. Players were clogging the servers by going away from keyboard so they could sleep, go to school, etc, without being logged off. Rather than pull out the ban-stick and taking things far over the edge, NCsoft quickly released a patch making such an exploit impossible.

The idea is that you don’t have to issue permabans to get a point across.

More on Aion, World of Warcraft, and more after the break.

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False Positives Happen: The Response Is What Counts

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Good morning/day folks,

A couple of threads on this topic appeared during the night and rather than replying to each one of them I thought I’d create a new one.

We have, as you know, recently banned a large number of users for violating our User Agreement. If you found yourself unable to log in after the night, that would be the reason.

If you are 100% sure you have not been involved with any activity that would violate our User Agreement (this would also include anything related to RMT), then we suggest contacting our Customer Support team at Support | NCsoft who will be able to look into your case.

We understand that the timing is very inconvenient and will make sure that inquiries on this matter are made top priority. Our GMs will be working through the weekend to sort this out as quickly as possible.

– Ayase

Mass bans in any game remind us as to why police officers don’t take down an armed suspect in a crowded mall by firing an automatic rifle into the crowd and hoping to hit him. You’ll hit your mark eventually, but you are the one that will be explaining to little Tina why daddy won’t be waking up.

When the subject turns to real money trading (RMT), the situation turns from cop-in-mall to a McCarthy style commie hunt, the commies being the gold farmers and buyers (Note: Not a jab at China). Hunting down goldfarmers is akin to searching for a criminal by attempting to listen to their thoughts (Note: You are not Matt Parkman, nor do you work for the FAA). Banning for gold is an even hairier issue. Take for example the following issue: Xkcd sends TwinkpOwn892735 twenty thousand gold. R3dsp0t sends X Dalton X twenty thousand gold. Both of these transactions actually happened in an unnamed MMO, and one of the two were gold farmers. I’ll come back to that later.

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NCsoft Nukes Server Cloggers: New Servers!

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Aion is one of the few MMOs to incorporate private shops in addition to an Auction House. Players are able to set up shop wherever they go, allowing their character to set up a little table for other player to browse. Current Aion players that I talked to on the subject prefer the private shops to the auction house, noting that in the auction house there are “too many instances of players doing everything to undercut each other in price.” Setting up a shop also removes the automatic logout feature for players who are away from keyboard.

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Aion: Pick A Less Popular Server

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If you rushed to create a character in the head start for Aion, on the more populated server before it closed down, you are most likely seeing something like this. Reports from the battlefield indicate that the server queue’s are reaching six, seven, and climbing over eight hours in some instances during higher traffic hours. The question that remains on many minds is: When NCsoft was gloating over their four hundred thousand preorders, how did they expect to cram everyone into little over twenty servers (12 for NA, 12 for EU)?

The question is whether NCsoft will take an “ends justify the means” approach, and stay committed to keeping the servers balanced. An easy way to accomplish this would be to open more servers, and allow transfers from the more populated to the less. If current player nature is any indicator, it is likely that the Asmodian side will forever overpopulate the Elyos, to the fullest extent NCsoft will allow.

The issue appears to be stemming from players who are joining the overpopulated faction, overwhelmingly in fact. Further reports from the battlefield make claim that the Elyos side of these multi-hour servers, are giving little to no waiting time. If you don’t have any obligations to join friends or a clan on a selected server, I suggest you join the Elyos faction. Judging by trends on the server status, the Asmodians are always going to be facing queues until the community starts balancing itself out.

By the time you read this, Aion will have gone live (alongside Fallen Earth). Here’s hoping NCsoft finds a way to quell the rage.

Aion: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

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Aion launches in four days, and the title, much like Champions Online did earlier this month and in August, is stealing much of the spotlight here at MMO Fallout. So much so that I’m putting together a new section for MMO Fallout: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (Not that that particular mechanic has ever been done before). Since preselection began today, it’s one of the better times as any to get a good preview in.

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Aion: Still Gaining Momentum

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A couple days ago I talked about retention rate being more important than simply the number of people who preorder an MMO. The fact that Aion has brought over three hundred thousand preorders means nothing if you can’t keep those people playing after their initial month of free game time is up. Aion’s success will not be decided by the number of people who buy the boxed copies, but in the long run, where subscriber numbers mean everything.

I will admit I’ve taken a look at Aion with a little more skepticism than the title deserves, even though everything I have said is true. Success in the Eastern market means nothing when referring to how the West will respond to the game, and attempting to gauge the success of the game based off of forum hype will produce equally inaccurate results.

So here I notice that, in the past few days since Aion announced that three hundred thousand copies were preordered, today comes another announcement: The number has hit four hundred thousand, bringing the title to be the most preordered MMO of 2009. This news comes in conjunction with news that will directly please the company: Aion will not ship with Game Guard, the controversial anti-cheat software. While Game Guard may be used in the future, NCsoft has promised that should the software return, it will be tweaked in response to criticism.

In finding discussion-worthy topics for MMO Fallout, I do a lot of traversing over various forums, and I can say without a doubt that the lack of Game Guard will be well received within the community. If NCSoft can prove, using methods such as this, that they are indeed listening to the community, they will have a major edge over critics in the long run. For those who are unfamiliar, Game Guard is widely panned for inefficiency, and false positives.

Nothing but good news for Aion this week. Aion goes live on September 22nd, with preorders gaining early access.

It’s All About Retention Rate

ncsoft Aion launches alongside the delayed Fallen Earth come September 22nd, and those of you who have watched sales figures over the past few months will have seen Aion topping the charts for the PC market, both retail and digital through Steam and Direct 2 Drive. Aion preorders have gone so well, that NCSoft has proudly boasted the latest mark of over 300,000 preorders for the upcoming MMORPG. NCsoft is looking to make Aion not just localized, but going forward and culturalising the title for Western markets, changing various mechanics in the game to suit a different play style and expectation.