Chris Hager – MMO Fallout

Given that we are nearing the end of November, and Aion is still running to the best of our knowledge, the jingling of pipe bombs at my doorstep is a good indicator that the Aion producer Chris Hager has put out a new address to the community.

Earlier this year, Aion introduced the free slightly restricted server transfer service with the hopes of one day making such a service paid for all. Hager boasts that the team has transferred over 170,000 characters since July, and that the team has learned enough from the test service to put a full paid version in effect coming next year. After January 5th, 2011, when everyone has no doubt finished clustering into the transfer service while it is still free, server transfers will become paid. Of course there will be restrictions on certain factions transferring to certain servers where they may be unbalanced.

But what would an Aion article be without talking security? In the next week or so, Hager plans to address a new security system going live on December 1st, that will entail a secondary pin system. Security has been a major issue in Aion’s history, from NCsoft account problems to fansites getting hijacked, and everything in between. If this pin system is anything like several other games, it will likely involve the player inputting a pin via a mouse click screen. I can’t really see NCsoft using a dongle system like Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft.

More on Aion as it appears.

Aion launched in late September 2009, and by November I had reported that NCSoft’s report that the game had sold nearly one million copies in North America and Europe. Not only that, but very shortly after release NCsoft released a couple more servers to alleviate load. They did this, of course, with very public opposition to the idea. With any MMO, adding servers within the first month is generally a poor decision, as the iconic mass exodus that follows any MMO’s launch in the first few months is bound to alleviate those overpopulation woes.

So it is not too surprising when Aion announces that they are merging servers:

“I don’t relish the idea of mergers, however, once it is complete you should notice improvements in each of the new server economies, an abundance of players to group and run instances with, a number of great Legions to join or people to form new ones with, and a more tightly knit community.When all is said and done, Aion will be a better game because of the server merge. We’re in the planning stages, and will have more information on the timing and execution in the coming weeks.”

Chris Hager is right! Seriously, he is. Server mergers are not always a bad thing, and can do a world of good to the game’s economies and servers, and often even incite people into resubscribing who may have left due to low population on their server, but an unwillingness to transfer and create a new character.

In the recent NCsoft Q1 report, Aion is down in the West, with the conference call noting:

“As for the Aion performance in the Western market, I should have mentioned that the number of active users has declined since the launch of the retail package in September and October last year. But I’m also very confident that at this point EU/US is able to maintain the current level of active users and since we’re expecting the 1.9 update soon, and also 2.0 in the third quarter.”

More on Aion and the server mergers as it appears.