Aion wants second place in MMO market

Hmm, after doing some reading, it would seem that Aion at retail is likely to have a LOT of issues server side.

Lots of people are having lag and rubber banding issues. There are also the problems associated with something called Game Guard, which Aion installs on your PC. Quite a few people are having issues getting the game to run due to the Game Guard program. Without it Aion will not even run. :(

Well we shall see. Seldom do releases go smoothly, but I honestly thought they would have had most of these issues sorted since the game has been out in Asia for months now...

If this bombs, umm... well, I hope Champions Online is okay... sigh, but I don't know anymore with all these damn MMO's and their issues. T_T

Mood: Pensive

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Originally Posted by tehNihilist

Hmm, after doing some reading, it would seem that Aion at retail is likely to have a LOT of issues server side.

Lots of people are having lag and rubber banding issues. There are also the problems associated with something called Game Guard, which Aion installs on your PC. Quite a few people are having issues getting the game to run due to the Game Guard program. Without it Aion will not even run. :(

Well we shall see. Seldom do releases go smoothly, but I honestly thought they would have had most of these issues sorted since the game has been out in Asia for months now...

If this bombs, umm... well, I hope Champions Online is okay... sigh, but I don't know anymore with all these damn MMO's and their issues. T_T

Mood: Pensive

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GameGuard is the bane of the existence (and probably soon death) of many MMO's.

It's a program that runs in the background whilst you play the MMO in question. It is supposed to detect hacking/botting/exploiting. Whilst this sounds lovely on paper, without GameGuard working properly, you can't play. And GameGuard has a lot of issues.

I've never run into GameGuard before - I've seen it running while I was playing the Closed Beta - didn't really experience any problems then.

Lag and rubber-banding ... well ... that's something I'm used to with Guildwars already - again, it wasn't any more noticeable while I was playing - just random lag spikes from time to time.

I suppose it will be quite a different story when the whole world climbs on board though - even though the open beta allows anyone with a key to play, it's still far cry from the numbers they're expecting when the game finally releases.

GameGuard sucks. Having XFire run in-game with it causes Aion to crash anywhere between 5 minutes and 2 hours. Most commonly it happens when loading a large new area or entering a cutscene. Also, when closing Aion, it doesn't always close itself properly, you'll find two processes still running in your task manager.

It's really just rubbish. It also spews errors forth on a whim, but that's usually caused by either a conflicting anti-virus program running in the background, or because GG's two processes didn't close down correctly on a previous run of Aion, at least that's how it's been for me since the recent update to 1.5.0.3.

Other than that, it's not that bad. Although it's a pain and it causes it take 30 seconds longer to start the damn game...

*shrug*

So far I'm liking Aion enough to keep my pre-order going... But we'll see.

So... Finally made my mind up... (Yes, yes, I know, I'm as confused as a transvestite in a suit). I've decided to cancel my pre-order.

There's just too much Wrong and not enough Right with Aion for me to want to buy it. I won't play it long-term... There's just not enough to interest me and I really just don't like playing a half-baked game with a plastic ceiling -.-'

I really hoped for more :(

Ah well, at least I still have EQ :p

Yes, you do ;) Let's hope that lasts until something new arrives :p

Haha this whole pre-order OB key thing looks to have backfired on them.

I have no idea how I will feel about the game to be honest. I want to like it, and graphics really don't mean that much to me. At least even if I decide I do not want to play that I still have a copy if I ever decide to retry it.

It is very hard these days to have a 'successful' MMO launch due to there being so many fully fledged games to compare it to. There is no way a release MMO can really ever compete with its offerings / stability compared to titles with 1-4+ expansions. And the way these days people react to gaming as a whole and find problems with absolutely everything, it is made even more difficult.

Don't take this wrong Lycanthrope, I am certainly not saying you are one of those people. I am just mentioning how the MMO community is in general. Just go read forums on sites like http://www.mmorpg.com/ to see how people can be.

With so many 'duds' lately I am very wary for this genre. Hmm, if Aion sucks someone needs to give me a suggestion on what to play. I NEED a proper MMORPG fix!

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Played:
AoC - Beta Poop. Funcom have no idea what they are doing, (tried it again a few months ago and it is still the same).

WAR - Laggy Crudsticks. The same Scenarios over and over with nothing to really do endgame. Also ORvR was a joke.

FFXI Online - Life Stealer. This game just takes way too much effort to be honest. Every small thing needs a group, and leveling is dull dull DULL. Otherwise it can be really amazing IF you have the time, friends and the patience.

EVE - Molasses. The PvE is unbelievably boring. The PvP is pretty damn fun, but the real time skill training did not gel with me. I felt I was always having to wait on something to actually do something I wanted to do.

Guild Wars - MMORPG-Lite. I like quite a lot about this game despite how I may come off about it. The PvE for me seems to lack purpose very quickly. Largely all you have access to long term is just get Titles, or to get some fancy dress up fashions. The PvP is pretty good, but I found the PvP community to be quite hostile to new players.

City of Heroes / Villains - Sleepy Time in Spandex. Hmm, never really got into this game. I just got bored pretty fast with its mission structure.

WoW -Teh Nubz Invade Expansion!! I totally looooved this game initially. However over time I felt that what I loved about it slowly devolved into nubtastic cheapness. The community went downhill fast, and that was the real killer for me.

Lotro - Sameness. I have not played this again since release due to their new credit card system with some annoying company. When I left everything felt shallow with no class build variety - example, all Hunters were the same pretty much.

Tabula Rasa - LOL. Nuffsaid!

Forgot EQ2 - Dull Endgame. When I got to level 80 in the RoK expansion I did all the endgame and found the Raid content to be severely lacking compared to say WoW. Also the community was pretty crappy long term, battling to get a Raiding positions in guilds due to most players being longtime ingame friends. The crafting was pretty decent certainly, but it sometimes felt like a chore. Since there are not that many people playing it the leveling process was a lonely one. Ohh yeah, the AA system was amazing.

Misc F2P titles that all sucked and cost more money to be competitive in than any P2P titles due to their excessive Item Shops. Also, they were largely just fashion parades with grindalicious lack of depth treadmill leveling.

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Originally Posted by tehNihilist

I want to like it...

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That was my problem too. I can't stress this feeling enough... In my honest opinion, it has the potential to rip every other MMO out there to shreds. It is this fantastic concept with an incredibly enjoyable combat system and... The rest just fails.

Bear in mind that the following is the idea I've built up in my head in anticipation for this game. I wanted to ascend. I wanted to fight off icky mobs, fight with the rest of the players to the point where you ascend. I wanted that to be a moment of pure, "ZOMG!" Where you're finally set apart from the rest. Where you've earned your wings and the sky is yours.

Where, you aren't limited by force-field walls and red text in the chat window saying, "You Cannot Fly Here." Where, you see the landscape and the Tower of Eternity before you, with its beam of light off in the distance. Where if you look up, you see the smouldering insides of the other half of Atreia. Where you have the illusion that you can reach anywhere and anything if you want to.

Looking up at that ridiculous fresco ceiling and the mimic Tower, you don't feel that at all. It feels bland and lifeless. You don't feel like anything is possible... You feel like you're in some cheap attempt.

Also, the whole idea of the CryEngine was that anything is "physically" possible. If you wanted to fly over a mountain, you could. But you can't, there are forcefields that force you to run through a pointless tunnel. The idea that if you wanted to jump up onto a hut or something, no... there are invisible walls there.

Speaking of illusions, this is where I need to do a comparison between Aion and EverQuest II. In EQ, dialogue is done beautifully. Dialogue appears in a speech bubble, and there are always at least two options. One is to continue the conversation and the other is the dismissive, "I'm not interested right now" option. Speech is kept to maybe 10 lines, unless they're telling you a story you choose to hear. What I mean by illusion, is that EQ's dialogue gives you the illusion that it's short and that it will be over soon, it doesn't bombard you with a wall of text with key words hinting at what you need to do. And, I genuinely find the EQ dialogues interesting. Also, a lot of the dialogue has voice-overs, which is just awesome.

Aion's walls of dialogue text put me off. Not because I don't want to read them, but because I always feel "rushed." They're intimidating and being bombarded by them doesn't make it any better. I really believe that they could've done that much, much better.

I have to resort to the graphics again. I expected more. Really, what's the point of taking to the skies if when you look down, you just see cardboard textures? The water in Aion looks pathetic. It's knee-deep everywhere and it just looks comical. When I play a game, and again, this might just be me, I want to take it seriously. I want to look out over a landscape and go, "Wow, this is absolutely amazing!" I can't possibly stress how disappointed I am in that alone.

I imagined this grand-scale, epic MMO where everything is yours to explore. Where there is more depth to the story, the characters and where it feels like you're actually achieving something more than the usual quest-hoarding, glorified grindfest nonsense that pretty much every MMO out there suffocates you to death with.

Sometimes I just like playing out of character... And the idea of flying over to a beach, or to the top of a beautiful mountain and just sitting there, looking out over the horizon and chatting to a friend or whatever... I like that...

It feels like I've been looking forward to something for so long, and been bouncing off the walls in excitement about the awesome CE... and... all for nothing...

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Don't take this wrong Lycanthrope, I am certainly not saying you are one of those people. I am just mentioning how the MMO community is in general. Just go read forums on sites like http://www.mmorpg.com/ to see how people can be.

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Heh.. I'm a member there... I tend to read through a couple of threads, but it's only a matter of time until they start measuring their e-penises and detract from matters of interest. Also, I needed to see for myself.

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With so many 'duds' lately I am very wary for this genre. Hmm, if Aion sucks someone needs to give me a suggestion on what to play. I NEED a proper MMORPG fix!

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The only MMO I've ever played which 100% gets me on a PvE level, is EQ2. But the combat is very stand-still-and-do-your-best. I like fluid, interactive skill-reliant combat where strategy plays a part. Aion did this... beautifully. I really just want a game where I have the PvE side of EQ, the action side of Aion... But if I had to choose between the two, it's a pretty easy choice.

Although, I've pretty much been ignoring EQ in anticipation for Aion... It kinda feels like I've made EQ the "next best thing" which makes me feel like I've lost interest...

A part of me hopes that NCsoft will patch up Aion, and that it will evolve into what I hoped it would be... But it would be what I'd want, not what other people would want. And, well, I'm also pretty sure that it would take too much time and resources for them to rework pretty much everything :p

*sigh* :(

The Chronicles of Spellborn had an awesome combat system. Real-time twitch-based combat with a rotating skill-bar. Good fun. Pity it's temporarily dead and going F2P :(

I guess I am sort of happy with why you are not happy with Aion. Besides the 'walls' in flight, there is not much that would piss me off too much in what you have mentioned.

Also I wonder if it gets any better once you hit the void areas in regards to free-form flight? I did however recall reading this game is VERY linear, which may turn people away, again this is not a biggy for me. It is sort of contradictory considering the theme of flight, since flight is all about freedom really, and now you have all those barriers...

I avoid hype, in fact I generally avoid any previews / forums for ANY games these days. All I read up is the hard set in stone information. Beyond that I try stay the hell away from previews and opinions since it always misleads a person. Hopefully this will mean I can go into Aion without a mindset of expecting XYZ.

For me what kills a MMORPG are:

1. Most importantly: A bad community - insular, elitist, immature and the like.
2. Lack of diversity long term. New MMO's suffer from this, but in different aspects which some never address.
3. Lackluster combat system. Most MMO's seems to suffer from the - Press 1,2,3,4 = WIN! syndrome, but the ones without utility skills in the mix and nothing to look forward to are the worst.

Maybe I have been playing this genre too hard and for too long?