Ok so I read this thread and...here is my two cents on the situation. I play on the Israpheal (sp?) server and Ive had to wait in queue's a bit. Never more than an hour...and while I wait I just go read a book or clean house or what not. I took off work so, right now, its not a big deal to me. Some people obviously have had rather longer wait times, and I see how that could suck. My question is this: how would NCsoft opening up new servers alleviate your problems? There are servers with less wait times. You don't want to switch servers though because 'all your friends play on this one!' or 'you will lose your name' or other such things.
So they open up 10 new servers...and no one moves on to them because 'all their friends play on the other server!' or 'They dont want to lose their name'. So you have 10 new lightly populated servers and the old servers with 3-5 hour queues that have been reduced to 2 and a half - 4 and a half hour queue's. Hooray?
Basically, if I've understood this right, is you want everyone ELSE to move to another server so you can play with your friends. Yeah good luck with that guys.
Actually, opening new servers will not solve anything and will only lead to more problems. They have boxed themselves in a corner at this point. But let me explain my train of thought so its clear.
At NCsoft our commitment is to making the MMO player experience the best it can be. And while Aion has seen a very successful launch that has exceeded our expectations in many ways, we are aware of the longer than usual queue times that players have experienced on some of the servers. This is due to the initial rush of players that we’ve seen in the early days of the game’s launch in Europe and North America.
Since the opening of Head Start this past weekend, we’ve have been heavily focused on striking the delicate balance between managing busy servers with queue times versus overcompensating by adding new servers too quickly that are then underpopulated and don’t deliver a fun experience for players. We did indeed see an initial rush on the first days of Head Start which resulted in longer than desired queue times for some of our servers, and we are working around the clock to alleviate this. In fact, we are happy to confirm we have increased our server caps and are adding an additional server in both North America and Europe by this weekend, and we will continue to evaluate adding additional servers.
That said, we do have alternate servers where players are experiencing lower queue times. People can get a real-time update and select that choice on our website at: http://na.aiononline.com/livestatus/server/
We continue to monitor issues closely and strive to address player feedback quickly to ensure the best possible experience.
----
Now what I get from that is this. They can increase the server caps. So that means its is possible and that they have set the server caps at a lower number (obvious since they plan to increase them). So at what point did they decide to do this? Were the hundreds of posts and threads on Sunday and Monday not enough info. Were reports of 7+ hour queues on some serves not long enough? Did we need 10+ hour queues?
So my argument is that their desire to balance server populations trumped or replaced their desire to respond to their customer's needs. In other words, the reason many were not able to partake in the head start was because of WHAT they set the server caps at.
Sorry I would put customer needs and complaints before server balance. I have played many games with server imbalances like DAOC, among others. They company can find ways to fix server balance that are acceptable to the customer. Sure, they not be perfect but there are ways to fix it and there are better ways to fix than cause your customers (the ones who bothered to pre-order your game) to sit in 7+ hour queues.
As I mentioned that is the first impression I have gotten from Aion and NCSoft and its not a good one. And that impression will stick with me longer than anything else.
Let me put it to you like this friend. Who wants to play an imbalanced PVP game? By creating balance NCsoft is only thinking about the consumer. The fact is quick solutions only work for the time being. To be successful you have to plan for the future. Look at WOW they had crazy ques back in the day. Now they are on top. Because they can see the big picture. I'm sure a lot of people were mad about the WOW queue but glad they stuck with it. If your view is so small that you have to scutinze the only real bad thing about this launch then maybe you need to reavalute your thinking. The expression first impressions last a life time is meant to encompass your whole experience. At this point you are focusing on only one thing. Is life so bad you have to only look at the negative?
You have no facts to base your third comment on. Server balance in key in a game with only 2 playable factions. Cause no one want to PVE in a PVP game. If NCsoft is concerned about the balance then maybe they have reason to be. You have no idea what they have in store for the game. So calling balance a non-issue is just plain dumb. Lastly, as far as customer service goes NCsoft has been more helpful and open to suggestion than any MMO I've ever played on. Only a blind and deaf person would miss the effort they have put in to reassuring the players of the issues and addressing them accordingly. Making up stories about what you want to think or your opinions need to have a little more foundation then they do now for you to be taken seriously. Think before you make yourself look even dumber.
I thought the 3rd faction was supposed to balance the servers? I mean that is what it is there for right? Or am I mistaken?
And the only official communication I have seen fro NCSoft was today 9-22-09, launch day. Not a word on their official site until then. 2 days of a "head start" sitting in 6+ hour queues. That is NOT customer service in my book.
The 3rd faction is suppose to balance the power of the server. Meaning if one side is getting consently owed then they will attack the faction with the most power.
Once again sitting in a que for 6+ hours is silly. Who really did that? Use your brain and get on a server with a lower wait time. There is nothing NCsoft can do about you wanting to get into a server so bad that you wait 6 hours. It its like that resturant again. There are other tables don't punish yourself and call it bad Customer Service. If there were no other servers I can understand. But once again the preselect idea was a bad move.
I have read and fully understand why NCSoft is allowing the ques (one EU sever said it was up to 10 hours today!!??). Now the questing is, does this show they have no faith in their game? If they believed that the game would grow, or even maintain its current record numbers, then more servers would not be a waste of money. But, in the only post I have seen from NCSoft, they said the servers are what they are because they do not want, and I quote, 'Servers to become a barren waste land later'. I am sure recent AoC, LOTRO, WAR launches have played heavy on their choice.
So, am I wrong about them seeming to not have faith ?
Definitely. The source of your confusion in this matter is that they are working of existing and historical trends/data and you're working off...
well, what data exactly are you basing your stance on?
Perhaps the empirical evidence indicated by the way in which they handled the release, in addition to the historical trends you mention? If you look above, I have bolded the last line, in which Oxnix indicates that NCSoft probably made their choice in large part based on the outcomes of recent AAA launches. Did you even read what Oxnix wrote before you decided to harp on him for making the correct assessment for reasons that you did not like?!
How was his assessment that NCSoft has a lack of faith in their game proven to be correct?
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
I have read and fully understand why NCSoft is allowing the ques (one EU sever said it was up to 10 hours today!!??). Now the questing is, does this show they have no faith in their game? If they believed that the game would grow, or even maintain its current record numbers, then more servers would not be a waste of money. But, in the only post I have seen from NCSoft, they said the servers are what they are because they do not want, and I quote, 'Servers to become a barren waste land later'. I am sure recent AoC, LOTRO, WAR launches have played heavy on their choice. So, am I wrong about them seeming to not have faith ? PS, for my very short review on Aion, I will say once you get into the right server and get past quest camping the game is great. I have played in just about every recent MMO and this one I really believe has the most potential. Now, if only NCSoft would believe that as well??? Thanks for reading.
Oh how nice, new servers 15-20% of the way through peoples included 30 days and several days after busting up groups of friends and guilds if not by server then by level due to the difficulty getting on. It is BS, they knew damn well they had too few servers and either through arrogance or stupidity just figured they would screw over folks until they got around to it. Worst MMO launch I have seen by a long shot, and not for bugs or bad game or anything like that but for simple and avoidable issues and complete lack of concern for customers.
I think you have no idea what you are talking about. First why would a new game purposefully want to piss people off? If they knew they had too few servers then they would have fix the problem. There are too many other games that people can choose besides this one. But if you knew anything and could read then you would now that this is not the case. There are plenty of servers that have little to no wait. Awww you can't take your pre-selected toon or your friends joined a full server? Then that your problem. And if you don't think they have concern for the customers then you have not been to the website or seen any of the changes that have been made in the last 48 hours. You say what you want to say because your mad that you had to wait to get into a game. Grow up! I'm guess you get mad when you have to wait in the line at the store, or the movie theater then say they have bad customer service. People like you need to get a grip on reality and think before you type things that have no real thought. Who are you Mr. perfect? I bet if it were up to you the launch would have been perfect huh...plz
NCsoft themselves said this was done intentionally, though I argue at best it was a mis calculation on their part that made it far worse than they intended. Either way, they made the choice to put people in huge queues rather than open more servers to alleviate the problems.
Now, I agree with the conundrum folks have pointed out about the problem they have now of people not wanting to go to another server even if they open them. That is why it is so important to have that initial server count at the least a tad high rather than too low. Additionally, I think they really screwed up with a two day headstart - it left no room for error in terms of gathering metrics for live. Had they done a week headstart or maybe 10 days they could have easily gauged the interest more accurately and adjusted accordingly. They would have also been able to see if a substantial portion of players where dropping off after a week (something they seem to be counting on currently).
The real problem is that NCsoft did a piss poor job of communicating with people. They setup this early character creation thing without bothering to tell people it was entirely pointless as they had so few servers and such a strict pop control policy that there was nearly no way you would get to that server with your friends. They drastically underestimated the number of servers needs, no matter how you slice it 4 to 7 hour queues on day one of head start is a total abortion. The reasonable thing to do is to make the very best estimate of how many servers you need, maybe even erring to the low end a tad - then open those all first day of headstart and let the people fall where they may with minimal pop throttling or queues or whatever. Then, after a coule days see what servers are off (pop wise or balance wise) and start throttling from there through actual live to funnel folks to fill in the gaps.
I fail to understand the argument over faction/side balance when there is and cannot be any indication from the drop rate of the players. The balance only plays a role in end-game which will not be reached en masse during the first month no matter how quickly you can reach it. And after the first month when this pre-emptive balance work ought to bear fruit there can be a massive imbalance due to people leaving the game. Hence, keeping the scale even between the two sides at launch is of no indication for "final" balance. They could have just let 10,000 players to enter each side and then close it for new players of that side. With 400,000 pre-orders alone they can be pretty certain that 24 servers spread over US and Europe will be filled when they can at most hold 480,000 players (if that 10,000 number on these forums is the actual one). To launch a game like this is just inexcusable for the reasons they give -- if they were caught by a surprise by the number of pre-orders and use the balance as a red herring to divert attention elsewhere, well, that's a totally different issue.
I agree, that is why i just don't buy the line that they where doing this intentionally for balance. Clearly they screwed the pooch on the number of servers.
After reading the official post on Aionsource and looking at the server situation it sure looks like they have no faith in their game. And what that actually does is that they'll loose many interested customers with queues of 2 to 10 hours. I mean 12 servers for Europe and 12 for the US? Thats probably a maximum of 170.000 western customers. And I even calculated with a very high figure of 7000 players per server. They had 400.000 preorders. So what they are currently saying is pretty much: "Well we have no faith in our game, everyone above the 170k limit please go play another game. We don't feel like taking the risk of adding a few servers so most people can play." I even agree that there should be "short" queues, but once the queues go over 30 minutes on 90% of the Servers they need to add capacity. I really wonder what they will do on Friday when the game is officially released and masses of more people come in.
If they keep up their "save money" strategy the game will loose lots of customers for sure.
Are you that stupid? How about filling/balancing out servers you have THEN add new ones? I guess they should just add 50 servers like WAR where everyone get's thinned out and then you have to start merging. Sounds like a good idea, right? Christ. You kids are ridiculous.
Here's the thing. As a paying customer (Yes, I paid for the full CE version of the game from Steam a long time ago) I really don't care what NCSoft thinks is best for their game if I have to wait in a 4 hour queue to log into the server I chose on Sunday. If paying customers can't access the servers they have already spent significant amounts of time on making and playing characters, then there's a serious problem. I didn't know the server (Zikel) my guild chose to roll on would become so popular and the home to several zerg guilds and hordes of people who go AFK in item shops. I didn't know the servers wouldn't have rolling restarts to boot these retards, and I didn't know (though probably should have suspected) that Aion developers would sit on their asses for days trying to figure out a complex solution to a simple problem. In addition to queues for many servers, the Aion account support system went down and as I type this post, the Aion developers still can NOT post on their own forums due to a bug. Seriously, how could you be so utterly unprepared? It's true that all MMO launches have problems. Trouble is, Aion launched almost two years ago. Comparing other MMO launches to Aion's launch in the West in disingenuous for that reason. Compare Aion today with WoW in 2006 and you have an accurate comparison. So what are my options? Well, I can sit in a 4 hour queue, or I can change servers to a time zone that's three hours behind mine and spend lots of time recreating my characters with different names and abandon the rest of my guild mates who don't want to leave Zikel. Real great choices for me on that front. Choices I shouldn't have to make. The solutions to the server queue problems are simple. Have restarts that boot the AFKers or get rid of the fucking player shops altogether. Then we get rid of a worthless feature and the problem they are causing. Naturally, we'll always have the boot licking fan boys who blame the players themselves for NCSoft's serious errors, but whatever. They aren't the people waiting in 4 hour queues to play with their friends. Assholes.
Get off the 2 servers everyone at Aionsource decided to cluster up together. Primetime Easter yesterday only 2 servers were horrible which was Zikel and one other. I could log onto every other Eastern server with a berable queue or right in. It's your choice, switch servers with your guild. There is really only 2-3 servers that are getting over populated.
Are you that stupid? How about filling/balancing out servers you have THEN add new ones? I guess they should just add 50 servers like WAR where everyone get's thinned out and then you have to start merging. Sounds like a good idea, right? Christ. You kids are ridiculous.
it isn't a question of either having the existing 12 servers or having 50 servers, it is a question of whether 12 was too few and maybe they needed 18 or 20. With 400k pre orders there clearly needed more than 12 servers, especially if they where going to so aggressively enforce faction balance and whatnot. At a minimum, they should have gone with the 12 and been ready to, at the flick of a switch, have 4 or 6 more ready to go.
It is obvious that they just screwed up and the population balance stuff is just spin. I mean think about it, something the apologies will refuse to do of course. Why doesn't the game have a boot on afk built in, like many games do if they had planned to do this all along? Why are the afk stores not limited or possibly suspended for a few days if they planned to do this? Why was headstart so short if they planned to do this? And the most telling contradiction, why advertise, promote, and sell the early character creator if they planned to throttle 400k people so severely that on day one there would be 5 to 7 hour lines to get on an play the characters you made during the period they setup for you to make them?
Are you that stupid? How about filling/balancing out servers you have THEN add new ones? I guess they should just add 50 servers like WAR where everyone get's thinned out and then you have to start merging. Sounds like a good idea, right? Christ. You kids are ridiculous.
it isn't a question of either having the existing 12 servers or having 50 servers, it is a question of whether 12 was too few and maybe they needed 18 or 20. With 400k pre orders there clearly needed more than 12 servers, especially if they where going to so aggressively enforce faction balance and whatnot. At a minimum, they should have gone with the 12 and been ready to, at the flick of a switch, have 4 or 6 more ready to go.
It is obvious that they just screwed up and the population balance stuff is just spin. I mean think about it, something the apologies will refuse to do of course. Why doesn't the game have a boot on afk built in, like many games do if they had planned to do this all along? Why are the afk stores not limited or possibly suspended for a few days if they planned to do this? Why was headstart so short if they planned to do this? And the most telling contradiction, why advertise, promote, and sell the early character creator if they planned to throttle 400k people so severely that on day one there would be 5 to 7 hour lines to get on an play the characters you made during the period they setup for you to make them?
The queue's are a result of the low pop caps they set on the server as they just announced on Aion Source and Aion online recently. With them upping the pop cap on the servers and adding one for each territory the queue's should come down some and they will monitor it more to see what else they need to do.
It's not screwed up if they want a balanced server population without having lag issues and getting disconnected every few minutes or even server crashes. With to many servers they would end up like WarHammer did and that's not exceptable.
Are you that stupid? How about filling/balancing out servers you have THEN add new ones? I guess they should just add 50 servers like WAR where everyone get's thinned out and then you have to start merging. Sounds like a good idea, right? Christ. You kids are ridiculous.
it isn't a question of either having the existing 12 servers or having 50 servers, it is a question of whether 12 was too few and maybe they needed 18 or 20. With 400k pre orders there clearly needed more than 12 servers, especially if they where going to so aggressively enforce faction balance and whatnot. At a minimum, they should have gone with the 12 and been ready to, at the flick of a switch, have 4 or 6 more ready to go.
It is obvious that they just screwed up and the population balance stuff is just spin. I mean think about it, something the apologies will refuse to do of course. Why doesn't the game have a boot on afk built in, like many games do if they had planned to do this all along? Why are the afk stores not limited or possibly suspended for a few days if they planned to do this? Why was headstart so short if they planned to do this? And the most telling contradiction, why advertise, promote, and sell the early character creator if they planned to throttle 400k people so severely that on day one there would be 5 to 7 hour lines to get on an play the characters you made during the period they setup for you to make them?
The balancing isn't a spin. If you look on the site that shows status it's usually 48vs52% or close. It's like a 10% buffer I believe until one race locks out.
If they don't make enough servers for the full launch this weekend i will just cancel my sub for a couple of months or for good.
I don't work all day to come home and then Que to get in a game Ive payed for, I'm pretty fed up i payed for a collectors edition for the head start as when I have some spare time to play I don't want to waste it queuing.
Playing: FFXIV Future: wishing for SWG 2, World of Warcraft Classic Played: Most current and extinct MMO's - 18 Years in....
The balancing isn't a spin. If you look on the site that shows status it's usually 48vs52% or close. It's like a 10% buffer I believe until one race locks out.
How does faction balance have anything to do with NOBODY, on either side, being able to log in to a server without a 1, 3, or 5+ hour wait like we were seeing? The answer is nothing, it wasn't that you could only get on a server avoiding a queue on a certain faction, you where getting queues for both factions.
Besides all that, what does a numerical character's created number balance mean? Once the initial surge settles people will play where they want and a lot of those 'balanced' characters will sit offline doing nothing to help balance. Characters created is a really meaningless stat in terms of balance, especially when they are forcing people from server to server, said 'balance' can only be maintained as long as the forcing from queues is continued.
The balancing isn't a spin. If you look on the site that shows status it's usually 48vs52% or close. It's like a 10% buffer I believe until one race locks out.
How does faction balance have anything to do with NOBODY, on either side, being able to log in to a server without a 1, 3, or 5+ hour wait like we were seeing? The answer is nothing, it wasn't that you could only get on a server avoiding a queue on a certain faction, you where getting queues for both factions.
Besides all that, what does a numerical character's created number balance mean? Once the initial surge settles people will play where they want and a lot of those 'balanced' characters will sit offline doing nothing to help balance. Characters created is a really meaningless stat in terms of balance, especially when they are forcing people from server to server, said 'balance' can only be maintained as long as the forcing from queues is conti
Have you visited the website at all? Its easy to think you know what you are talking about but the information is there. They are raising the server cap and adding a new server to US and EU. NCsoft is already taking steps to elimiate of reduce ques. If you want to know what a numerical character balance means check the site.
Servers are the wrong way to handle this crap. I mean, if the game has instances and channels, what point is there in dividing up the player base according to servers? Guild Wars has 'channels' and can support any number of players that can play together, period.
In short, what we're experiencing is a massive failure, covered up by the convenient fact that every other MMO uses "servers". Give me Eve's or Guild Wars' "anyone can play with anyone" mentality any day.
Servers are the wrong way to handle this crap. I mean, if the game has instances and channels, what point is there in dividing up the player base according to servers? Guild Wars has 'channels' and can support any number of players that can play together, period. In short, what we're experiencing is a massive failure, covered up by the convenient fact that every other MMO uses "servers". Give me Eve's or Guild Wars' "anyone can play with anyone" mentality any day.
Lol, pretty much showed everyone you have no clue about this game. Well done there little Tutty...well done...
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
After reading the official post on Aionsource and looking at the server situation it sure looks like they have no faith in their game. And what that actually does is that they'll loose many interested customers with queues of 2 to 10 hours. I mean 12 servers for Europe and 12 for the US? Thats probably a maximum of 170.000 western customers. And I even calculated with a very high figure of 7000 players per server. They had 400.000 preorders. So what they are currently saying is pretty much: "Well we have no faith in our game, everyone above the 170k limit please go play another game. We don't feel like taking the risk of adding a few servers so most people can play." I even agree that there should be "short" queues, but once the queues go over 30 minutes on 90% of the Servers they need to add capacity. I really wonder what they will do on Friday when the game is officially released and masses of more people come in.
If they keep up their "save money" strategy the game will loose lots of customers for sure.
Yup... and AION is the first game ever to have a server que... NOT.
Any popular game (including WoW) had server queues at launch. NCSoft is trying to make sure their servers are balanced and not ghost towns within a month after the "free month" players leave.
No faith? Hardly.
You cannot compare the server queues of WoW back in 2004 with the Aion server queues right now.
Blizzard was truly caught off guard and never expected so many people slamming the servers on day one. As those numbers back then were unheard off back then in the MMO days!
NCWest however knew they had 400.000 registered paid Pre-Orders!
So their excuse doesn't fly about how they didn't expected this. That's total Bull shit! As they exactly knew how many would slam the servers.
Hence, they were even bragging about the number of Pre-Orders all over the internet and media! So give me a break!
If you want to know what a numerical character balance means check the site.
I have been to the site and what they show doesn't mean jack to in game balance. So what if there is a 50/50 split of characters created, it is about characters active. But beyond that, my point is that this 'balance' is likely to be fleeting as once the rush subsides people will leave the servers they are on now to play with their friends.
Originally posted by Mylon
Servers are the wrong way to handle this crap. I mean, if the game has instances and channels, what point is there in dividing up the player base according to servers? Guild Wars has 'channels' and can support any number of players that can play together, period. In short, what we're experiencing is a massive failure, covered up by the convenient fact that every other MMO uses "servers". Give me Eve's or Guild Wars' "anyone can play with anyone" mentality any day.
I have never understood why games don't just go this route. One 'server' but instances that roll out across a server farm. Yes, it is a different architecture than what you see commonly used but aside from perhaps some initial complexity it is entirely viable and makes much more sense.
Are you that stupid? How about filling/balancing out servers you have THEN add new ones? I guess they should just add 50 servers like WAR where everyone get's thinned out and then you have to start merging. Sounds like a good idea, right? Christ. You kids are ridiculous.
it isn't a question of either having the existing 12 servers or having 50 servers, it is a question of whether 12 was too few and maybe they needed 18 or 20. With 400k pre orders there clearly needed more than 12 servers, especially if they where going to so aggressively enforce faction balance and whatnot. At a minimum, they should have gone with the 12 and been ready to, at the flick of a switch, have 4 or 6 more ready to go.
It is obvious that they just screwed up and the population balance stuff is just spin. I mean think about it, something the apologies will refuse to do of course. Why doesn't the game have a boot on afk built in, like many games do if they had planned to do this all along? Why are the afk stores not limited or possibly suspended for a few days if they planned to do this? Why was headstart so short if they planned to do this? And the most telling contradiction, why advertise, promote, and sell the early character creator if they planned to throttle 400k people so severely that on day one there would be 5 to 7 hour lines to get on an play the characters you made during the period they setup for you to make them?
The balancing isn't a spin. If you look on the site that shows status it's usually 48vs52% or close. It's like a 10% buffer I believe until one race locks out.
You're trying to use logic and fact in a discussion with AgtSmith.
Just sayin'...
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Comments
Actually, opening new servers will not solve anything and will only lead to more problems. They have boxed themselves in a corner at this point. But let me explain my train of thought so its clear.
I recently read this post: http://na.aiononline.com/board/notices/view?articleID=111&page=
To quote it directly:
At NCsoft our commitment is to making the MMO player experience the best it can be. And while Aion has seen a very successful launch that has exceeded our expectations in many ways, we are aware of the longer than usual queue times that players have experienced on some of the servers. This is due to the initial rush of players that we’ve seen in the early days of the game’s launch in Europe and North America.
Since the opening of Head Start this past weekend, we’ve have been heavily focused on striking the delicate balance between managing busy servers with queue times versus overcompensating by adding new servers too quickly that are then underpopulated and don’t deliver a fun experience for players. We did indeed see an initial rush on the first days of Head Start which resulted in longer than desired queue times for some of our servers, and we are working around the clock to alleviate this. In fact, we are happy to confirm we have increased our server caps and are adding an additional server in both North America and Europe by this weekend, and we will continue to evaluate adding additional servers.
That said, we do have alternate servers where players are experiencing lower queue times. People can get a real-time update and select that choice on our website at: http://na.aiononline.com/livestatus/server/
We continue to monitor issues closely and strive to address player feedback quickly to ensure the best possible experience.
----
Now what I get from that is this. They can increase the server caps. So that means its is possible and that they have set the server caps at a lower number (obvious since they plan to increase them). So at what point did they decide to do this? Were the hundreds of posts and threads on Sunday and Monday not enough info. Were reports of 7+ hour queues on some serves not long enough? Did we need 10+ hour queues?
So my argument is that their desire to balance server populations trumped or replaced their desire to respond to their customer's needs. In other words, the reason many were not able to partake in the head start was because of WHAT they set the server caps at.
Sorry I would put customer needs and complaints before server balance. I have played many games with server imbalances like DAOC, among others. They company can find ways to fix server balance that are acceptable to the customer. Sure, they not be perfect but there are ways to fix it and there are better ways to fix than cause your customers (the ones who bothered to pre-order your game) to sit in 7+ hour queues.
As I mentioned that is the first impression I have gotten from Aion and NCSoft and its not a good one. And that impression will stick with me longer than anything else.
Let me put it to you like this friend. Who wants to play an imbalanced PVP game? By creating balance NCsoft is only thinking about the consumer. The fact is quick solutions only work for the time being. To be successful you have to plan for the future. Look at WOW they had crazy ques back in the day. Now they are on top. Because they can see the big picture. I'm sure a lot of people were mad about the WOW queue but glad they stuck with it. If your view is so small that you have to scutinze the only real bad thing about this launch then maybe you need to reavalute your thinking. The expression first impressions last a life time is meant to encompass your whole experience. At this point you are focusing on only one thing. Is life so bad you have to only look at the negative?
I thought the 3rd faction was supposed to balance the servers? I mean that is what it is there for right? Or am I mistaken?
And the only official communication I have seen fro NCSoft was today 9-22-09, launch day. Not a word on their official site until then. 2 days of a "head start" sitting in 6+ hour queues. That is NOT customer service in my book.
The 3rd faction is suppose to balance the power of the server. Meaning if one side is getting consently owed then they will attack the faction with the most power.
Once again sitting in a que for 6+ hours is silly. Who really did that? Use your brain and get on a server with a lower wait time. There is nothing NCsoft can do about you wanting to get into a server so bad that you wait 6 hours. It its like that resturant again. There are other tables don't punish yourself and call it bad Customer Service. If there were no other servers I can understand. But once again the preselect idea was a bad move.
Definitely. The source of your confusion in this matter is that they are working of existing and historical trends/data and you're working off...
well, what data exactly are you basing your stance on?
Perhaps the empirical evidence indicated by the way in which they handled the release, in addition to the historical trends you mention? If you look above, I have bolded the last line, in which Oxnix indicates that NCSoft probably made their choice in large part based on the outcomes of recent AAA launches. Did you even read what Oxnix wrote before you decided to harp on him for making the correct assessment for reasons that you did not like?!
How was his assessment that NCSoft has a lack of faith in their game proven to be correct?
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I don't even....
I think you have no idea what you are talking about. First why would a new game purposefully want to piss people off? If they knew they had too few servers then they would have fix the problem. There are too many other games that people can choose besides this one. But if you knew anything and could read then you would now that this is not the case. There are plenty of servers that have little to no wait. Awww you can't take your pre-selected toon or your friends joined a full server? Then that your problem. And if you don't think they have concern for the customers then you have not been to the website or seen any of the changes that have been made in the last 48 hours. You say what you want to say because your mad that you had to wait to get into a game. Grow up! I'm guess you get mad when you have to wait in the line at the store, or the movie theater then say they have bad customer service. People like you need to get a grip on reality and think before you type things that have no real thought. Who are you Mr. perfect? I bet if it were up to you the launch would have been perfect huh...plz
NCsoft themselves said this was done intentionally, though I argue at best it was a mis calculation on their part that made it far worse than they intended. Either way, they made the choice to put people in huge queues rather than open more servers to alleviate the problems.
Now, I agree with the conundrum folks have pointed out about the problem they have now of people not wanting to go to another server even if they open them. That is why it is so important to have that initial server count at the least a tad high rather than too low. Additionally, I think they really screwed up with a two day headstart - it left no room for error in terms of gathering metrics for live. Had they done a week headstart or maybe 10 days they could have easily gauged the interest more accurately and adjusted accordingly. They would have also been able to see if a substantial portion of players where dropping off after a week (something they seem to be counting on currently).
The real problem is that NCsoft did a piss poor job of communicating with people. They setup this early character creation thing without bothering to tell people it was entirely pointless as they had so few servers and such a strict pop control policy that there was nearly no way you would get to that server with your friends. They drastically underestimated the number of servers needs, no matter how you slice it 4 to 7 hour queues on day one of head start is a total abortion. The reasonable thing to do is to make the very best estimate of how many servers you need, maybe even erring to the low end a tad - then open those all first day of headstart and let the people fall where they may with minimal pop throttling or queues or whatever. Then, after a coule days see what servers are off (pop wise or balance wise) and start throttling from there through actual live to funnel folks to fill in the gaps.
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I fail to understand the argument over faction/side balance when there is and cannot be any indication from the drop rate of the players. The balance only plays a role in end-game which will not be reached en masse during the first month no matter how quickly you can reach it. And after the first month when this pre-emptive balance work ought to bear fruit there can be a massive imbalance due to people leaving the game. Hence, keeping the scale even between the two sides at launch is of no indication for "final" balance. They could have just let 10,000 players to enter each side and then close it for new players of that side. With 400,000 pre-orders alone they can be pretty certain that 24 servers spread over US and Europe will be filled when they can at most hold 480,000 players (if that 10,000 number on these forums is the actual one). To launch a game like this is just inexcusable for the reasons they give -- if they were caught by a surprise by the number of pre-orders and use the balance as a red herring to divert attention elsewhere, well, that's a totally different issue.
I agree, that is why i just don't buy the line that they where doing this intentionally for balance. Clearly they screwed the pooch on the number of servers.
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just another reason not to get into a game the opening month.
Are you that stupid? How about filling/balancing out servers you have THEN add new ones? I guess they should just add 50 servers like WAR where everyone get's thinned out and then you have to start merging. Sounds like a good idea, right? Christ. You kids are ridiculous.
Get off the 2 servers everyone at Aionsource decided to cluster up together. Primetime Easter yesterday only 2 servers were horrible which was Zikel and one other. I could log onto every other Eastern server with a berable queue or right in. It's your choice, switch servers with your guild. There is really only 2-3 servers that are getting over populated.
it isn't a question of either having the existing 12 servers or having 50 servers, it is a question of whether 12 was too few and maybe they needed 18 or 20. With 400k pre orders there clearly needed more than 12 servers, especially if they where going to so aggressively enforce faction balance and whatnot. At a minimum, they should have gone with the 12 and been ready to, at the flick of a switch, have 4 or 6 more ready to go.
It is obvious that they just screwed up and the population balance stuff is just spin. I mean think about it, something the apologies will refuse to do of course. Why doesn't the game have a boot on afk built in, like many games do if they had planned to do this all along? Why are the afk stores not limited or possibly suspended for a few days if they planned to do this? Why was headstart so short if they planned to do this? And the most telling contradiction, why advertise, promote, and sell the early character creator if they planned to throttle 400k people so severely that on day one there would be 5 to 7 hour lines to get on an play the characters you made during the period they setup for you to make them?
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it isn't a question of either having the existing 12 servers or having 50 servers, it is a question of whether 12 was too few and maybe they needed 18 or 20. With 400k pre orders there clearly needed more than 12 servers, especially if they where going to so aggressively enforce faction balance and whatnot. At a minimum, they should have gone with the 12 and been ready to, at the flick of a switch, have 4 or 6 more ready to go.
It is obvious that they just screwed up and the population balance stuff is just spin. I mean think about it, something the apologies will refuse to do of course. Why doesn't the game have a boot on afk built in, like many games do if they had planned to do this all along? Why are the afk stores not limited or possibly suspended for a few days if they planned to do this? Why was headstart so short if they planned to do this? And the most telling contradiction, why advertise, promote, and sell the early character creator if they planned to throttle 400k people so severely that on day one there would be 5 to 7 hour lines to get on an play the characters you made during the period they setup for you to make them?
The queue's are a result of the low pop caps they set on the server as they just announced on Aion Source and Aion online recently. With them upping the pop cap on the servers and adding one for each territory the queue's should come down some and they will monitor it more to see what else they need to do.
It's not screwed up if they want a balanced server population without having lag issues and getting disconnected every few minutes or even server crashes. With to many servers they would end up like WarHammer did and that's not exceptable.
it isn't a question of either having the existing 12 servers or having 50 servers, it is a question of whether 12 was too few and maybe they needed 18 or 20. With 400k pre orders there clearly needed more than 12 servers, especially if they where going to so aggressively enforce faction balance and whatnot. At a minimum, they should have gone with the 12 and been ready to, at the flick of a switch, have 4 or 6 more ready to go.
It is obvious that they just screwed up and the population balance stuff is just spin. I mean think about it, something the apologies will refuse to do of course. Why doesn't the game have a boot on afk built in, like many games do if they had planned to do this all along? Why are the afk stores not limited or possibly suspended for a few days if they planned to do this? Why was headstart so short if they planned to do this? And the most telling contradiction, why advertise, promote, and sell the early character creator if they planned to throttle 400k people so severely that on day one there would be 5 to 7 hour lines to get on an play the characters you made during the period they setup for you to make them?
The balancing isn't a spin. If you look on the site that shows status it's usually 48vs52% or close. It's like a 10% buffer I believe until one race locks out.
If they don't make enough servers for the full launch this weekend i will just cancel my sub for a couple of months or for good.
I don't work all day to come home and then Que to get in a game Ive payed for, I'm pretty fed up i payed for a collectors edition for the head start as when I have some spare time to play I don't want to waste it queuing.
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I love this forum, QQ all the time. lol
Why dont you ask yourself this question.
Does I show lack of faith in their game?
How does faction balance have anything to do with NOBODY, on either side, being able to log in to a server without a 1, 3, or 5+ hour wait like we were seeing? The answer is nothing, it wasn't that you could only get on a server avoiding a queue on a certain faction, you where getting queues for both factions.
Besides all that, what does a numerical character's created number balance mean? Once the initial surge settles people will play where they want and a lot of those 'balanced' characters will sit offline doing nothing to help balance. Characters created is a really meaningless stat in terms of balance, especially when they are forcing people from server to server, said 'balance' can only be maintained as long as the forcing from queues is continued.
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How does faction balance have anything to do with NOBODY, on either side, being able to log in to a server without a 1, 3, or 5+ hour wait like we were seeing? The answer is nothing, it wasn't that you could only get on a server avoiding a queue on a certain faction, you where getting queues for both factions.
Besides all that, what does a numerical character's created number balance mean? Once the initial surge settles people will play where they want and a lot of those 'balanced' characters will sit offline doing nothing to help balance. Characters created is a really meaningless stat in terms of balance, especially when they are forcing people from server to server, said 'balance' can only be maintained as long as the forcing from queues is conti
Have you visited the website at all? Its easy to think you know what you are talking about but the information is there. They are raising the server cap and adding a new server to US and EU. NCsoft is already taking steps to elimiate of reduce ques. If you want to know what a numerical character balance means check the site.
Servers are the wrong way to handle this crap. I mean, if the game has instances and channels, what point is there in dividing up the player base according to servers? Guild Wars has 'channels' and can support any number of players that can play together, period.
In short, what we're experiencing is a massive failure, covered up by the convenient fact that every other MMO uses "servers". Give me Eve's or Guild Wars' "anyone can play with anyone" mentality any day.
Lol, pretty much showed everyone you have no clue about this game. Well done there little Tutty...well done...
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Yup... and AION is the first game ever to have a server que... NOT.
Any popular game (including WoW) had server queues at launch. NCSoft is trying to make sure their servers are balanced and not ghost towns within a month after the "free month" players leave.
No faith? Hardly.
You cannot compare the server queues of WoW back in 2004 with the Aion server queues right now.
Blizzard was truly caught off guard and never expected so many people slamming the servers on day one. As those numbers back then were unheard off back then in the MMO days!
NCWest however knew they had 400.000 registered paid Pre-Orders!
So their excuse doesn't fly about how they didn't expected this. That's total Bull shit! As they exactly knew how many would slam the servers.
Hence, they were even bragging about the number of Pre-Orders all over the internet and media! So give me a break!
Cheers
I have been to the site and what they show doesn't mean jack to in game balance. So what if there is a 50/50 split of characters created, it is about characters active. But beyond that, my point is that this 'balance' is likely to be fleeting as once the rush subsides people will leave the servers they are on now to play with their friends.
I have never understood why games don't just go this route. One 'server' but instances that roll out across a server farm. Yes, it is a different architecture than what you see commonly used but aside from perhaps some initial complexity it is entirely viable and makes much more sense.
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New overly advertised MMORPGs always sell big then die big. Aion is just making sure that it keeps a stable population after the inevitable fall off.
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it isn't a question of either having the existing 12 servers or having 50 servers, it is a question of whether 12 was too few and maybe they needed 18 or 20. With 400k pre orders there clearly needed more than 12 servers, especially if they where going to so aggressively enforce faction balance and whatnot. At a minimum, they should have gone with the 12 and been ready to, at the flick of a switch, have 4 or 6 more ready to go.
It is obvious that they just screwed up and the population balance stuff is just spin. I mean think about it, something the apologies will refuse to do of course. Why doesn't the game have a boot on afk built in, like many games do if they had planned to do this all along? Why are the afk stores not limited or possibly suspended for a few days if they planned to do this? Why was headstart so short if they planned to do this? And the most telling contradiction, why advertise, promote, and sell the early character creator if they planned to throttle 400k people so severely that on day one there would be 5 to 7 hour lines to get on an play the characters you made during the period they setup for you to make them?
The balancing isn't a spin. If you look on the site that shows status it's usually 48vs52% or close. It's like a 10% buffer I believe until one race locks out.
You're trying to use logic and fact in a discussion with AgtSmith.
Just sayin'...
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