These flashy trailers and amazing graphics seem all to familiar to me, and after the huge letdown that is "Aion" what is going to stop NCSoft making the exact same mistakes in B&S? How are they going to make their terrible customer support and other problems better by releasing a new title?
I would really like to think that Blade & Soul will be a great game but I can't help feeling that it's going to go down the same road as Aion.
Opinions?
QQ much? You were let down by Aion because you had preconceived what you wanted it to be. When it turned out to be a game other than what you predicted, you say they let ya down. You just had false hopes, thats all.
Forming your opinion of a not-yet released game based on the company that backs it is rather narrow minded. The only company that deserves that stigma would be Sony. Everyone knows thats where games go to die. NcSoft has such a wide array of games that are SO different that you can't blame the faults of one game onto another, especially since you haven't tried the one you're rendering your strong opinion about. Also, you used a horribly inaccurate (and rather cliche) term there that has no bearing on anything really... "exact same". I can say in full confidence that it isn't even possible to make the "exact same" mistakes... ever.... for anyone. (lets even look over the fact that the cliche is redundant anyway)
and, I have no idea what NCSofts customer or technical support is all about as I've never required any of it. I've played their titles for years now on a plethora of configurations and machines and they always work for me.
Well my answer to that is "no" ...I will never pre order another NCSoft title (except maybe GW2 which is put out by Arenanet). NCSoft has a horrible track record of operating games.
different branch of NC. The CEO's of NC are busy trying to sue their old team (that quit)--made lineage two. For using the code they created while working for NC; Then making a new game (TERA).
(Bad Grammar Incoming on purpose):
I IS GOT TEH HOPE IT BE BALLING AND BRAWLING. AND KEEP ME INTEREST. AND KEEP TOSE BOTS AWAY AND GOLD SELLERS BANNED.
Yet.. in some cases since its a Korean company making it, they may have less because virtual currency selling is legal in Korea.
different branch of NC. The CEO's of NC are busy trying to sue their old team (that quit)--made lineage two. For using the code they created while working for NC; Then making a new game (TERA).
Nice to see that someone else knows their NCSoft history.
i dont agree actualy i must say tht every1 makes misstakes we are humans after all, but NC haz fixed almost all the problems with aion and probably they will fix it at 100% with the new patch , U cant think tht companys who are making games are to bad ..lets just say tht ppl have become much smarter and thts a big reason why u see more hackers ...and so on...
Blade and soul it will be a gr8 game i really hope tht they gonna have open pvp and not the arena system and tournaments as i heard
These flashy trailers and amazing graphics seem all to familiar to me, and after the huge letdown that is "Aion" what is going to stop NCSoft making the exact same mistakes in B&S? How are they going to make their terrible customer support and other problems better by releasing a new title?
I would really like to think that Blade & Soul will be a great game but I can't help feeling that it's going to go down the same road as Aion.
Opinions?
im curious to know, what exactly happened to Aion?
this lol .
/agree
OP, I play Aion and like it very much. NC has never been great with customer service but I feel that they are far better with Aion than they were with Lineage 2.
In any case, I'll try Blade and Soul. To me a game is a game not a lifestyle choice so if I don't like it I just won't play it.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
My only reaction is "NCsoft is making ANOTHER MMORPG?!". I mean jeez. Aion is still being bottle-fed and they are already working on another? Wow... I've literally lost all hope for the MMORPG genre...
My only reaction is "NCsoft is making ANOTHER MMORPG?!". I mean jeez. Aion is still being bottle-fed and they are already working on another? Wow... I've literally lost all hope for the MMORPG genre...
Remember, NC's mission is not to make "one" mmo but to make many of them that are attractive to a host of different players. That is one of the reasons NC actually started.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
The point is not that NCSoft is putting out another game and or is it going to be good (I myself having played a few of their games) It is more over that the coummunity as a whole growing tried of the same old game with a new face. Are we as a whole wanting a fresh new mmo that will grab us by our keyboards and drag us into the computer screen wanting more!?!?! I feel it is time for a change not only with companys like NCSoft but MMORPG as a whole from Blade & Soul to Shaiya it is not only a time for something better but something that we can look at and say ((OMFG I AM AMAZED! )) :P This is my thoughts on this that and $1 can get you a Coke(or Pepsi) thank you for reading
Just because they adopted a different business style from Blizzard, doesn't mean it's going to suck. Matter of fact, I'm glad NC decided not place all their eggs in 1 basket.
Can we trust NCSoft to deliver after what happened with Aion?...blablabla
What do you mean?
Aion is a well polished game and likely the best mmo right now (yeah i know its a matter of opinion).
That's like arguing between a fork or a spork to assassinate that annoying kid down the street with. At the end of the day, you're holding utensils.
Aion is a WoW version of Lineage 2, there's no and if or buts about it. It's a VERY terrible game. Please stop insinuating that it's anything more than a gag-grind fest.
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity: Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
Can we trust NCSoft to deliver after what happened with Aion?...blablabla
What do you mean?
Aion is a well polished game and likely the best mmo right now (yeah i know its a matter of opinion).
That's like arguing between a fork or a spork to assassinate that annoying kid down the street with. At the end of the day, you're holding utensils.
Aion is a WoW version of Lineage 2, there's no and if or buts about it. It's a VERY terrible game. Please stop insinuating that it's anything more than a gag-grind fest.
Oh sorry of course your opinion is the right one. All people who play Aion should imediately stop playin the game since you said its a terrible game.
The kid here is you who cant accept that people have their own point of view. If you dont like the game then dont play it. If you were that mature as you pretend then you wouldnt bash people because they like games that you dont.
NcSoft did a lot of things right with Aion and i'm cautiously optimistic about B&S.
Can we trust NCSoft to deliver after what happened with Aion?...blablabla
What do you mean?
Aion is a well polished game and likely the best mmo right now (yeah i know its a matter of opinion).
That's like arguing between a fork or a spork to assassinate that annoying kid down the street with. At the end of the day, you're holding utensils.
Aion is a WoW version of Lineage 2, there's no and if or buts about it. It's a VERY terrible game. Please stop insinuating that it's anything more than a gag-grind fest.
Oh sorry of course your opinion is the right one. All people who play Aion should imediately stop playin the game since you said its a terrible game.
The kid here is you who cant accept that people have their own point of view. If you dont like the game then dont play it. If you were that mature as you pretend then you wouldnt bash people because they like games that you dont.
NcSoft did a lot of things right with Aion and i'm cautiously optimistic about B&S.
In addition, Aion has the same type of game play mechanics as LOTRO. You go kill 10 bears, you go collect 10 spider silks you kill 10 crebain.
Exactly the same.
Yet I don't see people calling LOTRO a grind game. Oh, and same mechanics as WoW.
Somehow people have forgotten that grind games are "go to this field/cave/dungeon and kill monsters for 2 hours and log off and do it again the next day".
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
exactly. What you'll find with ANY new mmo, Aion, Blade and Soul, even say a elmo's world online(heaven forbid), is that they will be compared to what is available and fully updated, most people complain that aion or other new mmo's don't stack up to world of warcraft, with all of it's expansions and years of server optimization etc... But they are not comparing it to what world of warcraft was when it first launched which was horrible compared to the launch of aion or most new mmo's. Blizzard is fail out the door because diablo 3 and starcraft 2 are going to be delayed until who knows when, like almost all their other titles. Give us a release date AND DO NOT CHANGE IT FOR ANYTHING... Sure blizzard wants to get a game out that is pristine and fairly bug free for the most part, but waiting past reasonable amounts of time for something then finding out oh wait we are not giving you the full game here's part 1 whenever we decide to give it to you. Same held true for expansions, pushed back slightly, no I'm sorry anyone who gives world of warcraft a great review is only looking at 98% of the good stuff and only 2% of what's wrong with it. You want a game without grind? then find a game that has 0 combat. I have yet to see a mmo that is action oriented that didn't have kill quests.
Just my two cents, if you don't have change I understand!
I didn't think anyone else had a pulse way back then.
"Sovrath ~
Remember, NC's mission is not to make "one" mmo but to make many of them that are attractive to a host of different players. That is one of the reasons NC actually started."
It works in theory but not in practice.
You could probably call NCsoft and ask for support on one of their games, and have them totally bewildered that they even own it.
Jokes aside, While it is hard to encompass everyones tastes into a single MMO, It is even harder to make a slurry of games to try to appease each group of them while maintaining a development team for each game without running out of manpower and returns on money.
And that is while trying to make more games for different types of people.
VictimX ~
These flashy trailers and amazing graphics seem all to familiar to me, and after the huge letdown that is "Aion" what is going to stop NCSoft making the exact same mistakes in B&S? How are they going to make their terrible customer support and other problems better by releasing a new title?
I would really like to think that Blade & Soul will be a great game but I can't help feeling that it's going to go down the same road as Aion.
Opinions?
Okay.
By your logic; since you are a horrible person, your infant little sister is going to be a horrible person simply because she is born from your mother, Tabitha the Witch.
Despite what might muse you in you're alone time, there is not a group of three people somewhere in the bowels of NCsoft thinkalating some diabolical evil Korean game to leech your money.
Just as the people who made Dragon Age: Origins are almost completely different people than the ones who made Mass Effect.
These are two different teams of people within NCsoft creating and developing these MMOs; while they may borrow people from time to time, they still remain separate teams.
What may have affected Aion may not affect Blade and Soul as they are two separate teams, they might switch out people from time to time, but they still remain separate.
You placing the blame on all of NCsoft simply because of one development team is absurd.
If however your problem is with Customer Service, then you have all the right to be upset.
dunno if worrying about blizz pushing back release dates is something to concern one's self with. they've done it with everything because they're very attached to their vision, a gaming company composed of gamers. they pushed wow's release back plenty and it certainly didn't hurt that game.
implying aion is a failure or dud is bad form, although i complete sympathize. B&S caught my eye when a buddy in AoC sent me the trailer nearly 2 years ago now. when i saw the aion vision trailer my first thought was aion was a beta of B&S.
it's been many months since i quit aion but the last posts on the guild forum i read were people sharing techniques for what to do when grieved by other players wrongfully reporting them for farming (while they were completing collection/kill quests lol). that, i would say, would have to be a pretty big disappointment in anyone's book. a failure of sorts to be sure.
i used to be drooling for B&S, but getting disco'd every 2 mins during Aion abyss fortress fights, never getting any coins for my participation, and all the other well known issues people list soured me on the NCSoft style. still...B&S appears to have a lot of what i want so i'll most likely have to give it a shot and hope for the best...
i understand everyone opinion is different than another; but it helps people kinda get an idea of what they will have to face if they would like to play the game.
for people who never gamed with NCsoft before. keep in mind that, reading forums about your future game is fun; dont take it serious but decide for yourself .
Because, there are people who actually know what they are talking about versus people who happened to stop by and make a random post can confuse the Fk out of you.
i -myself- preordered through gamestop a limited collector edition for Aion + 3month subcription which cost me about $100+. I dont mind, if this game which i waited since the day it was only a domain.com with a "comming soon" message can keep me sitting down and enjoy my evening with.
I had a really good time playing Aion because i've met a lot of amazing aion players who are high school teachers, aircraft designer, biologist, cool buddies from different continents including some very nice game laborers of gold sellers and so on...it is hard to believe how it attracted so many awsome people from different fields into one game.
For people who disagreed with gamers who distrusted NCsoft. I just hope you were there and know what you are standing on with your argument.
if my tooth hurts, would you know? no you dont!
if i cry out my tooth hurts? you say im whiney!
funny isn't it?
well at 1 time, there were 3000+ post of complaints and there were not even 1 single word from GMs, nor forum moderators. At that time, only you, a pretty covered box, and an active server were existed. Players were so annoyed that they started flaming threads and cursed at other gamers. was it a riot? Why? were they immature? i do believe they are very mature individuals. Am i mature? i am but not enough because if i am fully mature i would only "look and stay low".
well, lets not argue over Aion anymore, lets do experiment ourselves and find our own answer. Lets ask your buddies around you; and see how many bought the game and stil playing?
Blade and Soul trailer made me drool, but to be caution i will not pre-ordered the game nor start to play the moment it comes out. Someone stated that "do test beta first and see if its worth to pay or not". NCsoft did fixed a lot of problems in Aion and game is getting better and better. People joined game in different periods of game have different experiences. So lets peace out
Hmm i wonder how a lot of people feel about this game a few months after this discussion.. For those of you that havent played AION i'll list a few flaws i had with the game.. Let me tell you this, AION was my first MMO, i did hit end-game in AION with my cleric (and was one of the first on Fregion to do so with a cleric, and WAS the first cleric to have full plat-coin gear set), and i enjoyed a lot of the time i spent.. But it was mainly because of what the above poster expressed, the ammount of diverse people that flocked to AION..
My legion was made of people from the army. people from asia, girls, cops, robbers, whatever.. If i could go back in time to any part of my "gameing" life and relive it it'd be back when AION first launched and i met up with all those people.. The night i got my lvl 40 orange weapon sticks out the most, as it started off rifting in asmodae, then running one of their instances, then flying under a fort in the abyss to gather mats, then finnaly back to sanctum to get my weapon.. It took a course of 7hours to do all this, and time just flew by.. That was about the last "good" experience i had with AION, besides the fort battles and all..
Anyways, heres a quick list of the things that AION did wrong.. Some of them are just stupid mistakes that could've easily been fixed, but never were.. First off, i actually didn't mind the solo-elite-grinding, but a lot of people hated it.. A easy way to fix this would be to make it where you actually got XP doing instances or quests.. But wait, the instances are extremley boring crowded pulls, next to another crowded pull, next to another crowded pull; make a mistake and if you have no CC you'll be running for the end of the instance.. This would go on for hours till you met up with some tank-and-spank boss that'd likley never drop you anything (hated getting a A rank in DP only to get a flame cap.) What about the quests? Well, if you like killing 10000 mob's for worthless xp/coins then be my guest... There is actually not one quest that stands-out for me in AION; nor is there an instance with the exception of Steel Rake which was pretty fun, but dragged on too long and Dark Poeta which was awsome instance that never dropped any items that made it worth it (besides the bloodstains)..
So the questing sucked.. The instances were meger, at best.. AION did do PvP right for the most part, besides all the limitations it gives on it's PvP.. Fort raids!?! Awsome!! Oh, but you can only do them 1-2 a day, at random times, and sometimes not at all.. Ok, well rifting sounds fun? Well you can only enter certain rifts at certain levels, and the rifts pop randomly and are only open for a hour or so or until the max # of players enter em.. I had a blast rifting, but as soon as i hit 40 i realized there were no more rifts left... I really stuck it out till 46 tho in hopes that Dredgion would be the answer to all my prayers... And for the most part it was, and it kept me from quitting AION until i hit 50.. Ofcourse, like all of AIONS pvp it had its own flaws.. It only popped up 3 times a day, 4-8hours apart from eachother so it was likley you were gonna make it each time it popped; if you could find a group in que at all..
BUT, the biggest downfall for AION was its end-game, or lack of.. At lvl 50 you were only allowed into 3 different instances (Steel Rake, some REALLY boring instance i forgot the name of, and Dark Poeta which is actually prolly one of the coolest instances i've ever played in any MMO.) So yeah, Dark Poeta is fun but you run it once and you're locked out a few hours, and not only that even after getting A and S ranks the boss only drops good items 1/1000 times.. It's very likley you'll go a whole DP run without finding one useful item.. So without instanceing you can always PvP, but PvPing in AION is ganking or getting ganked or doing fort raids / dredgion (which i already explained what was wrong with em.) BUT worse thing of all about AION and the reason a good portion of its end-game population quit can be summed up in TWO words... MIRAGENTS / FENRILS..
At lvl 45 i chose to grind out platinum coins for decent gear.. It took me 3 weeks of killing easy mobs (usually took 3-4 hits to kill) and gathering coins to get.. Only to figure out at lvl 50 you get miragents, a set everyone can try to get at lvl 50.. Even with my plat coin gear i stood no chance to any character in miragents, no other person in the game could stand up against a character in miragents.. I had jus spent 4 months grinding to 50 and another 3 weeks grinding out it's gear only to get beat by another lvl 50 in miragents; but not only beat but not even able to land a hit on 'em.. So you're pretty much forced into getting miragents; which is the worse grind in any game, ever.. I put up with the first 3 parts of the quest, then i got on the Miragent Leggings which usually makes or breaks AION for people..
I spent 2 weeks gathering 125 bloodstains.. No proc.. I spent another 2 weeks gathering 125 bloodstains.. No proc.. So i spent all the kinah i had amassed over my whole playtime for one more try.. No proc.. During this whole ordeal several guild mates that hit 50 weeks after i did got lucky and proc'd their miragents first try.. Other's were on their 10th and 12th tries.. That's what put the nail in the coffin for me.. Pretty much you're whole end-game comes down to weather you can randomly get lucky enough to proc you're leggings or not.. Theres no skill involved, just luck.. And if you failed you lost WEEKS of grinding and got NOTHING in return (besides on ur 5th try i think you get 100blood stains, but in order to get 5 trys you'd have to waste 5months grinding lol.) The complaints flooded into NC Softs forums; there was 2 pages full of threads just on miragents leggings complaining about how end-games soley based on RNG.. NC Soft never responded to a single one, and gave generic copy & paste emails to each person that tried to send a suggestion that way.. Trust me i know cuz i got the SAME exact response as other people who were sending in their suggestions/voiceing their concerns.. People quit.. Half my legion was gone in less then a week after hitting end game.. Even after all the good times we'd had, people just left and never came back after being so frustrated failing their 1st or 2nd proc on the miragents leggings.. I was one of those people, after my 4th attempt i was outta there..
Unfortunantley even to this day i havnt found anything fill AION's void.. It was a great game.. With so many design flaws that could've EASILY been fixed in some small patches had NC Soft listened to their customers.. Now they are already havin to go thru server merges to help with the population.. Not only that the recent patch that was promised to us for close to 8-9 months came out and barley has any content in it.. And most of all it didnt even fix the miragents quest, you're end game is still based off RNG, but the ammount of stains it takes is 100 now instead of 125; which is about 3-4 days less of grinding.. Which isn't much considering if you're unlucky enough you could theoretically fail you're miragents leggings a life-time and never proc them..
Yea.. those are the things that bug me with AION.. I didnt even mind the bots or gold sellers.. The gameplay it's self was so awsome, the game had so much potential, had NC Soft made some minor changes it'd prolly be the actual WoW-contender it was made out to be.
Currently Playing: Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
I too would like some curious beans.. What fiasco? What happened? Did I miss something? What trust was broken? Did NC sell all account details?
Someone nailed it a couple posts up. The game has been out for a few months short of a year now and they are finally addressed some issues such as blood drops, server population issues, and the fact that the ncsoft west version of the game had always been patches (yes plural) behind the korean version. There is no end game. Past 40 you have only a handful of instances to do other than grind your arse off in non abyss zones, and there was no rifts into the level 44-50 area that level 50's could participate in. Because of the AP system, no one of higher rank enters the abyss unless they are escorted by a raid or participating in a fort raid. And the fact that if your side controls the forts you can essentially PVE your way to the best PVP gear. The abyss is frickin dead. Certain classes are gods in abyss pvp like sorcs and rangers. Thats why the ground abyss coming out in 2.0 is going to murder the abyss even more than it already is. The game was fun, till you hit 40+. Then you really have to be a devoted grinder to make it to 50. I don't know how many SR runs (Steel Rake runs) I had to do to get up to like 47, and then begin the repeatable quest grind for a gold extendable (i played a chanter) Ugh....just ugh. I loved the game but finally with nothing to do at 50 except for grind the core for bloods and fail your god damn fenris pant combine OVER AND OVER AND OVER again got tiring. And i was on siel, a pretty active server with the best NA guild on the server. I played Asmo's against them and yet the abyss was still dead.
Oh not to mention they have a leak on their website. I never used their forums. Always used aionsource.com because the first time i did, i got hacked the next day and then my account got banned because of suspicious behavior or some crap. Finally took me a month to get it back. Then they revamped their forum's so i decided i would give them another shot, just chalking it up to coincidence. Well i sign in, make a post and the next day i get hacked again. There were times where i would sign into my aion account to get onto the search function and log into someone elses account. Happened all the time. NCsoft is the reason AIon is hurting. Not the game itself. Poor customer service, poor everything. I will never play another NCsoft game, and im completely glad that NCsoft has nothing to do with GW2.
I think the content was fine... Course, for a WESTERN MMO, it wasn't even close...
See the problem I find with the game is the player's mentality... The elements are there for a complete game but the people are so 'bored' because they expect a game to be as huge as well at launch and give away things so easily...
OK yes, RNG is old and boring and very depressing as we westerners can't deal with that.. It is a grind, but what MMO isn't a grind? I remember doing MC for 6 months just trying to get armor for Blackwing Lair... The tank&spank super easy boring 4 hour druid love gear dropping instance was just too much.. But at the time it was something refreshing and new.. I think WoW has it's members simply cause they got into the MMO right when MMO needed a newcomer...
Aion has barely been out longer than that time period...
The instances are different in AIon, they don't have a progressive type feel to them... The whole instance such as DP can fully be done with ease.. But time and speed determine the outcome of a boss at the end and loot drops aren't like what you see in WoW...
The game is far from perfect but so it other games.. I feel Aion still has the closest and most fun PvP atm than any other game... Even with gimped classes, I still feel I can beat most other classes...
Aion is stil very successful, it just didn't appeal to the Westerners like it has in Korea... There is only 5 servers for the NA version but over 36 still in Korea...
The biggest problem I think the game had was the lack of communication in the East/West depts of Aion.. It being a Korean game, NA was kind of just getting the least amount of attention.. And I personally think that was a wise choice.. Why would I support the ideas and feedback from a country that has abandoned the game? Hmm.. 32 servers of people giving their input vs. North America's 5 servers of people... I think their planning and development is going to cater to the larger crowd... Sorry, but that's just how it is.. If you don't like how the players are running things in the East, then just don't play it... It obviously doesn't have western appeal to it...
If you look at the article here: You'll see why I feel WoW has also destroyed gaming to a degree..
A lot of this article explains what I've been saying and reasons why I quit games like WoW...
While Aion is a long way off from being perfect.. At the moment, it's the only MMO really catching my attention till the likes of Blade & Soul or maybe Guild Wars 2.. Ironically, both these game will be under the same publisher, but least different dev teams as GW2 is Arena.net and B&S is a totally different team from the Aion one which I think is also another NCSoft mistake.. I think teams really should share technology because some games fail at certain things.. Like recently the Aion mergers/transfers.. I mean really, NCSoft knew it would happen being they been in the MMO business a while, why wasn't this technology already considered so it would be way easier to do..
Well, I've not given up on Aion yet.. Quite personally, the graphics alone keep me from going back to WoW even with the new expansion on the horizon.. I think Aion 2.0 has more the game I was looking for in the original Aion release... If I'm wrong then I'm wrong.. But like said, there isn't a whole lot to choose from for now and I stick to a game till it's dead.... Or something really slamming comes out that I will awe to... Tera Online is NOT it for me... B&S or GW2 might be...
I do agree to some degree the above posters response.. Tabula Rasa was a great idea.. A great game.. But it lacked in content... I think Aion fell into that same category for a lot of people... Simply cause the content people want require a carebear attittude for the game.. Aion has been successful enough to fund more projects upcoming.. I think attitudes towards MMO companies is sort of a two edge sword... You stop playing a game to voice opinion it sux, you also destroy the funding for the new games or even the current one...
It's not all the subscribers fault though.. The mentality of the companies destroy the games too.. Most game companies are only in it for the short haul surge of sales from the initial hype of a game.. Then usually scraps it to start new games instead of further develop into their current... To me, this is sort of a fail approach also... I have a friend in the gaming industry as well.. Support and quick response to in-game issues/bugs is what she said that really give players a boost in confidence that the company is trying to do what they can... But she also said, they don't care about a games long-term also.. That most and even her company was only in it for the quick surge of profit...
Anyway, that's my 2 cents and little then some...
*edit*
Just like to add.. I think 1.5 screwed up Aion... In 1.2 there wasn't any DP or Fenris/Miragent... What gear you got was in various dungeons like DC and Indratu and a mix of other things like PvP.. When 1.5 came out.. People completely skipped some of these instances... I think also the ability to summon people to the biggest bosses in the game also messed up the game... I led a team to kill the bosses in Indratu only to find a full elyos zerg already there using level 25 SMs to summon people to the boss lair.. They didn't have to work to it.. The bosses became simply FARMED... This cuts asmos off completely from being to go to Elyos land and kill bosses.. Also in 1.5 there was little need for these other than enchantment stones... Which killed a lotta players interest to even wanna do them.. When you hit 50, you didn't do anything but DP and grind bloods.. Why? because that was the best set and it didn't require but a 6 man group to do it... This kept relations on the game to a all time low I think.. It defeated purpose of having a large guild for support... When the game first came out.. You saw lotta guilds over the 90 member limit with them having to make 2 guilds with similar names.. Because guilds people thought would be much needed.. The heavy and long grind to 50 changed that.. Most people soloing and then realizing once 50, very little guild support was actually needed... It still isn't today.. I still see most alliances for forts being built by the LFG tool than it being in-guild alliances... I think by destroying the need for community is another huge mistake.. I played in China beta for 6 mos before moving to NA version, so I've been playing this game lot longer than most and still continuing today... Just wanted to add that I felt the release of 1.5 on NA launch actually destroyed the game to a degree, I think it was extremely poorly thought out and it just gave some the best gear to the RMTers quick while it left others a painful grind...
One thing I will give Aion though and NCSoft credit for is.. INCREDIBLY stable servers.. I remember when WoW launched, the servers would go down for hours even during primetime or go through a series of rollbacks and reboots.. Ugh... Was probably most horrible experience...
I never saw that in Aion... Launch was so extremely smooth, I was impressed.. Lag happens.. I don't think there is another game out there that could support the amount of people that showed up for the first abyss fort or the one that happened immediately after mergers.. Yes it was laggy, but most servers would have just crashed all to hell even at the sight of 1/4th the amount of people... Aion to me has all the right elements to a good game, it really should focus more on less zerg though.. I mean implement tournaments or instanced scenarios or more dredgions.. This gear gained from smaller group PvP combat allows you to get the armor for the bigger stuff.. Tahabata's Weapons should be in Divine instead of DP.. But the PvP medals to get gear should be in like 2 or 3 Dredgion-like instances and tournament style instances.. Not in zerg fort battles... Right now it's just the opposite and if one faction has a substancial amount of players.. GG for the other faction..
Another thing about WoW at launch, no PvP system... WoW also had very tank and spank dungeons and long boring instances... Hmm.. Sound familiar? I think just because WoW was the first to the scene and there was no other competition really is what made it successful.. All the other MMO games now following have to be compared... WoW wasn't first, it too is a copy/clone of MMO previous games but at the time they came out.. There was little F2P and other games to compete with it... So when it opened.. It's limited and very crappy end-game felt like a lot... I think Aion opened with more content that WoW first launch... WoW's progressive instances like MC just made the game feel a lot deeper since some bosses just couldn't be killed right away.. Unlike in DP where the bosses are easier and loot drops less, it's time that gets you the better boss at the end... Most people do like a progressive feeling of accomplishment.. I myself fall into this category... I'd rather have a harder time killing a boss and get loot from it every time than it being easier with less loot...
Hmm i wonder how a lot of people feel about this game a few months after this discussion.. For those of you that havent played AION i'll list a few flaws i had with the game.. Let me tell you this, AION was my first MMO, i did hit end-game in AION with my cleric (and was one of the first on Fregion to do so with a cleric, and WAS the first cleric to have full plat-coin gear set), and i enjoyed a lot of the time i spent.. But it was mainly because of what the above poster expressed, the ammount of diverse people that flocked to AION..
My legion was made of people from the army. people from asia, girls, cops, robbers, whatever.. If i could go back in time to any part of my "gameing" life and relive it it'd be back when AION first launched and i met up with all those people.. The night i got my lvl 40 orange weapon sticks out the most, as it started off rifting in asmodae, then running one of their instances, then flying under a fort in the abyss to gather mats, then finnaly back to sanctum to get my weapon.. It took a course of 7hours to do all this, and time just flew by.. That was about the last "good" experience i had with AION, besides the fort battles and all..
Anyways, heres a quick list of the things that AION did wrong.. Some of them are just stupid mistakes that could've easily been fixed, but never were.. First off, i actually didn't mind the solo-elite-grinding, but a lot of people hated it.. A easy way to fix this would be to make it where you actually got XP doing instances or quests.. But wait, the instances are extremley boring crowded pulls, next to another crowded pull, next to another crowded pull; make a mistake and if you have no CC you'll be running for the end of the instance.. This would go on for hours till you met up with some tank-and-spank boss that'd likley never drop you anything (hated getting a A rank in DP only to get a flame cap.) What about the quests? Well, if you like killing 10000 mob's for worthless xp/coins then be my guest... There is actually not one quest that stands-out for me in AION; nor is there an instance with the exception of Steel Rake which was pretty fun, but dragged on too long and Dark Poeta which was awsome instance that never dropped any items that made it worth it (besides the bloodstains)..
So the questing sucked.. The instances were meger, at best.. AION did do PvP right for the most part, besides all the limitations it gives on it's PvP.. Fort raids!?! Awsome!! Oh, but you can only do them 1-2 a day, at random times, and sometimes not at all.. Ok, well rifting sounds fun? Well you can only enter certain rifts at certain levels, and the rifts pop randomly and are only open for a hour or so or until the max # of players enter em.. I had a blast rifting, but as soon as i hit 40 i realized there were no more rifts left... I really stuck it out till 46 tho in hopes that Dredgion would be the answer to all my prayers... And for the most part it was, and it kept me from quitting AION until i hit 50.. Ofcourse, like all of AIONS pvp it had its own flaws.. It only popped up 3 times a day, 4-8hours apart from eachother so it was likley you were gonna make it each time it popped; if you could find a group in que at all..
BUT, the biggest downfall for AION was its end-game, or lack of.. At lvl 50 you were only allowed into 3 different instances (Steel Rake, some REALLY boring instance i forgot the name of, and Dark Poeta which is actually prolly one of the coolest instances i've ever played in any MMO.) So yeah, Dark Poeta is fun but you run it once and you're locked out a few hours, and not only that even after getting A and S ranks the boss only drops good items 1/1000 times.. It's very likley you'll go a whole DP run without finding one useful item.. So without instanceing you can always PvP, but PvPing in AION is ganking or getting ganked or doing fort raids / dredgion (which i already explained what was wrong with em.) BUT worse thing of all about AION and the reason a good portion of its end-game population quit can be summed up in TWO words... MIRAGENTS / FENRILS..
At lvl 45 i chose to grind out platinum coins for decent gear.. It took me 3 weeks of killing easy mobs (usually took 3-4 hits to kill) and gathering coins to get.. Only to figure out at lvl 50 you get miragents, a set everyone can try to get at lvl 50.. Even with my plat coin gear i stood no chance to any character in miragents, no other person in the game could stand up against a character in miragents.. I had jus spent 4 months grinding to 50 and another 3 weeks grinding out it's gear only to get beat by another lvl 50 in miragents; but not only beat but not even able to land a hit on 'em.. So you're pretty much forced into getting miragents; which is the worse grind in any game, ever.. I put up with the first 3 parts of the quest, then i got on the Miragent Leggings which usually makes or breaks AION for people..
I spent 2 weeks gathering 125 bloodstains.. No proc.. I spent another 2 weeks gathering 125 bloodstains.. No proc.. So i spent all the kinah i had amassed over my whole playtime for one more try.. No proc.. During this whole ordeal several guild mates that hit 50 weeks after i did got lucky and proc'd their miragents first try.. Other's were on their 10th and 12th tries.. That's what put the nail in the coffin for me.. Pretty much you're whole end-game comes down to weather you can randomly get lucky enough to proc you're leggings or not.. Theres no skill involved, just luck.. And if you failed you lost WEEKS of grinding and got NOTHING in return (besides on ur 5th try i think you get 100blood stains, but in order to get 5 trys you'd have to waste 5months grinding lol.) The complaints flooded into NC Softs forums; there was 2 pages full of threads just on miragents leggings complaining about how end-games soley based on RNG.. NC Soft never responded to a single one, and gave generic copy & paste emails to each person that tried to send a suggestion that way.. Trust me i know cuz i got the SAME exact response as other people who were sending in their suggestions/voiceing their concerns.. People quit.. Half my legion was gone in less then a week after hitting end game.. Even after all the good times we'd had, people just left and never came back after being so frustrated failing their 1st or 2nd proc on the miragents leggings.. I was one of those people, after my 4th attempt i was outta there..
Unfortunantley even to this day i havnt found anything fill AION's void.. It was a great game.. With so many design flaws that could've EASILY been fixed in some small patches had NC Soft listened to their customers.. Now they are already havin to go thru server merges to help with the population.. Not only that the recent patch that was promised to us for close to 8-9 months came out and barley has any content in it.. And most of all it didnt even fix the miragents quest, you're end game is still based off RNG, but the ammount of stains it takes is 100 now instead of 125; which is about 3-4 days less of grinding.. Which isn't much considering if you're unlucky enough you could theoretically fail you're miragents leggings a life-time and never proc them..
Yea.. those are the things that bug me with AION.. I didnt even mind the bots or gold sellers.. The gameplay it's self was so awsome, the game had so much potential, had NC Soft made some minor changes it'd prolly be the actual WoW-contender it was made out to be.
OMG, I wish I read this first.. haha.. ^^ this is probably explains it best..
REMOVE Fenris/Miragent line or at least make it quests that remove the RMTs dream and something you have to do in instance... i.e something with a drop off a boss and crafting combined with no RNG... I also think this quest forced more soloing for such long periods which pulled the Aion community apart other than someone QQing about not-proc'ing their pants (which was all the community there was).
More dredgion que times and maybe even more dredgion-type instances...
Remove the RNG and improve loot tables of instances even if it means increasing instances' difficulty...
I think bugs need to be fixed (i.e. Balaur not taking Kysis) and improve Balaur A.I.
Allow rifts into L50 zones... (WTF, you get 50 and you can't pvp??? I thought I was playing a PvP game here and now I'd rather twink a L40 than be L50, it was more fun cause I could rift in more zones and find more rifts to take.)
Remove all the time and restrictions to Level 50 PvP, balance classes a tad bit better (especially in air combat.. I.e. the sorc/ranger being OP in abyss without the player needing a smidgen of skill.)
ONE of MY OWN additions here... Please allow world bosses more difficult and cut off summoning to them or even put bosses like Jeshucci etc, in a rifted instance where both Asmos and Elyos have equal access to and can fight over them.. After all, it's pvpve yes? I go to elyos land with a group and never see bosses up cause they were already killed by large groups of elyos that just had L25 SMs summon their whole party to the boss to kill it quick... That's just simply stupid.. And Amso land has no bosses over L46.. Another really big stupid thing...
If you look at server stats, you'll see that Elyos have roughly the same amount of chars as asmos do... The imbalance comes from a larger Asmo inactive account status... It's just that more Asmos quit than Elyos simply cause we are cut off from most the end-game goodies... We have no bosses or anything to keep us active and it's really boring... It really takes forever to get a +10 weapon simply cause there is nothing to kill on Asmo side... So of course, Elyos accounts will stay active a lot longer than Asmo accounts... Then course, Asmos are simply outnumbered which is another huge factor in forts, etc.
I think those are things that are easily fixed... The mechanics for most of it is there... i.e adding Rifts to new other locations and such or changing the limitations of current rifts...
Also I'd like to point out that the player base is partially at fault with the Miragent/Fenris line.. That gear is PvE best... I think people shooting for it before actually PvP gear was a mistake... If you got stuck on pants for months on end, you were left with nothing.. Where as PvP gear was always at finger tips as long as you saved your AP.. Most people stayed Rank 9 to grind bloods so they would be hassled less... So if you fail your proc.. another couple weeks down the drain of nothing... So the mentality was backwards on this... I seen people get L40 w/L50 weapon gear shortly after becoming 50 and it was way better than Fenris/Miragent in PvP and it could be used just as well in pve... That's where most people went wrong including myself... Thinking Fenris/Miragent was the be-all end-game gear...
I also had a huge disappointing let-down with Aion.
I loved the flexibility possible with character creation (probably the best I've encountered to date). I loved the first 30 levels pve wise. The pace was just right, and if they had kept it where it was by 30, would have worked.
I was disppointed that the pvp was far crappier than hyped and advertised.
I detested how ridiculous the grind became post 30.
I held on for a little while, hoping they would make changes - but it became clear that regardless of how often the fanbois chanted "Just wait and see! Just wait and see! Just wait and see!" NCsoft had no real intention of fixing the widely agreed upon issues.
So I packed up, unsubscribed, and uninstalled.
Haven't been back once. Most likely never will go back.
The moment I found out that Tera is going to be handled by the same man who produced Aion, I lost all interest in it. I will not be buying it, or trying it out.
After the disappointing Aion experience - the only game I am willing to try associated with NCsoft is GW2.
And that's due to Arenanet's record - not NCsoft's.
Old enough to know better - young enough to do it anyway.
Comments
QQ much? You were let down by Aion because you had preconceived what you wanted it to be. When it turned out to be a game other than what you predicted, you say they let ya down. You just had false hopes, thats all.
Forming your opinion of a not-yet released game based on the company that backs it is rather narrow minded. The only company that deserves that stigma would be Sony. Everyone knows thats where games go to die. NcSoft has such a wide array of games that are SO different that you can't blame the faults of one game onto another, especially since you haven't tried the one you're rendering your strong opinion about. Also, you used a horribly inaccurate (and rather cliche) term there that has no bearing on anything really... "exact same". I can say in full confidence that it isn't even possible to make the "exact same" mistakes... ever.... for anyone. (lets even look over the fact that the cliche is redundant anyway)
and, I have no idea what NCSofts customer or technical support is all about as I've never required any of it. I've played their titles for years now on a plethora of configurations and machines and they always work for me.
Well my answer to that is "no" ...I will never pre order another NCSoft title (except maybe GW2 which is put out by Arenanet). NCSoft has a horrible track record of operating games.
different branch of NC. The CEO's of NC are busy trying to sue their old team (that quit)--made lineage two. For using the code they created while working for NC; Then making a new game (TERA).
(Bad Grammar Incoming on purpose):
I IS GOT TEH HOPE IT BE BALLING AND BRAWLING. AND KEEP ME INTEREST. AND KEEP TOSE BOTS AWAY AND GOLD SELLERS BANNED.
Yet.. in some cases since its a Korean company making it, they may have less because virtual currency selling is legal in Korea.
Nice to see that someone else knows their NCSoft history.
Laudanum - Romance. Revenge. Revolution.
Crappy, petty people breed and raise crappy, petty kids.
i dont agree actualy i must say tht every1 makes misstakes we are humans after all, but NC haz fixed almost all the problems with aion and probably they will fix it at 100% with the new patch , U cant think tht companys who are making games are to bad ..lets just say tht ppl have become much smarter and thts a big reason why u see more hackers ...and so on...
Blade and soul it will be a gr8 game i really hope tht they gonna have open pvp and not the arena system and tournaments as i heard
This is only my opinion cheers guys
im curious to know, what exactly happened to Aion?
this lol .
/agree
OP, I play Aion and like it very much. NC has never been great with customer service but I feel that they are far better with Aion than they were with Lineage 2.
In any case, I'll try Blade and Soul. To me a game is a game not a lifestyle choice so if I don't like it I just won't play it.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
My only reaction is "NCsoft is making ANOTHER MMORPG?!". I mean jeez. Aion is still being bottle-fed and they are already working on another? Wow... I've literally lost all hope for the MMORPG genre...
Remember, NC's mission is not to make "one" mmo but to make many of them that are attractive to a host of different players. That is one of the reasons NC actually started.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
The point is not that NCSoft is putting out another game and or is it going to be good (I myself having played a few of their games) It is more over that the coummunity as a whole growing tried of the same old game with a new face. Are we as a whole wanting a fresh new mmo that will grab us by our keyboards and drag us into the computer screen wanting more!?!?! I feel it is time for a change not only with companys like NCSoft but MMORPG as a whole from Blade & Soul to Shaiya it is not only a time for something better but something that we can look at and say ((OMFG I AM AMAZED! )) :P This is my thoughts on this that and $1 can get you a Coke(or Pepsi) thank you for reading
The ONLY TRUE WOLFX............................
Since when was more choices a bad thing?
Just because they adopted a different business style from Blizzard, doesn't mean it's going to suck. Matter of fact, I'm glad NC decided not place all their eggs in 1 basket.
Any faith I had with NCsoft died with Tabula Rasa when they refused to be patient with a completely unique game.
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
What do you mean?
Aion is a well polished game and likely the best mmo right now (yeah i know its a matter of opinion).
What do you mean?
Aion is a well polished game and likely the best mmo right now (yeah i know its a matter of opinion).
That's like arguing between a fork or a spork to assassinate that annoying kid down the street with. At the end of the day, you're holding utensils.
Aion is a WoW version of Lineage 2, there's no and if or buts about it. It's a VERY terrible game. Please stop insinuating that it's anything more than a gag-grind fest.
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
What do you mean?
Aion is a well polished game and likely the best mmo right now (yeah i know its a matter of opinion).
That's like arguing between a fork or a spork to assassinate that annoying kid down the street with. At the end of the day, you're holding utensils.
Aion is a WoW version of Lineage 2, there's no and if or buts about it. It's a VERY terrible game. Please stop insinuating that it's anything more than a gag-grind fest.
Oh sorry of course your opinion is the right one. All people who play Aion should imediately stop playin the game since you said its a terrible game.
The kid here is you who cant accept that people have their own point of view. If you dont like the game then dont play it. If you were that mature as you pretend then you wouldnt bash people because they like games that you dont.
NcSoft did a lot of things right with Aion and i'm cautiously optimistic about B&S.
What do you mean?
Aion is a well polished game and likely the best mmo right now (yeah i know its a matter of opinion).
That's like arguing between a fork or a spork to assassinate that annoying kid down the street with. At the end of the day, you're holding utensils.
Aion is a WoW version of Lineage 2, there's no and if or buts about it. It's a VERY terrible game. Please stop insinuating that it's anything more than a gag-grind fest.
Oh sorry of course your opinion is the right one. All people who play Aion should imediately stop playin the game since you said its a terrible game.
The kid here is you who cant accept that people have their own point of view. If you dont like the game then dont play it. If you were that mature as you pretend then you wouldnt bash people because they like games that you dont.
NcSoft did a lot of things right with Aion and i'm cautiously optimistic about B&S.
In addition, Aion has the same type of game play mechanics as LOTRO. You go kill 10 bears, you go collect 10 spider silks you kill 10 crebain.
Exactly the same.
Yet I don't see people calling LOTRO a grind game. Oh, and same mechanics as WoW.
Somehow people have forgotten that grind games are "go to this field/cave/dungeon and kill monsters for 2 hours and log off and do it again the next day".
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
exactly. What you'll find with ANY new mmo, Aion, Blade and Soul, even say a elmo's world online(heaven forbid), is that they will be compared to what is available and fully updated, most people complain that aion or other new mmo's don't stack up to world of warcraft, with all of it's expansions and years of server optimization etc... But they are not comparing it to what world of warcraft was when it first launched which was horrible compared to the launch of aion or most new mmo's. Blizzard is fail out the door because diablo 3 and starcraft 2 are going to be delayed until who knows when, like almost all their other titles. Give us a release date AND DO NOT CHANGE IT FOR ANYTHING... Sure blizzard wants to get a game out that is pristine and fairly bug free for the most part, but waiting past reasonable amounts of time for something then finding out oh wait we are not giving you the full game here's part 1 whenever we decide to give it to you. Same held true for expansions, pushed back slightly, no I'm sorry anyone who gives world of warcraft a great review is only looking at 98% of the good stuff and only 2% of what's wrong with it. You want a game without grind? then find a game that has 0 combat. I have yet to see a mmo that is action oriented that didn't have kill quests.
Just my two cents, if you don't have change I understand!
Oh my...
I didn't think anyone else had a pulse way back then.
Remember, NC's mission is not to make "one" mmo but to make many of them that are attractive to a host of different players. That is one of the reasons NC actually started."
It works in theory but not in practice.
You could probably call NCsoft and ask for support on one of their games, and have them totally bewildered that they even own it.
Jokes aside, While it is hard to encompass everyones tastes into a single MMO, It is even harder to make a slurry of games to try to appease each group of them while maintaining a development team for each game without running out of manpower and returns on money.
And that is while trying to make more games for different types of people.
VictimX ~
These flashy trailers and amazing graphics seem all to familiar to me, and after the huge letdown that is "Aion" what is going to stop NCSoft making the exact same mistakes in B&S? How are they going to make their terrible customer support and other problems better by releasing a new title?
I would really like to think that Blade & Soul will be a great game but I can't help feeling that it's going to go down the same road as Aion.
Opinions?
Okay.
By your logic; since you are a horrible person, your infant little sister is going to be a horrible person simply because she is born from your mother, Tabitha the Witch.
Despite what might muse you in you're alone time, there is not a group of three people somewhere in the bowels of NCsoft thinkalating some diabolical evil Korean game to leech your money.
Just as the people who made Dragon Age: Origins are almost completely different people than the ones who made Mass Effect.
These are two different teams of people within NCsoft creating and developing these MMOs; while they may borrow people from time to time, they still remain separate teams.
What may have affected Aion may not affect Blade and Soul as they are two separate teams, they might switch out people from time to time, but they still remain separate.
You placing the blame on all of NCsoft simply because of one development team is absurd.
If however your problem is with Customer Service, then you have all the right to be upset.
dunno if worrying about blizz pushing back release dates is something to concern one's self with. they've done it with everything because they're very attached to their vision, a gaming company composed of gamers. they pushed wow's release back plenty and it certainly didn't hurt that game.
implying aion is a failure or dud is bad form, although i complete sympathize. B&S caught my eye when a buddy in AoC sent me the trailer nearly 2 years ago now. when i saw the aion vision trailer my first thought was aion was a beta of B&S.
it's been many months since i quit aion but the last posts on the guild forum i read were people sharing techniques for what to do when grieved by other players wrongfully reporting them for farming (while they were completing collection/kill quests lol). that, i would say, would have to be a pretty big disappointment in anyone's book. a failure of sorts to be sure.
i used to be drooling for B&S, but getting disco'd every 2 mins during Aion abyss fortress fights, never getting any coins for my participation, and all the other well known issues people list soured me on the NCSoft style. still...B&S appears to have a lot of what i want so i'll most likely have to give it a shot and hope for the best...
i understand everyone opinion is different than another; but it helps people kinda get an idea of what they will have to face if they would like to play the game.
for people who never gamed with NCsoft before. keep in mind that, reading forums about your future game is fun; dont take it serious but decide for yourself
.
Because, there are people who actually know what they are talking about versus people who happened to stop by and make a random post can confuse the Fk out of you.
i -myself- preordered through gamestop a limited collector edition for Aion + 3month subcription which cost me about $100+. I dont mind, if this game which i waited since the day it was only a domain.com with a "comming soon" message can keep me sitting down and enjoy my evening with.
I had a really good time playing Aion because i've met a lot of amazing aion players who are high school teachers, aircraft designer, biologist, cool buddies from different continents including some very nice game laborers of gold sellers and so on...it is hard to believe how it attracted so many awsome people from different fields into one game.
For people who disagreed with gamers who distrusted NCsoft. I just hope you were there and know what you are standing on with your argument.
if my tooth hurts, would you know? no you dont!
if i cry out my tooth hurts? you say im whiney!
well at 1 time, there were 3000+ post of complaints and there were not even 1 single word from GMs, nor forum moderators. At that time, only you, a pretty covered box, and an active server were existed. Players were so annoyed that they started flaming threads and cursed at other gamers. was it a riot? Why? were they immature? i do believe they are very mature individuals. Am i mature? i am but not enough because if i am fully mature i would only "look and stay low".
well, lets not argue over Aion anymore, lets do experiment ourselves and find our own answer. Lets ask your buddies around you; and see how many bought the game and stil playing?
Blade and Soul trailer made me drool, but to be caution i will not pre-ordered the game nor start to play the moment it comes out. Someone stated that "do test beta first and see if its worth to pay or not". NCsoft did fixed a lot of problems in Aion and game is getting better and better. People joined game in different periods of game have different experiences. So lets peace out
Vietlove
Hmm i wonder how a lot of people feel about this game a few months after this discussion.. For those of you that havent played AION i'll list a few flaws i had with the game.. Let me tell you this, AION was my first MMO, i did hit end-game in AION with my cleric (and was one of the first on Fregion to do so with a cleric, and WAS the first cleric to have full plat-coin gear set), and i enjoyed a lot of the time i spent.. But it was mainly because of what the above poster expressed, the ammount of diverse people that flocked to AION..
My legion was made of people from the army. people from asia, girls, cops, robbers, whatever.. If i could go back in time to any part of my "gameing" life and relive it it'd be back when AION first launched and i met up with all those people.. The night i got my lvl 40 orange weapon sticks out the most, as it started off rifting in asmodae, then running one of their instances, then flying under a fort in the abyss to gather mats, then finnaly back to sanctum to get my weapon.. It took a course of 7hours to do all this, and time just flew by.. That was about the last "good" experience i had with AION, besides the fort battles and all..
Anyways, heres a quick list of the things that AION did wrong.. Some of them are just stupid mistakes that could've easily been fixed, but never were.. First off, i actually didn't mind the solo-elite-grinding, but a lot of people hated it.. A easy way to fix this would be to make it where you actually got XP doing instances or quests.. But wait, the instances are extremley boring crowded pulls, next to another crowded pull, next to another crowded pull; make a mistake and if you have no CC you'll be running for the end of the instance.. This would go on for hours till you met up with some tank-and-spank boss that'd likley never drop you anything (hated getting a A rank in DP only to get a flame cap.) What about the quests? Well, if you like killing 10000 mob's for worthless xp/coins then be my guest... There is actually not one quest that stands-out for me in AION; nor is there an instance with the exception of Steel Rake which was pretty fun, but dragged on too long and Dark Poeta which was awsome instance that never dropped any items that made it worth it (besides the bloodstains)..
So the questing sucked.. The instances were meger, at best.. AION did do PvP right for the most part, besides all the limitations it gives on it's PvP.. Fort raids!?! Awsome!! Oh, but you can only do them 1-2 a day, at random times, and sometimes not at all.. Ok, well rifting sounds fun? Well you can only enter certain rifts at certain levels, and the rifts pop randomly and are only open for a hour or so or until the max # of players enter em.. I had a blast rifting, but as soon as i hit 40 i realized there were no more rifts left... I really stuck it out till 46 tho in hopes that Dredgion would be the answer to all my prayers... And for the most part it was, and it kept me from quitting AION until i hit 50.. Ofcourse, like all of AIONS pvp it had its own flaws.. It only popped up 3 times a day, 4-8hours apart from eachother so it was likley you were gonna make it each time it popped; if you could find a group in que at all..
BUT, the biggest downfall for AION was its end-game, or lack of.. At lvl 50 you were only allowed into 3 different instances (Steel Rake, some REALLY boring instance i forgot the name of, and Dark Poeta which is actually prolly one of the coolest instances i've ever played in any MMO.) So yeah, Dark Poeta is fun but you run it once and you're locked out a few hours, and not only that even after getting A and S ranks the boss only drops good items 1/1000 times.. It's very likley you'll go a whole DP run without finding one useful item.. So without instanceing you can always PvP, but PvPing in AION is ganking or getting ganked or doing fort raids / dredgion (which i already explained what was wrong with em.) BUT worse thing of all about AION and the reason a good portion of its end-game population quit can be summed up in TWO words... MIRAGENTS / FENRILS..
At lvl 45 i chose to grind out platinum coins for decent gear.. It took me 3 weeks of killing easy mobs (usually took 3-4 hits to kill) and gathering coins to get.. Only to figure out at lvl 50 you get miragents, a set everyone can try to get at lvl 50.. Even with my plat coin gear i stood no chance to any character in miragents, no other person in the game could stand up against a character in miragents.. I had jus spent 4 months grinding to 50 and another 3 weeks grinding out it's gear only to get beat by another lvl 50 in miragents; but not only beat but not even able to land a hit on 'em.. So you're pretty much forced into getting miragents; which is the worse grind in any game, ever.. I put up with the first 3 parts of the quest, then i got on the Miragent Leggings which usually makes or breaks AION for people..
I spent 2 weeks gathering 125 bloodstains.. No proc.. I spent another 2 weeks gathering 125 bloodstains.. No proc.. So i spent all the kinah i had amassed over my whole playtime for one more try.. No proc.. During this whole ordeal several guild mates that hit 50 weeks after i did got lucky and proc'd their miragents first try.. Other's were on their 10th and 12th tries.. That's what put the nail in the coffin for me.. Pretty much you're whole end-game comes down to weather you can randomly get lucky enough to proc you're leggings or not.. Theres no skill involved, just luck.. And if you failed you lost WEEKS of grinding and got NOTHING in return (besides on ur 5th try i think you get 100blood stains, but in order to get 5 trys you'd have to waste 5months grinding lol.) The complaints flooded into NC Softs forums; there was 2 pages full of threads just on miragents leggings complaining about how end-games soley based on RNG.. NC Soft never responded to a single one, and gave generic copy & paste emails to each person that tried to send a suggestion that way.. Trust me i know cuz i got the SAME exact response as other people who were sending in their suggestions/voiceing their concerns.. People quit.. Half my legion was gone in less then a week after hitting end game.. Even after all the good times we'd had, people just left and never came back after being so frustrated failing their 1st or 2nd proc on the miragents leggings.. I was one of those people, after my 4th attempt i was outta there..
Unfortunantley even to this day i havnt found anything fill AION's void.. It was a great game.. With so many design flaws that could've EASILY been fixed in some small patches had NC Soft listened to their customers.. Now they are already havin to go thru server merges to help with the population.. Not only that the recent patch that was promised to us for close to 8-9 months came out and barley has any content in it.. And most of all it didnt even fix the miragents quest, you're end game is still based off RNG, but the ammount of stains it takes is 100 now instead of 125; which is about 3-4 days less of grinding.. Which isn't much considering if you're unlucky enough you could theoretically fail you're miragents leggings a life-time and never proc them..
Yea.. those are the things that bug me with AION.. I didnt even mind the bots or gold sellers.. The gameplay it's self was so awsome, the game had so much potential, had NC Soft made some minor changes it'd prolly be the actual WoW-contender it was made out to be.
Currently Playing:
Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
No.
Someone nailed it a couple posts up. The game has been out for a few months short of a year now and they are finally addressed some issues such as blood drops, server population issues, and the fact that the ncsoft west version of the game had always been patches (yes plural) behind the korean version. There is no end game. Past 40 you have only a handful of instances to do other than grind your arse off in non abyss zones, and there was no rifts into the level 44-50 area that level 50's could participate in. Because of the AP system, no one of higher rank enters the abyss unless they are escorted by a raid or participating in a fort raid. And the fact that if your side controls the forts you can essentially PVE your way to the best PVP gear. The abyss is frickin dead. Certain classes are gods in abyss pvp like sorcs and rangers. Thats why the ground abyss coming out in 2.0 is going to murder the abyss even more than it already is. The game was fun, till you hit 40+. Then you really have to be a devoted grinder to make it to 50. I don't know how many SR runs (Steel Rake runs) I had to do to get up to like 47, and then begin the repeatable quest grind for a gold extendable (i played a chanter) Ugh....just ugh. I loved the game but finally with nothing to do at 50 except for grind the core for bloods and fail your god damn fenris pant combine OVER AND OVER AND OVER again got tiring. And i was on siel, a pretty active server with the best NA guild on the server. I played Asmo's against them and yet the abyss was still dead.
Oh not to mention they have a leak on their website. I never used their forums. Always used aionsource.com because the first time i did, i got hacked the next day and then my account got banned because of suspicious behavior or some crap. Finally took me a month to get it back. Then they revamped their forum's so i decided i would give them another shot, just chalking it up to coincidence. Well i sign in, make a post and the next day i get hacked again. There were times where i would sign into my aion account to get onto the search function and log into someone elses account. Happened all the time. NCsoft is the reason AIon is hurting. Not the game itself. Poor customer service, poor everything. I will never play another NCsoft game, and im completely glad that NCsoft has nothing to do with GW2.
I think the content was fine... Course, for a WESTERN MMO, it wasn't even close...
See the problem I find with the game is the player's mentality... The elements are there for a complete game but the people are so 'bored' because they expect a game to be as huge as well at launch and give away things so easily...
OK yes, RNG is old and boring and very depressing as we westerners can't deal with that.. It is a grind, but what MMO isn't a grind? I remember doing MC for 6 months just trying to get armor for Blackwing Lair... The tank&spank super easy boring 4 hour druid love gear dropping instance was just too much.. But at the time it was something refreshing and new.. I think WoW has it's members simply cause they got into the MMO right when MMO needed a newcomer...
Aion has barely been out longer than that time period...
The instances are different in AIon, they don't have a progressive type feel to them... The whole instance such as DP can fully be done with ease.. But time and speed determine the outcome of a boss at the end and loot drops aren't like what you see in WoW...
The game is far from perfect but so it other games.. I feel Aion still has the closest and most fun PvP atm than any other game... Even with gimped classes, I still feel I can beat most other classes...
Aion is stil very successful, it just didn't appeal to the Westerners like it has in Korea... There is only 5 servers for the NA version but over 36 still in Korea...
The biggest problem I think the game had was the lack of communication in the East/West depts of Aion.. It being a Korean game, NA was kind of just getting the least amount of attention.. And I personally think that was a wise choice.. Why would I support the ideas and feedback from a country that has abandoned the game? Hmm.. 32 servers of people giving their input vs. North America's 5 servers of people... I think their planning and development is going to cater to the larger crowd... Sorry, but that's just how it is.. If you don't like how the players are running things in the East, then just don't play it... It obviously doesn't have western appeal to it...
If you look at the article here: You'll see why I feel WoW has also destroyed gaming to a degree..
http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=4221#e4cf8
A lot of this article explains what I've been saying and reasons why I quit games like WoW...
While Aion is a long way off from being perfect.. At the moment, it's the only MMO really catching my attention till the likes of Blade & Soul or maybe Guild Wars 2.. Ironically, both these game will be under the same publisher, but least different dev teams as GW2 is Arena.net and B&S is a totally different team from the Aion one which I think is also another NCSoft mistake.. I think teams really should share technology because some games fail at certain things.. Like recently the Aion mergers/transfers.. I mean really, NCSoft knew it would happen being they been in the MMO business a while, why wasn't this technology already considered so it would be way easier to do..
Well, I've not given up on Aion yet.. Quite personally, the graphics alone keep me from going back to WoW even with the new expansion on the horizon.. I think Aion 2.0 has more the game I was looking for in the original Aion release... If I'm wrong then I'm wrong.. But like said, there isn't a whole lot to choose from for now and I stick to a game till it's dead.... Or something really slamming comes out that I will awe to... Tera Online is NOT it for me... B&S or GW2 might be...
I do agree to some degree the above posters response.. Tabula Rasa was a great idea.. A great game.. But it lacked in content... I think Aion fell into that same category for a lot of people... Simply cause the content people want require a carebear attittude for the game.. Aion has been successful enough to fund more projects upcoming.. I think attitudes towards MMO companies is sort of a two edge sword... You stop playing a game to voice opinion it sux, you also destroy the funding for the new games or even the current one...
It's not all the subscribers fault though.. The mentality of the companies destroy the games too.. Most game companies are only in it for the short haul surge of sales from the initial hype of a game.. Then usually scraps it to start new games instead of further develop into their current... To me, this is sort of a fail approach also... I have a friend in the gaming industry as well.. Support and quick response to in-game issues/bugs is what she said that really give players a boost in confidence that the company is trying to do what they can... But she also said, they don't care about a games long-term also.. That most and even her company was only in it for the quick surge of profit...
Anyway, that's my 2 cents and little then some...
*edit*
Just like to add.. I think 1.5 screwed up Aion... In 1.2 there wasn't any DP or Fenris/Miragent... What gear you got was in various dungeons like DC and Indratu and a mix of other things like PvP.. When 1.5 came out.. People completely skipped some of these instances... I think also the ability to summon people to the biggest bosses in the game also messed up the game... I led a team to kill the bosses in Indratu only to find a full elyos zerg already there using level 25 SMs to summon people to the boss lair.. They didn't have to work to it.. The bosses became simply FARMED... This cuts asmos off completely from being to go to Elyos land and kill bosses.. Also in 1.5 there was little need for these other than enchantment stones... Which killed a lotta players interest to even wanna do them.. When you hit 50, you didn't do anything but DP and grind bloods.. Why? because that was the best set and it didn't require but a 6 man group to do it... This kept relations on the game to a all time low I think.. It defeated purpose of having a large guild for support... When the game first came out.. You saw lotta guilds over the 90 member limit with them having to make 2 guilds with similar names.. Because guilds people thought would be much needed.. The heavy and long grind to 50 changed that.. Most people soloing and then realizing once 50, very little guild support was actually needed... It still isn't today.. I still see most alliances for forts being built by the LFG tool than it being in-guild alliances... I think by destroying the need for community is another huge mistake.. I played in China beta for 6 mos before moving to NA version, so I've been playing this game lot longer than most and still continuing today... Just wanted to add that I felt the release of 1.5 on NA launch actually destroyed the game to a degree, I think it was extremely poorly thought out and it just gave some the best gear to the RMTers quick while it left others a painful grind...
One thing I will give Aion though and NCSoft credit for is.. INCREDIBLY stable servers.. I remember when WoW launched, the servers would go down for hours even during primetime or go through a series of rollbacks and reboots.. Ugh... Was probably most horrible experience...
I never saw that in Aion... Launch was so extremely smooth, I was impressed.. Lag happens.. I don't think there is another game out there that could support the amount of people that showed up for the first abyss fort or the one that happened immediately after mergers.. Yes it was laggy, but most servers would have just crashed all to hell even at the sight of 1/4th the amount of people... Aion to me has all the right elements to a good game, it really should focus more on less zerg though.. I mean implement tournaments or instanced scenarios or more dredgions.. This gear gained from smaller group PvP combat allows you to get the armor for the bigger stuff.. Tahabata's Weapons should be in Divine instead of DP.. But the PvP medals to get gear should be in like 2 or 3 Dredgion-like instances and tournament style instances.. Not in zerg fort battles... Right now it's just the opposite and if one faction has a substancial amount of players.. GG for the other faction..
Another thing about WoW at launch, no PvP system... WoW also had very tank and spank dungeons and long boring instances... Hmm.. Sound familiar? I think just because WoW was the first to the scene and there was no other competition really is what made it successful.. All the other MMO games now following have to be compared... WoW wasn't first, it too is a copy/clone of MMO previous games but at the time they came out.. There was little F2P and other games to compete with it... So when it opened.. It's limited and very crappy end-game felt like a lot... I think Aion opened with more content that WoW first launch... WoW's progressive instances like MC just made the game feel a lot deeper since some bosses just couldn't be killed right away.. Unlike in DP where the bosses are easier and loot drops less, it's time that gets you the better boss at the end... Most people do like a progressive feeling of accomplishment.. I myself fall into this category... I'd rather have a harder time killing a boss and get loot from it every time than it being easier with less loot...
Anyway...
OMG, I wish I read this first.. haha.. ^^ this is probably explains it best..
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To sum above up:
Make forts going live more often and variable...
REMOVE Fenris/Miragent line or at least make it quests that remove the RMTs dream and something you have to do in instance... i.e something with a drop off a boss and crafting combined with no RNG... I also think this quest forced more soloing for such long periods which pulled the Aion community apart other than someone QQing about not-proc'ing their pants (which was all the community there was).
More dredgion que times and maybe even more dredgion-type instances...
Remove the RNG and improve loot tables of instances even if it means increasing instances' difficulty...
I think bugs need to be fixed (i.e. Balaur not taking Kysis) and improve Balaur A.I.
Allow rifts into L50 zones... (WTF, you get 50 and you can't pvp??? I thought I was playing a PvP game here and now I'd rather twink a L40 than be L50, it was more fun cause I could rift in more zones and find more rifts to take.)
Increase quest XP or give Group XP bonuses...
Improve instances adding progressive interesting encounters...
Add some interesting quests...
Remove all the time and restrictions to Level 50 PvP, balance classes a tad bit better (especially in air combat.. I.e. the sorc/ranger being OP in abyss without the player needing a smidgen of skill.)
ONE of MY OWN additions here... Please allow world bosses more difficult and cut off summoning to them or even put bosses like Jeshucci etc, in a rifted instance where both Asmos and Elyos have equal access to and can fight over them.. After all, it's pvpve yes? I go to elyos land with a group and never see bosses up cause they were already killed by large groups of elyos that just had L25 SMs summon their whole party to the boss to kill it quick... That's just simply stupid.. And Amso land has no bosses over L46.. Another really big stupid thing...
If you look at server stats, you'll see that Elyos have roughly the same amount of chars as asmos do... The imbalance comes from a larger Asmo inactive account status... It's just that more Asmos quit than Elyos simply cause we are cut off from most the end-game goodies... We have no bosses or anything to keep us active and it's really boring... It really takes forever to get a +10 weapon simply cause there is nothing to kill on Asmo side... So of course, Elyos accounts will stay active a lot longer than Asmo accounts... Then course, Asmos are simply outnumbered which is another huge factor in forts, etc.
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I think those are things that are easily fixed... The mechanics for most of it is there... i.e adding Rifts to new other locations and such or changing the limitations of current rifts...
Also I'd like to point out that the player base is partially at fault with the Miragent/Fenris line.. That gear is PvE best... I think people shooting for it before actually PvP gear was a mistake... If you got stuck on pants for months on end, you were left with nothing.. Where as PvP gear was always at finger tips as long as you saved your AP.. Most people stayed Rank 9 to grind bloods so they would be hassled less... So if you fail your proc.. another couple weeks down the drain of nothing... So the mentality was backwards on this... I seen people get L40 w/L50 weapon gear shortly after becoming 50 and it was way better than Fenris/Miragent in PvP and it could be used just as well in pve... That's where most people went wrong including myself... Thinking Fenris/Miragent was the be-all end-game gear...
I also had a huge disappointing let-down with Aion.
I loved the flexibility possible with character creation (probably the best I've encountered to date). I loved the first 30 levels pve wise. The pace was just right, and if they had kept it where it was by 30, would have worked.
I was disppointed that the pvp was far crappier than hyped and advertised.
I detested how ridiculous the grind became post 30.
I held on for a little while, hoping they would make changes - but it became clear that regardless of how often the fanbois chanted "Just wait and see! Just wait and see! Just wait and see!" NCsoft had no real intention of fixing the widely agreed upon issues.
So I packed up, unsubscribed, and uninstalled.
Haven't been back once. Most likely never will go back.
The moment I found out that Tera is going to be handled by the same man who produced Aion, I lost all interest in it. I will not be buying it, or trying it out.
After the disappointing Aion experience - the only game I am willing to try associated with NCsoft is GW2.
And that's due to Arenanet's record - not NCsoft's.
Old enough to know better - young enough to do it anyway.