Potential new Player with some questions.

krazymagic

First of all, I dont want this to turn into a fan boi vs hater war. I am looking for mature responses from some veterens in the Aion community. I dont want biased answers to my few questions, but honest responses.

Im an MMO veteren, and have watched aion for over a year. I have never played it however. I have a few questions about the current state of the game.

1. I have heard a lot about Gold seller chat spam being overly obsessive, and botting being rampant. Is this still a huge problem? How bad is it REALLY? Has it really hurt the economy like some say? I want to see how big an impact Gold sellers have made on the game, and whether the problem is out of control.

 

2.How is the population status? Ive seen many people saying that servers are dead, while others call them crazy. Ive played in some MMO's that dwindled after launch into unpopulated servers and it is one of my biggest dislikes in an mmo- is severe underpopulation and no merge. This happened in both Vanguard and Age of Conan, where both companies waited until population server wide was literally 300-400 players online on the entire server before merges finally happened. Is Aion headed down this same route? Is population on a steep decline right now?

 

The fact that Aion may be grindy does not bother me. I played FFXI for 3 1/2 years and many complained of it being a huge grind, but it is the best MMO Ive ever played to date. Thanks to any who can help shed some light on the current status of Aion for me, as Im currently thinking of buying it and giving it a try.

Sovrath

Originally posted by krazymagic


First of all, I dont want this to turn into a fan boi vs hater war. I am looking for mature responses from some veterens in the Aion community. I dont want biased answers to my few questions, but honest responses.
Im an MMO veteren, and have watched aion for over a year. I have never played it however. I have a few questions about the current state of the game.
1. I have heard a lot about Gold seller chat spam being overly obsessive, and botting being rampant. Is this still a huge problem? How bad is it REALLY? Has it really hurt the economy like some say? I want to see how big an impact Gold sellers have made on the game, and whether the problem is out of control.
 
2.How is the population status? Ive seen many people saying that servers are dead, while others call them crazy. Ive played in some MMO's that dwindled after launch into unpopulated servers and it is one of my biggest dislikes in an mmo- is severe underpopulation and no merge. This happened in both Vanguard and Age of Conan, where both companies waited until population server wide was literally 300-400 players online on the entire server before merges finally happened. Is Aion headed down this same route? Is population on a steep decline right now?
 
The fact that Aion may be grindy does not bother me. I played FFXI for 3 1/2 years and many complained of it being a huge grind, but it is the best MMO Ive ever played to date. Thanks to any who can help shed some light on the current status of Aion for me, as Im currently thinking of buying it and giving it a try.

 

They seem to have the spammer/gold selling store adverrtisments under control. Mind you that doesn't mean you won't see them but they go away after a few hours. Everytime I report one of the stores it seems to vanish after a few hours.

Spam is nothing like it was when it first started and for the most part the chat is spam free.

Population is fine on Triniel.

krazymagic

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by krazymagic


First of all, I dont want this to turn into a fan boi vs hater war. I am looking for mature responses from some veterens in the Aion community. I dont want biased answers to my few questions, but honest responses.
Im an MMO veteren, and have watched aion for over a year. I have never played it however. I have a few questions about the current state of the game.
1. I have heard a lot about Gold seller chat spam being overly obsessive, and botting being rampant. Is this still a huge problem? How bad is it REALLY? Has it really hurt the economy like some say? I want to see how big an impact Gold sellers have made on the game, and whether the problem is out of control.
 
2.How is the population status? Ive seen many people saying that servers are dead, while others call them crazy. Ive played in some MMO's that dwindled after launch into unpopulated servers and it is one of my biggest dislikes in an mmo- is severe underpopulation and no merge. This happened in both Vanguard and Age of Conan, where both companies waited until population server wide was literally 300-400 players online on the entire server before merges finally happened. Is Aion headed down this same route? Is population on a steep decline right now?
 
The fact that Aion may be grindy does not bother me. I played FFXI for 3 1/2 years and many complained of it being a huge grind, but it is the best MMO Ive ever played to date. Thanks to any who can help shed some light on the current status of Aion for me, as Im currently thinking of buying it and giving it a try.

 

They seem to have the spammer/gold selling store adverrtisments under control. Mind you that doesn't mean you won't see them but they go away after a few hours. Everytime I report one of the stores it seems to vanish after a few hours.

Spam is nothing like it was when it first started and for the most part the chat is spam free.

Population is fine on Triniel.

 

Thanks sovrath for your response. I appreciate it. Its good to hear they atleast got the Chat spam under control.

 

Id still love to hear from several other members.

Rohn

As Sovrath said, the gold-seller spam isn't much of a problem anymore.  You'll see them very infrequently, and they are elimiated pretty quickly now.

The botting problem has also been significantly reduced.  It'll never be eliminated - just as it hasn't been eliminated in other games - but it isn't the same problem it was.  It shows that NCSoft is taking the problem seriously.

Regarding population, I can only give my impression from my server, but Azphel also appears to still have a very healthy population.  I couldn't give you any hard numbers, but generally speaking I have no problems getting into groups, or finding other people to fight with or against.

Wolfenpride

Theirs still a goldspammer here and there, but once you block those few you'll forget they were even there.

Population is really good, last night I went and gathered the pop of every level and it came out to roughly 1200 on elyos, double that for Asmodians and you've got 2400+ server-wide, as an estimate of course. This only applies for Lumiel anyways, Zikel is roughly the same last i checked.

Sacfed

Gold spamming is infrequent, no worse then any other MMO I have played.  The only thing that has happened to the economy is that gathered material prices fluxuate due to lack of farmers.

I can't say there is a huge issue with botting , although when i jump rfts i do commonly find them in obscure areas, but they do not seem to upset flow of hunting anymore. (I personally have never had any problems even at its speculated worst)

The population on Yustiel seems very full, there are always groups forming and lots of people around to chat with on /LFG. The Abyss is very constant at 18% control each side. with the remainder to the Balur.

 

Lathander81

Originally posted by krazymagic


First of all, I dont want this to turn into a fan boi vs hater war. I am looking for mature responses from some veterens in the Aion community. I dont want biased answers to my few questions, but honest responses.
Im an MMO veteren, and have watched aion for over a year. I have never played it however. I have a few questions about the current state of the game.
1. I have heard a lot about Gold seller chat spam being overly obsessive, and botting being rampant. Is this still a huge problem? How bad is it REALLY? Has it really hurt the economy like some say? I want to see how big an impact Gold sellers have made on the game, and whether the problem is out of control.
 
2.How is the population status? Ive seen many people saying that servers are dead, while others call them crazy. Ive played in some MMO's that dwindled after launch into unpopulated servers and it is one of my biggest dislikes in an mmo- is severe underpopulation and no merge. This happened in both Vanguard and Age of Conan, where both companies waited until population server wide was literally 300-400 players online on the entire server before merges finally happened. Is Aion headed down this same route? Is population on a steep decline right now?
 
The fact that Aion may be grindy does not bother me. I played FFXI for 3 1/2 years and many complained of it being a huge grind, but it is the best MMO Ive ever played to date. Thanks to any who can help shed some light on the current status of Aion for me, as Im currently thinking of buying it and giving it a try.

 

The do have the spammers and botters undercontroll for the most part. Not any here close to as bad as it used to be.  This was a huge relief for me as well.

I play really late on my server and I still get back to back FT groups. Lots of people on and playin even when I about to go to bed lol   So population is fine.  But I'm speaking for Ariel.

ghaiana

I play in Europe on Castor, we have a legion with about 40 members who are active and we're only ranked 34-36th in the Abyss Rank. So my guess is that the higher ranked legions have even more active players. When there's a fight in the Abyss there are  always plenty of people (my screen often is full of players). When I play on my lower alts there are everywhere people around still. There are botters and goldspammers, but not so annoying anymore as a few months ago. You can easily block them anyway.  The LFG channel is always lively and people ask for groups for all quests. In my experience it mostly takes half an hour max to get a group.

Azerin

Originally posted by krazymagic


First of all, I dont want this to turn into a fan boi vs hater war. I am looking for mature responses from some veterens in the Aion community. I dont want biased answers to my few questions, but honest responses.
Im an MMO veteren, and have watched aion for over a year. I have never played it however. I have a few questions about the current state of the game.
1. I have heard a lot about Gold seller chat spam being overly obsessive, and botting being rampant. Is this still a huge problem? How bad is it REALLY? Has it really hurt the economy like some say? I want to see how big an impact Gold sellers have made on the game, and whether the problem is out of control.
NCSoft has been getting pretty aggressive on the sellers, to the point where some people are being banned accidentally based on circumstancial evidence. As far as I know, a quick chat with CS usually fixes this, unless you actually are guilty. As far as in game, I would say 95% of the spam is gone, and I believe they did this by applying chat filters until they can come up with a more permanent fix. As long as its not on my screen, I don't care how they take care of it. I know on my server, one Legion lost quite a few members after they were banned for buying Kinah. They openly admitted to it as well, but I guess there's always some people who have no objections against this practice.
 2.How is the population status? Ive seen many people saying that servers are dead, while others call them crazy. Ive played in some MMO's that dwindled after launch into unpopulated servers and it is one of my biggest dislikes in an mmo- is severe underpopulation and no merge. This happened in both Vanguard and Age of Conan, where both companies waited until population server wide was literally 300-400 players online on the entire server before merges finally happened. Is Aion headed down this same route? Is population on a steep decline right now?
As far as in-game pop goes, I'm on Siel, and even during the day on weekdays when most folks are at work/school, I see a lot of people on, and the LFG channel is always active with requests for group quests and dungeon runs. None of the servers have been merged yet as far as I know, and I'm not even really aware of any concerns about population among the community forums. A lot of people also wanna base in-game population on sub numbers, which is faulty, because a certain percentage of subs don't actually play the game. Either they forgot to cancel or they played for maybe 2 days after subbing. This category contributes more revenue to most MMO companies than some would think.
 The fact that Aion may be grindy does not bother me. I played FFXI for 3 1/2 years and many complained of it being a huge grind, but it is the best MMO Ive ever played to date. Thanks to any who can help shed some light on the current status of Aion for me, as Im currently thinking of buying it and giving it a try.
Overall, I'm enjoying the game a lot. IMHO, it's the most polished MMO released in a long time. I really like the art style, the lore, the combat, and the graphics. Yes, NCSoft is looking to address the grind issue, and for a short term fix, they're applying double exp weekends about twice a month until they add a more permanent fix (more content). To see what NCSoft has in store, you should definitely check out the Visions of Aion Future trailer. It should whet your appetite.