This news is music to my ears. I'm glad to see Mr. Jennings aboard.
To interject, I found his article, "Real Money, Real Problems" to be an eye-opener. I truly had no idea until I read it that some farmers resorted to credit card fraud and account theft. Believe it or not, there are some people who still say, "Bots don't hurt anyone." This is certainly proof to the contrary.
Anyway...Scott certainly has his work cut out for him, as far as AION's concerned.
It's no new news that AION going into launch without GMs on the payroll and no anti-bot measures in place was a mistake of epic proportions. The MMO market offers many choices now, and, as such, people are fickle because they can be. Most form their opinion of the game within that first 30-day trial period. Several of my friends who gave this game a try quit in the first 2-3 weeks because of the bots, RMT spamming and trolling in the chat channels that often crossed the line into harassment. I was appauled when I learned this game didn't have 24/7 GMs because I thought all MMOs with sub fees had them (I mean, what else am I paying for every month?). AION is agreed by many to have the worst community of any MMO, and I honestly believe that is in part due to the fact that there are no repurcussions for anyone's actions. Trusting that everyone will be nice responsible adults in a virtual world just isn't realistic. Putting us on autopilot isn't just like an unmoderated forum, it's like a classroom of 3rd graders without supervision.
What's worse is the negativity that is spreading, somewhat in the same way that happened to (dare I say it) Warhammer. There's a game that did a complete 180. In the eyes of the community, they went from being able to do no wrong, to being able to do no right. AION is my first NCSoft game, and in comparison to other game companies, it's easy to feel that our voices are not heard. There really needs to be more communication to their customers, even if it's vague, instead of stony silence. Perception is everything and sometimes empathy is nearly as good as solutions.
I truly had believed that those of us still here were only those who had developed a real love for AION. I thought too much irreversible damage had been done. But reading through what forum posts I can, I find there are those still watching AION out of the corner of their eye, hoping for change that will prompt their return. I truly hope Scott can help facilitate that change.
This news is music to my ears. I'm glad to see Mr. Jennings aboard. To interject, I found his article, "Real Money, Real Problems" to be an eye-opener. I truly had no idea until I read it that some farmers resorted to credit card fraud and account theft. Believe it or not, there are some people who still say, "Bots don't hurt anyone." This is certainly proof to the contrary. Anyway...Scott certainly has his work cut out for him, as far as AION's concerned. It's no new news that AION going into launch without GMs on the payroll and no anti-bot measures in place was a mistake of epic proportions. The MMO market offers many choices now, and, as such, people are fickle because they can be. Most form their opinion of the game within that first 30-day trial period. Several of my friends who gave this game a try quit in the first 2-3 weeks because of the bots, RMT spamming and trolling in the chat channels that often crossed the line into harassment. I was appauled when I learned this game didn't have 24/7 GMs because I thought all MMOs with sub fees had them (I mean, what else am I paying for every month?). AION is agreed by many to have the worst community of any MMO, and I honestly believe that is in part due to the fact that there are no repurcussions for anyone's actions. Trusting that everyone will be nice responsible adults in a virtual world just isn't realistic. Putting us on autopilot isn't just like an unmoderated forum, it's like a classroom of 3rd graders without supervision. What's worse is the negativity that is spreading, somewhat in the same way that happened to (dare I say it) Warhammer. There's a game that did a complete 180. In the eyes of the community, they went from being able to do no wrong, to being able to do no right. AION is my first NCSoft game, and in comparison to other game companies, it's easy to feel that our voices are not heard. There really needs to be more communication to their customers, even if it's vague, instead of stony silence. Perception is everything and sometimes empathy is nearly as good as solutions. I truly had believed that those of us still here were only those who had developed a real love for AION. I thought too much irreversible damage had been done. But reading through what forum posts I can, I find there are those still watching AION out of the corner of their eye, hoping for change that will prompt their return. I truly hope Scott can help facilitate that change. Welcome aboard!
While it's a step in the right direction, it may be too late for alot of people. First impressions are everything in this genre (just ask Anarchy Online or Warhammer) and most of the time no matter how much you turn it around, there is no getting over the initial damage of not having this stuff in place day one.
The problem is (as been mentioned many times) is korean/asian games have a long history of letting botters and spam run rampant in their games. NCSoft has a history of botters and spam run rampant in their games. In the first two months of Aion, there has been very little done to change that thinking, especially where the bots are concerned. Another thing that is absolutely killing Aion right now is lack of communication on stuff like this. They should be posting stuff on their forums or website all the time when it comes to game breaking stuff and it's not happening. You put all that stuff together and then you wonder why it feels like just another asian F2P game. It makes you wonder if NCSoft West is basically some small office somewhere where a couple of guys just come in and check the mail and make sure the servers are powered on.
Aion really should have been released with the 1.6 Patch (increasing XP from questing, flying SM pets, added instances) and with a predetermined plan on combatting the bots.
I feel the launch of the game was a bit premature for the Western Audiance although ripe for Asia. When the original projections put Aion at 4th Quarter 2009, I had really expected a Holiday release (December) and that would have possibly been a lot better for them. This is assuming they were going to work on a bot issue in the first place. If nothing else it would have given NC time to fix gamguard instead of removing it completely.
Sadly hindsight is always 20/20. I enjoy'd being able to play the game sooner than December, but am regretful that doing so has ruined this game world for me.
LineageII | LoTRO | RFO | 9Dragons | Aion | Perfect World | Ether Saga | Dungeon Runners | GuildWars 1 and 2 | Hellgate London | tCoS | Warhammer | AoC | Tabula Rasa | SWTOR youtube.com/gcidogmeat
Originally posted by Cammy Tired of hearing the whine. As soon as someone posts ANYTHING to contradict the botting - then its "well - that's a dumb suggestion and can't be any steps in any direction because Aion is doomed"...
It's been interesting to see all the talk on the LFG channel when the GMs started hitting the zones banning bots, and the calls for the "death Shugo"; apparently some of the GMs have their own idiosyncratic ways of handling the kick-then-ban process that players are getting a kick out of.
Not having gotten into the severely-botted areas yet -- I've filed a total of three /autoreporthunting declarations on characters, one solely for a vowel-free keyboard mash of a name, another for a similarly vowel-free name that was running a stereotypical bot pattern, and a third for being hilariously suicidal (runs straight out into the water and drowns, then rezzes at the obelisk and repeats the drowning; if his name hadn't been 'Wddddda' I might have ignored it, but I reported him after the fifth identical death) -- I haven't run into areas where bots were crowding out the players, but there was a lot of chat traffic cheering the GMs on while it was happening.
And I have been seeing an increased policing going on. I have a standing policy while playing Aion of taking the time to screenshot and report to NCSoft anyone I find with a private store soliciting for an RMT website. When I first started doing it, I could come back four hours later and find the stores still in place; the past few days, I've seen intervals between report and disappearance of the store as little as five minutes. Several times this last weekend I have gone back to Sanctum or Pandaemonium and not found any RMT stores set up, which I hadn't seen since about two days after launch. Now, this is only on two servers, and I doubt that the reports I've filed have made a serious dent in the capability of the goldsellers to bot new characters to 10 to place new ad-stores; even though every report I filed got me an ultimate reply telling me that the characters I reported were removed from the game, I've only filed 97 reports, mostly on one or two offenders at a time (although I did have two reports on four at once). What is telling, though, is that this weekend I saw the advertised price for a million kinah (game currency), which had started at $9 near launch, drop from $4 to $3 to $2.50 over four days. Either the market is becoming supersaturated from too many bots grinding kinah, or the demand is starting to tank and the goldsellers are trying to get whatever they can for their inventory before it becomes worthless.
Comments
This news is music to my ears. I'm glad to see Mr. Jennings aboard.
To interject, I found his article, "Real Money, Real Problems" to be an eye-opener. I truly had no idea until I read it that some farmers resorted to credit card fraud and account theft. Believe it or not, there are some people who still say, "Bots don't hurt anyone." This is certainly proof to the contrary.
Anyway...Scott certainly has his work cut out for him, as far as AION's concerned.
It's no new news that AION going into launch without GMs on the payroll and no anti-bot measures in place was a mistake of epic proportions. The MMO market offers many choices now, and, as such, people are fickle because they can be. Most form their opinion of the game within that first 30-day trial period. Several of my friends who gave this game a try quit in the first 2-3 weeks because of the bots, RMT spamming and trolling in the chat channels that often crossed the line into harassment. I was appauled when I learned this game didn't have 24/7 GMs because I thought all MMOs with sub fees had them (I mean, what else am I paying for every month?). AION is agreed by many to have the worst community of any MMO, and I honestly believe that is in part due to the fact that there are no repurcussions for anyone's actions. Trusting that everyone will be nice responsible adults in a virtual world just isn't realistic. Putting us on autopilot isn't just like an unmoderated forum, it's like a classroom of 3rd graders without supervision.
What's worse is the negativity that is spreading, somewhat in the same way that happened to (dare I say it) Warhammer. There's a game that did a complete 180. In the eyes of the community, they went from being able to do no wrong, to being able to do no right. AION is my first NCSoft game, and in comparison to other game companies, it's easy to feel that our voices are not heard. There really needs to be more communication to their customers, even if it's vague, instead of stony silence. Perception is everything and sometimes empathy is nearly as good as solutions.
I truly had believed that those of us still here were only those who had developed a real love for AION. I thought too much irreversible damage had been done. But reading through what forum posts I can, I find there are those still watching AION out of the corner of their eye, hoping for change that will prompt their return. I truly hope Scott can help facilitate that change.
Welcome aboard!
While it's a step in the right direction, it may be too late for alot of people. First impressions are everything in this genre (just ask Anarchy Online or Warhammer) and most of the time no matter how much you turn it around, there is no getting over the initial damage of not having this stuff in place day one.
The problem is (as been mentioned many times) is korean/asian games have a long history of letting botters and spam run rampant in their games. NCSoft has a history of botters and spam run rampant in their games. In the first two months of Aion, there has been very little done to change that thinking, especially where the bots are concerned. Another thing that is absolutely killing Aion right now is lack of communication on stuff like this. They should be posting stuff on their forums or website all the time when it comes to game breaking stuff and it's not happening. You put all that stuff together and then you wonder why it feels like just another asian F2P game. It makes you wonder if NCSoft West is basically some small office somewhere where a couple of guys just come in and check the mail and make sure the servers are powered on.
Aion really should have been released with the 1.6 Patch (increasing XP from questing, flying SM pets, added instances) and with a predetermined plan on combatting the bots.
I feel the launch of the game was a bit premature for the Western Audiance although ripe for Asia. When the original projections put Aion at 4th Quarter 2009, I had really expected a Holiday release (December) and that would have possibly been a lot better for them. This is assuming they were going to work on a bot issue in the first place. If nothing else it would have given NC time to fix gamguard instead of removing it completely.
Sadly hindsight is always 20/20. I enjoy'd being able to play the game sooner than December, but am regretful that doing so has ruined this game world for me.
youtube.com/gcidogmeat
It's been interesting to see all the talk on the LFG channel when the GMs started hitting the zones banning bots, and the calls for the "death Shugo"; apparently some of the GMs have their own idiosyncratic ways of handling the kick-then-ban process that players are getting a kick out of.
Not having gotten into the severely-botted areas yet -- I've filed a total of three /autoreporthunting declarations on characters, one solely for a vowel-free keyboard mash of a name, another for a similarly vowel-free name that was running a stereotypical bot pattern, and a third for being hilariously suicidal (runs straight out into the water and drowns, then rezzes at the obelisk and repeats the drowning; if his name hadn't been 'Wddddda' I might have ignored it, but I reported him after the fifth identical death) -- I haven't run into areas where bots were crowding out the players, but there was a lot of chat traffic cheering the GMs on while it was happening.
And I have been seeing an increased policing going on. I have a standing policy while playing Aion of taking the time to screenshot and report to NCSoft anyone I find with a private store soliciting for an RMT website. When I first started doing it, I could come back four hours later and find the stores still in place; the past few days, I've seen intervals between report and disappearance of the store as little as five minutes. Several times this last weekend I have gone back to Sanctum or Pandaemonium and not found any RMT stores set up, which I hadn't seen since about two days after launch. Now, this is only on two servers, and I doubt that the reports I've filed have made a serious dent in the capability of the goldsellers to bot new characters to 10 to place new ad-stores; even though every report I filed got me an ultimate reply telling me that the characters I reported were removed from the game, I've only filed 97 reports, mostly on one or two offenders at a time (although I did have two reports on four at once). What is telling, though, is that this weekend I saw the advertised price for a million kinah (game currency), which had started at $9 near launch, drop from $4 to $3 to $2.50 over four days. Either the market is becoming supersaturated from too many bots grinding kinah, or the demand is starting to tank and the goldsellers are trying to get whatever they can for their inventory before it becomes worthless.