Aion Servers To Merge, XP Grind Softened 108
Massively reports that NCSoft's fantasy MMO Aion will soon be getting a round of server mergers to balance player populations and shore up in-game economies. A newsletter from Aion producer Chris Hager also brought word that character transfers will be an option starting in June, and NCSoft will be "offering them to all of our players for free for a limited time." This is happening in the lead-up to the game's 1.9 patch, due on June 2, which contains a number of measures to make the XP grind a bit less harsh (among other things; patch notes). They're creating more quests, increasing XP rewards from existing quests, and implementing a system that "grants you experience bonuses as you continue to play."
Asian MMOs (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Asian MMOs (Score:5, Interesting)
>>It's why I've avoided aion entirely and will most likely continue to do so.
I beta tested it, and that was more than enough to get me to avoid the game.
They'd have to cut grinding by about 75% to make the game playable in my book.
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Re:Asian MMOs (Score:5, Insightful)
You have got to be kidding. Aion would have to be one of the least grindy MMOs out there. Remember WoW is not the norm, it is the exception, the outlier, when it comes to quick and easy progression. On the other hand we have the TRUE grindy MMOs like Lineage 1 and 2, FFXI, and various other (mostly Asian) MMOs.
Aion is a compromise. It is an eastern style MMO (in terms of lore, graphical style etc) with a dash of western-style questing and story thrown in. The grind factor is somewhere between 'grindy' and 'WoW-like easiness, although to be honest it's closer to the less grindy side of the spectrum. An average player (i.e. just plays for a couple of hours every couple of days) should be able to hit the max level in Aion in approximately 6 months (less after the 1.9 patch goes in). Compare that to WoW where max level is achievable in mere days or weeks. And compare again to, say, Lineage 2 where max level even for a regular player is at least 4-5 years, and a casual player will never reach it. So yeah, I think cutting the grind by '75%' in Aion would be ridiculous. It's already fairly quick to level, and the 1.9 patch reduces that further.
The other thing is - what is with the mad rush to level up anyway? I enjoy the content at the low and mid levels just as much as at high levels. It's only a 'grind' if you want it to be and you are dead set on getting to max level ASAP at any cost. I never understood that mentality though. Enjoy the path, not just the destination. Personally I like MMOs that are a bit tougher (or require more time to achieve things, whether that be level or gear or whatever). Otherwise you end up with everyone walking around at the max level, with the best gear. All virtually identical. What's the point of that?
Oh and one final thing regarding the article generally (this is not directed specifically at the parent post) - the server mergers are basically necessary because, at launch, there were such serious server login queues that NCSoft rushed a couple of extra servers in to meet demand. So it's not like the game is dying. Even if they merge 4 or 5 or 6 servers, it will just be back to the number of servers they planned at launch anyway. A game does not have to be as popular as WoW with its hundreds of servers to be successful - it just has to turn a tidy profit. And Aion will continue to do so. It's not a game for everyone (due to the fact that, as mentioned, it IS a compromise between eastern and western elements). But I think it's the best new MMO out there right now, and it will tide me over until Diablo 3 comes out at least (yes, I know D3 isn't an MMO ... but it's the next major game I'm hanging for).
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Absolutely true. It took me more than a month at ~8 hours a day. Granted, the new dungeon system made it pretty fun, but it was still along the lines of "Yay, 24 xp! Only 32,542,163 to go..."
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2 hours every other day averages out to 1 hour/day exactly. So in your example, 144 hours = 144 days, not 36 days.
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Lord of the Rings Online is about on-par with WoW in terms of 'grindyness'. A friend of mine who was a WoW veteran joined LotRO and capped a character faster than he did with his newer WoW characters, and didn't have the knowledge to draw from as he did with his WoW characters. That's just one anecdote, but based on his experience, LotRO actually is easier than WoW.
I would also not call FFXI a grindy game. There was a time that it was, but changes to the game over the last 2 1/2 years have drastically al
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Re:Asian MMOs - MMOs have become misguided by the (Score:1)
The above post I completely agree with, why do us westerners want to get to the top level and be the best within a week of the game coming out. I play alot of MMOs and the reason I play is generally the journey, the story, the random walking about wasting time, talking to people. Yet all the big MMOs in the last few years are trying to make all levels in the game but the top most unrewarding. Everyone rushes, THEN everyone complains when they get to the t
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You have got to be kidding. Aion would have to be one of the least grindy MMOs out there.
And? Maybe he wasn't talking about grind in MMO scales but in what he can stomach? I know I can't be arsed to bash mobs over and over again to gain a level or the 50 thingamajigs needed for some joke of a quest. Monster Hunter 3 is about the limit for me.
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>>And? Maybe he wasn't talking about grind in MMO scales but in what he can stomach? I know I can't be arsed to bash mobs over and over again to gain a level or the 50 thingamajigs needed for some joke of a quest.
Precisely. I hate running around killing the same monster over and over again.
This is the very definition of tedium in a MMORPG for me, and Aion was full of it.
You may not get it, but there are reasons.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Make it sound like it's irrational for people to want to get to max level, while you overlook many of the common reasons for doing so.
1) Many games put more work and emphasis in end-game content, so players feel like that is where they need to be in order to really get what the game offers. It's where the content that lets players set themselves apart by something more than levels occurs (such as high level pvp, raiding, getting the best gear, etc).
2) The older a game gets, the player population tends to b
Re:Asian MMOs (Score:4, Informative)
If you are focused like a madman on leveling, yes, you can do it in a few days of non-stop grinding. I don't know too many people who have (even with assistance & heirloom items) done it in less than 4 days
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These days, with the XP bonuses, it takes about 11 days of playing to make it to level 80, assuming you're reasonably efficient, and you don't have any +xp leveling gear.
So yea, mere days. Mind you, it may take someone a year to rack up 260 hours of play time, but I've seen people do it in less than two weeks.
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Aion is a PVP game, on some of the servers. The first time (or ten times) you get ganked by people who are five or ten levels higher than you, you will understand the desire to not be at such a disadv
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For WoW, there are few players in between 1 and 80 at any given time, most are alts they don't want to explore the dungeon. They simply want $ITEM or their "random" done and over with. Same thing right now with the random heroic system, any skip-able boss is skipped, and no one talks. There isn't really a "party" there is not much of a feeling of a group. It's a 5 players all trying to get their badges and need the other 4(or at least the tank/healer) to do it.
Anyways, there are days i long for EQ1 style
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For WoW, there are few players in between 1 and 80 at any given time, most are alts they don't want to explore the dungeon. They simply want $ITEM or their "random" done and over with. Same thing right now with the random heroic system, any skip-able boss is skipped, and no one talks. There isn't really a "party" there is not much of a feeling of a group. It's a 5 players all trying to get their badges and need the other 4(or at least the tank/healer) to do it.
This is a pretty jaded view and not really applicable even most of the time as far as I've seen. I level alts quite regularly since I'm not in a raiding guild and enjoy switching from all the various playstyles the classes offer, and I pretty much level now through the dungeon finder at the expense of traveling around doing quests. It's not that I don't enjoy questing, it's just that it's easier to queue as a healer/tank and do dungeon after dungeon to level (as well as more lucrative gear-wise) than it i
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Oh and one final thing regarding the article generally (this is not directed specifically at the parent post) - the server mergers are basically necessary because, at launch, there were such serious server login queues that NCSoft rushed a couple of extra servers in to meet demand. So it's not like the game is dying. Even if they merge 4 or 5 or 6 servers, it will just be back to the number of servers they planned at launch anyway. A game does not have to be as popular as WoW with its hundreds of servers to be successful - it just has to turn a tidy profit. And Aion will continue to do so. It's not a game for everyone (due to the fact that, as mentioned, it IS a compromise between eastern and western elements). But I think it's the best new MMO out there right now, and it will tide me over until Diablo 3 comes out at least (yes, I know D3 isn't an MMO ... but it's the next major game I'm hanging for).
In my experience server merges are rarely a normalizing factor; instead they are symptomatic of the shrinking subscription pool of a dying game that cannot hold on to existing players and is unable through marketing or word of mouth to attract new replacements.
http://www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/quarterly.aspx [ncsoft.net]
Aion's subscription base dropped significantly this past quarter and will likely continue to do so unless NCWest gets it's act together.
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I beta tested it, and that was more than enough to get me to avoid the game.
Angels fighting in prom dresses were enough to get me to avoid the game.
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Aion has several major problems none of which have to do with the XP grind, in fact, most players I know personall
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A problem is that it's easy to just create a sandbox world and th
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I avoid all MMO's, even though I've trialed well over a dozen of them and would really love to find one I actually enjoy playing.
I understand the need of MMO companies to keep people paying subscription money for as long as possible, but I wonder if those companies are aware of the large number of people that don't even START subscribing due to the grind.
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You might try Lord of the Rings Online. It's not without its grind to be sure, but it's currently the premier story-driven MMO. The environment is beautifully rendered, and though the characters aren't as nice as Aions they're far superior to WoWs.
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You should try guild wars, it has no subscription.
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You should try guild wars, it has no subscription.
And for all my fellow Linux users.. works great under WINE. Just heard about it being Linux compatible a few days ago, downloaded the demo, and bought the full game the next day.
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granted space isn't super hard to render.
You need to start somewhere if you hope to render an apple pie.
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I plated UO for far too long, I logged in about a week ago and saw the game had pretty much died.. Played WoW off and on, always get bored once I get maxed out... The PvP in UO kept me playing, it doesnt in WoW.. Guild Wars was sort of interesting and fu
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The reason you need to be referred by an existing player is so that currency farmers don't just sign up for the free trials by the thousands to run their bots. It seems to work too. After an initial wave of bots at launch, NC cracked down pretty hard and you don't really see any now. Maybe one in a noob zone every now and again but that's it.
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There are no currency farming bots in Wow with a trial subscription. The trial accounts in Wow don't let you trade, use the AH, chat in global channels, and only let you accumulate a very small amount of coin. Most bots in Wow are the result of accounts that had their password stolen. The reason this doesn't plague Aion (as you claim) is that it has not reached the player base threshold for farmers to invest the time to create phishing scams to get these passwords. If they did, it would be easy to get a few
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To be fair, I don't think that's true.
As someone who played Dark Age of Camelot from it's early days, and got GM cartography on UO when it was hard. I never played EQ, but I had friends who wasted years grinding away in that too, I'd say that all MMOs nowadays, Asian or not require less grinding than Western MMOs have done in the past.
I didn't play Aion for that long admittedly, but for the time I did play it I didn't find Aion any worse for grinding than say, Warhammer online either.
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Getting to 40 in Warhammer was fun... the first time. Unfortunately, the level 40 content was simply painfully bad, both PvE and PvP, and after the first wave it turned into more of a grind to get a new character up to 40. I hear the max-level stuff is better now (and they certainly keep trying to improve it), but that game had some of the worst end-game PvE and itemization I've ever seen, and the city siege system was great in theory but failed in practice in its first incarnations.
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For what it's worth, their previous game, Dark Age of Camelot was the same.
There was pretty much no high level content for about 6 months after release until they finally got it all finished and released in a patch.
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Re:Anyone notice that black cat just now....deja v (Score:5, Interesting)
Firstly, nerfing 'the grind'. Players bitch and moan about it but in the end, if there's no grind and no other challenge, then levelling up becomes meaningless. If the best items are trivial to obtain, then why would players care about getting them? Players only value what took time and effort to acquire.
Secondly, server mergers are THE death knell of any MMO. Why? Because no matter how it's presented, a server merger is always interpreted by the players as "lots of people are leaving the game". The main reason you play an MMO is that everyone else is playing it. If everyone leaves, who is going to admire your shiny epic gear? Players only value things that set them apart from others. If there're no others to admire their achievements, why bother?
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I had the same thought... didn't Tabula Rasa (another NCSoft game) go through these same measures a short time before they closed up shop? Server mergers, more moves to bring people in... free periods of time... collapsing down to only a handful of servers, then close.
It's sad that we lose portions of the gaming world, some storylines that have the potential of being interesting, when online gaming servers close. I know TR had the initial potential of being interesting from the intro vid... yes, gameplay wa
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They never said that. There just isn't much they can do about it, because it's a self-fulfilling problem. Server imbalance breeds more server imbalance. Short of flat out shutting off Horde character creation on the server and offering some crazy Alliance creation incentives, they're powerless to the fact that Alliance players don't want to play there.
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That's not exactly what they're doing, what they're doing is providing a fixed amount
Re:Anyone notice that black cat just now....deja v (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually the stereotypical "Players" you describe with their wants & needs and what they value are only the Achiever kind of player in the Bartle Player Type classification (here [wikipedia.org]).
The Explorers, Socializers or Killers do not necessarilly derive any enjoyment from endlessly repetitive tasks.
Even the Achievers don't derive any enjoyment from endlessly repetitive tasks - what they enjoy is achieving something hard or getting something rare or unique: the "hard work" needed to get those hard to get achievements needs not be endless grinding: in fact, complex, difficult encounters with hard to get pre-requisites can be just as satisfying.
The truth is that, in MMORPGs, grinding based game-playing is a cheap way for publishers to create time-sinks in the game instead of spending money in creating real content like areas, dungeons, boss encounters, story quests and others.
While most people that played MMORPGs in the time of UO and the like were willing to live with it (since there was nothing beter), nowadays, there's plenty of MMORPGs out there with massive amounts of content for players to enjoy (in my personal experience, both current WoW - it was worse in the past - and LOTRO are very good in that aspect).
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"Even the Achievers don't derive any enjoyment from endlessly repetitive tasks - what they enjoy is achieving something hard or getting something rare or unique: the "hard work" needed to get those hard to get achievements needs not be endless grinding: in fact, complex, difficult encounters with hard to get pre-requisites can be just as satisfying."
This is how a non-grindy MMO like WoW appeals to the achievers...
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So, you say that mmos are played by sad people who need constant validation from others and feeling of superiority not to quit?
Hint: There are thousands, maybe million of people who play the same game. If you play it to feel special, well, though luck. You will never be special, but one of crowd. Always one of crowd. Your equipment? The way you play? Achievments? They are being cloned over and over by others. The more hardcore you are, the more cookie cutter ("optimized") you will be even.
Grind is always "d
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Why don't they then just quit? I mean, you can hunt carrot only for so long before realizing that, yep, i am hunting carrot and i will always be hunting carrot because that is how company turns profit.
I find it amazing that people are taking it so well: First round of quests in first wow expansion basically undone all precious work players did in vanilla by giving up "kill 10 boars" quest rewards beter than stuff that took months to grind. Knowing that once developers release new content, you will be kicked
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Why don't they then just quit? I mean, you can hunt carrot only for so long before realizing that, yep, i am hunting carrot and i will always be hunting carrot because that is how company turns profit.
They generally don't quit for one of (or a combination of) a few reasons:
1) They've already invested a lot of time into a character, and they don't want to throw that away.
2) They're playing primarily for social interactions and the "grind" is mostly something to do while hanging out with friends, so they don't mind it.
3) They're playing for the end-game raiding, which for many people *does* provide enough enjoyment to balance out any grind.
4) They're playing for the PvP, and they enjoy that enough to balan
Why discount that? (Score:3, Insightful)
Experience boosting weekends and speeding up the grind allow new players to catch up with their friends who are at the level cap so that they can all go raid together. Without server mergers, you may have servers that are so low in population that you can't always get enough people together for a high-end dungeon, so server mergers can help to increase s
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Those haven't been killers for WoW, but that may be because WoW got it "reasonably" right to begin with.
Aion, on the other hand, had a brutal grind initially, driving away all but the most hardcore. Releasing a broken MMO and fixing it later doesn't work - see the epic failure of Dark Age of Camelot's Trials of Atlantis expansion. ToA destroyed the game, and by the time Mythic accepted that fact and fixed the problems, their subscriber base had already been decimated.
Too many MMO developers are reactive "
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The only MMORPG i took time to play was RF Online, and with 30X exp we had to level (as a group, otherwise that was impossible as characters died in literally two hits, tanks in three) on a cave where it took it anywhere from 1 to 3 minutes to kill a mob. The experience table was such that each level needed twice as many mobs to kill. Every mob gave me 0.3%.
I was 8 levels away
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Depends - Blizzard did all these things and more (for instance you can buy special gear to give your next character 20% more exp on everything they do) and they keep gaining subscribers.
There is something to the design concept "it really does need to be fun to play" - never mind how hard it is.
I think WoW scales pretty well - there's plenty of stuff to do even if your terrible at the game, plenty of hard modes to do in raids if you're really quite good at it. Leveling shouldn't be the end all to any mmo - n
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To me MMO suicide is server mergers. Your admitting as a company your game isn't successful - its a death knell as your game slowely loses interest the playerbase get smaller and smaller and to keep the game going you have to make the server pool smaller.
Exactly what I was trying to get at with the last bit of my post. As soon as players start getting the *illusion* that people are leaving the game (which is the message that server mergers send) they're much more likely to leave themselves... which starts a nasty vicious cycle.
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I read an eloquent post on the WoW forums once (no, really!) detailing how the equal availability of gear was a bad thing, and I quite agreed with it. Back in Vanilla, you'd see someone decked out in Naxx gear and you'd think "wow, that's amazing!" Now you can get decked out in Icecrown gear and it's like "meh, just another character in the same gear".
Slashvertisement much? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Slashvertisement much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah. This is one of those MMO based announcements. It was supposed to be the MMO that killed WoW, lots of people switched for all of about 2mo, before they realized that the grind was so heavy you needed to dedicate your life to it. Not as bad as FF or anything, but plenty bad enough. The reality is everyone has been spoiled, for lack of a better word because of WoW. They know playing it, that if you stop for 3mo and you're way under the gear cap you can run heroics and get the gear. If you only want to play for 2hrs a week, you can, and still get somewhere at the end of the game without grouping with anyone.
enjoy the journey (Score:2, Interesting)
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I think that's the key - a long journey to max level would be fine if it were fun. Problem was:
1) Not enough quests to level on quests w/o grinding
2) XP mechanics when grouped effectively actively discouraged grouping - this was a real killer!
3) Loot in dungeons was crap - combined with the pitiful group XP, this made dungeons a real drag, almost as bad as solo grinding
4) The group-finding system was awful compared to even WoW's old system. WoW's new system makes finding dungeon groups easy.
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With the exception of (2), they're changing everything.
1) Quests give more XP
3) Drop rates are being increased
4) New group-finding/LFG module is being added. It looks a lot to me like FFXI's grouping system, but a lot of fellow players (who came from a WoW background) say it looks a lot like WoW's new system.
With regards to (2), though, I've found that grouping is actually actively encouraged. You can get XP much faster (after level 15) by groupin
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The rationale for not having to group in WoW was actually explained at the last GDC by Kaplan I think - basically he wanted a game that you could sit down and play for 30 minutes without having to sit in some central hub pleading to join some group for several hours at a time.
WoW does have group quests - but they aren't required. Group quests often have better rewards (more exp, money and sometimes a blue or epic item), but certainly not required to level. Wow has almost 30+ or so lower level dungeons to do
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It depends on your class - Some classes solo much better than others.
For a Templar - you've gotta group or you'll be in pain.
For many other classes, it's much faster to solo grind XP than it is to go to some of the outdoor elite spawns. Part of the problem is the XP penalty gets brutal if even one person in your group is just a level or two above the mobs.
1.9 looks promising, but it's coming too late - lots of people have already quit. I'll be unsubbing this weekend because my friends unsubbed, although I
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I canned Aion not too long after release.
I'm all for enjoying the journey, and the levelling game is actually one I usually quite enjoy. But Aion is really terrible at the journey. The quests are sparse, so most of your journey is killing indiscriminately. That's compounded by the fact that you've seen the entire game world by the end of level 2. I shit you not. Everything else is the same crap rebadged. Instead of a Blurr, it's a Ferocious Blurr, or an Enraged Blurr, or a Beastly Blurr. Same model
Might as well name every new MMO "Not WoW" (Score:5, Insightful)
Played and liked Guild Wars for two years, played and liked Age of Conan for two months, but I'm beginning to see a sameness in nearly all MMOs. Of course each will have their slight variations, but in the end ever subscription MMO is trying to beat Blizzard at what they do best (except Guild Wars...that game marches to the beat of its own drum).
Until a MMOG offers something revolutionary and enjoyable, they might as well name every single one "Not WoW", because that's how their potential customers see it.
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I can feel this sameness in about every MMO :
Quest type 1 : kill X of those monsters
Quest type 2 : get X of those items (which are possessed by those monsters so you'll have to kill them before)
Quest type 3 : get X of those items on the ground... in an area populated by those monsters, so you'll have to kill them first
Quest type 4 : go find this guy (oh hey by the way, did I say the road was full of monsters...)
Quest type 5 : kill THAT special guy. Oh he's surrounded by other monsters, you know what to do..
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Stop looking at the big titles and look towards the niche. There are tons of MMOs out there that break the EQ model (WoW). Go through the list of MMOs in development at mmorpg.com and see what you can find that might interest you. I'm personally hoping The Secret World turns out good, and recently played Darkfall. Remember, shiny doesn't necessarily mean polish.
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Funilly enough I have a somewhat similar experience as you although in my case it as more like:
- EVE Online
- WOW just after release
- Guild Wars
- LOTRO
- Tried Warhammer Onlime
- Tried D&D Online
- Back to WoW, 4 years after I left.
I pretty much came to a similar conclusion: they're all very much the same.
Yet, at around the time I was getting fed-up with LOTRO I found out that for me (an Explorer in the Bartle types), it's fun enough to start on an MMORPG, see most of the content and then leave for another
And the ongoing infestation of hackers and bots? (Score:3, Insightful)
No mention of that, Chris?
After Lineage 2 sank under the groaning weight of bots and hackers, didn't you pledge to deal with that issue from day 1 in Aion with a dedicated bot/hack hunting team? How'd that play out for you?
Oh, and how about the the promises about cracking down on egregious gold farming, and the blatant market in bot-grinded accounts? Got all that sorted did you? Like you said you would?
Speak up Chris, it's all gone a bit quiet.
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One might suggest keeping such indignant retorts and demands (addressed directly to the game producer no less) to the Aion website News comments section.
As completely ignored as that comment section is by the GMs, to say nothing of Chris Hager himself, it's at least a degree of separation closer than posting a reply on slashdot.
Just saying.
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Not at all surprising (Score:2)
Aion went through the same thing every other overhyped MMO launch does: convince a ton of people to sign up inititally based on hype, and hope some of them stick around after 2 months.
A bunch of people I play WoW with all quit to play Aion. Within six months, every single one was back. The game has way too much grinding and way too little serious endgame content, especially if you're not a PvP focused player. People got to the level cap, looked around, said "now what?", and quit.
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Completely derivative but pretty (Score:2)
Doesn't surprise me one bit. No innovation.
It's a pretty game. That's the only good thing I can say.
It has the exact same crafting system everquest shipped with 11 years ago.
Aion is to Asian for western audiences (Score:2, Insightful)
There seems to be an odd cultural difference for some reason in MMO's, although to be fair I should perhaps also put this party on age.
Aion and similar titles are often defended because they are very pretty... no they are not. They are flashy, but that is not the same as pretty. But when you are 12 or asian, that seems to be the case. Consider a tricked out city car, or if you are really gay an American Chopper versus the clean lines of an e-type. No e-type needs blue leds.
The Asian MMO's seem to play sim
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The Asian MMO's seem to play similar to a hack&slash, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bABf-SL3rQQ&feature=related [youtube.com] the action takes a while to get going, but notice what happens when he hits an enemy. HUGE floating damage numbers. No western MMO would do that, you have a health bar somewhere on your hud that tells you this. It might seem a small difference but think about what single player games have huge floating damage numbers and which do not. Beat-em-ups and hack&slash games, Mortal Kombat and Bayonetta (sorry if they are mispelled, they are not my kind of game) vs Fallout and well any Bioware game (why are there only two RPG makers?). I dare say that while I did enjoy a bit of Diablo, on the whole the two types of games cater to different types of players.
Actually, NCSoft's City of Heroes [cityofheroes.com] superhero MMO has the floating numbers -- gold for damage you're doing to your target, green for healing you receive, red for damage done to you, grey for the numbers associated with other players (the damage they do, healing they get, damage they take), plus additional information like 'Critical', 'Dodged', 'Deflected', etc. And CoH is a Western-centric MMO; it apparently didn't do well when they tried taking it to Korea.
Aion looks pretty, if you like flashy, at first glance, but its beauty is really only skin deep, it has the same very basic character customization that all asian MMO's have. There is no depth to flash and it lacks functionality. You swing a huge sword around in the same basic animation forever and it never has anything to do with the damage. You can sweep straight through an enemy and miss and do a move on enemy behind you 100 meters and score an instant kill. It is the ultimate example of a spreadsheet game with a disco lightening show bolted on top. Great if you like that, but since servers are being merged, apparently not many do.
Aion's game world has an amazing depth of detail, bu
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Aion and similar titles are often defended because they are very pretty... no they are not. They are flashy, but that is not the same as pretty. But when you are 12 or asian, that seems to be the case. Consider a tricked out city car, or if you are really gay an American Chopper versus the clean lines of an e-type. No e-type needs blue leds.
All these Korean MMOs really do have the same look, and I don't like it... Let's not even touch cars, I'd ban asians and indians/arabs from even buying European cars if I could.
XP (Score:1, Funny)
XP can mean many things. My first thought when I read the title was it was either about Windows XP or Extreme Programming. The farthest thing from my mind was "experience points".
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Grinding is just a cheap way to keep user busy (Score:1)
In WoW there is a lot of grinding at max level, you have to grind gold and/or chemistry if you want to raid.
There are many quests but again, most of them is "kill X things", "keep killing things until they drop X thingies".
opposites.. (Score:2)
here in korea your performance deteriorates if you keep playing to slow people down and get them to take a break.
Why is Grinding OK? (Score:1)