- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Ahhh head start. An MMO developer’s way of incentivizing that little pre-order you put in to purchase a game. Head start for Aion starts today, 2 days before the anticipated release of the fantasy MMO community’s current darling baby.
On a day as auspicious as this one, I thought it would be prudent to throw in a few nice little notes that will prevent you from throwing your keyboard through your monitor in frustration. Because we know that you’ll be tempted to do it when you can’t login.
One thing to note is that launches always lag. It’s a clever alliteration, sure, but in addition to that, it’s a sobering reality of any MMO launch. As an IT professional, I’m all too familiar with how networks can get saturated rather easily no matter how much you prepare for the inevitable bandiwdth. 400,000 people have been estimated to have preordered Aion. That’s a whole ton of people for the number of servers that they’ve opened in North America and Europe. Expect not to be able to login, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you are presented with your character screen of tiny pink-haired female characters.
Another is that updates come as fast as they can be released. There’s a notion that instant updates are waiting in the wings for any MMO that experiences stability or bugs prior to the release of a game, but until we have SkyNet coding bugfixes, we’re not going to get them any faster than someone can code them up. I always tend to be the one on the forums sitting back, relaxing, and having a bit of microwave popcorn while the angst of not being able to login or having to deal with a fundamental bug is discussed. They don’t say “good things will come to those who wait” for nothing, you know. If NCSoft is worth any salt, they’re already anticipating the deluge of activity and will be dealing with it as they can.
And finally, and most telling, is that something always gets overlooked. No matter how prepared any MMO developer is for the launch of their game, there’s always something that requires a hotfix, something that needs downtime to deal with, and something that otherwise is unforeseen. Don’t get mad, get glad, as the commercial says, because every release, even Aion, is going to deal with this. Thankfully, despite Aion’s stability being vastly tested these last couple of weeks, the response from the developers has been fairly rapid, so hopefully things will settle down. Save your nerd rage for something that’s important – like that pizza you ordered for today’s play session not being delivered on time.
I’ll be seeing all of my friends and everyone else in Aion in all its lag-filled, crashy, buggy glory! Remember – misery loves company.
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I'd be surprised if you're right about some of this considering the game has been stable in Eastern release for as long as it has. Lag, yes. Buggy/Crashy? Not really. We'll see. (Or rather, some people will see. I am for obvious reasons not playing yet.)
I've always had a nice and cautiously optimistic thought about that. Lots of people build themselves up into thinking a game is going to be different in that regard, but really, the tech just hasn't caught up to the demand. That's why it's not a big deal to me that this stuff happens, because I know it's going to. Hence the microwave popcorn as I watch angsty threads. With butter on top. Mmm.
If anything, I think the queues and lag on some of the servers will be far more effective at spreading out the population than the caps for pre-select were.
Eh, I rolled on Yustiel. No queue to get in, but people running all over the place. Lag was actually pretty good most of the time. Felt really polished, which is something I've not been able to say about WAR over the past year.
But … Aion's been out in Asia for over a year! Surely us westerners won't face any of those headaches we've seen with recent new MMOs. This launch will be perfect. Everything will work perfect. My experience will be perfect. That's what I'm reading all over the place about this game. And when something goes wrong … the fickle masses will gripe and groan like they do about every other game.
I've heard mixed things about this … some good and some bad. I feel the PvP crowd will be a little disappointed since the good PvP doesn't start until Level 25. Have fun grinding your way there via PvE to experience it. And then I've also read that to get the really, really good PvP gear … you have to PvE for it in the PvP zone. Still, more PvE for a supposedly PvP-centric game? Wha?
Speaking of PvE, I've also heard that the PvE is pretty nice. But will it be as good as WoW? That's the main question on many players' minds. My question is, will people stop to read the quest text, the lore, the background … or will they just read the "how many rats do I need to kill" … "what item do I need to find". I'm guessing the latter.
Since this blog is slanted "positively" … having seen vidz for this game it does look nice, the character customization is top-notch and amazing, and since I like the Final Fantasy look it simply looks amazing. I'll wait to see how this shakes out but will probably give it a test drive at some point.
I should hire you for the competitive price of $0 for that first paragraph. Nice nice!
Like with any MMO, Aion is going to have its ups and downs, with the latest being that they not only queued servers but stopped people from entering the queue. At last check, these queues were up to 4 hours in some cases. But what's important is how much you enjoy the game, really.
What little I have played, I still like. I had a particularly harrowing experience as all of my friends were able to login except me, putting me behind the curve from the start. Oof! But that's what comes from high demand.
As I said before, anyone who comments can be as hateful as they want, hehe. I'm the only one needing to be (and not having much trouble being) positive.
The long queues are a big problem. I'm sorry but I'm not waiting 2 – 4 hours to get in. Heck, I'm not waiting an hour. There has to be a sweet spot somewhere between too many servers and too few. If people have to wait that long it already gives some players a bad taste in their mouth. The anticipation of excitement of playing a new game can wear away quickly if these waits don't subside.
My playing window during the week is usually 8 p.m. – 2 a.m. If several hours of that time are wasted waiting in a queue … well I'm not going to be happy. I'm sure that will subside after time when tourists get past their one-month trial, others decide the game isn't for them, and some determine this game isn't WoW.
It will surely hold subscribers but it should be interesting to see how they hold up. Most MMO gamers have been there done that.