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February 4, 2012

Tag: Aion

March 18, 2010

Singing the Unsubbed Song

Wow, it’s been a while! It’s funny how a short trip to another city can take a lot out of you, right? I’m still on the road to recovery but don’t worry – I’ll be back to 100% real soon.

Today, I’m informing my smallish readership that I have moved on from one of my subbed MMO,s Aion. As those who play MMOs know well, unsubbing from one that you’ve played is not unlike breaking up with someone you’ve dated – it’s a bit awkward, makes you feel like you invested your time for nothing, and it kinda hurts your butt for a while. But just like any actual relationship breakup, ultimately, you need to look on the bright side and see that yes, even though you probably totally made a mistake putting months of your life into the affair, that you’ll have learned something. Yes, just like finding out that dating someone who is a little too into kitchen appliances might not be conducive to a healthy relationship, unsubbing from an MMO gives you a few lessons to take to the next subscription.

For example, here’s some great tidbits I learned about Aion during my journey from 1 – 50 as a Cleric:

  • Perpetually poor people like me can’t pay for deaths and experience loss consistently. Soul Healer, you are the Donald Trump of MMOs.
  • A little randomness is nice. Too much randomness, such as critting on crafting for quests, is nice to make you want to stab your eyes out with a spoon.
  • Soul Healer, you should write a book on economical success in MMOs.
  • The best treadmill grind is the one you don’t realize you are running. The worst treadmill grind is the one that you not only realize you are on but which also has spikes on the treads as you run.
  • I like a little resistance in PvP. It makes battles more exciting. However, when encountering the resistance is like jamming your index finger as hard as you can against a brick wall to try to make a hole in it, it’s not quite as fun, you see.
  • Getting loot is neat. But in the repeated absence of any loot at all, you can at least copy and paste items into chat to fantasize about having epic gear.
  • Did I mention that if Soul Healer was a class, all they would have to have is an ability which sucks money and experience away to succeed? Easiest class ever, I say!

So the next time you bust up with the MMO love of your life, don’t drown your sorrows in pints of Ben and Jerry’s and constant YouTube and Hulu watching. Learn the lessons and move on (or back) to something you truly enjoy and can give you what you want. Trust me – you’ll be better and a little less flabby for it.

March 3, 2010

The Top of the MMO Mountain

Yep, that’s Everest you’re seeing. What other mountain would I have picked for this topic today? Heh.

Anyone who’s played an MMO before knows that there is an end, a top, a pinnacle to be reached that everyone aspires to and works towards.  It could take the form of a level cap, the best gear in the game, being ranked number one in killing squishy cloth-wearing classes, or something else entirely. It’s the sort of “cream of the crop” that MMO tourists never really get close to and many powerlevelers race to achieve first.

Me? I’m somewhere in the middle – a journeyman who tends to tough it out whenever possible, and sometimes reaches the top of the mountain climb. I watch the tourists fade away into obscurity and the powerlevelers fade away into distant heights. As someone who has less playtime than the average gamer, my schedule sometimes prevents me from getting to that mythical MMO peak.

This, however, is not one of those times. In Aion, my current game of choice, I’m close to level 50, the current cap of the game. Now, many of you who are reading this know that if I’ve gotten near Aion‘s cap, that means that I’ve grinded, literally, hundreds of millions of experience points to get there. I’ve probably suffered through tons of instances gone bad and death penalty bills that have flattened my virtual wallet. Sure, the crippling experience curve makes trying to walk straight up a wall less of an effort and it seems odd that a PvP advancement system takes away more ranking points than a supermodel breaks hearts, but I manage to have soldiered on.

The secret, it seems, is people. Everyone plays an MMO for their own reasons, but at least one of those reasons involves other people – whether to stand alone at the top of the MMO mountain in front of an audience or to play with others and have a grand old geeky MMO time. I’m doing the latter – running with an extremely small but dedicated bunch of people who have been climbing the steep mountain of Aion along with me. It’s funny how a few laughs over getting low-quality items from bosses makes the game a little bit easier to bear. Along the way, I’ve gotten to know new people, snicker at the usual community chat hilarity, and generally try to mask the fact that I’m climbing the MMO mountain. It’s probably part of the reason why I’ve managed to get as far as I did, and I think that if more people realized that, they’d be more apt to stick with an MMO.

Now to get that 125+ million experience to get to the cap…

January 20, 2010

NCSoft’s Positively Cautionary Tale

If you’re a player of an NCSoft MMO, you might be feeling a bit nervous lately, because recent concerns and hacks on account security have raised some definite red flags with the distributor. Some of the victims were compromised using the traditional methods of unsafe websites and phishing scams, but others have apparently been found to have their characters stripped and exploited without having done anything at all. The supposed core of the problem may lie in a vulnerability somewhere within NCSoft’s authentication system of sites, and the latest security statement by the Game Surveillance Unit’s Scott Jennings (a person whose word I respect in the industry due in part to Broken Toys) is an acknowledgment and a reminder of the dangers of such things.

The playerbase for NCSoft games such as Aion and Guild Wars has been understandably upset over security holes that could end up with months of work undone in only a few short clicks. Stories vary in threads like the “Account Stripped…so what happens now?” thread on Aion fansite Aionsource. Sadly, through no fault of ours, my legion recently suffered a devastating loss of legion warehouse mats and supplies – hundreds and in some cases thousands of items taken from the warehouse and sold by an account with access to the warehouse that had been compromised. We’re still working to get the items back.

During times like this, it’s hard to be positive, but as always I like to find the silver lining in the black-clouded storm. If anything, the whole situation with NCSoft with regards to the integrity of their security is a cautionary tale. It’s a signpost in the road that shows how high of a priority account security should be when it comes to MMOs. With technology advancing at a crazy rate these days, the good that potentially could be done with it is only overshadowed by the potential evils. With the convenience of having a single account tie to multiple items comes the risk of having them all hacked. With the ease of clicking links to get on-demand delivery of content comes the equal ease of mining information from the computer through malicious code on sites. The list goes on, but the point is that in the grand scheme of things, protecting users’ characters, accounts, and most importantly, credit card info is of paramount importance and security holes need to be found, fixed, and dealt with.

It’s also a cautionary tale developers can learn from when it comes to quelling, communicating, or otherwise reassuring the angry mob with pitchforks, too. Community tends to be overlooked or pushed to a lower priority when it comes to developer teams. The community folks I know seem like they are underpaid, overworked, yet passionate about the ideals of a game design supported in part by player feedback. It’s still important, however, to make sure you are communicating properly and frequently  in times of widespread problems, something that NCSoft and other developers should be taking very seriously. Scott Jennings’ statement is a good start, and at least an official communique from someone investigating the problem. While it isn’t a solution, it’s at least the beginning of what will hopefully be a speedy fix to NCSoft’s account woes

November 28, 2009

Overheard On Chat – Biblical PvP, BotSPAM, and Your Mom

So in Aion I soldier on, making an effort to get ever so closer to the upper echelons of the grinding ladder. Still, I could never get through this without the entertainment that chat ends up being, so without further ado, here’s what I’ve overheard on chat this week:

Religious education, MMO style:

Aionbiblical

We love those bots in Aion:

Aionbotcheer

The More You Know:

Aionlube

Yo Mama is So Fat…

Aionoutdated

Ah, the great MMO Restaurant comparison:

Aionmcds

November 24, 2009

Aion Infornography

There’s a small buzz around the ‘Net, and it revolves around NCSoft East’s 9-minute trailer introducing the expansion for Aion, including a ton of new features such as housing, town sieging, mounts, and more. Here be the trailer for said goodness:

Now, I’ve always advertised that optimism is a good thing, and that we should endeavor to manage our own expectations properly upon seeing cinematics and trailers. Still, this is a good strategic step forward for Aion, mostly because it takes advantage of a concept I call “Infornography”, a desire to fulfill one’s own desires through the overload of info that can only come from marketing craziness like the above.

The reason why I call this a smart move for Aion is that it has shown an anticipation for the MMO community’s tendency to be fickle and tourist-y when it comes to titles. While Aion has enjoyed some level of success, the inevitable march from honeymoon to reality (and all the problems that come with it) has led to some players feeling rather hesitant about making the jump to the natively Korean MMO. Some have even stopped subscribing altogether, due to shattered dreams or expectations not met – in other words, the same thing that has happened to almost every MMO release since WoW.

Just as the cusp of this love affair ending, NCSoft East comes out with the above “Visions” trailer, a visual orgy of features, graphics, and full-steam-ahead promises. For the players still subbed to Aion, the trailer provides with it a beacon of hope, a validation that the game isn’t going anywhere, and an exciting hype-buildup to brand new features and content to aspire to. For those who have chosen to stop subbing, “Visions” provides a roadmap, a marker to come check the game out at, and an interesting look into solving some of the game’s core problems. Either way, NCSoft wins.

More companies should work to be this strategic about their marketing. Taking into account the very real and sometimes depressing behavior of today’s MMO players, and then rolling with that, is something that can only really lead to success in the future. Regardless of whether you like or you dislike Aion, you probably took a look at the trailer – and no matter what the reaction, NCSoft has accomplished its mission in doing just that.

Well played, Aion. Well played indeed.

November 21, 2009

Overheard On Chat – The Great Cleric Insanity

As someone who typically plays support in  MMOs, one thing that I can say with relative certainty is that it takes a little bit being mentally off to be a healer. A blend of masochism, insanity, and laughter is pretty much what makes up any dedicated support class chat, and in Aion, things are no different. Here are just a few of the hilarious gems I’ve taken from chat.

Don’t forget that I’m taking submissions for this topic! If you have a chat screenshot you want to contribute, just drop me a line and I’ll be sure to put it up!

Aioncc1

Aioncc2

Aioncc3

Aioncc4

Aioncc5

Aioncc6

Aioncc7

November 18, 2009

Rifting: The Appeal Of The Aion Un-Welcome Mat

img_4796_aion_005Last night my good friend Kristen and I managed to discover what I find most enjoyable about Aion. It isn’t the graphical detail or the simplistic class system or the flight. It isn’t the marked progression of gear and a very active economy system, either. Hell, it isn’t even leveling.

No, the thing that I enjoy most about Aion is rifting. For those that don’t know, rifting is a form of encouraging incidental, skirmish-based pvp in the normal areas of the game. Aion is divided into two sections with a pvp section in the middle. The two sections each belong to one of the two factions. Normally you can’t go to your opposing faction’s areas – until a rift appears which will take you there. From there, you’re in hostile territory and just about anything goes.

As I’ve written before, Aion is a game that has a “safe” mirror-sheen polish to very tried and true elements – classes, quests, and yes, even the soul-crushing expected grind – are all things that Aion does well to at least a fairly solid degree. This definitely explains some of its popularity since its release. Rifting, and the pvp that comes with it, is one of Aion‘s few innovations, and it’s great for a variety of reasons.

One is the dynamic factor. Sure, you could go to the Abyss, where you actually expect to pvp, but nothing beats a chance encounter in a zone where you don’t expect it. While there’s an occasional zerg, most encounters are small-scale and happen at random. The dynamic of finding targets to kill, or hunting down rifters, breaks up the monotony of “kill things, turn in quest, repeat”.

The other is the thrill. Not being welcome in a zone where you are clearly surrounded and outnumbered means you have to use different tactics to survive. Just ganking everything in sight will end your trip prematurely. No, the tactics involve sneaking around, moving quickly after a kill, and wandering in a manner that seems random, among other things. This, combined with the need to look over your shoulder, creates a potentially exciting experience that could end in 20 minutes or 2 hours.

Surfing the rift is definitely fun. I recommend it to those of you who are having a hard time keeping your eyes open after killing 20,000 mobs.

October 31, 2009

Good Lessons Learned The MMO Heartbreak Way

broken_heart-18231True to form, my self-proclaimed nemesis strikes again. At Hardcore Casual, Syncaine’s taking what seems to be an almost unhealthy and sadistic delight in the folks that have found recent MMO title Aion not to be their cup of tea and quitting. If you’re not quite sure that’s the right description, here’s the Eminem song line that my fellow blogger refers to when he’s reacting to the end of the Aion love affair:

“BLEED! BITCH BLEED! BLEED!”

Syn, my villainous counterpart, I’m thinking you need a little bit more caffeine in the morning so you don’t get so very grumpy and frumpy in your writings! I hear a morning cup of Joe does wonders for the disposition.

The place I will agree with Syncaine about with regards to folks not seeing Aion (or any other game for that matter) as the game they thought it would be, is that I’m glad for it. Not in the Sith-like Force Chokery way Syncaine does, mind you, but more of a “lessons learned” satisfaction that can only really come from mistakes made. While it’s never fun to go through the practice of MMO heartbreak, where the ideal title you’re with is nothing more than a cyclical love affair, what it does do is make you more mindful of your expectations, what you like, and what you don’t like.

Managing your expectations and keeping yourself realistic about a game’s trials and tribulations is a skill that, especially with MMOs, is difficult to do due to the hype train of marketing, pre-release. The idea of understanding this, and also getting an idea of what you prefer to play, can only be borne in part of going through the painful process of seeing that a particular title doesn’t tickle your fancy like it did in the gameplay trailers and early beta. To keep the relationship analogy going, you basically understand through breakups and multiple dating experiences what to do, what not to do, and what you should expect in the future. Such as it is with MMOs and the folks who somehow end up quitting one or two months out. It’s just not for them, and realizing that early is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Besides I’m not one to speak for what you all, or anyone else who doesn’t read this 100% sunshiny day of a blog, likes with MMOs. I find it a bit silly and wasteful to deride people for their chosen preferences – it’d be like someone who prefers to date blondes making fun of a person like me who has a weakness for redheads, when my latest relationship doesn’t work out. Ultimately, the choices people make are their own, as well as how they deal with them.  It’d be nice if we were all overly cautious and completely pragmatic and made good choices when it comes to MMOs, but that’d really just be uneducational, bland, and boring. Give me overly positive with my MMOs any day.

October 24, 2009

Overheard On Chat – Quality Communication

Ah yes, MMO chat – the best and brighest communication medium in any online game. I’m convinced that were MMO chat applied to other mediums that we would uncover a veritable potpourri of human condition that would be both meaningful and eye-opening. So let’s see what MMO chat has for us this time:

Aiondrop

I think perhaps this guy is communicating some level of critical feedback on loot drops. Clearly this is worthwhile.

Aionspam

I have a feeling that the rest of that sentence was meant to be “wwwwwaahhhhhhhhhh”. C’mon now, buck up! It’s not like MMO death means anything these days, right?

Aionnonsense

Now his secret code for God mode or 30 lives is revealed! You heard it here first on Overly Positive.

Aionrift

Always nice to know that there are people who are immensely helpful with communicating directions.

And that’s that. Just imagine if I was playing more MMOs than just the two I am subbed to at the moment (WAR and Aion). What gems of communicative intelligence would I discover. If you’ve seen anything like this, feel free to leave a link in the comments or point me towards a place where I can find more chat nuggets!

October 19, 2009

The Lighter Side Of PvP Gaming

invasionAh, nothing like seeing the land run red…with your killers’ names, of course.

PvP in MMOs has mostly been about serious business and competition to the highest degree. Whether it take the form of prepared teams going at it in a sanctioned match or a spontaneous explosion of virtual guts and glory, PvP is equated with a sense of meaningful and definite achievement. Where PvE-focused players get their kicks from defeating the latest and greatest in AI-controlled epicness, a PvP’r defines pleasure in the conflict and battle between human intelligence. The best MMOs feed this need and create situations where PvP folks can prove themselves.

But there’s another side to PvP that is not quite about being the best in combat with other players but simply being the most creative and interesting. The dynamic nature of this kind of PvP has been seen before in the form of creatively stealthed attacks, mechanics that take advantage of unaware players and best of all, simply creating as much havoc as possible to the normal routine of the opposing faction. In many cases, this takes hilarious forms, and I participated in something like that just last night.

My good friend Kristen invited me to a bit of a crazy mission for Aion last night to bust up the grindstone gag-fest. This mission would be to see how far we could get from the opposing players’ level 20-25 base once transported there. As a secondary goal, we would see just how long it would take for people to realize that her gladiator boyfriend was being healed from two hidden places while he smashed people’s faces. The goal was not victory, nor was it bragging rights, nor was it to “pwn faces”. No, this particular insanity was all about causing chaotic behavior in a hostile zone that favored the enemy.

The results, aside from the screenshot above, were hilarious. Most of the enemy players, used to  tunnel-visioning onto completing the next in a long line of excruciating “kill x things” quests, did not know what to make of a single hostile target being healed from hidden places that crushed things on the main road. A couple of them paid for their hesitation with a respawn. Others actually flew past us. But eventually we drew the ire of a legion of players who helplessly beat on our gladiator while he was healed. Eventually, we showed ourselves and killed a few more, including someone who happened to just be resting and afk, before finally being overwhelmed by what seemed to be scores of annoyed enemies.

Instead of being upset, we merely laughed. While fifteen minutes is hardly a massive impact when it comes to PvP in MMOs (especially since we lost, quite handily), it was fifteen minutes where PvP wasn’t simply about victory at all costs and being totally l337, but just about creating something dynamic for everyone to experience. At its heart, PvP in MMOs is just that, no matter how you decide to play it. It’s something that isn’t really scripted, but tests yourself in a situation where intelligent players will react to your actions. In my case, it was just another way to entertain myself by doing something different from the norm. PvP’ing to win certainly has its merits – but it’s not the only way to create PvP in an MMO and enjoy it.

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