So two weeks ago it was announced that Aion would be having a Halloween event. I was excited to say the least. When the 25th rolled around I was waiting for something a bit more than what I got, a stack of 5 candies that transformed you into sparkie via an in game survey. It was ok because I figured “no biggie its just the 1st day.” Next day was the same thing. I’m like perhaps they are waiting till the end of the week when more people will be on. I mean they’d want to have to time set up. You know since Asmodians would be what was that again “celebrate (ing) by racing after the Wild Kurthanir hunt leader during the Wild Hunt and cooking special traditional dishes.” While us Elyos would be “roving Dark Night bands to hunt and destroy the undead before they invade Elyos villages.” To my surprise however neither faction would be doing either of these. Instead the Halloween “event” consists of in game surveys that give you transformation candy. I mean sure I should be glad that each survey offers little chunks of lore goodness. ‘rolleyes. Not only that answer a survey on one character and none of your others get a damn thing because you only get one survey a day and the candy can not be put into your account warehouse.
Note to NCsoft West -this- is not an event. This is a load of crap. And while you might have later clarified what exactly would be happening this week its still a load of crap.
I’ve done /anon, i’ve set up different chat tabs to get away from the mountain of spam flooding all the chat channels but this…this is what I came home too last night. I guess the methods of addressing chat spam are working so well they need to send mail now. How quaint.
It’s no secret that since the pre-selection and head start of Aion the que times have been a bit of a problem. It’s even become a bit of a joke with survival guides posted to help ease your time in the que. Generally I am not one to complain much when it comes to my MMOs. I can put up with most anything. I come from, despite my cries otherwise, hard core gaming stock. I’ve put up with random PK in Lineage 2, frustrating PvP in WoW, often repeative game play in City of Heroes, and the list goes on and on. And while I didn’t not start playing WoW until a few months before Burning Crusade was released I do remember the ques when it was. They lasted for the most part a day or two on my server at the time. However this is the 5th day for me inside the que and I’m sorry but I’m getting a bit annoyed.
I understand the reasons why there is a need for a que. I appreciate NCSoft’s logic in wanting to maintain servers where play time is enjoyable by all. I get that. But it seems that they’ve failed to understand the basic human logic, if there is a will there is a way. Right now the will of the people is to play and the only way to beat the que at the moment is to set up an afk shop. I mean let’s be honest in pretty much every MMO its basic human nature to devolve into a complete and total prick. I’m sure there are other underlying reasons for the que outside of afk shops but its the one that people are the most upset about. When you see things like the picture above how could you not be.
They’ve offered a solutions by uping the amount of people that can be on the servers at any one time, sending out messages of what servers don’t have ques and opening 2 new servers over the weekend it ultimately doesn’t seem like much to me. Because while technically there are 12 North American servers at the moment there are only 6 servers designated for the East Coast, 5 for the West and 1 for Oceanic. Meaning that prime events such at fortress sieges will take place around a times that some what fit that time zone thus making the decision for which server to create a character on even smaller. So that means for me I’d -have- to pick one of the 6 East Coast servers which always have a que. Being able to participate in fortress sieges and the endgame pvp content is and was a huge selling point to me when I started getting into this game. The end game is what is really important here and if you can’t participate in that then it kinda negates everything you’ve done to get there.
At this point I’m not really sure what I’m going to do. I want to continue to play with the friends I’ve gamed with for over 4 years but I can’t continue to see me waiting around 3 hours every night after work just to play. They say this won’t continue and I’m going to give them that chance to prove it. I have to say though that if I was actually paying for this I’d cancel my account tonight.
First please forgive me for the lack of updates this week I’ve been fighting a sinus infection. I haven’t really felt like doing much of anything but passing out on my sofa. I did manage to get in a few hours play time in the Aion OB here and there between moments of being doped up on meds and I’ve started noticing a horrible trend with region chat. So much so that last night while glancing down at region chat I noticed this little nugget of goodness which about sums up the experience quite nicely. I’m not sure how it is on the other servers but on the Elyos side of the Nezekan server region chat is about 500 times worse than Barrens chat and that’s saying a lot. So much so that I too feel like this poor helpless soul.
Another thing I’ve noticed its that people are really stupid. I know that sometimes the initial quest text has a lot of words but they do give you a summary if you know reading big walls of text is hard for you. It’s like they said in school reading is fundamental. I’m starting to realize that perhaps WoW really has dumbed down the whole MMO experience. Nothing glows for you telling you “hey I’m a quest item pick me up” because heaven forbid you actually have to search for something on your own. I know that it might seem a little harsh but after hearing the same questions asked over and over again
1. Where is Tutty?
2. Where can I find this fossil?
3. Where is Poppy?
I think my head is going to explode. What’s funny is I managed to find all these on my own the first time out without asking anyone for help and trust me when I say for the most part in games I’m directionally challenged. I’m not going to lie in WoW I even used quest helper but that was after playing for a year and some change getting around on my own. Even with that I still don’t see what the hell is so hard. I think the next time someone asks either of these questions my response will just be “over near Mankrik’s Wife”.