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Aion Servers To Merge, XP Grind Softened
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."
It always seems to me the Asian mmo's require more grind than a lot of the western mmo's. It's why I've avoided aion entirely and will most likely continue to do so. I'm not even sure it will continue exist a couple years from now. Still it's a pretty game, I think only eve has better graphics in terms of an mmo, granted space isn't super hard to render.
Do I have to turn in my geek card since I've never heard of Aion? Is slashdot the place I should go to learn whenever some online game changes their game balance?
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
I played WoW for about a year and a half after release, then put it aside for personal reasons, the foremost one being that I'm a flawed person with an addiction-prone personality!
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.
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).
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).
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.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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 similar to a hack&slash, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bABf-SL3rQQ&feature=related 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.
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.
Perhaps Asian MMO's are just meant to be played differently, you don't play Diablo when you want to loose yourself in a fantasy world and its rich characters do you? It is often claimed Koreans especially play their games in the social settings of a Internet cafe, were they play for long stretches at a time but do chat, drink, smoke at the same time. A western player is more likely to play alone, at home and be limited to the interaction in the game. I get the impression that a western player expects more downtime between fighting. He has few, smaller battles that give him what he needs. While a Asian player expects to be pounding enemies for an hour straight.
As said, these are impressions, but on the whole, if you want to play Aion coming from a western MMO background, you better be ready for the differences. Expect to grind. Expect the best quests to be on the level of the worsed western quests. Expect player killing. Don't expect raiding. Expect PvP being the only end-game content. Expect items shops. Expect them to matter.
It can be fun, but it is NOT the same as a western game. Really, it is Bayonetta vs Dragon Age. As long as you go into the game knowing this, you might be pleasantly surprised. Sadly many people didn't and expected WoW
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"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."
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 social interaction on low-pop servers by putting you in contact with more people. Heck, I remember people playing on low-pop WoW servers starting forum threads asking for their server to be merged with another for just that reason.
If you don't have the social experience in an MMO, then you may as well go back to playing single-player RPGs. Stuff like this does actually matter on occasion - some of this stuff might get the Aion players who still want to stick around a better chance to hang out together.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
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 be clumped on the higher level end instead of lower levels, making it harder to find groups at lower levels.
3) Often new people join because of friends, so now the new person wants to be able to catch up with their veteran friends.
4) Many MMO's include Player vs. Player combat (even if just optional). Quite often, there is a desire to be higher level in order to have an advantage against other players.
5) Many MMO's include Player vs. Player combat (deja-vu?)... Quite often, players want to get to a higher level in order to defend themselves against higher level players preying on the weak.
6) MMO cultures tend to equate game achievements, such as level, with your skill. It's flawed, but it still exists.
The reasons may not apply to you, and you may not agree with the reasons, but there certainly are many reasons, at least a few of which are completely reasonable.