Aion – The Tower of Eternity

Or rather the Queue of Eternity. If you thought the WoW servers were horrible at launch, they are flawless in comparison to how awful Aion's were and still are.

During Closed Beta there were queues on every server. During open beta even more so. Up to 2hrs queue. Now, at launch, there still are queues of 2hrs+. You would've thought that they'd get it through their inch thick skulls that they need to upgrade their servers for retail launch.

It's been a few weeks now after launch and the queues still remain. Not to mention bots, gold famers, gold sellers, power-leveling services – I actually noticed these in-game spam adverts 2 days after official launch. But we'll get to that later...

RETAIL LAUNCH

For those who played in Closed Beta had everything set up and running to play the game. All that was needed to do was to simply input your payment of choice (credit card, game card, paypal) and enter the retail launch code from the Aion box and log in and play to your hearts desire.

Or rather, that's how it should've been. Trying to log in to your account on NC-Softs site was impossible. Server error, server timing out, all those "fun" things. When you actually managed to input your code and payment option, you couldn't log into the game because your account was deemed inactive as you hadn't paid yet. They (NC-Soft) didn't take into account the 30 day free time you get shipped with the box.

I, and many others, had to run through all kinds of stupid hoops on the account site just to get the account from Inactive to Playable. Some people who chose PayPal as payment got billed twice as they tried to activate their game properly.

The forums were in an uproar during launch day. It wasn't resolved until several hours later. I remember picking up my game that friday on my day off and I figured I'd have a fun time trying out this new MMO as it was looking pretty solid during beta. I came home around mid day and I couldn't log in to the game until at least 4 hrs later due to the horrible bugs and server time-outs during launch. Fun, yes?

QUEUES

As I mentioned earlier, there are insane queues on almost every server. The fact isn't made better that some servers are designated solely for french, german and spanish speaking people. Leaving oh, say, 6 or 7 odd servers for english speaking people only. Which have all filled up to the brim. They added ONE new server for english speaking people. One.

Honestly, they should've anticipated the half a million odd sales in EUROPE ALONE not to mention the queues during BETA that their servers need to be upgraded and/or get some more to compensate for the huge influx of people.

The North American and Europe forums are filled with complaints and questions how they (NC-Soft) didn't add a whole bunch of extra servers when they new that this game was going to get a huge influx of people.

What answer did we get from NC-Soft? Nothing. Except for a deluded PR post from Lance Stites, the executive producer of Aion.

He says that they are seeing time-frames where 60% of all players are playing at any given time. "Another surprising development is how long players are staying in game—I think that’s a testament to the enjoyable nature of the product ."
That is pure and utter bullshit. Most of those "players" are bots, gold farmers or gold sellers. The real players are either stuck in queue or are avoiding the 30 minute AFK logout because of the insane queues at prime-time. Enjoyable nature? Don't make me laugh...

He says: "The reality of the situation is that some servers quickly become very popular servers, with lines queued up to enter, but other servers have plenty of space to accommodate players. Obviously, adding servers won’t help in this case. If you’re waiting to enter a full server, 100 extra servers won’t help. "

Partly true, but let me go back to my previous point of HOW YOU SHOULD'VE FIGURED OUT AT BETA THAT YOU NEED MORE SERVERS! Idiot.



BOTS

Two days after retail launch I saw the first power-leveling service. Two days after that, gold seller spam. After that, it just went quickly downward. Nowadays you can't even log in without being hit by a million and one spammers all wanting to sell their gold, power leveling service etc. Etc.

Oh, and there are no GM's around to handle it, either. As you can only make petitionts between 9 am to 5 pm (I shit you not) and only 5 petitions per day. Seeing as how the GM's are non-existant and bots are still running rampant throughout the game, one can only surmise that NC-Soft doesn't give a rat's ass about it. They've said they've banned a whole bunch of accounts, but somehow we (the players) just don't believe it as we're seeing the same bots, the same names running around in the same old pattern.

OFFICIAL FORUMS

This is perhaps the absolutely best part: the CM's (community managers) can't post on their official forums due to some "bug" in the forum software. Yes. It's true. I couldn't make this shit up even if I tried. They CAN, however, post sticky notices but not much else. They also ask people to follow them on twitter. Yes. Twitter. Again, I couldn't make this shit up. It just stinks how utterly unprofessional this is.

The english forum CM, Ayase, posted a sticky topic asking people to express their thoughts on how they think NC-soft should handle the queues and bots. Excuse me, you are asking US how YOU should handle your own product when it's so blatantly obvious even a blind man could see it?

That thread has reached 13 pages with people all wanting to hear an official NC Soft representative or even the CM (Ayase) to reply to his own thread he's started. No luck. Guess we'll need to follow him on Twitter, right? Yeah, if you really think that's gonna happen, Ayase, you've got another thing coming.

I've seen them post more on unofficial forums than the official ones. I find it also amusing they can't solve a forum bug that prevents the CM's from posting.

Recently, people hve been posting that the queues have improved. That may well be so, but it's not thanks to NC-Soft. It's because most of the players have left (me included).

Anyone who isn't a fanboi can see that this game won't last the year if it continues the way it does.

There is no community representatives active, no GM's, no nothing. Anyone who ever says anything bad about NC-Soft on the official forums gets their post deleted. Speak no evil, see no evil?

It's a shame it had to come to this, really, as the game had potential. It has stunning graphics and the game runs smooth on most systems; but the complete and utter lack of support and horrible bugs still in the game that should've been resolved during beta makes it a sub-par game. At best.

If you're planning on buying this game, don't. Save them for STO or SW: Old Republic.