What an eventful past few days it has been. The buzz surrounding Aion's launch can be heard far and wide. Apparently, the Asmodian race is a popular one. Who knew? I mean, usually more people gravitate toward the shiny happy people, right?
Last Friday (9/18/09) was the day for pre-selection for those that pre-ordered Aion. It meant you could reserve 2 character slots. That's it. No playing yet, just reserving your name and faction on 1 or 2 servers. This actually didn't go over well for everyone. Sure, it was nice to get to do that… but there was a lot of complaining too.
Some people had to change their server choices or had their names taken. Then there was the blocking of creating Asmodians on a LOT of servers for a period of time. This didn't mean you never could, but you had to wait until more Elyos were created to restore balance.
Balance being the key word.
With a game like Aion that has a lot of focus on PvP, balance is important.
Of course, this started to raise some concerns for people… how quickly servers were filling up and so forth… and so many people trying to get on at the start of pre-selection to save their name.
That was the first hurdle. Sideshow and I were successful in reserving our names on our server of choice, Lumiel, for our main Asmodian characters. We also reserved our names on another server as Asmodians.
Then came Sunday (9/20/09). That afternoon is when the headstart began for those who pre-ordered. The game was scheduled to go live on Tuesday (9/22/09). Unfortunately, we (like many others) didn't get to play very much during the headstart allotted time.
Why?
Queues.
Yes, the queues were frustrating. No, I didn't freak out. As frustrating as they were, I understood the reasoning behind them. I was playing at Warhammer Online's launch. That wasn't pretty – too many servers, major imbalances, lag, crashing, bleh.
Now, although I wasn't around for the launch of WoW, but I can imagine it wasn't the smoothest. Even now, almost 5 years later, there are times when queues happen and other issues. Look at how bombarded the servers get after the release of a content patch… or better yet, an expansion… the flood of players trying to get online, too many people after the same mobs, etc.
Aionic Thoughts has a great post about the queues.
Also, if you still contemplating whether or not to check out the game, here are a couple posts to check out:
5 Reasons to Play Aion at Massively
15 Things to Know Going into Aion by Samodean
But yay! Tuesday we picked up our official copies of the game! I got the collector's edition. Sideshow ended up upgrading to the collector's edition online for only $10 for the in-game bonuses (whereas mine cost $20 more)… but I got more cool loot in my box!
In-game loot:
- Black Cloud Wings (40 seconds additional flight time)
- Black Cloud Earring (gives HP and MP boost)
- Character title (Settler of Aion) with stat boost
- Color dye to tint gear
- 2 additional character emotes (boogie and hiphop dances)
Out of game loot:
- Hand-painted figurine of Aiva, a winged Asmodian Daeva
- Official Aion soundtrack CD
- 2 dual-sided posters
So, yeah, I'm a happy camper overall. Now, I just need a bit more time to play. Hopefully the queue times will shorten up soon!
The queues are only on some servers – so far I’ve been in one queue on Nezekan, of which I was possition 1 lol. As soon as I saw the queue message, it dissapeared.
The name reserving thing was really cool in my opinion, although the error messages on why you couldn’t create an Asmodian needed some work – it led me to believe I already had an Elyos character, not that it needed balancing.
Overall I’m really happy with the launch. There were no server crashes (for me), and the balancing is very needed. People complain now – but you watch how much people would complain when there was no PvP action on their server if they didn’t balance.
Most people mature enough to understand and think about the reasonings behind it are fine. The tantrum throwing children with their “wah wah wah I’m not going to play this game now” because of the issues need a good spanking… and not in a kinky way.
Btw, really loving that statue. I couldn’t get a CE here so missed out… wishing I could have seeing that.
@Haydies – Oh yeah, I know in the long run everything they did to maintain balance will make Aion a better experience. It did get a little tiring hearing so many complain. I admit, I was a bit frustrated and annoyed, but I understood the importance and tried not to QQ out loud 😛
I’m glad you are enjoying it!
I hadn’t known what all was included in the CE box when it was preordered, so I was pleasantly surprised by the figurine. Although, I was a bit surprised by her rack lol