spent around 5 hours (i can't sleep, must be caffeine running low) lurking in some forums and i noticed Aion are having issues that hit wow earlier during starting phase: long queues, gold sellers and half automated macros for ez-mode play/ bots for auto grindfest.

from chat with a fren that quit wow that refuse to give me his gold this early morning (like 5am), he mentioned blizz had revamped portions of it's macros and game play to let user interact more with the game (except paladin that lets people alt tab for pr0n), banning bots/ gold sellers during vanilla

i think the following month will be crucial for NCsoft to keep their servers from the usual MMO plagues (especially bots and 'ni hao') at minimum level on US/EU servers to keep the players confidence level up.

I don't think bots are their main focus atm. They are rushing servers to cope with the demand and other technical problems (their forum still doesn't allow them to post officially yet, in-game chat is a headache, imagine private stores causing queuing problem where they now limit it to 30 min of the private store being open, EU servers in US still).

One thing that they did very well was the open communication with the problems and ETA via Twitter. They don't always reply every single query but some they do.

I think with WoW, yes, it sounds like vanilla launch but unfortunately, they do not command the respect that Blizzard does so players may not be willing to wait 3-4 months for them to sort things out.

yea. i bet aion is ur typical good vs evil game, u know the common plots. wow's story line is really good. remember cabal? theres a quest where u have to read through called old man's romance. and they ask questions based on what he said. pages longgggggggg and really a drag i ended up guessing answers. really stupid. how many people actually read through the quest before they accept it? i know i dont unless im stuck, but thanks to qh, i hardly ever read.

imo RO brought a very interesting castle raid sys (minus potion spam)
multiple castles, only open for taking/defending during limited duration of the week, each castle having their own instance & unique loot... etc

if wintergrasp (or to an extend warhammer sieges) used that concept, i think things will play out very differently.

This post has been edited by fr0sti3: Sep 29 2009, 05:07 PM

Good news, looks like they add another server to a total of 13. The new server I think is Fregion. Other than Guild Wars which I played for 3 months I can say this has some quality but switching over is impossible. I still need more gears for Arthas.

But yeah it is very amusing all supposedly WoW killer never really been able to reach 20 servers. So what is next in line? SWTOR?

Why does it matter how many servers a game has? A game can have 1 server and have the capacity of ALL WoW servers, does that mean it has less people playing cos it's ONE server? Don't think so.

i think the only wow killer is the american government, coz they would want to break wow's monopoly on on9 gaming =0

Not unless they decentralize their servers all round the globe (at least some for Asia regions), or else we will all suffer from bad latency issues.

the best thing about Blizzard - Not only they try hard to improve their own game, but they learn from others and even make better versions of it

You can clearly see how WoW evolve throughout the years - from a mostly PvE gameplay with a scary 40 man requirement raid, to a full fledge PvE Raid content for hardcore raiders and serious Arena for PvP junkies.

But while satisfying the hardcore players. they never forget those 'not l33t' players - you have battlegrounds, regular/heroic dungeons, daily quests that not only gives you fun; but also gearing up while you do it; making the transition to raid/arena much easier

and World PvP like Wintergrasp spices things up - you literally saw your whole server population fighting over this 'tiny' castle for both loot and buff

and lets not forget Achievements - as much as i hate how some players abuse this 'stat', it is a nice thing to see your hard work gets rewarded. Or how it makes you try something you never thought you can do - like Glory of the Hero/Raider?

and the latest expansion are coming with even more new things and changes - like how Fishing is going to be changed to be more like Animal Crossing

we might be even seeing Warhammer's RvR siege battles in WoW someday!

aion might not be a good game, but i don't think i can stand playing wow anymore. after doing 7 seasons of arena(minus season 4) the game has gotten really stale for me. i don't pve much and there deosn't seem to be much new pvp content coming in 3.3 or even the expansion, i think my time in wow will finally come to an end this time for good. i'm gonna give aion a shot, if it's bad i don't think i'll return to wow, probably gonna just quit MMOs for a while till a good one comes out.

agreed. they should have servers scaterred all over asia. specifically singapore. but if they do tht, i will miss my american friends tho

don't worry about it.. when tmnet screw up, even nearest game hosted in malaysia or singapore get screw up too, so it's no different at all xD

I think all these so called "WoW Killers" are created by the players. I dont think any developers will call themselves WoW Killer.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. Its the different market that each game caters to. Remember how WoW changed from 40man to 25man? Everything is tailored according to their market. I'm pretty sure there are some Chinese games we have never heard of and if you ask the players they will say WoW sucks.

WoW is still grinding just that its a different type of grind. There is no MMORPG that doesnt require grind or you having to do something repeatably. WoW just changed it to another form of grinding. Can we really say dailies arent grind?

WoW started off with quite little PvE instances as well and i'm sure a lot of players here dont even know what is DM west,east, north and DM arena and it was introduced quite late after WoW launched.

So i'm just saying no need to judge every other games out there. WoW is 5 years old and developed by Blizzard and Warcraft series was already a very well known and accomplished game at that time. Blizzard has the funds and manpower/knowledge on how to make good games.

Dailies are a grind, but it isn't forced upon you. It's a very very small part of the game, and most of us only do dailies when we reach max level, so it's not grinding to level anymore. It's grinding to stay competitive with the loot and gold.

Its still the same if we put it this way.

Leveling isnt forced upon you as well, if we look at Warhammer, we can say you can choose not to do PvE in order to level fast instead you can just continue grind PvP and stay competitive at lower tier. Nobody force anyone to reach max level in Warhammer

People grind to level in order to stay competitive as well. Hardcore gamers will grind in order to reach highest level the earliest. Remember the DK who got rollbacked? Otherwise, we can choose to play casually and enjoy the game while leveling slowly. Some grind certain mobs or zones over and over again for loot. Its all personal preferences again.

No MMORPG can avoid grinding. Like i said earlier, WoW is just another form of grinding in disguise. Some games like Warhammer really had the intention and concept to be successful but it was executed badly probably in a rush.

We have to admit WoW really did set a standard for the future MMORPG to follow which is why many players will just go back to WoW after a while...they just dont have the patience like 5 years ago when they started WoW as they had not much other choices to choose from at that time

Anyway, WoW storyline isnt superb. It was good when it started and imo it has started to get ridiculous since BC launched. Story wise, there are some other MMORPGs that might be better such as DDO

WoW strongest points i believe would be endgame raids and the game can be easily picked up by new players. Aion has a very tedious gathering and crafting system where new players might be discouraged to level it

WoW will get extremely addictive once you devote your life to it. When one devote his life to WoW, no other MMORPGs will appeal to him till he burn out. This applies for every MMORPGs in the market

i devoted my life to ro and maple, before i realised they are money sucking games especially ms where those tht has extra money get better stuff thn those who do not pay. ro is botting alll the way. but wow is different its a really dynamic game tht constantly changes.

Given the discussion here, I think this blog discussing WoW (which I've been playing for 2+ years) and SWTOR(eagerly anticipating this) and basically dissecting if the two really are direct rivals?

http://darthhater.com/2009/09/30/swtor-vs-...ally-a-rivalry/

End of day, WoW of today is waaaay different from Vanilla. WoW evolved over time to what it is today. Other new MMO's often are just rushed too fast into retail before being actually being ready. Which usually ends up with lots of complaints, QQ's etc from people who start playing & have some sort of WoW experience.

SWTOR will have the hardcore SW fans & then the numerous MMO gamers looking for the next big thing. SWTOR seems to be leaning towards more story & character based progression playstyle than WoW's Raiding & PvP focus.

Let's just hope Bioware doesn't succumb to pressure to release an incomplete game to retail too soon!

Cheers!

lol, so you're limited to play non-end game content if you dont grind. yeah, it isnt forced upon you, but if you're paying your subscription to 'enjoy' lowend content, compared to say, WoW, where you dont get forced to and you still get to enjoy end game content... obvious, right?

see what i just did there? comparing warhammer with WoW.
forget about it, futile.

---

Added on October 3, 2009, 1:14 amdevelopers and publishers need money, anyone can succumb to money. Blizzard is already established with games like sc/d2/war3, and blizzard's way of making games gives their fans a lot of confidence and in return, said confidence is given back to the devs so that they know fans will still buy/play their game. and such they can avoid the usual "preasure" other devs/publishers face.

granted, blizzard has been abusing said "trust" over time in WoW, then again, if you compared to everyone else, they are still at the top. think of it as screamyx. they arent good, but compared to everyone else, you're better off with them.

This post has been edited by Quazacolt: Oct 3 2009, 01:14 AM

for one who played warhammer and wow, i would agree on warhammer's concepts...
they got everything right, until when its time to implement it then the lag ruined it...
if it is not good, WoW would not have copied so much from warhammer...
heck into cataclysm would have some ideas originated from WAR such as guild lvling gystem...

pvp wise, warhammer's pvp is much better if u are looking for casual open world time...
too bad the lag and the lack of end game content on launch for the hardcore kills off the game...
the whole hype given to it before release was justified to me...

IMO, grind is very subjective. End game raids isn't grinding, not until the time comes when I only need a few more upgrades from this dungeon and it never drops. I have went for 5 weeks without any loot. The frustration can build up heaps but then on the 6th week, I got a BIS drop and everything feels fun again.

Dailies shouldn't be a problem with Blizzard adding new dailies every content patch. I think the problem comes when people does 25/25 dailies everyday.