Archive for September, 2009
09.30.09
Posted in Aion, Rant at 11:02 am by Fedoldinn
I’m going to try and keep this short, for your sake. However, as much as I’m enjoying Aion at the moment (and I do think it’s a great game), I really despise the NCSoft Launcher.
In my opinion, it is useless overhead we are incurring each time we wish to load our favorite game. You could argue that it does keep your NCSoft games up to date and it is able to repair corrupt game files, but I think these two don’t nearly make up for the shortcomings of this annoying little program. First, most games these days do a check for updates when you launch them or, in the case of MMOs, when you log on to the game servers. Second, although a repair shouldn’t be necessary, it would be easy enough to incorporate this into a standalone program that users can run as needed.
The launcher itself seems to be the cause of many of my issues lately. I can’t count how many times in the last week it has thought that Aion was not up to date (when it was) or that it encountered an error the last time it was run. Both of these have made it necessary to choose to force the game to play without checking for updates or repairing, since I know damn well that nothing is wrong with it.
Aion has crashed on me on occasion, but I don’t find it bothers me as much as the fact that when you log off or get disconnected from the game servers, you end up back at the launcher and have to reload the game in order to log back on. The game takes a considerable amount of time to load, and if it was already loaded why do I need to head back to this annoying little program to reload it and make sure everything is just peachy before I can play again?
I’m happy that NCSoft decided to remove GameGuard from the Aion release (for now anyway, we’ll see about that later on), but I really don’t like their launcher. I don’t own any other NCSoft games*, and I don’t really understand the purpose of this program other than to annoy me each time I want to play Aion. Why should I have to load a program before I can load my game? Especially if it provides no added value to the experience?
* As an aside, I may have once described in great detail how much I disliked Guild Wars and it’s expansions to the developers and NCSoft PR folks at E3 one year.
Permalink
09.28.09
Posted in Puzzle at 8:30 am by Middea
Permalink
09.21.09
Posted in Aion at 5:58 pm by Middea
In case anyone was interested…
I’ve been in game… A lot to say the least. Four hours of sleep >.> Not by design, work going on in the house and it’s going on “very loudly with much banging and drilling.” Not exactly conducive to sleep. Which leads to the next part, I fear I’ll be joining the dreaded queue, power is going off for an hour or so while they work on rewiring.
What have I been up to? Well from levels 1-6 I played with a friend (irl!) and we quested a bit and tried to get ahead of the pack, then he had to go eat pizza, rough life. I pushed on doing mainly only the campaign quests and gathering every single plant I could find. Ascended, chose Cleric, and slowed down, worked on extracting Aether, leveling up Armorsmithing, and just generally goofing off for a bit to let the crowd pass me a bit. Currently level 16, 86 gathering, 57 aether extraction, and 61 armorsmithing.
I’m forcing myself to stop and sniff the roses, enjoy the process. Every time I start pushing myself to level faster, I literally have to tell myself to slow down. It does seem to help. At this time I’m about 7 level behind the highest level Asmodian (Calix, a 23 SM and no level 22’s on either).
Aether Extraction Hint: Find a spawn location for your skill level with a nearby safe landing zone. Gather the spawn completely, land, switch to the next channel. Rinse repeat. With the 3 minute cooldown on channel switching and the time it takes to regain your full wing flight time, it’s a pretty golden method, assuming someone else isn’t camping that same spot.
Crafting hint: This may seem a bit silly, but do Work Order 1p over and over, until it isn’t in the options to do it anymore. Why? It is the only free skill ups you will get, and it gives you free mats/designs that will last you until you hit around 100 skill level. So skill level 1-50 do Work Order 1p.
Why do you want to level up gathering, crafting, and aether extraction skills? Well, they give you exp. Free experience to gather/make things you will do in the long run… Plus it will help you keep up with the expected leveling process. If you don’t gather you might find yourself running out of quests. And later on there are many more “Go gather x items!” and then if you aren’t up to the appropriate level you’ll be kicking yourself!
And the queue… the lovely queue. Before you curse at it, ask yourself, would you rather play in a stable environment or play in a lagtastic one? I’d rather be sitting in a queue for a pretty accurately estimated queue than be lagging/dying in game personally. Massively also posted a survival guide for the queue, my choice for passing the time is MindJolt games on Facebook or chasing the dogs around the house.
Kudos to NcSoft for a brilliant head start launch, spiffy new forums and keeping servers/factions all relatively balanced. I love that they share that information with us rather than us having to speculate. And don’t forget, “real” launch is tomorrow, might be a bit crowded in the beginning zones again.
All in all, I’m having a blast! Nothing is feeling grindy to me yet, players are being courteous for the most part (some channels actually formed a line to queue up for their turn at Cute Ribbit), and it is amazingly lag free.
Only negatives I have at this point are that we are missing several key emotes (sigh, hug, giggle, etc), crafting really does take a long time and is quite expensive (though that should sort out the dedicated)… Nothing game breaking woot.
How is your Head Start experience? Having fun? Any memorable moments so far? What do you do to pass the time in queue?
Permalink
Posted in Puzzle at 8:30 am by Middea
Permalink
09.18.09
Posted in Aion at 10:15 am by Middea
 |
A journey of a thousand miles begins by taking the initial step. ~Lao-Tzu
|
Pre-selection is upon us, yay! Sunday is right around the corner for those of us with pre-orders and Head Start. (Dates and meanings explained here)
By now, you have hopefully chosen whether you are going to be Asmodians vs Elyos and picked a server.
- Lumiel and Zikel are unofficial RP servers (drama explained here)
- Nezekan is the official server for Oceanic players
- Israphel is an unofficial hub for Brazilian legions
What else is there to do before Sunday arrives for Head Start? Or Tuesday for NA launch/Friday EU launch as the case may be…
Well, you will need to pick a class to start with, what do you want to be? Have you decided yet? Maybe you’re still flip flopping between a few options. I know I was, so many options and each with their own niche. Perhaps you weren’t sure if you should be Sorcerer vs. Spiritmaster or Cleric vs. Chanter or some other combination. How did you pick? If you haven’t picked yet, you better start weighing pro’s and con’s, break out some paper and write it down if needed. That character creation screen is quickly approaching!
Also, for everyone who has participated in the beta events, this is one final reminder that if you haven’t taken the time to do so already, you will need to change your Aion password before you will be able to log on to the Head Start or on the release date. The process is fairly simple, but it is easily something that can be overlooked with the excitement leading up to the game!
Once you make it into the game, hopefully a lag free experience is waiting for you, because your grand adventure in Atreia is about to begin. Now, some tips to make it a little less painful.
Changing Channels: Essential to avoid the overcrowding in the beginning zones. Channels are present in the two beginner towns and outlying areas and offer a way to experience the world in a different instance, up to ten of them. So rather than having everyone in channel 1 trying to get the same basket of fruit, you can hop over to channel 10 and have less competition. Once you get to areas that have rifting, past the two beginner areas, you no longer have the option of changing channels, you can’t hide from the enemy!
Walk through of how to change channels up on Aion’s Powerwiki: 
Power Shards: There are still quite a few not quite sure what they are or how they work. We posted up a little something on it, and it seemed to help a few people. You can check it out here.
Most of all, with the upcoming servers opening and excitement and rush and hullabaloo, do not forget to have fun. You only get one chance per side to level to max for the first time, so enjoy it in a way that suits you. There will be plenty of time to enjoy the max level game, and even if you are not in the first crop of level 50’s, you will get there. So stop and sniff the roses along the way!
Oh and one final thing I should probably mention in case anyone was curious, Fedoldinn and myself chose to go Lumiel with our legion, Asmodian side of course. Apparently it’s quite the popular choice amongst bloggers with Toque, K&G, and Naamah along with the AionRolePlayers (ARP) group all headed there. I personally voted for Lumiel on our legion vote due to the description of Lumiel and her personality, prior to the ARP server vote. She kicks ass heh 
P.S. These characters won’t be deleted! Unless you do it! *happy dance*
Permalink
« Previous entries
