Aion Likes Queues

[modeps]

http://evavhost.com/i/news/aion.jpg

Thinking on hopping into the new MMORPG Aion? You may want to wait a few weeks. Both Massively (http://www.massively.com/2009/09/21/the-aion-server-queue-survival-guide/) and Kotaku (http://kotaku.com/5364238/aions-early-start-so-far) have reported long waiting queues to simply start playing, over saturated starting zones, and random crashing. Couple two of those together (Long wait times and crashing) and you'll get some very unhappy people. Imagine waiting for 4+ hours to play your game, then crashing once you're in...

So you pre-ordered Aion and you're super excited to jump into the game during the headstart release that's going on right now. You've set aside a whole block of time for your game play, you have your snacks at your side and your DVR ready to play some great entertainment while you grind your night away. You type in your username and password, accept the EULA, select the server that you made your character on during the pre-selection annnndd.....

...you get slapped in the face with a 2 hour wait time.
My main problem was due to the initial rush. With that many people in your starting zone, quest items will be camped, and quest monsters will be slaughtered mercilessly. At first NCsoft had 10 instances of the newbie area available for players to freely switch between, but each one was packed, causing severe quest bottlenecks, especially when the quest required players to click on one item that spawned every two minutes. It was chaotic.

Of course this is a new MMO that everyone wants to try, and there are bound to be some issues, but it's still sad that no one's quite figured out how to plan properly for a launch. I mean heck, right now they're having these issues and it's only for folks who pre-ordered (game servers don't open up for everyone for another day or so). You're telling me that NCSoft couldn't gauge demand based on pre-order sales and how the open beta went?

[Ravenus]

The Beta was ok... I wasn't all that impressed by it, but I definately won't be playing it now.

[Zeal]

played this horrible garbage in beta. i expect server merges in a few months and then it being made free to play.

...the fate of all who challenge WoW.

[Sasori the Medic]

Ugh, queues. Nothing worse in an MMO, besides maybe in-game advertising.

[Wolfgang]

Champions had a few server issues, but not to this extent. They had 2 afternoons of downtime and then a hour of downtime since launching about 3 weeks ago.

I don't think Champions was as popular as Aion (Aion recently claimed they were the most pre-ordered MMO this year)

[modeps]

I don't think Champions was as popular as Aion (Aion recently claimed they were the most pre-ordered MMO this year)

See, right there... NCSoft KNEW it was going to be popular and they're STILL having these issues? Bah.

[Wolfgang]

See, right there... NCSoft KNEW it was going to be popular and they're STILL having these issues? Bah.

Yeah I completely agree. They should have handled this better, but so should have Champions (servers didn't crash, but did lag), 1943, Xbox Live after Christmas, etc...

I guess though with times tight and players being loyal to the purchase (can't say I blame them, once you break the seal you can't return it), companies rather play it safe.

Heck Warhammer launched with a few servers, faced queues, then added what felt like hundreds which then caused the servers to feel empty and then took forever to start merging them.

Maybe one day someone will get it right? Want to place bets on Blizzard's next MMO launching smoothly? Heck Lich King didn't even have a great launch.

[abso]

Turbine's LOTRO launch was pretty damn smooth. It can certainly be done if you plan for it. But you need to make decisions 4-5 months in advance with regards to what content is going to come post-launch.

[Anenome]

Well, there's only one thing worse than underplanning for a launch like this--and that is overplanning. If you have too much server capacity you've paid needlessly.

Furthermore, too much server capacity and no queues doesn't translate into free publicity like this one that imply the situation is far better than what the developer thought it would turn out to be. Clearly everyone's rushing in to play, creating a bandwagon effect. "What's that, Aion's got 2 hour queues? Maybe I should check it out soon."

Problem is it's difficult to distinguish between poor planning on the part of the developer from a truly unexpected bumrush by consumers. After all, lots of people could've bought the game in the last 24 hours before launch giving them no real way to react.

I'm sure, ideally they would want to plan adequately and have no queues for anyone. But, this is a good problem to have from their point of view, as long as it doesn't last too long. Month tops.

And, when even WoW can't avoid queues when they launch new content, we need not judge a brand new MMO so harshly. How they react to this development means more to me right now than the fact that they were taken by surprise after launch. In a very real way, predicting usage ahead of time is at best very difficult to peg. Even Nintendo was accused of creating artificial shortages with the Wii, when that wasn't the case at all. They simply got swamped with consumer interest and it's quite a bit harder to ramp up console production than to add server capacity. So, again, I give it a month tops, but probably more like a week. Somewhere between those time-frames would be fine. Any longer and I think people will blame them.

[gojira]

I don't think Champions was as popular as Aion (Aion recently claimed they were the most pre-ordered MMO this year)

Anyone actually know what these numbers were? Pre-orders for Champions and Aion, I mean.

Just morbid curiosity, really, wondering how ol' Jack Emmert is faring.

[Samstag]

...you have your snacks at your side and your DVR ready to play some great entertainment while you grind your night away.

Is this typical MMO behavior, or is it an Aion thing? I never enjoyed the MMO thing and figured it was just something some people enjoy and others don't, but this statement makes me wonder if they really aren't fun for anyone.

Do you guys normally need to be entertained while playing an MMO, or are the good ones entertainment enough?

[pwnophobia]

Is this typical MMO behavior, or is it an Aion thing? I never enjoyed the MMO thing and figured it was just something some people enjoy and others don't, but this statement makes me wonder if they really aren't fun for anyone.

Do you guys normally need to be entertained while playing an MMO, or are the good ones entertainment enough?

Depends on the scenario. If I was grinding reputation in WoW I'd have to have the TV on or something going in the background because it was stupid boring killing the same mobs over...and over...and over...again.

[randir14]

I don't think it's quite true that no company has had a good launch. DAoC and Lord of the Rings Online both had perfect launches.

[MasterEvilAce]

So EVERYONE at EvilAvatar hates this game?

Weird.

I find Aion to be actually pretty good. I played during open beta, and I'm in the headstart. There is a mad rush to play, that's why there are queues. There seems to be too few servers, and all of them are full... with more players coming in tomorrow when the headstart is over.

Despite that, I have not experienced any crashes or disconnects. I had a 280ms ping in the starting zone which was jam packed. The game didn't feel laggy at all, however.

Initially I had a wait time of "an hour" and got in within 5 minutes. After taking a break and going back in I had a wait time of two hours, and waited a little less than that. For comparisons.. I experienced the exact same wait times (or worse) with Warhammer. I was on the most populated server, though...

Having said that, I'm actually impressed that the servers kept up with the demand. A lot of people will complain that this is the "worst mmo launch in history" but these are clearly 12 year olds with no memory.

Gameplay-wise, the game feels fine. I don't feel like I'm grinding (yet, atleast). There's a lot of character customization visually... I don't think there's enough outside of that, though... just a few custom abilities you can choose.

The game is highly PVP based.. so if you liked WoW, you probably won't like this game. I liked instances in WoW (read: not raids), and I don't think Aion has many of them.

I'm still debating if I'll pickup this game or not. I'll probably get it in a week or two unless there are major game issues that people find.

[bean19]

In the open beta they had two starting zones. Most MMOs spread the userbase out more than this in starting zones either through instancing (CoX, Guild Wars) or more starting locations (WoW).

The servers may be setup correctly for a playerbase of this size that is spread out in level, but that doesn't help make a launch smooth.

[MasterEvilAce]

In the open beta they had two starting zones. Most MMOs spread the userbase out more than this in starting zones either through instancing (CoX, Guild Wars) or more starting locations (WoW).

The servers may be setup correctly for a playerbase of this size that is spread out in level, but that doesn't help make a launch smooth.

There are multiple channels per zone.. I have seen at least 10 different channels before.

[mulamasa]

i played from the time the server switched on with about 4 friends all of yesterday, neither of us experienced a single crash nor a Q when logging back in from lunch, breaks etc.

as the above poster said, the opening zones have 10 channels (instances) you can change between, and then the second area (11+) has 4 or 5. so there really was plenty of room.

that said im on the oceanic server, they may have effected the server load i guess. but it was at "high" on the load list lastnight when the rest were "low" and was still fine.

[bean19]

I didn't know they were instancing. Obviously from those pics they need to instance more or open more servers. I have this preordered, but the plan is to play with my brother and we are both on hectic schedules so that just hasn't happened.

[kionee]

I remember when WoW came out and the servers were overloaded, and Everquest 2 poked fun at Blizzard by advertising the game as World of Waiting.

[lockwoodx]

I'm a MMO addict but I passed on this one. It's more of the same, and the asian final fantasy graphics where everyone looks like a meterosexual fairy turned me off.

[Valkyrist]

See, right there... NCSoft KNEW it was going to be popular and they're STILL having these issues? Bah.

The closed beta was pretty smooth.

The open beta was a complete fiasco. At least 48 hours before their servers were stable enough to actually log on. And then when they did go up, they had severe problems with overcrowding like what you described.

So yes, they knew EXACTLY what was coming, but went ahead anyhow. I have it preorded (hence why I was part of the closed beta), but am opting to not pick it up for at least a week. Just gonna give it some time to smooth out and the flood of lvl 1-10 characters to filter out.

Once you get into the game itself, I found it to be pretty fun. It's a very pretty, shameless WoW-clone. But it's new WoW-esc stuff I havn't done 10,000 times already, so hopefully it'll keep my MMO-cravings under controll till FFXIV or SW:TOR arrives.

[Namielus]

How to the quality of the launch matter? Everyone already paid 50$ for this game, so if they got feed up they can set the game down right now and ignore it. How many of you are really willing to spend 50$ to abort a game you haven't played. No one. This is exactly why the launch day blues don't matter at least not to the devolpers.

You are taking about an increadible complicated server and client release that has had hundreds of thosands of man hours put into it to, that will see traffic volumes that will be 10-20x times the load they will ever get to ever again. I don't have metrics on how long this lasts, but I can imagine that it doesn't last long when you look at the lifecycle of these products.

Can they do a better job, damn right. We are gamers, we love games. Everytime a game gets hyped up and we get excited, and then devistated when games don't live up to these expectations we feel let down. I understand. I've loved and lost so many games (I PREORDERD LIONHEART (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionheart:_Legacy_of_the_Crusader)). I forced my closest friends to try to play that game at a lan party day of release. They never trusted me again.

Bottom line, releasing software is hard, delivering what people want is even harder. Give Aion some time (ODST anyone?) and then pick it up with a clear head. Nothing will fix our broken expectations, but we can at least accept what now is for what it is, temporary. Then play the bejesus out of this brand new game.

[Valkyrist]

I'm sorry, but in this day and age I find you reasons very thin, Namielus.

For all the touting they did about having the most preorders, you'd have thought they would know at least ROUGHLY how many people to expect. Keep in mind that non-preorder players can't even play yet. The only people trying to access their servers are the ones already accounted for. I would think that if I had 10k preorders, and knew my servers could only handle 5k, I would notice a slight problem and do my best to correct it.

And it's not like these preorders just popped up overnight. They've been accumulating over months. MOST of them already had participated in one or both betas available to preorders. The open beta itself was a massive stress-test, as was evident of the 48 hour downtime when it first opened. Which of course is the purpose of a beta: To weed out these kind of problems BEFORE the game is released. This is not some minor glitch on a single NPC's text lines. The game is flat-out unplayable at the moment.

Does NCSoft not employ marketing people to track these kind of numbers? To tell them how much demand to expect? If they do, they either need to start listening to them, or fire the lot of them. Because something failed here on a massive level.

Also, this is not the first major MMO to be released. In fact, we have the experience of witnessing many major MMO launches and the mistakes they made. From Everquest, FFXI, SWG, WoW, to more recent ones like Age of Conan and Warhammer, EVE, and Tabula Rising. For that matter, NCSoft itself is no stranger to MMO releases, with Guild Wars and Lineage, and their multiple expansions squarely under their belt. I find it hard to believe, then, that they simply were "caught with their pants down" and didn't realize what was going to happen.

So no, I don't buy it. I've been playing MMO's since Ultima Online, and I expect launches to be a bit rocky. For server instability for weeks. Glitched quests. Class inbalance. Etc.

But to be forced to wait hours or days after spending $50 to play? Especially when one of their big promos was a two-day early access for people who preordered?! I won't go so far as to say inexcusable. But it definitely says dark things about the company that allows this to happen when they should've know almost exactly how many players would be showing up. A company that expects you to pay a monthly subscription. And quite honestly that worries me more than a bit if that is the way they're acting already.

[Anenome]

The game is highly PVP based.. so if you liked WoW, you probably won't like this game. I liked instances in WoW (read: not raids), and I don't think Aion has many of them.

- Makes my decision even easier, not gonna pick it up. PvP is not my thing. I understand that many Asian cultures are far more into it than Westerners, which is interesting from a sociological point of view, if not particularly illuminating in any obvious way.

Meanwhile, raiding definitely agreed with me in WoW. I set myself up as a paladin tank before it was cool and was already a main tank when they became even more competitive mid-BC days. Ended up offtanking on Illidan for my servers first kill of him :) After that, I quit. It was analogous to beating the game. Probably would've been a lot harder to quit if I hadn't done that :P

So, I have a 70 decked out tank sitting there with about 40,000 gold on him, as I was a great auction house player too.

[Xarcara]

there really is no excuse for queues IMO. WoW actually sets this precidence as there are queues when they launch new content almost always, like it or not SoE knows how to launch and mmo, to bad companies follow WoW's example most often

[kionee]

there really is no excuse for queues IMO. WoW actually sets this precidence as there are queues when they launch new content almost always, like it or not SoE knows how to launch and mmo, to bad companies follow WoW's example most often

WoW has more subscribers than anyone, so queues when new content comes out is not unusual. Especially when they release major content/xpacs, people come back and see what is new.

As for Sony knowing how to launch an MMO, maybe, but Vanguard wasn't exactly a rousing success when it launched was it.

[LobsterMobster]

It's not fair to say that no one knows how to plan for a launch. I'd say they know exactly what they're doing. What's more economical: buying enough infrastructure to handle your load 95% of the time, or buying twice as much so it can handle that extra 5%?

MMOs don't "sort out server problems" in their early months. The load dies down.

[clok1966]

having 30 servers when in 3 months they wont need 5 is very silly. Name 1 MMO that has needed more servers in 6 months after launch in the last 4 years? Every New one is "wonderful" and in 2-3 months is half dead. Anything new is ...well new for a few weeks and even feels like its fun.. but time and doing the same thing we have all (the cronic MMO playres)done 1 million times before but with different graphics just dont cut it. Asian MMO games are, have been and will always be GRIND FESTS, though I must admit the days of Linage and Linage2 are gone (months to make levels) but they are still sadly all about grinding. And I hear some PvP comments. Anybody who thinks WoW has PvP or Warhammer did, or AoC did and hasnt played an Asian PvP game will be crying like a baby in a few weeks. The PvP wil make a hardened criminal weep, its far more ruthless then anything in the USA. It makes Ganking in WoW seem like safety. And while i like a challange of PvP (alot) I doubt you will see more then 10 kills in a year of playing that are remotly even matched (as in you not many levels over them or they over you, or when you are not 10% health or engaged in combat with mobs already).

The only thing i have really heard is pretty smooth and nice to look at... AoC was pretty (but not smooth for 75% of the players)... graphics dont make a game, they do make it better, but Aion is just same old same old in new cloths. For the die hards who have been playing since UO days, its nothing new. For the Newer players who have only Played WoW.. give it a go, its nice to try new things.

[bean19]

there really is no excuse for queues IMO. WoW actually sets this precidence as there are queues when they launch new content almost always, like it or not SoE knows how to launch and mmo, to bad companies follow WoW's example most often
Back when they had MMOs that were highly successful this wasn't the case. I realize it has been over 5 years since Everquest II and SWG came out, but SWG was a fiasco and EQ II had several server crashes and the towns and town instances were often unplayably overcrowded. Plus EQ II launched with a game-breaking bug that allowed mobs to go through the floors or walls when chasing players who would then run them across the maps because they could not attack them through walls/floors. This created trains of enemies that could not be targeted at entrances.

[Anenome]

Probably the best MMO in the world, no queues, and with a first person shooter element is: The Army. The only MMO that PAYS YOU to play :P
(super-fast-announcer-voice):Long term commitment required.

[MrE]

I'm a MMO addict but I passed on this one. It's more of the same, and the asian final fantasy graphics where everyone looks like a meterosexual fairy turned me off.

Wow, nice Xenophobic outlook on the game. If they'd all been Caucasian or have pointy ears you'd be good with it, but because it reminds of of FF you pass? Eh, to each his or her own I suppose.

[gojira]

Probably the best MMO in the world, no queues, and with a first person shooter element is: The Army. The only MMO that PAYS YOU to play :P
(super-fast-announcer-voice):Long term commitment required.

That's not a MMO kid, that's real. You have to actually get off the couch if you want to play that one.

Kinda like the Wii Fit, actually. Hmmm.

[Anenome]

That's not a MMO kid, that's real. You have to actually get off the couch if you want to play that one.

Kinda like the Wii Fit, actually. Hmmm.

It is massively multiplayer :P