Leaving Aion for now

[ariesel]

It's very disappointing to me, because I absolutely love to play with all of you, but I've had enough.

I read this blog post yesterday and I'm going to follow through:

www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Stradden/112009/5038_Speaking-With-Your-Wallet

Until NCSoft gets rid of the macro farming and gold selling situation, I am going back to LoTRO. Things like making aether gathering poisonous to all in the next patch is just ridiculous and only hurts the real player base.

I will definitely keep conversing here! My characters will send some things before cancelling so they don't go to waste!

I love you all!

[Morreion]

Arie, you make a good point

One thing that really stuck in my craw about DAoC...I enjoyed that game immensely for years. But the forests of buffbots grew over time at the frontier entrance keeps, many people talked about what an advantage that gave others, and Mythic did nothing about it. That was a sore point with me, because it meant that bot accounts trumped players economically. Lots of people were bitter about that in the end. It took a while to get to that point in Camelot, but the bots started immediately in Aion. It will only get worse if NCsoft does nothing about it...and the game feels more and more 'fake' as they let that go on.

[EchoVamper]

Ari, your decision saddens me, as I'm sure it does all of us. But I do respect it. I have some grave concerns of my own about the way this is playing out.

I watched this type of thing destroy much of what I thought was good about DAoC. I will not tolerate these elements nearly as long in this game.

Morreion mentions economics. I actually haven't had too much trouble acquiring the kinah I need to do things thus far. But on the other hand, it's disgusting to blow half of your kinah on about 30 crafting levels, and then see these mindless bots filling the coffers of other players. Sooner or later, the impact of all this botting will hit the broker, and it won't be pretty. It will then become very hard for an honest player to develop a resource base inside or outside of the market.

For now, I will continue to hang in there. I enjoy some parts of the game very much and I enjoy you all immensely.

[Gidgiddoni]

I agree with you 160%! (and I think that is the highest percent ever!)

I was actually out of Aion most of this week trying out Dragon Age Origins. I stopped in Aion Friday to check out the veteran rewards and to see if anything had changed (which I knew pretty much for certain nothing would have).

Anyway ... It is easily clear to me that NCSoft has little concern for the live players of this game. When I logged in Friday I marked the allowed 10 bots within a few minutes close as a sorcerer's spell range from Eltnen (sp) Fortress.

They clearly don't care, of they would have some actually LIVE GMs going around removing the gold selling private store people who sit there all day. And the bots.

And the bots weren't quite so bad in levels 1-20 because you could usually change channels and get away from them. But now you are stuck. You even get slowed in doing your level 20 quests because level 26 gladiators are there killing everything.

DAOC, WoW, Warhammer and Aion - Aion has, by far, the worst of this (and Aion has only been out a little over a month!). I don't see Blizzard putting up with this. And, of the few things Warhammer did any good, at least they fought the gold sellers. And this is a lot worse than the buff bot forests of DAOC.

Blech.

Part of the problem is there are already enough things to turn you against this game WITHOUT the bots. The crafting sucks. It is asinine and insane. It is way too Kinah intensive. It isn't horrible, but it isn't far from it. Maybe this is part of the reason gold sellers will always be with this thing.

Honestly, I don't think Koreans know how to deal with an American market.

[Morreion]

Add to the bot/goldspammer situation 2 other concerns:

All week I could hardly play due to lag. This morning it wasn't bad and I could actually play. I hope that doesn't come back.

And I am not looking forward to being ganked by higher level players in the Abyss starting at level 25. I'm scratching my head how a major game release would start PvP at level 25 in an area where players levels 25-50 can go. Basically, this means you get ganked a lot by the early levelers. An opponent 5+ levels above you is pretty much invincible to your attacks. 20+ levels of being ganked is PvP? Who thought this was a great idea?



The strange thing is- these issues were mostly forseeable. I am at a loss to figure out how NCsoft did not see them coming.

[Rakul]

The keen is very sad now. But, I honestly completely understand. The same thing is bothering me right now in all of the Lepharist camps. Out of 5 camps in the area, 4 were camped by a bot or group of bots. Not sure how much longer I can stand it myself. I guess we'll see.

PS: We'll miss you in game... stay in touch here!

[Morreion]

Topic: Update on the 1.5.1.0 Patch Notes

From the patch notes:

1. When you extract Aether, there’s a chance that Aether Poison Gas will infiltrate your body. The poison blocks gathering for a certain period of time unless you detoxify the poison.

- Once you are poisoned the only way to detoxify yourself is to utter the "Cleansing Word.”

- To utter the Cleansing Word, type the randomly given letters and numbers within the designated time

- When you utter the Word, you get three chances to enter the correct letter/number sequence. If you fail three times, Vitality Extracting and Aether Extracting are prohibited.

- The “/ExtractStatus” command provides your extraction status.

- When you have Aether Poison Gas in your body, you can still move and activate other abilities, so move to a safe place before you utter the Cleansing Word.

Attack botting by making real players type captchas in a game.

[EchoVamper]

Nov 8, 2009 20:30:39 GMT -5 Morreion said:

Topic: Update on the 1.5.1.0 Patch Notes

From the patch notes:

1. When you extract Aether, there’s a chance that Aether Poison Gas will infiltrate your body. The poison blocks gathering for a certain period of time unless you detoxify the poison.

- Once you are poisoned the only way to detoxify yourself is to utter the "Cleansing Word.”

- To utter the Cleansing Word, type the randomly given letters and numbers within the designated time

- When you utter the Word, you get three chances to enter the correct letter/number sequence. If you fail three times, Vitality Extracting and Aether Extracting are prohibited.

- The “/ExtractStatus” command provides your extraction status.

- When you have Aether Poison Gas in your body, you can still move and activate other abilities, so move to a safe place before you utter the Cleansing Word.

Attack botting by making real players type captchas in a game.

That is one of the most offensive concepts I can imagine in an MMO. Unbelievable!

The botters would probably just replace the disabled character with a new account after mailing its current resources to someone. The honest player will be left with their account, and the characters they have invested so heavily in, forever crippled. Simply unbelievable.

[Loendal]

Some of the methods they used in (*shudder*) Runescape were interesting...

You could have a beastie jump out and attack you, a random NPC would show up and if you don't respond to them you can get teleported or something like that. Neither make sense so far as immersion value, but then again, Captchas seem even worse.

[Regolyth]

Sorry to see you go Ariesel. Good luck in finding fun elsewhere.

Nov 8, 2009 20:30:39 GMT -5 Morreion said:

- When you utter the Word, you get three chances to enter the correct letter/number sequence. If you fail three times, Vitality Extracting and Aether Extracting are prohibited.

Wow... that's a piss-poor effort of dealing with bots if I've ever saw one.