Taugrim's MMO Blog

I played in a few rounds of the North America Closed Betas (CBs) and had the same impression as many other players: Aion is very polished.

Unfortunately, Open Beta  (OB) has been changed that perception for me. Granted, Betas for most games tends to be up-and-down in terms of stability. But I expected, after having such a stable game experience with Aion’s CB, that OB would be more of the same. After all, we’re getting closer to the launch of the game later this month.

This has been my OB experience so far…

Sunday (OB Day #1)

I was able to login but couldn’t connect to any of the listed servers for most of the 1st date of Open Beta. This affected everyone, as the servers were down for maintenance.

Late Sunday night I was able to connect to a server, but the lag was really bad (10+ seconds from pressing an ability before it fired), and I couldn’t stay logged in for more than 5 minutes, because I kept seeing this Game Guard (GG) issue:

Please note that:

1. I am definitely not a game hacker
2. GG gave me no problems during any of the rounds of CB

GG is a program designed to prevent hacking of the game. Anti-hack measures should be invisible to a legit player such as myself.

I thought maybe my client installation was messed up. I had used the CB-to-OB patcher instead of downloading the full client install via BitTorrent. So Sunday evening I started downloading the full BitTorrent installation.

Monday (OB Day #2)

The server lag was fixed, which would have been great, except that I kept experiencing the same GG issue noted above. I think the longest I was able to play before getting kicked out by GG was 10 minutes.

Late Monday, after 30 hours, the BitTorrent download was completed. So I uninstalled Aion then installed from the BitTorrent file. Even with a clean install, after logging in I ran into the GG issue again. I went to bed and decided to do read up on the Beta forums on Tuesday.

Tuesday (OB Day #3)

It turns out a lot of players were running into the same issue with GG (links to threads: 1 2), regardless of their operating system (Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7). There were some suggestions on the forums for things to try, such as deleting the bin32 directory that contains GG, disabling the firewall, turning off anti-virus software, etc. I tried those things, but they didn’t help. And anyway, it’s ridiculous to have to manually disable any PC security software due to a bug with a game.

Yes, this is a bug. It’s not possible to classify it as anything else, although I have seen some ridiculous posts by Aion fanboys that it’s not NCSoft’s fault. NCSoft chose GG for Aion. Therefore, it is NCSoft’s issue to resolve.

Keep in mind I had no GG issues in CB.

Wednesday (OB Day #4)

GG is still kicking me out of the game.

I’m following a few of the Aion Community Managers on Twitter, and the annoying thing is they are announcing things like free OB keys and such, without providing more visibility into the GG issue. The only thing I’ve seen posted on Twitter regarding GG was this link to a page that provides manual workarounds, that in my case and many other people’s did not help.

http://na.aiononline.com/en/gameguard/

I was looking forward to playing Aion when it launched. GG is a showstopper though. I’m not going to play in 5-min spurts before getting kicked out of the game.

The Aion developers need to fix this.

The following video has footage from 2 scenarios, Dragon’s Bane and Howling Gorge, with my Swordmaster running a damage / mitigation spec.

I made the video to show tactics for surviving heavy focus-fire as a 2h tank. Played correctly, a 2h tank has very good durability and can bring the pain with a big 2h.

The combination of 700 Strength and 700 Toughness, with 3 offensive tactics slotted (Balanced Accuracy for the crit bonus, and the Damage-over-time tactics Potent Enchantments and Ensorcelled Agony), has been the most effective blend of DPS and survivability that I’ve found. I’ve experimented with many different spec, gear, and RR configurations with 1h and 2h swords, and this 700 / 700 2h build suits my playstyle perfectly.

As I discussed in Part 3 of the Swordmaster Class Mechanics Guide, a tank can stack avoidance, or mitigation, or both.

When using a 2h, I’ve tried stacking parry or disrupt to improve survivability. Parry provides avoidance only against melee attacks in the 180 degree arc in front of you. Disrupt provides avoidance only against spells. I’ve tried stacking avoidance and mitigation together, but that causes my DPS to suffer, because I have fewer tactic slots and RR points to spend on offensive tactics and stats.

For ORVR and scenarios, what I’ve found works best is simply stacking Toughness. The only avoidance stat that makes sense to stack in my opinion is block, because block provides avoidance against most attacks (except morale abilities). And obviously you can’t block with a 2h.

Toughness provides passive mitigation against most attacks (except morale abilities). It doesn’t matter whether you are facing your opponent, and it mitigates damage even if you are stunned or knocked down. Toughness scales with the numbers of attackers; the more you are being attacked, the more damage Toughness mitigates.

A few game mechanic changes have increased the value of Toughness:

1. before Patch 1.2, many damage proc and DoT abilities were not mitigatable. However, in Patch 1.2, proc and DoT abilities were changed to be mitigatable, and this increased the value of Toughness significantly
2. as of Patch 1.3, there is a pocket item that drops in Land of the Dead that can makes attacks undefendable. So that’s another factor in making mitigation more valuable relative to avoidance. This is not to say that a shield isn’t a valuable avoidance tool. Shields in WAR are powerful because they can block any attack. I’ve just found that I’m more effective in RVR with a 2h sword as opposed to a sword-and-board, in terms of applying pressure to healers and bursting down targets

Yesterday Warhammer Online released a Live Event (LE), called The Wild Hunt. Part of that LE is an instance called The Hunter’s Vale (HV). While the HV mini-bosses drop nothing of significance, if you kill the final boss in the instance before the PQ timer runs out, you have access to very good drops.

Last night I joined a group with some folks from the Phoenix Throne guild Clash of the Karak to run HV. We downed the boss in time, I won a gold bag, and inside this was waiting for me:

Ironically, I’ve been trying to get a solid purple 1h sword for a long time. I chose both 2h greatswords for the RVR influence rewards. Up until recently, I’ve been using Blade of the Bloodmoon, which drops from the 1st PQ in the middle wing of Bastion Stair. I haven’t gotten a purple 1h sword to drop in my runs of the right wing of The Lost Vale or from the Tomb of the Sun in Land of the Dead.

But at least now I’ve got a pretty solid 1h weapon

The LE has been fun, there has been a lot of ORVR fighting in the Elf lands. The main issue for me is my game client keeps crashing. It’s a shame Patch 1.3.1 wasn’t a stable follow-up to 1.3b. A lot of the players on my server are quite frustrated with the lack of game stability.