Server Choice For Aion is Up in the Air

Posted on 2009 September 17 by Ed Park

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve chosen Assassin to play as my main character in Aion. I haven’t decided which server and faction to roll.

Here’s why this decision matters to me:

  • I don’t have the time or desire to level multiple characters on multiple servers. The switching cost is too high
  • I want to play on a server with a strong, mature community. For the last 2 MMOs I played, LOTRO and WAR,  I played on RP servers, Landroval and Phoenix Throne (PT) respectively, and the experience on those servers was much better compared to non-RP servers

Here are the options I am looking at:

  1. roll Asmodian (Asmo) on Lumiel
  2. roll Elyos on Zikel
  3. roll Asmo on Zikel with the guild A New Level (my original plan)

Let me give some more context.

I’ve been unguilded since I de-subbed from WAR the first time back in April. When I came back to WAR in July, I wasn’t sure how long I’d be around, so I avoided joining a guild. I didn’t want to join a guild and then leave shortly after; that’s not healthy for the guild. It turns out I played WAR for the past 2.5 months. Had I known I was going to be around that long, I would have applied to an excellent guild, Irony, that I grouped with frequently. Irony has the trifecta I look for in players of a guild: skilled and friendly but not elitist.

I enjoyed the tight community on PT and wanted to guild with other PT players migrating to Aion, so a few weeks ago, I applied to a guild called A New Level (ANL), started by some of my former opponents. I never grouped with them in WAR, but they were cool on the forums and we had a lot of fun fights and duels.

There was a huge Vent meeting over the weekend between guilds from both factions of PT, and they decided to roll on the Aion server Zikel. This caused some friction between some PT players and ARP (Aion Role Playing), as both groups wanted their server (Zikel and Lumiel, respectively) to be designated as the Aion official RP server.

The upshot of all this:

  • Zikel looks way imbalanced in favor of Asmo, as counted from the Zikel forum on AionSource (Numbers for the Legions Elyos/Asmo). A lot of people have said it won’t matter, but in the past 2 games I’ve played, I’ve seen the effect that even a hundred competent players switching factions on a server can have, even if the server has a population of thousands of players
  • there has been a lot of flaming on the AionSource Zikel forums between PT / ARP and between PT / TheMercs. All this forum drama seems to have attracted a lot of elitist guilds to Zikel. I’m not intimidated by elitist guilds from a skill perspective, but they tend to be pricks in-game and on the forums, and this creates a environment I don’t want to be a part of

Both of those points have made Zikel look less attractive as a server.

I have til tomorrow to decide.

UPDATE (2009/09/18): I’ve rolled Elyos on Triniel.

UPDATE (2009/09/24): Yesterday, I re-rolled Asmodian on Lumiel for my main character. I checked out the server out of curiosity, and the player base is very friendly.

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Posted in Aion

Thinking of Rolling Assassin for Aion

Posted on 2009 September 14 by Ed Park

The launch of Aion for North America is only a week away!

I’m still debating the all-important decision of which class to play as my main character. As I said in a post a few weeks ago, I was thinking of rolling one of these 3 classes:

  • Gladiator
  • Templar
  • Chanter

I decided to remove Templar and Chanter from the list, for the reasons I mentioned in the other post.

Once the Game Guard issues were resolved by NCSoft in Open Beta, I leveled a Gladiator to 11, so I could try out Gladiator with a 2h. I enjoyed the Gladiator a lot more with 2h; the burst damage is much better.

On a whim, in Open Beta, I also rolled a “Sin” (Assassin).

I was very curious about the Assassin class based on the positive comments from players on the AionSource.com forums. Here are some of the strengths of Sins at higher levels:

  • high burst and sustained DPS. Sometimes you only get one or the other with a DPS class. With a Sin you get both
  • lots of stuns to work with. This will be great for handling kiters and healers
  • strong soloing capability
  • highly desired for PVE groups, because of the high, sustained DPS

I’m now thinking of rolling a Sin as my main.

Which class are you thinking of rolling as your main and why?

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Posted in Aion

Open Beta Has Removed the Polish From Aion

Posted on 2009 September 9 by Ed Park

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:

aion-game-guard-fail

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.

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Posted in Aion

Swordmaster PVP Video: 2H Damage / Mitigation Tank

Posted on 2009 September 3 by Ed Park

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

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Posted in PVP, Video, Warhammer Online

Finally Got a Worthy 1H Sword, Courtesy of the Live Event

Posted on 2009 September 1 by Ed Park

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:

hunters-vale-gold-bag-1h-sword

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.

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Posted in Warhammer Online
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