WAR Games

I will use primarily in this article Aion’s community, because it is the one I’m most involved with currently.

Why is it that, especially with Aion, that gaming communities online appear to lack moderation?

Take Aionsource.com for example. The section Aion Discussion has degenerated to what is known as trolls. There is rarely anything constructive in the posts here and ends up being a flame war between the so called fanbois and haters. For those like me who love the game but realize there are some issues it gets annoying.

This article was supposed to be about online communities, which I’ll write about later. I feel the Aion community needs to be addressed here.

There is so much hate on this game on the forums now it is unbearable. The game is fun, a lot of fun. It has some issues but the forums that allow 50 posts about the same damned thing QQing about gets old. As do the the people who post the inevitable ‘go back WoW’ crap.

NCSoft has been making huge progress with some of the issues. I rarely crash now and I was affected by that. I was part of the lag snafu, which was addressed and I am no longer affected. Spam is nearly nonexistent now except for Private Stores. Yes, there are still bots and they get banned, I’ve seen it happen.

I’m not blind. I know Aion has some issues, the fortress raids really need some loving. I did my first one yesterday and got 1 AP. Yeah, that was worthwhile. I was on a team that did considerable damage, each of them got more. So teams do not matter. I will not waste my time here until fixed. Perhaps a system that rewards for being there, randomizing rewards like WAR did.

See what I did there, I made a rant and gave a solution. Since this is my site there aren’t 50 other topics like it else I would have posted this there instead of making a new post. Perhaps this article should have been forum etiquette. Hmm, updating title…now!

What I guess I don’t understand is why so many people feel they have to post their negative experiences after they’ve left the game. Do they feel obligated to make everyone else rage quit too because they weren’t having fun after maxing out? Well I’m rage quitting the forums myself, or at least cutting way back.

The game is fun to me, when it no longer is it will be time to move on. I don’t see why some others don’t understand this simple concept.

Well, it’s obvious that I need to revamp the layout of this blog. I’m not playing WAR anymore, and Aion I should be for a while. In due time. For now, I do like the look of my gobbos and such.

However, the RSS feeds and such will be updated today…I hope. Aion willing of course.

Well, been playing now since head start and have to say, Aion is a lot of fun. I play on the Lumiel server so feel free to hit up Adoniel and say hello.

I will be giving a full report once I get into the Abyss, because as of yet I have never been as I’m a mere level 20 and one needs be 25 to get in. Also, the official Aion site (na.aiononline.com/en) has got to be one of the most buggy I’ve seen. The boards are bad, really bad. Overall it has good information, just poorly presented. Aion Source (www.aionsource.com) is much more bang for your proverbial buck. It has guides and a new Market forum to sell your wares.

Well, I did it. I said I wasn’t going to until THQ’s release of 40k, but I did it anyway. I broke down and purchased another MMO, Aion. Aiononline.com has the skinny, with news, etc. The game comes out I believe on the 21st, with name preselection beginning the 18th of September and head start for preorders sometime shortly after that.

I’ll write a full review once the game is out, but I will say this. It is unique in presentation, and possibly the most balanced I’ve ever seen in any MMO PvP arena as both factions are identical, although highly customizable.

Well, as I gave up WAR a while ago, it’s about time we shift the focus here. From this day on I shall do more with this blog towards it’s original goal; my take on various games, anime, etc.

Need that extra gold to get that last piece of Dark Promise armor? Worried that it might go against the CoC? Not any more as Mythic is reversing it’s stand on gold selling.

“We just feel like we’ve been beating a dead horse” admits EA/Mthic’s Warhammer gold producer Adam Jacobs. “I mean, if you want to spend your real money in this economy to support another country’s, far be it from us to say no.”

No real devs were available for comment.

1.2.1 was announced by Mark Jacobs on Friday as well as the latest in server closures,er, free character transfers. Ostermark, the home of my Order toons in WAR, is offering the choice of Phoenix Throne, the last remaining RP server, or Volkmar, a core server. For me, this was sort of the perpetual straw that broke the camel’s back.

It does look as though the devs have heard the outcry of the mergers, but only time will tell. The transfers begin Monday and my subscription has another two weeks, though I won’t be playing my remaining time. As it was, I was already being lackadaisical in my WAR efforts. MMOs in general for me are becoming too much of a chore. I like this game, the PvP is second to none, but I can get most of the same feeling from a free RPS. No monthly fee or a lower one probably would have kept me, but as is I’ve decided to move on.

With the server merger/closure/trannsfer/whatever I decided now was a good time to walk away. I do prefer scifi or such in my MMOs anyhow, but even they really don’t have anything to offer me at the moment. So with that, no more MMOs. Well, at least no more for a while. 40,000 is coming out in a couple of years…

Well, the title’s no surprise. In a recent Youtube bit he calls for an end to the drug war. You know, he’s got a point. We spend millions if not billions to prevent what some of our presidents have tried if not still do. What’s the dealio?

No, it’s not game related, or is it?

Mainly because Mythic doesn’t seem to like giving out the numbers, and I don’t think this will stay up that long; I’ve copied a Herald post below:

Greetings! Today, we sat down and chatted with the RvR team about two popular topics we’ve seen pop up in the WAR community. Read on!

Q: We have keeps claimed but our Victory Points from Scenarios, Skirmish, and PvE are still degrading…what gives?!

A: This unfortunately is a common misconception due to various player mods which inaccurately represent the Zone Control system.

Victory points in the Skirmish, Scenario and PvE pools degrade whether a Keep is claimed or not.

Q: We just did 5 runs of a PQ and the PvE pool has barely moved…what’s going on there?

A: Each Zone Control pool has various weights associated with it to determine its importance in the over all Victory Point total. These pools also have a neutral pool to limit the “flip flopping” of dominance in a single area of Zone Control (except for BOs and Keeps which are binary). Currently the weights of each pool are as follows:

* Tier 1: Scenario – 40%, Objectives 40%, Skirmish 10%, PvE 10%
* Tiers 2 and 3: Scenario – 35%, Objectives 35%, Skirmish 10%, PvE 10%, Prior Zone 10%
* Tier 4: Scenario – 25%, Objectives 45%, Skirmish 20%, PvE 5%, Prior Zone 5%

Zone Domination overall from what I’ve played is great, as is 1.2. However, too much emphasis in all tiers is given to scenarios. I think scenarios need to be taken out of the equation all together. Open them up to be playable form whatever server you’re on. In other words, if you’re on the Phoenix Throne server you could do battle against people from the Ostermark server in a scenario; however that scenario would not count towards zone control.

I like this idea as it would help low population servers and casual gamers alike. There would be very little cue time, and we wouldn’t be limited one what scenarios would pop at any given time.

Paul Barnett always has someting odd to say on his Twitter.  His videos on Youtube are odd at times as well, sometimes funny, and other times informative.  Have a look for yourself.