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.

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.

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.

Also, I am grateful on some of the changes to the Shaman, and not so on others. Do sumfin’ useful will now be useful as it will absorb more damage and Gather ’round will cast quicker and heal more. Both very good. But ”
* Gedup!: This ability’s build time has reduced, but its cooldown time has been increased.: not so good. I already have the instant tactic spec’ed for this and now that seems pointless. They don’t say what the longer cooldown period is either, so it may prove we’re no longer the best rezzers in the game; which was something since we are far from being the best healers.

Overall though I like it. They’ve addressed every class in some way, some more, some less, but everyone got something looked at.

I’ll address this more later…time ta WAAAGH!

ION 2008 an Analysis of MMOG Subscription Growth

Here’s the survey.

The numbers being addressed at this time are faction populations.  The numbers per server are not given but it still gives a good overview of the number of Order vs. Destruction.   They break it down between Monolith and North American servers with the following figures (first set of numbers for Order, second for Destruction):

Average of All North American Servers

Active Accounts Per Faction: 49% / 51%
Relative Average Exp. Earning Rate per Time Unit: 50% / 50%
Relative Average RP Earning Rate per Time Unit: 50% / 50%
Average Exp. Per Character: 50% / 50%
Average RP Per Character: 50% / 50%

Monolith

Active Accounts Per Faction: 44% / 56%
Relative Average Exp. Earning Rate per Time Unit: 50% / 50%
Relative Average RP Earning Rate per Time Unit: 50% / 50%
Average Exp. Per Character: 51% / 49%
Average RP Per Character: 51% / 49%

SOURCE

So what does this say?  From the looks of it, it would show  a near even pairing of the two factions with a slight advantage going to Destruction on the Monolith servers.  The thing is, it gives us no useful information, such as an hourly breakdown of the two factions and in what tiers.  This is a good primer but not sufficient.

What can I say?  I’m a numbers person.  I want the breakdown of all the data in the game so I can determine if something is worth my time.  But sadly the devs have come out and said they will never give exact numbers as they don’t want people gaming the system.  Mythic has been forthcoming with most of what they do, but giving calculations or any numbers they’ve always been cryptic at best.  Overall faction population numbers is a start, sort of.

First, although not completely new, something I haven’t seen since the original Everquest and with many improvements, you must aim at your target in order to hit it. This goes for spells, archery, and melee. This feature alone would make this game worth it for me.

It has a robust alignment system as well. I think every MMO should have some sort of alignment/faction system, and from the hype on this, it’s done well in Darkfall. Even though you play an Ork, it shouldn’t make you automatically evil, just perhaps inclined to such.

Without going in to detail of all the features of the game, I will say this. My last article was about MMO innovation, and Darkfall answers a lot of what I was calling for there. If it wasn’t for the fact that I am waiting for a decent SciFi MMO (Champions may have me here ‘cuz I like the superhero genre as well), and the fact they have female orks I would definitely try this game out.