Since 30th October, NCSoft is offering veteran rewards for its players. The longer you subscribe, the better items you will receive. EXP amulets, wings, emotes, etc. are included.
Actually a really good move
I’m sure this project will affect the decisions of some morons players to continue subscribing. No matter how bad the game is, how many bots are running around and ruining your experience without being banned. Who needs customer support? You get nyerking free items instead. Isn’t it cool? Even ingame events aren’t necessary, ffs!
Subs must be dropping rapidly
NCSoft truly messed up. Bots, gold spammers are not being banned. No 24/7 customer support. Worst ingame events, I’ve ever seen in my life. NCSoft is trying to act genius by spending minimum money but earning a lot. Is it going to work? I don’t think so. At least it’s not going to work on me and most people I know. I’m not a moron who would waste money for such a horrible company.
What do you think?
I think my trolling instinct has gone rampage above. Am I seeing all this wrong? Correct me if so.
1. November 2009 at 4:11 pm
I don’t like that.
I take up new MMOs in the hope that they’ll be more human than the last one. Aion is, in some gameplay ways, more human than Guild Wars, but big minus points for monthly subscriptions.
That which they just did is big stuff. If I actually get hit by bad botting etc, I’m leaving too. Rewarding the players who don’t have a life, life being the most human thing of all, is just STUPID.
That’s a big blow to the respect I have for Aion.
1. November 2009 at 4:14 pm
Ya, I completely agree, I quit Aion before the first month was even up, gold spammers and bot made the game unplayable. It’s disgusting to see another AoC hit the NA market.
1. November 2009 at 5:29 pm
Screw AION
I am totaly enjoying Borderlands :D
1. November 2009 at 5:33 pm
Haha, yeah! No grind, epic quests, fun! :D
1. November 2009 at 11:03 pm
Ok, I must disagree on some parts here, in the entry and the comments.
First of all, trying to say people that enjoy Aion (while you seem to have some sort of animosity towards it and the company behind it) are morons, is just childish – I don’t enjoy Borderlands as much, but I won’t call you a moron for having paid to play that either. You enjoy what you enjoy, I’ll enjoy what I enjoy. Without the need to try ‘ridiculing’ eachother.
Personally, and I think most people in general, wouldn’t keep an active subscription to the game purely to get some toys for a game they won’t want to play. However, for those of us that still enjoy Aion (myself enjoying it tons in the ‘later’ levels) – getting a little treat each month is welcomed. So I don’t agree this will get some ‘moron’ players to continue subscribing.
It doesn’t reward the botters any more than it rewards regular players either if I were to understand what you wrote Aku. A botter gets a little Michael Jackson routine by having their subscription running for a month – I don’t care about that at all. Do you?
The needless bashing by “Who needs customer support? You get nyerking free items instead. Isn’t it cool?” is such a weak argument (in lack of a better word). This has nothing to do with customer support. But I will agree with you that they have a seriously poor customer support. 24/7 support should be automatically there from the first day when you are talking about a MMO that is running basically 24/7. Office hours are just idiotic – but I assume they will staff up a bit more here on NCsoft West within some months time, that don’t excuse it not being there from the beginning though. Luckily I haven’t had too many bugs and issues (none tbh.) that would require a GM reply, so I don’t really care for the time being – but I might eat those words tomorrow when I get totally stuck and need GM assistance after office hours.
The event was a total failure indeed. A daily survey to pick up some candy? Why not make us chase after some speedy mob in a zone and get the candy as a reward for that. Yay, on the final day I got a pumpkin head, that could have been a quest reward as well. Indeed, they failed hard on landing even close to this being an event. There were no decorations in Pandaemonium, and I didn’t spot any at any other locations either. Partly, this might be because Asia is not all that hyped up about halloween as alot of the western countries are now (*cough*US*cough*). They don’t exactly code this stuff (for now and afaik.), so they can request that they add some proper events for next years halloween, but probably wouldn’t have had the time to get it implemented this year. We can buy a full santa outfit already now, so I can perhaps guess there’s a better event for the Christmas season. A christmas tree or something at least in the capitol cities. I’ll see, come December.
Sleepy and my line of thoughts are not really latching on to eachother now, so I’ll summarize again:
I don’t agree this is and will be a way to keep players not liking the game to stay. The event was a failure, but that can be because halloween isn’t as big in Asia – and there has not been time enough to get it coded (So maybe next year?). Customer support is rubbish, and I can only imagine they staff up now that they are actually getting a little more money (I am fairly certain I read someplace that NCsoft West was hiring customer relations personnel recently, maybe it was wishful thinking). Bots are pissing me off, not because they actually affect too much of my gameplay, but because there are ‘cheaters’ that are so obviously there and not being banned. Totally agree on those points too, but not that they actually ruin my ability to play Aion – that is just silly, at least technically. Gold spammers soured my first few weeks after they hit, but have gotten so much better now, at least on Spatalos. I see maybe one or two messages in LFG a day, I add them to block and remove them again the next week when they have made themselves new Sdjahdsdflg characters. Complete filtering of spam will most likely never happen. The filter can be smart and update itself, but you can’t get rid of those first few messages that people see. They don’t prohibit me from being able to play either, technically – so another silly statement in my personal view.
PS: I am not saying silly equals lesser intelligence or that those that feel targetted are morons. I am just stating I find it silly, and you can find it silly that I find it silly. Still, it was a good read, Jasdemi – even if I don’t agree with you on alot of the things you write and how you write it.
1. November 2009 at 11:50 pm
You have some really good points there, but you should’ve not took my post so seriously. I agree some of my arguments were childish and weak, but it was necessary. Calling Aion players morons was a bit too much, though. Looks like I forgot to strike this word.
However, this helped me to get Aion outta my head to start fresh. Just had to ensure that I won’t ever come back to it.
Sorry for my impoliteness, but as mentioned in my post already:
“I think my trolling instinct has gone rampage above.”
2. November 2009 at 5:37 pm
Just to clarify:
I’m not connecting botting to the Veteran Rewards scheme. I was saying that if the server I’m on starts to get a big botting problem as well, then I’ll be very tempted to leave.
2. November 2009 at 4:59 pm
While I don’t have time to read through all the comments since I’m at work I did want to say that I think you are way off. Aion is not the only NCSoft game that offers Veteran Rewards. City of Heroes has a reward system similar to the one that Aion is putting in place. In Guild Wars you get a mini pet on the birthday of your character. So I highly doubt this is something aimed at retaining subscriptions but rather just another reward program in one more of their games.
4. November 2009 at 7:21 am
Honestly, I think Aion is starting to show its true colors at level 34ish. 12 Mil XP to level? A casual FT run does maybe a BAR of experience. And that’s assuming the group isn’t made of fail. The fact that they have to TRIPLE IF NOT QUADRUPLE XP in the first majorish patch is a bad sign. That’s not even counting the HUNDREDS of bots I’ve seen on Lumiel alone. Goldspam has died down, but still, not good signs.
4. November 2009 at 7:14 pm
Dude, FT is SHIT. The only thing thats good there is Kromede’s Dildo/weapons. I was able to do 33-35 in 2 days and still slacked 25% of my time. You just need to know the right spots.
Decurio beat me to the punch on this one, was pretty much gonna say the same stuff.
4. November 2009 at 9:10 pm
The bots and gold spammers really depend on the server you’ve chosen. I’m still not seeing a whole lot of either on Kahrun.
Anyway, I’ve got a 3 month subscription going now. I’ll stick around for a bit and see if it’s cool, but I don’t think I’m going to extend the sub beyond that point. It’s a nice game (when you’re not spammed by goldspammers) but I’m not sure whether it’ll stay interesting in the long run.
By the way, Jasdemi, you might want to give Torchlight a go. I’m not sure if you’ve played Diablo 1 or 2 but supposedly it’s a pretty good (albeit lacking in story/setting) clone. I figure that if you like Borderlands, which is sort of a 3D shooting Diablo, then you might like this too.