Nostalgia takes me for a moment. retrospective moment.

[Bittena-DN]

Haven't posted in like prolly a year if not more. so apologies if I ramble but I have a lot of very fond memories over this game. even if I'm not terribly fond of the current version.  Better graphics and all that but a lot has been lost too.

There days I really which I was looking at a 4.0 to 4.8 version server.  The cash shop was relatively tame.  The game economy was off the hook.  Kinah farming bots everywhere.  It was so bad that saying to NCSoft NA "Why don't you guys just sell us Kinah.. you can under sell em so bad t'hey can't keep up."    .. and it wasn't that unreasonable.  After all NCSoft should have been getting all the money spent for Kinah.   Old argument now.  I never gave the RMT's money then and not about to now.  Don't miss that part at all.

What I do miss is well, the world.  The levelling struggle.   These days it's almost  "don't sneeze.. you'll level cap!" So much of the story is just skipped over.  A new player has no clue what went on before.   And we actually had a pretty decent RP community that kept it true to the lore or at least made best efforts.  I remember some of the insanely out of the way places we'd take our RP just to stay away from the trolls.  Didn't get much help from the GM's.  GM service was always kinda flaky.  They never had what they needed to adequately monitor the game world. 

I never wanted a buy my way to victory game, even though seems to be the way of so many games these days.   Just charge me a subscription, and if ya add new content, make me pay for it.  Worked just fine for Blizzard ya know.. right up to the point they suicided by selling themselves to EA.  And looky there.  Warcraft Classic, and the servers are full ok!  Proof you can go retro and make it work! I'd faint and thought I'd died and gone to heaven to see the old 4/0 game world quest sieges etc in the current iteration of the game engine with it's much tweaked. and improved graphics and graphics response and optimized code.  Especially now we're all on broadband darn near and off dial up!   it'd be damd smexy and just as good looking as anything else out there (better really.. brighter palette of color!)

I know there are private servers out there running back versions of the game.  That's not what I want.  I've tried a couple and yea.  Issues, and really rude communities.  *gag!*

So yea.  If ya'll ever wanna put up a legacy 4.0- or 4.8 I'll sub. ya'll can have $20.. maybe even $25 per month from me.. but the more ya charge the more ya better have GM staff 24/7 and active!

I want kinah sellers DRT as fast as they log on.  They get one advert per toon out and they go poof!. No excuses.  And just to make it extra fun.  Must be subbed before you can log in.  The RMT's are not going to be willing to have to pay up a moths cash in advance to play.  No F2P model, and no P2W what so ever,  No XP boosters, no game advantage of any kind in the cash shop.  Cosmetic only and lots of it!   And yea world PvP but yes ya gotta have immune zones because players will tweak, and limited hours, and when the rift period ends you get auto returned.  If you log out while rifted you get auto returned..   No log off the character and come back hours later when no one is expecting you.  Keep the world PvP sane because not everyone PvP's.  though they will have to pay attention to whats active where.  It's a dangerous game world.  it should always feel like it.    I made General back in the day.  I wouldn't mind doing it again.  And I wasn't even particularly good at PvP, but I went to sieges every day with out fail.  Didn't miss many of them.   I enjoyed it in spite of the god awful lag fest slide show that it was.

The current Aion version just doesn't have it for me.  I kinda fiddle with it and keep it installed and up to date.   I've no interest in actually playing it.  The games story has moved on and it doesn't really make a lot of sense to me at times.    And levelling is just plain a waste.. why not simply trim down the number of levels because on the route to the level cap simple and easy.  Cut the levels in half and maybe some challenge can be introduced back in, and game balance work would be simplified.

In spite of my carping, it's Aion.  Still the prettiest MMO on the market.  And a better character creator then even some of the very newest games.  If it didn't have something it would have been off my hard drive years ago.  Great music (all original).   It has great story, even if the newer players have no idea what the story is anymore.  They get a real shorted "Current" version and never learn the nuances of what came before and why it matters  (and maybe just maybe why some of the older players are so seriously bad ass!  But that could be just me. Meh!). 

Anyway.  Had to do a clean re-install.  ABout 18 min away from finished.  I'll log in a fiddle for a bit..  

Peace, Out.

Bittena sends 

[LadyEreshkigal-KT]

Exactly!

I wish we could have all the old maps back and the possibility of flaying again, the old way of crafting and the rift, but as they were once. Aion was the only game that let me leave Guild Wars, the first one, did not like much the second one.

I'm still here playing even if not often as I used to. I lost the enthusiasm to get home after work to play the game, I could not wait to get on it with my friends.

I hope Aion will survive all these last updates but I can see how players are getting less and fewer numbers, so sad.

To me, Aion is the best game I have ever played, I tried other games but I always come back here.

Thanks for the really nice post, Bittena.

Ciao.

[Gabrielis]

3 hours ago, LadyEreshkigal-KT said:

Exactly!

I wish we could have all the old maps back and the possibility of flaying again,

I didn't know there was a possibility of flaying in this game, i think I missed something...

[Squid]

20 hours ago, Bittena-DN said:

I never wanted a buy my way to victory game, even though seems to be the way of so many games these days.   Just charge me a subscription, and if ya add new content, make me pay for it.  Worked just fine for Blizzard ya know.. right up to the point they suicided by selling themselves to EA.  And looky there.  Warcraft Classic, and the servers are full ok!  Proof you can go retro and make it work! I'd faint and thought I'd died and gone to heaven to see the old 4/0 game world quest sieges etc in the current iteration of the game engine with it's much tweaked. and improved graphics and graphics response and optimized code.  Especially now we're all on broadband darn near and off dial up!   it'd be damd smexy and just as good looking as anything else out there (better really.. brighter palette of color!)

 

Why are WoW classic servers full? Because of the overwhelming support for their classic P-server community. Servers with 50k-100k players waiting in ques to get on to these P-servers while here in NA you do not have fanatics that exist with WoW's community total numbers adding up in to the millions. It got to the point where people were un subbing because the community surrounding these P-servers were not only more helpful and less toxic but they actually took the time out of their own day to help 1000s of new comers to their server.

Aion never even had 1million players in the NA region and you expect them to be able to pull off the same feat? It's total player base across all P-servers is less than 25,000. This includes all international servers in this number count as well. NA P-servers have max like 3k and that is being extremely generous. P-servers popularity represents those who desire older versions of a game. When players leave Aion they leave because it is garbage for them not because they want to play older versions of the game. 

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I know there are private servers out there running back versions of the game.  That's not what I want.  I've tried a couple and yea.  Issues, and really rude communities.  *gag!*

This is just it. This is how people played Aion back during those periods that is why they are still toxic now. Aion brings out toxicity because if you are not toxic you will have someone else who is try and muscle in to your spot. I met healers in Aion who are literal garbage but since they talk down on other healers they secure their position in groups because people agree with them instead of seeing what is in-front of them. Communities carry games. Ignoring WoW's success lets use another game Age of empires 2. 

No other game has such an overwhelmingly positive community like AoE 2. AoE when HD came out looked dead they thought it was the end but the community pushed for one last effort and got AoE2 DE released and it brought 10s of 1000s of players back to the game to the point where it is now considered an E-sport worth competing in. All this came about thanks to the overwhelming support and positivity surrounding content creators brought the community up off its defeated feet to continue fighting for the game.

Aion never had the community to begin with which sounds insulting to players but is not everyone does something that is toxic to another. Hell PvPers find it toxic when PvErs refuse to fight them despite entering PvP content so even PvErs often end up being the toxic community in games. Aion is full of broken players where a good portion accept cheating as valid strategy for playing end game. There is no one nor anything on the horizon that can bring players back from this and that is what type of game Aion has become.

[Arhangelos]

Blizzard has created their own world and have a ton of titles and dedicated players and they also make mixes between games (like Warcraft and World of Warcraft).

I never liked the aesthetics of WoW and it is a good reason I stopped playing it, but there are die-hard fans of the Blizzard universe that are willing to play whatever their company makes. The thing here is that the company gives more room for side-things to their games, just the gatherings they made with cosplay competitions and comicons etc were enough to engage people and have them follow the company religiously.