Aion’s launch has been a little underwhelming. Sure there haven’t been any major incidents and the game is very polished, bug free and fun. But there is this one nagging little pest that just keeps coming back: server queues.
NCSoft did not foresee the traffic that would overwhelm their servers during the first few weeks, which sent them scrambling to launch new servers. Since my last rant on this topic, they’ve managed to launch to new English European servers and launched several patches primarily aimed at combating these queues.
In other words: a lot has changed these past few weeks. But has it proven to be enough to banish those pesky server queues?
Well, not quite …
A little over a week ago NCSoft added a new server, Kahrun, which quickly filled up … with new players. The existing player base hardly migrated at all, which resulted in Kahrun being void of queues and the remaining servers featuring worse queues than ever with the influx of new retail players.
So I got smart and moved over to Kahrun. I haven’t seen a queue since, it’s been smooth sailing all the way. I can log in right now and play immediately, which really is how it should be. I did pay for the game after all.
Another new server (Kalil) has been added last week so there’s plenty of room for new players now. You can safely pick up a copy and be guaranteed of instant action, without waiting through tiring queues. A new player at least should have a very positive playing experience.
But transferring your character to another server will not be possible until early next month. This leaves all of the head start crowd (who did not switch server) out in the cold. They’re still sitting through queues and generally having a miserable time.
Fortunately NCSoft did a few things these past couple of days to remedy those terrible queues as well. Last weekend they introduced a bonus experience event on the two new servers, which resulted in a lot of head start players moving on over to Kahrun and Kalil. The queues for Perento and Spatalos have decreased noticeably. The queues for Gorgos and Castor haven’t.
End result? All the old servers still have queues every night, but they’re in a more manageable 900-1600 player range. Much better than the horrible 3000+ player queues of the past two weeks, but far from queue-free.
NCSoft’s response? Change a tiny little thing about the server browser in their latest patch (launched today) that could have a big impact on the queues.
All of the old servers, including Kahrun, are now labeled as “FULL”. These servers actually aren’t full, because they’re still accepting new players and Kahrun doesn’t even have queues yet. But it’s a neat trick to get new players to join Kalil and not any of the older servers.
As a result I expect the queues will down over the coming weeks as the players grow out of their initial leveling rush.
There has actually been some interesting news regarding this initial leveling rush. NCSoft’s Executive Producer Lance Stites has offered some insight into how things went so wrong at launch and why it’s been so difficult to come up with an appropriate solution.
As it turns out, Aion players are quite hardcore. NCSoft is seeing instances of over 60% of the total player base trying to get in and play at once. If that’s still 400.000 as the pre-order count indicated then that would be a stunning 240.000 players. And they’re staying in-game longer than NCSoft had predicted as well.
Head on over to the Aion website for the full lowdown.
Now is the time to go get Aion if you’ve been waiting out the initial launch problems.
Server queues are not an issue on the two latest servers and there have been no game-breaking issues or bugs. If you get in now then you still get to experience the awesome early-days community feeling, which will soon disappear as the bulk of the community nears the level cap.
I’m Aeroth on Kahrun – Elyos Chanter and Anaeron on Perento – Asmodian Templar. See you in-game … now that I can get in!
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