Paragus Rants

Rants, reviews, and interviews from an MMO veteran and guild leader. Join me in an objective discussion about what went right, what went wrong, and simply how it is.

Author: Paragus1

Rant: Modern Warfare 2

Sorry for deviating from the normal MMO stuff for an entry, but there is something bothering me that I can't help myself from touching on.  During our time in between MMOs, Inquisition likes to dabble in a variety of other games to help pass the time.  One of the most popular games in my vent has consistently been the various incarnations of Call of Duty, be it Modern Warfare or World At War.  First person shooters are a genre near and dear to our hearts coming in a close second under MMOs, so naturally when we heard Modern Warfare 2 was coming, there was a lot of excitement.

Then it happened.  The most blatant display of a developer literally taking a hot steaming deuce on its playerbase.  Infinity Ward breaks the news to the gaming community that the PC version of the game will not have dedicated servers, but instead will feature a peer-to-peer match making system akin to what is commonly found on console systems.  The heads of Infinity Ward tried to justify this decision...

"We're just prioritizing the player experience above the modders and the tuners," says West. He points toward the mounting feedback IW has received from PC fans of Modern Warfare who couldn't find a decent server to play on between all of the cheaters, the insular communities, and huge skill level disparities that the original game's community fractured into. "We thought maybe it would be cool if the fans could play the game," he laughs.

Does he really think PC gamers are too stupid to figure out how to find a good server to play on?  I've been playing Call of Duty 4 and 5 for the last year and it has never been a real issue for us.  Chances are if you are smart enough to know how to operate a computer, you are smart enough to look at a server list and pick a game that best suits your needs.

So what does a loss of dedicated servers really mean to PC players?  First of all, it means that a player with a residential internet connection will be hosting the game giving him a perfect ping advantage while the other players are at the mercy of his connection.  This also means the days of large epic battles on server with upwards of 64 people will be traded for servers with about 18 people max.  No more tweaking the servers to turn off cheap noob tubes, martyrdom, last stand, and other common unskilled cheeseball tactics that destroy the balance of the game.  Clans can also kiss their private servers goodbye used for competitive play.

Worst of all, no dedicated servers means there will be no mods and custom maps.  One of our favorite aspects of Call of Duty is the "Zombie X" mod which we still play regularly on CoD 5.  This game mode features one randomly selected zombie who has to infect all the hunters until the entire map gets turned into zombie or the hunters hold out for a set amount of time.  Often times this gets combined with some amazing custom maps for an extremely fun and heart pounding experience.  Nothing gets you going like having 40 people trying to break into a house your held up in with the last remaining players.  Alas, these days will be gone in MW2.

In response to all of this, a petition was put online demanding the addition of dedicated servers to the PC version of the game.  As of me writing this, the petition has been signed by over 190,000 people.  Yet they continue to stick their thumb in the eye of the PC community, who is greatly responsible for their company's success.

Did I mention they are charging $10 more for this game than previous installments on the PC, and every other PC game in general?  That's right, for $10 more you too can buy a sequel with half of the online multiplayer functionality.  In fact, when you compare it to MW1 in terms of features, it makes no sense.

The old cliche is true that people should speak with their wallet. Modern Warfare 2 is not an MMO, so you only vote once when you buy it instead of every month.  If you buy the game and get burned on it, it's a win on their bottom line since they already have your money.  If they decide to reconsider their stance and stop trying to roll back a decade of progress in the genre, then I would definitely reconsider.  I can only hope that in the meantime that the PC community holds them accountable for trying this sort of nonsense.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

Aion's Issues

This will probably be my last write up regarding Aion.  If you have been following my previous articles, I have detailed my play experience with the game by focusing on the 1-10 experience, 10-25 early Abyss, and the 25 and beyond.  This will be my last word on Aion for the time being because some of the game's issues have forced most of my guild to step back from the game.

Now I am not one to make "I quit" posts typically, but all thing considered, I believe my assessment of the game in previous articles has be pretty fair and objective.  So what I would like to do here today is talk about some of the aspects of Aion that ultimately ended up turning us sour in a constructive and informative way.

The Grind

It seems you can't read anywhere about Aion without reading about the grind, and this blog has been no exception to that.  That being said, it has to be mentioned because this is probably the first of several pitfalls that is going to be cause people to throw in the towel.

This is a graph that fairly accurately plots the experience points curve in Aion at each level that was made by a member of the community here.  As you can see by the graph, right around level 35 the amount of exp needed literally makes the graph look literally like a wall.  Often times when you read on various forums about people saying the grind is fine, make sure you put it into the context of what level they have made it to. Now to be fair, the amount of exp needed by itself is not necessarily the problem as you start to enter your 40's, but the way in which questing starts to play far less of a role.

When I hit level 42, I quickly completed all of the new quests and looked down at my 60 million exp bar to see only about 10-15% of it had been filled, leaving the remaining 50 million to be obtained by pure mob grind.  Now I am well aware of an upcoming patch slated to increase the quest exp and mob exp, but I think the problem goes a bit deeper than that.  There is a real lack of quest content that becomes painfully obvious at the higher levels.  Quest content is very good at masking grind in other games, so the lack of it in Aion at this level range really only adds to the pain and tedium.

The best comparison I can make is for those who played Age of Conan at release and hit the wall around level 50 where the quest content dried up almost instantly forcing people into grinding cannibal caves for levels to get through the gap.  This problem only gets compounded more however as the exp needed to level continues to grow exponentially, but the amount of content does not.  This only helps feed the bot epidemic and will undoubted crush the will of non-hardcore players as they reach the higher levels.

One final note on the grind that really bothers me is that Aion seems to punish grouping.  As a ranger, I found in most cases I was able to solo grind far more efficiently than in a group killing elites a few levels higher than me.  I would highly recommend adjusting the experience modifier for grouping to make it more appealing to group.  So with all the above factored in, players struggling with the progression in the game are going to start to ask if it's worth enduring for the sake of PvP.  Let's take a look...

PvP

I like to break the PvP elements in Aion into pretty much 3 different categories.  First you have your rift PvP into enemy territory, then the fortress fights, and finally your small scale encounters that occur in the Abyss.

1) Rift PvP

A week or so ago, my guild got a group together to through a rift into the Asmodian level 30+ area to go cause some trouble.  I think it was a real telling moment to me personally when it became glaringly clear that at least half of the people we were killing in this zone were bots.  When attacked, bots would simply stand there or continue to attack their mob, and when killed they would run the same exact route back to the same spot literally upwards of 10 times.  Each time they would take the same exact route, to the same exact spot, and not even stopping or deviating when getting attacked.  Granted killing the bots was a good source of Abyss points, but the fun of the PvP leaves something to be desired when a PvE mob offers more resistance.  Again in all fairness, there were probably 50% real people mixed in who had guilds, who would react to being attacked, and change tactics after being killed or spotting us.

In this regard, I really have to say that NCSoft's bot detection team or tools, or whatever they are spinning as is either completely worthless, or they think their customers are stupid.  Who the hell is in charge of the bot spotting team, Stevie Wonder?  Anyone with a working pair of eyes can see dozens of bots infesting the level 30+ area on both sides.  They are so blatantly operating out in the open that there is no way possible anyone could NOT see them.  Frankly when I read NCSoft press releases about how they have tools in place, it's insulting to my intelligence.

2) Fortress Battles

I think most people can agree that the fortress fights make up one of the key elements of the PvP aspect of Aion.  In my last article, I touched on the fact that crashing seemed to be somewhat of an issue during some of the sieges.  Since then, I have had the chance to participate in many more sieges to see how much of an issue the crashing really is.  I can say with all honesty in almost every siege I have been in since then, the game crashed at some point during the sieges, except for one where the Asmos never showed up to defend and I had all of the character models turned off (Shift + F12).

This is a major problem for me on so many levels.  First of all my PC is pretty serious, and judging by all the posts on forums and conversations with most of my guild, people having this issue are a pretty sizable portion of the playerbase.  This is pretty much game-breaking because the fortress battles are the only way to get medals, and medals are needed to get the top PvP reward gear, so crashing during sieges pretty much makes is close to impossible for you to get the medals needed to pursue the endgame gear.  With the game being out so long overseas, and 4-5 rounds of betas in NA, I am somewhat confused how the game went live without anyone knowing about this being picked up, let alone not being hotfixed.  It's even sillier when someone in the community posts a fix on the forums before your professional coders can do it.

Another issue is a flaw in the overall fortress system in general that also Warhammer Online suffered from, a lack of incentive to defend a fortress.  Medals are not given for a successful defense, and enemy fortress guards are actually a better source of Abyss points than most other mobs and players.  Killing a handful of guards seems to net more AP than running the instance you get access to for holding the fort.  So when you think about it, you are somewhat better off not defending because you will be granted a better source of AP, and a chance to earn medals when you go after it again later (assuming you don't crash).

3) Small Scale PvP

Small scale PvP overall remains one of the game stronger suits to me personally.  The only zerging that really goes from what I have seen so far is during the fortress fights, which is completely understandable.  The rest of the time people tend to roam around solo or in small groups making for some pretty fun encounters.  A smaller group of players who play smart is capable of beating a larger group if the right tactics are used along with the right crowd control.

I think if there is anything I would change, I would make other players worth more experience points.  Although it wasn't in the game originally, the amount of exp given for killing a player is so small that they pretty much may as well not give you any at all.  One other aspect is the fact that low level players give virtually no AP, but at the same time your enemy's level is hidden.  This can be annoying when you opt to chase someone for quite a long distance only to be rewarded with 1 AP.  Had you known the person's level you may have been inclined to not even bother chasing them extensively.  I also understand the benefit though of hiding levels, so it's a double-edged sword I suppose.

Summary

The way I see it is that players will need to start asking themselves this question: Is worth enduring a steep and tedious grind that becomes exceedingly light in content for PvP that has 2 of out 3 aspects not meeting expectations?

The prospect of increasing exp sounds good in theory, but there is no mention of any much needed quest content.  NCsoft's word is losing a tremendous amount of value to players due to their inability to find the bots that every player with a pair of working eyes can see on a daily basis.  I can understand that many players may be willing to hang in there a bit longer given the game's polish and small scale PvP, but at this point I have to say the answer to that question is "no" from me personally, but to each their own.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
 

Aion: Post Launch Impressions

It has been about a few weeks since the NA launch of Aion, so I wanted to take some time to update my impressions. In these first few weeks I have been exposed to a variety of gameplay experiences in the game, so I am going to talk about a few aspects of the game that have struck me as either being well done, or needing improvement.

Looking for Gold Channel

I used to to think LFG was about finding groups, but in Aion is seems to be more about finding gold.  There is a serious gold spammer epidemic that has rendered this channel pretty much unusable.  On any given day, this chat channel is literally flooded and spammed by gold sellers, that you can't even read anything.

I find it very hard to believe, despite the rhetoric from NCSoft, that there is a serious ongoing effort to target and ban the accounts of gold spammers.  In fact it's downright absurd.  You might think that given the number of servers they have running, that they could afford to have one GM on each one who can spot and ban these people.  The money generated from the banning of these accounts and spammers rebuying them should easily justify the price of paying someone to monitor it.

Aside from the rampant gold spamming, the LFG channel needs to be broken down into level ranges.  It makes no sense that people in their late 30s and 40s have to sift through level 25's trying to find a group.  This could also work to the advantage of forcing a gold spammer to level up as a deterrent if they want to spam mid and higher level players.

The Abyss

Now that the game has released in North America, I have had a chance to spend a lot of time in the Abyss experiencing PvP and some of the various mechanics surrounding it.  There has been a lot of discussion over whether or not the wings are just a gimmick or if they really add anything to the table.  I have to say that after spending quite a bit of time in the Abyss since release and doing some PvP, I am starting to lean more towards this feature adding an element to PvP combat that is not found in the competition.

There is the obvious element of flying and fighting in the air, but I think that doesn't fully explain it.  It's not so much the fact that you can fly to me, as much as it is the environment that is possible because of the flight element.  In games like WAR and even DAOC, the standard battlefield was typically a flat plain or maybe a mountainous area where battles would unfold.  In Aion with the element of flight, battles are able to take place is the very surreal looking environment of the Abyss with its floating islands, comets, upside-down ruins, and other interesting locales.

I have had some interesting fight situations that just would not be possible in some of the other traditional RvR MMOs out there.  Me and a friend had a chase underneath a floating continent weaving and bobbing through stalactites.  I have had fights where me and my opponent were hopping from island to island blasting each other, and recently a large fight with one side holding the ground against an aerial force.  Of course I have to mention one incident where a bunch of people, including some of my guildmates, were completely obliterated when a stray comet plowed through a crowd of people fighting near an artifact.

Speaking of artifacts, Inquisition decided to have a small guild event to go test the waters on taking an artifact on the bottom floor of the Abyss where thing were lower level.  Taking the artifact was a pretty simple task overall, and reminded us as being on par with some of the smaller battle objectives in WAR in terms of difficulty.  The artifact was protected by a group of NPC's of the opposing faction with an elite boss.  While we brought 2 groups being uncertain on how hard it would be, one solid group of players would have been an adequate force.  Once the boss goes down, a broadcast message told everyone we had taken it, and our guilds emblem was stamped on the site and displayed on the map.  There is however no message to let you know when your artifact is under attack by the enemy faction.

Finally, I had the chance to get involved in my first fortress siege in the lower Abyss.  The amount of people involved was pretty massive and I have to say it even made my high end PC start to lose some frames.  One issue I experienced along with many others was crashing during the attack.  This is one area where I think some improvement is needed, but to be fair I have to say the game handled itself better than WAR at this stage in terms of performance.

The door to the keep took quite some time to bring down, but I did not see anyone there really utilizing the siege weaponry which would have undoubted sped the process up.  The keep guardian in Aion makes the Warhammer and DAOC keep lords look like a wimp in terms of appearance and difficulty to kill.  In Warhammer the keep lords usually seem to buckle within a minute of the room being breached, in Aion it takes far longer and actually gives the other team a chance to turn the battle in the final room since the fight is so long.

That chance to turn the battle is exactly what the Asmos in this fight successfully did.  The layout of this particular keep had a large opening in the courtyard that dropped you literally on top of the boss inside.  While we were busy trying to bring the big guy to his knees, the enemy capitalized on us not defending the courtyard and turned the boss room into a bloodbath.  Death from above was an ocean of Asmos pouring into the room from above like a faucet of red names.  The fight was pretty impressive with people flying all over the place killing each other, while an angry Balaur boss went on a rampage.  All in all it was pretty fun with the exception of the crashing.  Hopefully they will improve that aspect for the large fights, but thankfully most of the abyss fighting outside the keeps has been small scale and very reminiscent of DAOC.

The Grind

This has been one of the hot topics regarding Aion, and I have read a ton of threads from people making various claims about grinding as it relates to Aion.  Before we go any further and people jump down my throat, apparently everyone interprets what grinding is differently.  Just so we are all on the same page, my definition of grinding is having to kill mobs repeatedly without any related quest in order to gain experience points.

Aion has a grind.  Yes, yes, I know the classic "All MMOs are and have grinds!" line, but it is my opinion that the grind in Aion can legitimately be perceived by some as steep once you start to level into your 30's.  Of course this statement is subjective, and depending on your prior MMO experiences your opinion may vary.  Someone from Lineage 2 might not find it bad, but someone who is used to WoW and some more modern traditional style MMOs might be in for a bit of discomfort in this area.  I survived old school EQ1 and FFXI in terms of grind just to give a little perspective on where I am coming from.  A lot of players are probably going to have to come to terms with the fact that most people won't be reaching max level in Aion as quickly as they did in some other MMOs.

Up until level 25, I think the grind was not particularly rough until maybe level 24.  After 25, the Abyss opens up as a new area for quests, campaigns, a dungeon instance, and exposure to increased mob exp. In the 30's, the amount of quests and the experience they yield starts to fall a bit short in terms of being able to quest your way through levels.  Combine this with the fact that the amount of exp needed to reach the next level starts to increase dramatically in the level 35+ range.  As an example, leveling from 36-37 required just under 20 Million EXP, the next level going from 37-38 jumps up to 26 Million EXP.  At 37, killing a 39 Abyss non-elite mob solo (which yields more exp than non-abyss mobs) nets in roughly 23,000-25,000 exp a kill.  As a ranger I can kill probably 2 per minute, equally around 500k exp in 10 mins, or roughly just under 3 Million per hour, or 8-9 hours to get 26 Million Exp to level via pure mob grinding.

All of this is based on the premise of course that not a single quest is completed, and you are soloing and not grouping for elites (which has the potential to be faster depending on the group and location).  Whether or not questing is faster than grinding all depends on what is available to you at a given level.  Some of the juicy campagin quests give upwards of 2+ Million Exp, while your average quest can net you anywhere between 400-800k.  Regardless of which is faster, you will not have enough quests to level purely from questing as other MMOs, and you will be forced to grind at some point to clear the remaining exp needed.  The fact is some of the quests just flat out don't give enough exp to satisfy a lot of players, but upcoming changes look to change that.  Depending on your prior MMO experiences this could be perceived as normal or a major turn-off, but there is definitely something to be said for grouping and doing elites in an instance or hard area.  Just to give an idea of how it ends up looking later, rumor has it that you will need 86 Million exp to go from level 49-50.

Instances

I have also had the chance to do a variety of PvE instances in the first few weeks.  All of them seem to have quests to kill the final boss for a blue item of some sort.  Some of them require you to get keys to enter them, some can be entered if you control castles in the Abyss.  Most of them provide a decent source of exp and come with some degree of lockout timer.  In terms of loot, you might be in for an unpleasant surprise when it comes to taking down some of the bosses.

This brings me to one pretty annoying point regarding boss mobs.  In all of the instances ran and bosses killed, probably more than half the time the bosses dropped nothing of any real value with a few blues being seen rarely.  This is something I think a lot of players might find somewhat annoying, myself included.  Killing the final boss of a dungeon and finding nothing but a small amount of gold is going to be received like a slap in the face for many players.  Hell at least give us a random green or something, but only finding 500 gold or a common crafting mat off of a level 37 boss is complete ass.

Final Thoughts

Aion remains to be a solid and polished product, but not without it issues.  Depending on your MMO tastes, some people may be turned off by the fact that max level is difficult to achieve, while others may enjoy that.  As players start hitting the mid 30's and hitting the leveling quicksand, I can see some people being turned off to the game.  The issue of bots and gold spammers is something NC Soft really needs to crack down on in a big way.  Despite all of the flowery language by the devs, I have yet to see any reduction at all in these activities.

On the other hand, if you can get past the brutal leveling curve, there is a very interesting RvR experience.  Aside from the occasional crash in the fortress fights, Abyss RvR so far seems to be small scale and reminiscent of DAOC in many ways with roaming groups outside of the big sieges.  The PvP I have seen at this stage does not seem to be ruined with excessive crowd control like the competition, and the rewards seem viable.  Whether the end game actually works is something we probably won't know until a large portion of the population reaches higher level, and that seems like it may take more time than some may have anticipated.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
(Zikel Server - Elyos)

Rant: Guild Recruit Spam

It's been a while since I've done a rant entry in here, so today I figure I would touch on something that has been driving me up a wall in the last few MMOs I have played, Guild Recruit Spam.  Chances are if you have played any MMO, you have seen these guild recruit spam messages flooding one of your chat channels.  I saw them in AoC, WAR, Darkfall, and now in Aion.  While general chat is hardly the place to have scholarly discussions and intellectual persuits, spamming people with your guild advertisement pretty much makes you about as cool as a telemarketer.

A vent server and a website?!  Holy shit!  Where do I sign up?  Maybe back in 1999 when I was raiding in the original Everquest this would have been exciting, but I don't see how this is really even worth mentioning at this point.  I'm sorry guys, but this is 2009. It is pretty much expected that if you are a real MMO guild, you are going to have a ventrilo server and a website.  That's like me trying to get people to join my swimclub by telling them I have a pool. It's just a given, isn't it?
 

Well apparently it isn't.  During my time in Darkfall, I was in a position where I was able to talk to a lot of people in a lot of various guilds for interviews and political dealings.  I was absolutely shocked at how many people are still using Teamspeak.  Compared to Ventrilo, TS sounds like you are broadcasting on some sort of shortwave radio from World War 2.  If you are really serious about building a guild with lasting appeal and a strong community, splurge the couple bucks a month for the vent server.

I also love when I see a guild recruit spammer claiming their guild is elite or hardcore.  Elite and hardcore groups of people don't take any random jabroni off the street into their ranks.  That would be like having the special forces accepting applications in a kiosk in your local shopping mall.  Let's assume for a minute that you were an amazing player with PvP skills placing you in the top percentile, what guild would you join?  The guy standing on street corner wearing gear from a garbage dumpster looking for friends, or a group of like-minded players who are on the cutting edge?

Aside from recruitment spam being one the worst ways to attract quality members, it also ranks you right up there with gold spammer as one of the most annoying people in the game.  People will always remember the name of a guild who spams the chat box because you felt the need to remind them every 3 minutes.  As a result, don't be surprised if people's reaction towards you and your crew in less than favorable.  Just remember, a gold spammer doesn't have to live among the people they are annoying, your guild will.
 

Up and coming guilds need to ask themselves what is more important; having more members just for the sake of having members, or settling for less members who are solid and likely to share your vision.  I look at guilds as more than just a bunch of people playing a game together, it's a family-like community.  A good guild will not have its lifespan limited to its duration in any given game, instead it will become a community of like-minded people who travel with each other from game to game.  I've used this model in Inquisition, and it is no coincidence that many of the strongest guilds in any MMO are typically those with long histories that span across many games.

The best way to find quality members is obvious and at the same so often overlooked.  MMOs are games based heavily on community, and if your looking to find good players you should be socializing in the game with people you meet.  Spamming chat channels is a good way to make your guild appear as cheap and catering to the lowest denominator of player.  It is far better to have a smaller roster of loyal friends who will stick with you, then a large roster full of random selfish members.

One quick antecdote to wrap this up. Back when I played World of Warcraft shortly after release, my guild at one point had over 130 members at its peak population.  We recruited everyone and anyone we could get our hands on.  I soon found at that peak population did not equal peak performance.  One day me and my co-leader decided we were going to reroll the guild on a new server, and cut the guild roster in half down to our best 60 members literally overnight.  Once we reached max level again on the new server a month later, we were able to defeat content that we could never imagine winning with our old roster.  These were the members who were friends of friends who shared our vision of the guild, many of which still play with us years later.  Consider this a page from a guild leader's handbook.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

Aion: Updated Impression and the Abyss

Since my last article covering some of the basics of Aion at low level, I have had a chance to invest a bit more time in the Chinese version of the game.  Having progressed far enough to see the Abyss finally, I wanted to take some time and give some updated impressions on my play experiences since I am a bit farther into the game.

The Grind

The first thing I want to touch on are my experiences with the grind in the game so far.  From levels 1-20, I can say that I was pretty much able to quest through most of my levels.  The campaign quests give a substantial amount of EXP over the standard quests, and there are some repeatable quests to help you through some of those areas where you do find yourself grinding to reach the next level after your quests are all completed.

Between the levels of 20-24, the grind starts to pick up more and more each level.  The percentage of your levels EXP you are able to get through quests starts to gradually go down in this range for a few reasons.  The first is that the amount of exp to reach the next levels ramps up pretty quickly, and secondly, some of the quest EXP rewards don't seem to be enough.  The repeatable quests really don't reward to well either, as one requiring you to kill X amount of mobs, rewards you at turn in with amount of exp equal to killing 2 of those mobs.  In the time it takes you to go turn them in, you could have kept killing and came out better off.  As a result, I spent a lot of my time grinding in the jungle and desert in Eltnen. Once reaching 25 however, things seem to pick up a lot (I'll touch on this later).

Legions (Guilds)

During my time playing, I had a chance to delve into the Legion functionality with some of my guys on the NA and Chinese versions.  My first beef is that Aion only allows 3 different ranks for your legion members, and these rank titles can't seem to be changed.  While you can set permissions for each of the 3 ranks, you can't have 2 people be the highest rank.  In MMO guilds like mine where there are 2 leaders, this is somewhat disappointing and inconvenient.  The current version I played during the NA weekend and Chinese also only allow 10 characters for your legion name, which I find unnecessarily restrictive.  Since my guild's name is 11 letters long, I can only fit "Inquisitio".  This forces us to abbreviate ourselves to INQ, and I am sure other MMO guilds will have to do the same unless the newer version updates we haven't played yet increase the character limit.

Aion legions also have levels like some other MMOs like EQ2 and WAR.  Unlike its predecessors, Aion only has three levels for legions.  Upgrading your legion to level 2 requires having 10 people on your roster, and a payment of around 120,000 gold.  Once you upgrade, you will have roster limit increased from 30 to 60 maximum members, although in my opinion the fact that there is one at all strikes me as silly.  Once you upgrade, you can also customize a guild emblem for your cloak.  There are only a dozen emblems, but you can pick any background color you can imagine.  You can also change your guild emblem at any time if you so chose for a small fee.

The one really good aspect of Aion's legion system is if you are able to upgrade to level 3.  Level 3 requires a higher roster count and around 1.2 million gold, which is not as bad as it sounds on paper given how much money I was making.  Any decent size guild should have no trouble getting this cash together if everyone kicks in a bit of cash.  At level 3, the limitations of the emblem system redeem itself by letting you put your own design.  This means you can literally use any graphic or logo you want to represent your guild.  During my playing I managed to see some pretty interesting logos as seen in the above screenshot.  Overall I think there is room for improvement in the legion functionality, but specialized level 3 emblems make for an awesome feature.

Rifts

Once you reach level 20 and start to move into the third tier of zones, you will start to get your first taste of PvP.  It seems like every so often, there are rifts or portals that appear somewhat randomly that connect to the other faction's area.  These rifts seem to have a chance to appear in one of many predetermined locations across the zones, which are quite large, and have a set number of uses before they become unusable.  From my own experiences, it seems that at almost any given time there is a rift up that either leads to the enemy area or has the enemy coming into yours.

There are no PvP restrictions in terms of where you can go and who you can attack.  Enemies can even go inside the perimeter of your main fortress if they are careful to avoid guards, which is not difficult.  While you are able to attack anyone of any level, you will not know what level the people on the other faction are.  This makes for some interesting encounters where people misjudge the strength of their opponent.  In one personal experience, a bunch of us ganged up on a single enemy only to have him obliterate all of us by dropping a meteor on us!  In addition to the PvP points awarded, there are special "infiltration" quests that require you to go to the enemy zone and complete tasks there.  In this regard the rift aspect of the game makes the PvP not consentual, which is fine by me but may turn off others.

The Abyss

Once your reach level 25 the game starts to open up and you are allowed to start delving into the Abyss, which is the games central area for RvR.

As soon as you hit level 25, you will receive a new campaign quest series to complete in order to be able to access the Abyss.  The campaign consists of 3 mini trials you have to go through in order to prove your worth, but also double as a minor tutorial.  The first test consists of proving your worth by completing 1 task from 3 available choices.  I chose a challenge to kill some monster under the arena in a certain time limit that was laughably easy.  The second trial tests your knowledge, and has you answering a series of multiple choice questions that serve to educate you a little about the Abyss and some of the game's lore.  It's impossible to fail it seems as picking the wrong answer prompts you to try again among the remaining choices.

The final trial is a test of flight in which you have to fly through a series of rings in a short time.  This serves to educate the player about the use of these rings which are present in the Abyss.  Flying through the rings replenishes a portion of your flight timer and gives a small speed boost during the trial.  Like the previous trials, it was not difficult at all and I was able to complete it on my first run through.  Once all trials are complete, you are shown to the Abyss portal (as seen above) and are free to go through whenever you want.

Once you arrive in the Abyss, you will find yourself in a fully functional fortress area with pretty much everything you will ever need.  The fortress was complete with various vendors, banks, auction house, bind point, and even teleporters to take you to many of the games PvE zones.  You will also notice that there are new standard quests for the Abyss that helps alleviate the strain from leveling, as well as campaign.  The first campaign mission presents the player with a simply amazing tutorial about RvR in the Abyss through the use of various cutscenes.

Abyss Tutorial

Here is a quick summary:

The first thing they explain is that the Abyss has a total of 9 keeps that you can fight over, and they are spread across 3 different layers: bottom, core, and top.  The Balaur are a monster faction that participates in the Abyss wars, and they often take over these keeps.

Each keep has some sort of damage shield that protects it from air assaults.  Trying to attack a keep from the air while the shield is up is supposed to be difficult and damaging.  Inside each of the keeps is some sort shield generator that powers the shield.  If this generator is destroyed, then the shield goes away and people are free to assault from the air without any kind of penalty or negatives.

Each of the keeps has doors to protect it from ground assaults that will need to be broken down in order to gain access.  The doors are also especially vulnerable to siege weapons that can be deployed by the attackers.  In addition, there are also portable bind points that can be dropped in the field so that people can respawn close to the fight.  These bindpoints are supposed to easily destroyed and only be able to be used a certain amount of times before being rendered useless.

Finally they explain about artifacts that can be used to sway the battles.  They are supposed to be activated to provide various effects from mass healing, mass damage, and other assorted abilities.  They also tell you to kill the boss to take the keep, and elaborate on the benefits of taking on for your legion. Benefits range from Abyss points, items (including Abyss medals), cash, and other bonuses in the newer versions of the game we haven't received yet.  They also give you a final warning about some sort of Balaur flying battleship that can drop monsters into areas to mess with people.

The Abyss environment itself look very nice and seems to vary as you go from island to island.  The entire area is flight enabled, and the rings can be used to guide you over some of the longer stretches between islands.  There are teleports that take you from the bottom level to the top level, but if you look up at the sky on the bottom level you can see the upper level far above.

The core of the Abyss can be seen in the center and resembles a large sun-like ball of fire.  In case you were curious, flying into this ball of fire will result in being insta-gibbed.  PvE in the Abyss was getting me around 13 AP (Abyss Points) per kill at level 25.  The fact that you can gain points through PvE can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at things.  On one hand some people might not like the fact people can PvE grind their way up the ranks to abyss abilities and gear.  On the other hand, people opting to take this route do so in an area where they can be ganked at any moment, so it will help drive traffic to this area making people somewhat easier to find.

Rewards

Abyss rewards come in the form of abyss abilities for reaching certain ranks, and item rewards for cashing in your points.

Over on Aion Source, I spotted this thread that shows an example of some of the high ranking Abyss abilities.  One of the more notable abilities this high ranking person has is the ability to effectively turn themselves into a raid boss once every 2 hours for 10 minutes.  This is definitely an interesting dynamic that should be interesting to see in action.

Items are the other major reward you get from PvP.  There are stores in which you spend your Abyss points in order to purchase high end gear.  There are various degrees of gear for each level range that have varying prices.  Most of the green items can be bought purely with points, but some of the high level gold (epic) items also require medals which are earned during fortress sieges.

The Abyss gear actually looks to be itemized well, a problem that WAR had at launch with a lot of its PvP reward gear.  The above picture shows 2 Abyss bows that are both level 30.  The green one costs much less AP then the gold one, but the gold one features more damage, stats, and socketing slots for manastones.  It is up to the player to decide if they want to hold out for the higher end item, or hold out for higher level gear.  Since players lose AP for PvP loss, some may want to cash out sooner depending on their luck.  One final point, spending points you have earned subtracts them from your total, thus reduces your rank.  This means as people purchase items, there will be a constant moving up and down the RvR ranks, and high rank players will have to decide if they want to give up their rank abilities to cash out their points for weapons.

Conclusion

I really am looking forward to seeing how this all pans out when the game releases in North America.  The game has solid PvP rewards, risk, and keeps / artifacts for people to fight over.  For all the comparisons you hear about this game with WoW because of the playstyle, I'm starting to think it might be in many ways like an asian DAOC.  If everything works out, I think this game could offer a lot to people who were fans of DAOC and disgruntled Warhammer fans.  I look forward to continuing my journey on the Chinese version a while longer, and I am curious to see how the patches NA will have at release alleviate some of the issues with the game.  If they can reduce the grind as they claimed in a recent interview, then I think this will be a game a lot of people will probably be jumping into if the end game ends up being solid.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
 

Review: Aion Beta Weekend

After my last entry about some of the upcoming MMOs, luck would have it that I was able to get a chance to play Aion during one of their recent beta preview weekend type events.  Today I am going to try to give you my impressions from playing during the recent weekend event that had a level limit of 10, but did allow players to make characters from both of the game's factions.  While I will be the first to admit that 10 levels is hardly enough to review much of anything, but I think I got a chance to sample the game and take a look at various aspects that were present.

Just to recap quickly here before I get started, I went into this with a few preconceptions about the game in terms of graphics, polish, and whether or not the game would be bringing anything new to table.  I have seen some pretty remarkable screenshots of the game, so graphically I set the bar pretty high.  The game has also been out in a foreign market for a while, so I expected a fair amount of polish.  In terms of innovations I approached Aion with fairly low expectations.  As soon as the log-in screen popped up as seen above, I felt somewhat reaffirmed that graphically I would not be disappointed. So with all that being said, let's get started!

Character Creation

Before we can do anything, we have to create a character.  The game is based around 2 main factions that are to be pitted against each other akin to what we have seen in Warhammer and World of Warcraft.  One of the main differences with Aion is that the game only features 2 races to chose from, the Elyos (Angels) and the Asmodian (Demons).  If your used to some of the other RvR MMOs out there where each team has several races to chose from, this might concern you as it did me.

As soon as I saw the actual character creator, my concerns about character customization for my appearance pretty much vanished.  I have to say in all honesty that Aion sports one of the most customizable character creators I have seen. Aion gives you infinitely more options than many of its competitors, and rivals and possibly exceeds Age of Conan.  For starters, the creator has a color palettes that enable you to make almost any part of your character into any color you can imagine.  This opens the door for some very creative and also very silly looking toons.  Hair, skin, and lip color can be anything from standard colors to wild shades of green and purple.

Sliders and more sliders.  This creator has sliders for everything you mind can think of, as well as stuff probably wouldn't have considered.  When you make your character, the 2 main aspects are designing your face and your body.  The body creator has 12 sliders alone, one of which includes a height slider that can make your character as small as a child or a tall as an ogre.  As if that wasn't quite enough, the face customizer has another 25 sliders!  It's very easy to lose yourself at this point, and if it wasn't a beta, I might have been there for quite some time trying to sculpt my guys face.  In conclusion here, there are enough options to make your character look unique despite the fact there are only 2 races to chose from.

The other decision you have to make is what archetype do you want your character to be, as well as the gender of your character (this is actually done before the customizing step).  This probably where my first beef comes into play.  I am the type of person who would rather pick a class right out of the gate, rather than an archetype.  My concern with this route is that you do not actually get to play the class you want until you have put in 9 levels into your guy.  While this is not really a large time investment by any means (took me 90 minutes my first time), I'd like to find out sooner rather than later if the class I am going to be is to my liking without having to invest the time to find out.  I don't want to put in the time and finally get to my class only to find out it's not a good fit for me, then have to reroll and repeat the early content again just to try again.

User Interface

The Aion User Interface is pretty much the cookie-cutter UI we have seen from most of the traditional style MMOs in recent memory.  If you spent any time at all playing WoW, EQ2, AoC, or WAR, you will pretty much feel right at home instantly.

You will find most of the standard UI elements here along with the ability to customize it a bit.  Aion gives you 3 rows of hotbars to be stacked on top of one another, but they remain completely invisible if there are no abilities dropped into them.  Aion also uses the same exact keyboard buttons assigned to some of the basic functions from previous MMOs as well.  Again if you have played a recent traditional MMO, you will find yourself open your inventory, character window, map, etc. without even having to look up the predefined assigned key.

The character window itself is broken into several different tabs of information.  The main screen features the standard equipment paperdoll which is accompanied by all of your characters primary stats, defensive skills, and resistances.  Below that you will find your backpack contents and gold totals.  One confusing things for me was the fact that instead of using the term backpack, Aion calls it the "Cube".  The cube initially only has a limited number of slots, but there is an NPC who will expand your cube for a fee.

Another interesting aspect is that much like Warhammer Online, Aion also features an unlockable title system. It seems that by completing certain quest or quest chains you can unlock new titles to be displayed next to your name.  What makes this system a bit different than WAR's title system is that the Aion titles actually have different bonuses associated to them.  I was able to unlock Tree-Hugger by completing one of the early quest chains that gave me an accuracy boost.  The list seems to have 50 hidden titles in total, so most likely there will be certain titles that end up being favored by certain classes in the game because of the bonuses they give.

Combat

Aion's combat style follows the traditional MMO style combat from games like WoW, EQ2, and WAR.  The game features the standard tab targeting system, and activated abilities that are on various different cooldowns.  The game's mini-map color codes aggressive monsters as red, and when you target them you even see their aggro radius as if it were a tiny radar.

The combat sounds and animations struck me as being pretty well done. While the combat seems to be in many ways the same recycled form of combat we have seen in the last few MMOs, it does feel responsive and look well.  The game's combat does feature positional attacks and a combo type system for chaining weapon attacks together.

They really seem to go out of their way to make the skill chains easy to learn compared to some other MMOs.  As an example, the character I picked was under scout archetype.  One of my stun attacks can only be performed directly after my character evades an incoming enemy attack.  In some previous games, it would be up to the player to watch the combat very closely for the evade message or animation. In Aion, when my character evades I get a visual flashing effect on the ability that pretty much screams "press me!", that get accompanied by another visual in plain view near the center of my screen.  This makes it fairly user-friendly for even new and inexperienced players to know when to seize the opportunity to use a situational skill.

One final quick note here.  This game also seems to feature items that can be socketed with other stat boosting items to give very specific effects much like the Warhammer talisman system.  The stones can be popped into both weapons and armor and seem to drop fairly regularly off of mobs I fought.  They effects I saw ranged from adding HP and MP, all the way to boosting crit chances and evade percentages.  This gives a little bit of room for the player to mess around with various set ups, and the stones can be removed from a special NPC in case you want to try a different stone.

Quests

Questing in Aion is pretty lame to be honest, there just isn't really any other way to say it.  You can tell as soon as you talk to your first NPC that your questing career in Aion will pretty much consist of the same drab recycled kill and collection quests that we have seen in WoW, EQ2, AoC, WAR etc. Quest NPCs can be spotted by the usual floating icons over their heads to indicate quest offerings or turn-ins.

This is yet another game where the work of a hero is to collect flowers, kill animals, collect dingleberries, and do some part time work for Fed-Ex.  I won't harp on this too long as I have already ranted on this countless times in the past, but there really isn't much anyone can write at this point in a quest box to make collecting sacks of grain into something heroic.  I didn't really care for it in Warhammer, but at least Warhammer mixed things up with their public quest system, there just isn't anything along those lines here to help break up what will be a long chain of tedium.

The one thing Aion seems to do a little different in the quest department is their campaign quest system.  The quest journal is divided into normal quests and the campaign quests.  Each of Aion's major zones seems to feature a campaign series of quests.  These are pretty much a long series of quests that chain together that help walk you through the area and give you a little story at the same time.  The initial level 1-10 noobie area campaign seems to revolve around the fact that you have lost your memory and need to try to recall it.  The bad news is these quests pretty much are the same exact kill and collection quests you will find in the other part of your journal.  When the campaign starts, you will see all of the quests listed with the recommended character level for it, although at the start you can't see the specifics of the quests.  As you start to progress through the campaign, you will unlock the ability to see quests further down the list as well as their reward.

The one saving grace about the campaign system is that they do seem to go a little out of their way to help drive home the story element that comes along with some of them.  A lot of these quests will reward you with cutscenes at various stages to help give you an idea of what is going on.  Not all cutscenes seem to be created equally though.  In the quest to recover your lost memory, the final stages have some pretty impressive and entertaining ones (as seen above), but at the same time there are some that tell you a farm has been pillaged that seem unnecessary.  I'll take anything that helps break up the tedium though I guess.

The World

I wanted to devote a section here about some observations I made about the world and some features it has.

The first thing I want to touch on are the graphics and the games performance.  This game probably has the best graphics of all the traditional MMOs on the market with the exception of Age of Conan which I think has a completely different art style.  Performance wise, the game runs great on a wide variety of systems.  I also have to say the sound and music seemed pretty well done as well.  A lot of the musical scores I heard in some of the various areas seemed to be professionally composed and helped add to the immersion factor.

There are a lot of familiar features to Aion that seems to have been copied from other games.  I noticed right out of the gate that they have flight masters for flying you across a zone the same as found in WoW, EQ2, and Warhammer.  The only difference here is that instead of riding a flying animal, your character uses a special pair if wings to fly himself over to wherever he is going.  Aion also seems to have a working mail system and auction house system in place much like its competition.  One good feature that I think is new to this game is a fast way of selling vendor trash type loot at the merchants with a single button.  One thing that I did find somewhat annoying was the fact that binding to a new location costs money.

One of my biggest concerns regarding the world is the layout of it.  The world is divided into 3 parts, one of the Elyos, one for the Asmodians, and the Abyss PvP area in the center.  Each of the race's section of the world map seem to be divided into 5 main zones and a city.  After leveling from 1-10, I had completely exhausted the first zone, leaving 4 more to be explored.  Given the amount of areas remaining, and the number of levels I have yet to climb, I suspect that the game is extremely linear in terms of how you progress through the content and the map.  In a lot of other games, you are given choices on which zone you want to spend your time adventuring in at any given level.  Since other games have multiple races and multiple areas to go with them, in WoW for example if you tire of the human areas, you can head over to the elves for a change of scenery and content.  I fear that Aion will send you down a very narrow set of rails in order to reach the max level with little room for deviation.  This can be worse if you decide to level up an alt because you will be forced to do all of the exact same content you did the firs time around in all of the same places, including the campaign quests.

This leads to me another concern regarding how someone will experience PvP during the leveling process.  In Warhammer Online, each area you level up is connected to an area controlled by the enemy.  This means that if someone really wants to experience the games PvP at any stage, they only need to wander over towards the local hotspot.  While I haven't seen this during the preview weekend, I have heard there are portals that can open up randomly that send you to the enemy area for PvP.  Depending on how rare these occur, your exposure to the PvP side of the game could be very limited initially.  I like to have an opportunity to test my character in PvP even at the early stages so I can see how well the class I picked handles itself in a variety of situations.

Flight

No doubt one of the main selling points and innovations of Aion is the flight mechanic.  Initially you can't fly right out of the gate when you start, but once you reach level 9 and complete the campaign to get your class you will be able to glide and fly after a ceremony.

The flight system seems to work very well and I found the controls very easy to get a handle on.  In the bottom right part of user interface, there is a little flight indicator that tells you if you can fly in a certain area, and how much flight time you have left.  If you are in a flight-enabled area, you simply press the "Page Up" button for your character to sprout their wings and take off.  Once you are in the air, you can press "R" and "F" to fly up and down respectively, or you can hold your right mouse button down to tilt your altitude.  The meter will start to tick down and when its out your wings will vanish sending you plummeting.  You can manually land or turn off your wings by pressing the "Page Down" button. Sometimes I found the fastest way to get back to the ground safely from high up was do turn off my wings to fall, then turn them back on right before I hit the ground (use this method at your own risk). 

Having a third dimension to the game is definitely a very interesting feature, and flying was genuinely a fun experience. Having that third dimension made finding some quest locations tougher though, as on several occasions I reach the quest waypoint only to realize my real destination was actually high above me on some floating island.  My only beef is that the PvE areas I explored have certain parts you can fly, and others you can't, so you will find yourself hitting invisible walls that force you to land when transitioning to a no-fly area.  I would love to see more areas be flight enabled.

PvP

Unfortunately the limitations of the weekend didn't give me a chance to really be able to check out the PvP.  This is what will inevitably make or break the long term playability of this game.  While I was unable to participate in any PvP, I did notice a few features related to it.

For starters there seems to be a tab on your main character window dedicated to your PvP stats from the Abyss.  The window seems to keep track of your PvP rank, as well as your kills and points earned broken down into various time frames so you can monitor your progress.  Everyone seems to start out as a rank 9 Soldier, and by earning points you can advance through the ranks.  There is also a rank window that breaks down the point totals needed to reach certain ranks, as well as which players on each side are at the top of their game.  Points are earned by killing players in the Abyss, and unlike other MMOs, they are lost when you are killed.  This is one aspect that makes Aion stick out from its competition.  Warhammer and WoW were both notorious for treating people with kid gloves by rewarding them with points even for a loss, while Aion seems to have some sort of consequence for a loss.  This will undoubted stop competitive players from just rushing into fights without any fear of death, which is a good thing in my opinion.

The abyss seems to be the focal point of the Aion endgame and its PvP.  By looking at the map, we can see that it has 3 different layers, and assorted keeps to fight over in it.  I am not really sure how this endgame will stack up against what we saw in WAR, but this is going to be what makes or breaks this game.  The area looks to be a decent size by looking at the maps, and I hope that is the case. If all of the endgame PvP is going to be in this area, it will need to be very large to stop it from getting old.  Despite its flaws, Warhammer had a variety of areas and fronts for people to fight on to add a little variety to the PvP endgame, hopefully this area will offer enough to keep people entertained for a long time.

Conclusion

Aion is a graphically stunning game and has tons of polish.  The game has been out overseas for a little while now, and I think that ultimately that fact will be a large benefit to the North American fans.  Since the game has been out and patched for a while in other markets, NA players will be getting a game that is polished and feels complete.  There are not that many MMOs that have come out in the last few years that players have been able to say that about.  The game has a real focus on endgame PvP, and the patching the game has gone through already has no doubt made class balance less of an issue.  I am glad to see that there is a loss for death in PvP, as bind and zerg rushing seems to plague a lot of other traditional style MMOs that have tried for the same goal.

On the flip side, Aion strikes me as very linear game.  The way the overworld is layed out has me worried that in addition to being constricted, players will be forced to stomach through the same content over and over again every time they level up another character.  Aion also is not a game that is oozing with innovation.  Outside of the flight mechanic, I think a lot of people will legitimately be able to criticize this game for being somewhat of a clone in some aspects of some of the more recent traditional games.  The endgame PvP is going to be the real test of whether or not this game breaks through to people and distinguishes itself from the rest, or if it gets written off as another MMO using an already exhausted formula.  I think despite that, this game will appeal to a lot of people who might be current WoW and WAR subscribers.  The game already has a huge following overseas, so it should be interesting to see how it fairs in a completely different market.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

The Upcomming MMOs

With E3 wrapped up, there seems to be a lot of talk on the MMO community regarding some of the upcoming MMOs that we may have a chance at seeing over the next year.  My guild has been easing up on Darkfall waiting for the NA release so we can have our fresh start, so I figure I'd take a break writing about it for this entry to weigh in on 4 of these upcoming MMOs that have some of the members of my guild talking.

Mortal Online

This is one that seems to spur the most discussion for my guys at the moment, probably because it seems to be marketing itself as Darkfall's competition.  This game seems to be the fallback game for those people who have decided to opt out of Darkfall, although at present time, my guild still loves it.

The game sounds pretty decent on paper or powerpoint, and I sincerely hope it does well.  I am a big fan of anyone who tries to go the sandbox route and give players freedom and open worlds, which is one of the driving forces behind our interest in Darkfall.  So in this regard, I am happy to see some other companies trying to steer the genre in a direction that doesn't offer linear themepark gameplay.

At this stage, I think I have 2 major concerns regarding Mortal Online.

The first concern is whether or not the graphical engine will be able to handle a fair amount of people on the screen at once without bringing systems to their knees.  Darkfall takes a lot of flack from parts of the MMO community over the games graphics not being modern enough, but at the same time it has shown to handle more people fighting in close proximity better than many zoned and instance based games that are seen as being prettier.  Hopefully Mortal will not succumb to Age of Conan syndrome where good graphics become a detriment in certain aspects of the game.

The second concern I have at this stage is the recent announcement to start selling preorders for beta access even though the game will probably not see the light of day for another 6 months, or possibly more.  I don't mind preorders if they are within 4-6 weeks of release, but we are talking about a game that could be delayed until 2010 before all is said and done, and there is not enough footage (in my opinion) at this stage to justify jumping in this far out.  I wonder if the usual forum crusaders and armchair forum accountants will practice what they preached on previous titles or if they will give these guys a free pass on this.  I suppose if there is an option to cancel the preorder, then it might help a bit.  Still it looks like this is one to watch depending on your playstyle.

Aion

This is another game that seems to be talked about a lot lately with their recent North American beta.  I think the one obvious thing about this game that makes it jump out at people are the graphics.  Clearly from a graphic standpoint, Aion seems to be one of the more visually impressive MMOs to come around in a long time.  One of the other good things this one seems to have going for it is the fact that it has already been live overseas for quite some time, so one has to imagine that by the time it releases here that NA players will have the benefit of a game that has already undergone balancing and tweaking from patches.

My main concern with Aion is whether or not it brings anything really new to the table, or will it turn out to be nothing more than "WoW with wings".  The novelty of the graphics will diminish over time, and the game will need to have solid gameplay to back it up.  A lot of attention is given to the fact that you can fly in this game, but a lot of people who haven't been following it may not know that flight time is limited to very short spurts.  I am not sure if there is enough innovation here to peak my interest, but it no doubt might be a threat to WAR and AoC as they share the same target audience.

The other major problem that I think could derail this game's success in North America is the infestation of bots the game has seen overseas.  Much like Lineage 2, Aion seems to have a bot epidemic going on.  Depending on the severity of this, I am not sure if North American players will be as tolerant towards this in a new game.  Hopefully the people behind Aion will find a way to stomp this problem out before the game reaches North American shores, otherwise it may not see the same success it has enjoyed in their home market.

Final Fantasy XIV

I'll be the first to admit that I love FFXI.  This is one of those MMO's that a lot of my guild members have gone back to time and time again.  I think FFXI is probably the best PvE MMO on the market.  The game is relatively inexpensive and gives you an absolutely staggering amount of content for your buck.  Naturally when we heard about another online Final Fantasy game, some of my guildies ears perked up.

FFXI to us is like a spicy food that burns when you bite it, yet it's that burn that brings you back for more.  I think the game's challenge is one of the driving forces behind the game's success.  The sense of accomplishment for doing some of the hard content in this game does feel rewarding.  I think for a pure PvE game to succeed as long as FFXI has, it needs to be difficult to have longevity.

The possible kiss of death to me in the recent announcement was when I read in an interview with some Square-Enix people that FFXIV was going to be geared towards casuals.  To me, that translates into an easy game that will most likely have people breezing through content and possibly bored within 60 days (I hope I am wrong).  They have long stated that this next MMO would not be like FFXI, so I can't say I am surprised.  It also doesn't make sense for a company to release 2 MMOs that would compete against each other (see Mythic).  I just hope that they don't make this game cater to the lowest common denominator and end up giving us another WoW style theme park with Final Fantasy written on the box.  I'm sure the name alone will make it sell a lot, especially for some console players who are not used to MMOs.  Hopefully after all these years SE will come up with a better User Interface than FFXI's.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Everybody loves Star Wars, so it is no surprise that an MMO based on this universe is getting a lot of hype and attention from many corners of the MMO community.  If there is one franchise that deserves to have a good game made after it, this is it.  The current incarnation of Star Wars Galaxies seems to not be doing Star Wars any justice, and with a company with Bioware's track record behind it, it could have promise.  I'll give them credit for being smart enough to set the game in an era where Jedi are everywhere.  Let's be honest for a minute, when most people want to play a game in this universe, do you think they will chose to play a wookie like Chewbacca or a lightning shooting Sith Lord with a lightsaber?  Bioware seems to get it in this regard so despite the other classes, this game looks like it might be on a better track than SWG went down.

The concern I have with the game at this point is the hype.  I watched their trailer of a CGI cutscene of some massive Jedi brawl, but where is the gameplay footage?  They are starting this hype campaign a bit too early in my opinion and are going to end up with a customer base that has unrealistically high expectations.  FFXIV was guilty of this as well, showing no footage of the real gameplay.  Even the biggest steaming pile of crap can have a wicked CGI intro, but that doesn't tell you anything about the real game.  Show me something tangible to get excited about please because I want to be excited about a game like this.  I am buying a video game, not a movie, so show me the money!

They seem to have a strong story element going in this game which is a good sign.  There are not that many MMO's out there I have played outside of FFXI that really had a story with cutscenes, and not little kill quest journal crap not worth reading.  I'd like to hear about any PvP elements this game might have, I am assuming there must be one with all of the Sith and Jedi running around everywhere.  They are definitely running the risk of over-hyping this though given how far away the release date is if they continue to show more CGI cutscenes instead of real gameplay.

Conclusion

It looks like the over the next year or so, there will be a nice variety of MMOs coming out. No matter what game you are playing now, chances are there is one coming down the pipe in the next year that threatens to steal your interest from whatever you are playing now (if any). We also need to make sure to not over-hype these games based on power points or CGI presentations. Hopefully the companies behind these games will start to show us real and extensive gameplay footage so that we the MMO community can decide whether or not these games will actually stack up in reality like they do on paper.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

Darkfall: The Transfer Dilemma

It's been a few weeks since my last entry, but I wanted to talk a bit about the announcement regarding the upcoming North American server, and the character transfer dilemma.  Last week Aventurine confirmed the rumors that there is indeed a North American server coming in the near future, and that they plan to live up to their promise to allow transfers for characters currently playing on the European server.  The essential part of the update reads as follows:

"We will be making our own announcement when we nail down an exact launch date for the NA server,  there are a couple of things which may affect the launch date by a few days that are not ironed out completely yet.  Character transfer/cloning will become available with a significant delay (months) and possible further restrictions."

Community Reaction

The initial reaction in regards to the delay of "months" triggered a collective groan from most of current NA players looking forward to moving. I think most players can understand the rationale behind a delay.  There seems to be a fair amount potential customers who have been sitting on the sidelines waiting for the NA server before trying the game.  To have such a large percentage of the population with no skills against another large percentage who are throwing around high level magic would definitely be detrimental to the new guys . The issue seems to be with how many months it will be until the wave of high-end characters enter the world.  Hopefully this delay will give new NA players a chance to narrow the skill gap before judgment day.

This also seems to have sparked a lot of debate within the community about whether or not players should opt to ride it out for an undisclosed amount of time on EU-1, or to jump onto NA right at the launch and start fresh.  I think there are definitely a few factors that need to be considered by a lot of the current NA players.

The first thing you need consider is the fun factor. Depending on how much of the current server decides to reroll immediately, and how many more EU players get the game, there is a chance that the current EU-1 server could see a noticeable decrease in population.  The thought of spending anywhere from 2-6 months in that environment grinding my skills doesn't really appeal to me.  On the flip side, everyone on the NA server will be on even ground for at least a little bit, so if the population is solid, there will definitely be some fun fights to be had.

The second thing you have to remember is that if you are currently playing and planning on transferring, you can't take it with you.  It seems pretty evident at this point that when the transfers do go through, you will be going naked.  If you are allowed one character per server, it means you could roll a character on NA at launch and start to accumulate some wealth for you other character when they arrive.  Again on the flip side of this, a lot of people have stockpiles of armor on their current characters, as well as real estate that a lot of people have been "nutcupping" in order to hold.  You can't take it with you, so you mind as well ratchet up the PvP and have some fun with it.  My guild has been going out almost nightly practicing our teamwork in PvP situations while we have the gear to blow.  This increase in our PvP has definitely led to some memorable hate tells, especially after baiting and egging them on in the midst of their rage (although some are definitely good sports).

The Inquisition Plan

So like many guilds out there right now, we had to sit down as a guild and decide what course of action we wanted to take in regards to transfer or rerolling.

When we put our heads together and thought about thing we would do differently given what we know now, the internal guild poll was pretty surprising to me.  Nearly 2/3 of my guild turned out to be in favor of a complete reroll and just walking away from our previous characters.  We like many other guilds, designed our guild around the racial alliances built into the game mechanics, but as we experienced more of the game we came to realize that our playstyle would probably do well under an ARAC (Any Race) clan.  Initially we started out interested in land ownership like many, but after selling our hamlet and going for more a merc style route, we found ourselves having a lot more fun.  From this experience, we now know to focus more on character development and less on getting our name on the political map for our playstyle.

Having played the game for over 3 months now, we have a much better understanding of the differences between the races and how that factors into the game in real terms.  Some of my members have expressed an interest in playing the Mirdain (Elf) on NA because of the innate bonus they have to DEX, which contributes to archery damage.  While we will still probably make fun of them and their manhood, we can't deny the fact that archery plays a large role in PvP and DEX is one of the harder stats to raise.  Some of my guys are looking at the humans which has some of the best base stats of all the races, some others are examining the Alfar because of the lack of PvP restrictions and small size (despite a lower base HP and being KOS to almost everyone).  We still have some people who will remain as Orks and Mahirim simply because they look badass and are familiar with the territory.

One good thing that a lot of my guys like about Darkfall is the fact the guy with higher skills is not always the last man standing.  This game seems to give a lot of room and reward players who can outsmart their opponents and outplay them.  Getting your opponent to over extend, stamina management, baiting, and setting traps are all viable plans that when executed with the proper teamwork can destroy opponents with higher skill points.  It is in this regard that we are not afraid of our fate in PvP by starting fresh, especially when everyone else around us will be as well.

I think the one obvious challenge will be the grind in certain aspects of the game, specifically magic.  Leveling magic up is not only a time consuming venture, but it can be costly in terms of the amount of spell components needed.  I have seen some top level magic first-hand and I can say there are some visually impressive spells that can do heavy wide-spread damage, so in that regards I can understand the need for it to be hard to get.  Hopefully Aventurine will continue to exam the grind in this area to make some of the weaker schools a bit more tolerable to push through.  Looking past this, we are definitely looking forward to having our pings cuts in half or more, and knowing that in our primetime the rest of the server is out and about instead of being asleep.

EDIT: Looks like the patch notes released right after I put this up claim to reduce the grind on magic.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

Darkfall: Warhulks

Today I am going to finally be talking about one of the most requested topics from my readers, Warhulks.  Warhulks are the hover-tank looking siege weapons that many of us saw in the hype videos before the game went live.  It's been almost 3 months, but finally the first of these war machines have shown up on the battlefield, and I was fortunate enough to be there to see them in action.

Warhulks are basically heavy duty siege weapons that are land-based, and in many ways works how the ships do on the water.  There are 4 different types of warhulks that vary in size and cannon types.  The warhulk I was able to see in action is called a Vileforge, which seems to be viewed as the most powerful of the 4 types and the hardest to make in terms of skill and cost.  It has taken almost 3 months for the server to actually see anyone be able to build these machines, and I will try to explain a bit about why this has been the case.

To build a warhulk, you must first purchase the specific crafting skill which costs 15,000 gold, just like the shipbuilding and artillery (cannon) skills.  All 3 of those expensive crafting skills can all be bought from advance blacksmiths which can be found in many of the clan cities all over the world.  The main holdup was the fact that in the same way a warship has to be built in a shipyard, the warhulks require a special building of their own called a foundry.  Up until a day or two ago, nobody was able to find a city that had a foundry as a building option, and get together the 2,000 building modules needed to construct it in the city.  The Mercs, who some of you may remember from my warship writeup, recently took over a city that had the ability to build a foundry.  They constructed the foundry as quickly as possible and now have a new threat to unleash onto the battlefield.  Needless to say, many of their enemies are not happy with them having this capability.

So let's take a look at the layout of the Vileforge.  The main deck has 4 main weapons that can be controlled.  There are 2 normal cannons that act exactly like those found on warships.  The driver actually sits in a cannon chair that points directly ahead, and the other cannon is located in the opposite position facing directly in the rear.  The Vileforge also comes equipped with 2 flame cannons which mirror those found on some city towers.  The flame cannons are opposite of each other and located on the left and right sides in relation to the driver position.  While the front and rear cannons do similar damage to those found on ships, the flame cannons create a large fire which does around 20 damage a tick to anyone or anything caught in the fire that lingers after it shoots.  The range on the flame cannons is substantially less than the normal cannons, which means for the warhulk to really shine it needs to get relatively close to the structure.  The normal cannons which have decent range also are capable of damaging structures, it just takes a lot longer.

The main deck was a bit larger than I thought it would be as well.  At a glance I didn't think it would hold that many people, but once I climbed on board I was a little surprised.  There is probably enough room on there for 10 Mahirim if I had to guess, and I'm sure you could fit more at the cost of some breathing room.  Much like the warships, you have to climb up a ladder mechanism to get on board.  There were 2 ladders on the Vileforge that were located opposite of each other, but despite this, some naked Alfar managed to get on board somehow, making for a very tight and awkward fight for us as the largest race in the game. I am sure smaller races will be able to fit quite a bit more people onto one of these things than we were able to.

The Vileforge seemed to travel at a speed that was comparable to that of a sprinting player, but not as fast as a mount.  The main issue seemed to be with the steering and handling capabilities as the driver had a lot of difficulty getting a handle on maneuvering it around.  The turning speed in general seemed to be very slow, especially when the Vileforge was at a dead stop.  It seemed that once we started moving forward that turning became a bit easier.  The other major issue in this area is that even though the machine hovers off the ground a bit, it seems to have an issue with constantly hitting obstacles.  It seemed that when people were around the base that it would prevent the machine from moving in certain directions.  This can be especially annoying because in many situations this thing is going to be escorted and accompanied by ground support, and being obstructed by your own forces and escorts can lead to a frustrating situation.

This definitely marks a milestone in terms of warfare in Agon in general.  As time goes on and the server matures, I am sure more people will start to get foundry access and delve into warhulks adding yet another dynamic to the way sieges and wars will be fought.  I will be very interested in seeing the other 3 types in action and see how they differ from the Vileforge in terms of damage and size.

 EDIT: Video of this warhulk from this night can be found HERE.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
 

Darkfall: Post World War I Interviews

Over the last 2 months, Darkfall's political landscape has been dominated by a massive server-wide war.  In my article "Alliance Leader Interviews" one month ago, I tried to set the narrative for Agon's World War I against the Hyperion Alliance ruled by King Manus.  Now one month later, it looks like the sun might finally be setting on the Hyperion Kingdom.

The server wide war consumed the community and reached into almost every corner of Agon.  Originally, the perception was that this would be a cold war in which both sides were mustering up as many allies as possible in order to defeat the other.  Almost every weekend for the last month had multiple sieges going at the same time in a variety of locations, and at the start of every new week, players watched as the political and influence maps shifted around.  Almost every single alliance in the game over the last month has watched their territory and influence shift as war started to literally tear the server in half.

On May 12th, King Manus made a formal post on the Clan Discussion forums announcing that the remaining Hyperion would be surrendering to the Death Alliance. In his post, King Manus lays it all out as only he can do:

"It is for this reason that after a long and successful run, I now capitulate to the blue dots, and such leaders as Obidiah of LOD and Bone of Sinister, who are gentlemen I most enjoyed sharing the chessboard with, and whose tactic of lying low and making strategic use of the more vocal alliances bought them an excellent position. Much like a good billiards player doesn't think only about the ball he's currently trying to sink, but about how much force he needs to apply to set up the next shot, the Death Alliance, the blue dots, are the ones who played their hand most favorably, and of all my three antagonists are now poised with the most advantage on the world map.

Although Hyperion has been significantly reduced, under the terms of our capitulation to the Death Alliance, it will continue, and our final holdings will be preserved. The Death Alliance will receive what remuneration we can still provide as contribution toward their endeavors against whatever new enemy they choose to face."

Considering the amount of support and interest my articles have been receiving from the Darkfall community, I decided to track down some of the key players at the center of this recent turn of events.

King Manus - The Duchy of Wessex (Hyperion Kingdom)

1) The Hyperion Kingdom has been the primary focus of Darkfall's World War I, and clearly a lot of planning went into the creation and running of it. Tell us a bit about what it was like from your perspective at the top of Hyperion trying to manage such a massive collection of guilds and land (27 different clanstones).

At first, Hyperion's feudal structure made the management of the behemoth very easy. After all, the system we were using, feudalism, was used to manage hundreds of thousands of people. The different tiers of the feudal pyramid, along with the royal bureaucracy which was broken into departments handling such things as foreign diplomacy, interior communication, internal revenue, and organizing the military made everything work smoothly and efficiently. Being on top of such a structured machine was everything one would hope it could be. Enough of the cogs were working that I was able to enjoy the fruits of the accomplishment quite thoroughly for a time.

It was only after the departure due to dissatisfaction with the game of those several hand picked staff members who kept those departments running that it became rather a chore, as the workload per individual increased quite dramatically. This in turn encouraged more people to become burned out.

2) Did you ever foresee the possibility that literally half of the server would band together to try to defeat you, and tell us a bit about how you went about fighting against such a large group of players.

Yes, I knew it would certainly happen eventually. There's no way to hide that much territory and influence, and we had been the center of attention on the Darkfall forums for quite some time, even when people thought that the two original clans of Hyperion, Wessex and the Anvil Society, were rivals.

Our tactics against the large groups were much easier to implement in the beginning because of our increased involvement, and the fact that hand picked individuals occupied the leadership positions. This allowed us to execute an organization and field presence that outmaneuvered our foes. This was demonstrated early on, during the Yssam campaign, and even on into the times during the pilfering of Spear Waters from COTC. Having savvy battle commanders from top to bottom made it easy to work in tandem and divide the enemy troops into smaller units.

Toward the end, however, we suffered from the loss of players as everyone did, but we noticed it most significantly in the gaps in our structured command that developed. Other alliances who don't necessarily have that reliance on novel organization, which provides such an advantage if you can get it, don't suffer as much from the loss of certain figures. A bigger mob simply becomes a smaller mob, and works pretty much like it did before.

In the end, our last strategic masterstroke was sieging our own cities on a weekend when we knew a major server attack was coming because we knew we no longer had the playerbase. That kept us going for a couple more weeks.

3) What in your opinion was the most significant turning point in the conflict?

I would have to say it was the loss of Surly, Brando, Nira, and Dulath. Not
only did we lose the Anvil Society, who were sheer excellence in battle, easily worth 3 men for each one, but we lost entire interclan teams devoted to certain aspects of the running of Hyperion. This started to turn us from an organized kingdom into a "regular" mega-alliance, and that made us vulnerable.

4) If you could go back and do one thing different, what would it be?

I would have tried to have made stronger diplomatic ties with Death before COTC did, and when Surly left the game, I would have put more of my personal focus on propagandizing the DF forums, which ironically is the very tool I used to build Hyperion up.

5) During a lot of the major battles, Hyperion employed the use of mercenary guilds to help aid in the fight. What is your opinion on these guilds and the role they play in Darkfall in terms of their effectiveness and viability as a playstyle.

Well, there's no doubt that certain of the merc clans have players who have done nothing but develop their characters for combat, as opposed to the average player who develops a little crafting, harvest, etc here and there. Shuyin Hail and the gang, for example, almost unanimously have weaponmastery skills which double their melee damage, and were pushing the frontier on weapon enchantment R & D. In fact, my royal enchanter for all of Hyperion, who was funded by all the royal taxes from 27 clanstones, had to get new recipes from THEM! Other clans, like Covert Ops and Black Company made major differences in battle for us, and when Hyperion was losing troops to the grind of the game and only had money, their use was crucial to some of our final victories.

6) What does the future hold for King Manus?

Well, other than some real life projects upcoming, such as a martial arts movie called "Fierce Target" and an American martial arts television series, I plan to continue to play Darkfall, enjoying my modest corner of the map. I look forward to perhaps finally getting the chance to simply "play", casually and freely, without the heavy burden of the Crown "upon a troubled brow."

Gluttony SDS - Awful Company (Coalition of the Chillin)

1) Today we finally saw King Manus surrender to the Death Alliance. I think the first thing people want to know if whether or not you will make good on your word to break up the Coalition and restore balance to the server. When can we expect to see the coalition dismantled and what do the various pieces look like?

I saw the "surrender" as well... but if you "surrender" to one army (and when I say "surrender", I mean pay a couple hundred thousand gold for mercy.. remunerations, lol!) when multiple armies are at war with you, all you've done is waste money that could have been spent on preparing for the final fight that awaits them. My promise to break down the CC will be fulfilled when Hyperion is off the mainland and eradicated from Yssam -- this doesn't necessarily mean the Yssam Co. will be attacked but Tempest, you're fucked. Keep in mind it will be interesting to see what Death does when the CC shrinks... nothing against my brothers in Death(sup vehementi), but if you look at the map, there's more blue than purple

2) Tell us a bit about what it was like from a leadership point of view trying to organize and coordinate the a lot of the battles against Hyperion.

Imagine running a multinational corporation that makes you very wealthy and at the same time has you making important decisions that directly affect thousands of other successful and important people. It's a lot like that except replace multinational corporation with online MMO crew, replace making lots of money with neglecting your job/girlfriend(sup boo), and replace making important decisions with yelling at nerds of the internet.

Oh yea, don't forget getting less than 5 hours a sleep every weeknight and 0 hours of sleep on the weekend. War sucks, even in MMO's.

3) What do you think was the biggest turning point in the conflict?

When Hyperion failed to siege eXile's city at 4am on a random Thursday morning. The CC's anzac/euro squad pitched a perfect game during their defense of the city and fought off a Hyperion force 3x their size. This was the first battle that turned the "cold war" hot.

4) Your side has been notorious for the use of spies and propaganda to fight against Hyperion. Tell us a bit about the effectiveness these to get information and rally more people to join your side as the conflict progressed.

I'm not a propagandist... I just tell the truth. People claim I use charm or the "gift of gab" to garner popular support for my cause but the true reason people follow my lead is that they can sense that I'm being genuine about my desire for this game to become a viable place for smaller alliances/larger guilds to replace the 'must zerg' mentality that often plagues games with player run cities. If I was bullshitting this whole time, people would have seen through it and Id have ended up like King Manus -- with 100 Greater Magic and no guild to use it with.

As for the spies... section50 (along with the KGB intelligence guys) is responsible for 90% of our success. Think you can be the next James Bond Jr? Send an email to sectionfifty@gmail.com -- service gets you citizenship

5) What's your take on the other various alliances?

I think we're gonna raid each other for a while as I'm pretty sure everyone is a bit burned out from WWI(now I see why they originally dubbed it 'The War to End All Wars'). Anyone down for starting a League of Gaytions?

6) Where does Gluttony go from here?

Hopefully I can finally relax a little bit and play some DF -- my char's skills are way behind and I've got some tourneys to win. That being said, we have a war to finish... Longmarch won't fall easily -- it's the hardcore loyalists who always fight the most ardently.

Bone Dancer SiN - Sinister (Death Alliance)

I have a relatively unique perspective on Darkfall, you see, I was the "King Manus" of Shadowbane. In that game my actions and my alliances (The Rolling 30's) effectively snuffed out all competition on the server every cycle of beta through the first couple months of final. While I found my play time as a "King" gratifying to my ego, it got pretty boring pretty quick. It was reflection on those events that lead me to work against 'The King' and its reflection on those events that continue to lead me to push every political ally I have against letting CotC gobble up all of that conquered land and influence. Simply put A single consolidated world free of conflict, and inter-guild intrigue is a game I have no desire to play.

It's been a long while since my Darkfall Geopolitical reviews but if you look through them in order you can visualize the game unfolding. Hyperion, Savage Alliance, Stasis, and Dusk each grew to strong and dominant positions before being dismantled by the dogs of war and attrition. Hyperion was clearly the biggest of the pre-game alliances and their eventual fall was prolonged more due to good leadership and organization then any other fact. Most of today's guilds/alliances are shadows of their former selves with most suffering a deflation of sorts and only a select few growing or holding pat. I'm rather found of comparing real world history/politics to in game occurrences and the fall of 'Rome' analogy to Hyperion comes to mind. Hyperion's domination of much of the eastern hemisphere had to come to an end just as it is likely that a new power will fill the void. That said this area simply has to many borders and to many nation-states to ever stabilize for long.

I count my guild lucky to have been one of the few to grow during the Roman Empire's reign, expanding the Sinister holdings from a simple hamlet in the middle of the map to the luxurious Sunthrone, and finally to expanding into two neighboring hamlets. Along the way Sinister has fought with or against nearly everyone of the formerly mighty alliances. While I appreciate the King's nod in Obs and my direction, it really is rather misplaced as the players inside Sinister and the Death Alliance are the real strength. The absolute commitment to an organizations excellence depsite individual sacrifices is the halmark of any great team, or army and Death Alliance membership certainly fits that bill.

Finally, a word of optimism and some advice for the players. Missed in all the posts complaining about siege mechanics, 'the grind', the 'bad pve', has been the fact that the world was still new. Players and guilds alike have been busy trying to accomplish all progression paths at once, stretching nerves and tension to burnout enducing levels. Today however nearly completed towns litter the map, there are now numerous characters with capped magical, melee, or archery skills, and the real game of Darkfall is only beginning. More player time, resources, and effort will be put towards interguild conflict and alliances will form and fall quicker then ever. Those of you that look forward to PVP on a nightly basis can rest assured it is only just around the corner. If the Darkfall team and its community can keep infusions of players coming into the game of Darkfall, the chances of them 'sticking' with this game are only going to improve.

Commentary

To help illustrate what has transpired in the last month, I have both influence maps here dated.

We can see right away on the newer influence map that there are some drastic changes during World War I.  With the exception of the Death Alliance in the Northwest, and the Cairne Alliance in the Southeast, the rest of the map has had regional power shifts.  The DUSK alliance in the Southwest erupted into a civil war that had guilds breaking off from each other, pitting Alfar against Alfar across the desert.  In the Northeast, Stasis alliance has been driven out of Yssam and many of the Hyperion owned strongholds have tried to separate themselves from the Alliance.  The mainland of Agon shows that after a lengthy campaign, Hyperion's holdings have been reduced to only their core holdings around their capital of Long March.  The Coalition of the Chillin managed to substantially increase its numbers by getting more and more guilds to join their cause based on the premise that once Hyperion is defeated, that they would break the coalition up into smaller pieces to try to restore balance to the server.  I think a lot of people are keeping a close eye on them to see if they become the very thing they sought to destroy.

Just to touch on something Bone said about the siege mechanics, there is one particular loophole that I think needs to be addressed.  During this World War, we have seen guilds who are in the same alliance declare sieges against each other for the purpose of abusing an aspect of the mechanic that grants an immunity window.  After a city has been challenged, a siege mechanic grants an immunity window of at least 24 hours where no new challenges can be issued.  This means that guild A can front money to siege guild B, who are both in the same alliance.  Guild A then makes sure they lose the sieges, which gives the money to guild B, who now has an immunity window.  Guild B can then simply trade almost all of the money back to guild A.  This means if you catch wind of a possible attack, or want to make sure you survive the weekend, this can be abused to ensure your security.  In my opinion, you should not be able to challenge anyone who you were recently allied with in the last 24 hours or so.

It's hard to imagine for many playing the game that we have seen so much transpire in only 2 months, and for me and I'm sure many others, it seems like it has been so much longer.  I think much of the game's population is looking forward to turning the page on this chapter of Agon's history, and most people seem to be ready for the day where there are more smaller alliances instead of a few massive ones.  How it all plays out as time goes on is completely out of Aventurine's control and it will be up to the players to write Darkfall's storyline.  With as fast as the map changes, I have no doubt that we will look back at this in a month or so from now and it will feel like ancient history.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com