So I am playing open beta in Japan right now.

Few things I would like to say right away. The game runs completely smooth and amazingly well with even a hundred people on my screen. Servers are nearly 100% stable. The only issues were at the start up.

Another thing I am wondering. Is the US beta a few patches behind the Japan one? Because some people complained about controls, quests, items, etc. And none of those things in the Japan beta seem to be an issue.
 

The controls are smooth and easy to use. I have so many quests there is no way I will run out anytime soon (I’m level 15). Cut scenes are short, but they are present in most quests.

There is a wide variety of items to choose from the start. While most everything a MOB/creature drops is worth picking up. Items feel so much more useful here. I am sure things will change at end game, but its a good thing at these low levels.
Player shops are not all over the place. Most people use the auction house.

For the most part a very solid game. I would recommend for people who wish for a change of environment from WoW, while still feeling comfortable to jump in the game. For those that hate WoW, good luck finding a main stream MMORPG that will not copy/refine things used in WoW. Companies see the profit coming from WoW and they all want a piece of that action.

I have yet to venture into any type of PvP though.

However there are some problems:
BOTs...I already seem them running around since the start of open beta. Also I see many people who seem to be planning to do some 3 or 5 character boxing. NCsoft needs to start giving the clamps to these people. Gameguard is useless because people had been hacking through that for years now. Just look at Maple Story.. what a freaken joke game guard was there.
 

P.S. IS there a good quest guide and enchant item guide I can read? I can read a lot of the Japanese but not all :)

We're currently beta testing version 1.0, but they have stated at launch we will be at 1.5, which i hear has a whole lot of improvements.

I'd be interested in seeing if Japan beta players were concerned with the same issues that that US beta players were - The biggest being GameGuard.

Whats wrong with Game Guard? 

It seems pretty agressive IMO, I couldn't even dual box FFXI and Aion at the same time because the windower program I use for FFXI was detected by GameGuard and terminated....

Keep in mind the windower program did NOTHING for Aion.

I like my anti hack programs to be very evil in nature.

Because GameGuard doesn't do what it's supposed to very well, or even at all in some cases.

Programs to hack Aion are specifically designed to avoid GameGuard and they patch against GameGuard in minutes. A security blanket thrown over Aion is basically what it is, once it gets to Aion it's free sailing from there. Anti Hack needs to be either server side or embedded deep into the client or it will never work.

Originally posted by Laughing-man

Whats wrong with Game Guard? 

It seems pretty agressive IMO, I couldn't even dual box FFXI and Aion at the same time because the windower program I use for FFXI was detected by GameGuard and terminated....

Keep in mind the windower program did NOTHING for Aion.

I like my anti hack programs to be very evil in nature.

Yeah, very agressive. Earlier versions used to detect GOOGLE CHROME as hacking ;)

And current ones can conflict with other GGs from other games unless you reboot your machine everytime you wish to play a different game with GG, Draconica and China Aion being examples (yeah, I closed C-Aion and then opened US-Aion, and there you go, error).

I am excited that Aion is coming to Japan. NCSoft really planned Aion to be worldwide which is great! If the game gets over 3.5 million subs, I'll never quit.

 I've been using this: www.aionarmory.com/

And I've been playing the US closed, very good game so fare. I personally like the crafting/ gathering system and the fact that the nodes are static and respawn every 3-5 minutes. 

I hope this helps and yes, they need to shut down the bots but they are always present in most games now. It's like a part of life, like pigeons in NYC.

Botters are usually gold for cash farmers. Squashing the farmers requires quick and fair account bans. There's no downside to this for the publisher. The farmers will keep buying boxes until the costs cancel out their profits and if they go unchecked they will cost more genuine customers than their subscription fees are worth.

My concern is that back when L2 launched and for some time after, NC had a reputation of taking no action vs. botter accounts. I don't know if that has changed or not, but they can't afford to make that mistake with Aion U.S.

Same with hackers, of course. Counter-measures are fine and good, but quick action against those successfully hacking the game is crucial.

Originally posted by Syno23

I am excited that Aion is coming to Japan. NCSoft really planned Aion to be worldwide which is great! If the game gets over 3.5 million subs, I'll never quit.

Shud play wow, they have a whooping 11 mill subs :/

Few hours ago Japan released the pricing for Aion.... It sucks pretty bad.

you buy "credits" to pay for the game and it comes in the following flavors:

1800 credits (about 19 dollars) -> 100 hours/30 days

3000 credits (about 32 dollars) -> 300 hours/30 days

7800 credits (about 81 dollars) -> unlimited/90 days

btw, you can only buy credits in increments of 1000.

oh yeah theres a sort of item shop too rofl!!

I'll wait for the american release before i play i guess :( this blows

now that i think about it again. you dont have to pay for the retail box you just download it. i guess its not that horrible then?

Originally posted by NomortaL

Few hours ago Japan released the pricing for Aion.... It sucks pretty bad.

 

you buy "credits" to pay for the game and it comes in the following flavors:

1800 credits (about 19 dollars) -> 100 hours/30 days

3000 credits (about 32 dollars) -> 300 hours/30 days

7800 credits (about 81 dollars) -> unlimited/90 days

 

btw, you can only buy credits in increments of 1000.

oh yeah theres a sort of item shop too rofl!!

 

I'll wait for the american release before i play i guess :( this blows

 

now that i think about it again. you dont have to pay for the retail box you just download it. i guess its not that horrible then?

You are paying less to start with but more over the long haul. Still, it will take the US version a year before it becomes a better deal than the Japanese one. Even then your latency will be much better in Japan. Having a high latency in pvp is a death sentence.

Originally posted by Inktomi

 I've been using this: www.aionarmory.com/

And I've been playing the US closed, very good game so fare. I personally like the crafting/ gathering system and the fact that the nodes are static and respawn every 3-5 minutes. 

I hope this helps and yes, they need to shut down the bots but they are always present in most games now. It's like a part of life, like pigeons in NYC.

Thank you, it looks like it can help.

That really sucks about the paying plan. Micro+P2P is an interesting idea................:/

The damn bots are so easy to spot that 1 GM could rotate on all the Japan servers and quickly look in key areas and he/she will see them so fast. I hope in the US version they are not afraid to hire a few people to just to do this alone.

Hell I have a close friend who works for NCsoft and has been doing a lot of the translation from Korean to Japanese for Aion. I should just get her to let me into office here and I will ban the bots myself :-p ;)

What version are they running on the Japan beta?

Why would there be bots on a beta server? The server will be wiped before release?

 Boxing is fine. Every MMORPG has people who do boxing and it's not against the terms and agreements.

Originally posted by fiontar

Botters are usually gold for cash farmers. Squashing the farmers requires quick and fair account bans. There's no downside to this for the publisher. The farmers will keep buying boxes until the costs cancel out their profits and if they go unchecked they will cost more genuine customers than their subscription fees are worth.

My concern is that back when L2 launched and for some time after, NC had a reputation of taking no action vs. botter accounts. I don't know if that has changed or not, but they can't afford to make that mistake with Aion U.S.

Same with hackers, of course. Counter-measures are fine and good, but quick action against those successfully hacking the game is crucial.

There was a press release from the Korean version about NCSoft banning ~70k accounts for botting/hacking/goldselling.  I'm thinking it was in or around May.  That's a good sign.

Originally posted by comerb

Originally posted by fiontar

Botters are usually gold for cash farmers. Squashing the farmers requires quick and fair account bans. There's no downside to this for the publisher. The farmers will keep buying boxes until the costs cancel out their profits and if they go unchecked they will cost more genuine customers than their subscription fees are worth.

My concern is that back when L2 launched and for some time after, NC had a reputation of taking no action vs. botter accounts. I don't know if that has changed or not, but they can't afford to make that mistake with Aion U.S.

Same with hackers, of course. Counter-measures are fine and good, but quick action against those successfully hacking the game is crucial.

 

There was a press release from the Korean version about NCSoft banning ~70k accounts for botting/hacking/goldselling.  I'm thinking it was in or around May.  That's a good sign.

L2 in NA and EU still has Bot's but NC really did pull their fingers out their backsides and sort that problem though I've personally witnessed GM's pop and kick/ban entire bot groups on countless occasion's.

Like a lot in these games it's down to the players to report them,  far too many have the attitude of oh look a bot I'm sure someone else has reported it or what's the point nothing get's done.

NC do bust their asses over here to eradicate them you can and will never get eveyone though but that shouldnt discourage people from reporting them its a small amount of your time for the good of the whole community.

As others have said the only way to effectively stop gold farming bot's is when the continued purchase becomes more then their profit.

I'm sure they can cashback the initial purchase. So it's still more of a hustle for the game developer than the farmers.