Aion takes wing

Last weekend saw the launch of Aion, a massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) created by Korean developer NCSoft. It's been hyped, of course, and called the first true competitor to the 800lb gorilla of the gaming world, World of Warcraft (WoW). We're not sure about world records for games, but Aion's makers are claiming it's had 400,000 pre-order sales, beating any other game released this year. Whether it will ever reach WoW's 11m+ subscribers is another thing.

I found out about Aion quite late on, and only joined the beta program in time for the 5th, and penultimate, closed beta event. Complex games such as Aion require a lot of homework, especially if you join a hardcore guild that expects the best from you. In my research, which involved hours of trawling through forums and blogs looking for technical info and tips, I've noticed a lot of ex-Warcraft players, so there may be some truth in rumours of WoW's fall in popularity. It's been going since 2004, after all, and despite recent news of a new update, many gamers feel it's time to move on.

As launches go, Aion's was remarkably stable. The servers were expected up at 8pm on Sunday night, and were only about five minutes late. Those who didn't get in on their first attempt however found themselves in a queue. After a few minutes wait, I noticed the queue suddenly shrinking, probably due to more spaces being opened up on the server. However, those who were even a few minutes behind me ended up sitting in the queue for up to four hours.

Those who had got in first had a huge advantage. The first stages of the game are entirely linear, and early quests involved collecting, say, five items that "spawn", or appear, in a certain location. There were three or four people standing around each spawn location, madly clicking the spot where the item would spawn next in the hope of getting it first.

With such a limited set of resources to complete the first quests, the early birds managed to rush ahead of the crowd and extend their lead. Even with ten channels (separate game worlds with identical content) available, the crowds were unbelievable. Many of us skipped early quests just to get ahead of the crowd.

Those of us lucky enough to get into the game were rewarded with a very stable game, and I didn't crash once in the first few hours I played. Network lag was low as well, even with hundreds of people in the same area.

Another aspect of the launch that impressed me was the server and race distribution. Warhammer Online, which we reviewed favourably at launch, went downhill quickly because of population imbalances between the two factions and between servers. NCSoft seems to have enforced strict caps on server and race populations, so end-game player-versus-player (PvP) should be much more balanced.

The only problem NCSoft faces is how to reduce the queues. The game features a personal shop system (see image), whereby you can set up a shop and then leave the game running for hours (as long as you have items for sale - but it's easy enough to offer a useless item and set the price absurdly high, so no-one will buy it). Many players have been complaining that players are setting up a shop rather than logging out, leaving no room for players in the queue.

In Korea and China, where the game has been out for over a year, players have to pay by the hour to play, so leaving your character logged in is not an option for most. The general consensus is that this is a feature that hasn't translated well to the West, and we're hoping that NCSoft will at least set a cap on the time you can leave your shop running.