Aion: One Month in Q&A

MMORPG.com's Jon Wood had the opportunity to ask a few questions of Aion's Producer Brian Knox as we approach the game's one-month anniversary.

MMORPG.com: Would you describe the initial launch of Aion to the North American market to be a success?
Brian Knox: So far so good! The response since launch has really exceeded our expectations, and players continue to keep logging in. As you know, an MMO doesn't stop at launch so we still have a long way to go. We learned a lot in those first few weeks and feel we're on a great path now to continue to build off of the great experience.

MMORPG.com: Can you explain what led to the decision to allow what many considered to be outrageous queue times directly after launch rather than to add more servers or take some other measure to be sure that all who paid for the game could play when they wanted to?
Brian Knox: We tried to walk a very fine line and we strayed a bit in the beginning. Our goal was to always ensure there was a playable server for that language or region. Most players didn't use this option and continued to stay with their original server, but the option was there. That said, today we're seeing much more reasonable queue times today and continue to monitor this closely.

MMORPG.com: How has the queue situation played out over time? Has the system normalized since launch?
Brian Knox: Now that the hype of the first two weeks are over things have levelled out and we have healthy populated servers with minimal to no queue times. We will continue to monitor and predict adding new servers as time goes but I think we can all agree that an empty unhealthy server in an MMO is not fun

MMORPG.com: What are the developers currently doing to alleviate what many feel to be an epidemic in game when it comes to bots and gold spammers existing within the game?
Brian Knox: We have many tools on the back end that we cannot necessarily go into. What I would like to make clear is that these bots and spammers aren't just regular people they are organized criminals. They steal accounts and credit cards to earn their gold and advertise their services. There are 40+ companies of these criminals all working against us, so this is not an easy fight. But as I said we have many tools behind the scenes to detect and prevent these criminals from ruining Aion. As my public service announcement for the day, don't trust these companies for kinah or power leveling. They will use your account to spam and bot and eventually steal it back, maybe not today but eventually. That being said, we have implemented new spam filters as of this latest update that we think should help limit the spam and have our team closely monitoring and banning these as quickly as we find them.

MMORPG.com: What advantages has Aion had in launching first in an Eastern market before being launched here in the West?
Brian Knox: Stability and balance. We launched with a stable product that had been tested by massive amounts of players. We also have a game that has been balanced for months so that players have a good game experience.

MMORPG.com: There have been complaints that Abyss PvP is too centered around group battle, leaving the solo player more or less in the lurch. Can you speak to this?
Brian Knox: This all depends on play style. The Abyss is certainly more tailored to large PvPvE battles but that doesn't mean a player cannot survive and thrive alone.

MMORPG.com: What kind of feedback have the developers received post-launch that they are looking at integrating into upcoming patches and updates?
Brian Knox: We are looking into expanding the legion system and improvements to the UI, all things our players have been asking for. And as players are also seeing today, we've implemented some new spam filters to help address feedback from players, as well.

MMORPG.com: How long, on average, has it been taking for players to reach max level since launch?
Brian Knox: Most of our players are reaching the max level in around 300 hours. We more or less what we predicted from before launch. That said, it's been exciting to watch the progression of players.

MMORPG.com: Can you tell us what the developers have learned from Aion's launch? What do you feel was done right, and what, if you had it to do over again, would you change?
Brian Knox: We believe we did a good job in our beta testing. We received great feedback, thoroughly tested the game, didn't burn out users, and were able to show the game off to a larger number of users than traditional beta tests. I think we should have had a few more servers.