OK, so reading the whole thread, and as much as I can of the various linked articles, the summary seems to be as follows:
- On the korean forums, there are a lot of people posting about bots, or suspected bots (due to them being really high levels already)
- On the korean forums, there's also issues about balance between the classes.
- We have people here who have played the OBT, and are currently playing the retail game, saying they've not seen so many bots and the balance isn't too bad, nothing more tweaking won't fix.
There are a few things that need to bared in mind:
- There are a few hundred thousand people playing -concurrently- at anyone time. When a game is this new, people spend more time playing than they do writing on the forums. Those that are writing on the forums obviously feel very strongly about something, to take time out to talk about.
- Sadly, even here, 75% of forum posts tend to be negative. (OK, here it's not that bad, but the game's not out yet, and generally this is a mature and genial community)
- The game will have been live in Korea for several months, and in China as well before it hits our computer screens.
- NCWest is a new entity. They have stated they will not tolerate botting, and are, if reports are correct, cracking down on the issue far more than NC Austin did. Tools to aid in the detection of bots take time to produce and refine - it will always be an ongoing thing.
- Balance issues will be ongoing as people get more and more into the game, learn what the class capabilities are in more detail, and find more interesting combinations. In the case of the sorcerer, they've always been the proverbial glass cannon. Extremely powerful and physically vulnerable, it's a fine balance that needs to be found, and it will take time to find it - time we'll not have to worry about due to the 3rd point above.
So, enough lists, they were just for clarification (although they seem to ramble a bit now looking back on it).
In my opinion things are never as bad as they will seem on the forum, I am far more likely to lend weight to the arguments of people actually playing the game. The fact that there are bots there is disappointing, but inevitable. It's the response that matters. What everyone here that has played L2 especially want to see is a strong reaction from NCSoft in regards to this. Noone should expect an immediate response, a knee-jerk reaction to fix this would not be in the best interests of the game, nor as effective as other measures that can be found through deliberation. The game is young, and NCSoft is probably wise to use the time they have, while the game is young, to find the correct solution.
It could well be that botting to level is not efficient or called for, which is fine, it will die out, or be of little or no effect. Gold/resource farming is another matter, and can effect the economy a lot. However, the game setup seems to be that the truly profitable things will be
in the abyss, which to all intents and purposes, will not be an environment conducive to botting - I am willing to adopt a wait and see approach here.
The class balancing is a different matter altogether, and one that's taking place across -every- MMO there is. Noone will ever be happy with their class unless it is over powered in all ways, but that won't do to all the other classes. Time is what is needed to balance the classes properly. Regardless of how many people played the OBT, it's still not enough to find all the combinations and account for them. Again, we'll see the benefit of a more balanced game when it hits NA/EU.
Overall I think NCSoft should be applauded for having what can probably be considered one of the smoothest launches of any MMO i've ever seen. with a 90% retention rate from free to paying account, that is pretty massive, especially when you consider the numbers we are talking about (several hundreds of thousands of concurrent players?!). What those bitten by the bot issue in previous games want now is strong evidence of a crack down on bots. I don't expect that to happen in the first month of the games release, there's probably more pressing issues to deal with first. However, I do expect to see something by early next year at the latest - if that is a crack down with the ban-hammer, or botters finding there's no market in Aion for them, I don't care, as long as it gets resolved.
I would suggest everyone takes a deep breath, enjoy the good points, keep an eye on the bad ones, and invoke the mantra-a-la-Ayase and "Just wait and see, you will be very pleasantly surprised"