Directfeed from Korean forums

[IceAge]

To the OP:
If you compare WoW ( a 4 years old game ) with Aion ( 10-12 days old game ) then you are surely a WoW fan and you`re not willing to try out Aion. You are here just to bash it. How could you compare those 2 games while Blizzard has 4 years of patches, expansions and so on and Aion only has 10-12 days ? You complain that the classes are inbalanced? If you played WoW from the begining, do you remember that there were alot of threads in the official forum saying that classes were inbalanced? Quests bugs? Item stats bugs? Instances bugs , disconnects and so on? And still , there are players now who keep complain that some classes are inbalanced, you know that right? After 4 years there are still disscusions about the class balance, so what do you expect from a game who is 10-12 days old.
You were showing as ONLY the threads were players complain about the bots and few about class balance, why? Of course , because you want to bash Aion. Go to WoW forums , how many complains are there? Please make a screen from WoW forums, of course ONLY the ones were players are complaining and post it here so that everyone could see that after 4 years there are still players who complain.
What I am trying to say is that every mmo will have +&- from the view of some players, because it's imposible to make a game and EVERYONE will like it without any complains.
So for the ones who like Aion: If you don't support your game and keep believing 1-2-3 WoW fanboys, come back in about 3 months and try Aion by yourself before judging it.

[IHOPnes]

Originally Posted by GIS-83

I used to play wow and i have 3 lvl 70s (vencture co. server). and i have seen bots in wow many times and about 1/10 of ppl in bg were always using afk scripts(bot) to gain free honor pts. Also wow general & trade chat was always spammed by gold sellers lol and i think any wow players can back me up with this one.

i used to have a script that makes me auto jump every minute in double honor BG weekends. i see bots spamming to sell gold too. in WoW gold is not nearly as useful as adena is in L2, but WoW gold ebaying is still prevelant consider it costs 5000 frickin gold to train for the skill to ride the uber quick flying mount, so there is still a market for ebaying/botting in WoW, however, to a much less extent compared to lineage 2.

[Valentina]

But does NCwest have any real say in the development of the game?

[yume]

Originally Posted by Livvy

The man in charge of development and maintenance of titles at NCsoft West is Jeff Strain and he has tons of experience with western style MMO's ( first at Blizzard ,then ArenaNet ).I highly doubt you can push him around to take a course which he thinks is bad for any game.

The man is practically a living legend .

We should wait and then see for our own eyes.

[Lethe]

Originally Posted by Livvy

The man in charge of development and maintenance of titles at NCsoft West is Jeff Strain and he has tons of experience with western style MMO's ( first at Blizzard ,then ArenaNet ).I highly doubt you can push him around to take a course which he thinks is bad for any game.

The man is practically a living legend .

I couldn't agree with this comment more. A surprising number of my friends from the Guild Wars alpha went on to work for ArenaNet, and I can't tell you how much respect I have for that company.

Jeff Strain used to run Guild Wars. You know what they do in Guild Wars? They ban bots AND temporarily ban gold buyers. At the same time, they confiscate the illegally bought gold. That's a double punch right there!

People talk about banning bots, but ArenaNet is hitting botmasters where it hurts: at their customer base and direct profit lines.


This is why the moment that I heard that two ArenaNet founders were leading the newly formed NCsoft West, I was hugely relieved. NCsoft West was formed in September of this year, and already has a nice track record of implementing change in L2. Just imagine what all of you can accomplish if you would only direct your concerns to NCsoft West instead of flaming on an Aionsource thread.

[Valentina]

Originally Posted by Lethe

I can't agree with this comment more. A surprising number of my friends from the Guild Wars alpha went on to work for ArenaNet, and I can't tell you how much respect I have for that company.

Jeff Strain used to run Guild Wars. You know what they do in Guild Wars? They ban bots AND temporarily ban gold buyers. At the same time, they confiscate the illegally bought gold. That's a double punch right there!

People talk about banning bots, but ArenaNet is hitting botmasters where it hurts: at their customers.


This is why the moment that I heard that two ArenaNet founders were leading the newly formed NCsoft West, I was hugely relieved. NCsoft West was formed in September of this year, and already has a nice track record of implementing change in L2. Just imagine what all of you can do if you can direct your concerns to NCsoft West instead of flaming on an Aionsource thread.

Let's get started!

[DevotionRK]

anyone that says WoW isnt infested with bots/spammers/gold is clearly living in the clouds. the game is HUGELY infested with botted gold, people get lazy in WoW and when you can buy several thousand gold for next to no money it becomes a no brainer. personally over half the people i have known in WoW have bought gold at some point. (yes ive played for 3-4 years in raiding/arena guilds).

gold spammers and botters are now a thing of the future. Warhammer did attempt to fix this but what u got to bare in mind is

1) warhammer is a steaming pile of **** (i have a 40 RP since the start)
2) gold is worthless in warhammer. it has no value what so ever, a completely horrible idea.

Aion is a brand new game, have u ever played a game and read a forum with positive posts across all pages? i havent......people will always moan, its life.

I played Lineage 2 for many years also, i know first hand about botters in this game, hell on bartz we had a chinese/botter alliance take over DVC and we had to kick them out since every other ****** allied with them too!

a plus side to Aion is the ability to kill the other realms botters with no consquences, unlike lineage 2. the downside to Aion is only being able to kill one sides botters/chinese. Often agreements can be made with respected guilds to kick out the botters first.

[Valentina]

I've played WoW for 4 years and I've never come across a bot in the playfields. The only thing I've come across is gold spammers from Lvl. 1 characters in the central cities every once in a while.

[Ethos]

Originally Posted by Felluah

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"

Quoted for truth and to make sure that next to the less informative replies this one gets the attention.

@Yume When I read your post I get the feeling you think everyone just flames at the OP, and that's not the case. Most people didn't agree with his post but gave good arguments. It's not because the OP say's it's like this, that everyone has to share the same opinion. Let's not make this thread look worse than it is, I think after all some interesting opinions where shared. As long as you can analyze the information in a way that it makes sense (like the person i quoted above).

[DemonXaphan]

I have to agree that the game is in it's early stages of development and will continue to be developed until NCSoft sees this game till it's end. The problem with botter's is that there will always be botters no matter what game they appear in. The best thing to help NCSoft to combat botters is for the players to report them and if your not sure, there are ways to tell if a character is botting.

Worrying about class imbalances and botters just as a game comes out should be the least of your worries, so far the content seems good, the areas are varied and looks like there is enough quests to keep you busy for now. Give the devs some time to work at it as they need to start making money so they can fix some of these things.

I agree that comparing this game to WoW now is a atrocious analogy at best since WoW has had 4+ years to develop itself better, best it would be to compare it to how WoW was in the beginning and L2 has done pretty well with botters. Just remember, it's up to us the players to report such abuses and/or take care of such when we see it happening.

So chill for now and wait to see what will happen when we get our version ok.

[justamemory]

that's it. I'm quitting!

[DemonXaphan]

Originally Posted by justamemory

that's it. I'm quitting!

Took you 13 pages to figure that out?

[Vex]

What's with all the flaming? The only people you guys should be upset at is NCSoft. I can't believe how many of you are under the impression that these problems are "hard" and will "take time". Between posts 100-150, someone gets bashed for suggesting that they should be banned within 30 minutes. I am still dumbstruck. What the **** do you think you are paying a subscription fee for? So they can pay for the servers and their billing department?

So here's a quick recap for the new visitor:

-Lineage 2 is run by NCSoft and is the biggest mess of a bot farm you will ever encounter.
-Aion has bots and is run by NCSoft.

My brother is a game dev and I am a programmer myself; getting rid of bots is not a "takes time, please be patient" problem. It's not a "It's okay if there are only 2 or 3" problem. It's not even a "12000 player per server, no way they could handle that much monitoring problem."

The problem is players naively trying to convince each other that it's not so bad or that it's not so easy to get rid of or that it should be expected to see bots pop up. Until players stop making excuses for the company, NCSoft will continue to have no reason to limit their revenue stream. Have 100 000 people unsubscribe in the first week of gameplay saying they won't tolerate bots and see if you even hear about one again.

NCSoft isn't the kind of company to bend to your feedback and complaints. If they don't care about your posts on a forum, then make them care about your absence on their balance sheet. This may sound extreme, but if you've seen lineage 2 then you understand how dangerous this problem can be if not handled RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING.

[Diablo]

@Vex, enjoy p1ssing into the wind much?

Common sense left this thread 190 posts ago.

[eVenom]

Originally Posted by Felluah

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"

Full of win. Power to Felluah. Couldn't put what you said better myself.