[RiGoRmOrTiS]

Looking from input from mainly CM's but anything anyone wants to add please do.


Hello everyone,

I'd like to thank you for your patience while I collected feedback, comments and suggestions from various Aion communities' across Europe and North America. I used this information to create a list of questions that I felt needed to be addressed right away by our development team. This list does not cover all of your questions, I realize this, but I wanted to provide what information is available at present. The rest I am still working on.

I have spent the last week discussing the current state of morale within the community and the general excitement for the game with our production team and after reviewing the community report, one member in particular wanted to address you all directly. I would like to introduce you to Lance Stites, Executive Producer of NCsoft West's Game Production Studio. Greetings to all, As Executive Producer, my responsibilities include preparing and supporting the launch and ongoing operations of product for the "Western" market?including North America and Europe. I've worked with NCsoft since 2001, including 5 years in the Austin office and after a brief time away from the company I returned to spend almost a year in the European office. I've worked to launch or support multiple products or expansions, including the Lineage and City of Heroes franchises.

As you've probably seen, NCsoft West is undergoing restructuring which involves the relocation of certain key staff. We're building a dedicated production studio to support titles like Aion and the Lineage franchise. We've added Lani "Liv" Blazier as our Aion Community Manager recently and she is already taking an extremely active role within the community. Within the MMO community, this role is of vital importance and great to have someone who understands the importance of the player base and will be a tireless advocate of the community needs. Liv has spent the past several days gathering information and answers that are important to the community. We want to continue this open dialogue with the players and look forward to more as we move toward and past our Aion launch.

We really have an exciting time ahead of us in regards to ongoing updates to existing products, new releases on the horizon, and closer cooperation and coordination between the European and North American territories.

Cordially yours,

Lance Stites
Executive Producer, Game Production Studio
NCsoft West

I don't mean to be rude; but what? That wall of text to tell us about "Lance" and "Liv". I don't recall anyone in the community asking for staff bio's and job descriptions. This was utterly pointless. Introductions are meant to be a short and yet this is what most of our "Fan Letter" is filled with.

The Community Team is committed to listening and responding to your needs. Please find below the answers to 5 questions that I wanted to make you had answers to sooner, rather than later.

Ok maybe we are getting somewhere now! great.. bring on the answers.

1) When will Aion be released in North America/Europe?
We expect to ship Aion in NCsoft West territories in the fall of 2009.

We didn't really ask this question. We already know its Q4; we don't need to hear that again using different words such as "fall". What we were really looking for is a concerted effort at pushing the date forward; or spend your time answering our other more pressing questions.

2) Why is localization taking so long?
The localization effort is enormous, with a vast amount of content. Aion is not simply being translated, a team of dedicated content writers are re-creating the written dialogue and content to provide AAA quality and to ensure that it is culturally relevant for our audience. We are going to do this launch "right" rather than fast.

What a load of waffle. Every MMO under the sun that gets translated into another language has to go through content writers to re-create dialogue thats appropriate for the culture and region of release. This is not a valid excuse for why its taking so much longer than other MMO's. Addtionally people; its not taking them a year to translate; its taking them neigh on 2 years!. If NCSoft are to be believed then they have been translating along side the korean client's development. So a fair and conservative estimate for translation is 2 years!.

Lets put this into perspective; if 2 years wasn't doing that enough already. Warhammer On-Line; whatever you think about this game; translation wise this is just as content rich as Aion so a nice example.

On release (end of september) Warhammer was running in more than 5 languages! English, French, German, Italian and Chinese (for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau).
Since then it has also been translated into Russian! in less than 3 months and they are already well on the way to releasing the game in Korean this year!.

So I ask again. why is it taking 2 years to translate Aion into 3 languages when mythic can translate into 5-6 languages in a fraction of the time?

3) Has a date been set for our Preview Event?
While we are not ready to release specific details regarding the Preview Event, we can tell you that participants will include those who signed up at last year at FJV, PAX and Leipzig. We will also be extending invites to long time NCsoft customers and dedicated legions. As we get closer, we will be offering more opportunities for fans to get signed up for this exclusive event.

Why tell us exactly what we have already been told? why? >_< at this point I'm laughing in disbelief. One small point to be made here; which has been mentioned before by other people. Not only have you once again said "We can't tell you when this will happen" but you are saying only vistors to these conferences are going to get to play along with large well established legions. So in other words 95-99% of people are excluded.. Great!

4) Will there be community support for Europe?
Absolutely. We realize that many in the community were surprised with our announcement regarding the consolidation of the North American and European operations. We are deeply committed to our European community and will have native speaking Community Coordinators for our supported languages (English, German & French).

I don't think we ever really had this question high up on any list did we? of course there will be support in Europe on release; otherwise legally I don't think you could even sell the game in this territory. We would have to import the US version. So we know this already..

5) Will there be servers for each region?
We will have servers physically located both in Europe and North America for launch.
We know you have more questions and they are being addressed. My goal is to have another update for your within the next few weeks.

again. stating the obvious that we already know and didn't ask. Of course there will be local servers; otherwise you wouldn't be releasing the game here in Q4. *Rolls eyes*

Thank you,

Liv
Community Manager, Aion

Yeah. Thanks.. but you havn't told us anything new. I'm not trying to be nasty; I just found myself getting frustrated that this "letter to the fans" was even released. Its didn't provide us with anything other than frustration.

This post has been edited by RiGoRmOrTiS: 19 February 2009 - 06:21 AM

[Freiya]

While I fully agree with every single thing you said, I think you could have posted this in the similar topic right below this one. Regardless, good post.

[RiGoRmOrTiS]

Freiya said:

While I fully agree with every single thing you said, I think you could have posted this in the similar topic right below this one. Regardless, good post.

That post is full of waffle, spam and people arguing. I felt we needed a unified post that the CM's can read and get our response from. That is all :)

This post has been edited by RiGoRmOrTiS: 19 February 2009 - 06:34 AM

[Bronaz]

totally agree,...let Liv send this to Lance and get some more awnsers. 6/7 months to translate is bullshlt.

[Fleiva]

Have you played Warhammer in other languages? It's ****ing terrible rofl, at least in Spanish. Not the best example. Im not agreeing with you on the introduction part neither, because if they didn't do that, people would whine about a random guy nobody ever heard about talking about Aion. I think that while it can be skipped, it's not extremely unnecesary.

What I agree with, the localization efforts have been going since the first CBT (or so we were told) which means it will take them over 2 years to translate a game, which yeah, it might have suffered some changes in this time forcing them to change their original translations, but I doubt all their previous work was completely useless.

We are talking about game development timeframe right here, the korean->English translation is going to take almost as much as the game development itself, and that's indeed terrible for such a high profile company, I'm almost 100% sure that the timeframe would be way shorted if the koreans held their release in order to accomplish a global one as it was intended back in 2006, with such a Korean market pressure, they'd realize they have to hurry the hell up.

The complete lack of information about preview events is completely discouraging, we were already disgusted by the fact that we aren't receiving a proper unlimited beta, they shouldn't be pushing it further. A timeframe or even details is something to be expected considering how we've been hearing about a 2009 release for a while, March is almost here and we know the same as 6 months ago.

Then, the release date, they have to understant that during the course of development, we've been receiving hints, Ayase himself said that they were aiming for a Q1 release not so long ago in a video interview, how is this date any different? It's still a "we expect", we've gone through a bunch of "we expects" already and none of them were accomplished, we want guarantees, or a stronger feeling than "expect", for all we've experienced, Q4 2009 could mean Q2 2010, it's not like if you didn't state your expectations before.

Thing here is that Liv is still new here, probably she didn't know it, but out of that entire letter, we (the ones who have been following the game for a long time) already knew everything she said.

This post has been edited by Fleiva: 19 February 2009 - 07:08 AM

[Bronaz]

Atleast they can play the game,..I prefer playing the game in 2 to 3 months than waiting for a perfect translation. And I think they should only translate it into english and ship it. And afterwards make other translations by patches. I mean, english is a world language that everyone can understand.

[2aimless]

After years of analysis i felt like this:



Then i thought that and activ CM is a necessity for a project like aion.
I think noone would expect an CM to be passiv.
So whate the heck was that letter? Do your job. And do it good.

Keep up ppls attention. And everything will work fine.

edit: No matter what do you do i stay for aion.

This post has been edited by 2aimless: 19 February 2009 - 07:20 AM

[YamiVegeta]

I agree with these posts.

I'll give NCSoft a cookie thou ... for trying.

[Wolfer]

I have to say, I agree with you on every single statement you made here.
Nothing more to say.. cept; Give us something new please?

[Horus]

bah, release english version, entire NA speaks english and 75% ppl in Europe does (or is learning it). Then release other language translations in future patches. Can't belive i'll have to w8 till end of year for this... i mean, i probably wont, there must be some other game coming out before then >_>

[LaSirene]

Horus said:

bah, release english version, entire NA speaks english and 75% ppl in Europe does (or is learning it). Then release other language translations in future patches. Can't belive i'll have to w8 till end of year for this... i mean, i probably wont, there must be some other game coming out before then >_>

Not...really. And I've already expressed my opinion in another thread. :cry:

Oh and <3 Fleiva.

[Vepo]

Yeah release the English version :D

[filecreator]

Quote

On release (end of september) Warhammer was running in more than 5 languages! English, French, German, Italian and Chinese (for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau).
Since then it has also been translated into Russian! in less than 3 months and they are already well on the way to releasing the game in Korean this year!.

So I ask again. why is it taking 2 years to translate Aion into 3 languages when mythic can translate into 5-6 languages in a fraction of the time?

Bigger teams, bigger budget, no financial worldwhide crisses that forces company's to fire people to keep in the game.
Also, more detail, wanting the best quality and no half-assed crap that sounds terrible.

[RiGoRmOrTiS]

filecreator said:

Bigger teams, bigger budget, no financial worldwhide crisses that forces company's to fire people to keep in the game.
Also, more detail, wanting the best quality and no half-assed crap that sounds terrible.

While I personally don't like Warhammer; its a polished game with plenty of detailed story\dialogue.. etc.. that requires translation so its still an appropriate example.

However I do believe your right with "bigger team, bigger budget"; but of course the only people to blame for understaffing is NCSoft; it shows they are not taking Aion seriously. Their excuse has been "really big translation job" but that excuse simply doesn't hold up. Its most likely a translation team thats under staffed or simply not very good. Both are something NCSoft could fix. this is only guess work though; we need a real reply to my first post by a CM to know the truth.

This post has been edited by RiGoRmOrTiS: 19 February 2009 - 08:29 AM

[Livvy]

that is because NCsoft has been using the same procedures for communication in all games from the very start , it's this one:

http://www.aionsourc...html#post288253

by the way , this line

Quote

We really have an exciting time ahead of us in regards to ongoing updates to existing products, new releases on the horizon, and closer cooperation and coordination between the European and North American territories.

is NCsoftian for :

"we're going to close the european division because it's cheaper " .


cooperation,my ***.They're closing European and american offices left,right and center.

This post has been edited by Livvy: 19 February 2009 - 08:37 AM

[filecreator]

you can only employ as many people as your budget allows.
maybe they dont care, maybe theyre working theyre rear end off, maybe theyre going bowling tonight.

the problem is, we dont know
its better to think positive and reasonable about these kinds of things in life,
else you get riots that could have been avoided if people didnt make people go into mass hysteria.

a good example for that is a few months ago, greece.
a boy was shot by a cop there.
the boy was voilating rules, the cop shot and the boy was killed.

since it was unclear for both the public as for the authoraties if the cop shot to kill,
riots started for over a week, crashing the whole country.
People didnt think it over, the troublemakers started the urge to express anger, people joined in, etc

it causes a chain reaction that doesnt solve anything, at most make things worse cuz people will ignore the true problem,
and start trowing arround excusses, rumors and theorys..
(like most topics here atm)

[Vepo]

Wish I was in greece when that happened. I would have stolen a huge *** HD TV and stuffz!

[Diablo]

filecreator said:

you can only employ as many people as your budget allows.
maybe they dont care, maybe theyre working theyre rear end off, maybe theyre going bowling tonight.

the problem is, we dont know
its better to think positive and reasonable about these kinds of things in life,
else you get riots that could have been avoided if people didnt make people go into mass hysteria.

a good example for that is a few months ago, greece.
a boy was shot by a cop there.
the boy was voilating rules, the cop shot and the boy was killed.

since it was unclear for both the public as for the authoraties if the cop shot to kill,
riots started for over a week, crashing the whole country.
People didnt think it over, the troublemakers started the urge to express anger, people joined in, etc

it causes a chain reaction that doesnt solve anything, at most make things worse cuz people will ignore the true problem,
and start trowing arround excusses, rumors and theorys..
(like most topics here atm)

Hello target audience.

[Serina]

I have only been following Aion for a short while and even though this letter has clarified a few things like others this is all information that I was already aware of. It's still good to see Miss Liv trying, even if the response she got was one we sort of expected. Concrete is nice. Abstract is hard to appriciate. Uncertainty? Don't try that with a fan of a game that hasn't even played the game yet.

I can understand how translation can take a bit though, if they are looking for best quality. Best quality means all major languages of the West, and all languages in the game must be spoken good. They have to translate, read it, adjust it, read it again, adjust it, read it again, put it in game, fix glitches with it, go through again, fix glitches, then adjust it, then read it again, then scrap an idea for a better one, take out a chunk of text, put it in, and read read read until it flows as smooth as silk for a native born speaker of that language, then send it to that speaker, and even after release they will be making adjustments to select text and spelling errors. After that, while all that is still going on before the release there's still the voice acting for the quest scenes that requir it. For a game like Aion I wouldn't expect any less than GREAT acting and GOOD voices. Guild Wars acting was decent for a free to play, but often I found myself wincing. As a transcriber that takes strait English translations and makes them fit into English flawlessly I can understand the issues. A friend of mine that works for a Spanish branch of Sprint once told me that for major translation projects it takes at least a month to three months, and that's for a phone company.

I'm surprised that the full theme song is already done and in full English. However, if they are wanting the quality which they are hoping for they might even be translating and transcribing Forgotten Sorrow into French, Spanish, and maybe another/more of the European Langauges.

So though I'm disappointed, they did make it clear that translation and localization is taking a long time, and I can understand why. Keep up the good work Miss Liv. You kept your end and got a response, though it wasn't what alot of people wanted. I'll stand by in World of Warcraft as I build my new computer until I get a date. :)

[klanh]

if you ask me the lack of proper open beta / few days trial just suggests that the company dosent trust their product.

And anyway I wonder what is this so much hyped localization? As far as I know your only gonna make 1 English version, that is gonna be played in quite a few countries. I just want to ask how do you make a translation that is relevant to both Mexico and Spain? I'll tell you how, you simply dont. And then we come to the point of why in the heck do you even want to assosiate real world with world where you kill lava elementas and such?