Aion, Its Queues, and How to Fix Player Run Shops
Aion is out and has massive queues. That is the news across the web. Are queues good? Is the small selection of servers bad? Are player run shops the cause? What can be do to fix these problems?
While I hate queues, I can understand why NCSoft is doing this. If you look at Warhammer Online's situation, you see they launched with a huge selection of servers and most were empty within a month. Yes, queues suck and there no doubt be a lot of foot stomping about this. But, almost every MMO that is out sees a drop in players after the first month of release. I would much rather have to deal with queues for the first month then have to deal with empty servers for the rest of my play time. My bet is NCSoft is monitoring the situation and after the first month they will open new servers if the situation requires.
One of the main complaints is player run shops. It is not that the shops themselves are bad, but it is that players are misusing them. If you have a player run shop open, you do not get logged out. Ever. No matter if people are buying anything from you or not. And thus, you have people taking a piece of vendor trash and sitting in a corner with their player run shop listing the item for millions of Kinah. No one will ever buy the item from them so they will never get logged out. You have people sitting in a corner for hours while they sleep, while they work, while they go to school, holding up a server slot that no one else can take.
So the questions becomes: how should NCSoft fix this situation? I do not think the removal of player run shops is the answer. They are a unique way of doing business and can be useful. Perhaps, there should be a timer on unproductive shops. I have no problem with shops that are actually moving merchandise because they are properly using the system. Those that abuse the system do not want their merchandise to sell because if everything sells, their shop will close and they will get logged out.
I think the best answer would be to have a one hour productivity timer. From the time you set up your shop, you would have one hour to make a sale. If no sale was made in that time you would be logged out. If you did make a sale, your timer would reset and you would have another hour to make a sale.
This system would come with its own assortment of benefits and flaws. People just idling in a corner would get booted after an hour, freeing up slots for others. Prices in productive shops would have to remain competitive because if you are not competitive, you will not be making sales. On the other hand, someone could set up like a shop pact with a friend and have the friend stop by every forty five minutes or so and purchase something from their shop to keep them logged in. While this could happen, I think it would be rare and the one hour timer would get rid of most of the problem.
Other than the queue, Aion has been a complete blast. It has been a pretty solid launch. There was about a half hour of bad lag last night, but it was the first Rynala and I have encountered. We are working to level our mains together and as of last night we reached level thirteen. She is playing a gladiator and I am playing a cleric. I also leveled a spiritmaster alt to level ten yesterday.
With the official launch today, I am excited to see the future of this game and I remain hopeful of its success.