Aion Addresses Server Merges and Imbalances
Earlier this weekend, Lance Stites, Executive Vice President of Game Operations and Production at NCSoft, filled in for Chris Hager by writing up July’s Community Address. It is always a good idea to touch base with your players after a server merge, since the transition can leave some with a bad taste in their mouth. In some cases a sign of a failing game, server merges are often misunderstood. Stites emphasizes that providing a “vibrant social experience” is the key factor in the decision behind these merges, and he is excited about Aion‘s future with it’s first expansion, Assault on Balaurea. However, bots and other RMT affiliates continue to wreak havoc in-game, and Stites assures us that the dev team is working diligently to eradicate these false accounts.
Server merges come with their fair share of issues, the most prominent being imbalance. The team at Aion opened up inter-faction transfers during this process to allow players that freedom, but unknowingly exacerbated the imbalance issue that called for the merge in the first place. Since then, player transfers have been closed temporarily to stifle further disproportionate behavior. Stites explains, “if you’re playing on a predominantly Elyos server, Asmodian creation will be the only race available for new characters.”
The team at Aion is anxious to see a resolution to this issue, as they have big plans for coming months in the world of Atreia. Patch 1.9 has recently been implemented, and the aforementioned Assault on Balaurea expansion is on the horizon, which will be complementary to all players.
Lance Stites has some more to say about upcoming pet mechanics, and an inside scoop on what the Game Analysis Team is all about. So, check out his letter in it’s entirety over at the official site.
