Aion gets its first State of the Game address

Those getting Latency issues, apply this: http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info13581-LeatrixLatencyFix.html . It got my ping down from 450 to 110. Its a windows fix that will improve Latency in any game you play.

That's my point. It's pretty obvious that Aion at its Korean launch was WAY beyond WAR at its North American launch. Since that time they've diverged even moreso; Aion had everything (fairly) right at the start and had a year to polish what was there, while WAR has had a year of constant re-designing and fixing what shouldn't have been broken in the first place.

I've played WAR for a year straight, taken a character to level cap, played the T4 endgame for a long time on an active server (Badlands), and put in about 700 hours at this point. I know the game inside and out. I came into Aion with no expectations or preconceived notions, and was blown away by how well-executed it is as an overall package. Grindiness can be mitigated fairly easily, and server queues are annoying but show that the game is healthy. These are "good" problems to have. WAR has "bad" problems such as shrinking server populations, and areas of the game (Forts) that are so ignored by its playerbase that they need to be redesigned wholesale to even be useful.

Wow, I completely sound like a WAR basher. I don't mean to be (seriously), but playing Aion has been a real eye-opener for me. WAR is so far behind what NCSoft is doing that it's frankly astonishing, seeing as both games were developed in the same timeframe.

All that said, WAR could keep me around if there was any hint of new content on the horizon (and by that I mean new RvR zones, classes, races, etc.). There is none of that, even while other MMORPGs like WoW and LOTRO announce major expansions. Their Live Events, while neat, aren't cutting it for me any more (I don't need another title, thanks). EA seems to have put WAR into maintenance mode, and Mythic doing just enough to keep the lights on is no longer worth my $15/month.

Mythic is trying though, no doubt about that. I gotta give them credit for working their tails off in the last six months.

the PVP is fun

Yep, gotta agree with you there.

"For example, we're seeing timeframes where 60 percent or more of our players are playing at any given time. This is a significant event by any MMO standard,"

Wow, the boldness of the statement. Do they realise that they are admitting that 60% of players abuse AFK-shops to stay online and cause more queus... and their fix was to put a 24 hour limit to it.. like that helps...? He's spinning that like the players are actually playing 24-7 or what? Am I missing something here?

The fix was for 30 minutes, not 24 hours.

While I wasn't expecting the 3 to 4 hour queues on release, I was expecting some congestion, and was prepared for the delays. It didn't really take that long to resolve, and I am able to get in without a queue now. I'm figuring it will be about another 2 months or so and the economy will settle down as well.

The grinding takes me back to DAOC days. Goes quick for the first 20ish levels, then it really slows down. They need to bump the mission exp rewards to make them worth doing. Otherwise, you may as well find a spot to park and just kill mobs for hours. I'm not so concerned about it taking millions of exp to get to the next level, as long as the missions are fun and rewarding, then it will seem to go fast. I think they have a good balance of this at the beginning of the game, but the later levels are lacking.

Flight is very cool, and I wish they had incorporated it into more of the gameplay as opposed to just certain areas and for limited flight time. PvP is fun, and I'm looking forward to a larger population of high level PvP action.