ABYSchan

Out of 14 servers... if about 3-4 are lost, then this probably won't be much of a big deal.

If 7 or more are lost, however, I'd be surprised if anyone is still willing to say that this MMO is going as strongly as they had hoped for the NA/EU audience back in late 2009.

Either way, all the anecdotal "My server is CROWDED WTF are you guys talking about?!" Aion diehards that have been vocalizing in some comments on other articles have just been unceremoniously schooled.

And NCSoft just announced that they're merging servers -- 7 months after launch.

How long did it take for Warhammer Online to decide to do their server mergers?

I have played this game since the Beta, started at launch, and my subscription is expiring sometime in June. I haven't bothered re-subbing due to many varied reasons, but I too play on the Lumiel server as the Author, and the situations that he describes is the Lumiel server to a T, from population balance (at least on Lumiel), the 'dressing habits' of the Elyos, the severe population imbalance that's not properly reflected on the official website statistics and... well. I could go on.

I rolled Elyos initially (on Lumiel) and got a Cleric to her mid-40's. I stopped playing her due to the fact that the few times that I did get into a raid for fortress capping, I never got any honor, kinah, let alone medals for participating in a capture. I rolled an Elyos Spiritmaster on Azphel and got it to its mid-40's as well, but got bored and left due to the guild I was in disbanding. Repeat on Seil, with a Chanter. Got to 35 and leveling got slow. Went to Yustiel and made an Asmodian Gladiator, got farmed for AP the moment I stepped into Morheim (lol).

I ultimately did get that Asmodian to about level 43, and I will have to admit that I found the overall game experience a lot more unique for the Asmodian side than I did for the Elyos side. Elyos side reminded me of your typical fantasy MMO with sweeping green pastures, jungles and classic deserts and zombie-infested villages. The atmosphere was just... typical. Nothing really new. The reactions to Elyos daevas were typical "OH YOU'RE HERE TO SAVE THE DAY YAY." over and over... Asmodians, on the flip side, felt much more like an alien world. Bioluminescent plants, volcanoes, COLD-looking deserts, bizzare ice formations... all so very wonderful and unique without being too alienating and unfamiliar. Also, the Asmodian culture is so much more fleshed out than the Elyos one. You get quests right off the bat where you're launched into intimate stories of the strict hierarchic society; aristocrats having forbidden love and secret families/children. You run into disillusioned Archons that no longer know why they fight, philosophers who argue whether or not they deserve to divine. When you go out and do quests, humans are more or less BITTER at you because of the general aloofness of most Asmodian Daevas that preceded you, and you go out to prove them wrong.

The difference between Elyos and Asmodian in Aion is where as an Elyos, you're expected to be a disciplined, moral soldier. For Asmodians, everyone you meet expects you to be a failure or worthless and your victories amaze and make the NPCs you encounter believe in you and your abilities. I wouldn't say that's an evil faction, but a very, VERY jaded one.

Also, Asmodians have Victorian mansions with tinkling harpsichord playing. That's just... fun. And I find Pandemonium to be much more beautiful and easy to run around in. One may be able to glide around in some parts of Sanctum to get to places that are downhill a bit faster, but that doesn't REMOTELY make up for the fact that there are several real death traps if you have latency issues, along with one region of the city that requires you to sit around for 5 minutes to grab a boat to access if only momentarily. Then having to wait another 5 minutes for the boat to return... making any trip to the outer port into a 10-15 minute ordeal. The bank and crafting hall being at opposite ends of the city also does not help. And the elevator of doom... don't get me started.

But now, looking at some of these other comments...

I'm surprised at the number of "YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED THIS GAME!!" crap spewed at the author. Are you people delusional? Or have you not looked out beyond your home servers yet?

I also have characters on 5 other servers. Only two of them could be called "balanced" in any fashion -- Azphel and Seil. Seil is understated often, despite having a very active community there that sometimes bleeds over into Lumiel's forum space (I'm looking at YOU, Mephs). Azphel was a server with a rough start that had near constant downtime for the first week of of launch. I think with that start, they avoided picking up the majority of the "stay for a month and quit" players which went to other servers, and the people that stuck on Azphel were properly 'filtered' onto the server using that bizzare 'server balance' system that NCsoft employed during those first weeks that outright preventing you from making a new character until more of the opposite faction appeared.

Furthermore, Yustiel is the only server that I've seen that's Elyos dominated. As of posting right now, the Elyos owns half of the Abyss with Asmodians owning only a third of the lower layer (Sulfur fortress). There are roughly double the amount of Elyos legions than Asmodians on there, and the highest ranked Elyos individuals have double the Abyss points than highest ranked Asmodians. I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say Linvidor777 and 'Stupid' (hey, nice name!) are on this server. Not going to comment on how Stupid missed the point about how the lore perspectives are different depending on faction.

As for whether 'which side is better' I will throw out that there are some advantages that are in the Elyos side that I can say with certainty is by design. If you looked at the numbers of the population balance in the original game servers in Korea... the Asmodians pretty much dominated everywhere, every server. In response, NCsoft made the Elyos side a bit more attractive by putting in a few helpful 'carrots' for newer players and re-rollers to persue, as in a few more World Bosses that yield plentiful gold loot, one or two additional repeatable quests in the Abyss with relative closer proximity to Elyos posts, and an additional area full of elites that make for easier high-level grinding to get to 50. However, some of these 'carrots' are being removed. One of the coveted 'loot pinata' bosses in Heiron is having 80% of his loot table removed in the fabled 1.9 patch. Also, quest rewards are being modified, and most likely for balance between the factions. I suspect that the Daevanation armor chains will also be looked at... although I didn't find the difference between Asmodian and Elyos to be too drastic

Whatever minor and ultimately inconsequential advantage that Elyos has in terms of level 45 legendary items and quests that you can only repeat 200 times in the lower layer of the Abyss really has no bearing in the long run. But honestly, in the majority of servers, there are more Asmodians. Despite the official site's statistics being very obviously out of date in many cases, there is a trend for the Asmodian. I don't blame them, to be honest. They've got the better cookies.