September 30, 2009
The NCSoft Launcher…
I’m going to try and keep this short, for your sake. However, as much as I’m enjoying Aion at the moment (and I do think it’s a great game), I really despise the NCSoft Launcher.
In my opinion, it is useless overhead we are incurring each time we wish to load our favorite game. You could argue that it does keep your NCSoft games up to date and it is able to repair corrupt game files, but I think these two don’t nearly make up for the shortcomings of this annoying little program. First, most games these days do a check for updates when you launch them or, in the case of MMOs, when you log on to the game servers. Second, although a repair shouldn’t be necessary, it would be easy enough to incorporate this into a standalone program that users can run as needed.
The launcher itself seems to be the cause of many of my issues lately. I can’t count how many times in the last week it has thought that Aion was not up to date (when it was) or that it encountered an error the last time it was run. Both of these have made it necessary to choose to force the game to play without checking for updates or repairing, since I know damn well that nothing is wrong with it.
Aion has crashed on me on occasion, but I don’t find it bothers me as much as the fact that when you log off or get disconnected from the game servers, you end up back at the launcher and have to reload the game in order to log back on. The game takes a considerable amount of time to load, and if it was already loaded why do I need to head back to this annoying little program to reload it and make sure everything is just peachy before I can play again?
I’m happy that NCSoft decided to remove GameGuard from the Aion release (for now anyway, we’ll see about that later on), but I really don’t like their launcher. I don’t own any other NCSoft games*, and I don’t really understand the purpose of this program other than to annoy me each time I want to play Aion. Why should I have to load a program before I can load my game? Especially if it provides no added value to the experience?
* As an aside, I may have once described in great detail how much I disliked Guild Wars and it’s expansions to the developers and NCSoft PR folks at E3 one year.
August 30, 2009
Official Dates & Meanings
Taken from here, the official dates are out for this month, up to and including release. More than likely you have already heard of them, but let’s dissect what each is and what you can do in each.
Open Beta: September 6 (Sunday) – 13 (Sunday)
Server and Character pre-selection: September 18 (Friday) @ Noon P.D.T.
Head Start: September 20 (Sunday) @ Noon P.D.T.
Launch: September 22 (Tuesday) NA and September 25 (Friday) EU
What you need to do to upgrade to 1.5 or begin the journey to 1.5:
The open beta client is now also available for download from Fileplanet. You can also download the full open beta client or upgrade your closed beta client by downloading these torrents.
Open Beta:
Open Beta is for testing the game, previewing it. It is generally assumed that an Open Beta is open to the general public, but based on a quote by Ayase, “I’m not entirely sure how broadly our invitations will go out, but it will, relatively speaking, be open compared to our closed betas,” it sounds like it might not be open to the general public.
Characters from Closed Beta will be wiped and you will be starting new characters for Open Beta.
What we know, Open Beta will be version 1.5, and thus we will be experiencing:
- Western enhancements: including new Western stylization options during character customization
- New zones, instances, skills, and quests
- Level cap of 30
Edit: There is now a Letter from Aion Producer Brian Knox on Open Beta as well as Open Beta Patch Notes
Your characters will be wiped at the end of Open Beta.
Server and Character pre-selection:
Beginning Friday, September 18, at Noon P.D.T. anyone who has pre-ordered Aion has the option to create your character(s). You will be able to log in and create your character’s look and save the name(s) of your choice on your server. You will be able to create and save 2 characters at max during this time. You will not be able to log in and play until Head Start. Pre-Selection ends at 9 AM P.D.T. September 20 (Sunday).
Head Start:
Two days after pre-selection begins, on Sunday, September 20, those who have pre-ordered will be able to enter the game and start leveling. If you used the pre-selection time, you won’t have to fiddle around with creating your character’s look, but just start playing.
Launch:
Anyone who wants to buy the game without pre-ordering will be able to access the game and join those who have already started the leveling process.
Pre-order Items:
Preorder-Only In-Game Items: In-game items will be available for use during the head start program.
* Black Cloud Hat (gives boosts to HP, MP, magical resistance, and evasion)
* Lodas’ Amulet (gives a +20% experience boost for 1 hour)
* One Ancient Ring of Power (type depends on your preorder retailer): Ancient Ring of Fire (GameStop), Ancient Ring of Magic (Best Buy), Ancient Ring of Earth (Amazon.com), Ancient Ring of Water, or Ancient Ring of Wind.
Related Links:
Change your Password for access!: Make sure you do this if you created your Aion account before 07/29/2009
Installation & Troubleshooting FAQ: Comprehensive guide
How to download and install Aion without problems: “For those people with an unreliable internet connection “
Dat’s Translations – Including Major Patch Notes
Letter from Aion Producer Brian Knox on Open Beta
Open Beta Patch Notes
August 3, 2009
Change Your Password
Hello everyone,I have been asked to bring you a notice regarding changing your Aion game password some time before release. We have made adjustments to our password system and anyone who has an outdated password once release/headstart arrives, will be unable to log in to the game.
This message applies only to those of you who created your Aion account before 07/29/2009. If you changed your password or created your Aion game account after this date, you are fine and will not need to make any adjustments.
Our password system update will not affect beta access, but the password you are currently using in beta for any Aion accounts created on or before this date will no longer work once the game goes live for the Head Start event/official launch.
The fix is simple! Please go through the process of changing your Aion game account password at your earliest convenience. You can even change it to the same password you are currently using.
North America: http://us.ncsoft.com/en/
Europe: http://eu.ncsoft.com/en-gb/Thank you!
__________________
Sebastian “Ayase” Streiffert
Community Manager – Aion
Source: Source is from the betaboards so they’re probably going to go offline soon.
Choosing a strong password:
This is very important for your account security. Make it something you can remember but be sure to have capital and lowercase letters, as well as numbers. A great guide how to pick a strong password can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/password/create.mspx
In a related note, be sure to upgrade your Flash player as there is a real and serious trojan/keylogger vulnerability and several pages were compromised even at Curse.com.