"You'll End Up Naked And Alone"

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Scott Jennings| 29 Comments

A typically moderate public service announcement from my day job.

This entry was posted in Aion, RMT. Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://www.arksark.org/blog/ Arkenor

    Much better than the lost one, as it did not leave me hating everybody in it!
    Good fun!

  • http://www.arksark.org/blog/ Arkenor

    Er, “last one” even. I miss the edit button :(

  • http://www.independentcreator.com Matt

    I truly hope this will help someone. Some poor, misguided soul who doesn’t realize that if you buy your character, you’re not supposed to admit it.

  • http://wowpanda.blogspot.com/ wowpanda

    Funny video, but people who buy their stuff is not that bad, mostly they know what they are doing, and MMO’s require little practice.

    Also, the new comment system doesn’t seems to work on FireFox.

  • JeremyT

    Yaarvington is a hell of a lot more interesting than those other players (or the scorpion monster things on which they’re intently grinding).

  • http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com geldonyetich

    If Gold Farmers could bridge the Yarvington out of newbs, the world would beat a path to their door.

  • Mesar

    “A very long time of button mashing later…”
    This sums up my feelings about Aion quite well.

  • Vetarnias

    1) They have wings?
    2) If the characters can show something which has to be “censored”, it’s hardly the players’ fault, is it?

  • ToeJob

    I tried Aion but the grind was as bad as Vanguard with less to do IMO.  Someone at NCSoft has a decent sense of humor though.  Not to knock what Mr. Jennings does for a living but these kind of games where there is nothing but pure grind and everything costs a fortune in kinah or whatever currency help drive people to buy gold.

    I played Aion at launch with guys I’d gamed with since SWG launched and I have no doubt that they were telling the truth that they never bought gold.  Aion broke them from that.  I don’t condone it but from their explanation from their point of view, I could understand it.

  • TPRJones

    Wait, are you guys outsourcing to Rooster Teeth for these now?

  • lolya

    Yah, after doing a video on the evils of outsourcing your levels to a third party… they decided to outsource their work to a third party. Ironically, they made a video about buying high level characters… with everyone being level 1-10 and in the starting zone. Super ironically, the only player not to wipe during their pve adventures is the clueless ebayer. Not really sure what kind of message they are trying to send here. Would be great if ncsoft spent that money getting the 2.0 update out instead of sitting on their asses, paying other people to make videos for them so they can release it in 6 months time durp. 1.9 isn’t going to stop you from bleeding users guys. Hence korea getting 2.0 within a months time. It’s a prepatch, not a major expansions like you are trying to pretend it is. Just goes to show how out of touch the few people at ncwest are… they don’t play the game they profess to love so much at all.

  • Freakazoid

    I had no idea buying lowbie characters was a problem. Those first 5 or 10 levels must be a bitch, especially if they’re going against level 30 mobs that somehow have crossed over from several continents away.

  • Boley

    That video was actually fun to watch.  Much better than the previous ones.  Thanks for sharing.

  • Wanderer

    Your comment system is severely borked. I had to cut and paste from Notepad to post this.

    Anyway, I did a WoW heroic a couple of weeks ago with someone who was almost certainly an ebayer. Two people were too “nice” to vote kick him, but by the last boss, even the druid (one of those two) wouldn’t heal him anymore. We just let him die. He was more useful dead: he did almost the same DPS, and didn’t need healing.

  • Scott Jennings

    Wanderer: Your comment system is severely borked. I had to cut and paste from Notepad to post this.

    How is it borked? Other then the popup when quoting that I just noticed, that is.

  • Jerid

    Test comment (using Firefox 3.6.3)

  • Jerid

    Seemed to work ok for me (but no “edit” option)

  • http://www.whysohostile.com Cymbaline

    Nor preview. :(
    Also, I see no such pop-up, assuming the site hasn’t already been changed.  Additionally, it would be bitching awesome if the page didn’t eat your post if you hit Submit without filling out your info.

  • Wanderer

    It’s not happening now, of course, since you’re watching, but I couldn’t backspace — I was getting returns instead of backspaces. Then random spacing between characters. If I had half a brain I’d have gotten a screenshot.
    Also, it’s not remembering my info (though that could be Fx), and if there are supposed to be preview and edit buttons, there aren’t. Given your fondness for changing your template at random, I’m never entirely sure what’s supposed to be here and what isn’t. I’m pretty sure the whitespace randomization was a bug and not a feature, though.

  • http://www.mmomisanthrope.wordpress.com Dblade

    The funny thing is you see a ton of Yarrvington-modeled dwarf players in Aion.

    The video…well how many people unfamiliar with how to find a jump button are going to spend hundreds of dollars on a character, or even know that they can buy them? Usually people who buy accounts are vets to the game in specifically, or power gamers in MMOs in general.

    I think Aion more than any other game would struggle with that.The grind is insane.

  • http://myope.wordpress.com Eleint

    There are plenty of legitimate reasons to combat RMT.
    Why does the PR industry so heavily rely on tactics that involve beating people over the head with absurd generalizations?
    As well, I personally find that insisting that the grind is essential to the learning process (in any MMO) is a hideously hollow argument.

  • John Smith

    Well, what you have to realize is that the people making these videos, don’t play aion. At all. Neither does anyone who approved them for marketing. That much is clear, as they are using level 1 characters that are completely nakid to make a rather asinine point. Think of these videos as real world gold sinks. Some stupid, spoiled little kid (ncwest) is using mommy’s credit card (ncsoft’s money) to make videos (power leveling) so they can pretend that they have done hard work and that they did it for the community. It’s a huge, sick, twisted, ironic mess.
    I think I’m going to go out and learn korean just so I can tell the korean Executives just why ncwest is failing so bad. It’s not because the western market hates korean games, it’s not because “durp, our culture do not undarstoods”, but because they have put a bunch of con-men in charge of the company. I don’t know how they made the same mistake twice, but they did. First the osi thugs, and now these jokers from arena.net. The only thing they care about is guild wars 2 funding and all the other ncsoft games are suffering as a result. Aion’s getting server mergers in a few weeks because of a lack of players (which is directly due to a lack of content) and what does the producer, associate producer, and community manager do? They make cutesy little pod casts where they attempt to take credit for the entire 1.9 patch and go out of their way to show that after owning the game for 8 months, THEY STILL HAVEN’T PLAYED IT.

  • http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com geldonyetich

    I’m not going to belabor this point, as I think all the fun I had yesterday has tapped our host’s generosity enough, but I will state this: it’s not as bad of an argument as you might think.
    Sure, it’s ridiculous to think that players need to grind in order to find the Sword or Jump button, but what is a regular occurrence is that a player will skip important parts of the game via RMT and actually have no idea where to go and what to do at the higher level.  For some players (some people’s inner Yarvington being stronger than others) they can be a game breaker.
    Ask the average MMORPG player who’s higher up, and this will be at the top of their reasons why they fear pick up groups: because a player was power leveled up to their level but really has no idea how to play their character, getting them all killed.
    If anything, the video gets in trouble simply because they take some artistic liberties that players who know a lot about the game might pick up on (e.g. John Smith’s argument above).  However, just because said inconsistencies can be identified does not make the point invalid.

  • http://www.mmomisanthrope.wordpress.com Dblade

    Geldonyetich, it’s not as hard as you think. We had huge forum arguments over that concept in regards to power leveling, and the consensus was that it’s really not that much to learn. That’s because what happens at level cap in endgame doesn’t build on the skills you learned getting up there. Either that, or the skills you do learn are so basic you can pick them up easily.
    With Aion I don’t know. The problem with it is that before you are 40, you are just gank bait. The selling point is the PvPvE, but a level 20-30 really can’t do much in it unless they get very lucky and find another non-twinked level 20 or 30 to fight. Combine that with a pretty steep grind, and I can see why people go that route.
    John, I’m not sure it’s a lack of content. I’m a new player myself, and I think they have issues retaining new people around 25ish. I don’t see or hear of very many pure new people, and the grind drives them off. Especially since the PvP is the draw and at mid levels you are gank bait, especially if you pick a class like chanter.
    It’ s a lovely game, but I think they’d retain more people at mid-levels if it wasn’t such a hardcore grind.

  • http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com geldonyetich

    Actually, I somewhat agree, and I probably should have said this before: it’s going to depend on the game.  Some have difficulty curves and activity diversification as you level up, others don’t.  Clearly, whether or not the fundamental gameplay meaningfully changes or not will differ from game to game, and this will impact whether or not power leveling is going to screw up a learning curve (as one may not exist in cases).

  • pat

    a silly PSA that really affects nothing.   

    Being a veteran of MMOs since early 2000 I will say simply that AION is the first MMO that I want to buy a PL service for.   From the draconian “trial”  despite me purchasing the game and I had to call a friend at 3am since I could not send him a tell or send an email since I was under level 10.   And once I get level 10 and in the cities, I get to see the ads for Kinah/pl etc with smilie hearts.

    My toon is level 18 now and my friends are level 50.   In all honesty from the gameplay, all I want to do is get to level 50 to hang with them, but the gameplay discourages me from actually wanting to trep through the mud so to speak for another 32 levels, esp since I had to spend 10 levels not being able to talk to them.

    Because of this, I’m left with 2 options
    a) buy a lvl 50 toon to ignore the bs and hang with my friends
    b) wait it out til they get bored and move on to the next MMO and we can start on the same level and have fun together

    seeing I’m pretty anti-ebay and stuff a) is not pleasing, but to be honest of all the games played AION is the first game I’ve actually considered pretty hard about giving in to the dark side.

    atm.  I really am hoping for b.  cute commercial though.

  • pat

    actually here’s a quick clue for fraud prevention since I’m online atm,    do a query of messages with the heart symbol in it.   it seems to be prevalant in AION chat for gold farmers

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  • http://www.mmomisanthrope.wordpress.com Dblade

    No offense Lum, but as I play Aion more I think you are wasting time and money with this. Want to reduce RMT? Localize the game’s economy to not reflect Korean pricing and population. Want to stop character sales? Look more into reducing an insane solo/group exp grind. Make PvP less about your gear, level, and class and more about play.
    I mean, seriously. 12 million kinah vanity items? Soul healing at my level still 30k a pop? 96 million wings? Dunno man, this keeps up the game may not make it to 2.0 in the states.