Keen: 1 AT&T/NCsoft: 0 (well, unless you count them pwning my headstart)

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My problem is finally fixed — I hope *knocks on wood* — and I didn’t do anything.  Well, unless you consider calling AT&T 5 (no joke, 5) times and NCsoft twice.  On my 5th call to AT&T I was finally able to be… insistent enough… Okay, I was kind of mean but what do you expect when I missed the entire headstart?  They claim to have done nothing on their end but I call B.S.  They admitted to me during my 4th call that it was probably on their end because of the IP that was reporting “host unreachable”.

For a while there is was worried.  Both AT&T and NCsoft were blaming each other and weren’t willing to back down.

AT&T claimed NCsoft was blocking IP’s in the 99.x.x.x.x range

NCsoft claimed AT&T was having a routing issue

After finally convincing AT&T that NCsoft would be insane (NCsoft direct quote: “It would be stupid to the level of insanity for us to block those IP’s from a major provider”) to block their IP’s the AT&T people were willing to send a ticket.  It took me 30 minutes of being on hold, a discussion with an agent and his team leader, and convincing the network guy (using the T2 agent as a middle-man) that it wasn’t just me having the issue.  Finally a ticket was submitted (I had a PET Ticket # in hand) and they would look at it.

Then, about 2 hours after that call (Which I made between classes), it suddenly started working.  Magic?  Perhaps.  AT&T getting off their arses?  Most likely.

Either way, it’s working now and I hope it stays that way.  Although I was only able to get to level 3 before having to log out (ironically because an AT&T tech was at my house disconnecting me to do maintenance…) I’m still happy it works.  Right now I’m waiting in a 1.5 hour queue to play but at least I can connect.

  • This whole experience sucks man… probably the worst thing that could accompany an MMO launch, lol. Glad you got it working though 😉

  • Holy crap!!! Well, I can’t remember all of the companies that AT&T comprise of, but that means I’m sticking with FIOS or cable for now on even if I do hate comcast. I believe Bellsouth, SBC, and AT&T are all the same company now, but not 100% on that.

    In any case, glad to hear you got it resolved and sorry to hear about your headstart. Hopefully you don’t have to get up early in the morning and can do some serious catching up. 🙂

  • Just curious, what’s the deal with Server queues, are they realm balance or are the servers overloaded? From what I’ve been the sale no.s have been good (400k preorder sales or something).

  • Bravo Keen! Nice job…errrr Nice Luck…errr…Oh who cares your up and running! To be honest I’m stunned but I know you must be fired up! Congrats.

  • Stompfoot:

    The char creation locks are for inter and intra realm race/pop balance. They might pop up again when it goes official release tomorrow.

    The server queues are because the servers were overloaded. It was pretty bad on Sunday (I got about 1.5 hr waits on Lumiel), but completely okay today. (Not a single queue.) I think they just don’t want to spawn/pay for a bunch of new servers, and have half the servers be empty once the initial ‘Ima gonna play 48 hours in a row’ rush dies down. Probably good in the long term, can suck in the short term. (Esp with afk personal shops.)

  • Glad you finally got on and nice work for being so persistent! That’s the thing about call centers – they just all think you’re an idiot ad everything is your fault until you can prove otherwise! Very strange issue to have too. You should try and get a formal explanation of what was wrong – would be very interesting to see.

  • […] Aion launched yesterday for pre-orders. Cownose got in. Petter had the five hour queue (and he’s under deadline!) Heartless_ isn’t playing, but loves him some queues, anyway. Lars got to level 3, server kicked him off, welcome to four hours in the queue. Naamah got in, but his friend had to wait three hours. It’s a good thing, though. I think he kinda has to be positive about the whole thing, though. AT&T and NCsoft conspired against Keen. […]

  • Ok I had no queue on day of launch.

    I now have a 6 hour queue because of stupid AFK shops.
    WTF is this stupid system?
    Did NCsoft not see this coming?

    6 HOURS!!!!

  • yea lightsong. Sad part was at first I didn’t understand while all these shops had one item in it for 99,999,999 gold. ahahhahaha.

    Sometimes I just need to be smacked!

  • they need to just disable the personal stores
    there is no need for them if there is an auction house

    and for creating 6 hours queues these people should be shot
    😛

    but seriously
    so pissed off

    i got someone at home to log me in, as I am still at work
    i have about 3-3.5 hours till i get home, hopefully i will be logged on by then

  • So after all that you can finally login … and wait in the queue for 2 – 4 hours to finally play. WIN! Sorry, just find that comical.

  • […] start period to a close.  While many people are reporting 4+ hour queues to log in, and poor Keen almost completely missed out on the head start, I had very few troubles getting some quality time in with Aion over the weekend.  I attribute […]

  • From Lily Tomlin: “We are the phone company. We don’t have to care.”

    But other then that, it is always fun to deal with ISP and internet carriers. Congrats on getting something accomplished.

  • I know you’re playing Aion and absorbing most of your game time into it, but 3.2.2 just went live today. You know, in case you have some time left and want to kill Onyxia before it runs out. 🙂

  • ok
    leaving wow and hard core boring ass pve aside
    and back to aion

    afk shops need to go
    its a simple as that
    yes there will still be queues but they won’t be so long

    and staying logged in all day via a loop hole in afk shops is just about the gayest thing i can think of in any MMO

    creating 6 hour queues for everyone else is selfish and self-detrimental:-

    these afk shopers won’t be so happy when there server is a barren ghost land cause everyone has either 1. moved to another server or 2. quit the game all together

    if the queues haven’t calmed down before the end of my free month i’ll be choosing option 2

  • @lightsong

    I agree that AFK shops are a problem because they’re clearly not being used as intended. It is also worth noting, that personal shops are a key feature of the game and taking them out would be a big hit. Adding some feature that required the Personal Shop owner to be at the computer would be a giant pain and would only make people made.

    They’re in a difficult position, to be sure. I’m not sure what the correct answer is. Aside from, “raise the server cap.”

  • @ Bartlebe

    Please explain why having Personal Shops is better than a centralized Auction House?

    If I were to break through the exhorbitantly long queue and actually get into the game … could I search all the currently active stores to find something I want? Or must I stop by each store to see what trinkets they have for sale?

    If I can search them all at once for what they have … sounds like an auction house. What’s the big incentive to having these? So far it sounds like a mess.

    I’m sure there’s a reason they have the server cap where they do … stability. Upping that number could adversely affect performance which is a key selling point to this game.

  • @ Bartlebe

    Sorry that sounded mean-spirited … I meant to put in there that you were one of only a few I’ve found who knows anything about these personal stores.

    I don’t own Aion but will definitely give it a spin in a few months. To me, having a personal store sounds innocuous enough … but with all this clamor about folks going AFK to keep them “open” thus causes long lines to play … I feel they are a bad idea.

    Was wondering what the selling point of them are. Why are they better than an auction house? And would one be able to search all stores at once to find what they need?

    If that last point is true … why not have a main storefront that folks can simply sell stuff? It need not be an auction where you can get outbid but isn’t selling items in MMOs about making money? I’d want people to bid for my goods.

    Again, sorry to sound snippy … bad wording and a quick trigger finger on the “submit” button. 🙂

  • @Krosuss

    Well shops do have their benefits.

    They offer a small, limited selection of goodies out in wilderness villages or areas where there are no shops.

    Lets say you’re going out to explore some areas and do some quests. You find that the quests are tough and you’re having a hard time. You come into a clearing and some people have set up potions and item shops next to a local quest giver. Jackpot. In any other MMO you’d have to buy them from a vendor, for to much money or fly ALL the way back to the capital city to go to the AH.

    On the other hand, personal shops clutter the landscape and you quickly feel like you’re wading through a sea of annoying popups to get anything done. They’re being abused to prevent being kicked, used as advertisements or used to be annoying. I would love to see them removed from the game but personal shops are a feature of many asian MMOs. Given Aion’s close ties to Korean I would be surprised if they were removed.

    That the current predicament we’re in. The simplest solution (ditch personal shops) is the one least likely to see the light of day. Now the question becomes, well what do we do about it now?

    As for sounding snippy, I understand. Subtle parts of communication often get lost in translation over the internet. I understand.

  • @ Krosuss and Bartlebe

    First of hey guys, if this sounds angry/bitchy it really isn’t meant to be.

    NCsoft have tried to ‘westernise’ AION and in doing so they really should disable the personal stores as I don’t see much use from them and we ‘westerners’ seem to find loop holes in everything and as you say Bartlebe, after 3-4 days we are all ready abusing them, and I don’t see this changing any time soon. I strongly feel that this will be a continual problem.

    Not only that, you can’t turn off the speech bubbles!!! So in a highly populated area like a city, all you can see is fricking speech bubbles! The game becomes cluttered and you can’t find quest-givers or see the beautiful detail of the city.

    Bartlebe, I see what you mean about the ‘usefulness’ of the personal stores, but I disagree and I myself would never go afk to sell a couple of potions at lower rates than an NPC in a remote village,

    1. i could probably sell it to a NCP for more
    2. when i log off, i’m logging off, i don’t want to play, i don’t want to remain in the game and disallow some else to experience the game and give them 6 hour queues
    3. if i had some mad epic, i would want to put it to auction it off to get the best price, in a central auction house

    So all in all I really think they ought to disable the personal stores as they are being too disruptive and damaging to the game.

    NCsoft seem to want to ‘weather the storm’ of release and have played the ‘everyone is just trying to play at the same time because this is launch’ card, and it will get better when everyone gets into their own schedule.

    This is a fallacy, the game will have a peak time 5-11 at night and it will be impossible to get online if they do not disable personal stores.

    Sorry this was so long, cheers.
    Lightsong

  • @ Bartlebe & Lightshot

    Thank you both for filling in the gaps on these personal stores. In theory they do sound like a good idea. Hearing more about them they do seem like an Asian thing … something they are familiar with there so most of their MMOs have them.

    But yes … us westerners can take something and exploit it. Did you say they spam advertisements, too? Freaking annoying. And you can’t turn off the chat bubbles? Wow. Some of this is probably easily overlooked but perhaps too in my face for me to tolerate.

    Lightshot, from your experience it doesn’t sound like a fun thing. I’d be annoyed as heck if I can’t see what I’m doing because of all these folks hocking their wares and chat bubbles junking up the screen. For those that have been to Jamaica and been approached to buy things … ugh. They come out of the woodwork, are pushy, and don’t take no for an answer. I’m not looking for that in a game I choose to play.

    My ETA for playing isn’t set and it will probably be in a few months. Hopefully by then much of this stuff will be further westernized and resolved.

  • Ha! Do you really think we found an exploit in one of the games mechanics? Not even!

    People have been using private shops to stay logged in possibly since lineage 1 but definitely since the release of lineage 2. Lineage 2 supported tons of players in a limited instanced environment. Getting rid of the private shops would be like getting rid of their graphics. It’s a part of the game. Maybe i’m not so against them because i am so used to private shops. Or the fact that I havent really experienced Que’s aside from First 5 hours during release. But that had more to do with overpopulating the beginning area, then it had to do with private shops.

    I can sense it now, once they know the true capability of the servers performance, then the floodgates will be opened much more, till queue’s will be a thing of the past.