What a day this has been so far.  Classes began today and my first class was canceled while the second class was with a professor that I’ve already had and thus nothing more than roll call and an explanation. That followed up with traffic and just a really busy day and it all amounted to the worst day for a MMO to launch. Then the website went down while my host did maintenance. ;) Lucky for me guildies saved my name and the game was up and ready for me when I got home.
Allods launch day has been interesting. There are a lot of people. More than any MMO launch since WoW, albeit the game is free to play and that’s expected. The lag is … well, the lag is almost as bad as WoW’s in some cases. There was a lot of loot lag happening for us on the newbie island. To get our bags sometimes required running far away from the mob and running back to it. Other bugs like clickable quest objectives being lagged and just an overall feeling of latency was prevalent.  Playable though, very playable.
The Cash Shop is disabled currently. Some people jump to the “they want to suck you in first” cynicism but I turn to a more logical explanation; if I were them I would leave it down too because of server stability and possible problems facing a MMO on the first day. Introducing a cash shop could result in problems if there were rollbacks and other problems. It’s best to leave it off.
Even with lots of people there has been a shocking level of maturity. Chat channels are as bad as ever, but I didn’t expect people to actually line up and wait their turn for quest objectives. Maybe these screenshots will give you some insight into just how packed it was… these are two different quest locations.
Our guild is up and running and pushing 40 members now. The response has been excellent and we’re all making our way out of the newbie areas to get away from the lag and the crowds which make questing very difficult. Our vent is just exploding with people and I’ve already met some great folks.
Bugs in beta are present. There seems to be one with fatigue that I will not propagate by explaining here, but it should be looked into and fixed asap. Other than that, it seems like a solid launch. I’m level 8 and working my way through the quests in Lightwood at a comfortable pace.
A lot of people? “More than any MMO launch since WoW”
You must have not played Aion on launch day. That was hands down way worse than this!! And they had way more servers lol.
Played Allods since CB1, and am enjoying it all over again 🙂 This is really a great game, and if the masses can get past what they think is a “WOW” clone, they will see it’s far from that and such a deep game.
Plus hey WOW, see what better texturing can do to low res models, that’s right make it look better!! You can learn something from Allods.
Played Aion at launch. Due to the splitting of people into instances there were not as many concentrated in one area.
I’ll never understand MMO’s approach to splitting people into different instances, takes away the feel and ultimately makes me and people like me walk away. (I can’t immerse myself into that). Anywho, I enjoyed the Allods launch and was lucky enough to not run into even one bug or problem 🙂 Got to level 11 and I am a happy Paladin! 😀
Btw did you roll the guild on tensess or nezeb keen, i forget and am looking to add a character to the roster.
Tensess server.
It almost sounds like we’re playing on completely different games but my experience of Allod’s is a tad different.
Spawn camping is rampant. Lines for loot? Never seen them at all. Along with the constant kill stealing, it makes me sort of wonder who thought putting decaying items was a good idea.
See, I’m completely on the other side of the fence. I love instancing. City of Heroes did it best. No fighting over drops, mobs, or quests. You got done what you needed to get done, and you didn’t have a hard time about finding people to do it with. Not to mention it was relatively easy to switch between zones.
Why was that so bad? It meant that you and everyone could get what you needed done and not be interrupted. Where as how it works now, it’s all just a big game of ‘Spawn Camp Patience’.
Is that more fun then actually playing the game?
I am enjoying the game. I really do think I have finally found a game I can play.
I don’t know why, but every new MMO has stupid wow fanbois or whatever you want to call them filling up chat. It is so childish, and immature.
I think the newbie areas right now are way overcamped. Luckily I am a Sorc so killing mobs is pretty easy. I feel sorry for any melee types actually being able to kill things, and complete quests.
I spent about a half hour trying to kill Slouch for a quest. He spawned every minute or so, but for every minute that went by meant ten more people trying to kill him.
I think they should possibly speed up the respawn rates these first few days to get people spread out a little more, and not all in the same questing areas.
I think this game definitely has a lot of potential. I am curious what they will be selling in the cash store to make me want to spend money. The game seems pretty complete to me right now so I am not sure what they will be selling.
I am hoping that it cools down a little bit tonight. I should be able to blow through some content ten times faster than anyone who played earlier today who spent most of their time waiting to kill stuff.
I would have love to play with you guys..but my gaming partner decided she wants RP server and less crowded.. so we went to Nezeb.
@Sentack: Spawn camping is rampant right now because it was just released. You have 98% of the people playing in a single location. It’s always like this when any non-instanced MMO starts up, especially when they have one starting location per faction. Does that mean all MMOs should be instanced to alleviate that? No, because it’s just a temporary problem. As people level up, maybe 30% will quit playing, and the rest spread out throughout the world.
To me, instancing is one of the worst things for an MMO. I can understand it for things such as dungeons, but not for the outdoor world. It kills immersion when there are essentially parallel universes for each zone and it begins to not feel like an MMO.
That’s just my opinion, of course.
Good to hear your side of the game was mature.
The Empire side quickly degenerated into mob stealing with who had the fasted fingers and the chat turned into everyone vs the russians, then everyone vs the non english, then older players vs under 18s.
Really was disheartening to read so made me toggle my chat channels off just so I could game in peace.
The other thing I noticed was that due to the amount of players, the game wasnt rendering everything, even with a max draw distance. Mobs and players would pop up when others moved out of the area.
Still I tried to make a league character, I really did, but hate the elves too much. Looks like ill be trying to kill you instead Keen.
I must have been using the whisper command wrong. I tried to contact you in game with /whisper keen but to no avail. I’ll try again tomorrow for a guild invite. We brought down the troll and majestic stag; too bad it only dropped leather armor and a fist weapon, nothing for a Psiguy like myself…
Gank, remember that capitalization matters when sending tells, so it should not be /whisper keen but /whisper Keen.
I think people should and did setup a system to deal with the minor things like quest item and mob spawns. I was part of the earlier batch and it was just everyone standing on the item. Luckily my Z finger is really fast.
On a side note, I don’t think there are in game GMs. I think players should actively ostracize people that pick offensive names.
Being on the league side i figured we would get the worst of the crowd seeing as we have the easier on the eyes characters that the immature usually shoot for. I was wrong for the most part. Do not get me wrong, we had our fair share of bantering and such but comparing it to the empire we were having a decent conversation lol.
standard mmo launch is standard
Overall I was very impressed with the launch. Yeah there were too many people and I felt I was often forced into scenarios where you either spam click that quest objective or just let people walk all over you but this is all expected on launch day. For the game to be up and running without the server crashing is pretty remarkable imo. I’m also glad to see it was able to support so many people in one area. I’m optimistic about mass pvp which has more often than not been plagued by stability issues and latency in my experience.
Uhm… in those screenshots…. are you WAITING IN LINE to open a chest?
If so, that’s got to be the most civilized thing I’ve ever seen in an MMO since my days on MUDs.
Ahhh thx Bran I’ll give it a try!
I’m glad I did those two quests shown as soon as I got them because I would have hated to wait in line. That said, you’re absolutely right, it shows a high degree of maturity for people to do this.
With regards to lag, while it was noticeable moving around, I barely noticed it attacking or picking up objects. Actually the only thing that it was noticeable on was trying to get a quick lock on a target first before others (i.e. Great Lynx quest). Other than that, it was more than playable.
Certain unique kill quests were the major choke points. For example, people kept saying that you could do the Great Lynx quest in a raid and I know that’s not true because repeatedly one party in our raid would get the kill reward and other people in different parties of the raid wouldn’t. I waited over an hour or more (30+ kills) and finally gave up. I came back later, got invited to a raid and got the kill immediately. Again other people in a different party of our raid did not get the kill though.
All said and done though, even with the frustrations encountered, I thought things went pretty smooth. I mean with killing quests or collecting quests, I found it pretty easy just to stay in the same spot because the mob or plant would respawn quite quickly and I’d get it immediately again.
Robert: Yup, they are waiting in line to open a chest or grab the “captains log” scroll. Exactly what I said when I saw it. “So civilized!”
Wow, last night at about 8pm I asked people nicely at both of those quest items to make a line. I wonder if those where still there from when I started them. If not awesome someone else also got it going, made those two items so much nicer to get. I think the worse thing was trying to kill the mobs to get onto the ship.
I got fed up last night early and just logged out and had a couple of hour nap. Came back and it was a bit better but not by much.
Logged on this morning though and it was free for all time when it came to The Great Lynx if it wasn’t for a spamming of group invites to everyone in the area at one point I would still need it on my first character.
Hey Keen how do I get into the guild. right now my normal guild is not playing anything.
Visit the forums, read our charter, and contact an officer. Our recruitment is fairly open right now.
I didn’t get any great lag problems actually. I’m also on Tensess, and while I did see many times some “running man” problems where the client just keeps displaying some char as running after that player stopped, I didn’t get anything that bothered me gameplay-wise. No loot, hit detection or casting delay problems.
Like you said, trying to do “kill this single slow spawning mob” or drop quests was a nightmare, but expectable. Chat was just hectic, but once we got all our online players on the guild (BloodPact on Empire side), pretty much everyone just turned off zone chat and kept questing on large guild-only groups and raids. Personally I was very please with day 1.
This image says all about the expectation we had for the game: http://bloodpact.mmoguildsites.com/gallery_images/154778 😉
Yea read teh charter, how do you look up guilds in the game lol 🙂
My computer shuts off when I play it. The first time it happened, I first unchecked Show Tutorial or whatever at the very beginning. I thought it was just a malfunction on the part of my computer. The second time I started the game, I got to the point where I had to save some scientists on the starting Astral ship. Afterward, my computer won’t turn on again for a few minutes. What luck.
[…] Allods Online launched today. Or was it yesterday. Either way, popularity seems high. This game’s been getting a chunk of hype, and not in the ‘we, the developers/publishers, say it’s good’ kind of way but rather the ‘we, the beta players, say it’s good’ kind. Which is the good kind. […]
Made my Gibberling Warden on Nezeb (did someone say its a Roleplaying server? I must have missed that).
Did the intro and go to the starter Allod but I’m leaving it there for now. Too busy with the EQ2 expansion for the while and I know I’ll enjoy Allods much more when the crowds are all a good few levels ahead of me.
i logged on at 10pm +10 gmt yesterday and there was still 20ish people in that noob area (between the 1st and 2nd camp)it was better but it still took me like 30 minutes to get those stupid berries
Man, the amount of people playing in Europe is also enormous. It’s really chaotic but fun at the same time.
As this is a beta, even an open one, will there be a character whipe before the real launch?
No, there will be no wipe.
Truly remarkable, such civilisation.
It has been hit and miss on the civilized player front. Mob camping is pretty commonplace and it’s rare for a hotly contests mob spawn to be alive and untagged for more than 5 seconds. This isn’t a bad thing thought as it has lead to an increase in grouping. People who would normally solo these quests have been grouping up to complete them, mix that with the several incredibly hard (for on lvl characters) group mobs in each zone and I think I’ve grouped more in 2 1/2 days (with non guildies)in Allods than I have in the last 2 or so years of playing other mmo’s. It’s not all been sunshine and rainbows, but for the most part the community has been very nice so far, and that’s pretty impressive considering the huge amount of people they have crammed on two servers.
Having tested the game in closed beta for the last 2-3 months, it’s great fun to see the masses enjoying the game as much I do.