east-vs-west
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The Soapbox: Meeting the 'Asian gamer' stereotype on common ground
I originally thought I would craft this Soapbox to discuss the differences between Western and Eastern gamers. But in my research, I ended up noticing the differences and the similarities between the two gaming cultures -- in fact, the similarities were more prominent. Yes, there are gamers who game in stereotypical ways; there are gamers from China, Korea, and Japan who are stereotypically "Asian." But Westerners can behave as stereotypes as well. The good news is that we're all blending together.
Help NCsoft help you: Aion server poll arrives
Official update from NCsoft: We experienced some frustrating technical difficulties with the surveys we launched early this week meant to help roleplayers and language-specific communities choose their unofficial game servers. Many Aion communities saw a need to coordinate their members and were much quicker than we were to organize surveys. We have decided to honor their hard work by permanently taking our own survey down, since we have no desire to interfere with what our great communities accomplish or cause confusion. We will continue to work with the fansites in our Fansite Program to promote their community survey results.NCsoft has put up an official server select poll up on SurveyMonkey for Aion. Anyone can participate by choosing which region they're from, whether or not they're a role-player, and then which server they plan to play on. The results will be released on September 18 to help preselect players decide which servers they should make characters on. There is currently a bit of a competition going between Lumiel and Zikel as the official Eastern role-playing server. Before the release of this official poll, Aion role-players were gathering up to declare Lumiel the unofficial RP server because NCsoft didn't appear as though they were going to arbitrarily pick one. Recently, many Warhammer Online players from Phoenix Throne (the biggest and only official RP server) decided to organize an effort to steal the vote for Zikel. Many other hardcore PvP guilds seem to be vying for Zikel as well. We won't know the results of this until Friday. There seems to be another battle going on between Eastern and Pacific servers as well. We haven't been able to confirm any exact times, but apparently certain PvP events will be 'timed' in Aion, such as fortress vulnerability and the Dreadgion. The issue arises when players of the same guild who live in different time zones have to decide on a single server to play on. If, for example, a fortress can only be raided from 8PM-11PM PDT, that makes it prime time for west coast players. Eastern guildies who have to work in the morning might not be too keen on playing from 11PM-1AM EDT.
The Daily Grind: How do you feel about microtransactions?
One of the things we couldn't help but notice yesterday in Michael Zenke's excellent coverage of the GDC Future of MMOs panel is how the different developers reacted to the idea of microtransactions being the "future" of MMO gaming as opposed to the subscription model. Jack "Statesman" Emmert seemed pretty vehemently against the concept versus a few of the others. Some people feel that the idea of microtransactions just gives casual players the ability to enjoy the game in new ways. Others feel that it takes the whole point of playing a game out of the game; if you can buy the best gear, where's the incentive to run endgame content more than once? Does being able to buy all the best items make for a "game over" situation -- or game over until the next round of uber items become available for sale?Today we thought we'd ask what your take is on the model. Do you prefer the option of going to an online "item store" and buying that upgrade with your hard-earned real-life cash, or do you prefer the idea of being required to put in the time to get the best gear? Is there a happy medium? Should a nearly equal but not as nice set of items be available in the item store for those who want to buy their way up versus those who put in the time and effort to grind for items? Should microtransaction gear and farmed/raided gear be equal? Where would the line be for you?
