Hey, Hey... what's going on?

I know, i know... long time no update... Thulf, what's going on? NO, i did not have any accident like someone wrote in the comments. I'm fine. I just have been really busy trying to catch up with my legion members level wise, working odd hours and in addition, like i hinted earlier, I started to write for a print gaming magazine and used some of my creative time to work on my articles. Always wanted to do the major update i need to do for the blog "en bloc", but alas.. so much to do, so little time. ;)

I'm still playing Aion more or less daily and overall am enjoying it. Some things are really great, some are very cumbersome. At the moment i continuously hit a wall where i run out of quests and have to grind approx. half a level until i can take more quests. Since many of the repeatable quests are just not worth the time invested. It feels to me they screwed up the minimum level for quests around 35, some of the quests i can take give so little reward in XP and the mobs are way to easy for me, its more effective to grind higher level mobs then to do those quests.
About some things like more or less non-existent "office hours support" or hot topics like the gold seller spam I'll write another day. I also wrote Ayase with a few questions about it several weeks ago, but never got an answer back. Basicly from what i saw so far community management is run similar to the support at NCsoft, understaffed. Mythic/GOA had a much better relationship with blogs as well.

My main char Thulf (Templar) is level 35 meanwhile, which enables me to use my Kromede's Sword i got during one of the last Fire Temple groups i joined. I am very close to become a cooking expert and my armorsmithing is around lvl 33 items. My gathering skills both are up-to-date with the areas I'm adventuring in. Sheesh, its hard to work to keep the gathering & crafting up. And it costs a shitload of kinah. My advice: Don't start to work on your crafting early if you only want to supply yourself with gear its better you take alchemy or cooking for consumables and buy weapons/armor from the broker. They are expensive yes, but it will cost you more to level crafting and craft your own stuff in the long run.

Question of the Day: Why can't you read the official news at the Aion website during server downtime? It works for US...

Busy, busy

I know, i know... I'm slacking with my blog. The game started, where are the daily updates and more details about juicy boss fights, more tips and such? Well, since I'm still trying to stay ahead of the crowd - it's insane to quest in areas where *everything is being camped* - and also started to meddle with crafting inbetween, time to look at my notes and write new blog entries has been... rare. Busy, busy all the time... trying to catch up with my higher level guildies. My Templar Thulf is lvl 22 now and i can finally use the Inescapable Judgment I Stigma i bought from the AH for 75.000 kinah. Level 22 is really something to look forward to as you'll get a bunch of new and useful skills.

As i mentioned earlier i wrote some articles and such for different Aion publications. Some of the stuff has not being polished by me yet and is not used there since we could not agree on terms. I'm torn tho if i should put a lot of work into writing "long" guides for my blog since there are so many people that just blatantly steal your content, doing a copy/paste job onto their own website to generate content. I think for the moment I'll stick to the shorter post style like i maintain right now. Some days ago while i was thinking about it, i had the idea to set up a "coffee club" - basicly everytime someone spends the time to buy me a coffee i generate some short article with tips and send it to all those that already bought one. Then again that feels like ppl are forced to use that option, which is not true. I don't know... will think about this further. Just felt like i should do the guys & girls something nice.

I got a bunch of stuff in the pipeline, just need enough time to go over notes and write about it. Stay tuned...

Tip of the Day: Once you get the Quest [Spy] Liquor that Makes You Vanish (asmo), wait with drinking the liquor until you picked up more [Spy] quests (around lvl 22 & 23) and then use this quest as your ticket into Elyos country. Rifting, especially at the early levels due to some areas being off-limit for you, is somewhat random and it can take a while until you are able to grab a rift. Not to mention some entrance areas being... not suitable for lower levels. ;)

Quick Blog Update

Just a quick note for you guys: I'll be working on a fair from 12.-20.9. and therefore updates in my blog might be few to none, pending time. Else things are developing very well. Our guild is preparing for headstart/launch and people are stoked about finally be able to play properly. Since i last reported about blog visitors, I'm close to 23.000 visitors now and a steady 1000 people come to read in it every day. Welcome to the new readers! Make sure you subscribe in a RSS reader so you won't miss any updates. Due to people liking my blog and the content i create I've been contacted by various people that want me to write articles for gaming magazines or create exclusive guides for websites and whatnot. I'm currently sorting the offers and checking what makes the most sense for me. Be sure I'll keep you posted about it.

I'm still not sure how NCsoft will be able to handle the current issues before headstart, but they are working on them and finally there also appear more posts from the official team on the forum. Not as many as you could call it proper support yet, but its a start.

Since my time will be limited somewhat next week i might keep the ongoing Monster Raffle Contest (you can win free ventrilo servers from UGT) open a few days longer. Until i did not officially close the contest, feel free to post further entries.

Picture Host Problem - resolved for now

Seems there is a problem with the server my pictures have been hosted on. I'll try to fix it tomorrow. If anyone got spare webspace with FTP access and enough bandwidth to host my maps/pictures send me an email. Else I'll switch back to some free picture hoster (which some peeps can't view at work unfortunately). Uploading all the pictures again and fixing the links in all blog posts will take a while, so in any case that could take a day or so.

Update: I uploaded all the pictures to a photobucket.com account. If you find any pictures still missing by accident, drop me a line. The only thing not working atm are the large radar/minimap, due to limitations in bandwidth I'll probably upload them to a filehoster.

A Request: Please do NOT link directly to images/maps from my blog, instead point people to the main blog post you are refering to. Increased leeching of bandwidth due to people linking directly - and i know a bunch of people did, probably without thinking much about it - will force me to either pay for additional bandwidth or to cut down on large image files. In addition eg. maps will be updated in the future, so copying those over to your forum, etc. will result in your members missing out on content updates.

On a blog related note...

I'm quite happy with the turn out after only 20 days of having my Aion blog online. I'm already close to 10.000 visitors and many of you have subscribed the RSS feed. I'm thankful to those that spend a few bucks to buy me a coffee (button on the right), really nice of you guys! I've been approached by two different Aion wikis that wanted to invite me to their team (tho i had to decline since i rather spend the time on content for my blog) and also have been contacted by a company that wants to pay me to write an Aion guide. Offers like that probably emphasize content quality in my blog, so i take them as a compliment as well. The overall feedback and emails about my blog have been very positive - thank you dear readers. I'm still pondering if i should take 2-3 good websites i know of into my link list, since they have major advertising on their pages and especially for all those game guides, where many of them are just a ripoff and only post general info.

Open Beta and Headstart is coming soon, once the retail version starts you'll also be able to read more about my own adventures in Aion here. I still got some content up my sleeve to post while I'm working on it every now and then, stay tuned. ;)

Ragbag with Coffee Break

For those that did not follow my WAR blog: Ragbag tagged posts are a collection of brief information bits and pieces that don't qualify for a longer post themselves or just links i feel to share. On a sidenote, seems NCsoft has been to tied up with Gamecon to answer the question/problem the Baltic States have. From a PR POV this is really poor - how can it take them weeks to get our friends in Eastern Europe an official answer about of IP blocks will be enforced or not? *shakes head* From the threads it looks like Croatia will be able to play on the EU servers just fine. Here is another post about it.

There has been a mod for Aion that improved some of the blurry environment textures (which are created due to stretching the texture too much) by replacing .pak files with ones that handle the textures differently, but the thread has been deleted at aionsource it seems. The result looked much better, providing your computer could handle RAM for the textures.

Did you know there is a village hidden under Sanctum (Elyos capitol)? You can find the thread about this exploration adventure with pics here.

Have you seen the XP boost talisman (you get with preorder) yet? Seems it will be the Lodas's Amulet, which means you can reuse it for the XP boost.

Looks like there is already an Aion rip-off browser based game in Asia called Eternal World. LOL They really stole many graphics from Aion and it seems everything else is a rip-off as well. Some more screenshots here and here.

I saw a nice video of some large scale Abyss raiding here: part 1 & part 2.

Also wanted to give a shout out to the folks over at Aion Hungary. Right before the last closed beta ended i ran into a few of them and we exchanged some pleasantries. I could not really understand what they were saying, but think i read something about blogger, so maybe someone recognized me. If you did not know it btw, seems you can talk between factions by using the player shop signs, as the others can read them as well. Emotes you do can be understood by the other faction as well.

On a blog related note: A friend suggested i add a button to the navigation on the right so readers can "buy me a coffee", since he thinks long posts and detailed maps (like pandaemonium) are always done by me while i drink coffee and he wants more of those. So if you own a paypal account and one of my posts saved you a lot of time, now you can buy me coffee if you feel like it.

More MiniMaps

I posted three more MiniMaps in the Aion Zone Maps thread: Altgard, Poeta and Verteron. I'm also working on a longer article about the Abyss, which I'll post later today or tomorrow. Stay tuned.
To keep you entertained, here are two more videos for you:
1. Aion ENU - Origins a kind of lore explanation video how it came to the cataclysm.
2. Aion - Finding True Manhood a Michael Jackson looking guy searching for his Manhood. This video looks promising we'll see many more machinima with Aion. It also shows a few scenes from the new dungeons, like the pirate ship.

New Aion Blog

Since i decided to join the battle between Elyos, Balaur and Asmodians i thought its time to create a new blog for Aion, as Stunty Stomper somehow does not fit the context. So this will be my new Aion blog, update your links and subscribe the RSS feed. I'll already post frequently before launch from my beta experience and what other interesting stuff i come across. The blog layout & navigation is a work-in-progress until I'm satisfied with it.

Test: Fragment of Ectoplasm