Aion EU Vs NA - Free to Play or Truly Free?

This is a very clear and helpful form to compare the NA publisher and EU publisher.

A fan posted his angry on MMOsite's Aion Face Book pagethat:

"OMG AION EU is kidnapped by GAMEFORGE! Help tp get it back! The evil company removed a large EU petition to make it go US style F2P model, but the bad Gameforge removed it and then added (several months super late) a 3.0 patch that will promise a 3.5 and 3.7 and WILL NOT introduce fast trak, and player exchanges and auction house and free chat because: "That doesn't seem to be the interest of EU players"...wait...yes it IS, but you just removed the petition signed by all... sad sad sad. Stop playing to protest all EU!"



Source: Aion.im

That's why you should have one publisher cover EU and NA, so you can atleast avoid issues like these.


Does a proxy help to play the NA game or is it available to EU too?

It's GameForge, what do you expect? they kill any game they touch *Cough* Tera.

They are worse then EA, i hope they win the "worst publisher of the year."

Around level 40 you need to pay gold packs in AION EU for monthmy auction house, player trading, and other options. Around level 30 you start to get important drops for OTHER classes, and need to trade. Also you get important things for guild and need to trade. Otherwise you are a weak under powered player that mooches. It is a little hidden, but you realize almost all drops, for your class, are given to other classes. I have had nothing but epic items, but for other classes, and I know other people are getting my drops and we need to trade...or auction house...and since you CANT unless you pay... EU is pay to win. It is not like that in US. GAMEFORGE is BAD, but they are the onmy one giving French and german langauges, and they french and german do not know the difference (because they cant read these english reviews) and therefore pay cash and keep GF alive. It is sad, I hope it is over.
TERA is ruined when Gameforge is using lock boxes.

you can buy goldpacks for ingame curency tho so its basicly free, you just have to farm a bit to unlock the full game. No biggie if you ask me so all this hating is pointless. They need to make a profit somehow

i am lvl 48 and never needed that goldshit, i have played cb and become veteran.
Its not really p2w but its gameforge you know.

i honestly believe that the f2p model of AION NA is the best f2p model now. it seems like en masse took that idea and made a few changes for their TERA. but over all AION NA has the best f2p model. granted NCSOFT WEST is a mmo killer but we have to give them credit for cooking up the best f2p model in the market. if only more company would follow this path.

[quote]Quote: Originally Posted by 86.*.*.1 at Feb 8, 2013 4:33 am
i am lvl 48 and never needed that goldshit, i have played cb and become veteran.
Its not really p2w but its gameforge you know. [url=http://forum.mmosite.com/thread/2/16/20130207/Aion_EU_Vs_NA_Free_to_Play_or_Truly_Free-5114711e40b1c5813-1.html#p5114f0b2caf3ed][STB_STATIC_IMAGE_HOST]images/back.gif[/STB_STATIC_IMAGE_HOST][/url][/quote]yes , because YOU are a veterand player which doesnt have that much of a free to play limit.

IMO, its pretty sad they limit some of the main social cores, such as trading. but well, its gameforge so i guess it wont change.

[quote]Quote: Originally Posted by 90.*.*.189 at Feb 8, 2013 4:10 am
you can buy goldpacks for ingame curency tho so its basicly free, you just have to farm a bit to unlock the full game. No biggie if you ask me so all this hating is pointless. They need to make a profit somehow [url=http://forum.mmosite.com/thread/2/16/20130207/Aion_EU_Vs_NA_Free_to_Play_or_Truly_Free-5114711e40b1c5813-1.html#p5114eb3aaa24ba][STB_STATIC_IMAGE_HOST]images/back.gif[/STB_STATIC_IMAGE_HOST][/url][/quote]Eu players can play in NA fine and no proxy is needed, that's what i did when both models went free to play.

Obvious topic is obvious.


I mean, seriously, cmon.

trully free my ass

First eu have alreadt 3.5 not 3.1

Second Eu server don't care about FTS they just want UPDATES FASTER Yea i know eu people are stupid to choose for faster update and not for inporting FTS system becos they dont know what FTS means.....

majority of european players were against FTS and gameforge just went with what crowd wanted. Read forums first since you clearly have no idea what are you talking about

around lv 40 you already have money for gold pack and after that its fairy easy to get new one each month.but let me tell you how is NA atm because i try it.around lv 55+ you find out you need to pay 10 times more kinah  then gold pack cost in EU ,for all kind of boost scrolls who give you  same boost that gold pack give you in EU.also around lv 60 you find out people in NA can buy arena tickets and even AP,and no you cant get them from broker, so they get full geared really really really fast then they go and faceroll your silly ass.thats how is NA looking atm  and if you dont want to pay you will probably quit the game really fast.

Boycott Gameforge. Play on US server instead even if you have problems with the ping.
That will show them what we want not just what we do not want..

Until they have to sell the license again. Cant get much worse.

In fact, an article by raptorak, is my inspiration to post this thread.
Why SWTOR’s F2P Model Needs Help

Well, my purpose of this thread is to figure out what is going on Aion EU and NA, especially EU. Obviously, this is not single phenomenon. It should be a big topic – what the real f2p model should be. It seems that recent f2p model is always companied with cash shop or all kinds of restriction. I believe that most players could understand the publishers need to make a profit. But is there a good way to balance the profit and good gameplay experience??

Here I find another article to discuss the Aion EU’s present situation, All that’s wrong with Gameforge from Aion Rainmeter, posted on Nov. 29, 2012. I would like share this with you who really concern Aion or the rights as a player.

I wonder except that Aion 3.5 has been live on EU, are there anything outdated in this article?

And what is the exactly “ FTS (Fast-Track-Server)”?

All that’s wrong with Gameforge  Part 1


Clueless staff. Most of their staff have no clue about Aion, they even admit to it in the forums.

Lower drops than we had with NC, around ~30%. Even now with 3.1 the rates are different.


Gold pack. NC doesn’t have this bs.


Extremely long maintenance times. NC used to take 2-3 hours at most. Average time with GF 5-6 hours. Last one took them 15 hours.


Maintenance times. With NC there was a good reason, their staff was in the US, so they performed the maintenance at the same time in the US and Europe, so while US had their servers down at the lowest population times during the night, we had it at morning. With GF this should have changed as the staff is now in Europe, but they still do in the morning..
Lag. When GF took over most people had a 40-50ms ping increase.


No live profiles. They promised to give it before the takeover, but it never happened, never will. All the My Aion features we had with NC are gone.


No Vet Rewards. We only got the old ones owned to us from our NC account, after 6 months of complaints. They promised to give additional rewards of their own after that for every gold pack used, but it never happened either.


Slow updates. GF is the only publisher still stuck in 3.1, and they were in 3.0 only 2 weeks ago! while every other region (US, Korea, China, Russia, Japan, Taiwan) have already been in 3.5 for a long time. 3.0 came 6 months after US had it.


Incomplete updates. Every other region got FTS (Fast-Track-Server) with the 3.1 update, we didn’t. They won’t even do it for the 3.5 update next year (estimated near Summer 2013, when all others will be with 4.0).
We didn’t even get patch notes for 3.1 yet.


No security at all. No SSL in their website for login etc. No master account like we had with NC, if your game or -forum- account is stolen, they got your game stuff as well.


Very poor server security. Lots and lots of players are getting their accounts hacked with no apparent signs of misuse by the user.


Account PIN is useless with GF, if someone gets hold of your account, they can change your password, email, and PIN without any authorization from your part.

Part 2


No events. They either never do events or just copy/paste old NC ones, which most of the time don’t work properly.


Last event they tried ended up with half the players moving tanks to PVP areas like the eye to abuse other players.


Halloween event was again a copy of NC’s, very late and only after complaints from players.


Sometimes they even stopped events at a completely different time than usual without any notice to the users, and refused to put the NPCs back so players could get their rewards.


Exp/droprate events are only half the % of NC’s.


Still keeping “safe” areas of Gelk/Inggi while every other publisher removed them.


Absolutely no support. The first months of takeover tickets took an average 45-60 days to get an -automated- reply. After that, they now take days if even replied, most times just an auto-reply and closed unless you complain.


No support at evenings, weekends, and festive days. What a joke. Make a ticket on Thursday, no reply until Monday.


Complete leniency towards hackers and cheaters. Back in spring they -unbanned- ALL the hackers who had been previously -perma- banned with clear proofs of cheating, under a “2nd chance” rule. No penalty whatsoever. If anyone gets banned for cheats nowadays, they are out of the game for 2-3 days and that’s it. That’s after weeks of sending proofs to GF with clear videos from dozens of players. Euro servers now have more players using hacks than otherwise.


Cash shop is a joke. They don’t have all the useful items the players would actually like, as opposed to US NC.


Cash items are extremely expensive. 50 euro for a mount, 25-30 euro for some skins which can be used only once. 20-25 euro for pets (per character).


They even have the nerve to excuse the lack of FTS with not ruining “PVP” (ganking of lowbies), while they sell p2w items in the shop you can’t even get through other means.


Extremely buggy forum. Login issues were explained and reported 9 months ago, still nothing fixed. They even ban users for complaining about not being able to use their forums. Most of the players can’t even use them nowadays (cookie issue with guest overriding your login).


Lots of issues with purchased items not delivered after days, and then players get banned if they take the payment back over the items they didn’t receive.


Forum staff playing like they were supreme dictators high on cocaine. They blatantly lie to everyone, and ban users if they contradict the lies and ask for discussion about all kind of matters.


Forum mods ban players without any reasons, or make them up and lock them out of being able to complain about it. They aren’t even told why they are banned, as they receive a PM in the forum -after- they got banned, so they can’t even read them. If you ask about the ban after your account is restored, they ban you again without further explanation. They also ban users for “foul language” (as they deem.. not really), while they use all kind of insults themselves and go unpunished.

Part 3

No support. Forum mods ban your game support area so they don’t have to comply with their obligations and explain their actions.

Emailing “higher ups” and even faxing their office gets absolutely no reply either.

That’s right ^ they block your account from support tickets area, thus denying you of support over paid services. This is not even legal in the EU.

GMs abusing their power in-game. Players are getting banned inside arenas seconds after gliding a fear: the GM you played against logs their GM account and bans you for using a well known and working as intended game mechanics. They will also ban you if you engage a boss they are on at the same time for a dps race. People recently got banned during a Sunakaya kill, with the GM insulting the other alliance leader, and right after boss died, the player was insta banned. Support told the player he shouldn’t hit a boss other people were hitting oO most likely the same GM who banned him. This was a big scandal recently in their forums, with the support lead promising to investigate it, but eventually nothing was done and the threads were all locked and users complaining banned.

GMs apparently stealing accounts: http://www.aionsource.com/topic/134669-goodbye-gamefail/

Game launcher completely unfriendly, with no option to stop it from overwriting custom voice packs unless you skip the launcher completely through other means.

Extremely low populated servers. Most of them have maybe 1000 players on both sides together; that’s including a LOT of lowbie players just new to the game and a HUGE amount of bots, goldsellers and spammers. GF refuses to merge the servers.

Players getting banned for using Battleping, with half the staff contradicting each other about whether it’s allowed.
Hacked accounts don’t even get their items back, Gameforge will barely restore anything, as oposed to NCsoft, with all kind of lame excuses for not doing so.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Gameforge ruined and killed our beloved game in Europe. If you are tired of all the bs, stop buying gold packs and any items from their shop, don’t buy them in-game either, maybe eventually they give up and we’ll get a decent publisher.

Most of the veteran players have already quit because of GF, and a LOT of people who’ve had issues with them, getting banned for no reason and trolled by their staff; players who had been part of this game for 3 years and -never- had a single issue when our region was managed by NCSoft.

[b]Reply [url=http://forum.mmosite.com/thread/2/16/20130207/Aion_EU_Vs_NA_Free_to_Play_or_Truly_Free-5114711e40b1c5813-1.html#p5114eb3aaa24ba]4#[/url] [i]90.*.*.189[/i][/b] [br] [br]yeah if it worked ,i had me free play from gold pack then when it runs out so does all the perks, back to starter pack all my toons locked out and cant trade with friends ,i did like up till then ;)