Elliot under fire?

Now you may ask, what was my intention to create this blog… and furthermore… where is the connection to Elliot and ….. what about the fire ?

Luckily that is not too hard to explain…

First I never bothered much about the opinions on Aion… some may remember my little review I wrote on the English Aion Fan site AionSource as well as my posts there (you can find this review in my blog now too). I mostly just posted about my experiences within the game or on the things I encountered, and maybe answered some of the communities questions. Although today something really strange happened and it was the main reason why this blog is now alive…!

At around 10:00am I got an email from an austrian friend in my office, he is currently a WoW player and doesn’t know english very well and he never heard much about Aion too, except from what I told him or what he read on the german fan-sites.

So how could this email drive me to create this blog you ask?

Well listen… in this email he sent me a link to Elliots latest Blog entry (Aion too hardcore or too soft? You decide) and some other major concerns about Aion. First I was a bit confused because, well he can’t even really read english and I was like how he knows about Elliots blog and most of his post!?! I was very curious now so I didnt hesitate to call him. On the phone he explained me, that he has just visited some major german fansites and many of them were in rage because they wrote things like -> “Omg we knew it, its another L2, game is just a grind, typical NCSoft etc. etc. look here is link to source…..“… ! At this moment I realized the power of a single person on the net . My first thought was: Oh yeah I remember Elliot, and while I didnt agree with many of his posts, I never thought that his translations could have such a big impact on the overal “mmorpg” community. So during my lunch break I decided to google around a bit and find out about the misery Elliot… it didn’t take too long and I came across some interesting stuff. Several fan sites have already adopted elliots blog and most of his translations were seen with dark eyes. It was like the devil in person who came down to all the aion fan sites and brought the evilness about the game upon them. Locked threads, upset Moderators, deleted posts and angry Administrators etc. etc. ! All in all a very fun situation, especially because, well… it was just 1 person. He further has never played the game by himself?

So how comes people are giving him so much creditability – and why so much hate?

To explain this I guess we need to dig a bit deeper into the presence of the mighty Elliot! Elliot is a long time member of AionSource, he is always kind enough to translate stuff directly from the korean sites. Also he is a passionate WoW player, something which seemed a bit controversy, since we all know about the great wars on the net between different MMORPG game players, don’t we ? However, all in all at this time everyone was happy and content. Later after the launch of the korean Aion, more and more news appeared. Aion was highly successful in Korea, it even beat the World of Warcraft open beta launch, they had more than 220.000 simultaneously users online etc. etc. People were amazed by the success and were happy to hear that it is so successful there. However, soon after that the first negative posts regarding Aion appeared on the net (there isn’t a good side without the bad isn’t it?)… most nicely translated by Elliot and posted into the different communities. From that point the overall happiness seemed to fade away from the poor forums and the big battles between the Aion Fanbois & Elliot Fanbois started to fill the sky. On one side Elliot, he appeared as the Hero who brings us the truth about the game from the east and not just the “flowers”, and on the other side, the people who couldn’t understand on how just 1 person can bring so much negative information’s about Aion in such a short amount of time (he must be WoW fanboi !!!!! – some people cried)… !

 What happened to all the satisfied players? Whats with all the people who praised the game so much? Are they just playing the game maybe (after all its brand new?) or did they finally disappear and hide in little holes because the game was such a failure (who would want to admit that)?

So sooner or later Elliot needed to defend himself, since all he pretended to do is translating posts from the large korean fansites and forums – sure he can’t deny that he also added some additional salt and pepper in his posts with his own added opinions…, but hey he is still the good guy who just wants to tell us on what we can expect and moreover on what Korea is talking about this game – sadly he never found something good about it !

So who is right now? What is going on? Are all the good dreams of our Aion fans now shattering because of Elliot, who seems to be the dark knight of the truth?

Well, to answer this question I will have to say that I don’t think that Elliot is exaggerating in any way (even though some call him a WoW fanboi…). I am sure that the posts he translates are valid in their own way. Maybe he is just unlucky with putting his own opinions into the news – changing the news to something contradictionary than the original author ever wanted to say? Moreover the problem is that some of the added cynical comments are sometimes just plain wrong, which discredits the value of the post itself (and thus creates even more rants throughout the community…). Or maybe the critics come mostly from hardcore players who have a completly different point of view regarding Aion? – Who knows? – Even though I am sure that he doesnt do that intentionally, its really difficult to add personal opinions especially if you have never played the game yourself. All his opinions are based on the things he read.

But do you think that’s the sole truth?

Is this really something you can build all your further assumptions on? I myself dont think so… but in the end its up to the reader to decide on what to get out of the information’s and what not and maybe exactly that’s is also the reason why I took the time to create this blog.

I really want to advice everyone of you to make your own opinion about the game before you judge about it too much without ever having played it. Its just not fair, not to the game, not to the developers and not to the community. I for one think that with Aion they did such a beautiful and detailed masterpiece which everyone of you should get the chance to try it out yourself and judge by the time you are able to. There will never be a perfect game, and even thou Aion will have its downsides, don’t be deceived by the things you encounter in the net, be patient and give it some time, you will be amazed on what you see… I can assure you – but never expect too much

With this words I want to close my 2nd blog and hope to see you again in the next one, which will be about Elliots Blog regarding the XP Acquisition Chart of Aion (Aion too hardcore or too soft? You decide), and how the grind really compares to WoW or Lineage 2 – maybe I get the chance to ask some of my Korean friends too about this (those are already 40+) :)

Take care everyone,
LD

Advertisement

~ by Lord Devil on January 9, 2009.