Kotaku 
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Denver, 8:56 AM
Sun Dec 6
16 posts in the last 24 hours
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Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
09/25/09
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09/25/09
Aion is still a much smoother launch, probably because it had already launched in Korea.
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nothankyou.jpg
09/25/09
Of course thought there was a time later on when there were so many abandoned shops that SOE was even rewarding people for ridding the desert of playershops.
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09/25/09
How about they stop being cunts and open up new servers since the people are paying for the damn game! What a bunch of douche bags.
09/25/09
09/25/09
One(1) Gawker Star 600g
Well lucky for me you won't get rid of me that easily on Kotaku.
*goes n makes dinner*
09/25/09
Private shops were EVERYWHERE after launch because people wanted to avoid queues. Players like myself had to plan 2-3 hours in advance before actually being able to play.
Now, I understand that shops are not the entire problem, and this will only lower queues by a small amount, but its a start. If anything, our cities will be MUCH cleaner now without 500 chat bubbles above everyone's head. This is the major bonus for me.
Private shops became useless the way they were. People would set up and walk away from the game. Even worse than this, a lot of us just assumed the players were AFK and didn't even check the shops. This is bad for both sides.
With the new change, private shops will be limited to the people who actually care about selling their goods in an active way. This will A) lower the number of shops we see and B) make private shops a more unique way to sell. If you don't like the 30 minute afk timer, simply sell on the AH. It's the passive way of selling that you want.
So don't complain about Private stores not being infinite anymore - be happy that NCSoft has come up with a decent solution to help fix both the queue issue, as well as the lag, overpopulation, and useless private shops that we were seeing. Now, when you see a private shop, it will mean much more (hopefully).
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I'm supposed to sit there for hours and move my mouse a little bit every now and then so that my character can sit still and sell stuff out of his shop?
Kind of makes shops useless, huh? I would think most people would just start spamming the trade chat with their junk instead now after the change.
I really liked the idea of individual personal shops. It's great to see the devs are ruining another aspect that makes this MMO stand out from the sea of MMOs.
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Think outside the box. How would personal shops improve the community?
Having personal shops allows for players to bring the market to any town, which allows for a bigger community of merchants around the game world. In generic MMOs, you may have to travel to 'insert city' to get a certain quest item and then travel back to the quest giver. With personal shops, there is a decent change someone could have a shop setup the closest town to that quest giver selling that item. A few seconds run down the road and back and you've completed the quest.
Again, I felt personal shops were an original idea that made Aion stand out, but condemning all shop owners because some players are abusing the system isn't right. I would think MMO players would know something about that.
09/25/09
It's unfortunate that their "fix" totally kills the feature, but there are other, bigger problems with the idea that need to be fixed for it to function well.
09/25/09
I do think that personal shops are getting more blame than they deserve though.
The problems with the queues is bad planning and a horrible way to even out the servers.
NCSoft should have better antcipated the demand. A week ago they were bragging about the sales numbers. There is no excuse why there should be queues longer than a hour on the majority of the servers. Specifically they created too many west coast servers and not enough east coast servers.
They should have annouced that they are going to be strict on server population and use queues to try to spread the population around. Then guilds could have planned better.
Finally they should offer free moves from high population servers to low population ones. Because guilds and friends are being split up over this and someone who has been playing for a week isn't going to up and move to a new server.
Just because people are playing on a low population server doesn't mean they are going to stay there.
I think in the long run I think these queues and restrictions is going to be ineffective and hurt the community more than helping it.
09/25/09
(reading screen)
Where's the "any" key? I see Esc, Catarl, and Pig Up. There doesn't seem to be any "any" key.
Wo! All this computer hacking is making me thirsty. I think I'll order a Tab.
(presses TAB key).
Oh, no time for that now, the game is starting!
09/25/09