We're hearing the Aion servers are struggling to manage the hordes who preordered the MMO - 400,000 according to NCsoft - leaving some in the headstart program crestfallen and dreading what happens when the general public comes online Tuesday.
"There are more people waiting in cues to start the game than there are in the game itself," writes one tipster. "and this is just the people with pre-orders. This will be a nightmare when the game actually launches."
In that screen above, you see one poor guy is facing down a 7 hour, 30 minute wait at position 2994 out of 3188 in the queue. Others have sent in screenshots showing much shorter wait times. But wait times nonetheless. It seems fair to say NCsoft wasn't prepared for its Head Start campaign to get this much buy-in. I'm sure many are hoping that day one of the full release will open up some sort of extra server capacity, but unfortunately, I have no information. I'll update if I hear anything. Aion players, please do share your experiences in the comments.
Update: This is from Fahey, I'll quote him directly: "Might be worth noting that even with 10 instances of each starting area mobs are camped all over the place, and there's some horrible quest bottlenecking as dozens of players wait for quest objects to spawn."