Aion OBT

Wow, seems like the Koreans are just as excited about Aion as me!

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Source: Thisisgame, ETnews, Tistory
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Aion's Korean open beta is now boasting concurrent user numbers of 150,000.
Since launching the service at 6am on the 11th, 150,000 players managed their way into Atreia by 11pm the same day. Aion is now operating with a total of 25 servers, with each server exceeding the 5000 player target NCsoft had set out for their servers.

Upon login, players are finding most servers on the list marked as 'full'. Taking into account all the users in queue for the servers, the number of concurrent users could possibly be seen as closer to 200,000. Considering that the launch was done on a weekday, the numbers are expected to go up as many more attempt to join over the weekend.

(ETnews reports that this is a record for a Korean developed MMO opening in Korea. The past record holders have been Lineage2 and Ragnarok 2 but even they were only able to reach 100k after a month of open beta testing. No mention of how WoW did in comparison, but WoW had over 150k concurrent users at its peak during its Korean open beta according to an interview with Mike Morhaine.)

NCsoft is now dealing with the happy dilemma of handling a much greater level of interest than they'd anticipated. Having already added 7 more servers than originally planned, continuing to add to that pool is only one way of handling the situation. The first change implemented immediately was to cut down on the scale of the promotions that were planned to begin on the 13th. This decision was made so that Aion's user base grew in increments that they could actually handle.

Unsurprisingly, many players are venting their frustration at the situation. Players that used the pre-beta services to reserve their spots had it easier, but those that didn't were having to wait in long queues just to create their characters. (note: Many of these players were sitting in netcafes as well, so you can imagine the added pressure.)

Server queue waiting list to the Israphel server. This one has 1433 players in the queue with an estimated wait time of 24 minutes.

1433 in queue and only a 24 min wait? not bad imo :p