Aion wasnt that bad, but YMMV depending on your server. I know I was level 25 by day 2 so significantly ahead of the bulk of people without any major server issues. The only real issue Aion had from the start was server Queues, which was resolved by never logging off. Which of course contributed to the problem, but I digress.
EQ was a pretty rough launch, I was there for that as well. However That is over 10 years ago, and it isn't really fair to compare launches that many years ago to current. The MMO market has changed significantly.
Fact is, Se made some mistakes with this game that they should of known better. It doesn't stop it from being a good game, actually I think it is a fantastic game. However I want people to remain vocal about the very real problems the game has so SE gets the message and gets them fixed. If I honestly had any doubts as to SE's ability to resolve stuff, I never would of bought the game much less two CE copies. I played it in beta and was well aware of the issues beforehand. However SE remains one of the "Few" companies out there that I have faith in their ability to listen to the community (even if they take their sweet time) and fix the stuff that needs fixing. It will not happen though if people do not remain vocal and make sure SE knows they can and will take their money elsewhere.
Lets detail the list so everyone is clear.
-The current market system or lack of is completely unacceptable in a modern mmo on Launch day. There are FTP MMO's coming out with more robust market mechanics.
-The server performance is dismal by even launch day standards. Having skills literally take 4 or 5 times their advertised cast time to fire off should of been resolved in beta. The server crashes I can forgive as that is normal launch jitters. I don't know what they changed from beta but in beta I could chain my heals without issue. In launch I can literally put a stop watch to my heals and a Minimum of 4 seconds will transpire before the game recognizes the keystroke, and another 15 will pass before it fires off. That is nearly 19 seconds for a 1.5s cast time spell and that results in people dieing. Now when the server is taking a dive and I am seeing 2k+ pings I understand this, however when I am staring down my usual 44ms ping, that is just bad server code.
-The ui system is terrible. This is usually overlooked in most MMO's because you aren't forced to do everything through it like SE has done. It cannot be overlooked in XIV because SE chose to force everything through the menu system. To be clear I am not questioning the decision as I realize it was for consoles, I am just stating that the performance is a major problem. Couple this with glaring omissions such as F key targeting and the lack of <stnpc> for healing and you have a system that is extremely cumbersome. Given how well on average the UI worked in XI, I am more then a little surprised at how badly this one was done.
These are the major glaring issues that SE needs to fix and quickly. SE has a great game here, there are just a handful of issues holding it back. I deliberately omitted things such as the leve timers and such as while I believe they need adjustment, I feel they fall behind the above categories in importance. If the above issues are resolved, I would be able to deal with the rest as it is "tuned" and I suspect most other players would as well. Right now I believe most of the complaints with the game are just the total frustration of everything compounding that is the real issue. Remove the major stressors and allow players to really experience the game, and everyone is going to be much happier.
