especially when they were touting their amazing, record breaking presale numbers just a few days earlier.

It may have to do with play times also that you have been playing, and some pure luck, as every single server had queue times certain times during the day. I know this from selecting them all, one by one down the list, looking for any that didn't have too much of a wait time. I did find one that had less than the usual wait eventually and have also been logging on at 2-3 a.m. to find no wait times too on my server.

The thing is the game already has a channel system built in, so I don't understand why they don't just raise the channels available and put more server power to the current servers to support the channels, rather than open new servers that may have to be closed later. They even mention themselves that problem, people open with all the servers to hold all the new players coming on, and then a few months down the road they have to close a number of them and merge the servers, ending up screwing over a lot of paying players on the current servers (they usually have to pick different names, etc). If they just raise the channels they can scale them back later without having to do any server merging...

Aion's servers already have channels in the lower-level zones.

I don't know if it scales that way in the server architecture. Lag and stress on the server load would still exist with too many people on, even if they were subdivided into more channels. Not having those additional folks on your screen is a factor in your individual performance (and nice to not have to compete with them for resources), but I think they are monitoring the overall performance of the game, which in my experience so far has been stellar.

Its almost 5 years later after the WoW's launch! Tons of new hardware did come, much stronger processors are out. What was 5 years ago a super computer is now the more low price pc in the stores...

Things did change, people did change. Sadly bad service and poor excuses did not...

You know, I spent a little time after reading your comment to consider matters. You see, every character that you can see needs to be sent to your machine so that your computer knows what to draw. So let's compare WoW to Aion and see how it stacks up.

WoW:
1 racial variable
5 customization variables
7 armor variables
2 carried variables
Total: 15 variables per character, each of which is a simple numeric value.

Aion:
1 racial variable
2 base character variables (body and head base)
1 voice variable
4 head modifier variables (hair style, face texture, accessory, tattoo)
12 hue variables (4 coloration variables in RGB values)
40 (approximately) body and head morph slider variables
6 armor variables
6 color variables (1 for each armor piece)
2 carried variables
Total: about 74 unique variables for each character

That means that every single character in Aion requires at least five times more bandwidth than in WoW.

This is just one example of how Aion can certainly push systems farther than WoW does. I chose this example because it's not affected very much by the server itself. Where this plays a big role is in the connections between your machine and the server. And then also between the server and all the computers that are viewing you. You see, server limits are not set exclusively on the capacity of the servers themselves. It goes without saying that those are super powerful machines. Server limits are also set based upon the amount of data that can be fed to and from the servers, as well as by how much the average client machine can handle.

Yes, I agree completely that servers, the internet and the average user's computer are all more powerful now than they were five years ago. But as the example above shows, Aion does put all three through more than WoW.

Regardless, I would rather live with the short term pain of server queues now than the long term pain of empty servers later.

Actually,

They knew this was coming - fully expected it and did nothing for 2 reasons:

1 - Tourists will be gone in a month and "hype screamers" in 2. there goes 50% of current numbers. it's a very logical and sound decision to think further then 2 weeks ahead.

2 - Server(Cluser) Architecture design is one of the most difficult and deep processes in the setting up of the system. Look at all the different games and how they all function differently.
WoW runs on Small static clusers, EVE has a single massive farm that has static properties within it's processing power, Darkfall uses a dynamic accolation system, etc...

Each of these has it's advantages and disadvantages (EVE/Darkfall need daily maintenence becouse doing maintenence on 10-15 machines takes 1 hour - doing it on 200+ takes a bit longer and is done in parts during a period of a week.

Aion uses the same system Tabula Rasa did. Miniclusters + step in support processing power. the problem with this system is taht adding extra power gives extremly large deminishing returns. and their only option is opening more miniclusters... which they dont want to for 1.

a very businiss sound decision that fucks up paying customers.

Kinda says alot about the popularity of your game choice. But yeah, waiting a month is a good idea for anyone who is to uptight to wait through queues. I'd rather have queues for a while than empty servers in a month or so. Thank you Warhammer.

No. What if you've got one extremely rare item you're trying to sell? Unlikely you'll get rid of it within an hour.

The Trade Broker is always available. AFK shops are not the *only* method available to sell goods.