If one thing has marred the otherwise polished launch of Aion it is the extremely long server queues players face when trying to log in and play what they paid for. NCsoft responded a couple days ago saying that they are aware of the problem and working on solutions such as increased server caps and even opening a new server in both North America and Europe. Today they just announced a maintenance patch that addresses a major cause of their queue problem: Private stores will now have 30-minute timer to prevent them from being abused.

Private stores are a great concept. Players can set up shop anywhere in the world to sell their spare goods and make a pretty penny. Unfortunately, a feature of these stores is that they prevent you from idling out of the game. This feature really compounds the current server queue problem.

To avoid going through the queue process again, many players simply set up a private store and go AFK for hours at a time. One store we came across had this description set: "AFK at work, making you queue." This is even more evidence that MMO players will often take the path of least resistance for personal gain. Devs really need this hammered into their heads.

Nerfs are something that you don't want to happen. Leastways you don't want them to happen to you. One day, you're striding through the MMOG like a god, defeating mobs, collecting loot and punishing the wicked in PvP. The next day you feel like you're fighting with a nerf-bat covered in goose-feathers.

Nerfs are best known in MMOGs but also happen in assorted multi-player (and occasionally single-player) games. Nerfs usually (though not always) come about for good reasons, though. Partly it's because few people are actually sure when cheating is happening. Even if they're the ones doing it. Really.

The two biggest differences between single player RPGs and massively multiplayer online RPGs are the MMO and persistent components found in the latter. Player vs. Developer has a thought-provoking blog post up claiming that MMOs are not as persistent as they claim to be.

"Persistent" can be defined as "continuing without change in function or structure," which when you really think about it doesn't quite fit with how it is employed in most MMORPGs. Many MMOs claim to have a "persistent struggle," or "persistent world," which is only half true. Developers are constantly changing their MMOs and it impacts how we play.

What happens at the end of an expansion cycle? Often, players stop trying to progress and wait for the new content that makes old content obsolete. What happens when classes undergo constant balance shifts? Players are forced to compete on uneven playing fields. What happens when some gamers benefit from bugs or exploits before they are fixed? It can hurt player morale.

Many of these changes are for the best, but it does illustrate that MMOs are not truly as persistent as they claim.

Mission architect -- an amazing system that allows a very creative player-base to finally take the reigns of creation and make amazing in-game arcs that feature personalized stories, personalized characters, farming, well made.... wait, what?

Yes, you heard that right, people have already began to leverage City of Heroes's architect system into nothing more than powerleveling tool, and the community doesn't find that to be too enjoyable. Luckily, Matt "Positron" Miller, the lead designer, has already stepped up with a post to the community on the City of Heroes message board about how they plan on dealing with these problems.

The team wishes to remove the rewards some characters may have gained through powerleveling, all the way up to removing access to characters that were solely leveled up via mission architect exploits. Past working on a player by player bases, some badges will be changed while others may be removed entirely due to the exploiting groups surrounding them. Lastly, but certainly not least, the team will be proactively banning missions that are created to exploit the system.

For Matt's full plan, check out his post over on the City of Heroes message board.

One of the things that many people absolutely can't stand about many different MMOs is how slow to respond - and generally how light the punishment - for people getting caught exploiting/botting/or generally being a flaming @#(hat. Botting might nab you only a couple of weeks off for bad behavior - if they even bother to ban you at all. Scamming other players? Smack on the wrist. Of course, on the other side of the road, you have Aventurine who, with Darkfall, have been aggressively ban-hammering anyone who appears to be doing anything fishy. No excuses, no second, third, or fourth chances. If you cheat there and they can verify it, your account gets nuked from orbit.

Some players hate this, and claim that due to potential for error, it's way too dangerous. Other players think this is quite possibly one of the best things Aventurine is doing in regards to Darkfall - trying to keep it completely level and dealing with anyone who exploits, macros, etc. harshly. This morning we thought we'd ask what you feel is better - the more hands-off approach, giving people multiple chances to screw up before they're banned more common to many MMOs, or the hard-line Darkfall approach of ban first time, ban often?

The starbase exploit has been some big news lately. How does it impact your ability to assess the state of EVE's economy, and are there assumptions you've made in the past that you need to reassess now?

It's a good thing that you mentioned the starbase exploit because we are in the final stages of creating a very thorough dev blog on that, which will hopefully be published very soon. [Note: this interview was conducted just prior to the release of the investigation's findings.]

There are certain things with the POS exploit that made it very difficult to detect. You basically needed to be able to go to that particular starbase and look at it, look at the setup and so on. It was difficult for us to detect it otherwise, except from the code once we knew what we were looking for.

From a market perspective the EVE economy has become so big that in order for you to impact the market you will really have to have large quantities. And as will be shown in this dev blog that will be published, the scale of the exploit really didn't start until late 2008... to the large industrial scale so that it started to impact the market.

The EVE Online starbase exploit revealed in December has had a far-reaching impact on the game. Certain player-owned starbases in EVE were producing valuable, high-end materials that they shouldn't have been. Once a group of players picked up on this, they exploited the game on a massive scale, resulting in trillions of ISK (Interstellar Kredits, the game's virtual currency) that never should have existed being injected into the game. To date, this is the largest economic manipulation (via an exploit) ever revealed in EVE Online.

The starbase exploit was the first of several player-triggered drama bombs that hit the game in recent weeks, and resulted in a substantial amount of (in-game) market turmoil and player outcry over the issue. The game's subscribers wanted openness on the matter from EVE's developer, CCP Games, and they've certainly got that as of today. CCP Games posted the results of the exploit investigation, and the caveat "be careful what you wish for" may apply here, given the depth and complexity of the findings conveyed to the playerbase in today's dev blog, "War Makes Thieves and Peace Hangs Them."

It's no secret that I keep my eye on the Final Fantasy XI community. With two friends running an upstanding linkshell on the Bahamut server, I like to know what goes on in the game.

The current word on the street is the "big banhammer freakout." The vocal players are talking about what linkshells were hit by losing players caught up in the cheating scandal. But what's interesting are the words being thrown around -- things like "unprecedented" and "uncalled for."

A quick jaunt across the street to the loving and cuddly galaxy of New Eden shows that something suspiciously similar happened to corporation starbases in EVE Online, also ending with tears, banned accounts, and the exact same arguments being thrown around the community. "I didn't know it was an exploit," "It's not my fault," "They made me do it," and my personal favorite, "You should have fixed it."

So this week's Anti-Aliased isn't dedicated to some developer mishap or some bad piece of game design, it's dedicated to how daft some people are when it comes to cheating.

It's all the company's fault

Yes, it's all their fault that they didn't notice that they misplaced that one period in thousands upon thousands of lines of code. It's their fault that they don't run Salvage 40,000 times a week and check every rock and pebble in Vana'diel.

People who make this rationale probably never looked at the innards of a program -- especially an MMO. You have lines of programming being done by multiple authors and you have logs that extend miles long. Even with specialized programs, it takes time to sift through all of that information.

Case in point: Square-Enix fixed this glitch in November and banned people in late January. The delay wasn't because they were playing ping-pong in the basement and drinking beer. It was the double-edged decision of first finding who stood to gain on all of their servers, and then deciding an appropriate punishment. That takes time.

You know, this probably would have been caught sooner if more people would have stood up and reported it, instead of, you know, trying to conceal it. Then, when they get caught concealing it, they blame the company for not knowing about it. That's just poor form.

The game owes me

The game owes you what? It owes you for all the time you spent playing it, enjoying the challenges with your friends and engaging in an ever-changing world?

Certainly I'm horribly opinionated, but I like to play games for fun. Whenever a game ceases to be fun to me, I stop playing and stop paying. I play because I enjoy it, and I hope other people are out there doing the same.

FFXI may be an exercise in sadistic game design, but every player has the chance to walk away from Vana'diel. I did because I didn't have the time and I ended up enjoying the lore of World of Warcraft. If you are at the point that you hate the game so much that you believe it owes you something for your time spent playing it, then perhaps it's time to take a step back from it. There are plenty of other options in the game world.

But Square-Enix isn't without fault

The voices of the banned are right about one thing though -- Square-Enix has been inconsistent. Some people are getting banned for being in one of these cheating Salvage runs, and others are getting slaps on the wrists. There doesn't seem to be any clear consistency to how they slapped down the punishments.

The first part of a reliable punishment is to make sure it's handed out consistently and with appropriate measure. Without that, people second guess if the punishment is truly necessary. It's like if a professor gave you a D on a test just because he didn't like your hand writing. Your answers never mattered, and that's what makes you angry -- it didn't feel justifyable.

What it all comes down to

Even with Square-Enix messing up like that, it doesn't change the facts. Players knew about the exploit, players attempted to hide the exploit, Square-Enix found the exploit, and players got what they should have known was coming. All of these people had the chance to stand up, call a GM, and say what was going on.

If they had and this problem would have been caught earlier, bans probably wouldn't have been mentioned. These people would still have had their accounts. Certainly they would have less gear on those accounts, but it's really hard to use virtual weaponry when you can't log in.

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Colin Brennan is the weekly writer of Anti-Aliased who can still log into Final Fantasy XI when he wants to. When he's not writing here for Massively, he's over running Epic Loot For All! with his insane friends. If you want to message him, send him an e-mail at colin.brennan AT weblogsinc DOT com, or follow him on Twitter.

The Square-Enix bahnammer recently came down onto the Final Fantasy XI community, permanently banning 550 non-RMT accounts that were involved in performing an exploit that has occurred over a two year time period -- an exploit that some say SE was aware of, but never took steps to correct.

The exploit in question was only available to linkshells involved several endgame activities. The basic premise was finish the activity and then before the item drops from a treasure chest or monster the alliance of parties would break into their separate groups. For you Warcraft players, a raid would cease to be a raid and break down to the parties involved. Then each of the 3 parties in the alliance would get a copy of whatever items would drop. So, instead of 1 set of loot, you would grab 3 sets of loot -- including some items that could be sold for millions on the auction house.

A lot of time has passed since Age of Conan launched last May and while some things never change, it seems like the player perception of FunCom's slightly misfired MMO doesn't want to play by the rules. It's a good thing, though, as a small poll seems to be showing. Now, we say small because the actual statistics in question only represent about one-to-two thousand participants. Still, as a snapshot of a community, that's not too bad.

So what's the overall verdict? Bugs, exploits, and stability have all seen rises in ratings over the course of three months. The votes have also tilted in favor of communication and content for FunCom. So while we stress that this isn't super-scientific by any means, it does point to more improvements and overall up-trending for a game that saw some pretty rocky rapids just three or four months ago.

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	Having fun in Conan's homeland? Make sure to check out all of our previous Age of Conan coverage, and stick with Massively for more news from the Hyborian Age!

Over on the Second Life viewer development mailing list, there's a spirited discussion in progress about the suggestion of a notification list for viewer security vulnerabilities. The principle idea is that distributors of third-party viewers would get slightly earlier notification of vulnerabilities and exploits in the viewer code so that they could have secured versions of their Second Life viewers available to the general public at approximately the same time as secured versions of the first-party viewer become available.

Linden Lab has invited debate on what sorts of people it would be reasonable to disclose the information to (for example, perhaps only those who had signed a non-disclosure agreement). The topic has, naturally enough, brought out considerable debate as to whether such a group is necessary or even desirable.

After "widespread griefing of players by other players using a game exploit," Turbine decided to finally take down the Shroud raid in Dungeon and Dragons Online to prevent further use of this exploit. This level 17 raid was introduced with Module 6 and through the bug, allowed a single cleric to deny other party members completion and the part 4 chests.

Although community reaction to the shutdown is mixed, as is expected, Turbine says the raid's issue will be fixed and the Shroud will be reopened on the next patch, which could come as early as next week.

We've heard about gold farmers tangling with the law before, but this is pretty extreme from initial accounts we've turned up. So while a few of the details coming out of Korea are still a bit hazy, it seems a money laundering operation (working with gold farmers and MMO account thieves) was busted this week while trying to move $38 million between Korea and China. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency stated the operation was headed by a man named Jeong who, with a number of other individuals in Korea, was caught wiring the $38 million in illicit funds.

Korean news site dongA reports: "Jeong and his ring reportedly sold the game money illegally produced in China using cheap labor and virus programs. They are believed to have taken a commission of three to five percent of the money traded to purchase game money."

War declarations are an essential part of EVE Online. They allow corporations and alliances to fight for control over resources, territory, or simply to get revenge on their rivals. Then again, others declare war for the opportunity to grief in Empire space. Perhaps it's this latter tendency that prompted the latest announcement from CCP Games. They're branding the monkeywrenching of rival corporations during wartime as an exploit.

GM Grimmi states: "The practice of insta-joining/leaving warring corporations for the purpose of surprising war targets, or getting them in trouble with CONCORD, is considered an exploit from here on. Reports of this will be investigated on a case by case basis and warnings will be issued at the discretion of the GM. Repeated incidents may result in bans on accounts involved." This doesn't seem to apply to 'normal' corp infiltrations, though it does beg the question of why a corporation at war would even be accepting new recruits at all. What's the protocol in your corp, do you continue to accept applicants into the fold during a wardec, or is the risk of alt spying and sabotage too great?