'Aion' itself is a fairly new game, having been open to the US and EU for only about four months so far, so I don't expect the roleplay community to be as established and stable as in the other games I've played. As someone who was playing it since the last few Open Beta weekends, I've seen the roleplayers come and go. When the game first went live I couldn't sneeze without spraying on a roleplayer; one of the earliest things I remember was roleplaying with a friend of mine, walking throughout the main city, and running into three other people roleplaying within an area of town called the Vanahal Noble District. Since then, that area has become almost devoid of activity. While the tavern remains popular for roleplayers, it does get tedious, and sometimes I feel as if most of us roleplayers stay in contact via sending each other whispers or private tells, or by joining the private roleplay channel on Gorgos via the command /joinchannel Roleplay ARP.
Even the Aion Roleplay Forum http://www.aionroleplayers.com/ has gone eerily quiet on the Gorgos threads, which is disheartening, to say the least. I believe this is due in part to the gold farming and selling "bots" that run rampant throughout 'Aion', throwing the game economy awry, and hacking accounts. Gold botting and selling is illegal according to NCSoft's terms of agreement, and after the first month more than 27,000 bots over both the US and EU servers were banned http://uk.aiononline.com/board/notices/view?articleID=285&page=3. A further 23,000 were later banned as well, and their efforts are still continuing: http://uk.aiononline.com/board/notices/view?articleID=394&page. However, more recently the people behind the bots have begun hacking player accounts. In the past month three roleplayers I knew had their accounts hacked by gold bots, lost all their good armor, weapons, and whatever they had in their account banks and warehouses, and became what I lovingly refer to as "zombies" - mere shells of charatcers running around killing mobs much too low for them for the items they drop, selling these items and otherwise farming mindlessly for Kinah (the in-game currency). For those unfamiliar with gaming terms, they then give the Kinah earned via these hacked bots to players who pay real-world money for it, which is illegal by NCSoft's terms of agreements. These three people who were hacked lost everything, and one even got banned. Sadly, she was also the leader of the largest Roleplay Legion on our server, and when she left I began to see fewer and fewer of her legionmates online.
That was basically a tedious and drawn-out way of saying "the roleplay community on 'Aion' is dwindling, and I wanted to do something about it". Since the major roleplay Legion is incapacitated at the moment due to disagreeable botivity, I decided to try and stir up the roleplay community on my own. Obviously this wasn't going to happen overnight, but through my OOC webcomics on DeviantArt I've already had FOUR people from the US servers come to Gorgos, on the EU servers, for the roleplay. My art has been getting the roleplay community noticed, so last weekend I went that little extra step further.
The idea itself was one I'd been sitting on for a while, and even discussed briefly with said member of the other Legion. I wanted to hold a Player-versus-Player (or PvP) event instead of tavern roleplay, using the lore and game mechanics NCSoft offered the players to have a little something more than just standing around talking. Guilds in 'Aion' are called Legions for a reason - the entire game is very PvP and miltary-oriented, with multiple factions fighting for dominion over what's left of their planet Atreia after the terrible Cataclysm that split it apart (two of these factions are playable). As such, I thought it was about time we had an event that took all this into consideration.
Being the lore-whore I am, and through my journeys exploring Asmodae, I've come across readable books throughout the game that reveal more and more small snippets about the lore. I took screenshots of the books' pages and compiled them in a forum thread so people could read it, here: http://www.aionroleplayers.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=2990&start=10. One of my favorite areas in the game is a level 17-19 area in Altgard called "Impetusium", which is a ruined colloseum that is being rebuilt after hundreds of years in abandonment. Following the quest dialogue you help in the reconstruction efforts yourself when you run through this area, and I wanted to combine this with the story 'Impetusium of Glory' (the first story in the above link) to hold an event where Asmodian players would partake in a day of games like gladiators in the Roman colloseums would have done. When I first proposed this idea, the leader of the other Legion was already looking to plan something in the PvP arena in our main city of Pandaemonium, so I put the idea on hold, but when I found out she'd left I decided not to wait any longer.
The pot luck event our class held proved to me that planning things can count as a creative process, and this was my little take on it. Over the course of reading break I began contacting people in-game and planning the event. I spoke with a few players in the other Legion, who live in Europe, and asked about good times for them, and then tried to find a good overlap with the members of my Legion that live in Canada/the US. I finally settled on 6pm Saturday for those in Europe, as it's shortly after dinner, people are back from work, and there's no immediate rush to get to bed early for work the next day. This amounted to 9am for me, and 11-12am for the others in our legion, and seemed the best time. Of course some people did have work, but it's hard to please everyone, and I did the best I could.
I then drew out an advertisment and broadcasted it on both my DeviantArt website: http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Impetusium-A-Day-of-Games-153556234 and the Aion Roleplayers Forum: http://www.aionroleplayers.com/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=3117&p=44974#p44974.
I posted this advert a week in advance, which gave people plenty of time to prepare for it. I then contacted a few players to help me "cater" for the event. According to the lore, Impetusium was once a bustling hub of activity, of sparring, games, jousting events for money, to settle disputes, what have you, as well as a main trade berth boasting exotic goods and food. I contacted a few players to cook in-game food for the event, while I and another legionnaire made health and mana potions for the fighters. All this was done in advance, so when the day finally rolled around we made our way to the grounds early and set up player shops. We could roleplay while we sat there advertising our wares, and I thought it was good fun. I also shouted out on the roleplay channel every half an hour, ten minutes, and five minutes before the event, as well as poked anyone I knew on Skype to be present.
The turnout wasn't as great as it could have been, and I had hoped for more people to attend, but as my first attempt planning and hosting a roleplay event I think overall it was a success. We ended up delaying the fights until an hour after the original planned start, as we needed that time for everyone to trickle in to join the games, and also to get down their names for the event. My boyfriend helped me here and drew up a table, organizing people according to their level brackets (21-25, 26-30, 31-35, etc. etc. ...) and then calling them up to duel in pairs. Impetusium is a flight area, so people were able to take to the skies with their characters and duel in the air as well as on the ground. It was a proccess of elimination: two people would fight, the winner fought the next one in line, and so on. In the meantime I had written a speech about a week prior and Jaris read it aloud at the beginning of the event.
(Above: the speech I read. Originally Jaris said "and my General Bix ...", to which she intercepted and yelled "BRIGADE General Bix!" for a fun twist we had planned in advance. I put screenshots of the actual event in the image above - those are all real people playing their own characters - in the hopes of perhaps attracting more people to join us in future.)
(Above: the winners for each level bracket that attended. I spent days worrying about how to reward the winners, what prizes to give them, as many items in-game have far too much worth to be handed out simply as rewards. In the end I had the idea of using Bronze, Silver, and Gold "coins" that are easily gained by doing a few repeatable quests. They may not be worth all that much, but they stayed in the spirit of bronze, silver, and gold medallions, and people seemed to enjoy getting even such a small thing as thanks for coming.)
Although I was very nervous at first that my first roleplay event would fall flat on its face, I am happy with how it turned out in the end. People seemed to have fun - I know I did! - and enjoyed a break from their usual routine of grinding, or from tavern roleplay. I've entertained the idea of holding it again sometime in the future, after having planned a few more, or maybe planning one in the PvP arena next time, so more than one player can fight each other at the same time. My goals for improvement, then, should that happen, is to get more people excited enough to join us, possibly through more thorough planning, maybe over the course of two weeks instead of one, and more propaganda to attract more players. Heck, I can draw, I'll use my artsy skills to bribe them next time! "First place winner gets a free drawing!" Overall, I thought the event was a success, and I can't wait to host another one. Hopefully this will draw more roleplayers to our server in the future.
--Sak
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