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NCsoft addresses Aion server issues

"The rhino is upon us," says top dog.

NCsoft West executive producer Lance Stites has written an open letter to the Aion community addressing queue times and server over-population.

Despite a lengthy address, however, he made no mention of waiving subscription fees temporarily - necessary compensation, the Aion community reckons, for a product some have literally not been able to play.

"There's no doubt that we've done some things very well with Aion: the product is polished and incredibly fun. We managed to deploy to North America and Europe within the same week and have experienced strong demand. As most of you are aware, this has come at a cost in the form of queue times. This is by far our biggest challenge and has led to some frustration as players wait to enter their server of choice," wrote Stites.

He pointed out that NCsoft has upped server capacity, but that this will not solve a thing should everyone continue trying to access the popular worlds. Stites hopes that the free, one-time character transfer next month will rectify this.

He even attempted to explain why NCsoft, a massive company experienced at handling popular MMOs, was apparently caught off guard by the surge to play Aion.

"Most of you are savvy enough to realize that a healthy MMO server needs a robust population. We have to calculate our reasonable concurrency numbers in a week and in a month and beyond. The last thing we want to do to our players is spread them out so that the 'massively' in 'massively multiplayer' gets lost," he offered.

"I read an interesting conversation about a safari hunter, and the question was posed to him: 'Why don't you take an Olympic sharpshooter that could hit a bulls-eye at 300 meters?' His response was: 'I don't care what he can do at 300 meters, what can he do at two meters?' And that's definitely where we are now: the rhino is upon us."

Stites added reassurance that you are NCsoft's "number one priority" and that he is doing all he can to "exceed your expectations".