Abyss

[Asharra]

Ive noticed that our faction cant seem to hold the abyss for any length of time. Looking at the Aion website it would appear that this is normal for most of the servers. The factions don't seem to have the strange disparity of abilities we had in War Hammer. Any ideas?

[Kordine]

Levels, organization? There's any possible source of reasons. What I have heard indicated that Fortresses are zerged. Maybe The Asmo higher levels are more inclined to do small group skirmish and ganking whereas the Elyos prefer to zerg? Hard to say and too early to worry about trends IMO.

[Gisli]

On Lumiel, it is absolutely levels that are dominating the situation. It could be that Asmo high-levels are behaving differently from Elyos high-levels. But we see a lot more Elyos high levels in the Abyss all the time. It would be nice to get a clear picture on whether Elyos has more, or if ours don't go out there as much.

Now, if there is a persistent pattern across servers, then it is unlikely to be something related to local culture. If Elyos tend to out-level Asmodians across the servers, there has to be a reason. It could be that something is different about the zones that makes it easier for one side to level. It could be that, across servers, Elyos attracts a different type of player from Asmodian. Both hypotheses are a little hard to swallow, but the second is harder to swallow than the first. I can certainly believe that one server has a bunch of non-cooperative PvE'ers on one side. But across multiple servers? Seems unlikely.

[Kordine]

On Zikel I'm not sure if it's levels or just that Asmo players want to get to max level before they PvP. The fact that you can lose points in this game over WAR means that your average player doesn't want PvP where they lose.

Your right in saying that what applies to one side should apply to the other though Gisli.

[Drakhon]

According to the official site, both sides on Lumiel have 5% in the 31-35 and 2% in the 36-40, with 0% above that. Asmos have 51% of the total population, so rounding errors aside, we should have slightly more people in these ranges. Of course, this tells us nothing about their play habits with regards to the Abyss.

[Shalar]

Good site for info
http://na.aiononline.com/livestatus/server/

[Warseth]

Well I spend a bit more than average time picking fights and getting in them probably.

I am noticing that the higher levels are more collectively working together. That in itself is a difference. I hardly if ever see our high levels collectively working in a group to regulate lower abyss...actually NEVER....Just a lone wolf high level trying to help from time to time...

Honestly I think they have more (elyos) higher level players than we do ..that stick together... I believe our high levels are mostly BOTS....and a few legit players.

[Asharra]

I read something on one of the NCSoft sites that server population is figured by the number of toons on each account. So if was reading it correctly it doesn't matter the number of asmo vs ely accounts its dependent on how mayt alts each account wants to field? To me this seems a bit odd... Still I doubt very seriously that we as Asmos run more alt toons that the Ely. I guess we will have to wait and see how things develop.

[Drakhon]

You can't really show a level spread based on accounts. For those with multiple characters, do you just look at the highest one? Do you average them? Do you go by the last one played? Any of these methods can skew the results for or against a point that someone is trying to make.

The only sensible way is to consider all characters regardless of what accounts they may be on. While this does skew the results in its own way, it is reasonable to assume that the effect of alts would be similar in both factions.

[Gisli]

Yes, the side that plays alts more will, all other things being equal, lose more.

In our case, though, I think it is merely a skew effect from a relatively small number of Elyos leveling up fast and then spending a lot of time in the abyss doing gank groups and fort takes. So there a disparity. This is already starting to even out, as seen from our ability to take 2 forts last night. I expect that there will be another jump in favor of the Elyos when they are high enough level to tackle the upper layer forts. But after a couple more weeks, it should even out again. At that point, it will be realm organization, realm leadership, and realm determination that decide which faction dominates.