We’ve been following Guild Wars 2 since the first stirrings back in 2007, through the scrapped beta and onwards to this year’s big reveal. According to NCsoft West CEO Jaeho Lee, speaking recently during a post-earnings report conference call, we’ll be following it for quite a long time coming.

“I believe there will be a certain public event in the year 2010, so at this point it could be at least a closed beta test for [Guild Wars 2 and Korea-oriented martial-arms MMOG Blade & Soul],” he said. “The commercialization will be expected at this point probably sometime in the year 2011.”

The dates coincide with a story from earlier this year suggesting a 2010-2011 release for the eagerly anticipated follow-up to the company’s free MMO.

That’s quite a long time to wait, but it beats getting no Guild Wars 2 at all, right?

Guild Wars 2 due in 2011 [GameSpot]

It’s not a preorder bonus, as the game is already out, so should we simply call it an order bonus? Either way, folks who purchase Aion at participating retailers during the holiday season will find themselves in possession of the Aion Holiday Ascension Pack. What’s inside? The pack contains a code that gives players 20 Lesser Life Potions, 15 Lesser Running Scrolls, 15 uses of the experience point-enhancing Lodas’s Amulet, and armour dyes that vary in colour depending on where you purchase it.

Amazon – Hot Orange Dye
Best Buy – Mustard Dye
Game Stop – True Black Dye
Target – True Red Dye
Walmart – True White Dye

Perhaps not the most enticing purchase bonus we’ve seen, but certainly one of the more colourful ones? Bonus points for anyone who gets the song reference in my choice of colours used in the image above.

NCsoft is operating six games at once? Yes they are, and Halloween is coming to each one of them. The Mad King Thorn returns to Guild Wars, Scarecrow Jack visits Lineage II, the original Lineage has a costume party, the City of Heroes faces a Halloween Apocalypse, and Exteel’s Mechnaughts get painted orange and purple.

Yes, the festivities abound, but by far my favourite is what’s going on in NCsoft’s latest release, Aion. Since the world is split into two halves, there are two different celebrations! The Asmodians, otherwise known as the best faction, celebrate by going on a Wild Hunt, cooking special dishes and having a good time. The lowly Elyos, on the other hand, get plagued by zombies. They totally deserve it too.

Check out the full list of NCsoft’s Halloween celebrations below!

Aion – Harvest Revel

During the Fall harvest, the people of Atreia have always celebrated the bounty of the land. Years ago, the joy of the annual revels was troubled by an eclipse-a peculiar and magical eclipse that brought darkness to Asmodae and Elysea. Ever since, for days during Harvest Revel, the sky goes dark and the people of Atreia join in the hunt.

Asmodians celebrate the bounty through the Wild Hunt, racing after the Wild Kurthanir hunt leader and cooking special dishes made from the meat. On the other side of Atreia, the Elyos encounter undead creatures pulled back into a semblance of life by the power of the eclipse. Elyos must join roving Dark Night bands to hunt and destroy the undead before they invade Elyos villages.

Each day during Harvest Revel players will be rewarded for their investment with new lore and tasty treats including a Halloween Hat and candy that will transform players into in game creatures!

· Starts: Sunday, October 25, 2009

· Ends: Saturday, October 31, 2009

Visit www.aiononline.com for more Aion-specific information.

Guild Wars – The Return of Mad King Thorn

It’s Halloween in Tyria, and that means one thing: the return of Mad King Thorn ! Similar to years past, the maniacal monarch has come to play, and he’s got a bag full of tricks and treats to delight and dismay. But non-tricksters fear not, there are plenty of ways to celebrate Halloween – participate in several special events (a new series of quests and a costume PvP brawl) or explore the decorated cities/towns adorned with Halloween décor.

· Starts: Friday, October 23, 2009

· Ends: Monday, November 2, 2009

Visit www.guildwars.com for more Guild Wars information.

City of Heroes – Triumph over the New Deadly Halloween Apocalypse

Players brace themselves for a new apocalypse as City of Heroes’ annual Halloween Event returns with legions of Zombies, Werewolves, Jack-o-Lanterns, and other foul denizens descend upon Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. This year they’re bringing even more powerful allies! The new apocalypse is deadlier than ever as mysterious monstrosities join forces with the Eidolons, Shivans, and others. Paragon City and the Rogue Isles are in terrible peril, and only the greatest Heroes and Villains can turn back the tide. The greater the challenge, the greater the reward!

· Starts: Tuesday, October 20, 2009

· Ends: Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Visit www.cityofheroes.com for more City of Heroes information.

Lineage II – “Scarecrow Jack” and Halloween Adena Art Contest

Halloween is just around the corner and players can win in-game prizes by showing off their creative holiday spirit. Players are encouraged to create and share their Halloween and/or autumn themed adena art (visual art created by dropping adena on the ground in-game to create an image seen from above.) For those just looking to have fun this Halloween, players can don a “Scarecrow Jack” illusion featuring two animated emotes. Along with the illusion, players will receive 5 revita pops to refill their vitality bars while in game.

· Starts: Wednesday, October 28, 2009

· Ends: Thursday, November 19, 2009

· Deadline for art submissions is Saturday, October 31, 2009 at 11:59pm CDT

Visit www.lineage2.com for more Lineage II information.

Lineage – ” Cavern of Chaos” Costume Party

The Lineage team is hosting the in-game party of all parties this Halloween – costumes not required, but highly encouraged! In addition to free polymorph “costumes,” most monsters will drop pumpkin seed, which is redeemable for prizes like a Pinewand to spawn monsters of choice, accessories, and Stat t-shirts from NPCs. No tricks about it, as an added bonus, players will be treated to increased item drops from Bosses. See you at the “Cavern of Chaos!”

· Starts: Wednesday, October 28, 2009

· Ends: Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Visit www.lineage.com for more Lineage information.

Exteel – Halloween Event
Smashing pumpkins and bag snatching is easy! Try picking on a Mechanaught your own size, even if it is painted Orange and Purple! Exteel players are encouraged to celebrate this Halloween colorfully with free Orange and Purple paint. But that’s not all! Players will receive +50% bonus credits during the week-long Exteel Halloween celebration!

· Starts: Wednesday, October 28, 2009

· Ends: Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Visit www.exteel.com for more Exteel information.

Between the Mission Architect and the recent addition of power customisation, City of Heroes is a much more interesting place to be than it was at the beginning of the year, and Paragon Studios wants lapsed players to come back and see what they’ve been missing next weekend. From October 8th through the 11th, all accounts in good standing will be reactivated so players can simply download the client and go to town…or city. On top of that, everyone who plays during those days will earn experience points twice as fast. Just be prepared for that sudden stop when the event comes to a close.

During the weekend several tipsters emailed us with horror stories about the European launch of NCsoft’s new MMORPG Aion. Like North America, many citizens of the UK and Europe found themselves waiting in line for hours at a time to get into the game. Others didn’t even get that far. Kotakuite Andrew pointed us to a set of screens like the one seen here, telling players that there were simply too many people connected to the servers to join a queue.

NCsoft responded in much the same way they responded to initial queues with the much the same response they did the North American version, though today they announced the opening of two new servers, one for English and one for the French. Hopefully those two will help ease the pain of eager players across the European continent.

The shopkeeper system has been abused terribly since the North American launch of Aion. Here’s how it was supposed to work: a player turns on the private store option, putting items up for sale into special slots, assigning prices. They then become a clickable shop that players can browse.

The problem that arose is that becoming a shop acted as an anti-idle, allowing players to remain connected for long periods of time with no input on their part. A player would slip into store mode, set one item at a ridiculously high price, and then wander off to eat dinner or run to the store, without fear of coming back disconnected and having to wait in line again. This contributed greatly to the long lines of people waiting to get into the game during peak playing times. With less people disconnecting, the wait time only grew.

This morning Aion’s servers went down for maintenance, and came back up with a 30-minute timer on personal shops, which should go great lengths towards cutting down wait time. At least until everyone figures out my special method of anti-idle, the pecking bird egg timer on the W key.

Server Maintenance [Aion - Thanks Alex!]

We’ve learned how big a focus ArenaNet was putting on the art for Guild Wars 2 during our annual pilgrimage to the Penny Arcade Expo, which really puts the The Art of Guild Wars 2 into perspective. This isn’t just concept art. As far as ArenaNet is concerned, this is the game itself. Consider the book a way of getting your hands on the MMO a little early.

North American fans can snag the book from the Penny Arcade Store for $US30, while our friends in Europia can order directly from NCsoft for £20.00 or €25.00.

Kotaku AU note: Both ship to Australia. NCsoft have sold out, but will take back orders.

The Art of Guild Wars 2 [Guild Wars 2 Website - Thanks Connor!]

Forcing customers to wait upwards of several hours during peak game-playing time is not the sort of first impression you want to give the player base, but Aion associate producer Lani Blazier says that this sort of bottlenecking is something that they had anticipated.

“Aion’s Head Start period and today’s launch (note interview took place late yesterday) are strong, and we are happy to see huge numbers of players diving into the game. The excitement that has impelled players into the game is obvious. We see it in the high numbers of concurrent players online in the game’s servers. This is the only time that every single player who wants to play Aion is online at the same time, so many players online have an expected impact on the world servers.”

Of course, anticipating is one thing, and fixing it is another thing entirely. The team is apparently looking at each server on a case-by-case basis to determine the best course of action to help alleviate the wait times.

“Some servers will have intermittent queues for a period of time, although these are dependent on each of the specific world servers. We are monitoring and tracking the server statistics in real time to ensure optimal experiences for players, and we have planned steps for each server to manage periods of high player demand.”

This goes against the general practice with new MMO launches, which is to simply throw new servers at the problem until players stop complaining. Lani explains that the Aion team is taking a more cautious route in expanding the number of game servers Aion makes available.

“The roll out of the original servers and each additional server has been planned with an eye toward a sustainable and stable release of each new world server. We have plans to build, test, and roll out each new server, to set them to appropriate time zone settings based on the whole community’s needs, and to balance each of them appropriately as to faction. We are managing the roll out of game servers at a steady and deliberate pace. We want to give players the gameplay they deserve in the long term, as well during the expansive burst phase of Head Start and the short-term post-launch period.”

So what about immediate steps? According to NCsoft West’s PR director Ryan James, who spoke to us during our communications with Lani, relief is coming as early as this weekend.

“Since the opening of Head Start this past weekend, we’ve have been heavily focused on striking the delicate balance between managing busy servers with queue times versus overcompensating by adding new servers too quickly that are then under populated and don’t deliver a fun experience for players. We did indeed see an initial rush on the first days of Head Start which resulted in longer than desired queue times for some of our servers, and we are working around the clock to alleviate this. In fact, we are happy to confirm we have increased our server caps and are adding an additional server in both North America and Europe by this weekend, and we will continue to evaluate adding additional servers.”

Once again, there’s that emphasis on using caution. It’s a bit of juggling act, really. If they just opened up ten new servers right away, a year from now we might be posting news about server consolidation, which reflects badly on an MMO no matter what the reasons behind it might be.

We’ll see if caution is the way to go this weekend, when the players who missed out on the Sunday launch and don’t have time to play during the week hit the servers en masse. Fingers crossed!

Speaking of long queue times, last night was simply amazing. I spent 40 minutes in the queue at first, and then my power flickered due to these storms. Then I waited one hour, 45 minutes, and my PC locked up switching the window into Aion. Finally, after two hours, 45 minutes, I got in, killed two creatures, and decided I was too tired and went to bed. Good times.

Still, Lani is pretty damn awesome, even if she does share the first name of the ex-girlfriend who left me for another woman. Again, good times.

If you look closely, you can see my chanter-to-be Caliban, lost amidst a sea of people acting how they normally do when gathered in large groups via the internet. The server is Azphael; the side Asmodian. For the next five hours I would randomly crash three times, say the word “f–k” on at least 120 separate occasions, and eventually make it to level 9, at which point I left the newbie hubbub behind in favour of the more subdued, higher-level hubbub.

Yesterday we talked about queues a upwards of seven hours long, and while I certainly commiserate with those left waiting, it almost seemed as if the servers remembered who was online in case of a crash, letting them slip right back in as soon as they returned. At least this was my experience. I’m almost positive that at one point my server went down completely, and there were a few instances of severe server-wide rubber-banding (running the length of a road and finding yourself snapped back to the beginning), but otherwise things seemed rather smooth considering the huge influx of players.

My main problem was due to the initial rush. With that many people in your starting zone, quest items will be camped, and quest monsters will be slaughtered mercilessly. At first NCsoft had 10 instances of the newbie area available for players to freely switch between, but each one was packed, causing severe quest bottlenecks, especially when the quest required players to click on one item that spawned every two minutes. It was chaotic.

Later in the day I went back through and completed some of the quests I skipped, and things seemed to have calmed down a bit. I suspect the full launch tomorrow will experience similar problems. My suggestion? Skip quests and grind, or simply wait a bit to start levelling up.

I’ve managed to make it to level 12 so far myself, with Caliban the chanter kicking arse and taking names left and right while searching for a guild that’s a little more about roleplay than most. I know, good luck with that, right? Either way, I hope to see some of you in game. If I don’t respond, I’m asleep with my face on the keyboard.