Aion Review

But to notice this, you are required to take a closer look because it’s very easy to get mesmerized by Aion. The game is incredibly beautiful, the graphics are of high class and I completely fell for the alien design. It is fortunate, because although I have a lot of fun when I lose myself in the world of Aion, it’s not innovative. It is in many ways a very traditional online role playing game, for good or bad. It is easy to feel at home in the system, but they haven’t taken any risks, like a mix between World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online. Except that it’s prettier.

NCsoft has taken a couple of decisions that not only concerns me, they also surprise me. Aion is basically a PvP game, but there is nothing in the lower levels that actually suggests that it is. I don’t really know how NCsoft have thought here, because it’s not until you’ve reached level 25 and got a quite some good playing experience that you get to meet other players in combat. That until then only deal with the more traditional online role play to do quests, fiddling with your equipment and chasing down all sorts of monsters feels wrong from the developers’ side.

It is in many ways just another example of how unoriginal Aion is. While Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning went on to give its players experience points by fighting against other players, as both an instruction during the first few levels, but also to allow the fighting controll the entire game experience, Aion is playing it safe and doesn’t even seem to make an effort to offer the new player a good unique experience.

The wings and flying, as I mentioned earlier, is never given the space that would have been needed to give Aion that little extra. At least not until you’ve already played throught the same show that you have ??several times before, especially if you’ve played as many online role-playing as myself.

Crafting new equipment or potions or other things, is also a part of Aion that also could have had a little more love from the developers. It works, certainly, but not much more interesting than, for example, World of Warcraft. The involvement of “work orders”, crafting-related assignments that make it easier and cheaper to get better at what you have chosen to focus on, is a welcoming addition, but also nothing that is new in the genre for its time. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and EverQuest 2 had already done that and even better.

The PvP is fast and intense, just how I like it. There’s nothing much to complain about there, except, as I said before, that there is too little Pvp in the lower levels.

What’s also nice with Aion is that it is relatively difficult. Not like in the old Everquest or Ryzom, which more or less forced people into groups in order to survive, but enough for it to feel challenging. Fighting an enemy is no major concern, as long as it is around your own level, but when it suddenly comes another it gets a bit harder.

Aion may be unoriginal, but it works. It’s difficult to analyze it more closely as you wander around and get mesmerized by how beautiful it is. Aion’s script is also well written, engaging, and if you don’t care about the background story and just does what is said to you without reading the quest descriptions, you can miss out on a lot. The campaign that follows you through the game is even exciting at times.

If you haven’t played online role.plaing games before, you will learn to love this game. It is majestic and beautiful and easy to get completely settled in. But if you have played other online role-playing games, be it World of Warcraft or The Lord of the Rings Online, you have less to get here. We have seen it and done it before.

Graphics, flying, gathering .. if I was ranking on that I would give the game a much higher score. And if you are an avid pvper.. and can group or endure the ganking to finally level so you can gank .. you will also find in this game a playground to your liking.

Cooperating guilds going after an enemy fort was also immensely satisfying. I do not know if these events still take place.

It is a shame. This game has/had so much potential and squandered it by refusing to address the botting issues (at least when I was playing it) and providing protected pve leveling for those who do not like pvpve play. Other games have solved this dilemma by providing contained areas for that activity.

So .. in conclusion .. if you are a pvp advocate .. you may want to give it a try. If not, find another game. May I suggest Rift.

Sincerely,
Pur3Doom

Check the Link for more info.

http://na.aiononline.com/news/announcements/adventurers-mentors-crucibles-oh

thank you and Enjoi! 🙂

Chanter 55 on Perento

There’s a significant lack of endgame content–like, maybe two or three instances? Granted, they did add the Assault on Balaurea expansion pack later on, but I didn’t stick around long enough for that. In my opinion, it was a little too late, and a good portion of the community had already left in frustration months prior.

There are still plenty of other issues–unbalanced servers, laggy fortress sieges, short flight times versus long recharge time, etc.–but I think the biggest one is that Aion seems like an unfinished game. If you don’t believe me, just go watch Aion Vision. They keep the video right there in their media section. See that? City assaults, houses, mounts and swimming. Swimming! If we had had all that around launch, Aion would have been right up there with WoW. Still don’t believe me? Go run into the nearest body of water (in-game, not literally). What happens? You run along the bottom and slowly watch your health go down. There’s no HUD underwater filter, no swimming animation and definitely no water mobs. Seems pretty unfinished to me.

Truth is, Aion is still a wonderful game. And if you have friends to play with, its fun can last forever–but the community has deteriorated a lot because because of these problems, and I doubt any amount of fixes are going to bring it back to what it once was.

Story line: In the two Fraction, Elyos and Asmodeans, you are given two different stories…The Elyos character has forgotten his/her memory, and now has to start back at level one. The Asmodean is a simple low life human, who has his/her fortune told and soon learns that they are going to rise to be a Deava. The entire levels 1-10 are based on that story. Later you are just a regular Deava trying to do what is best for your part of the world…Until you hit level 25. That is when you actually start killing the other half of the fraction.

PvP: Yes, PvP is a major part of leveling once you hit level 25..but that is he point of the game! The entire story is about how the Asmodeans and the Elyos are fighting for Atreia(their home world). And every now and then these giant things called Balaur come out. But if you don’t like PvPing don’t get this game!!!Especially if you’re going to bash on it.

Character Customization: The customization elements for your character are unlike any other Mmorpg game out there, unless I haven’t heard of it yet. You can pick from how big your eyes are, to if you want big feet or a frown. It is almost like building a Sim, in the Sim 3 game of course, not the older one. The armor/weapons, are different too. Once in the Abyss you earn Abyss points, and if you accumulate enough you can take stuff to these vendors, and they will morph two things into one special weapon. It makes it so that almost no one will look the same as you or have their armor exactly like yours.

Grouping: In the Asmodians there are these things called Black Claws, they are probably one of the hardest things to kill..they are also Elites. Once you get to level 18 you are required to go into their village and mess with them….Level 25’s have problems with these things. They are ridiculous…as far as the Elyos have gone, I haven’t leveled up a character enough to know if there is anything that bad….So yes they’re will definitely be grouping, there may be now way around it.

Flying: Although most people say that flying is what makes it different….you can’t use it all of the time. You may glide anywhere you heart desires but actual flying is limited to areas. When you are in one of those areas fighting something on the ground it is easy to make a quick get away if you need it…but all together in Aion 2.0 they need to fix this.

Things to Come: In the new Aion 2.0 trailers they show better graphics(hard to believe), underwater cities, mounts, and house…and a lot more dungeons and instances. I hope I will be getting this expansion or whatever form it comes in….all in all I think this game was worth every cent!

Extra Fact!: In Aion the time you buy does not get used up on days you do not use it!!! (One of my favorite things….)

The main thing people seem to not understand, however, is that you have to keep in mind that this is mainly a pvp game. Yeah, there’s pve elements early in, and you don’t have to commit to it until around 25 or so, but you’re not going to enjoy this game to its fullest if you don’t enjoy pvp. Period. And unfortunately, that’s where the game starts to suffer.

To begin with, class balance is a little out of whack. Some classes just can’t get a break until they’re higher in the levels and get certain spells/abilities. Other classes have it way easier and can mop the floor with most folks (unless the person they pick a fight with really knows their class). Also, those of the lower levels will find their leveling time to be far more frustrating because folks way above your level will find and kill you fairly often. Getting used to death is an important part of this game.

The biggest issue I have, however, is that the game overall feels too much like a time-sink. There’s not much reward from doing most quests, and things just take way too long to do, or it costs way too much to use even the most basic services, such as going to the next area.

Not a bad game, but it’s certainly not the best.

it doesn’t take hours to find a group…or perhaps if it dooes, move on and go onto a different quest and then come back later when you’re a higher level?

i mean really guys…don’t give this game a bad rating just because you can’t handle all the abilities it has to offer

it feels accurate to say that WoW and other MMORPG’S must have baby-sat it’s users 🙂

I never engaged in PvP, and it also took hours to find groups for the group quests. I wouldn’t recommend this game unless you either have a plan for leveling quickly to get into a decent guild, or have some support from friends or something.

Flying is a nice feature, but your flight time is severly limited and if you bought the limited edition of the game- the wings that came with it aren’t even equipable until you hit level 30- which will take the average person at least a month if not two to achieve. Quests drop significantly at higher levels where the XP needed to level increase even more. Getting from 35-40 takes as much XP as it did to get from 1-35, etc.

There are positives; but between the hassle of RMT/bots and then the fact you have ample reason to use their services coupled with Gankfest PVP action- it’s tough to find them. I’ve played since opening and I keep waiting for things to improve…but it’s too darn slow.

Keep in mind that Aion has been online for over 12 months in Korea- so many of these start up issues really aren’t brand new- the fact they brought it over as is makes you wonder.

I didnt get to end game yet, some are saying that is even better. Cant wait to test it.

Flying is not as exciting as I wanted it to be. I wish we could fly anytime we feel like it.

10/10 from yours truly.

if you want to quit wow for a new game choose AION it’s as i said nothing special but at least you need more skill and it’s not as annoying as wow

I dont mean to keep beating a dead horse here, but until you tried the flight system with these over the top graphics added to the combat system you have no room to judge this game. Period. The closed beta Events arent even over yet. The game is still months from being out and I have already pre-ordered. Along with friends that I play with. Its simply that good.

Pros: Flight, Combo system, Classes, Character Customization (I spent 30 minutes making my character), STORYLINE QUESTS WITH CUTSCENES. One big thing too no one has mentioned, Once in game you get put into channels which divides people up to save the game from OVERPOPULATION. Thats right OVERPOPULATION. Oh sidetracked…my point was you dont need to relog to switch channels you can do it right from the interface.

Cons: flight speed is a little slow in my opinion, Costs alot to fly I think, and once you get out of the starting area it became increasingly difficult to find my way around town. Its so big O.O, but thats only after playing in that town for only like 30 minutes xD

About being a WoW killer. People talk about it all the time. When will the giant go down. My answer to you is never. People wont stop playing WoW for this game. It just wont happen. Itll never happen. WoW has to phase out on its own. Nothing will “kill” it, BUT I think if any game was to give them competition in number of subscriptions worldwide it will be this game.

Also like to point out that I spent HOURS messing with configs, and yes, there is point and click, and yes, you can shut if off if you dont like it. That is a plus really, because if you are used to trying to click a target to attack, you will find yourself constantly running right past it. Turn it off FAST!
If you really spend some time messing with the graphics settings, you can find that you can turn some all the way up for beautifying effect and the not so important ones all the way off for increased performance. I was getting 30-45 fps with a GeForce 7950 with shaders down, water off, and texture cranked. It looked pretty good. Oh, and got to have distance cranked and background.

And as far as WoW killer, well, it really depends on how they plan expansions and how they execute end game content. Flying around and fighting is good and all, but you gotta have something to fight and a reason to fight it. I really don’t want to see end game bosses end up as kite fests like Warhammers kings turned out to be. I quit the next day. Haven’t looked back. And people say you can’t compare AION to WoW, but yeah, you can. AION is on a different level, sure, but it is still an mmo that wants your money, so they better do something to earn it!
Peace

The storyline, from what i have read, sounds interesting, if not another war between races, still i think this will be a good starting point for the game.

The WINGS!! i love this idea, everyone can fly.
well i assume after a small series of quests and some requirements which i believe wont be too taxing on your gamerhood.

Pvp, to be honest i havnt heard much about the PvP system but, looking at NCsofts other games i assume the PVP will be a fun and innovative experience.

To put it bluntly this game looks stunning, the scenery, characters, NPCs, skills, it all looks amazing and i cannot wait until this is released.

The one thing i have to bring up is that i believe it will have a monthly fee unlike Guild Wars, provided it is no higher then WoW, ill give it a shot.

My personal bias is I do play WoW often but I am looking to move to Aion once I get into U.S. BETA (when it comes).

One – Aion developers if you read these, you need to open this game up to a broad spectrum fan base. Easy move style, the point to click is annoying, point behind the mob you get stuck walking around it while it smacks you in the face, don’t copy all the free MMOs out there like Cabal, Last Chaos, Shaiya. Point to click is crap imo. Easy interface, Bags able to click and show items on screen. And action bars, make sure we have easy access to all of our spells when they come in handy (and make sure we will need all of our spells).

Leave your interface open for Addons, I know a lot of players hate addons but more than not they like em, easy tracking, easy map coordination, keeping track of items in your inv, gold etc.

Don’t let people get their gold easily, it sucks when you are starting a new MMO and the first mob you kill drops 1k + gold… WTH?

Let professions open up player style, items crafted that can only be used per class/specialization/player. It is fun to have unique items in each profession that can be utilized by everyone, not just say… Blacksmithing for warriors.

Let story enrapture the player. This is a visually stunning game, don’t waste it by focusing on PvP alone. Like your website explains both books, let the story do talking as well through the quests (obviously some quests are mob grinds but that is to be expected).

Don’t let this game go down the tubes like Tabula Rasa. Obviously when this game first comes out you will need to patch so we expect it, but don’t release prematurely without trying to fix the major content bugs (like AOC & Warhammer did). Think of this as not competing with WoW (trust me a lot of players are getting restless), so you want this game to be fantastic e.g. listen to the complaints in your BETA forums.

I will review it fully once I get into BETA so be expecting it, for now, in anticipation I give this game a 9