Lately the MMO world has been buzzing with interest about a new offering from NCSoft called Aion. I purchased the Collectors Edition in order to get access to the paid preview otherwise known as the closed beta which is only available on select “beta weekends”. Kudos to the NCSoft marketing department for this clever ploy.
I’d just like to share a few of my thoughts regarding Aion while they are still fresh. This is going to be a rapid-fire guerrilla blog post. By no means is this a complete analysis or review of this MMO. It’s just what I saw and remembered after playing a few nights.
The Setting
Aion takes place in an all too familiar setting of a war torn world that has been split into two factions which are pitted against each other™. This time the world is named Etrea and the good guys are the angel-like Elyos and the bad guys are the demon-like Asmodians. In the middle is the Abyss which was formed by the Cataclysm which destroyed the Tower of Eternity that used to join both of the worlds.
Both sides also face “an ancient evil” called the Balaur that threatens the very fabric of their world and which serves as convenient PVE villains much like the Burning Crusade or the Scourge from WoW. Of course, all of this is standard fantasy MMO stuff.
Class Selection
The interactive screen that the player is presented with is the class creation screen. You have 4 choices that fill the traditional fantasy RPG roles:
- warrior
- scout
- mage
- priest
What I find interesting is that these classes are displayed in their full regalia — obviously high level gear. This is important because NCSoft is trying to tantalize the player and sell them the future power and prestige of each class. It’s very hard to resist this MMO with such impressive demonstrations of each class. Select one and they come to life with animation and speech.
Also worth noting, at around level 9 when you complete the main campaign quest line you qualify to “ascend” and become a Daeva which is an immortal with wings (eventually flying is a major part of PVP combat in an area known as the Abyss). At this point you get to choose between 2 classes. So a mage would be able to become a sorcerer or a spiritmaster. I thought they handled this quite well.
Character Creation
After you select your class and gender it’s time to customize your avatar. Creating a character is a joy to behold in Aion. The artwork is outstanding with very few Uncanny Valleys. The developers have wisely created an extensive number of attractive/handsome preset appearances that enables the player to quickly choose one without having to fuss over details of choosing the right nose, face, ears, etc. This lets the player get right into the game.
For players that like to create their characters from scratch NCSoft offers players an ingenious system that let’s you change any feature in a basic way then gets even more detailed with advanced customized features. The key here is that the player can decide how much they want to customize their avatars.
Since Aion was purportedly developed in Korea there is a distinctive Asian feeling to many of the faces which is understandable. Many of them are done in the anime style.
One issue that I’m concerned about is that there is only one race that players can play in Aion: humans. For most fantasy MMO enthusiasts who delight in being able to choose from a wide variety of races this may be limiting and as Tobold aptly noted will affect replayability. Another thing I’m worried about is that it could lead to a very boring and homogeneous world where everyone is the same.
User Interface
State of the art. Still a bit buggy dragging icons from your ability panel on to your hot bar. I loved the transparent map feature that comes on the screen when you press N.
Combat
I found the mage class to be a bit laggy while I was casting spells. On the other hand the melee classes were very fast and exciting to play. Lots of sound effects and visual effects.
Each time you level your existing spells get upgraded to the next level which is convenient. However you still have to visit your class trainer to learn new spells and abilities which is a good thing. The more reasons that players have to visit towns and cities the better. Other MMOs like EQ2 have made class trainers all but obsolete by giving the player almost no reason to ever visit them which I find perplexing.
One feature I really fell in love with is the concept of “chains”. Each chain requires that you know 2 spells: the spell which triggers the chain and the chain spell itself. Once you select the trigger spell/ability on your hot bar if your chain spell is available it will replace the trigger icon on your hot bar and it starts to flash.
This is brilliant because it saves you time and due to the onscreen visual cue which has been placed in an easy to view place on the screen, you can watch combat instead of having to focus on your hot bar.
Another reason I like chains is that it saves you valuable real estate on your hot bar. Instead of having both the trigger ability and the chain ability you only need the trigger ability situated on your hotbar. This is pure genius.
There is nothing worse then having a MMO that is so complex that you can’t enjoy the combat on your screen and instead have to watch for your abilities to refresh on your hotbar.
Another great feature that really excited me was the concept of Divinity Points. These points have their own bar and acrue to the player after each kill where they get experience. They are used in more complex spells and abilities and can turn the tide in battle if used correctly. If you die you lose all of your Divinity Points. This is a great way to encourage the player to play well instead of a more severe punishment for dying. Once the player becomes aware of the power of these points they suddenly step up their game to prevent dying. For me this is nothing short of terrific game design.
Typical Quest-Centric Gameplay
This is basically a WoW clone as far as the quest-centric gameplay that I witnessed from levels 1-14 — that’s as far as I got. It’s essentially a single-player MMO. Not once was a group ever required to get anything done. I’m not even sure if they have general chat channels. I could not find any except /say and /shout.
Quests are broken down into 3 different types: main plot storyline/campaign, quests and tasks. Complete enough of the storyline quests and you get nice rewards along with personalized and/or stock cutscenes. This is a page right out of Blizzard’s Wrath of the Lich King.
The Zones
The zones are laid out like one big long amusement park ride on rails. Very rarely is there any reason to deviate from the “golden path”. As I watched players running from point A to point B I suddenly remembered that old but fun video game called Lemmings. Everyone seemed to be behaving like a lemming, doing as their told by the questgivers.
It was reminiscent of the plot devices you used to see in action thriller movies where the psychopathic villain makes the hero run from phone booth to phone both and calling in instructions and threatening the hostage with death if he doesn’t make it in time. So explorers may be a bit disappointed in this MMO. Time will tell though.
The zones are very linear as noted by Keen:
In games like WAR, LOTRO, and even Aion the worlds are so linear that all we have to do is follow a road to the next location. Players have no reason, and often no option, to diverge down a different path. There is often only one way to play a MMORPG released in today’s market, and trying to play it differently makes you a “niche gamer”, a “roleplayer” or a “nostalgic”. I do not want my content handed to me one instance at a time and I certainly do not want to have to follow one road the entire game. I can understand that people find comfort from some form of linearity, but we’ve crossed the line.
The artwork of the zones is top notch. There is a harmonious and consistent art style used throughout this MMO. Each time you enter a new area you know it by the contrast in colors and vegetation. This is directly out of the Blizzard MMO playbook and not a bad thing.
The Mobs
I found the mobs to be a bit of a disappointment. They felt a bit too cutesy and not menacing enough — just my personal taste. It was hard to relate to many of them as they were completely original creations. I think adding more traditional mob types into the mix wouldn’t hurt this MMO. I didn’t notice any undead mobs…yet. Is this because of Asian superstitions that we can’t have undead mobs? I know that skeletons depicted in an MMO are taboo in China.
It seemed there were just too many mobs around in the newbie areas. At times it felt like being in a wildlife park. Every square foot of Aion seems to have a mob on it. Less is more.
The animations were very well done. The mobs seemed to have the illusion of life and behaved and wandered around quite nicely. Contrast that with what you see often in Turbine offerings where mobs are mostly stationary pinatas.
The NPCs
I was impressed by the variety of NPCs. They weren’t just recycled versions of character avatars which is the cheap way out for many MMOs. I saw some old people and lots of different vendor graphics in the towns and cities.
The Music
The music has its high points and low points. At best it’s some very ethereal New Age which works well for a MMO at worst it sounds like fusion jazz or progressive rock. I spent most of my time playing the “good” Elyos race so I didn’t get to hear much of the “evil” race the Asmodians. In my brief time there I heard lots of thrash metal music which was a bit over the top to be honest.
My advice for them would be to choose music that is more universal and orchestral in nature. As a musician, I would urge NCSoft not to skimp by exclusively using samplers and synths.
Gathering and Crafting
Gathering a resource node takes quite a while. You have a success bar and a failure bar. Not sure how the player can influence either but I noticed that the success rate increased significantly with each attempt at gathering the same node. Also there is just one gathering skill unlike other MMOs where you need to train in a special skill to harvest a particular resource.
I didn’t get a chance to experience crafting.
Asian Influence
One thing is certain, this game was created with Asian sensibilities and initially aimed at the Asian market. The avatar artwork is decidedly anime inspired although if you work at it you can get some nice western style avatars as well.
Many of the vocal sounds have not been yet translated into English. According to Aion Associate Producer Lanier Blazier they intend to have English as well as German and French voices for their respective countries once they launch.
Much of the text in the game needs a second pass with someone who speaks, understands and thinks in English. If NCSoft wants this MMO to be successful then they should use their remaining time before the game is released to properly localize it.
Special Mention
The emotes are truly outstanding. Typing /sleep makes you sleep on a cloud. Typing /sit has you pull out a chair. Once they get all of the voices synced up to the emotes this MMO is going to be a role-players dream.
One last thing which I absolutely loved is the mechanic that turns your avatar into a vendor. This reminded me of the days players would sell items back in the East Commons tunnel in EverQuest except without the hassle!
This cool feature enables you to sell items, set prices and set your vending message. After you enable your “store”, suddenly your avatar pulls out a chair and starts going into vendor type animations. I really thought this was amazing and a wonderful way to personalize having to sell items to other players. And yes there is an auction house too for people who prefer to sell that way.
Concluding Thoughts
Despite some of the refreshing innovations, I got the feeling that with Aion is playing it rather safe and we are seeing nothing terribly new here. Aion is the kind of world class MMO that we’re going to be seeing a lot of in the future. It has all the elements of polish and refinement that players have come to expect in a MMO and it most surely will follow in the well-trodden footsteps of Blizzard’s WoW if all goes according to NCSoft’s plans.
Still, success is not absolutely assured. There are many questions that are going to come up. One of my concerns is that leveling seemed a bit too fast and I wonder how this MMO will feel beyond level 14? Will it have staying power? Will there be enough community building mechanics? How much PVP vs. PVE will be in the MMO? What do players do once the quests run out at the endgame?
Although I’ve only seen a fraction of what to expect, Aion has made quite an impression on me. This is one smooth, slick and seductive MMO and it’s going to be very hard to resist this once it goes live. And did I mention that players get wings? 🙂
-Wolfshead
You forgot the super important boob slider that was also present in Age of Conan. It seems this slider system becomes the new standard way to customize face and body shape.
About levelling speed: Nonstop duo play at the weekends, and we did not make it past 23. The xp curve needed to level seems to go up quite fast.
There is also a XP penalty upon death, that costs money to recover and I tell you it HURTS. At 23 it is some 7300 Kinah already. And the average drops around this level are not so much better, except if you get a cool green “X of mirage” item.
I was pretty much impressed by Aion, too, but you are right: It does not really bring the genre ahead. But it is not released unfinished or seriously bugged like many other MMOs.
I wonder about the PvPvE part. I just noticed that Sorcerers make primary targets for ganking. They die quickly, and one cannot ignore them as they can easily do the same to you.
What happened is that a ! shout came in, usually followed by a ctrl-right click generated map location “X”.
“RIFT!” or “Asmo raid!” followed, and then even the lowbies ran there to zerg the enemy. Enemies were often ?? level to me, or maybe all of them. But I could hit them at level 20 already, they were probably level 25. Level difference did not matter that much. I got no killing blow but got credit for several kills nevertheless.
Crafting is praised by many korean players and many more experienced beta players. But it is hard to get into and distinctively alien to westerners. The economy is good and it seems to make sense that crafted items are much better than the vendor items, from food to potions to armor/weapons. I checked and it seems that player crafted stuff is often even better than most drops, at least around level 22.
But the crafting itself seems to be an AFK snorefest. You do not need to collect materials to level, you do that with “workorders” – you buy the required materials from a NPC and then afk craft away. You only need materials if you want to create an item for yourself or sale.
I think it is tedious and grindy, but unlike most WoW crafting the items are very good and thus also sell very well.
I think I already twittered you that you naturally want to group up for faster levelling past 10, I wonder if this trend continues. Right now I see a team of two as ideal setup for fast levelling to 25.
Something for your “improve EQ2 starter impressions” article:
NCSoft plans to replace (or add) some of Aion’s premade character models with westernized versions
http://www.aionsource.com/forum/663574-post.html
Not to discount your first impressions because they are valid ones, but I thought I’d clear up some misconceptions.
1) You are right to pick up the angelic/demonic vibes from the two races as that was obviously the designer’s intent. But the Asmodeans are not really “evil” per se.
2) Lack of starting areas is a true complaint but lack of races can be alleviated by the character creation screen which allows one to make all the prototypical fantasy races like elves, dwarves, halflings, etc. if they wished.
3) You only got to level 14 so the content seems to be solo-focused but in a few levels you will get [GROUP] quests which will be impossible to solo at that level. Believe me, grouping is the way to go in this game. Also, the global chat channels have been deactivated in Beta.
Thank you for the clarifications 🙂
You must be new to Eastern-developed MMOs. These character-vendors are a standard feature, and they seem fun until the game becomes established and common areas (city gates, places like that) become literally carpeted with them, creating crazy lag and making it hard to see through all the labels.
This is my first Asian developed MMO. The anime inspired artwork in previous MMO has been a big turn-off for me.
I agree that this vendor feature could have the potential to start crowding city spaces. Perhaps they could have special stalls in each town or city to accomadate them? However, I did like the chaos. Isn’t that what a city is supposed to be? Teaming with vendors haggling?
Well many of these reviews online have said pretty much what the game feels like. What bothers me on the Asian side of things… is the gold farmers!!! I cannot believe how they just let them spam the global chat with their advertising, whisper you and email you. I mean these games have GMs don’t they? How can they not see this. This is the one thing that would seriously make me shut this game down and never look back, they actually tolerate the gold spammer’s harassing their players, to the point you can’t even talk in Global chat without blocking like 50 names…. it doesn’t make sense to me if they want to come North America side… I mean Age of Conan, WoW, Warhammer would be banning clients right, left and center if they were spamming gold selling in Global? Why do they put up with it.
The chain casting feature kinda sounds like /castsequence macros in WoW, or like macros in general, is there something else to it that makes it unique?
Are there different servers on which you play, or is everything on one server, like EVE?
If there are different servers, will there be Asian/USA/Europe servers?
Sounds like you didnt have time to experience it, but is there instanced content, and how big a part is it in the world?
Are the major zones instanced, like in Age of Conan, or like in WoW?
Is there player housing? 🙂 How about guilds?
Can you play as Balaur faction, or only Elyos/Asmodian?
One thing I have to mention is that you compare everything to Blizzard, when things like truly distinguished zones based on vegetation or colors have been around for awhile in MMOs 😉 I can think of many zones in EQ like Everfrost or The Grey that are great examples. Also, the cutscenes have been around for a long time as well, long before WoW’s LK. They existed in CoX and FF11.
Having said that, I was REALLY engrossed in Aion. I played very little so as not to spoil it for myself before released (I tend to do that ><) so I only went to level 11 or so, just enough to ascend and see what the outer world was like.
I saw giant floating whale things as I stood atop a lofty island in the sky, people actually responded to me in town (NPCs) based on what I'd done, offered to sing me songs, etc. There are lots of little details in the game that make it awesome, even though it's still the same ol' grinding MMO. Sure it's not innovative really, it's not revolutionary on any scale, but it's pretty and it's new 😀
I think people who say that Aion (or any new MMO) is “just like WoW” have forgotten just how derivative WoW is of all the MMOs that preceded it–not to mention Dungeons and Dragons, MUDs, all manner of text-based RPGs, etc. etc. Any intelligently designed MMO is going to make use of a certain set of conventions that have become accepted and established during the evolution of this game genre. That’s because those conventions have been found to work, and because players are used to them–thus making the game easy to learn.
I like the look of Aion, so I’m planning to give it a try. At least I won’t run into arrogant raid groups who boot me because I don’t have all the right gear and the perfect DPS…
Pretty much sums up my thoughts completely. Aion is a nice game, slick and smooth. I’m sure it will do well and appeal to a certain audience but it doesn’t offer anything new to the table. That’s not a bad thing, just not great.
I’ve bought the game and will play it. I’m expecting to like it and play it for a while but not for it to rock my life and change my world. Nothing wrong with that though. It’s just a game after all.
I just can’t see how I can justify spending money on something that other games do just as well, if not better. If the flying PvP gimmick turns out to be great, then I’ll jump in and hoof my way to the Abyss ASAP. Otherwise, every last smidgeon of information I find is saying that it’s great, but it’s great stuff we’re already used to being great (thanks to WoW).
Maybe I’m being unfair, and maybe I’m becoming more jaded as I burnout from World of Warcraft overload, but I really want a game that does PvP right (not just instanced PvP) and implements the gameworld as something more than a rails-shooter that leads to end-game.
Aion has a ridiculous amount of potential, and I have the desire to see what the big deal is once NCSoft offers a free trial and downloadable client, but to me, this one seems like the perfect candidate for a F2P/microtransactions model rather than regular subscriptions.
People often do not notice it, but Aion makes use of instancing in the non-PvP starter levels, i.e. Poeta and Verteron (for the Elyos).
The instances are called “channels” and you are not really told you are in an instance, you notice it if you are in a party and team up and your buddy is in another instance.
You can then, unlike Guild Wars, on the fly change the instance and stay in the same place. I guess they will use a similar model in Guild Wars 2!
I am not sure if the first PvP areas, Eltnen (E) and Morheim (A) still make use of instancing, but the gigantic “Abyss” areas are NOT instanced, only one instance. But well, the Abyss is divided up in 3 parts, upper, lower and the middle.
-> Aion is basically the marriage of some of WoW’s polish and features with Lineage 2 and Dark Age of Camelot.
Guilds are called Legions and there is no player housing. The Balaur are a NPC controlled faction in the Abyss, they are basically Dragons and Lizards. They are no farm mobs, they team up and hunt for players. I mean already the rather dumb Krall mobs take a whole party to take down, and Balaur… well, they are something like the Dragons in the movie “Reign of Fire”. They are no pushovers.
http://www.aionfly.com/gallery/more/beta-weekend-screenshots/
Aionfly decided to host my beta weekend screenshot collection. I thought he would pick some of them, but he hosted them all. I started from scratch in BW4 to play with a friend, I thought I would switch back to my previously created Sorcerer, but I stuck with the similar looking one which should only accompany him till level 10. But I got more quests with her, and thus I stuck with this char… I just wanted to say I want to apologize for the extreme size of certain body parts. I had to create her in a hurry, had no time to take care of proportions too much! 🙂
What irks me is the misspelling of “Namaah” instead of “Naamah”, the name was taken, and I am going to snatch it on release, no matter what. :>
I wonder about the PvP part! Not many people could test it yet; levelling becomes slower and slower, so no fear you level to fast, Wolfshead.
The “PvPvE” with a mix of raid and castle sieges in the Abyss could be Aion’s selling point, but also the thing that scares away people.
The game is from an “alien eastern gaming culture” that did not experience the PvP/PvE split.
A solid write-up but I’m gonna have to disagree with you on one point. I was a little irked when you called the Divine Power bar “nothing short of terrific game design” as in my opinion it is quite the opposite.
The designers of Spellborn came up with a similar system that granted a buff for killing mobs without any deaths (PeP Ranking). In the end the player base realised that this kind of system rewards those who take absaloutely no risks, instead of “encouraging the player to play well” (playing well is anologous to tackling appropriate challenges in my book).
The problem is exacerbated when you are allowed to take your PeP/DP advantage into PVP. Admittedly it was more annoying in Spellborn as you never “spent” PeP, but the idea of grinding easy content for a boost in combat is much the same.
In my experience DP was a nice get out of jail card when I ran into unexpected trouble, but it was also a reminder to drop back and grind out some easier mobs whenever I used it up (experience debt is a pain). To be honest I’d prefer to take on a challenge (i.e. a wandering named mob) without having to worry about xp debt or maybe grinding out some more PeP/DP before I give it a go.
This is a great point. I haven’t considered how it would affect the player’s behavior regarding PVP combat.
I’d like to see PVP combat develop it’s own levels and abilities independent of PVE. I just don’t think that PVE and PVP mix very well.
I just like the idea that players should want to play at the top of their game and strive to avoid death at all costs. Harsh death penalties is one way to do this but it seems to have fallen out of favor in recent years. I think the best way is to reward risks much more instead of penalizing failure so much.
The problem with a MMO and most new quest-driven MMOs like WoW is that on it’s most basic level when a player is fighting non-instanced content there are very few rewards or incentives. They’ve even removed treasure chests from WoW.
In the old days you had an advantage for “clearing” a camp by having the mobs spawn one by one, which meant you could pull them one at a time as they respawned. You also had a chance that a named mob would eventually spawn if you stayed there long enough.
Contrast that with WoW where you in a cave or area to get an item or kill one easy named boss — all for a quest. Then you leave never to return.
It’s interesting that you like the vendor stall aspect while I’ve read a few others that absolutely hate it. It’s common in Asian games because it requires you to stay online; when they charge per hour, that was a smart way to get some extra cash from people. Now it seems inferior to the AH, where you can easily search for items you want to buy.
I also wonder how much of a clone the game will end up being, too. As Beej points out above, the initial feedback seems to be it’s very WoW-influenced. If Aion does well, this might just re-ignite the fervor to try to just clone WoW for other large games. Hopefully I’m wrong….
For me having to actually be online to sell items reminds me of the old days when mechanics like the Bazaar and Auction Houses/Brokers didn’t exist. Players actually had to work to sell items to other players.
For me it makes the MMO experience more immediate and personal. Sure they can get spammy but having barkers, vendors and hagglers is part of the city experience for thousands of years now. There’s nothing worse then entering a city in a virtual world and finding it devoid of “life”. Personally I think the spam and potential lag is a small price to pay for that.
It’s worth noting that AION has auction houses as well. Still I think it’s cool to be able to set up your own store and go AFK for a few mins for various reasons and sell off items you’ve acquired to passing players.
The challenge is probably going to be to be as close to WoW in ways but be a different as WoW in other ways. Every successful MMO adds a few new standard features into the MMO lexicon. It’s much like the automoble industry.
Power steering, power brakes, air conditioning, etc. All of them were new and unique at one point but eventually they became standard equipment. Therefore so it is with MMOs — every new one builds on the success of what went before them.
I’m guessing you didn’t play Guildwars also from NCSoft, they had a cut scene at the end of every major mission moving the storyline on, something that I thought was really good. That came out a long time before WotLK, and in WotLK I’ve only seen one big cinematic (a bit too cartoony for me).
As I’m playing and enjoying Everquest 2 right now its interesting to read Wolfsheads impressions of Aion and how it makes me feel if its a threat to EQ2 and me continuing to enjoy a player base to play with.
Overall it looks a strong competitor, they seem to be thinking about how abilities can be used in patterns which is a weakness of EQ2, I think this sounds good and a strength of it. The flying also does sound good fun, although from playing WoW it seemed to trivialise a lot of the game, maybe this was because of the way it was shoehorned in.
I think they’ve made some mistakes though there, the choosing of your class 9 levels in was something EQ2 did originally and it didn’t make sense long term. The no death buff sounds good in practice, but in the world of min-maxing I believe that it will reward mediocre play as others have said (or having to go around grinding bunnies before each attempt at some interesting content).
And the big one for me is the all human + Anime art styled player characters, it was one turn off for me in Guildwars, having everyone beautiful too detracted from the immersion. Something I think that WoW proved, the horde side before the introduction of blood elves were immensely ugly, but that didn’t effect its success, if anything it might have given it character.
Plus I like Frogloks 🙂 A whimsical point, but actually has a serious side, even if you want a beautiful avatar I think most people will prefer that they have something less beautiful to compare to, or maybe its a western need to want to be unique?
Aion gets quit tedious around level 20. At level 22-25 the xp curve needed to level gets up, monsters get considerably tougher and it is no coincidence that most mobs have the code for “2 players” in their bar – you can solo them, but it takes time and is hard.
I am afraid that some “this is WoW” players might wake up in some lessened asian grind before they get thrown into the Abyss.
Ah well, I am going to test the Abyss today…!
AION Beta WeekendAug1-2 Impressions
I just played some AION this weekend. This time I played the Asmodean newbie experience. I found it less polished then the Elyos newbie areas.
The quests aren’t very intuitive. You have to run long distances to find the quest mobs or items which is silly considering this is a newbie area.
Also, 80% of the areas are wasted with no real purpose to them. They seem to have put down mobs in areas just to fill up space. Every mob and area should exist for a reason. This is not the case here.
You soon realize that if there is no quest in an area that exploration is pointless. This is bad design. At least reward people that wander off the beaten track with some points of interest and some additional quests.
The sound effects of combat are very annoying and 2nd rate. After a while they tend to grate on you. When you agro a mob instead of hearing the mob utter some kind of sound you hear an electronic sound which is a bit silly.
The Asmodean combat music has a thrashing electric guitar which very out of place and soon becomes annoying. I rarely turn off music in an MMO but this time I made an exception.
The style of the armor which comes from Asian MMOs is starting to wear thin with me as it all looks the same. The avatars look the same as well and it’s very disconcerting.
There is about a 1 second lag after you cast a spell. This makes casting spells feel very unresponsive. Not a big fan of this at all.
Also abiliites and spells in your hotbar should grey out by default when you are out of range.
The “con” system needs more work. You should be able to tell from a distance whether something is agro or not.
The design of the non-human humanoids is very strange. They all look like variants of cute stuffed animals. If you want me to kill something at least make it look brutish and menacing.
Perhaps it’s the Asian sensibilities that are unnerving me — like the Kung Fu grunting and groaning that happens when I cast a spell — I’m not sure yet what it is yet. I’m starting to think that Aion is going to be another flash in the pan MMO with limited appeal and staying power.
Here’s my take,
Pros: visually stunning and amazing storyline
Cons: no third party UI addons and leveling up is more tedious compared to other MMOs
Do you think this could dethrone WoW? I’ve come across a lot of blogs and predicted that it can, but it’s still too early to come up with that conclusion.
Level 27 and I have no quests anymore, no idea where to go, in fact I cannot go to much areas where I am not outlevelled, I killed ostrichs and at the moment do not even want to log in anymore… 🙁
Hi there!
I’ve managed to role till lvl 50 on asmo side and now I’m finding my self in the great grind fest ever.
I’m gonna spoil a bit(not to much and not in numbers) so if you don’t want to know about the engame content pls skip next lines:
Ok so here we go. Lvl 50 Diiiing yaaaaay!
I have finished all the campaign quests that are available and now they are going to allow you to be part of the Fenris/Miragent troops.
Being part of that group is not so easy and you’ll have to pass 6 tests and at the end of them you will get armor and weapon as reward.
“Oh my! The engame epic gear, now I can get it!” was thinking that night at late hours and went to sleep.
Next day I found my self that I have to pay for all those armor pieces and damn they expensive.
So time consuming quest, brainless grind quest and now the best of them “luck” quest: a totally random craft system will allow you to finish an endgame quest chain beside the amount of items that you need (that by the way are at low low low drop rate).
Ok so I finally managed to craft the item that the quest required (is a critical process, if it fails the result is useless) and continue the quest chain.
Did I mention there is a brainless grind? Well yet again you have to grind and grind again to get a large amount of items at a low drop rate. So funny!
As I said, each time you finish the “hard work” of the quest you will need a blessing from a priest… and we all know that AION is an expensive game so you will have to pay with a special item that blessing. The amount is big so make sure you don’t waste it till 50 😀
Once you get the Daevanion Set you will be after better items and the cycle starts again: grind, farm and a lot of time consuming like in any other MMO. Nothing special just a lot more grinding and huge amount of kinah and AP needed to get something better. Beside will need good team and a nice active legion to go to abyss and take fortresses.
I’ll end here just because if I start talking about the PvPvE* I’ll fill too many lines of disappointments.
*PvPvE: to make this simple: meanwhile you are fighting with a mob an enemy from the other faction will attack you and vice versa.
So don’t ever hurry to get to the engame, take your time.
Cheers!