my thoughts on Aion

bullets

Aion,

Did not like it at first, then I loved it briefly, then
after I played the Betas I was just left disapointed
with it.

I'm a long term LOTRO player.
I dont like PVP favouring PVE.

Some of my Friends are not buying it because of the PVPVE element of it and of course its game protection system.

I played some of the Beta's of Aion expecting something
brilliant but was not impressed at all. I liked it, it was nice
it just was a disapointment.

The Avatars were suberb but other than that thats were it all kinda ended for me. I am gonna give it another go at release date.
Had a nightmare of a time with the game Crashing and
do not like Game Guard by its very nature.

A while back I wrote some of my thoughts on it for my Kin
in LOTRO

I found the The game play, the skills, the crafting, the game environment, the combat system and
game mechanic's are FAR FAR FAR superior in LOTRO.

The environment in Aion there is a lot of Hype about but its soo cartoonish
and the mobs are so childish like its like killing pokemon. The background environment
is from the CryEngine which is grand for an First person Shooter but only OK for an RPG.

Aion won GameAmp's 2006 E3 MMORPG "Best Graphics" Award.
But LOTRO just simply looks a hell of alot better in my opinion.

As for Aion, The Avatar's reign supreme. I mean come'on Lads! just look at
the jugs on my Blonde Babe and Bombshell I created for my testing purposes....
Look at her Boobs!!! Screen shots are here:

http://s173.photobucket.com/albums/w70/bullets_ie/aion/?start=all

I have my review that I posted into the beta forums below, loads of spelling mistakes
I am sure of......... (Note this was from my first beta play
which I enjoyed but later ones my interest level died down)

=======================================================================
I'm going to say a LOT of negative things about this game. But it does not mean that I dont like the game,
Its just the critic in me nit-picking.

The first day I did not like the game, the 2nd day of gameplay I loved the game.

I really really enjoyed my Beta experiance apart from all
the dis-connects I kept getting. I played a Ranger.
and dabbled with the Warrior and Mage. Even though I
have the rest of the evening to play my newly beloved
Ranger with a sexy body with huge lovely Boobs! the thoughts of having her wiped when it comes to the game going live has proven too much for me.

Its Nice but nothing Jaw Dropping.
The issues of getting the game to actually function
and having so many client/server issues kinda ruined
a lot of the enjoyment.

The Avatar's were the best thing on this game.
From a Male Hetrosexual Nerd point of view the
female avatars were fantastic, the Male ones were only
ok. I was trying to mimic my Hunter from LOTRO
in Aion, I got pretty close when it came to the face and hair!

The Amount of disconects/server/gameguard issues were the worst part of the game.

The gameplay itself was great fun but very crude and simplistic.

I'm not a number cruncher type of player that
gets all complicated with skills/numbers/traits etc
I'm more like the kind of player that goes, show me which mob to kill and I'll do it!! but even for me the
combat, skill system, weapons etc seemed very simple/basic. This may be a good thing! just not used
to things being so straightforward. (A worry is it may be so simple I will become bored quickly)

The Graphics (other than the avatars) were not as brilliant as all the hype made them out to be.

I come from Lord of the rings online so its the only
game I can compare Aion to. The environment
graphics in LOTRO are far superior to anything in Aion.
Aion graphics looked very cartoon'ish. But that
may be down to style rather than funtion.

Also the mobs! bloody heck they look very childish.
It felt like I was attacking Pokemon and not big bad nyerknyerknyerk evil enemies. Really really horrible some of those mobs.

Firstly Game Guard I totally object to.
NO software should effect any other software installed
on your machine. I lost track of the amount of poeple saying disable your firewall and antiviruse software,
it wont work with this keyboard, or that mouse, check your dirext X and graphics, fiddle around with ports on your router etc etc etc etc....... This is just ridicoulous!!!!
Have even seen people say the reformatted their entire PC just for 1 Game to work!!!!!!!!!

If your machine is in working order and uptodate You should install a game, and either you have internet access or not. And game should work! End Of!

So over 5000 people were trying to all access the servers
at the same time Friday evening, that may have rose to
7398 from looking at the most poeple online on these forums. That caused issues for people trying to connect and get it. If its causeing issues this early on for the servers, Imagine what its like when the game goes Live
for the first time!

Some game play notes:

The UI, we need to be able to move the individual panels
about more instead of just having a Top/Bottom option.
In LOTRO you can place each element of your UI anyplace on the screen that you like.

Game Chat. There is no ingame Voice chat!
This makes it difficult for joining PUGS or random poeple
to group with. Everyone cant be on the same ventrillo
or 3rd party voice software. Why cant there be ingame voice chat ??

Ingame Text/chat. Is there a way to be totally anonymous and NOT allow anybody to sent you whispers when you want some alone/solo time ?
I thought it was nice to be able to put your status to solo in game but was not sure if people could still whisper me if I went anonymous and turned off invites.

AFK. When typing /AFK there is no on/off indicator to
say if your AFK or not. And I cant see anyplace on the social panel to indicate which players are AFK and which are not.

Combat. I dont see any indicater to tell you if your
still on combat or not. it would be nice to have a graphical indication to know if there is still a mob aggroed or chasing you and your still in combat or not.

Your able to draw your weapons or put them away again
regardless of your combat status. Is there a purpose to this? or is it just cosmetic ?

Out of combat Health regen etc is painfully slow and you end up using bandages a lot of the time! This is painful.
Is this just a money sink ? OOC regens shoud be faster.

Aggro. Why is it that I can attack 1 single mob from an entire group and not get aggro from the rest of the group? it does not make sense!

Skill inductions and combos feel more like Street Fighter
beat em up than an RPG game. Where your waiting for a combo. Also once in combat if you reckon your not gonna be able to kill the mob, its often to late for you to flee! and get away without dying. You kind of got to engage a mob knowing full well in advance that you will be able to kill it. Other games are more forgiving where if you get into a spot of bother and you decide to run away, you live to fight another day.

Bind locations, These seem to be another Money sink.
Why do I need to pay to bind to a location! and why
are someplaces cheap and other places expensive.
Also Teleport costs are fairly pricey.

Gathering crafting resources. There was a hell of a lot of
node ninja'ing going on in the beta. Its considered polite, honerable and bloddy well good maners not to try and ninja a resource node out from under a player that may be fighting a mob next to it.

The crafting nodes were weird, you could harvest the node up to 3 times! and each time you had a succes or fail bar fighting each other very slowly. This in my opinion is rubbish. You should be able to harvest a node and get what you harvest. If yo make a crit, get a bonus or crit item, but not have a fail option chucked in there.

Also with crafting nodes I did not see a way to track the nodes for your crafting Profession you need to manually stumble across the node.

With Quest items like grains of sacks/boxes/pumpkins etc or things you need to interact with. There is no indication as you aproach the objects that they are related to your quests. In other games an object will glow if you get near it, if its a quest objective.
Becuase of this you could be going around in circles looking for quest itmes that you keep missing.

Why is there no Walking/Running Toggle??
Why cant we swim?

Why cant I find a button to switch off floaty names?

Loot, is there an option to auto loot all items all of the time. I dont want a window popping up all of the time,
on every mob I kill.

Running about the place. In a lot of places the
paths are very linear as in you can only get from
point A to point B in one way only.
Other games you can free roam the environment a lot
better and get to your destination whatever way you wanted, without needing to depend on a teleport etc.

Are character names case sensitive?
is Joe Bloggs, the same as joe bloggs, or would
they be considered different characters?

Accounts, Have seen no indications to if we can buy
life time accounts, or if we are forced to pay each month.

Interaction with NPC's sometimes lags or glitches where
you cant click on them.

Crafting, you need to click stop in the middle of crafting to attempt to stop it, why not be able to just take a step backwards to interrupt the action. Crafting seems like another money sink, where its very expensive for the player.

Costs in general are pretty high from what I can tell
lots of money sinks in the game to keep people poor.

Qroup quests. Is there any way to tell if a quest you
are doing requires a Group or if its Solo ?

PVP vs PVE vs PVPVE.

I'm mainly a solo player that likes to group for end game content. I do NOT ever want to play PVP.
with this came will I be FORCED to in order to complete
PVE content ?

Again game guard. Its rubbish, nobody wants it, it should not be allowed, its too envasive, it causes too many problems for genuine buyers and players of the game.

~B

Xyo

Did you masturbate to the purty pictures of your characters?

Dcully

Im sure like me others appreciate your thoughts on Aion.

I found the The game play, the skills, the crafting, the game environment, the combat system and
game mechanic's are FAR FAR FAR superior in LOTRO.

This summed it up perfectly for me as in thats all i want in an mmo.

Aion won GameAmp's 2006 E3 MMORPG "Best Graphics" Award.
But LOTRO just simply looks a hell of alot better in my opinion.

While LOTRO looks pretty damn nice id say Aoin`s envoirnments are atleast on par with LOTROs everything else looks so much better in Aion imo.
Id personally put Aion and Age of Conan ahead of LOTRO in the visual department.
Atleast thats on my pc, quad core,4gig ddr,1gig 4870 gfx card.

Dont get me wrong i like lotro but for me Aion is far superior in every department from what ive played.

cherryghost

some interesting thoughts there.

May I point some things out as i go along with your review, both agreeing and disagreeing with your points:

Negative:

1. I never had any crashing issues at all in the game. It shouldnt be an issue, as its been live in Korea for some time, I dont know what your problem is there.

2. I dont see where you get the cartoonish graphics from. They're just a small notch above other MMO's in terms of quality, but nothing special, true. Since when do lush graphics make a game? While I agree that LOTRO looks better, bogging down the game in terms of graphical appearance is more than nit-picking really, its unnecessary.

3. I only experienced disconnects once in the time that I played, and that was when the open beta patch was released (btw I'm on a 1mb connection)

4. I think the element of flight adds another dimension into fighting/crafting in the game, its not a gimmick at all, and comes to fruition after level 15, blossoming your character into a more overall enjoyable experience. While I agree that the weapons/skill system etc is a bit simplistic, I am somewhat relieved that the game has not turned out to be an overly-complication lump of shyte.

5. I rather enjoy the fact that you enter a quest not knowing whether its a group one or not. It makes the whole experience more unpredictable and less of a grind in a manner.


Agree:

1. I agree about Gameguard. Its a waste of space, its extra software installed on your system and the game could do without it.

2. I agree that there were too many servers available in the beta stages, that, to some extent, ruined the atmosphere that the game was trying to portray. I'm confident though, that when the game is officially released, that this wont be the case.

3. I'm with you with the UI issue, it should be on a free-to-move instead of locked to certain position. It can be a bit frustrating at times, as I'm used to the stuff being in different areas of the screen!

4. I agree that some costs are outrageous. Perhaps its just an incentive to fly yourself?

5. An icon to show whether you're in combat or not is definately preferable! Although I havent really had the chance to come to the point where I want to know whether I am. I will at some point, I know that for sure.


My own notes!

1. The atmosphere is well created although, theres a distinct lack of structures in the game, which is disappointing.

2. I like the flying element, there were a number of hidden areas throughout the Asmos area I found by flying to higher altitudes, which gives expands the free roaming element, which lacks a bit on the ground.

3. The channels were full of idiots comparing the game to WoW, I ended up blocking the regioned channel for a while. I'm positive it'll be the same on launch, but... at the same time, its not a huge issue.


Anyways, thanks for reading. Bullet I wasnt trying to attack you in anyway, I'm just up for a little debate on certain subjects.

See most of you there!

(also, I fapped to your avatar)

bullets

My opinions may yet change over time! and playing.

I have a love hate relationship with LOTRO too, as there are a lot of things
that annoy me in the game sometimes and it can get a little overcomplicated when
it comes to PVE raids sometimes.

For Aion if I was not to compare it to anything at all, I`d probably be
happy out with the graphics apart from some of the mobs.

Aion has Lovely graphics like here, all nice, Blue Sky, Blue Water, Colourful Trees.
http://s173.photobucket.com/albums/w70/bullets_ie/aion/?action=view&current=Aion0128.jpg

But I just preferred the look of this sky, this water, these trees:
http://images.slashdot.org/articles/07/06/lotro1.jpg


~B

Assmaster_Kronk

One aspect i'm looking forward to in Aion is that since its not based on an existing franchise, the monster and region designers were able to go crazy and make up all kinds of weird and wonderful stuff. When i first started playing lotro i liked the fact that they were sticking to the books, but eventually there was only so many different kinds of wolves, bears and orcish guys to kill before i got completely bored of it:)

Memnoch

I don't mean to cut you down, but honestly, Aion is primarily a PvP game. If you want PvE go play LOTRO or WoW, that's what those games specialise at.

Aion is all about the end game team based PvP and sieging and all that jazz that PvPers have been waiting for for a LONG time since DAOC, and which WAR and AOC failed miserably in trying to deliver.

Any sort of "review" of Aion from a PvE perspective is pointless because it's not a PvE game, even though the dev's do try and market it both groups and try to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.

In the end, if you only want to PvE and don't like PvP Aion isn't for you, and THANK FRICKING GOD, because every single MMO being made these days is designed to cater to the massive PvE crowd that WoW brought in.

All your comments about the gameplay being crude and simplistic are shallow and baseless because you are ignoring the most important aspect and core mechanic of the game, the PvP, which is where Aion shines and sets itself apart from all the lame WoW clones that everyone is producing these days.

Specifically team based open world PvP rather than WoW's endless instance grind, and the AWESOME Abyss point ranking system.

To summarise, we're PvP not PvE, get me?

Dcully

To summarise, we're PvP not PvE, get me?

Aion according to what im reading has 20 pve instances and loads of pve content in its current state.
The Koreans are mad as anyone on pve, 4 millions subscribers in korea alone suggests there is plenty of pve in the game [not that all are pve fans].
Personally i like both pvp and pve hence why im looking forward to the game pvpve they call it

Memnoch

Oh there's a decent amount of PvE content, but that's not what the game is really about imo.

cherryghost

Some updates today straight from the Aion website

- Aion now features all three languages French, German and English. To select your language simply right click on Aion within your launcher and go to Properties->Language Options. Please select which languages you wish to download and which you wish Aion to display.
- After analyzing our open beta test results Aion will not feature GameGuard at launch. We will however continue to pursue ways to effectively utilize GameGuard within Aion in the future. Right now we're focused on providing players with the best possible Aion experience.
- The level cap is now level 50 (previously 45).
- Players will be able to reserve 2 character names during Preselection and create 8 characters in total once Head Start begins and beyond.
- Channels will be set to 10 instances for the beginning 2 zones of each faction. Please note that these will be lowered as characters progress and spread throughout Atreia.

So Gameguard will not feature at launch. Relief!

Kiith

Getting rid of Gameguard is definitely a good thing. I had no problems with it, but i'm not a fan of it or similar software.

Wonder why they upped the level cap? Considering no one could get over lvl30 in the open beta, they must have know from before hand.

glid

Well Gameguard sux anyway. That's all positive.

jaggeh

Kiith wrote: »

Getting rid of Gameguard is definitely a good thing. I had no problems with it, but i'm not a fan of it or similar software.

Wonder why they upped the level cap? Considering no one could get over lvl30 in the open beta, they must have know from before hand.

my guess is they made the end level stuff a little too hard, upping the level cap would mean a few extra levels on the spells etc.

SK1979

I just thought I'd post a few early thoughts on Aion so far.

I was eagerly awaiting 8:00 last night to log on and enjoy the head-start and from around 7:30 attempted to log in but getting the "disconnected from server" error. At around 8:02 I got on and was initially disappointed to see that the server's I had created my characters on (spatalos and gorgos) were already full. However, another of the english server's had a population status of "low", so I joined, created a character and got in without any wait!

I made a Elyos priest to start off and leveled it to 7 last night. It was extremely enjoyable actually, far more fun than any other MMO I've recently started anyway. The interface is generally excellent, some great improvements, particularly around the quests, the fact that you can see where you're supposed to go easily in the quests cuts down on amount of spamming thats done (Where's X etc) in chat. Talking about the chat channels, they were fairly mild, nowhere near the dreaded "barrens chat" level.

The server was fairly laggy, but that was to be expected and rolling to level 7 probably only took me about 2 hours playtime and the lag was never so bad as to cause a death for example. Although I'd imagine by the time the mobs aren't passive, you'd want to have a pretty stable connection.

I went into the game, not knowing a hell of a lot and was really pleasantly surprised with it. Another aspect I liked was that even at such a low level, the loot I received felt worthwhile.

The priest class to level 7 is pretty standard stuff, a nuke (smite!), a melee attack, a big (ish) heal, a hp buff and a renew.... Nice and easy though thus far.

Overall, a good start and I'm looking forward to playing again later (by the way I'm only intending on playing this casually, so I'm not power-levelling etc).

What have others thought so far?