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Pre-Abyss AION Review
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[Creating a Character, the starter zone]
Like most Korean games, the setup is basically the same. You start off with extremely over- and underdressed characters. They all look stylish, based on what I've begun to call the “ Korean Ideal”. Where Aion distinguishes itself, is in the process of character creation. Aion has a system that is completely over the top. It's like City of Heroes with a different angle. Any feature of your body or face can be altered. We've seen this before, but where other games stop, Aion just lets you slide even further. If you want to make a Troll that looks similar to those from the Elfquest comic series, that's entirely possible. If you want to make an over the top high-elf, skinny as hell, long pointy ears, it can be done. It's up to you what you make of your character.
After finishing the character creation screen(I've made myself a medium sized “ youngster” with a fiery look in his eyes and red flaming hair), where I sadly could no longer pick the name Michael(yes named after the Arch-Angel Michael, but more so in style with my character, after the Elemental Angel Michael from Angel Sanctuary (manga)), the game loads a short video of the raging war in the Abyss. This video actually starts up very stuttering for the first 5 seconds and after making several more chars, it appears this is either PC related, or something ' broken' in the game. After the video, I'm finally ready to start my adventure.
Character moves are fluent. Animations look great. The textures of the world are below par, even if set to maximum, but graphically, it's not bad at all. I'm saying not bad at all, because Chronicles of Spellborn (Unreal engine), a recently sort of “ flopped” MMO has far superior graphics and thus proves that it can be done. Surprisingly, because you'd expect the Crysis Engine to be used for what it's worth, excuse me for the comparison.
In the starting area, you receive several Help Icons, that explain, in short but very detailed, how functions work. This system allows you to shut itself down, so you won't have to suffer 20 Icons in your lower screen on every char you make. The icons appear when most relevant (ie, when you perform an action, or when you are supposed to perform a certain action) and once gone, the ingame help(H) can always help you recall them.
Throughout levels 1-6, you learn how to deal with most situations. Kill quests, Gathering, Collector quests, they're all explained, if there is anything to explain, to give you the most basic knowledge you need in the game. Mind you, advanced game mechanics, such as professions and enchanting/upgrading of items are not explained, or I missed the explanation for full 24 levels. The explanation to these can be found online, on www.aionsource.com, usually found under “guides” (or just Google).
[Questing, grinding, what's it all about?]
I feel confident enough to state that Aion is far from a simple grinder. During the levels 1-18 you will experience questdriven leveling. I also feel confident enough to assure you that the claim of 1500 storyline related quests hardly makes a difference towards your approach of the game. It's a simple rinse and repeat “ Kill mob x for reward y”. People, get over it, it's in every game, WoW, Aion, it doesn't matter. Quests are a means to make the grind feel different from a grind. For 18 levels, Aion succeeds at doing this and makes leveling rather pleasant. From lvl 18, you will experience more grinding, with less questing. This might be a business model, or just “ by accident”, but it's the truth. Still, at this point, you will not experience the hardcore grinding that other Korean games are known for. Aion “ forces” you to group up to progress and this is actually pleasant, if you have a good group. It makes the grind enjoyable and can gain you several levels, just by killing certain types of mobs.
To give you a short example, I've had the privilege to encounter a very nice group of people,with whom I spent 5 hours in the Krall area (Elyos), the equivalent to BC(Asmo), and we had loads of fun. The group started at around 20:00 local time and ended at around 3:30. We did the area quests and at the same time we went for some serious grinding. It was fun, it was the best thing I've done in a game in the last year and almost made me feel like I was experiencing another Ragnarok moment. Kudos to the Aion developers, intentional or not.
In short; yes, Aion has grinding and more than a WoW player is regularly used to, but it's not gamebreaking and only takes place during a few levels.
[The game experience, besides the actual game]
As I mentioned before, it's good-looking, not graphically stunning, but definitely new-age. Besides the graphics, there's several other factors that support or oppose the game in what it's trying to do. In this particular case, I'd like to give you a few of the bads and a few of the goods.
The bads :
1. I have a Sennheiser headset with a decent soundcard plugged into my pc. When I play WoW, the sound coming from any attack on my left, comes in, on my left side. Aion does not make this difference, or does not make this difference by default. If it's a sound setting, I either haven't found it yet, or it doesn't exist. That, in my opinion, reduces the immersiveness(which is not a word) of the game.
2. Any critter/mob walking, or moving, sounds like someone's grinding his skull on the keyboard. Several critters/mobs moving, turns in to a waterfall of extremely loud sounds, that make no sense whatsoever. The sounds coming from the mobs, may they be movement, breathing, coughing, barking, roaring, it doesn't matter, are absolutely the worst ever in any game I've so far experienced. People that know how sounds were handled in RO and play Aion, are probably aware of the fact that Aion is arguably worse!
3. The game promises flying, but it's actually disallowed for the larger part of the game, pre-Abyss. When you fly into an area that disallows flying, you are blocked by a magic, invisible wall. This is rather silly and should be altered. (My suggestion would be, to change it into going into automatic glide mode, after which you land safely on the ground. Currently, that has to be done manually and often doesn't work while colliding with the invisible wall).
4. While playing, you will be shown several Cut-scenes. In my opinion, these are the worst cutscenes any game has ever shown a player. The only bonus Aion has, which also grades it above NWNII instead of below it, is the fact that you can interrupt the cutscenes. That way you prevent the game from trying to creep you out and you win time to grind/quest. No seriously, they are that bad.
The goods:
1. Servers have little lag, or hardly any I can speak of. I personally have a 60MBIT line, so that could be one of the reasons, but rubberbanding doesn't seem happen a lot to me, or to people around me.
2. The music is nice, the combat music is thrilling and when you're tired of it, you can shut it down. Couldn't be better. It's there, it's good and you decide whether you want to keep it.
3. Combat is fun. Yes, it really is. Chains add another dimension to your play style, skills look good, the effects make sense and you do really feel powerful whichever class you play.
4. With a good group, Aion manages to pull forth good old times, when not everything was about endgame, but about the path to it. Where grouping up made sense, instead of trying to rush yourself through the content and “peak” early. I'm not entirely sure about the mechanics (is xp split when more people join a group?), but grouping up provides you with solid xp, if you fight the right mobs.
5. I was in doubt for a moment, but I'm going to put the UI in the “good” department. While all standard function keys are not the keys I would personally choose myself (ALT+7,8,9,0 ??), they can be altered at will and there's plenty of optional bars to choose from, to provide you with enough space to put all your skills in. In contrary to the WoW interface, the standard UI also feels better somehow, while there's actually not much of a difference (So 5. might actually just be a silly rant). A big plus is, that you're able to move the party screen right from the start, to a more comfortable position, if for example, you are a healer.
6. The quests are well written, if you care to read them, and make gameplay more attractive than just grinding. The people you meet in-game are usually willing to help you out with quests, but, as any game, you'll also meet quite a few pricks. Inherent to the internet.
[Chat]
I'm giving this its own header. I'm doing that, because chat is actually one of the big issues about Aion that cannot easily be discarded. I'm going to be talking about the default settings that the game offers you. Chat is dysfunctional and should have been brought entirely different by the Developers.
First of all, the chat window is not small. It has a reasonable size and therefore allows enough room to show you plenty of text. Or so you would expect. Forget it. Instead of using a size 10,11,12, it feels as if they're using size 18. To give you an image, if someone posts a guild recruitment message, there's a high chance that all other text is blocked at that very point. In other words, if people spam these messages and goldsellers spam theirs, you can't read anything that's being said anymore. You can create your own Chat windows and alter settings to correct this, but it should have been a default setting. Western people, in contrary to Asian, apparently, don't need help reading text, they can get glasses for this.
Another topic, is chat abuse. In contrary to the groups that I've had, chat has been a wall of aggression 70% of the time that it's not used for either grouping or goldspamming. Seriously, if it's not about WoW vs Aion (people seriously freak out), it's about how much person x sucks, or about that rapper homey's mother being a hoe and so forth. I thought “ Mother” jokes were like, so 1999, but I guess I was wrong. This also indicates that the game attracted a fair share of “ cough” young, and more specifically, immature people that are not entirely fit to be playing games online. Back to your barbies boys.
[Goldspam]
Goldspam. All big online games have it. In fact, I'm willing to argue that a game without goldspam, might actually not have as many paying customers as it could and in that perspective, I'm going to preach for the devil for a moment, I'd say that gold buyers, are also paying customers and therefore the future of Aion is solidified, because of goldspam.
Back to my goldspam-hating self, goldspam can be blocked, but I've not read or heard any actions being taken against it. If Aion takes the same approach as most “other” Korean game developers do, which means they don't do anything against it, a lot of people will in time get fed up with the game. I already see a lot of people walking around in +10 full blue at lvl 24, with maximum managems, and that's something you won't manage to obtain even when working the market. In other words, cheating the game, is already in progress and will not stop by itself. This Review is pre-Abyss , but goldbuyers will have most impact in PvP, which is in the Abyss. Take that into account when you make up your mind about Aion.
[Conclusion]
For a Korean based MMO, Aion is extremely polished. I would not call it as polished as World of Warcraft, because it simply doesn't have the “Lore” to back it up, but it's close enough to be a competitor. Aion does not make the mistake to focus too much on making the game fun(WAR failed because their “fun” was too artificial and forced), but instead makes the game fun by combining existing features from several regions and just expanding on them. The fun in Aion is that you're reasonably free to pick your own path and you're not being rushed into one.
[Epilogue]
I haven't written many reviews yet. I just found myself hanging with the thought to make one and decided to do so. I've tried to be objective about it, but of course, it's an opinion and an opinion is never objective. I'd be happy if you'd point out anything that might be wrong, be it grammatically or otherwise.
