I don’t have much PvP experience in fantasy-themed MMOGs as I’m not a big fan of the whole auto-targeting style of combat. Nonetheless, I love MMOGs and the lack of a decent PvP-centric Sci-Fi title convinced me to give WAR and Aion a test spin since both claimed to offer a strong focus on PvP.

There are a lot of possible comparison which could be made between these two games but I only want to address the actual PvP combat.

I tried WAR at release but only played for two months. There were plenty of mistakes made with that game BUT I was very surprised at how much fun the actual PvP combat was. My main made it to 33 and I leveled several other classes into the high teens and a few into the 20s. In those two months, I spent dozens and dozens of hours in the RvR lakes and scenarios and while there were certainly some class balance issues, the actual PvP combat was a blast!

I remember following the development of WAR and reading that there were several very important decisions being made to ensure a fun PvP experience.

1. Losing control of your character. The WAR devs said they didn’t like it when players lost control of their characters during PvP combat and I agree with them wholeheartedly. Now sure, WAR had plenty of knockbacks, roots, and slows but no sleep, fear, or stun-locks. In Aion, you can die in PvP without ever being able to fire-off a single skill. Aion is swamped with abilities that cause you to lose control over your character and I can’t say I enjoy it at all.

2. Level difference. War did a good job of offering a fair PvP experience for characters of all levels. I had a crapload of fun in tiers 1 & 2 with a variety of characters. Aion is the classic race to reach high levels so you can gank players that are much lower than you. I realize that this is a temporary problem until the majority of the playerbase reaches the level cap; however, given the extreme level grind in Aion, this will be a problem for quite some time. It also makes the prospect of leveling alts very unappealing when an army of 50s will dominate the Abyss.

3. Gear dependence. Gear in WAR mattered but not nearly as much as it does in Aion. There are some incredibly game-breaking golds in Aion and that doesn’t even begin to address the incredible grind required for Abyss-level gear that gives even greater advantages in PvP combat. If you don’t have a whole lot of time to throw at this game, you should fully expect to face players with significant gear-based advantages and you will lose a whole lot more often than you would if it were based primarily on your skill.

4. Performance. Aion is currently experiencing a big problem with a memory leak in the Cry engine. I have tried to participate in several fortress sieges but it turns into a 10-15 FPS slideshow that crashes the client in short order. (Yes, I have a strong PC and anyone familiar with the game knows this problem has nothing to do with a user’s system specs.)

The bottom line for me—your mileage may vary—is that after five weeks in Aion, I have had very little fun PvPing whereas in the same timeframe in WAR I had a whole lot of fun. I’ll probably keep playing for a while and see if it gets any better but at the moment, I feel like I am just grinding in hopes that a fun game will materialize somewhere down the line.
 

No matter how valid your points are, and they seem good, dont get me wrong on that, is that a game is never as bad as people make it out to be. In general, I think people just think too much into too many things.

Originally posted by Toquio3

No matter how valid your points are, and they seem good, dont get me wrong on that, is that a game is never as bad as people make it out to be. In general, I think people just think too much into too many things.

Thank you for the reasonable comment, but it's really not about over-thinking it.   I'm not "feeling" it.

I play primarily for the PvP and I'm not having as much fun as I did in WAR in the first month.  Now I realize that Aion's PvP "fun" might come later and so I'm patiently grinding away and waiting for it but I'm getting bored fast.

Originally posted by raykor

Originally posted by Toquio3

No matter how valid your points are, and they seem good, dont get me wrong on that, is that a game is never as bad as people make it out to be. In general, I think people just think too much into too many things.

 

Thank you for the reasonable comment, but it's really not about over-thinking it.   I'm not "feeling" it.

I play primarily for the PvP and I'm not having as much fun as I did in WAR in the first month.  Now I realize that Aion's PvP "fun" might come later and so I'm patiently grinding away and waiting for it but I'm getting bored fast.

The one point that worried me about Aion pvp in your post is the heavy CC or loss of control of your character. Theres alot of that in wow, which is why I have to ask, have you tried pvp'ing in Aion with a friend or friends? In wow, I found that the best way to combat heavy CC is to play in a real group with people you know.

Originally posted by Toquio3

The one point that worried me about Aion pvp in your post is the heavy CC or loss of control of your character. Theres alot of that in wow, which is why I have to ask, have you tried pvp'ing in Aion with a friend or friends? In wow, I found that the best way to combat heavy CC is to play in a real group with people you know.

CC in warhammer (in the higher tiers) is MUCH worse than in WoW. There is no comparison. It is one of the game's biggest flaws and a truly baffling design choice by Mythic.

Originally posted by Toquio3

The one point that worried me about Aion pvp in your post is the heavy CC or loss of control of your character. Theres alot of that in wow, which is why I have to ask, have you tried pvp'ing in Aion with a friend or friends? In wow, I found that the best way to combat heavy CC is to play in a real group with people you know.

Didn't play WoW. Like I said, not much PvP experience in fantasy MMOGs.

I realize you can strap a pair of Clerics to your hip to counter Aion's CC but that's not the point. At a fundamental level, the WAR devs made a design decision that CC in a PvP-centric game which slowed or rooted your character was acceptable but that which caused you to lose complete control over your character was not. I agree with their decision and simply brought it up as an example of one aspect of WAR's PvP combat which I personally feel was more enjoyable than Aion's.

I think if you had played well into T4 in WAR you might have different take. Stun-locks and CC in general was one of the top 3 or 5 reasons we bailed on WAR. True, you did get to play some awesome PvP in that game for 32 levels or so. The best pvp in the biz, imo. Then you got rewarded by having your game turned off at level 33. Thanks for the heads up on Aion pvp being the same. I kinda want to give Aion a chance, but already canceled due to NCSoft supporting RMT. Things like this help seal the deal.

Originally posted by Timzilla

I think if you had played well into T4 in WAR you might have different take. Stun-locks and CC in general was one of the top 3 or 5 reasons we bailed on WAR. True, you did get to play some awesome PvP in that game for 32 levels or so. The best pvp in the biz, imo. Then you got rewarded by having your game turned off at level 33. Thanks for the heads up on Aion pvp being the same. I kinda want to give Aion a chance, but already canceled due to NCSoft supporting RMT. Things like this help seal the deal.

What?

Originally posted by Toquio3

Originally posted by raykor

Originally posted by Toquio3

No matter how valid your points are, and they seem good, dont get me wrong on that, is that a game is never as bad as people make it out to be. In general, I think people just think too much into too many things.

 

Thank you for the reasonable comment, but it's really not about over-thinking it.   I'm not "feeling" it.

I play primarily for the PvP and I'm not having as much fun as I did in WAR in the first month.  Now I realize that Aion's PvP "fun" might come later and so I'm patiently grinding away and waiting for it but I'm getting bored fast.

The one point that worried me about Aion pvp in your post is the heavy CC or loss of control of your character. Theres alot of that in wow, which is why I have to ask, have you tried pvp'ing in Aion with a friend or friends? In wow, I found that the best way to combat heavy CC is to play in a real group with people you know.

Considering that these game really are based on group pvp, CC makes perfect sense.

I have no problems with crowde control and it should be in pvp games. But it mustn't shut down a whole enemy force for an entire fight. It has be be added with some controls.

Also, as far as what another player said about crashing during sieges, here is another official response:

http://www.aionsource.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1588102

Originally posted by Sovrath

Considering that these game really are based on group pvp, CC makes perfect sense.

I have no problems with crowde control and it should be in pvp games. But it mustn't shut down a whole enemy force for an entire fight. It has be be added with some controls.

Mutli-target CC has no place in PvP. Warhammer abounds with it.

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

Originally posted by Sovrath

Considering that these game really are based on group pvp, CC makes perfect sense.

I have no problems with crowde control and it should be in pvp games. But it mustn't shut down a whole enemy force for an entire fight. It has be be added with some controls.

Mutli-target CC has no place in PvP. Warhammer abounds with it.

I disagree. And I've played Warhammer. Warhammer's CC was an issue because it stacked.  You had those wells of purple poison stacking and essentially draining you lickety split.

"Lava Golf" if you played Chaos in Warhammer you know exactly what I'm talking about. Order had 2 classes that had an extremely overpowered knock back skill that would knock the player back 200 feet and was exploited to hell in Scenerios (PVP battlegrounds) where there was lava. Chaos had 1 class with knock back but it was no where near as overpowered as the Order Classes knock back then eventually Chaos got the Black Guard class which had that same ability after a few months after the game went retail. I heard they finally fixed the knock backs and rooting issues but it was long overdue. 

As far as gear dependence I think Warhammer's was worse as you needed to have as much gear from a previous instance or renown rank or you would get an automatic stacking debuff that would cause you to take more damage in the next instance. I'm not sure if they fixed this or not but I used to play a tank class and it made it severely difficult to get in groups if I didn't have all my RR set pieces or instance gear for an instance I wanted to go into.

As far as PVP the RVR in Warhammer was extremely broken (I only played for 9 months after release so it may be different now.) It was near impossible to lock down areas on the map even after capturing all the capture points and keeps. I remember spending an entire weekend trying to lock down Praag and we had every point captured and didn't lose one for 10 hours yet the bar to lock down the zone never pushed through to actually locking it down. Also trying to attack a keep that was defended was pointless as the defenders even half the size of your force that was attacking was more than enough to defend a keep successfully because of how overpowered defense seige weapons are especially the burning oil which led to the sad trend of guilds and pick up groups only capturing undefended keeps. The funny part of that is for our server that my guild would coordinate with the opposite faction via the server's IRC channel and just keept rotating on capturing undefended keeps for renown farming.

I think Aion Dev's learned alot from the complaints of WAR players and made a much more superior PVP enviroment by using lock downs of fortresses to prevent the "Lets only take undefended forts" or for those 2:00AM raids and the lock down timers seem to be intelligent as I have never seen forts go vulernable until peak server hours which was a great idea. 

Originally posted by raykor

I don’t have much PvP experience in fantasy-themed MMOGs as I’m not a big fan of the whole auto-targeting style of combat. Nonetheless, I love MMOGs and the lack of a decent PvP-centric Sci-Fi title convinced me to give WAR and Aion a test spin since both claimed to offer a strong focus on PvP.

There are a lot of possible comparison which could be made between these two games but I only want to address the actual PvP combat.

I tried WAR at release but only played for two months. There were plenty of mistakes made with that game BUT I was very surprised at how much fun the actual PvP combat was. My main made it to 33 and I leveled several other classes into the high teens and a few into the 20s. In those two months, I spent dozens and dozens of hours in the RvR lakes and scenarios and while there were certainly some class balance issues, the actual PvP combat was a blast!

I remember following the development of WAR and reading that there were several very important decisions being made to ensure a fun PvP experience.

1. Losing control of your character. The WAR devs said they didn’t like it when players lost control of their characters during PvP combat and I agree with them wholeheartedly. Now sure, WAR had plenty of knockbacks, roots, and slows but no sleep, fear, or stun-locks. In Aion, you can die in PvP without ever being able to fire-off a single skill. Aion is swamped with abilities that cause you to lose control over your character and I can’t say I enjoy it at all.

You mustn't have played much to WAR. Aion is quite fine cc-wise

2. Level difference. War did a good job of offering a fair PvP experience for characters of all levels. I had a crapload of fun in tiers 1 & 2 with a variety of characters. Aion is the classic race to reach high levels so you can gank players that are much lower than you. I realize that this is a temporary problem until the majority of the playerbase reaches the level cap; however, given the extreme level grind in Aion, this will be a problem for quite some time. It also makes the prospect of leveling alts very unappealing when an army of 50s will dominate the Abyss.

WAR just sabotaged its own chances choosing the EZ mode leveling way. You could have anything just killing people. In a few weeks nothing mattered or made a difference but your class. LvL difference is a bit hard in Aion but it's due to gear. In a few weeks alts will be extremely well geared ("Mastercrafted" gear) Anyway, newcomers will have a hard time during their first levels but money will be much easier to get (due to high levels spending much more and injecting massive amounts of kinahs with their alts)

3. Gear dependence. Gear in WAR mattered but not nearly as much as it does in Aion. There are some incredibly game-breaking golds in Aion and that doesn’t even begin to address the incredible grind required for Abyss-level gear that gives even greater advantages in PvP combat. If you don’t have a whole lot of time to throw at this game, you should fully expect to face players with significant gear-based advantages and you will lose a whole lot more often than you would if it were based primarily on your skill.

Gear was a joke in WAR. It was just useless. No craft, no economy and a poor itemization killed their game. The time invested in in char should make a difference in PvP.

4. Performance. Aion is currently experiencing a big problem with a memory leak in the Cry engine. I have tried to participate in several fortress sieges but it turns into a 10-15 FPS slideshow that crashes the client in short order. (Yes, I have a strong PC and anyone familiar with the game knows this problem has nothing to do with a user’s system specs.)

 Aion is having troubles in that area on some PCs. In WAR it was a nightmare. 

The bottom line for me—your mileage may vary—is that after five weeks in Aion, I have had very little fun PvPing whereas in the same timeframe in WAR I had a whole lot of fun. I’ll probably keep playing for a while and see if it gets any better but at the moment, I feel like I am just grinding in hopes that a fun game will materialize somewhere down the line.

Having fun in PvP in Aion requires investments (potions, gear, time) to understand what your class needs and can do, and what can help. Grouping might help you to have more fun :)
 

Originally posted by raykor

I don’t have much PvP experience in fantasy-themed MMOGs as I’m not a big fan of the whole auto-targeting style of combat. Nonetheless, I love MMOGs and the lack of a decent PvP-centric Sci-Fi title convinced me to give WAR and Aion a test spin since both claimed to offer a strong focus on PvP.

There are a lot of possible comparison which could be made between these two games but I only want to address the actual PvP combat.

I tried WAR at release but only played for two months. There were plenty of mistakes made with that game BUT I was very surprised at how much fun the actual PvP combat was. My main made it to 33 and I leveled several other classes into the high teens and a few into the 20s. In those two months, I spent dozens and dozens of hours in the RvR lakes and scenarios and while there were certainly some class balance issues, the actual PvP combat was a blast!

I remember following the development of WAR and reading that there were several very important decisions being made to ensure a fun PvP experience.

1. Losing control of your character. The WAR devs said they didn’t like it when players lost control of their characters during PvP combat and I agree with them wholeheartedly. Now sure, WAR had plenty of knockbacks, roots, and slows but no sleep, fear, or stun-locks. In Aion, you can die in PvP without ever being able to fire-off a single skill. Aion is swamped with abilities that cause you to lose control over your character and I can’t say I enjoy it at all.

2. Level difference. War did a good job of offering a fair PvP experience for characters of all levels. I had a crapload of fun in tiers 1 & 2 with a variety of characters. Aion is the classic race to reach high levels so you can gank players that are much lower than you. I realize that this is a temporary problem until the majority of the playerbase reaches the level cap; however, given the extreme level grind in Aion, this will be a problem for quite some time. It also makes the prospect of leveling alts very unappealing when an army of 50s will dominate the Abyss.

3. Gear dependence. Gear in WAR mattered but not nearly as much as it does in Aion. There are some incredibly game-breaking golds in Aion and that doesn’t even begin to address the incredible grind required for Abyss-level gear that gives even greater advantages in PvP combat. If you don’t have a whole lot of time to throw at this game, you should fully expect to face players with significant gear-based advantages and you will lose a whole lot more often than you would if it were based primarily on your skill.

4. Performance. Aion is currently experiencing a big problem with a memory leak in the Cry engine. I have tried to participate in several fortress sieges but it turns into a 10-15 FPS slideshow that crashes the client in short order. (Yes, I have a strong PC and anyone familiar with the game knows this problem has nothing to do with a user’s system specs.)

 

The bottom line for me—your mileage may vary—is that after five weeks in Aion, I have had very little fun PvPing whereas in the same timeframe in WAR I had a whole lot of fun. I’ll probably keep playing for a while and see if it gets any better but at the moment, I feel like I am just grinding in hopes that a fun game will materialize somewhere down the line.
 

Ugh... try to get people who barely escaped with there lifes back do we. I,l keep it short:

1- Dont even compare Aion's perfomance to Warhammer's performance, and dont bother comparing them graphically either. Warhammer is well know-known to perform poorly, you only need to check there forums and make a census of Performance related opinions. A recent poll at Warhhameralliance stated Client/Server performance as the thing that is mostly in need of fixing in addition to Class balance.

2- Warhammer is known to have lots of snares and CC, only one class has this CC potential in Aion and that is a Spiritmaster in One on One situations. Most of Aion's Ranged CC break on damage. And more importantly, you can't win in Aion by spamming AOE attacks that are as powerful as single target spells.

Finally, Aion is much better from a design point of view, in relatation to Zone design, to how Sieges/World PvP work to crafting and general polish.

I am not truly judging the pvp in this game until I hit 50, and about 500 others do.  That will be the true test.

That's cool, WAR PvP is fun 1-20ish, and AIon's PvP is fun if you are 50 fighting a lowbie, or you get CCed to death just like in WAR.

NICE

If devs would just skip the whole RvR thing im positive both games would have fun pvp. Im sure Aion would be a blast if they just got rid of the RvR and opened up for FFA. Terrible when games are trying to tell you who your friends and foes are.

Originally posted by raykor

1. Losing control of your character. The WAR devs said they didn’t like it when players lost control of their characters during PvP combat and I agree with them wholeheartedly. Now sure, WAR had plenty of knockbacks, roots, and slows but no sleep, fear, or stun-locks. In Aion, you can die in PvP without ever being able to fire-off a single skill. Aion is swamped with abilities that cause you to lose control over your character and I can’t say I enjoy it at all.

2. Level difference. War did a good job of offering a fair PvP experience for characters of all levels. I had a crapload of fun in tiers 1 & 2 with a variety of characters. Aion is the classic race to reach high levels so you can gank players that are much lower than you. I realize that this is a temporary problem until the majority of the playerbase reaches the level cap; however, given the extreme level grind in Aion, this will be a problem for quite some time. It also makes the prospect of leveling alts very unappealing when an army of 50s will dominate the Abyss.

3. Gear dependence. Gear in WAR mattered but not nearly as much as it does in Aion. There are some incredibly game-breaking golds in Aion and that doesn’t even begin to address the incredible grind required for Abyss-level gear that gives even greater advantages in PvP combat. If you don’t have a whole lot of time to throw at this game, you should fully expect to face players with significant gear-based advantages and you will lose a whole lot more often than you would if it were based primarily on your skill.

4. Performance. Aion is currently experiencing a big problem with a memory leak in the Cry engine. I have tried to participate in several fortress sieges but it turns into a 10-15 FPS slideshow that crashes the client in short order. (Yes, I have a strong PC and anyone familiar with the game knows this problem has nothing to do with a user’s system specs.)
 

1.  You're joking right? Unless they recently changed that game the amount of roots, snares, stuns, etc.  was downright hilarious in T3/4.  A hell of a lot more than Aion, and you could be killed without getting off a skill in Warhammer.  I did it many times to players as well as had the favor returned to me so not sure where you get this from.

2.  No argument here.  While I think the leveling curve in Warhammer was a bit too low their system allowed you to get into PvP from level 1 and the variety of zones made it a lot easier to contemplate rolling alts.

3. I'm not going to argue over which game is more gear dependant over the other one.  They both are.  Trying to say one is better or worse than the other because one relies on it more or less is silly to me.  If the gear didn't matter at all that would be one thing but both games are dependant on itemization so really a wash here.

4. At least the server isn't crashing like it did in Warhammer with the big fortress battles.  Other than that seems like major deja vu to a point when it comes to large scale warfare in both of these games.  Warhammer's solution was limiting how many people could participate in the battles among other things.  We'll see what NCsoft has to do.  Right now performances in the sieges is a lagfest but it wasn't any different in Warhammer either and like I said least the server doesn't crash which is more than what EA accomplished in the first few months of that game.  Pretty much a wash either way right now far as I'm concerned on this point too. 

Originally posted by Timzilla

 I kinda want to give Aion a chance, but already canceled due to NCSoft supporting RMT.

Wtf?  Where do you people come up with some of this shit?

 I think the problem with WAR and AION is the developers try to fuse a PvE Level system (with story) along the way to an endgame that is RvR. If the NCsoft just threw players into their mmorpg PvP endgame and let them develop skills and gear from there it would have been much more fun.  Really PvP games waste so much with having the throw away PvE story, why not drive an  immersive world through a PvP endgame from the start then? Well, it would mean moving away from the WoW/EQ game tradition and I think we have to wait for the next generation of MMORPG to see this, the breakaway from the level grind to PvE or RvR/PvP endgame that is such a stereotype now.

Aion can be an incredibly fun game. Unfortunately, the PvP isn't the same level as fun as WAR was (is).

Originally posted by Visceral

WAR has a whole lot more thought into the actual pvp system than Aion does

Wow, just wow. WAR's PvP design lead to its downfall. They have basically admitted this by closing 2/3 of the starting zones to try and promote any sort of rvr pvp in t1. Scenerios killed off any open wprld pvp and class balance was non-existent, BWs were face rolling people for months lol. T4 endgame is the biggest joke i have ever seen in anygame, i didnt bother with it. I think we were playing different games...

I think theres only 2 servers left now, so you can always go back if you like it so much,

Originally posted by Perfection66

Originally posted by Visceral

WAR has a whole lot more thought into the actual pvp system than Aion does

 

Wow, just wow. WAR's PvP design lead to its downfall. They have basically admitted this by closing 2/3 of the starting zones to try and promote any sort of rvr pvp in t1. Scenerios killed off any open wprld pvp and class balance was non-existent, BWs were face rolling people for months lol. T4 endgame is the biggest joke i have ever seen in anygame, i didnt bother with it. I think we were playing different games...

I think theres only 2 servers left now, so you can always go back if you like it so much,

 

My thought is that they are different games that are trying to do different things.

So yes, with warhammer you can fight people at about the same level as the system will adjust your level accordingly if you are lower. Great.

But Aion is about gear, level and your group (or lack thereof). If one doesn't like getting destroyed then get better gear, level up or travel in a group. It's less "game like' and more world like in that aspect. So sure, a lvl 50 can got to an area in the abyss and destroy lvl 25's. So lvl 25's have to stay close to towers and call in reinforements if needed. That's part of the game.

I do agree that Warhammer's rvr just didn't work. The pvp scenarios were a blast and could be done by someone very quickly. So it would work for someone who didn't have time to invest or could only spend bits and pieces here and there.

You make some sound points in your comparison. Particularly with regard to when the PvP becomes fun in the games, War I new from the start this game had great PvP while in Aion " I am just grinding in hopes that a fun game will materialize somewhere down the line." --This captured my opinion about Aion 100%.

Aion is a game that dangled a carrot in front of me and each time I got the carrot I was unsatisfied and had too look farther down the line for the next carrot. People say it's about the journey and not the destination.....well Aion's journey is a grindfest. People that support Aion's system just tell me to level up and then start PvPing. I won't spend 1000+ hours to find that out. It's not worth the investment when I can play something that is fun all the way through.

The only point I disagree with had to do with performance. Aion has run very well for me; though, sieges are a nightmare. They(sieges) were just as bad in War but the characters/animations didn't look as good to me.

The real disagreement I can see between an Aion player and a War player is in the definition of "good PvP," but that's just my humble opinion.

I didn't feel the need to grind levels to PvP once I reached 25. I even participated in sieges, which were a lot of fun both attacking and defending.

As for rifting, I don't know why people complained about PvP mixing with PvE. You can avoid people enemies rifting very easily. Perhaps the main reason is because they are more into spy objectives than actually grieving the enemy territory.

WAR PvP was great, but the server I was playing died under my feet. Aion population on the other hand doesn't show any sign of dropping in the same manner. Perhaps it's just too early, or perhaps the population retention rate is just better.