And the major fun factor or Aion is ? No doubt it looks great and sounds great but thats about it.

I played in the last couple Aion OBT, preorder so I could make my toon at prerelease and subscribed for the first year. When the server merge came along and I ended up losing my toons name to a lvl 25 I quit. You get one thing that is unique in an MMO and thats your name, if they fuck that up through poorly done server merges, then they deserve to lose their playerbase. If someone asks me about an MMO to try, Aion isn't on the list.

Originally posted by Ganksinatra

It's awesome.....right up until you meet up with a cleric in the Abyss only 2 levels higher then you and your friends and he rapes all 5 of you in a few minutes. They may have changed that, but that ruined it for me. At the time I last played, there was no real guarunteed stuns or interupts...you could use a skill that had a CHANCE to do those things, but to be honest, they hardly ever did, leading to clerics healing themselves to full every couple of seconds, all while dropping their little lightning thingy that kills you. That alone was enough for me to say screw it and leave for another game.

ALL games have problems with balance as far as PvP goes, don't get me wrong, but when the guy that keeps everyone alive is almost unkillable unless you gang up on him, it kind of takes away from anyone NOT being a cleric, and there were a TON of them back then.

You're right there is a balance issue. Clerics who stacks HP manastones will last much longer than one with Magic Boost. But Obviously you havent seen a Sorceror killing clerics with 2 or 3 casts then. Every class has its advantages and weaknesses. I play on a private server (which I will not specify) I love playing the ranger class. But compare a ranger with any other class out there they have the least amount of HP, unless of course you stack HP manastones. But they have such a variety of skills available to combat the other classes its pretty easy to win. The only classes I have problems with are the Spiritmasters and Clerics. Only reason being rangers got 6-8 second silence skill compare to a sorc's 20 seconds to battle the clerics, you'll most likely run out of mana before the clerics do. And this is what really bugs me. Rangers have the focused evasion skill which will resist or avoid 1 magic spell or 1 attack against you (its a 7 second buff cast before you duel). Yet the Spiritmaster's instant cast fear spell overrides this buff, so by the time the fear wears off on you, you'll most likely get the AoE fear shriek spell casted on you or have about 1/4 of HP left to try and kill them.

Originally posted by Akais

The game had an exagerrated launch population because the game claimed it was something it wasn't.

Aion pulled a bit of a bait and switch at launch by calling itself a PvPvE game . This left many with the impression that while there was a healthy PvP component in the Abyss and select zones it was possible to play PvE to level and then the option of electing to go to PvP areas was present.

This was completely true up to about lvl 24 and again close to max level.

Then you got ganked... Alot.

Lowbie Epic grade PvP gear was easily the match of max level gear and anything better than green quest gear was hard to acquire as drop rates sucked after level 24.

Likewise the game is an Asian MMO that relied on grinding basically which left those little lambs that didn't want to PvP constantly in the open world waiting to get ganked.

For a PvP MMO, I think it's an awesome addition and once folks realized that this is what it actually was the game's real subscriber numbers showed.

The forum posts back then were quite funny though...

Month 1: "This game is awesome !!!"

Month 2: "This game is awesome but I am getting ganked alot I didn't realize it was a PvP only game. What can I do?" /Reply "It's not a PvP game, it's a PvPvE game...Hold Still"

Month 3: "Getting frustrated with this game as can't progress as everytime I go to grind or farm for next level I get ganked and have to start over"  /Reply " Cry More.. Umm where are you going next? I'm trying to get enough marks to get my gold boots"

Month 4: "Hey!! Where'd everybody go?"

Aion, at this point, pretty much has the number of subscribers it is going to ever have. I'd imagine it's current number of subscribers is in keeping with games like Lineage and Shadowfall as most PvP only games tend to share the same subscriber base. Had AionWest represented itself and the game clearly at launch it never would have had the launch numbers it did.

Well, if only Aion had a real PvP focus and if the developers had a stance (i.e "we stand by our decision to make of this game a PvP game"), I would probably still be playing the game. But this is not what happened.

As you said, people interpreted PvPvE as meaning PvE at will and PvP at will. The way this was meant to be interpreted was PvPvE in the abyss, i.e. 2 factions PvP and 1 faction E (in the abyss). With minimal research about the game, people would have seen that rifts were a big feature of the game (rifts are what allow you to go to the ennemy land - to "gank").

In any case, to cut a long story short, you make it look like all PvE players left the game and the PvP crowd lived happily ever after, but apparently only the "carebear-est" of the carebears left the game (or probably the PvP players did not gank enough PvE players), since a few months later, they started preventing rifts (so no more ganking) and the patch content was strictly PvE oriented (extra dungeons and crap like that). Which was clearly done to catter for the PvE crowd (you). Also, the PvP equipment was easier to obtain with almost pure PvE grind.

Problem is PvP players got annoyed (so loads left), PvE players thought PvE was not that great (so loads left). So they lied to everyone (or rather, they did not chose to focus properly and completely on PvE or PvP).

Originally posted by SaintViktor

And the major fun factor or Aion is ? No doubt it looks great and sounds great but thats about it.

Defending/attacking fortress was fun (Mass fortress based-PvP in 3 dimensions). The problem is it was broken... The idea was good though.

Getting great gear plus it, add top end manastones and becoming elyos general. It only lacked dedication from NC and got dumbed down by the american team other than that its still the best MMORPG outthere.

Though I did quit cause of the p2w manastone option.

Originally posted by csthao

You're right there is a balance issue. Clerics who stacks HP manastones will last much longer than one with Magic Boost. But Obviously you havent seen a Sorceror killing clerics with 2 or 3 casts then. Every class has its advantages and weaknesses. I play on a private server (which I will not specify) I love playing the ranger class. But compare a ranger with any other class out there they have the least amount of HP, unless of course you stack HP manastones. But they have such a variety of skills available to combat the other classes its pretty easy to win. The only classes I have problems with are the Spiritmasters and Clerics. Only reason being rangers got 6-8 second silence skill compare to a sorc's 20 seconds to battle the clerics, you'll most likely run out of mana before the clerics do. And this is what really bugs me. Rangers have the focused evasion skill which will resist or avoid 1 magic spell or 1 attack against you (its a 7 second buff cast before you duel). Yet the Spiritmaster's instant cast fear spell overrides this buff, so by the time the fear wears off on you, you'll most likely get the AoE fear shriek spell casted on you or have about 1/4 of HP left to try and kill them.

Clerics who stack HP die easily because you can stuin/silence or "insert any CC" them.  Clerics with MR set are the OP part, they resist all CC/stuns and pretty much all magic dmg (which some physical classes also have lol) unless you have magical accuracy set and are preferably a sorc. Anyway, magic resist is broken as hell stat. Evasion is broken too...almost everyone has way higher accuracy than evasion so making evasion build...dunno, never saw one. Think ppl tried at the start but gave up as it was crap.

P.S. Just saw you said play on private server...a LOT there is different than on official servers.

Originally posted by SaintViktor

And the major fun factor or Aion is ? No doubt it looks great and sounds great but thats about it.

Watching how your character soar, walk and fight

Deciding which armor set looks best on your toon.

Enjoyng beautiful landscapes in the places you have seen for the first time.

Making nice looking screenshots.

Rest is a waste of time - it's all boring timesinks to keep you playing and paying.

I came to the game thinking that pvp would be really good. However, I was sorely dissapointed. It was just dumb zerg fests, or whenever you found some 1v1 or group battles it would just be 10 minutes of chasing somoene on those stupid wings that made it impossible to kill someone and way to easy just to run away. 

The only good thing they had was "rift" pvp, but even that wasn't frequent enough, and again led to more zerg pvp. The castle sieges (in which my hopes were going to be like lineage 2 style) were poorly done, they were just a pve objective with the chance of pvp (more zerg with no strategy). 

Anyways as you can tell i'm still bitter about the game, I had so much hopes about it upon release. Actually to be honest, it is the last mmo game i'll ever get hyped over. Regardless, I came thinking it would be a nice pvp game, it wasn't. I personally think that pve and pvp should be separate. They tried to put them together in this game and it just didn't work (for me anyways). 

All the reply I see are mostly river of tears about the "oh so broken manastone and enhancement feature"... I guess "the MMO crowd is a sad sad crowd" heh I guess I read that somewhere :/

Well the point is the game has plenty PvE content, plenty PvP content (as long as you get a guild/legion). Yeah it is hard to get good gear and leveling is not so easy... but I'm soo tired of those nonsense games in which it takes 50 hours to reach max lvl...

I bought the game 2 month ago (previously played on private) I am now lvl 50 and farming my miragent set which is gonna keep me busy for about a month (yeah for a single armor set) and then I'll be busy rickrolling asmos !

This game is definitely worth a try .. or two and if you don't like challenge.. just don't come :)

Originally posted by Ronn

All the reply I see are mostly river of tears about the "oh so broken manastone and enhancement feature"... I guess "the MMO crowd is a sad sad crowd" heh I guess I read that somewhere :/

Well the point is the game has plenty PvE content, plenty PvP content (as long as you get a guild/legion). Yeah it is hard to get good gear and leveling is not so easy... but I'm soo tired of those nonsense games in which it takes 50 hours to reach max lvl...

I bought the game 2 month ago (previously played on private) I am now lvl 50 and farming my miragent set which is gonna keep me busy for about a month (yeah for a single armor set) and then I'll be busy rickrolling asmos !

This game is definitely worth a try .. or two and if you don't like challenge.. just don't come :)

a month seems pretty quick to get an entire armor set. takes a hell of a lot longer in other games. Just pointing it out since you said that "hard to get good gear" is not really true. 

I tried the demo.  I was gone from the game about two minutes after being puti n the world.  Yuck. No thanks.

Originally posted by DiSpLiFF

Originally posted by Ronn

All the reply I see are mostly river of tears about the "oh so broken manastone and enhancement feature"... I guess "the MMO crowd is a sad sad crowd" heh I guess I read that somewhere :/

Well the point is the game has plenty PvE content, plenty PvP content (as long as you get a guild/legion). Yeah it is hard to get good gear and leveling is not so easy... but I'm soo tired of those nonsense games in which it takes 50 hours to reach max lvl...

I bought the game 2 month ago (previously played on private) I am now lvl 50 and farming my miragent set which is gonna keep me busy for about a month (yeah for a single armor set) and then I'll be busy rickrolling asmos !

This game is definitely worth a try .. or two and if you don't like challenge.. just don't come :)

a month seems pretty quick to get an entire armor set. takes a hell of a lot longer in other games. Just pointing it out since you said that "hard to get good gear" is not really true. 

I knew someone was gonna say that ... well its a SOLO/QUEST armor set ... playing about 6 hours a day .. not like u had to wait for a group to form or a timer for an instance or anything... and well the funny part after that is getting it fully manastone slotted and +10 :D

Originally posted by CujoSWAoA

I tried the demo.  I was gone from the game about two minutes after being puti n the world.  Yuck. No thanks.

Hmmm the way you argue.. very interesting... and that moment when you said that .... owait , random troll ?

Originally posted by nblitz

The enchanting and manastoning system depresses me and makes me not want to play for extended periods of time. Those are my main reasons why I have quit several times and why I don't stay subbed for longer periods. 

This is also probably the reason why many dub it a grind and do not recommend the game to others. I know I haven't.

Also I've grown a bit tired of the click-to-attack & stand-there-and-trade-blows-combat (I can't remember the word for this) but I wouldn't unsub from a fun game for that.

This was implemented so that they could sell stuff in the cash shop to improve your enchanting and manastone results.  It's a disturbing trend in the video game industry of incredible greed.  I think  they will get a wake up call when GW2 comes out ant basically everyone leaves to play a wonderful game that has NO sub fees and no cash shop (at least I hope it remains that way). 

Originally posted by avalon1000

Originally posted by nblitz

The enchanting and manastoning system depresses me and makes me not want to play for extended periods of time. Those are my main reasons why I have quit several times and why I don't stay subbed for longer periods. 

This is also probably the reason why many dub it a grind and do not recommend the game to others. I know I haven't.

Also I've grown a bit tired of the click-to-attack & stand-there-and-trade-blows-combat (I can't remember the word for this) but I wouldn't unsub from a fun game for that.

This was implemented so that they could sell stuff in the cash shop to improve your enchanting and manastone results.  It's a disturbing trend in the video game industry of incredible greed.  I think  they will get a wake up call when GW2 comes out ant basically everyone leaves to play a wonderful game that has NO sub fees and no cash shop (at least I hope it remains that way). 

I agree with all of that EXCEPT ... please people quit overhyping videogames ... if they don't fit with your imagination you'll just go and random hate it (happens very very very often)

I quit for a few reasons.  Firstly, the game is not challenging.  It gives you the illusion of challenge by making the simplest enemies take forever to kill, making a ridiculous grind even more so.  Same goes for the PVP.  I consider challenge actually using my skills independent of what gear I have on, and still having a chance to beat someone my own level.  In Aion, after level 25, you're basically just waiting to be killed a lot by people in gold armor with crit stones maxed

I'm simply exhausted of games that promise an enthralling experience and deliver a gear-based grindfest.  This is not to say that players who haven't already busted their asses in games like WoW won't enjoy Aion for a little while.  I did, but the thrill doesn't last, because the concept is broken.  Bring on GW2 already.

Originally posted by Ronn

All the reply I see are mostly river of tears about the "oh so broken manastone and enhancement feature"... I guess "the MMO crowd is a sad sad crowd" heh I guess I read that somewhere :/

Well the point is the game has plenty PvE content, plenty PvP content (as long as you get a guild/legion). Yeah it is hard to get good gear and leveling is not so easy... but I'm soo tired of those nonsense games in which it takes 50 hours to reach max lvl...

I bought the game 2 month ago (previously played on private) I am now lvl 50 and farming my miragent set which is gonna keep me busy for about a month (yeah for a single armor set) and then I'll be busy rickrolling asmos !

This game is definitely worth a try .. or two and if you don't like challenge.. just don't come :)

Well, I've got better idea. why not to make a game in which chance to socket each slot of gear will be 1%? Or 0,1%? And if just one fails, all are destroyed, like it is now?

Why not make players grind for the best set for a year? Or ten years? How's that for a challenge? Will that be elitst enough for those that want to spend their entire lifetime playing a game to "achieve" anything?

I want to play a game for fun. I don't want to grind my buttocks off to be competitive...

Originally posted by heimdall22

Originally posted by Ronn

All the reply I see are mostly river of tears about the "oh so broken manastone and enhancement feature"... I guess "the MMO crowd is a sad sad crowd" heh I guess I read that somewhere :/

Well the point is the game has plenty PvE content, plenty PvP content (as long as you get a guild/legion). Yeah it is hard to get good gear and leveling is not so easy... but I'm soo tired of those nonsense games in which it takes 50 hours to reach max lvl...

I bought the game 2 month ago (previously played on private) I am now lvl 50 and farming my miragent set which is gonna keep me busy for about a month (yeah for a single armor set) and then I'll be busy rickrolling asmos !

This game is definitely worth a try .. or two and if you don't like challenge.. just don't come :)

Well, I've got better idea. why not to make a game in which chance to socket each slot of gear will be 1%? Or 0,1%? And if just one fails, all are destroyed, like it is now?

Why not make players grind for the best set for a year? Or ten years? How's that for a challenge? Will that be elitst enough for those that want to spend their entire lifetime playing a game to "achieve" anything?

I want to play a game for fun. I don't want to grind my buttocks off to be competitive...

Not only that, PVP is RNG to hell also. Some bloke gets lucky with his para stone on you and you're dead. Wanna play roullete? Just have a sorc spam their instant cast DoT spells on you until their magic boost godstone procs and oneshots you.

The guy you're quoting is talking about rickrolling asmos in miragent. That statement itself is fucking laughable. Before I quit I SMASHED people that were in full 50e armor. Anyone in miragent/fenris basically gets 2 shotted because damage reduction means everything on pvp armor.

There are some good things about the game, but the core mechanics of combat and content plateau is dumb as hell. Mashing 2 factions together and not except one to dominate the other is regrettable. Having inter-faction fights based on world bosses is dumb when you require people to work together to fight the other side. Making the grind to socket manastones or to enchant armor and weapons is retarded. Having to random proc your god damn pants for miragents is LAME AS HELL (I failed 18 times, highest amount of failure on my server was 33 by the time I quit).

Because the game is a dull grind, of no interest to anyone with half a western head working.