Aion really needs a high res texture pack.   

The artstyle was pretty good at the beginning, but when you get to the swampy area (level 35-45 zone) it really feels like they got lazy.   Anyways, with the new settings and shaders, the game looks okay at most places as long as the really low res textures aren't too apparent.   These were taken a while back when the build in AA wasn't working, so there were some jaggies at 1920x1200.   AA seems to be working now though, and I think they updated the shaders a bit.    

For a 3 year old MMO it looks pretty decent.   It was built on a heavily modified CryEngine (not the Crysis one) so this is probably as good as you'll get for such an old engine.

It looked good for its time, but it was never anything spectacular.

Indeed, assuming you could even run it, AoC had the best graphics for it's time hands down.

Aion still has some of the best graphics among the F2P crowd. The best thing about Aion, however, isn't the visual quality itself, but the fact that it is very efficient. Most machines can run it with little effort, even on high settings. 

It should look outdated, because the engine is actually quite a bit older than the game....

Originally posted by //\\//\\oo

It looked good for its time, but it was never anything spectacular.

Indeed, assuming you could even run it, AoC had the best graphics for it's time hands down.

Aion still has some of the best graphics among the F2P crowd. The best thing about Aion, however, isn't the visual quality itself, but the fact that it is very efficient. Most machines can run it with little effort, even on high settings. 

It should look outdated, because the engine is actually quite a bit older than the game....

 

 

 

Hey MOO, long taim no see, anyways, yes, when Aion first came out, it was a visual mind fuck, and relectanly when my brother got me a free trail to play swtor, (even with an old ass rig from 2009) it was still playable on max settings, and you could immidiately tell the shawdoing and lighting was superior to aion.  I still have my aion account and am waiting for 3.0 to come out, but in the meantime, I'll be on star wars, the pvp reminds me  of WAR, but the clean crisp lines and the vertical immersion to heights feels amazing.  The wolrd also has a very huge feeling.  Aion still looks good, but when folks dropped 200 million dollars on a game (that was developed many years in the making) it still feels ahead of its time.

The only thing aion wins against swtor is the character custimization and detail. It is truely second to none.

Originally posted by m0lly

no op is right, i did the same but i also played closed beta back in the days when it was on that stage, bought collectors edition back then and played alltogether 7 months so it says on my master account.

 

well now i transfer my account to free to play yeah very nice and logged in and wham same feeling does aion really looked like this ? i felt like it looked better then and somehow for some reason it didnt look like that now.

 

so whoever says its looking amazing dont really have experience amazing looking games out there then sorry to disappoint.

Aion didn't have its new engine back when the game first released.

The new graphic engine has to be manually turned on in the settings, and then you have to restart the client. If you don't find the models beautiful with that, you're blind. Mind you parts of the environment still leave something to be desired (specifically terrain, towns look beautiful) but that was a decision they supposedly made to keep system requirements relatively low.

Unfortunately my screenshot folder was deleted along with the install as, pretty or not, it's still boring as hell.

Originally posted by Lobotomist

But I just could not play it , it really hurts my eyes

'hurts my eyes'... lol Lobo.. really?:P

If it is an art style taste thing, then I get it, but your really saying this game looks bad enough on a technical level to make you stop playing?

...

I honestly have no response to that.

I suspect you wern't really that interested in it in the first place and was really just a new game tourist taking a look because it was free. I suspect you was never going to be impressed by anything the game had to offerand that it's just not your thing, which is fine. Making silly statements like the one quoted though does damage your credibility.

I can't complain about Aion's graphics.  Still one of the most gorgeous MMO's on the planet.

Originally posted by korent1991

Originally posted by Lobotomist

Aion was one of the rare MMOs i didnt play in beta nor bought on launch (i guess my disillusion with MMOs started back than)

So I was happy to try it now that is F2P

 

Now as far as I remember the game was hyped for its beautyful graphic , but i log in - crank everything to maximum and the game looks AWFUL.

Either there is some huge problem with my PC and this specific game , or i dont know what.

But I just could not play it , it really hurts my eyes

 

 

I think you didn't set your graphic settings right... I think it looks good...

link1

link2

link3

edit: I don't have maxed out settings...

 Yeah those links bring back memories...the game was ugly.

In fact i remember how sparse and barren the pvp area, think it was called the abyss, was.  Just a bunch of barren rocks floating about space.

I think the game has aged a bit faster than we may have thought was possible.

Oh and i played on max setting back when it launched, and those screen shots actually make the game look worse than i remember since they are shots of the pve areas that i had rememberd looking nice.

Typically i dont agree with lobo and his F2P fetishes, but i think he got this one right.  Those screenshots highlight the games uglyness.  How about posting some shots of the abyss?  Really show everyone the games ugly side?

 *edit* the guy above me posted some screenies that actually did the game justice, now i remember.  The textures and polygons on this game were aweful, the lighting was fantastic. However it needed blur pretty bad to cover the poor polygons and low res textures.

Bad talking about aion's graphics, its bs, cause after AoConan its the best graphics out to play as a mmorpg.
Bad stuff its the awful RNG on manastones, enchants, craft and godstones, that's the worst xit on this game

The graphics a game has on release, were how top of the line the graphics software was at the beginning of development, which can be from 5 - 10 years.

Thats why developers rush a game out before they become to outdated.

The graphics are nothing compared to somthing like Age of Conan but compared to most other MMORPGs they are still better.

Originally posted by SoulSurfer

 

Hey MOO, long taim no see, anyways, yes, when Aion first came out, it was a visual mind fuck, and relectanly when my brother got me a free trail to play swtor, (even with an old ass rig from 2009) it was still playable on max settings, and you could immidiately tell the shawdoing and lighting was superior to aion.  I still have my aion account and am waiting for 3.0 to come out, but in the meantime, I'll be on star wars, the pvp reminds me  of WAR, but the clean crisp lines and the vertical immersion to heights feels amazing.  The wolrd also has a very huge feeling.  Aion still looks good, but when folks dropped 200 million dollars on a game (that was developed many years in the making) it still feels ahead of its time.

The only thing aion wins against swtor is the character custimization and detail. It is truely second to none.

Sup?

For visual character customization, you're right, but in terms of actual skill customization, SWToR is better, of course you already knew that and I was just playing on the ambiguity of the term.

Amazingly, SWToR is quite a performer as well in terms of graphics (on lower end machines), of course I can't stand the gameplay (ESPECIALLY THE COMBAT) to any appreciable degree to stick with it... and sure as hell not for a subscription fee, so until then I'm back on Aion.

What really irks me about SWToR is that they couldn't invest at least 20 of those 200 million on the actual design of the combat. Nothing pisses more in my cereal than being forced to spam something when everything else is on cooldown. There's a reason why auto-attacks are auto and that's because nobody wants to relentlessly spam a button at every second mindlessly.

If SWToR had gotten combat right, I'd be playing it, but .. they didn't and it angers me.

Huh outdated?

Aion still looks great, better than Rift and many other mmos, probably the best visual F2P out there.

I started to get burnt out too at the time Aion came out. And now I decided to try it, since I like having a good overview over all mmorpgs. And its not exactly pretty, I was surprised to see how bad it has aged. Better graphics than rift? Sorry I cannot agree, and its not even in the same league. Although I find rift kinda dull, colorless and bleak.

Originally posted by Lobotomist

Originally posted by korent1991

 

I think you didn't set your graphic settings right... I think it looks good...

link1

link2

link3

edit: I don't have maxed out settings...

Yes, it looks exactly as these screenshots you posted.

I am playing TERA beta - link for comparison

My PC has no problem running the game at max settings and it looks like that.

 

And Aion is not that old game, it should really not look that bad.

 

 

Well then I have to say that you are in luck, Aion looks better than those screen shots. Those shots are not on maxiumum settings.

I have no current shots but these were taken on during Beta on a computer that is lesser than my current one.

Originally posted by Everket

I started to get burnt out too at the time Aion came out. And now I decided to try it, since I like having a good overview over all mmorpgs. And its not exactly pretty, I was surprised to see how bad it has aged. Better graphics than rift? Sorry I cannot agree, and its not even in the same league. Although I find rift kinda dull, colorless and bleak.

Rift has small maps & towns with quest turn-ins on stupid heights or  inaccessible places compared to Aion, I'm not talking about graphical resolution, overall Aion has far more views to take in and enjoy.

Yes it has mounts but the Aion fly and glide is far more fun -  it's far from outdated imo.

Age hasnt been kind to it.

Much like anything in AIon character models are still superb background textures are all locale dependent.

Santilus desert on the high engine and maxed you wouldnt even think it was Aion yet the starter zones still look like crap with background textures that are terribad.

Back in AIon though till I waste money to not play GW2 and TSW last hope is archeage.

Originally posted by Lobotomist

Aion was one of the rare MMOs i didnt play in beta nor bought on launch (i guess my disillusion with MMOs started back than)

So I was happy to try it now that is F2P

 

Now as far as I remember the game was hyped for its beautyful graphic , but i log in - crank everything to maximum and the game looks AWFUL.

Either there is some huge problem with my PC and this specific game , or i dont know what.

But I just could not play it , it really hurts my eyes

 

 

I tried Aion with my own settings and the game was not hurting my eyes.

But when I made it auto detect settings and then restarted the game, it did hurt my eyes.

I am using a Alienware personalized gaming laptop -- "Alienware M11x" variant.

I played Aion till level 33 and I found the game is suffering from lack of population and post 30 the game is too complicated or may be too grindy to continue. The Abyss part of the game is weird. That part of the game really turned me off post level 25. 

I will check back in when F2P 3.0 launches but with so many F2P options upcoming , this game falls at the bottom of my priority list.

I actually hopped in the game, having been gone since i left a month after launch.

The game looked god aweful...

Then i started tweaking the graphics, used the high detail engine, found the advance button hidden in the settings...adding the bloom and fancy effects made a big diffrence.

Aion is a game in typical eastern graphic theory, imo.  It favors blurring godrays and graphical effects over teture quality and detail.  Turning all the effects on and it looks good, see those textures for what they are and its downright ugly.

With that said....lol anyone remember back in 2009 when this game was going to "dethrone the king" and usher in a new era of eastern style games appealing to western markets?  They are down to 3 servers 4 right now but two are getting merged in a few days.

I rolled on israphel, and its quite populated, but i has a distinct F2P crowd flooding in.  I would call israphel the unofficial international server now.

Game still has the same issues it had when i left, terrible faction balancing.  Havent tried the frot seiges yet since my p2p account mysteriously doesnt exist.  My assumptions are that a gold farmer got a hold of it years ago and got it banned spamming with it.  Stuff i expect from a game like this so not a big deal.  Grinding does seem reduced, however its a double xp weekend.

Going to be interesting to see the game nosedive further when all the pvpers flock to Gw2.

One thing that i remember from launch, thats still true now...why do they make these type of games where everything is such a pain in the ass....travling, questing, crafting, pvp ....its all designed to have pointless time sinks.  Also brings back memories of the terrible execution of flight in the game.  Forgot flight is turned off on pve maps, im assuming to increase the travel timesink.

Oh and the client still crashes...ahh the memories.

Sorry Lobo...I usually side with you on your posts, but I can't agree with you on this one. I think Aion is one of the best looking MMO's to date.

Amazing how bad these games look after playing Battlefield 3 on ultra for months .