Oh crud, I just mentioned WoW in the title... well I tried!  Seriously though, this review will not try to compare Aion to WoW and more talk about my experience with the game.  Note, this review covers a 3 day span, with a bit of CB4 experience thrown in.  I've tried several characters 1-10 both sides of the fence (in Beta i don't power game, I play as many classes/races as I can to ascertain A) if I want to play the game at launch and B) what I would play if I did).

For this past weekend I chose a Elysian Cleric who was going to and did become a Chanter up through level 13.  I did not play non-stop.  I'd say about 4 hours each day (Friday, Saturday and perhaps a bit more on Sunday).  As this is my fourth toon I was quiet familiar with the Elysos starting quests which brings me to some of my first major points about Aion's content.

Content

One major drawback which hits me the first time you make a second character, there are only two starting locations in Aion, one for the Elsians and one for the Asmodeans.  Any character you make in one of these areas will have the exact same quests to do.  This holds true up through level 15 as far as I can tell.  So Aion gets a pretty big knock by me on diversity of content.  One could argue that lots of low level starting areas is a waste of dev time as they all merge together anyway in every other MMO.

To its credit, the two areas you do have are great fun to look at and explore.  Heavily Asian themed which can be a plus and a minus.  If you've played Asian MMO's before than you'll be familiar with the somewhat bizarre/cutsey monster varieties.  Everything has a slight "anime" feel.  The "mean" monsters you fight early on sadly look way to cute to be ferocious, the type of thing you'd see as a pet or stuffed animal.  This does change as you progress out of the  level 10 areas, you start to see much more bad ass looking mobs and do catch some glimpses of the big end game mobs as well.

The meat of the content itself is, unfortunately, pretty mundane. In either early story you are on a path of discovery, the quintessential "Heroes Journey" where you start from somewhat humble beginnings with a premonintion and discover that you are an imorrtal Daeva.  In either case, town villagers and military commanders alike, even those who know your near god like status still ask you to harvest 10 apples, pick some pumpkins or go get their lost bottle of wine.  Thankfully you don't kill "rats" but unfortunately the first few mobs you fight are decidely unheroic encounters.

Aions greatest sin early on though is that frankly, for anyone who's played an MMO before, it's boring.  The first 6 levels especially.  For any class you choose you'll have at best two abilities you would use in combat and there's no real feel for the class.   But the 6 levels don't come particularly fast.  In fact, the first time I tried Aion (CB3) I gave up on my warrior at level 4 thinking that this game was ridiculously over hyped for what he presented by that point.  Which was incredibly standard faire "Kill 10" quests and a boring combat system.  Aion, unfortunately to enjoy it, requires you to stick with it.  This more than anything else I feel will probably hurt Aion the most at launch.  While it sure looks pretty, it offers absolutely nothing exciting in the first hour or two of gameplay. That's a major killer in the US market, especially one that overhypes Aion as a major player in the MMO space.

Final content note.. the game is "instanced" to a degree.  It spawns copies of the new starting areas to help prevent over crowding but even so, there is fierce competition for ground spawn pickups.  Mobs respawn fast enough that there is only minimal waiting for mobs in crowded areas, but the "harvest" quests ar emajor bottlenecks.   It's bad enough solo, if you group with friends you'll psend a LOT of time waiting for ground respawns.  It's a serious drawback to the flow of the game in my opinion.  You can instance hop to find less crowded areas if you want, but again, this hurts flow alot, afterall you're just trying to finish the basic tutorial quests.  Once you reach aggro mob areas (places where mobs will attack you on site) the frequency of "clearing to a harvest spot only to have the harvest taken by someone else" gets quite high.

Character Generator

Okay, major positive here.  Aion has one of the most powerful character generators since City of Heroes. I summed it up to a friend as "Aion only has two "sides" with no races, because frankly, you don't need races.  You can make whatever race you want with the character generator".  What's impressive is exactly one tool achieves this diversity.  If you want a gnome, you can make a traditional looking gnome.  Dwarf? No problem.  Elf? Definately no problem.  Demon? Yup that too.  Anime dopey eyed girl with big boobs? Yup.  Very western muscle bound hero with scarred grizzly face? He's there.  This is achieved by powerful facial sliders and controls, a wonderfully diverse set of presets and a suprisingly large number of hairstyles and accessories, especially for an Asian title.  There are some annoyances and limitiations, skin color, hair color, lip colors are pallete based and limited by Elysos or Asmodean choices.  Asmodean's will *always* have fur on their backs (it's stylish, but it's always there) and claws and their eyes will always glow red.  This preserves the overall integrity of character looks and feels at the expense of complete diversity.

Core Gameplay

Early levels the system is pretty straight foward.  You'll be handed one or two attack abilities, possibly a buff or a heal and set free to start killing stuff over and over again.  To Aion's credit combat is smooth, well animated and provides fantastic "feedback" both visually and audibly for the user.  It's not hard to figure out what's going on or what needs to be done.  The UI is functional, if a bit barren, but it provides everything you need to know.

Typically this is no different than any other MMO on the market.  I've read some comments on review sites about a positional system at play (moving foward increases attack, back defense, sides evasion) however there is no evidence of such a system early on.  Around level 6 or 7 you finally start to see some traits of your class.  You'll achieve your first combo ability, which makes combat far more engaging giving you something to react to.  Typically combo's are "follow up" skills that can be used on a less frequent timer, after using a primary ability.  Your follow up skill will have bonuses associated with it.  The cleric for example has a 2 second or so stun with theirs.    Scouts and their ilk get their stealth abilities and before level 10 start getting some bonus abilities that make them more scoutish.

There is nothing about Aion by level 10 or 15 that truly differentiates it from other MMO's combat wise.  This is a action based combat system that we've come to know, love and hate all at the same time.  It is incredibly wall polished and does not feel "clunky" like many new MMO's.  Aion deserves high marks for the quality and responsiveness of the system. But doesn't earn any bonus points for differentiation.

Story

For those that care about story, Aion's is interesting.  It is defintately a  unique twist on a "Angels and Demons" story line (afterall you have white and black winged folks with claws and red eyes).  It does a remarkably good job of avoiding the designations of "Good and Evil".  These are two immortal races locked in a battle focused more on philosophy and choices than good and evil. Over it all is a supreme "master enemy" that is at the core of the cataclysm that brought about the seperation of the two races.  If you're into lore and new worlds, there is plenty of "meat" to this story to devour and for an Asian title, this is all remarkably well translated.  So well tranlsated that there are very few hints about its Asian origins if you were to ignore the graphics and art direciton.  There is still a bit of sentence structure issues, namely when describing combat or ability descriptions which implies more of an unfamiliarity with MMO mechanics in the translators eyes than a poor translation.

What Makes Aion Unique?

So this review is not exactly flowing with praise.  Aion is not, in my opinion, the second coming of MMO's and "what we'll all be playing next."  In fact I expect AIon to sell spectacularly when it launches (it *is* a gorgeous game) and then rapidly lose favor with MMO fans.  It will however, be a much loved and cherished game by those who stick with it because Aion does do somethings well that other games do not.

First, let's get flight out of the way. The flight system is fun, and unique and not just a means of travel.  It is clearly well integrated into aspects of the game design, there are even harvest nodes you can only get to if you fly to them, and harvesting efficiently is it's own mini game here as flight time is limited by stamina.  Flying, and gliding, around areas is a lot of fun and the animation quality is second to none here, feathers ripple in the wind, wing beats are fluid, the since of scale and flying really is delivered.

Sadly, flying results heavily in "invisible wall" syndrome.  No where in the game are it's world limitations imposed more than when flying.  "No fly zones" are planted on entire areas of the world for no obvious reason.  There is no logical story or contextual reason for why you can't fly in certain areas, no giant mountain barrier you can't cross.  Just a simple "Flying here is not permitted" message that jars you out of the virtual reality of Aion and into the "WTF is up with this mechanic?" realm of game playing.    It smells very much like the world builders couldn't find a way to build a world that dealt with Aion's one truly unique game system so imposed a simple, if brutal, control to keep you on the path they want you on and just not have to deal with it.  A real shame.  Perhaps later it becomes more open, I wouldn't know.  But this is definately the impression from a few days of weekend playing.

PvP - I can't comment, you have to get to level 25 to even really understand it.  This in my book is a major let down.  Warhammer online proved to the MMO world that you can make engaging, fun, and rewarding PvP starting at level 1.  For a game that is marketed as "An improved MMO" and a polished one, this simple oversight is pretty hard.  It's very hard to test, and or evaluate a major gameplay mechanic during preview beta weekends when they don't give you comped toons that compete.  My fears would be that most Asian MMO's have a very potion heavy, seriously unbalanced PvP mechanic that ultimately ends up being a zerg fest polluted by gankers and griefers.  I see no reason why this will not be the case with Aion.  It'll just be a very pretty excercise in getting pwned by gank squads is all.

Graphics

Okay I saved this for last and as apart of the "uniqueness" of Aion.  Aion is a beautiful game.  However any screenshots or videos you have seen to date emphasize Aions best qualities.  Namely character models and animation are superb, armor sets are gorgeous to look at and make extensive use of modern pixel shaders.  The environments however range wildly from Grade A to Grade C in my opinion.  Still water/lakes look incredible but flowing water looks very outdated (waterfalls especially, which there are a lot of).  Ground textures follow and very WoW (ack! I mentioned it again) art direction, focusing on artistic style over realism.  Which is fine, but it jars offly heavily with the very shiney character models heavily pixel shadered.  That said, the characters do in fact look good in the world.

One of the biggest let downs however would be that despite the amazing character generator, everyone looks the same.  Armor sets may look gorgeous but there is not a lot of variety in the early levels (between levels 1-10 there are maybe 2 different leather sets, two chain sets, etc.).  You can tell what stage of progression people are on by the clothes they wear and what class they are immediately by the weapons.  There is slightly more diversity in weapon looks except maybe for the clerics.  Who sadly use "hammers" that have hammers for icons but decidely maces for actual graphic and the diversity of the maces is obscenely lacking.

The game looks beautiful but underneath that glossy exeterior is an eery sameness to everyones looks.  To be fair, I saw much more diversity later on as I explored the capital cities.  NPC's have a wide range of armors they wear and if even half of these are available to players then there *should* be a large set of available looks.  I cannot confirm this as from what I saw armor look is heavily controled by level and tier.  I.E. you can tell what level someone is just based on the armor color/style they are wearing. Why? Because there is precisely one look for that tier.

Ultimately Aion is "Beautiful but limited".

Conclusion

So that was a tremendous amount of "wow, this isn't quite so great" review.  And that's my point.  I think Aion is over-hyped.  That said, Aion is not a "bad' game.  It has enough new look, feel and gameplay wise that it is different yet familiar and should do well with fans.  However it will be victim of its own hype problem.  NCSoft is pushing Aion hard, they need a success in the US.  They realize that marketing is their biggest weak point and are "doing things right" this time.  There's plenty of press on Aion with it's launch date only a month or so away.

It is, sadly, over-hyped as a MMO king, the "next new thing".  A mistake both of which Age of Conan and Warhammer made.  Claiming to be better, or allowing the fan base to hype it to that point.  Aion is a succesful clone. It inherits all the best traits of many great MMO's and adds a sprinkle of "unique" to make it something different and fill a potential void in the US market.  It's PvP system is mostly untested in the US and players should rightly fear it's Asian PvP origins as Aion did not clone any US based game PvP systems for that aspect of the game.  

Aion is also a somewhat harsh game.  There is an XP penalty on death, and as with many asian titles, an economy heavily influenced by cash generation.  Everything costs money, traveling, binding to a location, recovering lost XP and the cost is directly associated with your level.   Early on you can run out of money if you're not careful and cause major travel problems.  Costs scale dramatically, you can find yourself without the cash to buy spells for your level etc.  Travel times are severe enough (i.e. measure on the boredom scale).  You spend quite a bit of time running to and fro and that will turn high action folks off immediately.

In this regard, Aion is unfortunately not "the next best thing".  It does not substantially evolve the MMO market or industry in anyway.  It does not overcome the industries two biggest design failings at the moment in my mind.  Those are "Solo questing has ruined game design - its grinding you can't do with friends easily" and "travel time - also known as holy hell I pay 15 dollars a month to do nothing but run from point A to point B in 5 minute jogs at a time".  

Aion is however, a new twist on a familiar and loveable format.  If you *love* MMO's and current classic MMO design and thinking, can look past MMO design faults and fall in love with the game world, Aion has a good chance of not just interesting you but grabbing you by the nuts and taking hold. 

Believe it or not, I would heartedly recommend Aion to anyone looking for something new.  If you're suffereing from "current game" boredom but aren't jonesing for "it has to be something completely revolutionary" than Aion is a good bet.  Beautiful, solid (if somewhat uninspired) combat/class design and "content" rich.  A bit heavy on the solo quest grind (okay, ridiculously heavy) but otherwise fun to play if this kind of thing is your cup of tea.

If MMO's, subscription based play, are things you can't stand, just don't bother with Aion.  There's nothing to see here that would interest anyone who isn't an MMO player and probably nothing that will necessitate leaving your current favorite game if you're already  a fan of the MMO's you are playing now.

Good review.   The solo grind is killer it's like you want to group up but outside of the lvl 16 elites and lvl 25 elites grouping is not very effective. Maybe a dou in certain high spawn  concentration locations.  

Excellent, thorough and well written review.  Not something you see very often these days.  

Lol you mentioned WoW in the title

For me it's a breath of fresh air after playing the same game for almost 3 years.

It's very polished and fun to play so far.   I'm looking forward to retail and playing the rest of the game.

Random addon to this review...

The most amazing thing to me as a writer about this game is that every character has its own name, even the guards, and many say different things. For role-players or people who enjoy an immersive experience then this game offers far more than the average MMO that offers other things as well. The world even feels realistic; the little quest cities that you encounter through your journey feel realistically functional, even the farming towns feel like people are actually living and working there. Though there are some times when the graphics suffer from 'grass texture ground' syndrome, there are also times when you just have to stop and marvel, maybe just take a sit down and look around.

No, this game isn't revolutionary. If you haven't played WoW -ever- then you should play it instead. I, however, am tired of WoW. Aion has potential to be an awesome PvP -and- PvE game, it's beautiful, it's immersive and it scales in difficulty. It has its negatives; the two starting areas, the other areas being semi-mirrors of each other on each side, the limited flight and areas without allowed flight and the quest grind. I, however, enjoy the quest grind. It's just like WoW, for those that have played. The only difference is that Aion presents a more beautiful and interesting variety of areas and quests in which to proceed through the quest grind.

I was disappointed when compared to the hype but I will still play Aion. It may not be better than WoW is now but it is better than WoW was at launch and it's FRESH and it has potential.

Also, crafting and gathering are epic IMO. Random static things in the background turn out to be gatherable. Very smooth.

"Aions greatest sin early on though is that frankly, for anyone who's played an MMO before, it's boring"

Not for me. In fact I had a blast, and I have played quite a few MMO's.

"There is no logical story or contextual reason for why you can't fly in certain areas"

Wrong. You should read a bit before writing a review.  Do you know what Aether is?

Well, I think you could have shorten it quite a bit, but it was ok read. You were pretty spot on about many things that will negatively affect the number of subscribers, but towards the end you fell little too much on the speculative side considering you were "reviewing" first few levels of the game.

First impressions are important, but I do not think most people will unsubscribe because of early PvE, but when they actually enter Abyss. It is most likely that not many will even see the end-game.

I personally hope this will be a niche game, so popularity is really not an important factor. Apart from the fact that we know that it is doing ok in Asia.

I also had a small addition.  I spent a good two hours this weekend doing some very fun, and nicely balance surprisingly, PvP in the coliseum in the main town.  So the people saying PvP doesnt begin til level 25 are missing out, because if you just call out in shout for a few people to come to the arena, and tons of 10-15ish chars come for some fun battles just because everyone is eager to try out their char in PvP.  I highly recommend it ;o)

Originally posted by Juaks

"Aions greatest sin early on though is that frankly, for anyone who's played an MMO before, it's boring"

Not for me. In fact I had a blast, and I have played quite a few MMO's.

"There is no logical story or contextual reason for why you can't fly in certain areas"

Wrong. You should read a bit before writing a review.  Do you know what Aether is?

I agree, playing through the start zones is never a huge part of the game. Some will always find it boring.However, I enjoyed playing through bother start zones. So far i've gone 1-10 on elyos several time. I have always been 1-10 on asmodian 3 different times. TBH, it was funner each time I did it. Because each time, I had more respect for what I was going through.

 Nothing revolutionary, but deffinently acceptable in my MMO starter zone book. FYI, the start zone progression is a million times better than wow's start zones. Even if WoW has a ton of them.

My only huge gripes are the fact that SM dots don't stack if multiple SM's have the same dot on a single opponent. Also the problem that casting is auto-face target. If they get rid of this than the assassins and melee in general won't have a reason to bitch. "Which they do" because especially assassins when they stab a caster in the back, it takes zero skill for the caster to just autoface them after getting a spell of while facing the opposite direction. They need to make it so the caster has to manually face the target to get a successful cast.

Originally posted by Juaks

"Aions greatest sin early on though is that frankly, for anyone who's played an MMO before, it's boring"

Not for me. In fact I had a blast, and I have played quite a few MMO's.

"There is no logical story or contextual reason for why you can't fly in certain areas"

Wrong. You should read a bit before writing a review.  Do you know what Aether is?

Lot's of good feedback on the review so far, thanks folks and yes I agree, it's a bit long in the tooth.  As for the above, actually, only vaguely is the answer.  I've done very little lore research outside what the game itself presents to me in the quest texts I read.  (If the quest felt like more than a "harvest 10 X" quest I probably read its story).    So my point of view is not one of the external reasons the devs give for why you can't fly there.  Rather it's a practical, I'm playing the game....

The only one where it made sense flight was disabled was the starter zones, you aren't Daeva yet so why should you be able to fly?  Beyond that, the game doesn't say anything right away.  Certainly not at level 10 after you acquire flight, start flying around and hit the big magical invisible wall over the water near Verentia (sp?).  Or when you start running to Tabios (sp?) Village from there and can't fly along the road.  

So while it may be explained in lore, in fact I'm sure it is, that wasn't the point. The point was that as a gamer, playing a game, the restriction is quite obviously artificial and more to do with the games design than any logical flow of content.  I.E. we didn't put any flight content here and flying might break the world layout/artificial risk/pathing/routing we put it in, so we aren't letting you fly. 

Regardless it doesn't make Aion an awful game, just quite the suprise for a game heavily marketed on its "Look you can fly" system that frankly, doesn't let you fly as often as you'd think (gliding however, is quite a bit of fun, I routinely jumped off cliffs and glided around.  Again, a disconnect, you can glide, i.e. pop your wings out, but you can't actually fly.  

As for other points, I can definitely see how people would enjoy the first 10 levels, again, it's polished, everything works and the world is beautiful.   I've played a lot more MMO's than most people (it's a huge hobby of mine) and all I really should've said is that levels 1-5 I was bored playing a warrior.  I had been hoping for some amazing gameplay, something really special.  I have been spoiled by things like Warhammers really fun first 10 levels (note: doesn't mean I thought the rest of the game was good) and was expecting Aion to be more engaging.  I actually *did* stop playing after the first 5 levels as a warrior and didn't return until CB4 when a friend and other posts said to stick with it until the story gets better.  And I agree, by level 10 both the world and the story captivate me.

For the record I *will* be buying and playing Aion on launch and I am debating a collector's edition (I'm a sucker for knick nacks). I just don't think Aion is the second coming of anything.  I do think it's a great MMO, a quality title and has a fighters chance of actually being a popular Asian MMO in the US (PVP fears aside).  The things that make me stay with an MMO have more to do with the community I find once I start playing and aren't really subject to a review, or analysis during a beta.

Originally posted by Vestas

Final content note.. the game is "instanced" to a degree.  It spawns copies of the new starting areas to help prevent over crowding but even so, there is fierce competition for ground spawn pickups.  Mobs respawn fast enough that there is only minimal waiting for mobs in crowded areas, but the "harvest" quests ar emajor bottlenecks.   It's bad enough solo, if you group with friends you'll psend a LOT of time waiting for ground respawns.  It's a serious drawback to the flow of the game in my opinion.  You can instance hop to find less crowded areas if you want, but again, this hurts flow alot, afterall you're just trying to finish the basic tutorial quests.  Once you reach aggro mob areas (places where mobs will attack you on site) the frequency of "clearing to a harvest spot only to have the harvest taken by someone else" gets quite high.

Can anyone validate this? I was just in closed beta 5 and I honestly never saw anything involving instances on the UI. Not only that but me and around 4-5 of my friends all played together, with most of them joining a couple hours after me and a buddy and we all appeared in the same place, no one was ever in "Another instance".

-Jive

Originally posted by Vestas

Originally posted by Juaks

"Aions greatest sin early on though is that frankly, for anyone who's played an MMO before, it's boring"

Not for me. In fact I had a blast, and I have played quite a few MMO's.

"There is no logical story or contextual reason for why you can't fly in certain areas"

Wrong. You should read a bit before writing a review.  Do you know what Aether is?

 

Lot's of good feedback on the review so far, thanks folks and yes I agree, it's a bit long in the tooth.  As for the above, actually, only vaguely is the answer.  I've done very little lore research outside what the game itself presents to me in the quest texts I read.  (If the quest felt like more than a "harvest 10 X" quest I probably read its story).    So my point of view is not one of the external reasons the devs give for why you can't fly there.  Rather it's a practical, I'm playing the game....

The only one where it made sense flight was disabled was the starter zones, you aren't Daeva yet so why should you be able to fly?  Beyond that, the game doesn't say anything right away.  Certainly not at level 10 after you acquire flight, start flying around and hit the big magical invisible wall over the water near Verentia (sp?).  Or when you start running to Tabios (sp?) Village from there and can't fly along the road.  

So while it may be explained in lore, in fact I'm sure it is, that wasn't the point. The point was that as a gamer, playing a game, the restriction is quite obviously artificial and more to do with the games design than any logical flow of content.  I.E. we didn't put any flight content here and flying might break the world layout/artificial risk/pathing/routing we put it in, so we aren't letting you fly. 

Regardless it doesn't make Aion an awful game, just quite the suprise for a game heavily marketed on its "Look you can fly" system that frankly, doesn't let you fly as often as you'd think (gliding however, is quite a bit of fun, I routinely jumped off cliffs and glided around.  Again, a disconnect, you can glide, i.e. pop your wings out, but you can't actually fly.  

 

As for other points, I can definitely see how people would enjoy the first 10 levels, again, it's polished, everything works and the world is beautiful.   I've played a lot more MMO's than most people (it's a huge hobby of mine) and all I really should've said is that levels 1-5 I was bored playing a warrior.  I had been hoping for some amazing gameplay, something really special.  I have been spoiled by things like Warhammers really fun first 10 levels (note: doesn't mean I thought the rest of the game was good) and was expecting Aion to be more engaging.  I actually *did* stop playing after the first 5 levels as a warrior and didn't return until CB4 when a friend and other posts said to stick with it until the story gets better.  And I agree, by level 10 both the world and the story captivate me.

For the record I *will* be buying and playing Aion on launch and I am debating a collector's edition (I'm a sucker for knick nacks). I just don't think Aion is the second coming of anything.  I do think it's a great MMO, a quality title and has a fighters chance of actually being a popular Asian MMO in the US (PVP fears aside).  The things that make me stay with an MMO have more to do with the community I find once I start playing and aren't really subject to a review, or analysis during a beta.

i agree about the warrior, first 9 levels was rather hellish being stuck with a 1 hander shield and not very many dps abilities at all, but once i picked gladiator the class realy started to shine (note i crafted myself some armor (and skilled up so i crit the items and made better then normal gear)) im sure the templar holds its own but i dont care for pure tanking myself.  as far as the flight restrictions they are heavy early one, but then the abyss where you can be the entire time from 25-50 and raiding for pvp points long after 50 lets you fly as long as you have flight time to do so.

Originally posted by jiveturkey12

Originally posted by Vestas

Final content note.. the game is "instanced" to a degree.  It spawns copies of the new starting areas to help prevent over crowding but even so, there is fierce competition for ground spawn pickups.  Mobs respawn fast enough that there is only minimal waiting for mobs in crowded areas, but the "harvest" quests ar emajor bottlenecks.   It's bad enough solo, if you group with friends you'll psend a LOT of time waiting for ground respawns.  It's a serious drawback to the flow of the game in my opinion.  You can instance hop to find less crowded areas if you want, but again, this hurts flow alot, afterall you're just trying to finish the basic tutorial quests.  Once you reach aggro mob areas (places where mobs will attack you on site) the frequency of "clearing to a harvest spot only to have the harvest taken by someone else" gets quite high.

 

Can anyone validate this? I was just in closed beta 5 and I honestly never saw anything involving instances on the UI. Not only that but me and around 4-5 of my friends all played together, with most of them joining a couple hours after me and a buddy and we all appeared in the same place, no one was ever in "Another instance".

 

-Jive

Yes it's true, but this is only due to the fact that NCSoft understands on initial release there will be thousands connecting to their servers. When one "channel" becomes overcrowded the game opens up a new channel. This is only available in 1-20 hunting zones (where there is no pvp) and is not a feature outside of this. Most of the time the area isn't overpopulated, so everyone will be on channel 1.

Yes it's true, but this is only due to the fact that NCSoft understands on initial release there will be thousands connecting to their servers. When one "channel" becomes overcrowded the game opens up a new channel. This is only available in 1-20 hunting zones (where there is no pvp) and is not a feature outside of this. Most of the time the area isn't overpopulated, so everyone will be on channel 1.

Not necessarily.  I played in channel 9 with my friends so that we had our own areas.  It was enjoyable, and you can change channels at any time.

Good review.

However enough with the second coming thing already people, its almost as bad as the WoW comparisons.

In my opinion there will be no such thing as the next big thing. The MMO market has expanded A LOT in the past few years and every MMO offers something which another doesnt, and it will always be that way. I dont see any single MMO reinventing or taking the MMO market for a ride. While some MMOs will have more subs then others i think its safe to say that every MMO has and will have its own place in the MMO market.

Anyway even though Aion doesnt do anything new, i have not had this much fun for a long time in a MMO. The quests are very interesting and are well done, infact this is actually the first MMO i have played where i read all the text for quests. The zones are beautiful and the graphics are a breath of fresh air. To me Aion proves MMOs dont have to do something new, in my opinion it proves that MMOs just need to be fun! And Aion does that for me :).

Originally posted by Serulith

Good review.

However enough with the second coming thing already people, its almost as bad as the WoW comparisons.

In my opinion there will be no such thing as the next big thing. The MMO market has expanded A LOT in the past few years and every MMO offers something which another doesnt, and it will always be that way. I dont see any single MMO reinventing or taking the MMO market for a ride. While some MMOs will have more subs then others i think its safe to say that every MMO has and will have its own place in the MMO market.

Anyway even though Aion doesnt do anything new, i have not had this much fun for a long time in a MMO. The quests are very interesting and are well done, infact this is actually the first MMO i have played where i read all the text for quests. The zones are beautiful and the graphics are a breath of fresh air. To me Aion proves MMOs dont have to do something new, it proves that MMOs just need to be better and fun.

I agree with you %100.  I'm actually a small fan of a lot of failed MMO's (many I believe had potential, but without community all games die and I can't blame people for not wanting to put up with issues in any product they pay for).  I mention the "second coming" in my review mainly because it's all I read about Aion these days.  "NCSofts WoW Killer"  or "NCSoft intends to change the way you see MMO's".  Etc. Etc.  

Much of this isn't NCSofts direct fault.  The game is beautiful, when previewer's saw it months ago they couldn't believe how high quality this Asian import was and how popular it was getting.  So they started to hype it.  When they heard that the team who built it was looking to bring "western" (*aka* WoW) gameplay elements they all had heart attacks and started talking about "the next big thing".  So the hype got built and here we are.  Too many people expecting Aion to be "the" MMO.  Same stuff happened with Age of Conan and Warhammer, both quality, if troubled, titles that were victims of their own hype.  Aion will be too.  When you set expectations too high, you can only fall.

Actually there is a huge problem with these "type" of beta reviews and they all fail for the exact same reason. What your reviewing is purely 1-20 levels of an MMO that has infinite more content that you still haven't experience. 1-20 in Aion is what can be considered "tutorial" into the world. You have probably played only 5% of the entire game, yet your basing the entire game's  success on this initital content...(refer to Aoc) There is so much more which opens up after lvl 20 which you didn't even bother to mention at all.... 

- PvP rifting

- The Abyss

- fortress seiges

- PVE instances

- Crafting

- 1.5 patch, adding 12+ instances

How can your review hold any validity on how well Aion will succeed when you leave these key gameplay elements out?

You can't review an MMO properly without actually "experiencing" the key components ..

Originally posted by Vestas

Originally posted by Serulith

Good review.

However enough with the second coming thing already people, its almost as bad as the WoW comparisons.

In my opinion there will be no such thing as the next big thing. The MMO market has expanded A LOT in the past few years and every MMO offers something which another doesnt, and it will always be that way. I dont see any single MMO reinventing or taking the MMO market for a ride. While some MMOs will have more subs then others i think its safe to say that every MMO has and will have its own place in the MMO market.

Anyway even though Aion doesnt do anything new, i have not had this much fun for a long time in a MMO. The quests are very interesting and are well done, infact this is actually the first MMO i have played where i read all the text for quests. The zones are beautiful and the graphics are a breath of fresh air. To me Aion proves MMOs dont have to do something new, it proves that MMOs just need to be better and fun.

I agree with you %100.  I'm actually a small fan of a lot of failed MMO's (many I believe had potential, but without community all games die and I can't blame people for not wanting to put up with issues in any product they pay for).  I mention the "second coming" in my review mainly because it's all I read about Aion these days.  "NCSofts WoW Killer"  or "NCSoft intends to change the way you see MMO's".  Etc. Etc.  

Much of this isn't NCSofts direct fault.  The game is beautiful, when previewer's saw it months ago they couldn't believe how high quality this Asian import was and how popular it was getting.  So they started to hype it.  When they heard that the team who built it was looking to bring "western" (*aka* WoW) gameplay elements they all had heart attacks and started talking about "the next big thing".  So the hype got built and here we are.  Too many people expecting Aion to be "the" MMO.  Same stuff happened with Age of Conan and Warhammer, both quality, if troubled, titles that were victims of their own hype.  Aion will be too.  When you set expectations too high, you can only fall.

You make some fair points in your review and it was well written. Personally im not looking fior the "next best thing", i enjoyed WoW pre and part of TBC and look for something similar. If i want a change i'll keep an eye on Mortal and see how that works out.

One point i disagree with is comparing Aion with Warhammer Online. There is no comparison, you state WAR was quality ? Not my gameplay experience, a bug ridden, unresponsive, slide show.  If people leave Aion a few months down the line it certainly wont be for the afore mentioned reasons.

I skimmed through a couple of paragraphs of very uninspiring dialogue, but folk from WoW who review new games carry very little kudos with me.

I'm wondering how  the game is boring in the early levels, when you can get to level 10 in no more than a couple of hours?  Maybe you're a below average  MMO player?  Seriously, the first 10-12 levels are as easy as it gets in this game.  If you find it slow going and monotonous, give up now.

The 'meat' of this game starts at level 25 when you can enter the primary function - The Abyss.  Anything previous is a means to an end.

For anyone who wants to try this game, don't be put off by so called 'experts' who think they know the machinations of a good MMO - especially the ones who come from World of Warcraftl.

This game has aspects from the great MMO's, such as Everquest and DAoC - the OP actually made a pertinent observation here, which surprised me - but puts its own Korean slant on it.  If you have played these games, or enjoyed other games that have stolen ideas from them, you will love Aion.