Originally posted by severity3

     I  dig how the OP says "lets not bash other games", then takes a shot at WoW players like 2 senteces later.

I also threw one at XBL players to, for the exact same reasons.. didn't bash the game though ;)

I have to say I'm really impressed with some of the other posts that I've got on here. It's very difficult to form any sort of opinion based off of most of the discussion on this forum, given that most of it is whiners, complainers, trolls, fanboys. It's very nice to have some agreements and then 'detail corrections' rather than direct attacks or arguements.

Is there a way to get into Open Beta so that I may form an opinion of the game for myself, or is it past signup/purchase required to play in it ?

What hype? They might some on these forums, and some gaming sites... but that's it.

A lot of the people I know found out about the game from me.... they had never heard of it, probably never would have.

Originally posted by Richijefe

Let me start by saying good post.

I believe most MMOs lately for some reason have been hyped a lot, if you think of Warhammer, AoC, Darkfall, etc. Maybe it is a symptom of a lot of people wanting some new revolutionary MMO, and still have not found it that Aion is being hyped up.

Do not get me wrong, I love Aion, but in all honesty it does not bring much new to the table. But that does not always means that is bad, I mean a good polished game should be fun to play for a while if you ask me. Not everyone is looking for the next revolutionary, unique thing, so many people will be quite content to play Aion, which has neatly gathered a lot of the fun parts of different MMOs, polished some of them, and added a few things.

I would also like to say, that if you are really looking for the unique, revolutionary MMO, Aion probably is not for you. But can it hurt to try it out in Open Beta for free? Probably not, and you just might change your mind about it, maybe you have fun and want to play it a couple of months, who knows.

Not to WoW-bash either, but when WoW came out, it was not in any way the most unique and revolutionary MMO, it was a well polished MMO (which lacked endgame content but that was quickly added), and introduced some new features. But it had as well some good old features from the single rpgs, like leveling, as well as the skills system in Diablo 2 with the points in skills and such. So if you think it through, it also did not bring so much to the table.

I believe it is hard to totally revolutionize the MMOs with something completely new, since this might alienate a lot of players, because of removal of several features that the players in fact enjoy and bringing in untested features that the player base might not like it always a risky business. And well not all companies are willing to take that risk.

All in all, I believe MMOs do develop and do become better, but with small changes everytime. There is course always an exception here and there.

 

This post has probably been posted a couple of times already, but I think it summarizes the whole situation clearly.

I myself really like Aion, yet I know it does not necessarily offer anything new to the MMO world. It has had a lot of positive feedback from CB testers as well as Asian servers; but even if it didn't, the highly polished feel of the game is worth at least trying it out.

The interesting thing is that NcSoft has not hyped this game much, but many players love it. I think it's a combination of getting tired of current mmos and the past few mmos with big company hype falling flat on their faces. So now with Aion many players love the level of polish, the new lore, nice graphics and strong engine.

I don't know really know how the active WoW players feel of late. I stopped playing that mmo about a year ago, but it seems some of the active players are not too happy with the direction Blizzard is taking the game.
 

Why should I explain anything to you OP ! Do your own research and make up your own mind !!

I think most on here have been right. This game has not been hyped much at all. What you do see by the videos and what has been posted on this message board is that most of the people that have tried this game, like it. So they like to let others know why they feel its a good game. I have to say, most of the youtube videos for me were not very pleasing at all. They really do not do justice to the game. I mainly found out about it by just watching this site. before then, I had never even heard of it and its been out for over a year in the east.

Now, I plan on playing it because I did go through the last beta and found it fun. I found a few problems that were annoying (got stuck a couple times, there was no /stuck command that I could find) but overall the game play was fun and entertaining. I tried out 4 different classes and to be honest, none of them were bad. It has actually made my choice more difficult as to what I want to play when the game goes live.

Another thing, the game is pretty dang polished for the most part and that is a huge plus in many peoples minds. It does introduce something new with the flight system, it is unique and takes a bit of getting used to but it is ok. Now, for me, I am not a huge pvp fan. I played wow on a pvp server, I play EVE but rarely ever pvp. I played DAOC and pvp'd till I got tired of "the zerg". So, pvp is not a huge draw for me but since you really can't lose items, I dont mind to give it a try. Also, this is probably the closest any game has gotten to DAOC RVR and I will say that lots of people used to love that. I even did till zerging became the thing to do.

Now, you got a huge advantage that I do not. None of my friends have ever heard of this game. I been trying to get them involved and look at it and none of them are even interested. You want to know why you should play this game. You already know! You have friends that want to play it with you. Really, unless your hurting for money, plop down the 50 bucks and play it with them. If you dont like it, its not like you lost your house in the deal.

Why should you play the game... I think the question should be, Why shouldn't you play the game. You got friends wanting to play it with you, its a new game, You already know its pretty dang polished right from the gate, and you do appear to like pvp, and it has it in abundance.

While some of the Hype is just because people are bored with the same old thing and looking for something new.

One of the reasons I believe it deserves the hype is the PvP system being integrated from the start with the PvE. Most other games I have played have basically been PvE shells with PvP  tacked on with Duct tape and glue.  EQ was infamous for having to turn off skills and abilities, DAoC had to add massive damage multipliers, in PvP.

DAoC had a nice system of Keep capture and RvR combat and its providing realm wide bonuses. Aion seems to have implemented an almost identical type of system. The bonuses and penalties for owning or failing to hold various keeps and artifacts could, in theory, be massively game affecting. I have not played the >30 world yet, so the RvR bonuses remain mostly hearsay from K/CAion.
But these benefits give players something that is worth continuingly fighting over the control of.

Unlike other RvR type games where sides were allowed to become unbalanced Aion from the start has and is adding/refining balance and control. Add in the NPC Balaur who are there just to occasionally reset the balance and you have a game that is trying to prevent rampant imbalances in the population of sides as happened in WAR/DAoC and others.

Character classes, well... I think you would be hard pressed to find a game with fewer than 2 races and 8 classes playable.
Is that good or bad? Well, it makes keeping the class versus class skill balances easier as you basically avoid things like in WoW having, at start, Shaman on one side and Paladins on the other and trying to allow their skill sets to balance off against each other.
The bad being there is little variety in play a few alts later and you have pretty much seen all everyone can do.
At least with the Stigma and Manastone and Godstones you have some customization options, but largely these will rapidly devolve into 1 or 2 'true paths' that are the 'only' ways to set up a character.

Gathering and Crafting seem fairly well thought out and seem to provide some of the best gear in game. The requirement for many of the higher level items to consume the rare version of the earlier tiers as a component means that the highest tier crafted items will be both somewhat rare and difficult to make, but WELL worth the effort.

As a counter to the 'it's just another asian grinder game'  comments, it is really no different than any other MMO in the style and type of quests. And with 1.5 is adding even more higher level quests for 20+ areas.
At least for me getting into the low 20's was done entirely with quests and I never had to grind random mobs to level. Gathering can be a bit of a grind, especially Aether, but the results sell well as crafters are in constant need.

Worthy of the Hype? Remains to be fully seen. BUT! From what I have seen of it so far it has taken many of the tried and true mechanisms of the past, applied a bit of spin and a lot of polish to them. Balance seems well thought out. And the Game engine itself is incredibly optimized already, on my year old, $1k system I typically have 100+ fps in the open, dropping to 50-70 in the cities with all settings sliders maxxed , 8xAA abd full bloom.

Originally posted by LizardEgypt

Without fanboyism, explain to me what is appealing everyone to Aion. :P

 

 

Sorry, but I can't explain to you what is appealing to everyone, but I can explain to you what is appealing to me.

1. It was made by a company that has a mostly successful track record with MMOs. I know this doesn't guarantee future greatness, since NCSoft is also responsible for Tabula Rasa and Mythic seems to have flubbed with Warhammer, but it instills confidence that if they've gotten it right before, they can get it right again.

2. It's been played for the better part of a year in Korea. This means we are likely to get a fixed, patched version of the game at release. The chances are good that we'll avoid the pitfalls of a brand new MMO, resplendent with game breaking bugs.

3. It is designed around PvP. Real PvP is what I enjoy most about online games. I've got my skills, you've got your skills. Let's see who is better this time around. World of Warcraft is the one MMO that I've played the most the past few years and for me it's disappointing that Alterac Valley has become a ride by and kill the NPCs battleground. I understand players do it to get honor quickly so they can get gear, but for me, my favorite memories of Alterac Valley are the battles where the two sides would fight down to the last reinforcement, usually on the hill near Stormpike Graveyard. PvP was also my favorite part of Warhammer. Going into a Scenario with my Disciple was the most fun, especially when I felt / believed my healing could turn the battle and help our team press forward.

4. Speaking of PvP, we don't have just instanced PvP, we have open world PvP. As soon as I can get to the Abyss, I'll be going there. Even if people caution me against it, that's where I'll be. It's the same reason I prefer PvP servers in WoW and Warhammer. That fear that at any moment someone may step out of the shadows and try to gank you. As well as the thrill if you are able to turn the tables on them and teach the would be ganker a lesson. Not only that, but the rush you get when you find a would be victim and you contemplate how you are going to attack them. Because, as good as you are, there is always the chance you will come across someone who is that much better than you. But you never want to lose.

5. Also, I like the idea of faction controlled areas that allow you to do content the other faction can't. It gives you something to fight over. From what I understand, this will exist in the Abyss. As long as one side controls it, they will have access to areas where they can kill bosses to get uber loot.

6. While I like PvP, I don't mind earning my way there. As has been mentioned previously, this is an Asian MMO, which seems to indicate some amount of grindiness. I don't mind that at all, as long as it's not ubertard grindy. I don't want to have to spend six months of grinding to get one level. But I'd like to feel some sense of accomplishment about getting to the Level Cap.

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So, there you have it, the reasons I'm hyped about Aion. Mostly I like PvP and Aion seems to be made for it.

I participated in one of the Closed Beta weekends and knew I could play this game. I liked the combat style and all the mechanics that go with it. I may only play Aion for six months or a year, since I expect the content right now supports that amount of game play, but I'm going to get the game the day it's released and play it as long as it holds my interest. I'm just not sure it will hold my interest for more than a year.

"The issue is that I don't see anything unique or interesting about Aion other than the fact that it's polished. It may be a personal thing - but I dislike the graphics and most of the animations that I've seen, and for the most part the theme and visual style in general just doesn't appeal to me."

The reason I'm hyping the game is exactly this. The graphics, animations, theme, and visual style are probably the best I've seen from a polished MMO. Also, this is one of the only games out there with tons of options to create beautiful characters.

There are a lot of eastern MMO's with the beautiful visual style I love, but they are F2P and lacking polish. Conversely, although there are some well done western MMO's, the visual style is utterly unappealing to me.

In Aion you have a beautiful world (the sky especially is stunning), and amazing looking spells and abilities. You can create a cool looking character without having him look like the missing link (something that plagues a good deal of western mmo's imho).

Combine these things with a decent amount of content, Pay to Play system, 8 distinct classes, and a close as you can get bug free game and you're going to get some love.