Originally posted by boomerangx

Originally posted by fiontar

Originally posted by mutombo55

Originally posted by boomerangx

....The whole system veers players away from a zerg playstyle.....

Can you explain with some details?

And don't BOLD your entire post "bro"

 

The Aion design is completely designed with Zergs in mind, it doesn't discourage them, it forces them.

Defenders will rift camp, so it's often suicidal to go through a rift with out a zerg.

You lose Abyss points for dying in PvP, so you only go through if you think you have a big enough zerg to have odds on your side.

The zones are full of narrow choke points, so invaders can shut down mobility.

A level 40 Zerg can quickly reach the level 20ish areas of a zone, where they can then mow down everyone in sight.

There are two narrow exits from the main towns into the zone, which for a strategically minded invasion zerg makes gaining and holding those two spots the key to the entire zone.

Control of the zone will then come down to the clash of the Zergs. Rift based PvP is not 1on1, 6on6, 12on12; it's entirely the zerg. It's even useful for zergs to mix lower level alliances in with higher level alliances. Since you can't tell an opponent's level, when you are looking at a three alliance zerg, you're not going to know if only 25% are from the higher level ranges or all of them.

This also means if you see a zerg, you run, even if you are a small group of level 40s in a level 20-40 zone.

The Zerg is Rift PvP.

you are not using the term zerg correctly

zerging is running into a pvp fight with no thought and no remorse for dying...hence respawning and running right back for the same thing...over and over.."zerging"

 

just bc in aion you need larger groups to be successful does not mean it is a zerg minded game...why do you think most of the top rated pvpers from other games are going to aion? bc it is a zerg fest? no...WAR is the ultimate zerg fest..and i really did like the game but omg the zerging killed it for me...

 

a ton of players mindlessly fighting and rushing back to their deaths over and over...no ty

No. A zerg is all about numbers. BTW, you don't think when an zerg Alliance descends like locust on upon the unwary denizens that call the zone home that it's going to be anything but mindlessly running in and attacking people?

I remember PvE zergs from SWG. A lot of running in and mindlessly killing, not a lot of mindlessly running in and dying.

In Aion rift PvP, the Zerg is king. Numbers rule. When you are in such a Zerg, tactics don't matter, unless you encounter another zerg. No one is taking up their role, like they would in an Alliance PvE raid in other games. Even the healers will be running into get a few hits in as the zerg mows down everyone in sight.

Who ever assembles and manages the biggest zerg wins.  This isn't highly organized and controlled combat actions, it's the power of the mob, which is The Zerg.

Sooooo anyway........

anyone else getting pumped up for sunday? i am going to try and do all my errands and such tmrw so i can just sit in front of my comp all day on sunday

I am cautiously optimistic about Aion.

I had high hopes for Warhammer as well, but grew tired of it after only a few months. I am hoping that Aion can be what WAR was not.

To those who say the world size wil be a problem, I'm not Dora the Explorer. I want to find people to fight and fight them. I played WoW on PvP servers and while you would occasionally find other players to fight, for the most part, you could go about your business of questing and leveling unharassed. Boring. I played Warhammer Online on a PvP server also. Too bad the maps were designed for anti-World PvP. Mythic made getting to the zones of the other faction as difficult as possible. And once you got there, all you could find was 55 Champions guarding the towns. Boring.

I do think that Aion has limited playability at this point. I'm not expecting to have years or a decade of fun in Aion, but you never know. Even if it doesn't give me ten years of fun, I'll be happy if I get a year of fun out of it.

quick explanation of the term zerging

to zerg something is to swarm it with a large number of anything (could be like 200 low dmg classes or a mix of high and low or all high dmg doesnt matter) and overwhelming your enemy with sheer numbers in a way that there is no chance the enemy can win the term zerging was derived from the game starcraft where one race the zerg had a base unit called the zergling people would quickly and cheaply make as many as possible and swarm or "zerg" their opponants be it in game story or online vs players even though the enemy would have multiple powerfull units the amount of zerglings would easily overwhelm the enemy units

now that i got that over with i am waiting for the open beta too i cant wait to see what the 1.5 patch will be like i am gonna roll a ranger this time round and go with elyos so as not to burn out on the asmodians :)

hope to see you there

I've been looking for a DAOC replacement.   Maybe this is finally it.

Originally posted by fiontar

Please remember, a lot of people were very excited about WAR and AoC prior to release, or even for some time after release. Liking what you see so far tells you nothing about the long term appeal of the title.

Many people will find Aion fun short term. Long term? The game shares many of the flaws that plague WAR and AoC. In some areas, it more closely parallels AoC.

I'm maintaining my Aion pre-order and hope to get two or three months out of it. However, I'm actually much less hopeful for long term appeal from Aion than I was for WAR when it launched. The game world is tiny when compared to WAR, with very few zones. I can see it getting very restrictive and very "old" fairly quickly for me. Yes, I play a lot and level pretty quickly, so I'll "use up" the content more quickly than casual players, but a lot of casuals will hit a wall when faced with Rift enabled PvP.

The two biggest foreseeable road blocks to long term success for this game are the small world size and it's PvP gamer's niche focus.

No offense man, but I really don't think there is any comparison between WAR and AoC's release and Aion's release.

We all wanted those games to succeed so badly that it clouded our judgment.  I've just recently played AoC and it doesn't totally suck with its latest updates and the graphics are great.  I would feel totally differently if I had bought it at release.

WAR on the other hand, I bought.  I admit to some bitter feelings.  The game totally sucked.  I mean, if I made a list of everything that made a game suck, then WarhallmerOnline would embody the entire list.  I still can't understand why any MMO would think I wanted to look like a hobo in feathers.

So I pre-ordered Aion against my better judgment expecting to be disappointed again.  As a matter of fact, I was sort of looking forward to being let down so I could bitch about it endlessly on these boards.

I was disappointed.  Too bad, too, cause I love being an evil jerk and running games down that fall below my imaginary 'bar of acceptance'. 

Aion has potential.  It's practically bug-free and even though I'm a carebear, I like the idea of my world being a bit more dangerous than I'm used to.  I think Aion might have achieved a nice balance between pvp and pve.

Anyway, I could be wrong, but my point still stands.  There is no comparison between this game's launch and AoC or WAR.  The beta testers of both those games were waving red flags.  The only people waving red flags about this game are hired hands and people who have unnatural dedications to other MMO's. 

We'll all find out soon enough.

edit: for some extremely stupid grammar, and thanks a lot wicked for documenting my idiocy.

Originally posted by scodavis

Anyway, I could be wrong, but my point still stands.  There is no comparison between this game's launch and AoC or WAR.  The beta testers of both those games were waving red flags.  The only people waving red flags about this game or hired hands and people who have unnatural dedications to other MMO's. 

We'll all find out soon enough.

Yeah, I think his last 2 points are right that they could affect the appeal of the game for some players but I agree with you that there really isn't a direct comparison here.  A lot of the issues those two games had this one isn't going to.

That's not to say that it's a definite winner because as I said before the last two point fion makes are going to be an issue for some and there's always other things that could crop up.

I  hate that Warhammer and AoC get mentioned so much in the same context when talking about launches though.  Warhammer did have it's issues at launch that's for sure but it didn't seem to be near the complete mess AoC turned into once you got out of Tortage.  Not to mention the core mechanics of the game were flawed to shit but from my understanding they have revamped that completely.  Too bad none of that was done before the game launched.  Warhammer was a rather dissappointing launch as well but AoC was an absolute disaster in my opinion.

...and to think those asshats had the audacity to say their launch was going superb since they only had the severs crap out one day.  Like that's the only measuring stick a company should use to judge how their launch is doing.

/pees on Funcom sign

I hated WAR, but I actually liked AOC.  I think once they ironed out the gamebreaking bugs and performance issues, it was one of the best MMOs out there.  I just wish it were a more social, and less about forcing players to group just to get the coolest lewts.  Still, I plan on going back to it for a month, when the expansion comes out.

So I just hope Aion is at least as good as AoC.  That would work for me.  If it's even better, great.  As long as its not awful like WAR or Champions.

Originally posted by Wickedjelly

Originally posted by scodavis

Anyway, I could be wrong, but my point still stands.  There is no comparison between this game's launch and AoC or WAR.  The beta testers of both those games were waving red flags.  The only people waving red flags about this game or hired hands and people who have unnatural dedications to other MMO's. 

We'll all find out soon enough.

 

Yeah, I think his last 2 points are right that they could affect the appeal of the game for some players but I agree with you that there really isn't a direct comparison here.  A lot of the issues those two games had this one isn't going to.

That's not to say that it's a definite winner because as I said before the last two point fion makes are going to be an issue for some and there's always other things that could crop up.

I  hate that Warhammer and AoC get mentioned so much in the same context when talking about launches though.  Warhammer did have it's issues at launch that's for sure but it didn't seem to be near the complete mess AoC turned into once you got out of Tortage.  Not to mention the core mechanics of the game were flawed to shit but from my understanding they have revamped that completely.  Too bad none of that was done before the game launched.  Warhammer was a rather dissappointing launch as well but AoC was an absolute disaster in my opinion.

...and to think those asshats had the audacity to say their launch was going superb since they only had the severs crap out one day.  Like that's the only measuring stick a company should use to judge how their launch is doing.

/pees on Funcom sign

People on these boards often wonder why some of us are so bitter about some games.  It's because we feel like we were suckered. 

Wicked got suckered by AoC so he hates Funcom.  I got suckered into WAR so I hate Mythic.  I also hate Blizzard for TBC.

To address the OP:  Yes, I am very excited.  I'm excited because I don't have unrealistic expectations for this game.  I see it as an evolutionary rather than revolutionary game.

Obviously it will suck the life out of AoC and WAR at launch.  Those games suck.  Hopefully it will draw the Vanilla WoW crowd that were betrayed by Blizzard when they released TBC. 

The important thing is, I am excited about Aion's potential.  I have no idea how things will play out, but I am willing to give it a shot.  I also think I have a rational basis to be excited by this game. 

Lord help NcSoft if they fail me now!

edit: for Vhaln, I have been playing AoC for the last month to tide me over and don't officially think that AoC sucks.  it's just going to be a casualty of this competition because it isn't polished enough after too much time.

I can't wait to start playing.  I haven't actually played it yet, but everything I read about it just makes me want to hack my way onto the server and start playing now.

I just hope people realize that Aion although polish and bug free for the most part is a straight up PvE game from lvl1 to lvl19ish.

The core of this game does not really start until mid to late 20's.  Hell even filght is just a tease until you get to lvl30 and then you start to fully experance true flight PvP.

Wait OP, did you say that Aion won't eventually result in a endless gear grind? That's how any skillspamming MMOs today end in anyway.

Originally posted by Thenarius

Wait OP, did you say that Aion won't eventually result in a endless gear grind? That's how any skillspamming MMOs today end in anyway.

No he/she did not say that exactly.

Aion is commoon sense based and gear only play the part of enhance and customize character.  So no, you won't be able to one shot people because you have a certain weapon, but it helps if you have a more powerful gear.  Powerful gear also does NOT make you win automatically, play well and know when to run and when to go for the kill is what make you successful in Aion's PvP.

As for grinding gears, of course people always want better gears, but better gears varies in Aion.  Abyss gears are good for PvP in the Abyss because they give good set bonus and also extend fly time greatly.  However, there are also other ways to gear up such as go for pure stat boost from craft critical gear or raiding boss for gear.  It purely depend on how you fight and what your focus in Aion is.  There are also manastone and godstone to further customize what your character want to specialize in.

Originally posted by linren

Originally posted by Thenarius

Wait OP, did you say that Aion won't eventually result in a endless gear grind? That's how any skillspamming MMOs today end in anyway.

 

No he/she did not say that exactly.

Aion is commoon sense based and gear only play the part of enhance and customize character.  So no, you won't be able to one shot people because you have a certain weapon, but it helps if you have a more powerful gear.  Powerful gear also does NOT make you win automatically, play well and know when to run and when to go for the kill is what make you successful in Aion's PvP.

As for grinding gears, of course people always want better gears, but better gears varies in Aion.  Abyss gears are good for PvP in the Abyss because they give good set bonus and also extend fly time greatly.  However, there are also other ways to gear up such as go for pure stat boost from craft critical gear or raiding boss for gear.  It purely depend on how you fight and what your focus in Aion is.  There are also manastone and godstone to further customize what your character want to specialize in.

nice replies in this thread folks, lets keep the positive vibe..ONLY 1 MORE DAY TILL OB!

YOU ALL BETTER DO ALL YOUR ERRANDS AND STUFF TODAY

Originally posted by EyeballAion

I can't wait to start playing.  I haven't actually played it yet, but everything I read about it just makes me want to hack my way onto the server and start playing now.

did you get into the OB? or are you waiting till the release? either way i am sure you will have fun

Originally posted by bazak

quick explanation of the term zerging

 

to zerg something is to swarm it with a large number of anything (could be like 200 low dmg classes or a mix of high and low or all high dmg doesnt matter) and overwhelming your enemy with sheer numbers in a way that there is no chance the enemy can win the term zerging was derived from the game starcraft where one race the zerg had a base unit called the zergling people would quickly and cheaply make as many as possible and swarm or "zerg" their opponants be it in game story or online vs players even though the enemy would have multiple powerfull units the amount of zerglings would easily overwhelm the enemy units

 

now that i got that over with i am waiting for the open beta too i cant wait to see what the 1.5 patch will be like i am gonna roll a ranger this time round and go with elyos so as not to burn out on the asmodians :)

 

hope to see you there

there's about 50 definitions for zerging depending on what games you have played...

www.urbandictionary.com/define.php here are 14 that are common, i use the term to define a large group that is moving around swarming, however i use the term more to define a player or group of players that mindlessly run into pvp to just run back again and die..with no thought process - usually games that have a weak death penalty in pvp or a weak death penalty all together promote zerging play styles... just my 2 cents...