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Aion At A Glance: First Impressions
With the head start already under way, MMORPG.com's Sean Bulger writes his first impressions of the highly anticipated game.
By Sean Bulger on September 21, 2009
The latest game from NCSoft to hit the market is the MMO-with-wings, Aion. Set in a world, quite literally, torn asunder, players join one of two factions to participate in an on-going war between an ancient enemy, and each other. While still set in a fantasy world like most MMOs, Aion presents itself with a fairly interesting setting. It also promises high quality gameplay, a lot of polish, and even some intense PvP with a twist.
Of course, many games have promised very similar things in recent years, but such promises are difficult ones to achieve, and more than one development studio has been burned because of that. Having already spent a year in release in Korea and China, Aion has a step up on that, at the very least. However, Eastern MMOs don't always catch on so well in Western markets.
Luckily, I was able to take a peek into the world of Atreia for the duration of the open beta week to get a better feel for the game.
Character Creation
When entering into a new virtual world, you usully have the chance to create your own avatar - which you see in just about every MMO on the market. Aion is no different in that respect, but this isn't a game that is content to provide you with a few options here and there, or a few preset faces to choose from. Instead, Aion features a robust character creation system, complete with a near-obscene amount of sliders to fine-tune the minute details of your character's face and body.
This is probably a good thing, because the game only features two races (although technically only one). However, while the Asmodians and Elyos do look moderately different from each other, the character creation allows for a huge amount of variation within the races themselves. If you like playing Dwarves, you can manage a short, stout character just fine. If you like Elves, you can easily manage a tall character complete with the pointed ears. You can range from decently realistic looking characters, to characters that look like they just jumped out of an Anime.
Of course, with so many options, you will definitely see people walking around with some absolutely ridiculous looking characters. However, you can rest assured that those people tried to look bad, as I found it didn't take much effort to make something look appealing. Plus, the game also provides a large number of pre-configured faces to tweak.
Graphics and Presentation
Once my character was set up, I ventured into the world itself and was treated to a pretty nice visual feast. The character models in Aion are easily the best I've seen in an MMO. They're detailed, they've got variety, and they have style. They're easily the best part of the game, graphically.
The world of Atreia is definitely not shabby to look at either, and the developers put the Crytek engine to good use. The world itself looks pretty nice and it definitely has a lot of style to, much like the character models. The zones themselves, at least on the Asmodian side where I spent most of my time, had a ton of variety in them. The world may be broken up into different zones, but each zone can have a large range of environment types, from snowy fields, to lush forests, to swamps, and even deserts.
While this is true, I do have to admit that the environments don't seem to hold up to the quality of the character models. Some textures look like they could have been higher resolutions, even on the highest settings. The small details that exist on character models just aren't really present in the world. Sometimes it can be a little awkward seeing a fantastic looking character model on a fairly uninspired bit of ground with a texture that's slightly too low of resolution.
That said, that's still largely a nitpick more than anything serious I found against the game.
Gameplay
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;)
When actually playing Aion, I felt pretty much at home immediately. While the game provided me plenty of tutorial information, complete with short videos and voice overs I could have paid attention to, given that I've played MMOs made within the last few years, I already knew what was going on. At its core, Aion is still a very straight forward, normal MMO that doesn't do much to break the mold. If you've played WoW, WAR, or any other recent games, you will find a very familiar experience in Aion.
I do admit, the skill chains in combat are pretty fun - and the fighting looks fantastic. However, it isn't like other games haven't done skill chains before, although Aion does them very well. While during the early game, the skill chains won't seem to add much in the way of strategy of combat, as you gain more and longer chains, I can see how that could make a pretty major effect on how involved you feel in combat. That said, I didn't get far enough during the week to really make that call.
Of course, it is one thing to talk about combat and normal MMO mechanics, but what about flight? After all, that's the very thing that this game seems to push so hard to make it stand out. Well, once you gain your wings, the game does seem a bit different, and it definitely makes for quick travel and some interesting area designs. However, there are a few things to keep in mind: You can't fly forever, you do have a time limit that depends on your wings and other factors, and you can't fly everywhere in the game. Yes, there are areas that disallow flying. However, you can "glide" anywhere in the world.
Gliding is exactly what it sounds like. If you're on an elevated position, you can hit space once to jump, then hit space again to spread your wings and glide until you hit the ground. Gliding can take a bit of practice, as it is actually possible to extend the length of your flight, and you can cover some pretty impressive distances while doing so. It also can have some interesting effects in gameplay, too. For example, I've glided from high distances to completely blow past a ton of powerful aggro mobs to get myself to safety - often leaping from the top of a cliff to escape an otherwise certain death from a mob chasing me, too. It is different and I have to admit, it is fun.
While I didn't have a chance to check out much of the PvP, I did enjoy a few solid arena matches. I can't offer up much of a comment on the high end PvP of the game will hold out, but the matches themselves were pretty fun. I felt like how I was playing my character really impacted my performance, and movement -and even flight - seemed to be decently strategic. I'm looking forward to exploring this aspect of the game more in the future.
For you crafters out there, I can add a few comments as well. First off, gathering is easy and even nets a decent amount of experience. You can gather any type of resource regardless of your crafting focus, and even some quests require you to gather materials. Crafting also nets a decent amount of experience, too, although the system itself doesn't seem to feature anything earth shattering. It is simple, straight forward, and exactly what you would expect in a generic MMO crafting system. However, it works and seems casual enough, too.
Final Thoughts
A week of game time is far from enough to actually say anything really conclusive about Aion, but I have been left with some thoughts: the gameplay does feel like a standard MMO, but it does also seem very polished. The servers were relatively stable, although they had some very nasty latency issues on the first day, but as the week went on, I noticed the problems lessened and lessened. The world itself seems pretty interesting, and while even the quests are the generic blend, they seemed to be decently well written.
If you're looking for something new and earth shattering, I don't think Aion is going to be the game for you. However, if you're looking for a solid MMO experience that seems to be quite a bit of fun, then Aion might be a good place to focus your attention.
Be sure to check back for the complete review.
Nice review.
Prolly alot of wow players will be trying this game.
Thanks MMORPG for purposefully being misleading with the title and intro. I was hoping to read someone elses experience during the first day of head start that didn't involve countless angry raging forum posts. But instead you post yet another "first impressions" of Aion that were from the beta.
I agree with Streea, the game isn't out yet so this isn't a first impression of the game. That aside, this article sparked some intrest in Aion for me. It sounds like a pretty solid game. I'll be interested to see what happens when it goes live.
But it did go live. 2 days early for people that preordered the game.
I am having fun with Aion!
^ I'm not sure you're looking for. At this point what you see is what you get.
I've been in CB, OB, and now the head start. This first impression article is entirely accurate IMO and mirrors my opinion of the game almost to the point that I could have been the writer of this article.
edit: I should add that the new web features are great and help add to the game. If a review is written beyond a "first impression" piece then the website features should probably play a part in the review.
I swore to myself I would stop becoming addicted to MMORPGs when I quit WoW a year or so back. Now I've boughten Aion and I'm loving it.
Ah well. Very fun game with nice graphics, fluid animations and interesting quests with cutscenes.
For anyone that came here wanting to know about headstart, the game is indeed fun...when you can actually play it. A LOT of the server had queues that had players wait in excess of 3 hours, on some servers i hear the wait times were as high as 8 hours. So there were very many people that were promised early access that did not even get to play. NCSoft has not said anything to the people that were misled into paying early, nor have they said anything about situation other than acknowledging that there is a problem. Also the bonus items that were promised for preorders to be available during headstart are not.
So not only did they fail to deliver on the headstart due to their own ineptitude, they also blatantly lied about the bonus item availability.
I have not given up on the game yet, but the article makes it sounds like it's all roses and this point with the current server status I would not consider the game anything but beta quality. Hopefully they will remedy this soon.
It is because so many people are trying to play. It happens with every "big" MMO launch.
I have to add my two cents and say that I played the open beta and wasn't impressed at all with Aion. Sure, its pretty, but its just the same old MMO that has been done a thousand times with a new face. There's nothing new or innovative or fresh with Aion at all. The quests are 'yawn' like WoW and all the other cookie-cutter "Go kill X number" or "Go collect X number" or "Go deliver this to so-and-so" games we have seen done to freaking death.
Its just another class-based, linear lead-you-by-the-nose MMO that seems to be the industry standard these days. Can't anyone come up with anything new?
Also, if you've played any Asian MMO (i.e. Perfect World, Runes of Magic, etc) then you have played Aion. It has the same feel, same layout of terrain and monsters, same quests, etc. You start out at the same starting area for each of the two factions with every new character (so much fun to raise yet another alt on the same quests), have the same level-based/gear-based design that other MMOs have and combat is also the same.
If you don't like pvp then Aion is a huge let down as they have open pvp past I believe 30, where you have to enter the zones where the other faction goes as well, so you will get ganked and attacked no matter what server you are on. Like role-play? Not on Aion, they have no designated RP server and won't enforce any RP rules at all.
There are also player vendors and anyone who played SWG in the day knows that will lead to huge lag in town clustered with masses of spamming player vendors.
So why play Aion? If you're playing an MMO now, you're probably playing Aion with a different face so don't waste your money if your not impressed with your WoW/Conan/Warhammer/etc game already. You'll find nothing new here. So in short, don't.
Quite honestly its a huge disappointent.
Most players won't realize the problems with this game until they get to the end game since it is heavily pvp based. It has been proven time and time again that a two faction pvp system just does not work. Eventually one side starts winning constantly and then the other side just gives up. This was even evident in Beta somewhat. The crafting system is nothing more than a basic one. So what is going to occupy players at the end game?
Just watch this game follow the same course as War has. It is a lot harder to satisfy the masses on this side of the pond than on their side.
It is because so many people are trying to play. It happens with every "big" MMO launch.
That is not an excuse, they knew how many people preordered. I udnerstand there are certain growing pains with a new launch, which is why I am willing to give them a chance still, but there is valid excuse for the thorough lack and understanding scalability. It's like they did no capacity planning AT ALL.
Hey, good review. Basically same opinion I got from the beta: Nothing earth-shattering, but still a respectable MMORPG
Yeah i'm thinking you will see that just like Destruction over powered Order in War, Some stuff i have read are showing that to be the case overseas already, on a lot of servers the Elyos is pretty much dead, giving up trying ot fight a hopeless one sided battle.
Some may like that challenge, but frustration pushes people away. They are gonna need to do something to make the Elyos more appealing or the same thing will happen here.
I preordered the game, Play it, and will continue to play it for a while. BUT, This game is nothing special. it is a cookie cutter game with nothing that realy makes it stand out. Controlls are basic, combat is Basic, Creatures are Basic, Interface is Basic, and Quests are basic.
But what the game does, they do well. few bugs, Smooth, No to little lag, and Good Graphics.
It's NOT a great game, but not a Bad game either.
this is bullsh*t, WAR had specific race/class combinations which was the downfall for the entire pvp system, cuz some classes were more overpowered then others ( which is normal ) but u couldnt pick them on the other side, hence the inbalance on sides
in AION this is no problem, cuz all classes can be picked on either side. end of discussion
this is bullsh*t, WAR had specific race/class combinations which was the downfall for the entire pvp system, cuz some classes were more overpowered then others ( which is normal ) but u couldnt pick them on the other side, hence the inbalance on sides
in AION this is no problem, cuz all classes can be picked on either side. end of discussion
If only it were that simple. One side will outnumber the other. Even with totally balanced classes/races, the side with numbers will win more often. And when one side wins more often, the otherside tends to go elsewhere. And when one side tends to go elsewhere, the other side tends to win more often. And when that side wins more often, the otherside tends to go elsewhere...
Rinse, repeat until server merge.
Quite fun to know that people who have no idea bash it based on negative experience from other games.
Aion has a built-in balancing system where you:
1. Cannot create a character of a faction that is outnumbering the other one at the server at the moment with a 5% threshold. So the biggest % imbalance it can be is 47%-53%. http://uk.aiononline.com/livestatus/server/
3. If this fails, there is the Balaur, the NPC faction, that makes sure, if one side dominates the other, jumps in and helps.
I agree that Aion provides nothing new. Oh wait, it does. People that never played the game, but troll it and claim flying is just fluff have no idea what they're talking about. The need to be aware of the 3rd dimension at all times and actually having to pay attention to "above" and "below" instead of the usual 4 directions adds a whole new twist to PvP.
Another boring mmo with flashy graphics. It seems players will play anything these days just to get their mmo fix because just about everything else has been pretty horrendous. Aion excels because nothing else good is out. It's a one man race to the top. Grats on mmo of the year because nothing else good will release this year. It reminds me of 2007 when Lotro one MMO of the year. Nothing else was good either.
I don't think they've said enough about how the balancing system works. In everything I've read this is only the second time I've read about it.
Well here is my review after playing the game for 2 days now...It Rocks. The servers were overloaded the first day and had a long wait to log in, but after that worked itself out, i have no lag problems and love it so far.
If only it were that simple. One side will outnumber the other. Even with totally balanced classes/races, the side with numbers will win more often. And when one side wins more often, the otherside tends to go elsewhere. And when one side tends to go elsewhere, the other side tends to win more often. And when that side wins more often, the otherside tends to go elsewhere...
Rinse, repeat until server merge.
Are you sure about that?
http://na.aiononline.com/board/notices/view?articleID=109&page=
/carry on
I know you are right that imbalance can be an issue on two faction games, however, I still perfer it to one faction anything goes gank fests. IMHO there are no perfect solutions, all have pluses and minuses. I really enjoyed the two factions in WOW. I had a main on both sides(different servers) and it just so happened that one side alliance was ahead, other was horde. I suppose I will do the same in Aion, lol
I would have to agree, this is usually why PvP 'in' the game world ruins games.
Meh I would just play the game on a private server, they have tons of them with very little bugs, no use getting dedicated to the game then watching it go under. :p
servers became more stable because there is less people, everyone quit after playing this horrible excuse for a mmo.
I'm a WoW player, I tried Aion, and I'm staying with Wow .
aion is awesome i made this account just to say that.
ive played wow aoc warhammer d&d requiem darkfall and so on
aion feels very similar but is so beautifully done and its the many small things that they improved upon like the blue links in every quest that easily define everything and every place.
if you love pvp u need this game
one aspect that completely changes pvp is FLYING
those who havent played cannot possibly understand
if u like raiding stay with wow, if u live pvp and think nerds who raid are dumb, you need to buy aion. trust me
Im loving Aion so much.
im a happy
bunnyerr frogOne reason I hate the game, is flying. Its stupid IMO. Combats well done? Like, breaking combat if I barely turn my neck to the left or right, /dumb again. The spiked armour, dumber.
SWG had vendors players could place in their homes if the had the points in that skill tree or a trader pre nge but never had the vendors you speak of. did you play SWG?
how could you possibly hate the flying
its so well done
you can even glide using real concepts of physics and aerodynamics
you must raid in wow regularly
stick to that
this game is seriously for pvpers
First off it's clear you have no clue about about this game. If you did you would know that there are 3 factions in Aion. The third faction is the Balaur which is AI controlled to balance the playing field. Secondly, in addition to 3 faction NCsoft is balancing the servers to allow an even number of each faction. So unlike WAR there will not be Zerg fests going on becasue its one-sided. So if anything this game learned from those mistakes. And also unlike WAR, NCsoft listens to its fans. Look at Gameguard...gone. They set up a poll for people who wanted to RP. And they provided up to date information on all issues with the game thus far on there website if people would just read. They are definitly trying not to follow in WARs' shoes.
SWG had vendors players could place in their homes if the had the points in that skill tree or a trader pre nge but never had the vendors you speak of. did you play SWG?
Obviously before you did.
Good for you. What do you want a cookie? Don't you have WOW forums to be on?
not really .. alot already did. It was so easy to play on kor when it launched almost ONE YEAR ago.. then play on China servers forever. So .. a yeah lol whats changed . updated 1.5.
Just started playing game up to level 5 , seems like a wow or lotro clone, qusts are boring, hope it gets better
That is not an excuse, they knew how many people preordered. I udnerstand there are certain growing pains with a new launch, which is why I am willing to give them a chance still, but there is valid excuse for the thorough lack and understanding scalability. It's like they did no capacity planning AT ALL.
Unfortunately you are wrong Smut. The planning had nothing to do with it. If you check out the server status at the time you would have known that the issue was too many people trying to get on the same servers. There were plenty of servers that had low-meduim wait times to get in. I like how everyone always has the perfect solution to how a company should be run or what they did or didn't do. If you don't have first hand knowlegde how can you assume that they didn't plan? Think seem so easy when your on a forum gripping about something you have no experience with. Think before you type.
SWG had vendors players could place in their homes if the had the points in that skill tree or a trader pre nge but never had the vendors you speak of. did you play SWG?
I believe what bigtorn was implying to was the immersive breaking and wall of text spam that greeted and choked you when you landed in Coronet or on any of the popular cities in the galaxy from people or vendor barkers advertising what they had to sell from their vendors .
This is not wrong. This could have intercepted during the preselection. This could have been pre-empted by some message indicating what was going on. This could have prevented with a cap on the queues with a message saying something like "TOO LATE! TRY ANOTHER SERVER!" Unfortunately, much of this problems derives directly from preselection itself. People had time to choose servers and talk about the servers and find out which ones people would be on and for what. Because of this, people gravitated towards a very few of them, and the others had less people. This really was a failing to understand human nature more than anything. Therefore, while you are correct that it is primarily the fault of the players, it is a direct result of the procedures used by NCSoft.
Me and two friends decided to play Aion together. The first day we got in early though one of my friends had to wait almost an hour and a half in queue. Day to, when we wanted to play together the queue was almost 4 hours long. It took us 2 minutes to find a server with NO QUEUE and it was fun.
Basically, as far as I'm concerned if you are going to be stubborn and insist on playing on a popular server, don't complain about queues early on. Either play on a different server or suck it up.
Exactly what I was afraid of. Wasted a lot of hours in wow doing this, then again in AoC and Warhammer. After a while, this gets old =(
Since when is "go kill x number of bugs and come back to me for quest reward" or "go find x in this town for the next quest hint" not new?
Even if that was the case a ques it pretty much telling you that it is full and to pick another server. Also, there is a cap on the server thats why you have to wait to get in. But I will meet you halfway on the pre-select it might have been the wrong move even though NCsoft had the right intentions.
Since when is "go kill x number of bugs and come back to me for quest reward" or "go find x in this town for the next quest hint" not new?
Quest are but a small part of an MMO and they relly define MMOs in general. If you don't like quests don't play mmo's. Also i agree with Kolapz. There are many new thing that this mmo does things differenly and you don't even have to play to find that out. Poeple saying that a game has quest that you kill X for a quest reward does'nt mean it brings nothing new. It just means its an MMO with quests. Name one with out those types of quest.
I wasn't expecting to find a mood change between the two sides but it's definitely there. Elyos quests are about a peaceful place threatened by a looming evil, tension is low although people seem to worry about the future. Asmodeans however are about a place anticipating a war to explode at any second, tension is high but people don't seem to worry about the future, living a blink and ascetic life.
You are so wrong! Have you got past lvl 10 even? lvl 20? How your attacks work in chains and you make decisions? I doubt you have.
BOO!
That is not an excuse, they knew how many people preordered. I udnerstand there are certain growing pains with a new launch, which is why I am willing to give them a chance still, but there is valid excuse for the thorough lack and understanding scalability. It's like they did no capacity planning AT ALL.
I never said it was an excuse. A lot of gamers do not pre order so just going by pre-orders isn't enough. It is clearly not easy to approximately figure out how many gamers are going to play on launch day. There is alot of variables to deal with. It is way better to start with less rather then too many in my opinion. I have come to this conclusion after watching other MMO launches in my 10 yr MMO history. It is much better PR to add more servers after knowing the exact demand rather then guess before launch and have too many. Over guessing can lead to closing some empty servers a few months later. This happened with WAR.
There was a lot of complaining for WAR to add more servers right before launch based on how popular WAR's Open Beta was. Mythic didn't want to as they already had a lot but they caved in. This ended up being a huge mistake for WAR as it backfired a few months later. There was too many servers which led to populations being spread thin and etc. This led to server merges and closures which, regardless of the reason, is always bad PR for MMO's. The same people who wanted more servers were now crying that some servers were dead!
Q's have typically went away after the first few days or so. I did not experience any Q's today. The biggest Q for 1 of my friends last night was a little over a hour on Zikel server after his internet disconnected.
The problem is all the people complaining tend to forget how horrid other game launches are! Look at recent game lauch failures such as CO. Aion has had hardly any issues other than some lag they fixed in beta and an overwhelming amount of people trying to sign on at one time. Crap look at WoW when it launched! That was awful compared to what you are all complaining about.
Aion has shown that even below standard computers can play the game. I appluad NCSoft and all they have done. They brought us a good game.
That is not an excuse, they knew how many people preordered. I udnerstand there are certain growing pains with a new launch, which is why I am willing to give them a chance still, but there is valid excuse for the thorough lack and understanding scalability. It's like they did no capacity planning AT ALL.
Unfortunately you are wrong Smut. The planning had nothing to do with it. If you check out the server status at the time you would have known that the issue was too many people trying to get on the same servers. There were plenty of servers that had low-meduim wait times to get in. I like how everyone always has the perfect solution to how a company should be run or what they did or didn't do. If you don't have first hand knowlegde how can you assume that they didn't plan? Think seem so easy when your on a forum gripping about something you have no experience with. Think before you type.
Actually you have no clue what YOU are talking about. I write software that is massively scalable, there is no excuse. They knew the preorder numbers, they could have prevented these terribly disruptive issues but they did not. I have over 10 years of experience in this problem domain, how about you? Think before you type.
Just a quick note, a bit irrelevant to the discussion. This is the forums of anonymity. Anyone can claim that they can do anything. Just because you claim you are proficient in something, doesn't automatically give you credibility. You could, in the best case scenario, exaggerating.
Bump BUmp BUMp BUMP it up!
been playing since beta #2. and ofcourse playing headstart... but i just realized.... the lack of variety. begining with how a templar only using 1h swords. ( unless the greatsword, but isnt exactly for temp).. like... WTF? we can use 1h mace.. but why would we?
there is more.. but im tired and gonna sleep....
btw... the creation is sexy awesome... id go gay for my guy. xD game is just sexy looking. but kinda seems its all it gives.
I've played in the last closed beta and open beta as well as the head start program...
to be honest it's all around as the review says.
BUT I do see alot of honest complaints as to why the head start isn't looking at its best right now... (-_-;; There are practically no servers that can hold the amount of players that have pre ordered... I don't want to think about all the people that join in later when it's released live. It's got something around 12 servers, I haven't counted... but it's not goin to look good if they don't plan on creating more.
as far as waiting for the bonus items.. I got em on my second day... not bad, not GREAT, but not bad. They aren't all that important to a great game anyways. the quests can and WILL get monotonous to any mmo player, but what mmo has actually offered anything that is somewhat creative. WOW did a few interesting things in their quests... but it's the same across the board. On a positive note, I CAN CHARGE THROUGH THE FIRST TEN LEVELS IN ABOUT 2 HOURS! WOO! lol.....
The one thing that bothered me though... is the server world size is a little small for the amount of population it can hold, which is actually kinda cool since it allows some "interaction" but then it also creates those "boring waiting times" that can only be cured by patience. An example of overpopulation and poor server size is this; I get a quest for a map on a ship, and wait a good hour for the map to respawn, mostly because it takes about 3-10 minutes for it to spawn and a small amount of people are all standing around on the boat picking our noses, thinking, "doesn't this remind you of the final fantasy corsair quest?" except kinda small, with people around you... heh... too bad I don't know any of these people from FFXI anymore...
And while the server is well populated, no one really encourages a sensible bond that I enjoyed in final fantasy... but ahh well... it's not as if I've played that long or have even put much effort into thinking about any sort of communication as I REALLY want to get to the pvpve... Which I have read is looking pretty good. Imagine a lord of the rings pvp system but rather then controlling npc like monsters you fight two other factions for control over one large map, one being an npc faction, the other being the opposing faction.... which is a nice creative element. (Ponders whether the A.I. will actually react to combat simular to an actual person) Sounds fun, and kinda freaky... anyone feel kinda terminated?
The class balance, since it's EVERYONE's HUGE concern, is actually looking interesting. you get the nice option of playing a basic version of the class you play as before deciding on which class it is you will play as. But I find myself mesmerized by the game during fights rather then interested... maybe it's the game's atmosphere? So I hope there's a little hype and interest in techniques available for what I think will shine in pvpve... And while most concern about "OMG that arrow shot me in the throat and silenced my awesome spell" and "OMG that giant sword wielding gladiator just knocked me on my ass and stopped me from defending myself" or "OMG that annoying clereic just healed the tank for 9999 hp and stopped us from winning the battle" and my favourite "OMG that sorcer just hit me for like 5000 damage and caused a massive imbalance in the battle even though it took like 10 seconds to cast." I'm more interested in how I'll be able to see the difference be kept different and make us capable of choosing our "prey" and creating a sense of nessecary strategy and team work, rather then, "My class can't beat yours this month, but you wait... next patch I'll be so OP'd I can win against like 20 people."
I expect to be burnt toast, so I'm going to finish my toast and say "cheers" I have some nice expectations for this game.
OH... and don't forget to jump if you're human, I might not be able to tell the difference. All in good humour and enjoyable reflections, Kyligraphy/ProjectJump/Spiritwalker/Dreamstasis.
p.s. I'll be playing the kaisnel server (Or what not) mostly past 6p.m. My clerics name is Jump, and my scouts name is Spiritwalker. And if I'm not supposed to be writing a review before it's officially released or for some other odd reason, please do me a favour and give me a second chance and a copy of this game with the chance to invite some friends of mine.
It is a polished game. It is a decently coded game. There are numerous things that scream Asian ginder, however. Water being a big one, the way objects can be hidden by something in front of them by more than the model because of the way objects work is another big one. Many little things about style and gameplay do as well. They gave it a little bit of a story, but it is still the same thing as many others. This is no great achievement.
This is a much better launch so far than WoW, or some others, but the problems arose during the headstart. That is not launch, and during the pre-release access there should be no such problems. This is an indication that they are just not ready.
ooi! I forgot to mention something, I hope this isn't one of those games where everyone does the same things and thinks like a robot with perfect memory and ends up acting like someone else without thinking about it. I end up looking at things in frustration that people do in online gaming communities and end up feeling like I'm being policed over small pranks and jokes that frustrate the hell out of people... it still makes me laugh though when I see it happen again, it's just annoying that I end up with people who tend to gravitate towards the same old stupidity instead of doing something entirely surprising or different... isn't that the point of being a person? The sense of being a part of a community that is actually relate-able because they are in essence unique rather then entirely predictable... Or maybe I'm just too observant... (-_-;
DAMN YOU STAR GAZER WHO FOUND OUT HOW THOSE STAR SIGNS WORK AND TOLD ME THE SECRETS OF HOW TO PLAN MY DAY BY READINDG MY HOROSCOPE IN THE MORNING!
anyways, I hope you see a sense of exageration and mindless bread dead humour in this post about how Artificial Intelligence and the human sense of curiosity can compare in a way that creates what is known as the learning process of blah blahblah blah blah (charlie brown effect) wah wha wha wwah waaah! wha wah! and as such we find that the computer is actually not a person on the other end but rather another computer created AI that is ment to emulate human interaction and simulate a situation in which you might not be in on every day occasion. Meaning if you are to enjoy this interaction, make it an incomparable moment that can only be told in story and laughter.
For this you can actually change to other channels that's not so populated, there's 10 in total...
I'm on kaisnel server, so yea... it's one of the more unpopulated server, though yesterday, it was pretty busy... tonight its nice and quiet. It's still almost what is expected to me on how it launched, but I'm not one to complain and would be willing to wait the first month to play... When I think about it, it is argue-able on how that could effect a games outcome... =/
like many, when I think mmo, I think social aspect... yet seem to shy away because I feel kinda targeted... as a gamer and almost humiliated by my choice of personal preference on what game I play... (they almost nearly flood the channel with how wow is the best of the best for newbie areas) I see alot of that in pretty much all games, and oddly end up seeing those games go *FLOP* because everyone assumes "Meh, the launch is worse then the game I currently play, I think I'll just head back to what I'm comfortable with" To be honest, I liked a few games that have ended up being empty after awhile... pirates of the burning sea was fun, Age of Conan was an almost unbeatable concept in my eyes (but seemed trashed as a concept because of their xbox mix up) and a few other games...
So yea... Not to get back to repeated history of MMO games, but I would like to see this one break the mold of the way a game launch should be done... So far I kinda see that it's not too bad aside from the usual intro chatter and the high server populations, the game itself is interesting to a guy like me (who played FFXI and is almost lost in nostalgia) and is pretty bug free from what I've noticed.
There is a third faction that is computer AI controlled, you clearly didnt pay attention.
if you have played in headstart you know why there is a queue! it is there to keep both faction balanced on each server! war did not do that they just let everybody create their character and ended up 80% destruction 20% Order! also both factions have the same classes! So the faction pvp will be more balanced then in any other mmo so far! Now also the queue has nothing to do with NCsoft it is as always the players fault opening a private store so they do not have to log out! there are 3000+ players doing exactly that on each server! Only thing NC could do is restart the servers!
I played WAR for a while, never seen 80/20 on servers. There is a queue their because they have crappy servers for a crappy game.
Yeah i'm thinking you will see that just like Destruction over powered Order in War, Some stuff i have read are showing that to be the case overseas already, on a lot of servers the Elyos is pretty much dead, giving up trying ot fight a hopeless one sided battle.
Some may like that challenge, but frustration pushes people away. They are gonna need to do something to make the Elyos more appealing or the same thing will happen here.
http://uk.aiononline.com/promotion/preselection/
Looks quite ballenced to me, there are things in place to stop once side getting a to big of edge in numbers.
Nice well rounded impression though the hyping of the graphics is odd. Aion doesn't look WoW bad, but its not competitive with most newer MMOs for player or world graphics. Be hard pressed to say Aion has more detail in poly count, texture, animation than say WAR, AoC, CO, LotRO, EQ2, TR(RiP)... Its good looking but it is still limited by a 5 year old engine and the PvP focus. Otherwise good write-up.
First of all, there is a third faction that will attack the dominate one to balance things out, second NCsoft has tried to keep servers as balanced as possible, you can see this on their website under servers. They even have locked a few to keep the balance. Clearly most of you don't actually look into the game and just came to this topic to bitch about a game you clearly know little about. I find it surprising how quickly this entire site went right to hell. I honestly will be trying AION out myself because you never know till you try. Also for those of you that are not looking forward to this game I have one question. Why the hell are you posting about it?
That is not an excuse, they knew how many people preordered. I udnerstand there are certain growing pains with a new launch, which is why I am willing to give them a chance still, but there is valid excuse for the thorough lack and understanding scalability. It's like they did no capacity planning AT ALL.
Unfortunately you are wrong Smut. The planning had nothing to do with it. If you check out the server status at the time you would have known that the issue was too many people trying to get on the same servers. There were plenty of servers that had low-meduim wait times to get in. I like how everyone always has the perfect solution to how a company should be run or what they did or didn't do. If you don't have first hand knowlegde how can you assume that they didn't plan? Think seem so easy when your on a forum gripping about something you have no experience with. Think before you type.
Sorry man, you put my name in there when it wasn't even my post. You were quoting danison, not me.
Unfortunately you are wrong Smut. The planning had nothing to do with it. If you check out the server status at the time you would have known that the issue was too many people trying to get on the same servers. There were plenty of servers that had low-meduim wait times to get in. I like how everyone always has the perfect solution to how a company should be run or what they did or didn't do. If you don't have first hand knowlegde how can you assume that they didn't plan? Think seem so easy when your on a forum gripping about something you have no experience with. Think before you type.
Actually you have no clue what YOU are talking about. I write software that is massively scalable, there is no excuse. They knew the preorder numbers, they could have prevented these terribly disruptive issues but they did not. I have over 10 years of experience in this problem domain, how about you? Think before you type.
I responded to your post much farther back in the thread. Your 10 years of writing software means nothing to me when we are talking about games. We are talking about servers, not scalable software. So your problem domain is NOT MMO GAMES LOL. Since you did not respond to my post, here it is again.
I never said it was an excuse. A lot of gamers do not pre order so just going by pre-orders isn't enough. It is clearly not easy to approximately figure out how many gamers are going to play on launch day. There is alot of variables to deal with. It is way better to start with less rather then too many in my opinion. I have come to this conclusion after watching other MMO launches in my 10 yr MMO history. It is much better PR to add more servers after knowing the exact demand rather then guess before launch and have too many. Over guessing can lead to closing some empty servers a few months later. This happened with WAR.
There was a lot of complaining for WAR to add more servers right before launch based on how popular WAR's Open Beta was. Mythic didn't want to as they already had a lot but they caved in. This ended up being a huge mistake for WAR as it backfired a few months later. There was too many servers which led to populations being spread thin and etc. This led to server merges and closures which, regardless of the reason, is always bad PR for MMO's. The same people who wanted more servers were now crying that some servers were dead!
AION THE MARMITE OF MMO WORLD!
But it did go live. 2 days early for people that preordered the game.
I am having fun with Aion!
Actually ... did not! In that 2 days early you was able ONLY to CREATE 2 alts and give them of course name. No playing.
I guess you are the visionary here, what do we know.... I love how people make these posts about how a game is basically "crap" or not worth a play because it has systems so similar to other games out on the market. News flash if companies put out any old crap just to be different there aren't enough of you people screaming for different to even make a successful game not to mention you'll probably find something it's similar to and just trash it as a copy anyway. For once I want to see one of you people who come with all the doom and gloom to enlighten us as to what is "new" and has never been tried before. You guys always make it sound so easy you must have some insight into what it takes? And if not why not just quit mmos until the industry has progressed enough to "seem" new to you.
friend of mine let me install his game on my PC so that I could play his account when he was at work (conveniently in the evenings) and after playing some of the open beta and now the pre release I don't think I'll be picking it up. It all feels too generic and has the "I've done this before" feel to it. I've played several mmo's in the past 10 years from SWG, WoW, EQ, AoC, WAR, etc and this one feels like just another notch, nothing really new, nothing different other than the flight gimmick. I guess most people are just super excited that its a new MMO coming out rather than a truly revolutionary mmo.
Disappointing review...there have been plenty of reviews about the beta all summer long.
That being said, I read most of the replies here, what surprises me is that no one made any mention of Lineage II.
If you had played that game you would recognise the Artistic Direction of the game, as well as many systems, such as the Class system the Vendor System, Siting down to regenerate, XP loss etc... there is really nothing "new" about it all, not even the flying, since as a concept existed since Lineage II.
Btw, L2 was a big disappointment in the western world it was the game that practically coined the description of "Korean Grind"...it has really nice looking graphics when it came out (about 6 months before WoW), and these were its main attraction but its gameplay made it so that the servers were populated by 50% Gold farmers.
NCSoft had made a game for RMT, and it is the reason I quit that game along with my guild and many others. So I somehow got my lesson with that game and am very skeptical about NcSoft games (I am glad Richard Garriot went on his marry way as well).
Long story short, NCSoft never liked the fact that WoW was so much more popular than L2, I remember massive exodus of people switching to WoW from L2 when it came out. And I believe AION is somewhat an attempt at a taking a peace of the pie from WoW (not something unique to NCSoft but in this case there is a small history behind it). It should come as no surprise that it contains many similar features, in essence it maybe a combination of Lineage2 and WoW...
Still I do not trust NCSoft's capacity to create good gameplay (they do create very nice and stable graphics) since Lineage II...it maybe unfortunate but it is how it is, and so I shall wait a couple of months and see how things go with AION before deciding to give it a try myself.
I'll wait for real reviews, not the ones like the past 10 of them starting with How awesome graphics look. I want to hear about the Leveling curves past lvl 20, want to hear about the game's economics and how grindy or not grindy it is, and you can be sure I am going to be monitoring sites for Kinah (in Lineage II it was Adena) offers..but most importantly I would like to hear about the community of players in two months from now.
In Lineage II, the players Community was the Greediest I have ever seen in my MMOG playing History which made for a very poor in game atmosphere.
Cheers! And don't get "too" mesmerised by sparkling dust, nice and good looking graphics are not only what makes up an MMOG.
Actually ... did not! In that 2 days early you was able ONLY to CREATE 2 alts and give them of course name. No playing.
No you are wrong! the 18th - 20th was for creating characters only, then the 20th - 22nd was headstart playing in the game! The game launch was on the 22nd. I know for a fact I was playing it when this article came out!!! Get it right!
Here is a link to another article here that will tell you that you actualy play the game for headstart.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/253/feature/3537/page/1
Ive been play the last few days I even got the CE addition and Ive read most of this.
The game has the same issues it did when the first closed beta of L2 was going on. Yes i said L2 beta. The game has some slight updated UI, but even then its not up to gaming standard.
The game is pretty that is about it. Nothing new nothing exciting. Same problems as before with no interaction that i have seen from NCSoft. If they are expecting this to compete with WoW they failed when they didnt not learn from there previous games or from Blizzards examples. But at least they didnt follow SOE example.. =P
Hopefully SWTOR, Stargate or Star Trek online will give WoW a run for its money.
Sorry but I didn't get anything from this article. I learned nothing new except ... well ... nothing.
This entire piece just seemed like it was written by someone who is a fanboi but doesn't have any real pros or cons except that you can logon and play but still wants to appear neutral.
Please play for a while, forget the entire beta experience and tells us details about the live game. To do that of course you must play fr more than a few days. Get back to us when you have done something but thanks for trying.
Hi, nice review, just wanted to say that since I started playing last monday I just cant stop playing.
That was about the Live game. And nothing has changed from the final beta. So that would mean he has played it for more than a few days.
Unfortunately you are wrong Smut. The planning had nothing to do with it. If you check out the server status at the time you would have known that the issue was too many people trying to get on the same servers. There were plenty of servers that had low-meduim wait times to get in. I like how everyone always has the perfect solution to how a company should be run or what they did or didn't do. If you don't have first hand knowlegde how can you assume that they didn't plan? Think seem so easy when your on a forum gripping about something you have no experience with. Think before you type.
Sorry man, you put my name in there when it wasn't even my post. You were quoting danison, not me.
My bad man. I got carried away I guess.
Well like what others says, it is the most visually beautiful MMORPG. Graphics is Hax!
"Aion is a game that knows no cultural boundaries, and will provide an art style, story and game mechanics that will last through the ages and be appreciated by a global audience"
Wow, there goes $59 down the drain. This article inspired me to try it out but the sad sad truth is that this game IS Lineage 2 with a pretty new face. The mechanics are identical and I'm sure the grind for xp and millions of gold is as well.
The gold sellers are already spamming.
These games are just a ruse to profit off of gold sales.
Good review.
I play Aion and love it. As you said its nothing new but its something done right, which is what many MMOs are lacking.
Personally im over the whole "wait for the next ground breaking MMO" thing. Its not gonna happen. Every MMO that has been announced already looks the same too, so its best people just choose a MMO and play it instead of believing something groundbreaking is going to be released.
I didn't read all the posts, but I'm surprised the review didn't mention the great framerates on relativly low end cards....
I got a review for you on AION, don't get me wrong I have played it on the beta events and prepurchased it. All of my friends are on a server and I can never get logged on, they have told me that what I have to do is log on and have a macro keyboard to move me every 10 min or so forward then back so that I don't dissconnect and then never log out so that you always keep your spot. So my review is this, 3hour wait times to get onto servers? The only failing point I see on this game, they should have already released another 5 servers to balance the load, or made each server handle more people. I mean they knew the numbers were there 400k in pre orders alone? Come on guys get your crap together. One day when I have hours to spend looking at a que screen maybe I will get in for a few minutes and be able to write a proper review of my experiance.
minutes 0 - 20 - The loging screens look amazing the intro movie was great, I selected my server and I am now waiting in Que
minutes 21 - 60 - Still on the que screen looks like 2 more hours of waiting to get on pulled out my paddle with attached ball and started paddling
minutes 61-120 - Still on the que screen might get in quicker it say 45minutes oh and got to 600 paddles with the ball got board pulled out rubix
minutes 121-160 - Threw my rubix at the wall still can't figure that damn thing out after all these years, finally got logged in but servers are down for maintenance.
Well maybe it won't be just like that but you get the idea...LOL