Like many others, MMORPG.com Correspondent Dana O'Shea recently started playing NCsoft's Aion. In this article, he describes his early experiences in the game as a player from "Down Under."

The biggest thing about this game's hype is the flight. It is said to be the best implementation of fight added to an MMOPRG so far. It's not long into the game before you get to experience this but I have spent my gaming time with Aion exploring the early parts of character construction, and just exploring the world.

As an Oceanic player I am very grateful that NC Soft had decided to assign a server to just us Aussies. At release it is just a West Coast server but I am told it will later be adjusted to our time. This makes a bigger difference than some people might realise. For a start, an MMO that has maintenance at times convenient for US players means that Oceanic players lose some of their peak playing time (I am assuming they will adjust maintenance as well). The dream for many of us is that one day we will have local servers to cut down latency troubles but, as conciliation, at least if all of us on the server are Oceanic-based and suffering the same lag, then no-one really has an advantage.

Read Entering the Game