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Aion Review - Edit
8.7
Great
| Pros |
   
|
 Excellent Visuals Fun Gameplay Large Scale PvP |
| Cons |
|
 A Mostly Standard MMO |
Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat.
-- Paradise Lost, Lines 1 - 5, John Milton
While NCSoft's Aion is not actually based on the library of Milton, it would be difficult to say that the developers had not taken some inspiration from his classic works. When winged angelic beings clash, it is hard to not see these parallels. However, Aion actually weaves both a tale and a setting - far different than those we see in Paradise Lost - in which players can fight and explore.
Players create a character from one of one of two factions, the angelic Elyos - who live on the temperate and blessed half of a shattered world, or the black-winged Asmodians - who brave much harsher climates and have evolved to survive them. While each race might hold a stereotypical hero/villain appearance, neither fit these stereotypes. However, that doesn't mean that players won't be seeing plenty of combat between the two sides, and their true enemy, the NPC-controlled Balaur.
advertisement While the story is largely fluff, it does set the stage for Aion's main gameplay mechanic: PvPvE (Player vs. Player vs. Environment). While PvPvE largely focuses on faction-based PvP combat, it still manages to bring in plenty of PvE to add variety, and ensures that all playstyles will get some attention. However, despite its seamless and polished integration of both these systems, Aion still remains a conservative game.
To be straight-forward about it, outside of the flying system, Aion doesn't do anything that you haven't seen before if you're an MMO veteran, but what it does, it does well.
Character Creation
;)
The first thing new players will experience with Aion is character creation. This is an area where the developers clearly paid plenty of attention. You aren't just presented with a few choices of heads, or even just a few sliders that slightly alter the way a character looks. Instead, you are presented with a gratuitous number of sliders that have a fairly dramatic effect. If you thought that Oblivion had a pretty impressive character creation system, then think again: Aion actually lets you create a very distinctive looking character, to the point that you can probably tell people apart purely on visuals without looking at their names.
Given that there are only two races in the game - and technically both sides are only Human - visual diversity is a plus. If you're a fan of traditional fantasy races, you'll have no trouble creating anything that looks like say, a Halfling, an Elf, a Dwarf, or a character akin to an Ogre.
Players begin with a choice of four classes that represent the normal archetypes you'd expect in an MMO: Warrior, Priest, Scout, and Mage. However, at level 10, each of these classes split off into different directions. Warriors can become Templars (tanks) or Gladiators (AoE-based melee DPS). Priests become Clerics (healers) or Chanters (buffers). Scouts become Rangers (Ranged DPS) or Assassins (single-target melee DPS). Mages become Sorcerers (ranged DPS and CC) or Spiritmasters (Pets).
The classes are all fairly distinct and bring something different to the table, and I can't say any of them felt useless either. While some may seem more powerful than others, the game is largely balanced around groups, and everyone seems to fit into a role pretty well. I can't say I could find any archetype that was noticeably missing either. If there's a class you like to play, you'll probably find it here. Although, once again, you won't find anything new to the genre here either.
Visuals and Interface
Visually, Aion is solid. Character models are well detailed and they certainly have a style to them, and - as suggested by character creation - there is plenty of variety. Armor is similarly well detailed and - provided you like the art style - you'll be pleased by how everything looks. Not only are the character models well done, but also the various mobs you'll find in the world also appear to be equally polished.
;)
The environments themselves can be quite spectacular. Aion definitely features a high fantasy setting with a very magical world, and there are plenty of unique and stunning places to explore. From giant cities, to lush forests, to snow-capped peaks, to great fortresses, and even the floating islands of the Abyss, it is all quite stylized and magical. Needless to say, the art direction pulls it off well.
There is also an awful lot of variety in each of the large zones as well. While you might start in a snowy region, you will soon find yourself in a lush forest, then in a menacing swamp, then in a desert area, etc... It may not always seem realistic, but it does allow for a fair amount of variety in the places you'll be in, which is nice.
However, the environments - while they look nice - do not seem to have nearly the amount of resolution and detail seen in the character models. This is a bit of a shame as occasionally you can run into a rather poor, bland looking place, which will seem very strange with a very nice looking character. It creates a disconnected feeling.
Overall though, the game is a graphical treat, and easily one of the best looking MMOs on the market now. Given that I enjoy the art style, it appeals to me more than any other I've played.
Early Levels 1 - 10 and 11 - 25
When playing Aion, I noticed that the feeling of gameplay changes depending on your level range. When players begin the game, their character is a Human - as in, they don't have wings, and they only have one of the four basic classes. This part of the game feels like a very generic MMO. There is absolutely nothing in it that will make this part of the game seem different than anything else on the market. However, it does serve as a good introduction to Aion, letting you explore the controls, and it feels comfortable, regardless if you have played any prior games.
;)
As you level, you will begin to gain some of the abilities of your basic class, learn some of the background of the world, run through quests, and bash some mobs. Eventually you will reach level 9, which gives you your Ascension Quest, that upon completion, will auto-level you to level 10. Here is where you gain your wings, your advanced class, and ascend to join the immortal Daevas!
Gaining your advanced class can be a pretty big deal, too. For example, my main character was a Chanter. As a Priest, I was mostly using ranged spells as I leveled up as a Human. However, upon ascending and becoming a Chanter, I became less and less reliant on ranged spells, and far more reliant on melee abilities. A Cleric, on the other hand, would notice less of a change as they continued to focus on ranged magical attacks mixed in with their healing abilities. For a Cleric, it is a natural flow, but even for my Chanter, the change was gradual over a few levels as I gained new abilities.
Even once you have your wings and your new class, Aion still pretty much plays like every other game. Glaringly, your flight is heavily restricted in most of the game. In fact, outside of the Abyss and a few key areas, you won't be able to fly at all.
However, you will be able to glide, which is a bit different. Gliding allows you to leap from high places (or on the tops of downward slopes) to ride air currents. This can speed up your travel significantly, and it can also be used strategically. For example, leaping from a high cliff to avoid being nuked by deadly mobs. As you glide to distant safety, the angry mobs will be stuck shaking their fists at you (well, they won't actually do that, but it creates a wonderful mental image!)
During this period you'll also get pretty familiar with the combat system, too. Really, it is pretty standard MMO combat. The only catch is Aion puts a greater focus on skill chains than most games. That is, when you use one ability, it will unlock another ability, which might unlock another ability, etc... The further you go down a skill chain, the more powerful the abilities get, but if you need to use an ability outside of the chain, the chain will be broken and you'll need to start over again.
During the earlier parts of the game, you won't notice much strategy in combat. However, as you go along, you gain more abilities, more chains, and there is a hint that eventually it'll get a bit more strategic, which ultimately it does.
Decent write up, but I think some of the game's short comings have been glossed over a bit too much in this review. I agree for the most part with much of what was said, the game is solid and polished. I think people should be warned about a leveling curve that gets fairly steep in the 30's. This makes me wonder what level the author reached before writing this. The amount of exp needed to level ramps up dramatically and the number of quests available does not. While not everyone thinks this is a bad thing, it is definitely worth mentioning considering the amount of debate in various communities about it.
Is it okay for a game to change focus so dramatically half way through the leveling? No mention of this as either a pro or a con.
Are there enough quests to level up questing after level 25? No mention of this either. I'll avoid calling non-questing advancement a 'grind' because of the negative connotation of the word. In most games they would call it a 'lack of content'.
Is PvP forced on PvE players? If so, wouldn't it be a con for those who prefer PvE? He says that the Abyss can be avoided, but what exactly are you supposed to do when you avoid the abyss? Is the gameplay sub-par when not in the Abyss?
As a player with limited information that may be deciding whether or not to play the game, these are issues that are keeping me from making a decision of whether or not to play. The review doesn't really address them.
I'm in an agreement with Paragus on this one. Part of a review is painting a picture so people with different playstyles can decide if they'll like the game. For example, my first MMO was DAoC, and I love the whole PvPvE concept. However, I didn't much like the game, but it wasn't so much because of the gameplay, rather it was because of my playstyle. I'll elaborate.
This game is extremely linear levels 1-20 and not much better after that 20-25. Maybe the Abyss opens things up a bit until more zones become playable, but I never made it that far to choose, due to my playstyle. Because of the linearness, replayability is near to none, if not none for a lot of people. So for a person that likes only 1 type of class, and only levels one character, they won't notice the same negatives that a person like me would see. A person who likes a variety of classes, and can only choose once he tries them all, will bore very quickly of this game. I for one created around 10 characters, so I could try each class, because I actually like the way all the classes sound on paper. For those that'll comment on the 10 part, I rerolled servers. Anyways, I was so sick of the content that I couldn't even make it past lvl 22 without wanting to claw my eyes out. At that point, I'd rather watch paint dry than kill even one more monster. The game is very repetative, moreso than most games these days should be.
Customer support and community is also big factors. One NCsoft has control over, while the other is the luck of the draw. When you see the same gold spammers day after day, and the same scammer day after day, you KNOW there isn't any GM support in the game. Let's be logical here, how long would it take YOU to watch the chat channels, write down all the names spamming gold adverts. and scam websites, take them to your boss, and he delete those accounts? It took me around 3 minutes to block 15 gold spammers and 1 scammer, upon logging in with a brand new character. So if every server had 1 GM, which is bare-minimum, since there's usually many more in any MMO I've ever played, the server would be rid of gold spammers within 3 minutes of that GM logging in. So we KNOW there isn't any GM support, which speaks volumes about NCsofts opinion of customer satisfaction. That alone is an insult to us as customers and is enough to quit the game out of disgust for their business practices. How many of you would go back to a restraunt if there was bad customer service?
The community varies on the server you choose, and I can only comment on Lumiel and Meslamtaeda, but others can chime in on their server communities. General chat is flooded with questions that are answerable if they'd just read their quests, or explored a little bit. So the first strike against the community is that their either dumb or lazy. Next are the racists and sexists, which a spewing their crap on a regular basis. That's the second strike against the community, although these people can be ignored. Next are people who are disrespectful and are just plain assholes. This comprises the majority of the people on general chat. Yes, you can just leave the chat channel, or ignore a long list of people, but you're really starting to take away the entire community at this point, since General chat IS used by good people who are trying to communicate with it. There's good information on General chat, that you'll miss out on by turning it off. This was Elyos by the way. The community IS something you can get around, by joining a Legion (full of people you don't know and could possibly be just as bad as the people you're trying to avoid), but any wise person will know that you don't rush into a Legion. It's better to get to know people first, and then create a Legion with those people, or join theirs.
Lastly, there's the grind. Okay, so the grind isn't as bad as the older games. I get that, because I played those games. But those games were played in a different time, when none of us knew any better and the communities were MUCH better and worked together. How many of you would play a single-player game where you had to grind on mobs for hours? I think we'd all agree that'd be a pretty sad single-player game. So why would you accept it in a MMORPG? Shouldn't MMORPG's be entertaining as well, not snoozefests? I'm not advocating for a lot of of meaningless quests to do, but you can't honestly say that standing in one place killing the same mobs, using the same skills over and over and over again for hours is actually fun? I'd hope people have a bit more intellect than that and would require more mental stimulation to be entertained.
Anyways, despite all of that, AION is a good game, but it is playstyle dependant, which is my whole point in posting. The reviewer did a good job, but I think he glanced over the negative stuff.
had no idea you played Aion, always thought you where the darkfall guy.
Seems like a populist review to appease the rampant fanbois on this site. 8.7 plz dont make me laugh.
Writing a review must be very difficult. I would never attempt it. However, I just want to say that with some things you say I disagree and others I agree heavily. But in the end the conclusion is the same. 8.7 seems to be a very fair number for myself.
I really am enjoying AION more then any other mmo every.
I've done a few write ups on Aion if you click my sig.
Have to disagree with the statement about GM's they are actively monitoring the servers and killing the gold spam when they see it, as far as bots they have to go thru an investigation which can take a month but includes several other bots and bank toons when banned. So far the bot problem is not out of control but do agree that some in house security does need to be made to lessen the problem.
Yes general chat has it's problems but what MMO does not have that problem.So tell me what other MMO does not have a grind in it at a certain level huh?
Do enlighten us on how the game doesn't deserve that. Think about it for a sec its the first good game since lotro.
I dunno, but 8.7 feels quite overrated. Aion isn't all bad, but it surely is not that great, at least once you play a while it feels quite repetitive and grindy. I feel it is more like a fast food game, but thats my perspective. I would not rate it mor than 6.9 or so.
Nice write up and although I totally agree with the label "standard" and "nothing new" from an MMO I think the crafting write up was a little short. I find the crafting / gathering system to actually be very good and fun. I think it should be pointed out that you can choose how you level up your crafting and there is in fact no need to gather materials if you have money to do work orders (where you can be rewarded with recipes and materials). In fact you only need to gather materials to craft items that would use or sell which so far as I have experienced are roughly available when you would use them. I also really like the "crit" effect they have added where you have the chance to make something even better. Lastly the two little bars (succeed / fail) that compete while you are crafting or gathering do make it interesting.
Please take all I have said with a grain of salt as I am not overly far into the game and my crafting is only 200ish. Like you I am also biased to the sylized art of game and other like it. Either way, I am enjoying it and thanks for the review.
Remember everyone, 8.7 is the school equivalent to a B+.
A good score, but not epic.
There they come... the trolls are already leaving their caves and on their way here.
8.7 is unacceptable to them... you are gonna pay.
Good review for a great game, and with a very fair score
That's wierd. I read this review, which starts out with a quote from John Milton, and then I start reading some of my critical thinking textbook and guess what the Introduction begins with?
"The mind is it's own place and in itself can make a hell of heaven or a heaven of hell" (John Milton).
How does 'A standard MMO' get an 8.7?
Anyway, IMO Aion lacks a little feature called fun, and no I don't want to grind to 50 before the game begins.
I agree. I'm not big on assigning numbers on games because I know a lot of people have different tastes when it comes to this genre. The game is solid in terms of gameplay and polish, and it's probably the first time in a while NA has seen a game that didn't feel unfinished at release. The grind will be turn off for a lot of people, and others won't mind it. If I had to give it a number I'd probably have given it somewhere between an 8 to 8.5, but I can understand how some people would not rate it as high. I don't think it deserves any higher though until they really get a grip on the gold spammer, bots, and some siege performance issues.
Very good review and you say the things that I do believe too. Been a while I didn't had that much fun in a MMORPG and I'll be playing this game for a lot of months, this is for sure...
I really think its more of a 7.5 - 8 but definitly no more than an 8 its a fairly good game but like other's said its nothing special.
And if you take into the handling of the game by ncsoft west the should be slammed for the shitty service they provide aswell (in the eu anyway). This is one thing that anoy's me about mmo review's they talk about the game and fail to mention how the game service is run.
Its the only reasson i quit.
This doesn't seem true to me in the EU. I've seen the same gold seller spammer for over 8 days straight.
The review seems a bit high, but scores are definitely subjective. I agree it's a polished game, but the beginning is very linear and the first 20 levels (not to 25 yet) seem a bit small and the areas are 'fenced' in. I'm liking the chanter a LOT, though, and the character customization is top notch. (I wish fewer monters were cute...personal preference.)
With regards to NC Soft's level of support...
I think the lack of service NC Soft's part has definitely been glossed over in this review. Not that it's necessary to be overly negative, but NC Soft has more or less been an 'empty uniform', at least in my experience as an EU player.
Barely a single response from NC staff on the official forum, because apparently, "they can't log in to their own forums" - for a few days I could believe that, but 3 weeks after release? Yeah.. right.
Not a single response from NC about the rubber-banding issues for wireless users, and nothing on the infamous Crysystem.dll crashes..
I'm still getting the same gold spam whispers from the same people three weeks into the game. So I suspect the gold sellers are simply deleting and re-making characters to continue.
This coming from the biggest troll and hater? Pot calling the kettle black.
I didn't play Aion myself. But since I read the threads about it every now and then, watched some videos, screenshots, read about the praise and the complaints, I of course got an opinion as well. :)
In my opinion 8.7 is a bit high. I mean, let's say a person says "I want to try an MMORPG. I don't know anything about them. Aion? I like the screenshots. 8.7 rating? Wow, that is very high, one of the highest ever given. This game must be great. I'll buy it." That's kinda the effect that rating has. Nearly everyone who will read the review and didn't research the game by himself/herself will assume that it is a safe buy, something that will always be liked.
But is it true? Will really everyone who didn't research the game but just relies on the review love it as much as the review claims? I have my doubts.
I mean, either was the reviewer a great fan himself and such didn't want to give it a lower rating because he'd feel like a traitor. Or he didn't want to give the lots of Aion fans in this community a bad feeling. The feeling that they are disliked and thought lowly of by the people who run this site and community and approve or even write the reviews.
If that's true, they also kinda lure people into buying this game, although they do know that more people than the 8.7 verdict lets us assume will be disappointed. And that is a depressing thought.
Of course there are trolls out there, writing bad stuff that ain't true about the game, exaggerating it's flaws and not mentioning the good stuff. But not all of the people who have complaints about the game are making them up. Some people are obviously really disappointed, and probably not only 1 or 2 people.
8.7 seriously?
That would make it the highest rated game ever on here (by the staff), wouldn't it?
For such a small, linear game, you gotta wonder if the reviewer got caught up in the initial experience, but an MMO is about longevity too, hence, there are monthly fees.
This coming from the biggest troll and hater? Pot calling the kettle black.
troll and hater? by all means, what did i troll or what do I hate?
Best thing about the review is the first Quote.
So did the reviewer hit level cap? Or is this another review of a scrub that hit level 25 and thinks he's taken in the whole thing? If so this review means jack.
Kudos to you Sean for writing what I think is probably one of the most fair reviews I've read about Aion so far. I personally can't stand to play the game but I'm not going to hate on you for writing a positive review. You didn't overlook some of the issues the game has had so far but you didn't shred it to pieces for having some issues at launch. The fact that this game really wasn't what I would call a "new release" when it launched here will end up benefiting it in the NA market big time. Unfortunately for me I wanted something that offered some new experiences than I had in WoW et. al over the last 4 years. Good job bro!
Fair review I think but I wouldn't give it an 8.7. Definitely a 7.5 out of 10 would be my opinion. I think for the time we are in Aion should be major step above all mmos, including WoW. The problem is that it isn't a step above everyone else, its pretty much the same thing since WoW launched with prettier graphics and art style. All NCsoft did was make a theme park mmo and slap a pricetag on it.
If you think 50 is where the game begines.. Well I don't know what to tell you then. Ever since I hit 25 I have run through 4-5 different dungeon areas. Taken part in 6 different epic keep captures. Killed over 200 Elyos and been wiped out by a Baluar Dreadigen Space Ship twice.
At this point now (31) I have done around 200-250 quests and have a log book full of 30 more quests to do. I have also reached a crafting skill of 250 to fill my Alchemy crafting need of pots in pvp.
The last time I had this much fun in a MMO was back in the 90's when Ultima Online launched.
So, no You do not have to be 50 in order to have fun in the game. Though once you do reach 50 you will have alot of additional content to play around with (9+ instances to do, Rifting PvP, Abyss PvP and Fortress Captures, 10+ Different Raid World Bosses, 4+ different open world dungeon areas).
If all you enjoy is PvP or PvE alone then Aion is more then likely not going to be for you. You will need to be able to enjoy both equally to enjoy the game. Heck there is even a endgame instance that focuses on PvPvE where you are fighting through different bosses to reach the last boss and along the way you will encounter the opposit faction and have to fight ageanst them.
It doesn't matter if you disagree or not. I'm not exaggerating when I say I seen the same gold spammers and scammers there for 3 days straight. If you play only one character, you wouldn't notice it after you block them. But I was trying out all the classes and that took about a week. For several days I was blocking the same gold spammers and scammers, so you're disagreement is ignorance to me.
MMORPG's with general chat vary in the degree of childishness. I'd say average is what should be tolerable, any more than that is intolerable, and any less than that is a great community. For example, depending on the server, WOW general chat can range from intolerable to great community. So server choice has a lot to do with it. Some games as a whole promote or attract a better community, such as EvE, Saga of Ryzom, and LoTRO. No one could really know before a game releases on what kind of community a game will attract, but on both Lumiel and Meslamtaeda, they were intolerable. So to answer your question, some MMO's don't have that problem, or it's so seldom the problem is insignificant.
Your last question is addressed to grind. In this case, I'm speaking of doing an activity that offers no immersion at all, and is very repetative. Killing mobs by the hundreds, one at a time, using the same skills...for hours, is a grind. An uninteresting, and a non-mental stimulating one at that. Some games do a better job of hiding the fact that you need x amount of xp before the next level. Such games offer content that immerses you in the game, and story, if you bother to read them. Such games are not grindy, depending on the immersion factor. When I hated quests, or had no tolerance for the trash quests, I found questing an intolerable and mindless grind. Moreso than I did grinding. However, some games do a better job than others at writing quests and tying them into the main story. For example, WoW's WoTLK expansion actually was one large story, where each zone contributed to the overall story, yet had their own mini-story, in which every quest you did contributed to the mini-story, which indirectly contributed to the main story. So the quests in that game were immersive, which made the leveling non-grindy. LoTRO is another example of this, except they offer an epic storyline in addition to the smaller quests which build upon each other, completing the larger picture of what's going on in the area. AION had such immersion from 1-20, but after that it was spotty. I'm sure some parts of AION after that are immersive, but the game has too much space in-between those immersive stents filled with mindnumbing grind.
I can say for an MMO that is not even a year old yet it has come out pretty well so far. Granted the queues where not great but they did add servers when needed to help cut them down. They have done hotfixes to alleviate the situation but also need to come up with a security program to deal with the bot solution somewhat, i do see them trying to alleviate the gold spam problem but i think that also has to do with players buying Kinah too.
Personally i don't go by reviews, i do my own research about a game before i play it. As has been said, reviews are just peoples opinion and everyone has them be it good or bad. I don't expect lots of people to enjoy it but i do see a lot that want a return of some of the old school elements from past MMO's.
Only way to truely say if a MMO is for you is to try it, i have tryed quiet a few in my time and some just didn't cut it for me while others did.
I'd say it was a fairly balanced review, might not have rated it that high, but I'm prob burned out on high fantasy and the same old same old MMO so it's me. It is a good game though, but far from great.
It doesn't matter if you disagree or not. I'm not exaggerating when I say I seen the same gold spammers and scammers there for 3 days straight. If you play only one character, you wouldn't notice it after you block them. But I was trying out all the classes and that took about a week. For several days I was blocking the same gold spammers and scammers, so you're disagreement is ignorance to me.
MMORPG's with general chat vary in the degree of childishness. I'd say average is what should be tolerable, any more than that is intolerable, and any less than that is a great community. For example, depending on the server, WOW general chat can range from intolerable to great community. So server choice has a lot to do with it. Some games as a whole promote or attract a better community, such as EvE, Saga of Ryzom, and LoTRO. No one could really know before a game releases on what kind of community a game will attract, but on both Lumiel and Meslamtaeda, they were intolerable. So to answer your question, some MMO's don't have that problem, or it's so seldom the problem is insignificant.
Your last question is addressed to grind. In this case, I'm speaking of doing an activity that offers no immersion at all, and is very repetative. Killing mobs by the hundreds, one at a time, using the same skills...for hours, is a grind. An uninteresting, and a non-mental stimulating one at that. Some games do a better job of hiding the fact that you need x amount of xp before the next level. Such games offer content that immerses you in the game, and story, if you bother to read them. Such games are not grindy, depending on the immersion factor. When I hated quests, or had no tolerance for the trash quests, I found questing an intolerable and mindless grind. Moreso than I did grinding. However, some games do a better job than others at writing quests and tying them into the main story. For example, WoW's WoTLK expansion actually was one large story, where each zone contributed to the overall story, yet had their own mini-story, in which every quest you did contributed to the mini-story, which indirectly contributed to the main story. So the quests in that game were immersive, which made the leveling non-grindy. LoTRO is another example of this, except they offer an epic storyline in addition to the smaller quests which build upon each other, completing the larger picture of what's going on in the area. AION had such immersion from 1-20, but after that it was spotty. I'm sure some parts of AION after that are immersive, but the game has too much space in-between those immersive stents filled with mindnumbing grind.
Your choice in trying the different classes on the same day with the same spammers, but i don't expect them to be banned right away but after a few hours they are gone. There are other thing to do besides grind or quest grind in game. Considering this MMO is only 11 months out, things take time to flesh out properly, hell even WoW took it's time to from it's begining to get as far as it did. As far as mind numbing grind well that is also your opinion on that and it varies from person to person. Oh i do play on Lumiel so i have seen the GM's do their job when they are on.
Its funny how a reviewer that only talks about 1-25, and nothing else , and the fanbois here agree with everything and says its a great review, yet other reviews from other sites that have played the same or just abit less of levels, the fanbois start saying " has the reviewer even hit lvl cap yet", "how many hours did u play:?, "judging a game on the firts 20 or so levels is not a review", "have u done end game yet".
Its all rosy when the reviewer is a fanboi himself , yet a similiar review done by another site is slammed because his played a few levels less lol. This site is a joke along with the idiots posting here. No more posting here for me. Post what u want iot wont be read. just realise the Hypocrisy on this site is beyond belief.
I'm not interested in reviews that are all "fluffy kittens" and "happy thoughts". I want a critique. I what to hear a critical evaluation of the game--even the best games have issues. Because ultimately it's whether or not I can tolerate the "issues" with the game that will determine the long-term playability for me. I found this review far too positive. And the only place they start to lean critical, the next to the last paragraph, it's more about outside forces on the the game--Gold spam and GM response time--than about game mechanics, etc.
It doesn't matter if you disagree or not. I'm not exaggerating when I say I seen the same gold spammers and scammers there for 3 days straight. If you play only one character, you wouldn't notice it after you block them. But I was trying out all the classes and that took about a week. For several days I was blocking the same gold spammers and scammers, so you're disagreement is ignorance to me.
MMORPG's with general chat vary in the degree of childishness. I'd say average is what should be tolerable, any more than that is intolerable, and any less than that is a great community. For example, depending on the server, WOW general chat can range from intolerable to great community. So server choice has a lot to do with it. Some games as a whole promote or attract a better community, such as EvE, Saga of Ryzom, and LoTRO. No one could really know before a game releases on what kind of community a game will attract, but on both Lumiel and Meslamtaeda, they were intolerable. So to answer your question, some MMO's don't have that problem, or it's so seldom the problem is insignificant.
Your last question is addressed to grind. In this case, I'm speaking of doing an activity that offers no immersion at all, and is very repetative. Killing mobs by the hundreds, one at a time, using the same skills...for hours, is a grind. An uninteresting, and a non-mental stimulating one at that. Some games do a better job of hiding the fact that you need x amount of xp before the next level. Such games offer content that immerses you in the game, and story, if you bother to read them. Such games are not grindy, depending on the immersion factor. When I hated quests, or had no tolerance for the trash quests, I found questing an intolerable and mindless grind. Moreso than I did grinding. However, some games do a better job than others at writing quests and tying them into the main story. For example, WoW's WoTLK expansion actually was one large story, where each zone contributed to the overall story, yet had their own mini-story, in which every quest you did contributed to the mini-story, which indirectly contributed to the main story. So the quests in that game were immersive, which made the leveling non-grindy. LoTRO is another example of this, except they offer an epic storyline in addition to the smaller quests which build upon each other, completing the larger picture of what's going on in the area. AION had such immersion from 1-20, but after that it was spotty. I'm sure some parts of AION after that are immersive, but the game has too much space in-between those immersive stents filled with mindnumbing grind.
I agree with you on the gold spamming and scamming. The game is running rampent with them both. BUT even with that said I hold out some hope that the upcoming hirement of alot more GMs (they are going 24/7 GM support soon) and the re-introduction of GameGuard will help reduce alot of the botting and Spamming. (Because if you disable gameguard they can detect it and you are more then likely going to get banned for it. And we all know GameGuard hates to see anything else running on your computer while its running - And no I am not a fan of GameGuard.. But if it helps the problems then I am all for putting up with it)
I can only somewhat agree on the immersion after 20. There are a fair number of kill quests and such afterwards. (But come on there really only 3 types of quests in MMO's: Fedex, Kill, and Find type quests.. thats the essence of MMOs right there.) What I do enjoy is the cutscreen's and the campaign quests. Most of them keep the story flowing right along past 20. Most of the lvl 25+ instances you encounter are nicely put togeather and have a good story to go along with them.
Borred at lvl 25
Really borred at lvl 26
Cancel account at lvl 27 ....
Back to Lotro. :)
So what your saying is that you want to hear all the "negative" aspects of the game rather than a solid balance of what's good and what's bad? Too positive obviously equals a conspiracy by Aion fanbois to tilt the curve away from games such as WoW right?
This is an idiotic mindset and moreover it's what is contributing to the problem of games being rushed out, overhyped, and under delivered to meet an unrealistic expectation.
The review is a solid one and the 8.7 is deserved. I've played them all just about and I left WoW myself after going through the trend of big hyped up games coming out only to fall flat, heralding a return to WoW. This time I was very pleasantly surprised and that's even going in with a really pessimistic view.
People need to stop feeling threatened and stop hating on this game just because their worried their game might topple from the number 1 spot. Who cares. Enjoy it for what it is. No one said it was revolutionary, they said it was a new take on an old model and after experiencing it first hand, I'll take it. It's beautiful, well polished, and has some very interesting and unique features.
Almost a 9 for this game???
Way over rated, the reviewer was a bit over enthusiastic.
This game is not awful, but giving it a 9 shows how biased the reviewer was.
Aion is very polished, it has decent content and the graphics are pretty good.
But the game play can be tedious and repetitive, and you need to grind quite a lot in order to max your character.
Also the game doesn't bring anything new to the genre whatsoever, therefore lacking the innovation element which doesn't justify such an high score.
Hardly 9 rating material.....................
1st off... we asmodians are just asangelic as well you pompous tree hugging Elyos... tee hee! Sorry for being curt but honestly your very first sentence came of like you think of us asmodians as the lesser faction... being the underdogs and the fallen one's that got the short end of the stick, "meaning we got no sun on our half of the world and were freezing or butt's off so we got this wierd furry mane on our backside keep us warm..." therefore our wings do not look ethereal like the Elyos... forgive me if i seem to be coming off defensive" OMG you say hero / villain just cuzz we have black wings we are labeled bad? ROFLMAO! >*< ! Holy cow what next a forum post on racism between the to factions ROFLMAO tee hee *giggles... I do agree of your opinon on the lore story line... for some people that like to play solo they ae screwed for you are forced to play in groups or never lvl to your peek level. PvP is fun and the PvE is falty at the least for if you do not gather in the game when you reach level 20 your damned when doing quests in Morhiem for it seems you must gather at least 30 % or more things to finish a quest in that region... i know i'm going off subject but their ore some bugs in the GRFX in the game that i hope the address soon ... " if AION does not get a handle on the spammersin channels 1-2-3-4-5 & 6 things are going to be rough for alot of ppl chat is gone "LFG ch. is gone as well as trade ch. is gone! and these channels are VERY MUCH needed... i like doing solo things but this mmo was not made to be like that so i accept this and enjoy AION, as for the paying for paying for death... this is bunk !
In conclusion i concur with 75 % of what Stradden has said...
( at least you addressed that we have to live in the cold harsh weather with no sun! ! )
& 4 Ascended Alts ... 10 assasin 10 gladiator 10 ranger & sorc!
*Giggles!!!
in a mmo called Rohan 'blood feud' there was a way that they got rid of the gold spammers after1 month the game put in these handcuffs you could buy at any NPC vendor for 5 gold and if you saw a spammer or a gold farmer or a dealer you could slap the cuffs on them and it would Immediately send a tell to a Game Master and they would BAN them from the game...
now it did not get rid of all of them cuzz they could remake a toon and come back but the players could police the game. At the very least keep the chats from being swamped... in AION ... "my god i have to stay in my own tab that i made in the game so i don't see the spammers BUT they killed the 1.2.3.4.5.6. ch. LFG and Trade windows are useless!!!
I agree
So what your saying is that you want to hear all the "negative" aspects of the game rather than a solid balance of what's good and what's bad? Too positive obviously equals a conspiracy by Aion fanbois to tilt the curve away from games such as WoW right?
This is an idiotic mindset and moreover it's what is contributing to the problem of games being rushed out, overhyped, and under delivered to meet an unrealistic expectation.
The review is a solid one and the 8.7 is deserved. I've played them all just about and I left WoW myself after going through the trend of big hyped up games coming out only to fall flat, heralding a return to WoW. This time I was very pleasantly surprised and that's even going in with a really pessimistic view.
People need to stop feeling threatened and stop hating on this game just because their worried their game might topple from the number 1 spot. Who cares. Enjoy it for what it is. No one said it was revolutionary, they said it was a new take on an old model and after experiencing it first hand, I'll take it. It's beautiful, well polished, and has some very interesting and unique features.
What kind of mindset is it when you make assumptions about other people?
That poster asked for an honest critique of the game, not an overly negative review. Critiques reveal both the good and the bad. That poster was right that this wasn't a critique, because it didn't systematically reveal the good and the bad of the game. However, a critique would require more thought and would be longer than gamers might want to spend reading a forum. So a critique may not be called for. I wouldn't of minded a critique, nor would that poster you quoted. I'd of found a real critique interesting, even though I've played the game and didn't like it.
So what your saying is that you want to hear all the "negative" aspects of the game rather than a solid balance of what's good and what's bad?
Yes, that is exactly what I want. And so I am still waiting for a review that does it.
What kind of mindset is it when you make assumptions about other people?
That poster asked for an honest critique of the game, not an overly negative review. Critiques reveal both the good and the bad. That poster was right that this wasn't a critique, because it didn't systematically reveal the good and the bad of the game. However, a critique would require more thought and would be longer than gamers might want to spend reading a forum. So a critique may not be called for. I wouldn't of minded a critique, nor would that poster you quoted. I'd of found a real critique interesting, even though I've played the game and didn't like it.
Really? Then why don't you give us that critique since you seem to be the expert on what a review is or isn't?
Just so I'm clear...the rating system is 1-9 right? Not 1-10. Because a 10 is obviously by everyones standards here not possible and a 9 is pretty much the right hand of god? Yes?
Well the good stuff is already mentioned to death at any advertisment of the game, the games fansites, websites etc. So a reliable review must stress the negative stuff.
What kind of mindset is it when you make assumptions about other people?
That poster asked for an honest critique of the game, not an overly negative review. Critiques reveal both the good and the bad. That poster was right that this wasn't a critique, because it didn't systematically reveal the good and the bad of the game. However, a critique would require more thought and would be longer than gamers might want to spend reading a forum. So a critique may not be called for. I wouldn't of minded a critique, nor would that poster you quoted. I'd of found a real critique interesting, even though I've played the game and didn't like it.
Really? Then why don't you give us that critique since you seem to be the expert on what a review is or isn't?
To what purpose would a critique serve and what would the benefit be for me? I've already critiqued the game for myself, which lead me to quit the game. Critiquing the game is not my job, nor is there any real benefit to me doing so for a forum full of ungrateful people, who will likely let the thread die in a matter of days, after flaming it to death. The only way I'll spend the effort to write down a critique about something is if I was properly rewarded for it, such as if it was my job, or a grade in school depended on it.
Well the good stuff is already mentioned to death at any advertisment of the game, the games fansites, websites etc. So a reliable review must stress the negative stuff.
Completely disagree. Aspects of the game should be told in a non biased and fair manner. If there are no negative aspects of a game or your having to get to microscopic to look for them then you tell it like it is...that there are really no negative aspects that you could find or that the ones you did find which are this, this, and that, are really more of a minor annoyance or hardly mentionable flaw. Same goes with the positive side...if all you find is negativity and the positives are too small then you mention them for what they are.
What you don't do is try to drum up things to try to create some equal balance in order to appease the readers of a review because they believe a review isn't a review unless it's mostly negative...or mostly positive.
Just state the facts and let the reader make up their own mind. That being said a review is always going to be created in the eyes of the person doing the review and what they find as an annoyance or what have you, might be something that's right up your alley in terms of play style or what have you.
mmorpg.com's review of wow they gave it an 8.0
aion gets an 8.7?
aion is wow with...less content...
make sense
Really? Then why don't you give us that critique since you seem to be the expert on what a review is or isn't?
To what purpose would a critique serve and what would the benefit be for me? I've already critiqued the game for myself, which lead me to quit the game. Critiquing the game is not my job, nor is there any real benefit to me doing so for a forum full of ungrateful people, who will likely let the thread die in a matter of days, after flaming it to death. The only way I'll spend the effort to write down a critique about something is if I was properly rewarded for it, such as if it was my job, or a grade in school depended on it.
You could have stopped at the "its not my job" part. Case rested. And since it isn't your job how are you a credible critic of a review over anyone else? How can you tell anyone that this review is any better or worse than any other?
Eheh exactly my point.
Also WoW doesn't even deserve an 8.............and Aion ain't better than WoW, go and figure.
Me think MMORPG.com needs better reviewers
Maybe mmorpg like pvp wow didn't do it good anyway so many class unbalances.
And people that played wow at launch say that it was not bug free so maybe that can add to the rating.
Completely disagree. Aspects of the game should be told in a non biased and fair manner. If there are no negative aspects of a game or your having to get to microscopic to look for them then you tell it like it is...that there are really no negative aspects that you could find or that the ones you did find which are this, this, and that, are really more of a minor annoyance or hardly mentionable flaw. Same goes with the positive side...if all you find is negativity and the positives are too small then you mention them for what they are.
What you don't do is try to drum up things to try to create some equal balance in order to appease the readers of a review because they believe a review isn't a review unless it's mostly negative...or mostly positive.
Just state the facts and let the reader make up their own mind. That being said a review is always going to be created in the eyes of the person doing the review and what they find as an annoyance or what have you, might be something that's right up your alley in terms of play style or what have you.
Is it truely unbiased writing when you only write from your perception of things? What you describe the writer doing, is writing from his perception. If the writer didn't perceive there to be much negative, then there wasn't much negative.
Just so I'm clear...the rating system is 1-9 right? Not 1-10. Because a 10 is obviously by everyones standards here not possible and a 9 is pretty much the right hand of god? Yes?
No game, no movie, no music track ever gets a 10 on serious magazines or Ezines.
10 is perfection, which no product, no matter how good it is, will ever achieve.
So 9 is the best achieveable score any product can ever get.
And a 9 for Aion is way, and I repeat WAY over rated, no matter how much you like the game.
As I said the game isn't bad, but you cannot give such an high score to a game which doesn't bring any innovation to the genre and which is quite tediious for a good number of people who already quit the game (me included).
So does it deserve a 4? Of course not, the game is solid and works flawlessly.
Personally I would have give it a 6.5.
I would accept a 7 from a satisfied customer and an 8 from a fanboy...........but 9 from a reviewer???
WoW got an 8 and has 10 million subs..................Aion in 6 months will be lucky to have 500K in US/EU.............very lucky
C'mon let's be serious.
Completely disagree. Aspects of the game should be told in a non biased and fair manner. If there are no negative aspects of a game or your having to get to microscopic to look for them then you tell it like it is...that there are really no negative aspects that you could find or that the ones you did find which are this, this, and that, are really more of a minor annoyance or hardly mentionable flaw. Same goes with the positive side...if all you find is negativity and the positives are too small then you mention them for what they are.
What you don't do is try to drum up things to try to create some equal balance in order to appease the readers of a review because they believe a review isn't a review unless it's mostly negative...or mostly positive.
Just state the facts and let the reader make up their own mind. That being said a review is always going to be created in the eyes of the person doing the review and what they find as an annoyance or what have you, might be something that's right up your alley in terms of play style or what have you.
Is it truely unbiased writing when you only write from your perception of things? What you describe the writer doing, is writing from his perception. If the writer didn't perceive there to be much negative, then there wasn't much negative.
That's a whole different argument. Are you unbiased in your own perceptions or are perceptions themselves biased since they aren't really the truth but more your interpretation? Sure we could get into that all day if you wanted to. The point I'm making is that if you are going to write a review you have to do so with an open mind and approach the subject matter from all sides. Technical aspects can be measured sure but you can't measure fun aside from your own personal take from actually playing the game and that's not going to necessarily be the same as the readers or others who experience the game for themselves either so the best you can do is explain to them how your experience was from your point of view and THAT is what this reviewer did.
If you want a more technical review then you need someone who spends their time measuring things such as graphics, server lag, combat models, etc. But that's an entirely different review and usually the people who review such things have an entirely different view of what is "fun".
Really? Then why don't you give us that critique since you seem to be the expert on what a review is or isn't?
To what purpose would a critique serve and what would the benefit be for me? I've already critiqued the game for myself, which lead me to quit the game. Critiquing the game is not my job, nor is there any real benefit to me doing so for a forum full of ungrateful people, who will likely let the thread die in a matter of days, after flaming it to death. The only way I'll spend the effort to write down a critique about something is if I was properly rewarded for it, such as if it was my job, or a grade in school depended on it.
You could have stopped at the "its not my job" part. Case rested. And since it isn't your job how are you a credible critic of a review over anyone else? How can you tell anyone that this review is any better or worse than any other?
Do you need to be a Chef to cook a good meal or a Maid to clean your house well? Even if I made a list of reasons why I might be a more credible critic, would you or others believe them? Would it really matter? People aren't infallible, so there's room for improvement on everything. Whether or not this is a better or worse review than any others isn't really my concern. I do think it's reasonable to expect that reviews are unbiased, because of the reasons reviews are read. After all, who is more likely to get the most use out of a review, the players or the people on the fence? I'm not picking on the reviewer, and my opinion of the review is on the first page of this thread, if you care to reread it.
Is it truely unbiased writing when you only write from your perception of things? What you describe the writer doing, is writing from his perception. If the writer didn't perceive there to be much negative, then there wasn't much negative.
That's a whole different argument. Are you unbiased in your own perceptions or are perceptions themselves biased since they aren't really the truth but more your interpretation? Sure we could get into that all day if you wanted to. The point I'm making is that if you are going to write a review you have to do so with an open mind and approach the subject matter from all sides. Technical aspects can be measured sure but you can't measure fun aside from your own personal take from actually playing the game and that's not going to necessarily be the same as the readers or others who experience the game for themselves either so the best you can do is explain to them how your experience was from your point of view and THAT is what this reviewer did.
If you want a more technical review then you need someone who spends their time measuring things such as graphics, server lag, combat models, etc. But that's an entirely different review and usually the people who review such things have an entirely different view of what is "fun".
You had it there for a second, but then lost it in the end. Reviews are supposed to be written with an open-mind and covered from all the different angles, which can only be seen with an open-mind. A point-of-view is only one angle, one perception, and is biased. When you write something from every point-of-view, you've covered all angles and have written an unbiased piece. So you see, by claiming that a professional review should be written with only the reviewers point-of-view, you've lost the main point and contradicted yourself when I thought you figured out the answer for yourself.
User rating of 8.2.-I could see that.
Roughly the same as CO, Warhammer(8.2) or a LOTRO(8.4) without the content.
Wow didn't have 10 million subs at release and as far as I know reviews are then when a game is newly launched and people have said many times that wow at launch was not bug free and that can result in a low review rate.
Plus 10 million subs are worldwide aion is already successful in eastern (while the subs are not clear it may have from 1.5 million to 3.5 million just from eastern)
No game, no movie, no music track ever gets a 10 on serious magazines or Ezines.
10 is perfection, which no product, no matter how good it is, will ever achieve.
So 9 is the best achieveable score any product can ever get.
And a 9 for Aion is way, and I repeat WAY over rated, no matter how much you like the game.
As I said the game isn't bad, but you cannot give such an high score to a game which doesn't bring any innovation to the genre and which is quite tediious for a good number of people who already quit the game (me included).
So does it deserve a 4? Of course not, the game is solid and works flawlessly.
Personally I would have give it a 6.5.
I would accept a 7 from a satisfied customer and an 8 from a fanboy...........but 9 from a reviewer???
WoW got an 8 and has 10 million subs..................Aion in 6 months will be lucky to have 500K in US/EU.............very lucky
C'mon let's be serious.
Wow got an 8 because it was the newest kid on a very old school block. Today WoW is far outdated and anyone reviewing it today using today's standards wouldn't give it anywhere near that. Anyone who measures trends (which I do) for a living knows that you don't see significant trend changes overnight. WoW has dominated the market for a long time and a great many people have become institutionalized within it and have a hard time separating themselves from the time investment they put into that game. But sooner or later that is going to change and it's not going to change because some new game popped on the scene that's suddenly revolutionary because even if that did happen no one is going to believe it or buy into it until enough time has passed where enough people finally made the leap and transition and in turn opens the floodgates wide enough for significant moves to be made. But that initial drip takes a long long time to become a steady flow because of human nature.
Wow is far past it's time in it's current state, and even Blizzard knows this which is why they are scurrying to make their last ditch expansion the bridge that will give them the time they need to focus on their next gen MMO. This isn't me bashing Wow, this is a well known fact.
Point of all that is subs really doesn't mean a whole lot because when a new games comes on the scene you can no longer measure in the same way because the new games potential has to come into play and you sure as hell can't measure that with subs in the short term and yet the game could very well be the WoW killer for all anyone knows. So yeah a game just coming out and getting a 8.7 over a game that has been out for years and is outdated but has 10 million subscribers makes sense and is entirely possible. A true measurement would be if you pit WoWs rollout as a new game against Aion now. Then you could make some decent arguments and comparisons about the two.
7.7 (C+) at best and that is because it is a very cool looking game with flight (limited flight).
Rating
Why is it you guys rate games that are just average with such high regard? It's not an terrible game by any sense of the word but this game is not ground breaking. This is the same whitewashed, reskinned, flavorless, classic grinder as the other titles they produce. You give it points because " what it does, it does well"? It better do it well..the game is a year old! I guess Koreans/Asians don't experience the same "in-game" issues we did at their launch of the game =/. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
Gameplay
The game does not really get good (boring actually) until lvl 25 (or so) because you open up the fun content but then by the time you hit 35 (or so) the grind begins. So the in the end, the game is only fun for about 10-15 levels. I love that it is not easy to achieve max level but there is no excuse for a game that was released a year ago (Korea/China) to have shitty leveling content or such a wicked ass leveling curve.
Sean suggests that you can skip the pvp content but fails to tell you that if you do not like pvp then the game is not really for you, or rather, you should not play this game because if you don't gain xp/ap through pvp you will be grinding instances until you eyes bleed. Did you even mention AP and how important it is to this game Sean? I think most Aion players would agree that the game just starts at level 25-35. Dude you are reviewing the best part of the game right now. (if you have gotten further than level 25 then you have yet again failed to communicate that accurately in your review.)
Comments
Does anyone care about end game content anymore? How can you give an accurate review of a game if you have not even experienced what it is like to level and play at max level? I am a grinder so I am used to getting to end game and waiting two to three months for the end game bugs to be fixed and hope for some added content.
2 cents
Is it truely unbiased writing when you only write from your perception of things? What you describe the writer doing, is writing from his perception. If the writer didn't perceive there to be much negative, then there wasn't much negative.
That's a whole different argument. Are you unbiased in your own perceptions or are perceptions themselves biased since they aren't really the truth but more your interpretation? Sure we could get into that all day if you wanted to. The point I'm making is that if you are going to write a review you have to do so with an open mind and approach the subject matter from all sides. Technical aspects can be measured sure but you can't measure fun aside from your own personal take from actually playing the game and that's not going to necessarily be the same as the readers or others who experience the game for themselves either so the best you can do is explain to them how your experience was from your point of view and THAT is what this reviewer did.
If you want a more technical review then you need someone who spends their time measuring things such as graphics, server lag, combat models, etc. But that's an entirely different review and usually the people who review such things have an entirely different view of what is "fun".
You had it there for a second, but then lost it in the end. Reviews are supposed to be written with an open-mind and covered from all the different angles, which can only be seen with an open-mind. A point-of-view is only one angle, one perception, and is biased. When you write something from every point-of-view, you've covered all angles and have written an unbiased piece. So you see, by claiming that a professional review should be written with only the reviewers point-of-view, you've lost the main point and contradicted yourself when I thought you figured out the answer for yourself.
Actually, no I didn't. No one can write something in the point of view of another with any real accuracy unless they walked in their shoes. This isn't a difficult concept to understand. Things like fun, positive/negative, good vs. evil, etc. are all relative. The point is that only things that are measurable and have standards can be reviewed and critiqued based upon a set standard, everything else is relative and based upon a point of view no matter how open minded and encompassing you believe yourself to be.
Because aion's endgame is accessible at level 25? it keep on opening the higher you go but you can pvp, siege and raid in the abyss at that level.
I only agree with this review rating if it didn't consider the bots and spam.
The bots and spam have such an impact on the gameplay experience that by 30+ you'll be quite mad at them and how NCSoft still haven't done anything when they saw this coming and didn't make any defense in advance... actually it's comprehensible as they don't even have in-game GM assistance yet... an AAA title without that isn't really an AAA title until it provides it.
Until then, IMO Aion gets a 7 at best - a ZERO at in-game rule enforcement and customer support.
You are wrong in that there is in-game GM assistance. They work normal hours like 9-5 (7 days a week). You can see them in-game in chat talking every so often as they go about banning all the spammers.
Soon within the next two weeks or so it will be ramped up to 24/7 In-game GM support. It just takes a few weeks to get GM's trained for the positions.
Wouldn't have been any use to hire 100 GM's if the game tanked right out of the bat. You would have lost an entire months worth of pay just training the GMs and then having to fire all them GMs. So they played it safe and when they seen that there was enough demand and the population is going to stick around. They started hireing more GMs. Right now them GM's are in the training phase and will be rolled out to the live servers soon.
Earlier I saw a post from someone saying the gold spam and bots are not bad. Well I have tried 3 different servers and everyone of them is loaded with both of the former. I don't see NCSoft doing much about it either. Support is horrible, and they don't seem to do anything. Just typical NCSoft. So because of these factors a 8.7 is far too generous for this game.
It is a beautiful game and there are not a lot of problems with it. One thing that the review misses is the grind after 35 which is very notable and the lack of an end game at the moment.
So my thought is for those enjoying it at present, many of you probably won't be playing in 6 months time.
I don't think Aion is a bad game either, but it just goes to show you that all it takes is a (somewhat) clean launch and no game-stopper bugs to get high scores. That's what we give 8's for now, polish. Reflects alot of the MMO genre in general.
What's more interesting is the reviewer mentions a number of times there is nothing new or innovative to it, despite the flying aspect. Yet the game still rates highly. Like I said, pretty graphics and polish are what get high reviews with this genre.
Sad really
You are wrong in that there is in-game GM assistance. They work normal hours like 9-5 (7 days a week). You can see them in-game in chat talking every so often as they go about banning all the spammers.
Soon within the next two weeks or so it will be ramped up to 24/7 In-game GM support. It just takes a few weeks to get GM's trained for the positions.
Wouldn't have been any use to hire 100 GM's if the game tanked right out of the bat. You would have lost an entire months worth of pay just training the GMs and then having to fire all them GMs. So they played it safe and when they seen that there was enough demand and the population is going to stick around. They started hireing more GMs. Right now them GM's are in the training phase and will be rolled out to the live servers soon.
I counter the spam issue myself by blocking spammers (as easy as right clicking their names and clicking block then OK, gets annoying to do this 2-3 times a day as you have to do it for every alt you play), still have to block 15-20 a day, Azphel server.
Bots, in the other hand, are out of control, my /autohuntingreport usages get quickly used as I walk around in 25+ areas.
I know Ayase promissed us a 24/7 GM Support soon, I'm just being realistic looking at the current issue. Like the server queues that got solved in two weeks (although they killed the private shop feature without increasing broker limit and allowing us to make partial stack purchases from there), I also believe this will get sorted out, but in a review you shouldn't be giving a good rating in a category that currently is horrible because you "believe" it will get better, you review the game as it is right now.
Then you can re-review it later, MMOs are constantly-changing games anyway, a review will eventially get outdated, even more when you talk about the end-game.
It's silly to not give a high score to a game just because it isn't innovative.
Some of the best games of all time were not innovative in the least.
It's silly to not give a high score to a game just because it isn't innovative.
Some of the best games of all time were not innovative in the least.
Precisely! It goes back to either you review based upon a set criteria that is measurable and yes you can measure how innovative a product is, or you review from your point of view on what you think is enjoyable. Innovation is going to be relative depending upon the importance of that in their realm of what is enjoyable. I personally think you do both, you rate based upon whatever the standard measurable criteria is, and then you give your personal take on your experience and enjoyment of the game.
It's silly to not give a high score to a game just because it isn't innovative.
Some of the best games of all time were not innovative in the least.
Agreed. If this genre was all about inovation there wouldn't be 150+ surviving titles around... most fantasy and level-based.
A lot of the industy seems to think that Aion is a good game for what it is. It might not be perfect, but no game is going to be perfect to everyone. I just wanted to see if the review score here was higher than anywhere else, and it really isn't. metacritic which averages all review scores has Aion listed at an 81 or 8.1 score. The highest review was a 93 by game focus going all the way down to a 50 by 1up. Out of the 19 reviews they used to get the score only 4 were below 80.
So if you want to see a large amount of reviews for Aion go to metacritic and read up for yourself. I know I would be going to multiple sources if I was interested in the game, because I know I would be with it for a while. Also this way you get to avoid all the people that just like to complain and say things like this review was paid for.
Metacritic Aion Reviews
For what it's worth, AION is a great game in it's own right.
Is it the best? Well, it depends on your own taste but overall, I am actually interested in trying it.
Again another "review" on this site which is turning a blind eye on flaws and issues with a game, resulting in a way too high score.
I 'm wondering if these kind of reviews on mmorpg.com are written for the reader or the company which brings in the money advertising here.
Just to name some:
-linear game, zero replayability
-goldspam and bots taken over
-lack of content throughout many levelranges
-grind
-booooring gathering/meaningless crafting
-economy already down shit creek
= not mentioned.
And even if you rather want to ignore these issues in yor review, how can a game 5yrs after WoW get a score of 8.7 without bringing anything new on the table, but less in almost any aspect?
Sorry guys, i like this site and many of the ongoing discussions here...but i can't take your "reviews" serious anymore.
"To be straight-forward about it, outside of the flying system, Aion doesn't do anything that you haven't seen before if you're an MMO veteran, but what it does, it does well."
"During this period you'll also get pretty familiar with the combat system, too. Really, it is pretty standard MMO combat. The only catch is Aion puts a greater focus on skill chains than most games"
To name a few features not seen before.
Combat movement system - completely missed this from lvl 1 didnt we? Never read the manual or took a looksie at you characters stats while strafing, retreating and advancing
rifting - the portals between opposing factions pve areas
hunting parties - one of possibly 2/3 mmo's you can actually go hunting in
seige bonuses via capturable artifacts
Flight Combat - totally different set of skills required sets it above other MMO's by light years
Map overlay feature (aka Diablo 2 style) not seen in an MMO before
There are so many things the review has missed the mark on and the reviewer does not understand the mechanics of the game - perhaps to much wow has numbed the brain due to its 3 day regurgitated leveling to max level?
You take reviews seriously? You need to stop drinking the Kool-Aid and start looking at what the game really is before trying it.
1. yes / has some re-playability but remember it's just starting off.
2. not yet but i'll wait and see before checking yes to it.
3. not even a year out and you think it lacks (facepalm)
4. your opinon
5. again your opinion
6. still your opinon
MMORPG.com didn't give AION the review *I* wanted it to have!
My goodness, the community on this site is becoming laughable.
The review magically create content in the pve are, dude it is a cattle shoot straight to the abyss LOL
It's clear you were running out of ideas after your 1rst two issues, which I completely agree with (the first 2).
Maybe the reviewer enjoys Japanese grinder mmos. If so, this game definitely deserve the high score on polish alone. Fun, on the other hand, isn't something you'll find in a Japanese grinder unless you "love to grind".
From the review:
"To be straight-forward about it, outside of the flying system, Aion doesn't do anything that you haven't seen before if you're an MMO veteran, but what it does, it does well."
Wont there come a point when games cant get away with rehashing the same over and over and still get good marks? I mean if a random action movie was released that had the same plot, same type of fighting and so on like a gazillion other movies before it then that is taken into account when giving it a review mark.
Aion is so much like WoW that it is funny. Everything from the gfx theme, to the quests, to the combat is like WoW. What they added on top of it is a faction 1v1 PvPvE, awfully similar to WAR, and some limited flight (which btw Champions Online has done much better) and then presented it in a new flashing package.
There is nothing in this game that has not been seen before....
You just hit the nail on the head, and I've been saying this on this website for a long time. This website, along with many others, survive mainly on advertisement dollars. Go to the front page and see how many adverts there are, same with IGN and various other sites. MMORPG.com has a vested interest in making sure that they are not "too harsh" in their review of a game as to not completely destroy their credibility with the people who pay their salary. Anyone here, who reads these reviews, that doesn't take this into account needs to have their head examined. At least this review doesn't totally ignore some of the issues. Having said that, the overall rating score that was given to the game, based on the review I read is almost laughable. Take it with a grain of salt, add in some of the other reviews, and try to put together a complete picture of what the game is like. Seriously folks..
MMORPGs suck these days. Did you know there exist 154+ MMORPGs? It ridiculous that many exist today and are still RUNNING. Either those companies have plenty of money or we really are pathetic and drawn into the addictive nature of MMORPGs to easily.
I think I'm beginning to grow up out of this genre. The gameplay in all of them these days is no better than something you couldn't find in a children's game and they are all EASY. I get tired of fighting an enemy that I KNOW I will win against as long as I press those skill icons in the right order as soon as they become available before having to sit down to regain lost HP.
Agreed. If this genre was all about inovation there wouldn't be 150+ surviving titles around... most fantasy and level-based.
Ok so you create a game that is just like another success (WoW) and then it should get high score just because it has pretty gfx, few bugs and lots of content.
I mean if you have played WoW, who hasnt, and DAoC/WAR then there is not a single thing in this game that you have not experienced before so for anyone but newcomers to the genre this game does not deserve a high score.
Copying and reusing other games concepts and ideas and then present it as your should give you mediocre scores.
Good mention, Metacritic is the best source for this as it shows all professional reviews done on the game and makes an average.
Metascore of 81 and user score of 7.3.
Your last sentence sums up his/her post perfectly.
Yeah it is laughable what the genre has come to. The original vision of the first innovative devs to create a virtual world which you live in and can impact is all gone.
Replaced with a static world full of instances and "phat lewt". Essentially becoming multiplayer online games with no virtual world aspect what so ever.
This was kind of where I was going to 'not being new or innovative' but yet still getting a high score. I think most everyone can agree that Aion doesn't invent the wheel, but I thought most people wanting something that wasn't what was already out there. There's another article on this site about the top games post WoW but most of those are the same old, same old. At least games like EvE or even Guild Wars tried to mix it up a bit by introducing different game concepts.
I mean, I'd love someone to explain specfically what make Aion better than a DAoC (for PvP/RvR) or WoW (PvE).
Lets say you are working in one of those large companies creating complex software likes MMORPGs and you decide who gets what information about upcoming projects or is allowed to have (maybe even) exclusive information and interview from and with the devs. And let's say you notice two websites. One of them says that the stuff you just put millions into and try to sell is just garbage, and the other website says that your stuff is incredibly fun and great. Whom would you rather give the information, interviews, material and whatnot?
Websites like these are all highly dependant on companies whos product they rate. And the larger the company the less they want to piss them off.
Aye. Independent media is a myth. Does not exist... They are companies, just like others, and need money to stay alive and preferably high profts.
What a joke, how much did NCsoft pay to write this.
True, an 8.7 might very well be the equivalent of a B+...
But I challenge anyone to find a higher rated game reviewed from MMORPG.COM
Just for point of reference; here is the score MMORPG.COM gave some other fairly popular MMOs:
MMORPG.COM Review Scores
From the review score at least... it would appear that MMORPG.COM is endorsing that Aion is the best MMO currently available. I haven't tried it, so I can't say one way or the other.
I just thought it fair to point out that for a MMORPG.COM review score; an 8.7 IS Epic!
True, an 8.7 might very well be the equivalent of a B+...
But I challenge anyone to find a higher rated game reviewed from MMORPG.COM
Just for point of reference; here is the score MMORPG.COM gave some other fairly popular MMOs:
MMORPG.COM Review Scores
From the review score at least... it would appear that MMORPG.COM is endorsing that Aion is the best MMO currently available. I haven't tried it, so I can't say one way or the other.
I just thought it fair to point out that for a MMORPG.COM review score; an 8.7 IS Epic!
They've never given big-ass companies bad scores. They wouldn't get exclusives or money from banners anymore.
Don't bite the hand which feeds you.
Reviews = useless on mmorpg.com.
Your best bet is the forums still.
True, an 8.7 might very well be the equivalent of a B+...
But I challenge anyone to find a higher rated game reviewed from MMORPG.COM
Just for point of reference; here is the score MMORPG.COM gave some other fairly popular MMOs:
MMORPG.COM Review Scores
From the review score at least... it would appear that MMORPG.COM is endorsing that Aion is the best MMO currently available. I haven't tried it, so I can't say one way or the other.
I just thought it fair to point out that for a MMORPG.COM review score; an 8.7 IS Epic!
Nice! That is exactly what I was saying.
Aion is a beautifully done and excellent story driven world. I currently have an Eloysian Templar (Lvl 14) and an Asmodian Sorceress (Lvl 12) and both are an absolute hoot to play. The quests, the side quests, the richness of the world.. is awe inspiring to say the least. Is the game perfect? No.. no game is. There still needs to be a very widesweeping attention to the spammers and their ilk but I as a player am not going to let those types ruin my fun. As my characters have progressed and as I have gone back to read the finer details of the storyline, I can better my roleplaying skills when in character, and it is great that I can do this so that I can truly get the immersion I want from a high fantasy game such as this.
Aion may not be innovative or new when it comes to all thing MMO wise, but it is clearly a well thought out, finely crafted game that seems to hit on all the tried and true aspects of a fantasy MMO.
And yes, I beta-ed and played WoW when it came out and it really jaded me towards Fantasy MMOs, it was that sorry of a game as far as I was concerned. (And I still do not understand the attraction that people have towards WoW) Aion is the first fantasy MMO I have played since WoW left that bad taste in my mouth. I absolutely enjoy the game and will continue to play it for the near future.
My own grade is A- or to put into Metacritic style, I'd give it a 91.
my own .02 influence.
Nice! That is exactly what I was saying.
Yes.
It was a bit misleading on Dana's part to compare an 8.7 score vs. a perfect 10.
The fair comparison of an 8.7 score is in comparison to every other MMO reviewed by this site. As it stands (unless I missed one with a higher score) Aion has the highest review score ever given.
So, by that standard... MMORPG.COM is saying that Aion is Epic. If that is indeed the case, that's fine; but let's make sure everyone knows how an 8.7 score here on MMORPG.COM stacks up. Currently, an 8.7 is as good as it gets.
True, an 8.7 might very well be the equivalent of a B+...
But I challenge anyone to find a higher rated game reviewed from MMORPG.COM
Just for point of reference; here is the score MMORPG.COM gave some other fairly popular MMOs:
MMORPG.COM Review Scores
From the review score at least... it would appear that MMORPG.COM is endorsing that Aion is the best MMO currently available. I haven't tried it, so I can't say one way or the other.
I just thought it fair to point out that for a MMORPG.COM review score; an 8.7 IS Epic!
/Signed
I haven't played Aion either and wont comment on the fairness of the score, but 8,7 definately is epic on mmorpg.com.
Unlike some of the others I will however add that I generally think that mmorpg.com makes some of the best reviews and give fair scores. That does not mean that they cant be a few decimals off mark sometimes though. But if the reviewer already gave the score based on relativity, then I wont complain(but I doubt it).
Nice! That is exactly what I was saying.
Have to agree with everyone else questioning the scoring of this review.
This question is to Jon Wood: Is the intent of this site to let every review stand on it's own? Or do you guys shoot for a score that compares the new games merits to those that have come before it ... i.e. a relative scoring approach?
Based on the data posted by xyzax, it appears you guys are using a "vacuum" approach to reviews. The reviewer fairly admits that the game does nothing new which screams "average", 7 out of 10, a 'C' grade to most people. He unabashedly admits he likes the art style and there is a general overly-enthusiastic tone to the whole piece. A neutral reader can't help but come away from the review thinking that the meat of the review does not match the tone and final score of the review.
I believe in order for reviews to mean something beyond being a fanboy or hater dissertation corroborating their point of view, there has to be meaning to the scale. A relational approach is more useful in that one can, at a glance, look at the rating of a new game and be able to compare it to the highest (and lowest) rated games to get a relative feel of it's place in the MMO universe.
From the body of evidence around the web and within the MMORPG review itself, the consensus is that Aion is a solid but generic MMO title but certainly not a trendsetter as the MMORPG rating portends.
There's no way that GM's are even patrolling, much less banning, any gold spammers. My block list filled up days ago and the scroll of spam makes both general and lfg channels worthless. Finally i created a tab with all the options except for the 2 channels. As far as them game goes, its ok but not great. There is a bit of a grind, because while there are some quests to level on their very generic and the rewards are awful. I havent worn any gear for at least 15 levels (18-33) that came from a quest and the exp usually is so low that u lose exp per hour if u take the time to run back and return. Grinding seems to be the best way of leveling, speed wise at least, with some campaign quests thrown in. Im playin now but probably wont for the long term just for the simple reason that even when i get to a new area it feels like the last area and im left with the feelin"what am i doin this for and is it really any fun?" Pvp combat is pretty fun depending on which end of the ganking ur on. The bright spot is how pretty the game is, which is really encouraging to me b/c hopefully we have some designers out there willing to combine the tech with a good story line and some emmersive gameplay
Whoa, wait a minute.
Not doing something new equals average? really? You are then saying that if a game does nothing new but there are bugs all over the place and the writing is sub par and the combat is the same type of combat but just doesn't capture any sense of excitement then that is average? Not bad?
And to further that point, if a game uses the same techniques and same types of story telling and combat types but the writing is sharp and exemplary, the combat, though the same type of combat, is fast and exciting and The game is very polished then that is also average?
Reviews should be based around what the game is trying to accomplish and whether or not it does that.
If I review a newly released rock album I'm not going to say "music is in the same stale key signatures, all 4/4 time, maybe something in compound time thrown in, the obligatory quarter note equals 120 which should make you all want to jump out a window, same whiney subject matter about teen angst and rarely modulates to anything other than the dominant. Grade C.
I'm going to say "ok, here is a rock song. It falls in the genre of a rock song so how does it stand up to what a rock song should be?"
I played Aion a bunch, couldn't be bothered to actually subscribe. I'd never give this game an 8.7, but the reviewer is certainly entitled to his opinion.
If Aion had come out 5 years ago I'd give it an 8.7. But there's nothing new here. I'm looking for new, not polished same. Thats why I'm not subscribing to Aion.
Answer these questions. And no I'm not being smart@ss. What other major MMO title has done aerial combat/character flight (meaning no mount.) What other major MMO has a combat system that allows for chains to be connected in such a way that you don't have to worry about putting them all into your tool bar? What other MMO has a world that is comprised in layers and has an abyss that is also comprised of layers and a multiple artifact system that can turn the tide of a pvp raid? Personal hand crafted guild icons? The rift system?
Again I'm not being smart I'm really asking what else is out there that does some of these things really? Because if not then I'd call some of these things if not all in it's entire package trend setting for it's genre.
Whoa, wait a minute.
Not doing something new equals average? really? You are then saying that if a game does nothing new but there are bugs all over the place and the writing is sub par and the combat is the same type of combat but just doesn't capture any sense of excitement then that is average? Not bad?
And to further that point, if a game uses the same techniques and same types of story telling and combat types but the writing is sharp and exemplary, the combat, though the same type of combat, is fast and exciting and The game is very polished then that is also average?
Reviews should be based around what the game is trying to accomplish and whether or not it does that.
If I review a newly released rock album I'm not going to say "music is in the same stale key signatures, all 4/4 time, maybe something in compound time thrown in, the obligatory quarter note equals 120 which should make you all want to jump out a window, same whiney subject matter about teen angst and rarely modulates to anything other than the dominant. Grade C.
I'm going to say "ok, here is a rock song. It falls in the genre of a rock song so how does it stand up to what a rock song should be?"
Excellent analogy!!!
Nah its more like A-.... which is too good imo. :P
Nice! That is exactly what I was saying.
Have to agree with everyone else questioning the scoring of this review.
This question is to Jon Wood: Is the intent of this site to let every review stand on it's own? Or do you guys shoot for a score that compares the new games merits to those that have come before it ... i.e. a relative scoring approach?
Based on the data posted by xyzax, it appears you guys are using a "vacuum" approach to reviews. The reviewer fairly admits that the game does nothing new which screams "average", 7 out of 10, a 'C' grade to most people. He unabashedly admits he likes the art style and there is a general overly-enthusiastic tone to the whole piece. A neutral reader can't help but come away from the review thinking that the meat of the review does not match the tone and final score of the review.
I believe in order for reviews to mean something beyond being a fanboy or hater dissertation corroborating their point of view, there has to be meaning to the scale. A relational approach is more useful in that one can, at a glance, look at the rating of a new game and be able to compare it to the highest (and lowest) rated games to get a relative feel of it's place in the MMO universe.
From the body of evidence around the web and within the MMORPG review itself, the consensus is that Aion is a solid but generic MMO title but certainly not a trendsetter as the MMORPG rating portends.
Well said. (Good points as well from Bluefix ).
I also think that MMORPG.COM does a rather good job with their reviews and their scores. I wouldn't have even popped into this thread, or made the table above; except for Dana's comment on the 8.7 score.
When I read it, I immediately tried to think of a single MMORPG.COM review score that was higher than 8.7.
I couldn't think of a single one, so I went and click on the last 100 or so MMO's to see the MMORPG.COM review score.
(That brings up another point... it would be nice to see the MMORPG.COM review score in the Main game list, not just the player review score).
Anyway, unless I missed one; my suspicions were confirmed. An 8.7 is the highest score I found.
So, when a staff person from MMORPG.COM makes a post that comes across as trying to "justify" an 8.7 score because of how it relates to a perfect 10... I decided to make it known how an 8.7 score stacks up here on MMORPG.COM.
(And no... I don't have anything against Dana... quite the opposite. Dana just happened to be the one that made the post).
So, in summary:
I do not know if Aion deserves an 8.7 score... that wasn't the point of the table above.
I did want everyone to know that in comparison to EVERY other review score here on MMORPG.COM... 8.7 IS EPIC!
The problem is that there are too many variable. Or at least one big variable, the reveiws were probably not written by the same person.
One person's 8.7 is another's 7.5 to another's 9.1.
They would actually have to come up with a simple yet quatifiable way to even out their reviews to really compare them.
Such as:
scale of 1-3
1 game breaking bugs
2, some bugs, noticable but you won't die.
3, hardly any bugs
scale of 1-3
1, they copy and pasted from diablo 1 and just changed the textures
2, fairly standard art design but enough new that one might take notice if they saw a screen shot
3, Borders on High Art with every detail of the world rendered in loving care
Well, you get the idea.
Answer these questions. And no I'm not being smart@ss. What other major MMO title has done aerial combat/character flight (meaning no mount.) What other major MMO has a combat system that allows for chains to be connected in such a way that you don't have to worry about putting them all into your tool bar? What other MMO has a world that is comprised in layers and has an abyss that is also comprised of layers and a multiple artifact system that can turn the tide of a pvp raid? Personal hand crafted guild icons? The rift system?
Again I'm not being smart I'm really asking what else is out there that does some of these things really? Because if not then I'd call some of these things if not all in it's entire package trend setting for it's genre.
Still waiting on answers...
doesn't deserve 8.7,
reviewer get to level 30, then we'll talk... up to 25 the game is perfect, after that.... goes downhill drastically.
it's a 6/10 or a generous 7 simply because of PvP, graphics and character select.
crafting is a joke (that 20 second mini game crafting and gathering ugh), PvE is awful, we won't go into the grind when you run out of quests argh.
abyss armour does look sweet even at 30 though. doesn't help the grind. (want the first blue set, get 4 more alts to 30... joy)
want a soley PvP game - look elsewhere, want a soley PvE game? get the hell out of aion. Want a mix of both - other games do it better
Whoa, wait a minute.
Not doing something new equals average? really? You are then saying that if a game does nothing new but there are bugs all over the place and the writing is sub par and the combat is the same type of combat but just doesn't capture any sense of excitement then that is average? Not bad?
And to further that point, if a game uses the same techniques and same types of story telling and combat types but the writing is sharp and exemplary, the combat, though the same type of combat, is fast and exciting and The game is very polished then that is also average?
Reviews should be based around what the game is trying to accomplish and whether or not it does that.
If I review a newly released rock album I'm not going to say "music is in the same stale key signatures, all 4/4 time, maybe something in compound time thrown in, the obligatory quarter note equals 120 which should make you all want to jump out a window, same whiney subject matter about teen angst and rarely modulates to anything other than the dominant. Grade C.
I'm going to say "ok, here is a rock song. It falls in the genre of a rock song so how does it stand up to what a rock song should be?"
I think you're reading a little more into my point than was intended ...
But, anyway, I agree with what you say about a review being based around what the game is trying to accomplish and whether or not it does that. But it should also be relatable to what has already come before in the genre.
If a new MMO breaks no new ground in any appreciable way and a review of the game essentially states this, then the game should not be rated above it's peers. To be fair, I probably should have worded my initial statement to indicate this rather than imply I think Aion should be rated a '7'. I honestly don't know since I haven't played it but from the tone of the review and by relative comparison to it's peers I don't believe it should be rated any higher than an 8.5.
Answer these questions. And no I'm not being smart@ss. What other major MMO title has done aerial combat/character flight (meaning no mount.) What other major MMO has a combat system that allows for chains to be connected in such a way that you don't have to worry about putting them all into your tool bar? What other MMO has a world that is comprised in layers and has an abyss that is also comprised of layers and a multiple artifact system that can turn the tide of a pvp raid? Personal hand crafted guild icons? The rift system?
Again I'm not being smart I'm really asking what else is out there that does some of these things really? Because if not then I'd call some of these things if not all in it's entire package trend setting for it's genre.
Not sure how close it matches the "chains" combat system that Aion has, but LoTRO introduced something similar in it's two new classes with the MoM expansion. The Warden's gambits and the Rune Keeper's attunement function in a similar way it sounds. Also the Group Fellowship maneuvers are somewhat similar as well.
Here is a short explanation of them:
Warden class Gambit graph
Rune Keeper Attunement explained
Group fellowship conjunctions
I'm not an expert on the subject... but I do follow a lot of MMOs. Just thought I'd point out that there is something similar from the sound of it.
The review glosses over a hell of a lot and no it doesn't deserve the score. Until the end game matures the game practically only exists for the first 20 levels, followed by little else to do but a hell of a lot of grinding and ganking. The first 20 levels (or so) are also so incredebly linear and generic it gets old very quickly rolling alts.
Nice graphics and animations, but the game is a step backwards not forward.
I think you're reading a little more into my point than was intended ...
But, anyway, I agree with what you say about a review being based around what the game is trying to accomplish and whether or not it does that. But it should also be relatable to what has already come before in the genre.
If a new MMO breaks no new ground in any appreciable way and a review of the game essentially states this, then the game should not be rated above it's peers. To be fair, I probably should have worded my initial statement to indicate this rather than imply I think Aion should be rated a '7'. I honestly don't know since I haven't played it but from the tone of the review and by relative comparison to it's peers I don't believe it should be rated any higher than an 8.5.
So you haven't played Aion and you are criticizing the score of the game.
Still waiting on answers...
Not meaning to be flippant here but what you're asking is really irrelevant to the discussion about the validity of the rating as pertaining to the content of the MMORPG review and then comparing it to other MMO reviews on this site.
You may feel these are exceptional points to make but apparently the MMORPG reviewer did not feel the same way. I can only assume that if he personally felt these were worthy of mention, he would have. Yet, he does go out of his way to point out that, in general, Aion does nothing really new or spectacular ...
AION is a really good game as far as I'm concerned, the only thing that bothered me was that the beta testers didn't get anything out of testing the game at all unless you managed to go out and buy the game. I was hoping they would be the first to actually give the beta testers something other than little gifts ingame. but hey, there's other games and I really hope that this game takes off and does good for a long time to come.....
I think you're reading a little more into my point than was intended ...
But, anyway, I agree with what you say about a review being based around what the game is trying to accomplish and whether or not it does that. But it should also be relatable to what has already come before in the genre.
If a new MMO breaks no new ground in any appreciable way and a review of the game essentially states this, then the game should not be rated above it's peers. To be fair, I probably should have worded my initial statement to indicate this rather than imply I think Aion should be rated a '7'. I honestly don't know since I haven't played it but from the tone of the review and by relative comparison to it's peers I don't believe it should be rated any higher than an 8.5.
But most music and movies don't really break any appreciable new ground. And they get decent to even rave reviews all the time. Well, the good ones anyways.
If a game does not break any new ground but does everything right then it should get a good review. If a game were to completely turn the genre on top of its head and do it the right way it should get an amazing review.
Conversely, if a game were to completely turn the genre on top of it's head but it isn't fun, it's buggy, and the art design is not enough to draw the player in (not saying it has to be high level graphics now, just convincing, even it it's 2D) then it should get a bad review.
In my opinion, being that the total is greater than the sum of its parts, Aion deserves anwhere within 7.5 to somewhere in the 8's. No higher. And I'm a fan with 2 accounts.
it does fall back on old style gameplay. Luckily it does it well enough and incorporates a vareity of features in an inspiring (for those who can be inspired by this type of art design and world) world.
It is a good solid fun game that is cast in the light of a traditional mmo. None of the "new" features they touted made it in the game that I can see so it falls squarely in the wow, lotro, eq 2 school of games. or even Everquest. (though was never able to get far in eq as it was too old for my taste so I can't exactly comment on that to any detail).
I think you're reading a little more into my point than was intended ...
But, anyway, I agree with what you say about a review being based around what the game is trying to accomplish and whether or not it does that. But it should also be relatable to what has already come before in the genre.
If a new MMO breaks no new ground in any appreciable way and a review of the game essentially states this, then the game should not be rated above it's peers. To be fair, I probably should have worded my initial statement to indicate this rather than imply I think Aion should be rated a '7'. I honestly don't know since I haven't played it but from the tone of the review and by relative comparison to it's peers I don't believe it should be rated any higher than an 8.5.
So you haven't played Aion and you are criticizing the score of the game.
Yep, exactly!
I'm criticizing the score of the game ... NOT the game itself.
My contention is with how the score, tone of the review, and comparison to genre scores of other MMOs don't relate on this site.
Oh well, I never got past 17 and it was the same old mmo grind I was hoping to avoid. I do hear its great past 20 and gets better and better. After Beta I bought the game and cant get myself to grind to even 7 yet (keep goin back to other mmo). Still playing pop a mole, weasle, bird, crab or what ever little animal is around. Ah and I picked Ranger too and I hear thats extra boring in begining. Did chanter before and was more exciting at lower levels. If I havent played all the betas I would be lovin the game. Just have to put in the time and do the grind.
Here's my very concise review of Aion, after spending much time in it in beta:
"SOSDD"
(Same Old @#$%, Different Day)
Gee, I wonder what the next MMORPG will be that underwhelms me?
I think you're reading a little more into my point than was intended ...
But, anyway, I agree with what you say about a review being based around what the game is trying to accomplish and whether or not it does that. But it should also be relatable to what has already come before in the genre.
If a new MMO breaks no new ground in any appreciable way and a review of the game essentially states this, then the game should not be rated above it's peers. To be fair, I probably should have worded my initial statement to indicate this rather than imply I think Aion should be rated a '7'. I honestly don't know since I haven't played it but from the tone of the review and by relative comparison to it's peers I don't believe it should be rated any higher than an 8.5.
But most music and movies don't really break any appreciable new ground. And they get decent to even rave reviews all the time. Well, the good ones anyways.
If a game does not break any new ground but does everything right then it should get a good review. If a game were to completely turn the genre on top of its head and do it the right way it should get an amazing review.
Conversely, if a game were to completely turn the genre on top of it's head but it isn't fun, it's buggy, and the art design is not enough to draw the player in (not saying it has to be high level graphics now, just convincing, even it it's 2D) then it should get a bad review.
In my opinion, being that the total is greater than the sum of its parts, Aion deserves anwhere within 7.5 to somewhere in the 8's. No higher. And I'm a fan with 2 accounts.
it does fall back on old style gameplay. Luckily it does it well enough and incorporates a vareity of features in an inspiring (for those who can be inspired by this type of art design and world) world.
It is a good solid fun game that is cast in the light of a traditional mmo. None of the "new" features they touted made it in the game that I can see so it falls squarely in the wow, lotro, eq 2 school of games. or even Everquest. (though was never able to get far in eq as it was too old for my taste so I can't exactly comment on that to any detail).
I think we agree then on a more reasonable score though our reasons for this new score come from different rationales. =)
The problem is that there are too many variable. Or at least one big variable, the reveiws were probably not written by the same person.
One person's 8.7 is another's 7.5 to another's 9.1.
They would actually have to come up with a simple yet quatifiable way to even out their reviews to really compare them.
Such as:
scale of 1-3
1 game breaking bugs
2, some bugs, noticable but you won't die.
3, hardly any bugs
scale of 1-3
1, they copy and pasted from diablo 1 and just changed the textures
2, fairly standard art design but enough new that one might take notice if they saw a screen shot
3, Borders on High Art with every detail of the world rendered in loving care
Well, you get the idea.
I see where you are coming from, but I do think that a site is responsible for making sure that all scores on it's site are in line with the standards that they have set for themselves.
I am under the assumption that this review for Aion did in fact get approved for posting as the official MMORPG.COM review by staff/admin here.
So yes, while each individual reviewer does in fact have different standards for what each particular MMO may score... it is up to the site admin themselves to make sure that those submitted reviews and scores match the standards of the site.
The scores I showed in the table I did were all from MMORPG.COM only... not from other sites. So, in that respect anyway they SHOULD be comparable.
Remember, I have no problem with Aion receiving an 8.7 score. I do have a problem with a MMORPG.COM staff person posting in this thread and saying a 8.7 score is only good, not Epic.
When it's the highest score ever given on this site... then yeah... it is EPIC. To say otherwise is being misleading at best.
Still waiting on answers...
Not meaning to be flippant here but what you're asking is really irrelevant to the discussion about the validity of the rating as pertaining to the content of the MMORPG review and then comparing it to other MMO reviews on this site.
You may feel these are exceptional points to make but apparently the MMORPG reviewer did not feel the same way. I can only assume that if he personally felt these were worthy of mention, he would have. Yet, he does go out of his way to point out that, in general, Aion does nothing really new or spectacular ...
The point is completely relevant considering the fact that people keep mentioning innovation as a sticking point. So if there's no contest to the questions of what Aion brings to the table then obviously it is innovative and therefore should contribute to the rating regardless if the reviewer that is being critiqued did so or not. In otherwords if someone is going to use that against the reviewer then they better be able to answer to the things that are indeed innovative.
I would have agreed completely with the reviewer pre lvl. 16-17, once I hit 20-25, it became gut wrenchingly painful to even log in. Pre 25, 8.5, post 25, Meh!
Psst... Post #115
Also, these might be some relevant quotes from the actual Review:
"To be straight-forward about it, outside of the flying system, Aion doesn't do anything that you haven't seen before if you're an MMO veteran, but what it does, it does well."
"The actual mechanics of the sieges are similar to Dark Age of Camelot, or Warhammer Online."
"It may not do an awful lot new, but what it does, it does very well."
Cons
A Mostly Standard MMO
Just thought I would point out that you are technically arguing with the Reviewer (Sean Bulger); not those of us who are questioning the score of said review.
True, an 8.7 might very well be the equivalent of a B+...
But I challenge anyone to find a higher rated game reviewed from MMORPG.COM
Just for point of reference; here is the score MMORPG.COM gave some other fairly popular MMOs:
MMORPG.COM Review Scores
From the review score at least... it would appear that MMORPG.COM is endorsing that Aion is the best MMO currently available. I haven't tried it, so I can't say one way or the other.
I just thought it fair to point out that for a MMORPG.COM review score; an 8.7 IS Epic!
I play Aion as well, now granted, I haven't even hit level 25, but so far my experience in Aion (according to my style of gaming)
I am having fun, its getting repetitive, but whats mmorpg isn't these days when it comes to the level grind.
With all due respect, 8.7 is Pretty High Rating for Aion especially in its present company of games listed.
I won't give it a score until I play it a little more, but as of now, lets just say, I don't agree on that 8.7
But again, this score is just based from the staff of mmorpg.com and it they want to give it a 10, well so be it.
Not meaning to be flippant here but what you're asking is really irrelevant to the discussion about the validity of the rating as pertaining to the content of the MMORPG review and then comparing it to other MMO reviews on this site.
You may feel these are exceptional points to make but apparently the MMORPG reviewer did not feel the same way. I can only assume that if he personally felt these were worthy of mention, he would have. Yet, he does go out of his way to point out that, in general, Aion does nothing really new or spectacular ...
The point is completely relevant considering the fact that people keep mentioning innovation as a sticking point. So if there's no contest to the questions of what Aion brings to the table then obviously it is innovative and therefore should contribute to the rating regardless if the reviewer that is being critiqued did so or not. In otherwords if someone is going to use that against the reviewer then they better be able to answer to the things that are indeed innovative.
I disagree. Also, where did you get the impression that no one contests whether it is innovative or not. I hadn't got that impression from some other comments in this thread (as well as other sites). But that's not really the point under discussion ...
It seems your saying that one should have beforehand knowledge about Aion and apply that through the appropriate filter when reading a new review. That's a little dubious to assume. What if it's the first review that someone happens to read on the game? If the reviewer didn't mention these points then we can't necessarily assume he meant to or not. You have to take the review for what it is and not filter it through assumption-filtered glasses.
In the end, you're arguing about whether Aion, in general, is innovative not on the relevancy of the review as written on this site. They're two different points ...
Your choice in trying the different classes on the same day with the same spammers, but i don't expect them to be banned right away but after a few hours they are gone. There are other thing to do besides grind or quest grind in game. Considering this MMO is only 11 months out, things take time to flesh out properly, hell even WoW took it's time to from it's begining to get as far as it did. As far as mind numbing grind well that is also your opinion on that and it varies from person to person. Oh i do play on Lumiel so i have seen the GM's do their job when they are on.
... Wow. Did you even read what they said? Here, I'll quote it, and bold the relevant part.
"It doesn't matter if you disagree or not. I'm not exaggerating when I say I seen the same gold spammers and scammers there for 3 days straight. If you play only one character, you wouldn't notice it after you block them. But I was trying out all the classes and that took about a week. For several days I was blocking the same gold spammers and scammers, so you're disagreement is ignorance to me."
The relevant bits in your post and in nate's are both bold and in orange just to make sure they're not overlooked again. Nate clearly says he tried out different classes over the course of a *week*, and that for *several days* (that is, more than one day), he was blocking spammers/scammers. How in the hell do you get "trying classes on the same day" from that? 1 day = 24 hours. 1 week = 7 days. *Big* difference.
I swear... 80% of the nonsense on this site would be eradicated if people simply learned to *read* and *comprehend* others' posts.
I'm starting to lose respect for the folks on this site. Don't you think that rating is a bit high?
Lets just hope other companies dont follow and create Aion clones. Might as well just stop playing these games if that happens.
Edit: Look at the list of ratings these guys give MMOs, Even Eve is rated too high.
Not one mmo released after SWG deserves more than a 8.0 and thats me being nice.
Yeah and on one of the servers in question (Lumiel) he is stating that the same gold spammers are up for several days as you so noted in orange which is not true on the server i play on. After i have blocked them i don't get any whispers or see their gold spam in trade or LFG chat.
Yes i have read it and playing all classes over a week means me at least played 2 or 3 classes a day for week.
Hey when a reviewer states their opinion about a MMO it's theirs to be made as you have your and others have their's. Be it right or wrong or whatever it is, taking a review as anything other than someone's opinion just nonsense. The only true review of a game that truely matters is your's.
Not meaning to be flippant here but what you're asking is really irrelevant to the discussion about the validity of the rating as pertaining to the content of the MMORPG review and then comparing it to other MMO reviews on this site.
You may feel these are exceptional points to make but apparently the MMORPG reviewer did not feel the same way. I can only assume that if he personally felt these were worthy of mention, he would have. Yet, he does go out of his way to point out that, in general, Aion does nothing really new or spectacular ...
The point is completely relevant considering the fact that people keep mentioning innovation as a sticking point. So if there's no contest to the questions of what Aion brings to the table then obviously it is innovative and therefore should contribute to the rating regardless if the reviewer that is being critiqued did so or not. In otherwords if someone is going to use that against the reviewer then they better be able to answer to the things that are indeed innovative.
It's not innovative. Rifting actually is limiting since it's not true open world PvP. I'm not sure what you mean by a layered gameworld but you can make the argument that the abyss is just one huge Battleground. Wings are nice, but again innovative? Hell, we can say WWIIOnline has aerial combat because it has planes.
The reviewer himself says that Aion doesn't do anything new. What it does do it does well. I think that makes it a very straightfoward, vanilla game. There's nothing wrong with that, but the review score doesn't indicate that.
Hey when a reviewer states their opinion about a MMO it's theirs to be made as you have your and others have their's. Be it right or wrong or whatever it is, taking a review as anything other than someone's opinion just nonsense. The only true review of a game that truely matters is your's.
Anyone that can review aion and make it the highest review on the site is clearly being paid off by the developers.
Honestly I hate WoW but anyone that thinks Aion ranks higher than WoW in anything is crazy. Being tired of WoW after years is one thing but head to head feature to feature WoW kicks this games ass all over the place.
No way is this review correct in any way. Yes Aion is polished and good but it also has many glaring flaws which he seemed ot ignore. Its a 8.0 at best and 7.9 at worst. 8.7 is way way to high.
Pretty poor review tbh,
Not just in the score(no way does it deserve so high) but even things like the chain attacks "That is, when you use one ability, it will unlock another ability, which might unlock another ability, etc... The further you go down a skill chain, the more powerful the abilities get" what is the "etc" bit about?
Also the bit about the rifts and pvp is just so wrong I doubt the reviewer even did a rift when the other side were flowing out of them.
It may sound like I like I think the game deserve's more credit but I dont think it does,I just think this is a very poor review.
For me I have been here and done it so many time's,I was hoping that the game had the best elements of all the recent mmo's into 1 and for some parts they do but just so many things about the game are just not fun,pure and simple.
Think this review is going to have to be pulled, if it stays up , it would be the official notice that ncsoft owns this website now, umm if mmorpg,.com doesnt want to step up and admit this review is extremely biased and misleading, then I think mmorpg.com will lose a lot of credit with a lot of fans of the sight who have put in relentless years supporting mmorpg.com.
Can we please get an official response for this review, and if it stays up, then I will most likely look for a new source for my mmo news since this is becoming complete bullshit.
AIon was fun until about level 29, then you hit the wall. I made it to 34.
3 things that really suck about the game:
1) The lack of quests to help you level, repeatables lol please having a reason to run around and explore zones is always good this game lacks it.
2) Killing boss mobs does not give you loot, thats right not even a green.Loot is 100 percent RNG. When you enter fire temple your so excited and then you get squat for you reward. Training grounds was the same way. Oh and it gets better this is the last dungeon until about level 40.
3) The epic pvp is not that epic. what happens when 400 people show up for a fortress siege? Massive lag and the guy with the most numbers wins.
I was all about Aion at first but if this is the kind of crap they are peddling out of NCSOFT I will pass on everything that is NCSOFT from now on. No thanks, I will wait for Star Wars. Lets hope it can deliver.
Agree with you there, 7.8 to 8.0 after a heated debate with my wife , she loves it, I don,t as not into that sort of game, but yeah I think its polished up to a point . I went 7.2, wife 8.0. After rather one sided rant on mean score (I wasnt the one talking) settled on 7.8.
I say settled in the crash into a hillside sort of settled.
game is a 7.9 - 8.2 at best simply for the pperformance of the client.
You've only made it as high as 14. I'm not saying your opinion isn't valid, but it's only valid up to 14. I think most, even those who left the game can say the game was fun at least until 14 if not 20. Give it another 10-15 levels and then come back and tell us what you think. If you still think the game is great and you stay subscribed, I'll be happy for you and take back what I'm about to say. However, I'd bet against you liking it at those levels.
I noticed they didn't bring up the biggest current flaw with the game, namely the crytek.dll error. Basically, if you have over 2gigs of ram on your system. Be prepared to crash often and always during fortress raids. It's bad enough that you're basically forced out of them once they get large enough, which basically ruins the majority of the end game. NCsoft has made no statements as to a timely fix for what is only going to be a larger issue as time goes on.
Sadly, this alone is marring what could be a fairly decent RvR MMO.
the abyss zerg fest is garbage
the game is over rated, i'm over it already
Your choice in trying the different classes on the same day with the same spammers, but i don't expect them to be banned right away but after a few hours they are gone. There are other thing to do besides grind or quest grind in game. Considering this MMO is only 11 months out, things take time to flesh out properly, hell even WoW took it's time to from it's begining to get as far as it did. As far as mind numbing grind well that is also your opinion on that and it varies from person to person. Oh i do play on Lumiel so i have seen the GM's do their job when they are on.
... Wow. Did you even read what they said? Here, I'll quote it, and bold the relevant part.
"It doesn't matter if you disagree or not. I'm not exaggerating when I say I seen the same gold spammers and scammers there for 3 days straight. If you play only one character, you wouldn't notice it after you block them. But I was trying out all the classes and that took about a week. For several days I was blocking the same gold spammers and scammers, so you're disagreement is ignorance to me."
The relevant bits in your post and in nate's are both bold and in orange just to make sure they're not overlooked again. Nate clearly says he tried out different classes over the course of a *week*, and that for *several days* (that is, more than one day), he was blocking spammers/scammers. How in the hell do you get "trying classes on the same day" from that? 1 day = 24 hours. 1 week = 7 days. *Big* difference.
I swear... 80% of the nonsense on this site would be eradicated if people simply learned to *read* and *comprehend* others' posts.
I LOL'ed at this. I gave up on him as you can tell, I never replied. After he posted that, I knew he either didn't read my post or is just a dumbass. Either way, he wasn't worth my time anymore, but this post was too funny to pass up.
Yeah and on one of the servers in question (Lumiel) he is stating that the same gold spammers are up for several days as you so noted in orange which is not true on the server i play on. After i have blocked them i don't get any whispers or see their gold spam in trade or LFG chat.
Yes i have read it and playing all classes over a week means me at least played 2 or 3 classes a day for week.
No, I created a new class almost every day after the first week. Lumiel was the server I started with, and I played on it from headstart until they released Meslamtaeda. Lumiel didn't have much gold spam problems at the time, but it was starting to pick up near the time I left. When I rerolled on Meslamtaeda, I rolled a new character every day, to every two days, because I wanted to try all the classes to see which one I'd like best. So I got real familiar with the names I had to block every day and while at first I was patient and paid not much mind to it, by the end of the week of doing this, I thought it was rediculose, because a company like NCsoft, who has plenty of past experience should have at least 1 GM per server catching these spammers. Before giving up on the game from boredom, I rolled a Cleric on Lumiel. I can't really say whether or not the gold spammers on that server lasted more than a day, but I don't see why that server would be any different.
Did you guys just rate this game 8.7? HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH
Yeah ok.
Giving this game an 8 would be too much, 7.5 seems about accurate if you're going to try to blow it up like that. But an 8.7 don't make me laugh. How would any one rate this game so high when it has such a low amount of classes, small world and gathering/crafting that's a joke. Timed flying, no mounts, huge grind. Anyway, long story short this game is no where close to an 8.7.
WoW has been out for how long and had 2 pretty big expansions?
Makes sense.
Outside of combat and PvPvE, Aion provides you with the other standard gameplay system found in most MMOs: crafting. Crafting is a very straight forward affair in Aion. You have a recipe, you get the materials you need for the recipe, and you click "Craft". Or rather, you gather enough to make multiple versions of an item and click 'Craft All' which automatically queues up everything for you. There's nothing special about it, but it does work. However, I warn all future crafters: you'll take some serious losses while crafting. I've known people to make money with alchemy, but beyond that, unless you're very clever, crafting will be more of a time and money sink than a way to pay the bills."
Not for me then....tired of games where crafting is not only non-essential but boring and worthless. I'll skip this and play Fallen Earth. :-)
Not a chance in hell that you're done. You fit in so well.
Yeah and on one of the servers in question (Lumiel) he is stating that the same gold spammers are up for several days as you so noted in orange which is not true on the server i play on. After i have blocked them i don't get any whispers or see their gold spam in trade or LFG chat.
/facepalm
Seriously... You make my head hurt.
You don't get any more whispers or see their gold spam in trade or LFG after you block them.... ready for it? ..BECAUSE YOU BLOCKED THEM.
That's not what's in contention here. What nate is explaining is that the RMT are *not* being dealt with by NCSoft because, day after day, over the course of a week, across several new characters, he found himself blocking the same names that he'd blocked in previous days, on previous characters... In other words, the RMT spammers *aren't being kicked*. They are not "gone within a few hours" as you state in a previous post.
It's such a simple concept to grasp. It's not complicated in the least....
Ugh.. I need an Excedrin.
To quote Dr. Tran as he goes over the falls... "What's happening to my world?!"
A week review in my opinion, but it seems many reviewing sites have been posting inacurate reviews of this game. The quest content takes a sharp turn down while the amount of exp to level takes a sharp turn up post level 30 . Most of the reviews I have read seem to be written up at or before they reach this benchmark which leads to some very missinforming reviews. A game that focuses so much on grinding is something that needs to be noted and this review completely misses that fact.
Get to 50 next time and then write your review.
I'm having fun with Aion. Then again, I had fun with Final Fantasy XI. It seems that FFXI players like this game more than anyone.
Have to disagree with the statement about GM's they are actively monitoring the servers and killing the gold spam when they see it, as far as bots they have to go thru an investigation which can take a month but includes several other bots and bank toons when banned. So far the bot problem is not out of control but do agree that some in house security does need to be made to lessen the problem.
Yes general chat has it's problems but what MMO does not have that problem.So tell me what other MMO does not have a grind in it at a certain level huh?
You must be kidding, are you? As original poster said one can see for a week SAME gold spammer. I personally have reported SAME (with name like "alidjfshdld" classic for gold spammer and can not be coincidence somebody recreated it) player ***FOUR*** times in 2 days with my 4 alts.... yet he was happily spamming at least week after. Spamming includes whispers as public chat. Then I left so is enterely possible he is still spamming. I do not have any impression there is any support in game. I did not got any feedback on any of my at least 15 petitions.
Yestday have returned (and stayed only about 5 mins) on Castor server after about 2 weeks .... wow ... I have not seen in all other games put together (wow included) in one year so much gold spamming like here in few minutes! It is completely impossible to read anything usefull on chat because of massive (but really MASSIVE!!! like watching dir command from old dos for thousands of files!) gold spamming. Gold spamming messages are running so fast that it is impossible to read even them. Like 95% of people on aion are gold sellers and boots. Have expanded chat window to entire screen .... in maybe 5 max 10 secs screen was full of gold spamming scroolling up. And this worsening happned only in last two weeks ... before was bad .... but not near 10% of this what was yesterday. Despite how I really hate gold sellers as they ruin any game ... I must admit was impressive looking on chat window.
So in summary, despite I loved playing aion with 6 alts all to between lv. 17 and 18, I will remember Aion most as being gold spamming world.
The difference between gamerankings i 0.6, stop pretending as if mmorpg.com is way of course here.
You know what really puts off the core of evolution Zorndorf? People who bash other games and don't play other MMORPGs simply because they do not have Warcraft in their name or Blizzard as their developer.
Glad to see Aion get the score it deserves.
Still waiting for the retraction...
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NCSoft's Aion Enters Open Beta
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Wow ,, maybe mmorpg.com could break free of the newtork bull shit and actually review a game themseklves, instead of having an ncsoft staff writer write the review.
This sight has officially lost all crediblity.
Also good buddy Sean live right in the same city where NcSoft studio is located and our old buddy from Tabula Rasa Lives. Really let get even more blantant about how mmorpg.com has just said fuck it and giive us the money.
wow, that's just pathetic, you guys should just pull this review.
I'm going to plaster this all over the net regardless, douchebags.
The review score seems as over hyped as the game has been but you need to take into account that the score of any MMO is higher before launch then lower as the years go by. Still has any MMO achieved a 8.7 here at launch, from all accounts this is way too high?
I think this is a fault of the individual reviewer, I don’t see how you can lay this at MMORPG.com’s door. Yes they seem to have chosen a fanboy to do the articles, would people have thought it fair if they had chosen someone who hates Asian themed fantasy MMO’s?
Also, being in the same city does not warrent a conspiracy theory. :)
That made me laugh.... and the above post of course.
So this guy is writing 20+ reviews on the web as a fan boy.
.... And it is excepted as such by mmorpg.com.
WOW. And now compare the following on Xfire: Aion has 3X times the number of EVE Xfire with ... 400K players (even less these last few days).
What a joke this site and the complete mmorpg.com has become !!!
What's your reaction editors of mmorpg.com ??? :))))))
400k players? you do realise that these were pre - order numbers and the game has been avaible for a month now, right?
EVE's subscriber base is about 200k subscribers. if Aion sold only 200k copies this last month, that would mean it has 3 times as many active accounts. It really isn't rocket science.
I absolutely love all the people going apeshit over this. MMORPG's score is pretty much the average review score Aion is getting. It's a good game people, get over it.
you got be kidding? Who's website is this ? Sean Imancsoftfanby or mmorpg.coms website ?
He wrote this turd to get into the good graces of the Austin studio, and I think it is ignorant for a website to even post reviews without even reading them and actually weighing the scale of what the website deems fit for publishing.
Is Sean Balgar wanted fame, he has got it with being one of the most unknowledgable writers to have ever had Anything published on this website in the last 3 years I've posted here. You have no idea how angry I am that mmorpg..com doesn't ccare anymore to proof shit and actually say, "you know what, this reviewer is full of fucking shit"
I appreciate the review and it was very informative in my opinion. Thx i was looking forward to a review from an optimistic point of view.
This review needs a disclaimer:
"brought to you by the
Not meaning to be flippant here but what you're asking is really irrelevant to the discussion about the validity of the rating as pertaining to the content of the MMORPG review and then comparing it to other MMO reviews on this site.
You may feel these are exceptional points to make but apparently the MMORPG reviewer did not feel the same way. I can only assume that if he personally felt these were worthy of mention, he would have. Yet, he does go out of his way to point out that, in general, Aion does nothing really new or spectacular ...
The point is completely relevant considering the fact that people keep mentioning innovation as a sticking point. So if there's no contest to the questions of what Aion brings to the table then obviously it is innovative and therefore should contribute to the rating regardless if the reviewer that is being critiqued did so or not. In otherwords if someone is going to use that against the reviewer then they better be able to answer to the things that are indeed innovative.
It's not innovative. Rifting actually is limiting since it's not true open world PvP. I'm not sure what you mean by a layered gameworld but you can make the argument that the abyss is just one huge Battleground. Wings are nice, but again innovative? Hell, we can say WWIIOnline has aerial combat because it has planes.
The reviewer himself says that Aion doesn't do anything new. What it does do it does well. I think that makes it a very straightfoward, vanilla game. There's nothing wrong with that, but the review score doesn't indicate that.
In the end a dildo with wings is innovative, that does not however mean it is a good idea, or good in practice.
I am actually not a little disgusted in this review of Aion, sure it's polished and clean but ultimately it is far from deserving of a score of 8.7! I smell something fishy going on here...smells like...tuna. I suppose, in the end, the review is entirely subjective and should be treated as such but I expected more from mmorpg.com...
hmmm... 'plays just like any other mmo'.
thats right! but how the hell does it get 8.7 rating then? lol........
generic mmos should not get more than 5.
I woulda probably gone for a 8.0-8.5. Great polish and solid gameplay but ultimately and imo generic and somewhat boring. I quit before the first month was up, it's a pretty good game for what it is but can't hold my interest.
i can't believe people can be so ignorant to be upset by a review.... it's quite laughable really. some of you are irate that it has 0.6 to 0.9 to high..... are you serious??? your upset at less then a point??? feel free to disagree with the review, but come on, calm down about, mmorpg isn't owned by ncsoft, it's just a review, by someone who liked the damn game, why is that so hard to believe? all reviews are based on opinion, and no review can be neutral, because you will always be biased towards something. if i'd reviewed WoW, it'd be much lower then an 8, a lot to do with the my extreme dislike of the graphic art style.
then of course Zorndorf has to come in and make sure everyone knows it has less subscribers then WoW..... like the rating of the game contributes to the subscription numbers, or that for any reason, one could logically try to compare sub numbers between a game out less then one month in north america, to a game thats been out for five years, and has the only true mmo advertising campaign in history. who seems to think the only people playing it, are the pre-orders... even though it is selling on amazon, as he points out...
so please, stop complaining about mmorpg losing cred, if you want to threaten to leave, just leave, find a site that you feel isn't biased.
If a mod reads this thread wow how many pages will go back lol.
So many emotional people it's just a review /sigh
Great review, pretty much mirrors my own at
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/255744/L30-Aion-Review-You-dont-order-beef-and-then-complain-it-tastes-like-beef-910.html
The problem I have is the reviewers lack of knowledge of mmo gaming in general. Everything in Aion was "new " to "him" even though when you google his name he has played Vanguard, WoW , and many other mmo's which had flying combat in some way shape or form, so he is now a liar on that marrit. The second problem is his over exented look at the "content" of the game. You are going to sit there and tell me Aion is a content rich game. When has NcSoft ever shipped a content rich game out of Korea ? Never. 3rdly , the Reviewer is in the industry and looking for cookies for good deeds done in his town of Austin Texas, damn the internet has so much information.
Given enough time I will bust this review to shreds with even more google searchers, public record searches as well as any other search I deem feasable to prove that this particular "writer" using the term very losely when it is just copy and past from NcSoft themselves is full of shit. Seriously if Aion isa 8.7 , then LotrO, Vanguard, AoC, and Warhammer are 9._ titles, because everyone who is an mmoplayer on this particular site knows the difference between comeplete rubbish m, and something that actually makes sense. This review is bull shit. Half this thread has called bullshit and half of the web sites around the world that arent affiliated with "mmorpg portals" are calling aion bull shit.
Makes me wonder now if this sight was not bought out by the same fuckers who bought Allakazam. If that is true that this site was bought,, make it official and let people have the dignity to cancel there accounts.
As your playing aion lol yet you keep on bashing it that tells me more then enough on you, even zondorf doesn't spam as much as you in aion threads/pictures.
8.7 is high yes but your exaggerating with your rage and feelings on a game your not playing.
When you review a game you review it's features and if they are done good, aion is polished and has few bugs bots and gold spams are not the huge part of a review.
Next patch will increase quests exp by 3x or 4x for those that mostly wanted to reach cap fast so this maybe will lower some people's whinings.
I;'m not playing Saga of Ryzom, Eve or Fallen Earth eithe rbut I can recognize that they are stellar game , stell concepts from content design, visual aesthectics . If something is justifed, I will respect it. Aion is not justified, here is a question for you, how did the gold sellers have over 100billion in gold ready to ship in Aion in the first week ?
Nice honest review, of a great MMO.
Aion is the highest rated MMO on this site for a reason, i believe the polish and PvP components is far ahead of any current released game. Just look at xfire, people are loving the the game.
How do you know that sum were you involved? gold spam and bots are a problem YES I didn't deny it did I?
I'm giving ncsoft a chance to see if they will do something to reduce the spams and bots what about you? will you keep on writing on game's sections that you don't like? why do you need to hate a game so much? don't have anything else to do?
I heard you play or played eve or lotr why your not playing there instead of flaming and may give useless warnings and bans on people that are short tempered (not me of course I'm posting politely as far as I know)
LOTRO, one of the best games out there and the top ranked game on this site has an 8.5 review score. That's after 2 years of growth and (i assume) a re-review here at some point.
So now you are saying Aion less than a month in is overall 'better' than LOTRO?
I find it really hard to believe and I bet you that in a few months (especially after mirkwood) the numbers will speak for them selves.
All I'm trying to say is: however much the reviewer may have liked Aion, the score needs to be in some kind of context in the market otherwise it's more of a marketing effort than an objective review.
Thats a silly argument. So only sandboxes are allowed to get high scores?
We need a re-review.
I gave these guys credit for having the balls to give WoW a 8 score and they reinfocred that by going against a good number of sandbox fans by giving DF a 6.
This site for me atleast has been known for giving fair reviews with the exception of Eve (they seem to be catering to us a bit).
Now we get Aion the highest rated game on this site, honeslty can one of you guys chime in on this? Aion is nothing but a nice looking Lineage clone with random portal pvp.
Come on guys, the game needs a re-review.
EVE has a confirmed sub base of 300K players (a week ago even 320K). The ratio between WOW-EVE-LOTRO on Xfire was always in the 5M-300k-180K count.
In no way this game has more then 3 times the number of EVE players (see the down trend of Aion already below).
With these references Aion would have now far over 1 M players in the west ... on 32 servers. A laugh if you defend this. In Chine at launch they had 113 servers to serve thsoe 1M players in Korea it was 41 servers for around 400K.
BTW after 2 weeks even the wrongly sampled Xfire numers are DOWN with at least 20% for Aion. So I even think the active number of players is LESS now than the dual launching week of NA/EU. It is clearly less then the first launching weekend.
http://www.xfire.com/games/aion/Aion/
Now comes the "above" review of a guy plastering all over the internet.
Remember the NEVER (by NCSoft) confirmed 3.5 million so called Asian players too and I think we ALL get the picture.
Only fools can be fooled into believing in this game.
How many times do I have to repeat myself?
You do not have any hard numbers. You have no idea how much of the servers in china were actually used, just because they launched with that many users doesn't mean that many servers were actually required at that time.
Xfire is NOT a reliable source. It never has been and it never will be.
Remeber that Ncsoft NEVER denied the 3.5 million asian players
Metalhead, you're STILL trying to deceive people by calling it a Lineage clone? haven't you emberassed yourself enough last time by making that comparisson? Stop talking about games you know nothing about.
Thats a silly argument. So only sandboxes are allowed to get high scores?
Not at all in my opinion Ryzom is a 5.5, FE is a 6.5 and Eve a 7.5. Personally I think if a game is consider "good" it should get a 5 or 6 at the most.
Aion = 7 and thats a great score imo.
Not at all in my opinion Ryzom is a 5.5, FE is a 6.5 and Eve a 7.5. Personally I think if a game is consider "good" it should get a 5 or 6 at the most.
Aion = 7 and thats a great score imo.
5 or 6 is widely considered to be either mediocre or average. Not good.
Guess the staff is losing it...what is next a "top 10 of smoothest mmo launches ever" with darkfall #1?
And yes I have tried this game for a week or so but it didn't do it for me, its not bad but def. not that good!
Not at all in my opinion Ryzom is a 5.5, FE is a 6.5 and Eve a 7.5. Personally I think if a game is consider "good" it should get a 5 or 6 at the most.
Aion = 7 and thats a great score imo.
5 or 6 is widely considered to be either mediocre or average. Not good.
Average or good is basically the same shit. From 5-6 is playable and isn't for everyone but the targeted fans of that particular game.
"niche" games getting a 5-6 are right on track with the expectations of the developer.
Step away from your console rating background and realize that a game doesn't need a 8 or above to be considered good.
5 or 6 is widely considered to be either mediocre or average. Not good.
Average or good is basically the same shit. From 5-6 is playable and isn't for everyone but the targeted fans of that particular game.
"niche" games getting a 5-6 are right on track with the expectations of the developer.
Step away from your console rating background and realize that a game doesn't need a 8 or above to be considered good.
A 5 or 6 isn't considered good anywhere. Average and good isn't the same thing, good is above average.
A niche game is a game that has a small specific target audience, to say that the developer expects low scores because its game is designed to appeal to a specific target audience is ridiculous.
I'm sure in your own little world 5 or 6 are good. However a much more common rating system that is recognised pretty much everywhere in the gaming community is this.
Anything below 5 is bad. 5 or 6 is average or mediocre. 7 or 8 is considered good, 9 and 10 are considered really good or great.
Whoa, wait a minute.
Not doing something new equals average? really? You are then saying that if a game does nothing new but there are bugs all over the place and the writing is sub par and the combat is the same type of combat but just doesn't capture any sense of excitement then that is average? Not bad?
And to further that point, if a game uses the same techniques and same types of story telling and combat types but the writing is sharp and exemplary, the combat, though the same type of combat, is fast and exciting and The game is very polished then that is also average?
Reviews should be based around what the game is trying to accomplish and whether or not it does that.
If I review a newly released rock album I'm not going to say "music is in the same stale key signatures, all 4/4 time, maybe something in compound time thrown in, the obligatory quarter note equals 120 which should make you all want to jump out a window, same whiney subject matter about teen angst and rarely modulates to anything other than the dominant. Grade C.
I'm going to say "ok, here is a rock song. It falls in the genre of a rock song so how does it stand up to what a rock song should be?"
Reviews on the same site for the same type of games (MMORPGS) should be relative to each other. If one game gets 8.7 and another gets 8.4 then it should be the opinion of the site, not just the reviewer, that the first game is considered better.
The site publishing the reviews should have some kind of responsibility for the scores they post on the site. Unless the specifically say that the review, and the score, is entirely the opinion of the reviewer and not neccessarily supported by the site.
That way the site would distances themselves for taking responsibility of the review score just based on that statement. So either MMORPG needs to do that or they need to fully admit that they think Aion is the best MMORPG ever reviewed by the site.
5 or 6 is widely considered to be either mediocre or average. Not good.
Average or good is basically the same shit. From 5-6 is playable and isn't for everyone but the targeted fans of that particular game.
"niche" games getting a 5-6 are right on track with the expectations of the developer.
Step away from your console rating background and realize that a game doesn't need a 8 or above to be considered good.
Say what? Good, in the context of reviews, are relative to other entities, above average. Average is average in relative to other reviews so in no way are they the synonimous.
Having a score system that goes from 1-10 and then saying a score of 5 is good would be very strange since that is the average score in that system and good should then be above that average.
Cant rate this higher then 8/10. Too linear, to standard, to grindy. Beautiful and polished tho
8.7 score ............. 1$ per visitor
8.4 score ............. 0.5$ per visitor
8.0 score ............. 0.2$ per visitor
score 6.0 and below if you don't pay anything at all, not even bother to pay us for a big ad. banner.
season special discount: 8.7 score + big flashing ad of a half-naked asian girl for all time best price 1.2$ per visitor.
I actually thought Paragus had a better/more detailed review of the game since he touched on post 25+ more. By reading that review he'd probably rate it an 8 which is probably where the game falls. I'm actually surprised that the game got reviewed so quickly, normally it takes much longer for this site to put a review for a game out. I think the reviewer is correct that Aion becomes almost a different game post level 25. Perhaps we can have a review that specifically focuses on that part of the game since everyone who plays Aion has developed the slogan 'Wait until level 25'.
I'm not saying you're wrong Solareus, but I have a few points to make:
1. This is not a reputable news source. It's a gaming website, with a community mostly made up of people who wouldn't know the difference between a reputable and illreputable website. So taking anything seriously on this website is a mistake.
2. You're getting angry over a website, that wrote something biased about a game, a GAME! It's not that serious! So getting angry over it only makes you look like less of a person to those handful of people who actually are worth something on this website.
3. I've been using this website since early 2005, and I only seriously use it for one thing: To learn about what MMO's are releasing soon. They're quick enough to let us know when a mmorpg will be released, so this website is worth putting on your Favorites bar for just that reason. The forums and reviews should be taken with a grain of salt, because it just isn't worth any serious energy or emotions. It's great for some drama filled entertainment, but don't get emotionally involved.
5 or 6 is widely considered to be either mediocre or average. Not good.
Average or good is basically the same shit. From 5-6 is playable and isn't for everyone but the targeted fans of that particular game.
"niche" games getting a 5-6 are right on track with the expectations of the developer.
Step away from your console rating background and realize that a game doesn't need a 8 or above to be considered good.
A 5 or 6 isn't considered good anywhere. Average and good isn't the same thing, good is above average.
A niche game is a game that has a small specific target audience, to say that the developer expects low scores because its game is designed to appeal to a specific target audience is ridiculous.
I'm sure in your own little world 5 or 6 are good. However a much more common rating system that is recognised pretty much everywhere in the gaming community is this.
Anything below 5 is bad. 5 or 6 is average or mediocre. 7 or 8 is considered good, 9 and 10 are considered really good or great.
this right here shows how flawed the system is.
Shouldnt a 10 be a perfect game? have you ever played a perfect game? I know I havent.
Anyway the rating system means nothing, read the guys review The con calls Aion a mostly standard mmo.
A standard MMO deserves to be #1 on the site?
Im just surprised that a site called mmorpg.com writes a shallow review like this one. I would expect something with more depth than the regular gaming sites but this was a real dissapointment.
It doesnt say more of the game than reading the Aion website about the features of the game...
Deleted
That's logical.
It'd make sense that 10 represents perfection, but let's temper this with reality. Nothing is perfect, so perfection shouldn't be the standard of measurement. Instead, what's offered should be measured against the ideal, and against other games in the same genre.
So a 10 would represent top of the line graphics, stellar gameplay, feature rich, great customer support, no stability problems with recommended specs, bug-free, and great replayability. A 1 would obviously be the complete opposite of that. A 5 would be right in the middle, or average. It's not the only way to rate a game, but it makes sense to me. It sounds logical.
While innovation would be nice, it's not needed to create a great game, so I don't count innovation, evolution, or revolution of the genre as a requirement to get a great score. It certainly helps, but does not hinder at all.
Also, whether a game is sandbox or themepark doesn't weigh in either, because that's just a preference, which is highly subjective. The same goes for fun.
Graphics are either techinically good or not good. A low graphical game can still look good artistically, but it wouldn't compare to a game that looked as real as technology allows.
Gameplay can be measured by how responsive your character is in combat, and how smooth the game flows from one task to the next, one area to the next and so on. It also represents how well things are put together, and if it is logical. Complicated things seem like a no brainer when it flows and is put together well.
Feature rich means there's a lot of features. Features can be anything that enhances gameplay, such as a great and customizable UI, housing, and even an auction house. Features can be as many or as few as a developer likes, but it's a tangible that adds value to a game if they work and doesn't inhibit gameplay. For example, a death penalty is a feature, but it's a feature that can be done right or wrong. You know if it's right or wrong by if it feels natural to the game.
Great customer support is easily measured. A website that offers everything a person could possibly need? Good communication between the company and players? Technical support? In-game support? Preventive and Counter measures to cheating, botting, and illegal RMT? Speed and efficiency of service both in and out of the game?
Stability problems. Server related lag? Works well on recommended specs at the intended graphic settings? CTD's?
Bugs. No noticable bugs in sight?
Replayability? Can I play the game from 1-max level without repeating content more than once? Twice? How many times? With how many classes and races? Combinations?
Now first id like to say Aion is polished and has a pretty good story to it. But come on a 8.7 LOL this game is should be ranked in the 7ish range.
Not meaning to be flippant here but what you're asking is really irrelevant to the discussion about the validity of the rating as pertaining to the content of the MMORPG review and then comparing it to other MMO reviews on this site.
You may feel these are exceptional points to make but apparently the MMORPG reviewer did not feel the same way. I can only assume that if he personally felt these were worthy of mention, he would have. Yet, he does go out of his way to point out that, in general, Aion does nothing really new or spectacular ...
The point is completely relevant considering the fact that people keep mentioning innovation as a sticking point. So if there's no contest to the questions of what Aion brings to the table then obviously it is innovative and therefore should contribute to the rating regardless if the reviewer that is being critiqued did so or not. In otherwords if someone is going to use that against the reviewer then they better be able to answer to the things that are indeed innovative.
I disagree. Also, where did you get the impression that no one contests whether it is innovative or not. I hadn't got that impression from some other comments in this thread (as well as other sites). But that's not really the point under discussion ...
It seems your saying that one should have beforehand knowledge about Aion and apply that through the appropriate filter when reading a new review. That's a little dubious to assume. What if it's the first review that someone happens to read on the game? If the reviewer didn't mention these points then we can't necessarily assume he meant to or not. You have to take the review for what it is and not filter it through assumption-filtered glasses.
In the end, you're arguing about whether Aion, in general, is innovative not on the relevancy of the review as written on this site. They're two different points ...
I believe I already stated that those are two separate points which you would have seen had you followed the thread. This particular point was in response to those making the argument that Aion is in no way innovative and therefore doesn't deserve the review.
Aion is a well polished game and has a lot to offer. I enjoy playing it.
However, as the reviewer stated, the problem with Aion is not with the game . . but with NCSoft itself . . . specifically, NCSoft West. As a former Lineage 2 player, I can tell you that NCSoft West's support was without doubt the worst I have ever seen in a MMO. If anything, NCSoft West is even worse with Aion.
NCSoft West needs to realize that even though this game scored an 8.7 on MMORPG.COM's review, their lack of support and apathy toward its players lowers this score by 5 points in my eyes.
Get with the program NCSoft. In today's economy, people are not as patient and forgiving as they used to be.
I love how people get bent out of shape over a meaningless review, which they all are. The score means nothing in the long run, smart people don't base buying games off of others reviews (since all they are is opinions anyways)
Smart people wait for trials etc. Anyways this is why i dislike scores being added to reviews, because everyone over-reacts to the score because it doesn't fit their Opinion on it, never mind the fact that people seem to forget everyone has different tastes and this Aion score, while good for some, isn't good for others.
Perhaps you folks running MMORPG should consider not giving scores anymore and just give reviews.+
The point is completely relevant considering the fact that people keep mentioning innovation as a sticking point. So if there's no contest to the questions of what Aion brings to the table then obviously it is innovative and therefore should contribute to the rating regardless if the reviewer that is being critiqued did so or not. In otherwords if someone is going to use that against the reviewer then they better be able to answer to the things that are indeed innovative.
It's not innovative. Rifting actually is limiting since it's not true open world PvP. I'm not sure what you mean by a layered gameworld but you can make the argument that the abyss is just one huge Battleground. Wings are nice, but again innovative? Hell, we can say WWIIOnline has aerial combat because it has planes.
The reviewer himself says that Aion doesn't do anything new. What it does do it does well. I think that makes it a very straightfoward, vanilla game. There's nothing wrong with that, but the review score doesn't indicate that.
In the end a dildo with wings is innovative, that does not however mean it is a good idea, or good in practice.
I am actually not a little disgusted in this review of Aion, sure it's polished and clean but ultimately it is far from deserving of a score of 8.7! I smell something fishy going on here...smells like...tuna. I suppose, in the end, the review is entirely subjective and should be treated as such but I expected more from mmorpg.com...
So then based upon your assesment if 2.5 million people order the dildo on wings such as they have subscribed to Aion accordint to MMO data, then obviously it's not a good idea or practice? Apparently people seem to have a different opinion. Now whether or not those innovative ideas are enough to provide the staying power it needs to continue to be competitive is another story. As far as your expectations, I'd imagine that your like the rest looking for as much negativity as you can garner from the review so you can sleep better at night. But the one thing you said that does actually make some sense is that it is subjective as are all reviews that aren't based upon some standard predefined measuring system and unfortunately for you many of the things that an MMO brings to the table like, oh I dunno, fun? are in fact subjective.
Preach it Brother
Wow really dude? Can you be any further on blizzards crotch? Sorry but Blizzard is one other company among hundreds trying to compete in a market place. I mean if Blizzards is in fact the king of MMOs and is the one making all the money then wouldn't you think that the reviews would be posting in their favor? No? Because there is some mass conspiracy against Blizzard?
Get real please. These aren't Korean reviews nor are all of these guys 'suddenly' in the pocket of NCsoft.
Amazing what some of these threatened WoW players come up with. I bet you stay up at night over this crap.
This sight has officially lost all credibility <-----People keep saying this, why? because MMORPG won't follow your personal opinion of a game? rather childish as far as i'm concerned.
Really people if that's how you feel, please find a place that is more credible. perhaps you'll just have to make your own, that way you can have the scores you wish to see, so you can feel better about yourself.
Wow really dude? Can you be any further on blizzards crotch? Sorry but Blizzard is one other company among hundreds trying to compete in a market place. I mean if Blizzards is in fact the king of MMOs and is the one making all the money then wouldn't you think that the reviews would be posting in their favor? No? Because there is some mass conspiracy against Blizzard?
Get real please. These aren't Korean reviews nor are all of these guys 'suddenly' in the pocket of NCsoft.
Amazing what some of these threatened WoW players come up with. I bet you stay up at night over this crap.
AWW come on Zorndorf does make for some funny conspiracy post at times, but once and a while he does come up with some credible info even though he is a Bliizard jokey rider.
I can happily say I have been coming to this site since it was introduced, and for the most part I have loved my many years here. But This Aion review really pisses me off. During the ENTIRE review, I could barely get any good creditable info on the game I might by, all I could read sounded like some 14 year old Korean kid whos been waiting on Aion for 5 years.
The most one sided review I have ever seen. Next time hit end level and really dig deep into the endgame, and give us some friggin information instead of just gloss and frosting.
So again, help me out here people. What your saying is that you can only get credible information on a game by the negative reviews that are made about it?
To each there own I guess, Aion is a bland, repetitive, albeit highly polished grinder to me. (with really poor customer service and an issue with gold sellers and botting to be honest)...its does what it sets out to do in a very stable but very uninspired way. In effect it's just more of the same, like the third or fourth sequel to a superhero movie franchise that keeps racking in the cash despite not improving :p
Personally its a 7(ish) for me, if you just wat another on rails, hand holding, MMO experience in a polished and eastern themed game-world than Aion is worth a shot if you are tired of WoW.
uuuh did you read the post you quoted?
I said the review wasnt full of much usful information I didnt already know, and anything negative he did mention was glossed over with fluff.
My point is that this review was written by an obvious loyal fan of Aion...Whats your point? That you really like this game cause your the "abyss stalker" and a standard Asian grinder MMO that brings NOTHING new to the table besides wings deserves the best review score on the site?
The question here is did you read the post? I don't give a damn about your point. My question is to you and everyone else saying the same thing about how the review is worthless and too positive, since you seemed to miss it, was "Do you only get credible information on a game by the negative reviews that are made about it?"
THAT is my question. And btw, if you actually read the thread...you would have seen several things posted about what the MMO does bring to the table that is in fact new. You might be tired of the genre but Aion does bring new things to the table. I guess because I enjoyed WoW during my time there and several others in the vast array of MMOs I've experienced that I've obviously a fanboi for each of those games too and that it can't just be that I know a good game when I play one? I don't give a damn if you don't but don't try painting me into a picture just because your threatened by a review.
You want to talk specifically about why this review is a bad one and what about it you disagree with and why then let's have that discussion.
Aiobn is a 8.7 , fallen earth is a 10
My review of Fallen Earth
I just shot a gun and itwas amazing, 10/10.
Thanks for your great insight and you generous contribution to this discussion.
You achieved as much as many people on this thread (bash Aion) without 1/10th of the talk. Gratz
At least you didnt made us spent so much time reading it as some of the other haters
read about 3 pages back, I laid out my theroies and conspiracies lol. MMorPG has officially lost all street cred to loyal followers.
If I were Turbine , Blizzard and any other big gaming company I would not even deal with mmorpg.com.
Yeah maybe next time they should ask you and others alike whats the score they should award.
Maybe that way their credibility could be conserved....
Yes, because if you hate a game, it's obviously a failure, so everyone who likes it is clearly out of their mind.
How much time do you spend every day looking for opportunities to bash Aion? Isn't there some far superior game you should be spending your time playing?
your going to make me go line for line on this review arent you , with only 4 hour sleep ?
/agree Saying Aion is the best game ever reviewed on this site is a big stamement to make by a reviewer. And totally off base. I played Aion until lvl 29 and it's a pretty standard quest grind with some laggy crashing zerging PvP at the end. No more than a 7/10.
REad the review and count how many times the review states something is "standard."
The environments themselves can be quite spectacular. Aion definitely features a high fantasy setting with a very magical world, and there are plenty of unique and stunning places to explore.
There is also an awful lot of variety in each of the large zones as well. While you might start in a snowy region, you will soon find yourself in a lush forest, then in a menacing swamp, then in a desert area, etc... It may not always seem realistic, but it does allow for a fair amount of variety in the places you'll be in, which is nice.
Really, cause almost every screen I've seen is a cattle shooot straight tot he abyss with no actual area fo exploration you would find in Vanguard, Really Now. Man I'm about to go Ed Lover up is this bitch ... Really now ? gtfo of here dude , really ? gtfo....
When playing Aion, I noticed that the feeling of gameplay changes depending on your level range.
Really dude ? WReally now ? come on dude, come on
wtf ? really, you mean the xp started to get harder ? really, are you kkidding me dude ? really , wtf ? (google ed lover )
what is bullshit is your opinion. nobody cares. get over yourself.
Do you speak for a legion of people ? who is this no one ?
Since the credibility of this website has been brought up for discussion, are there other websites dedicated only to MMORPG's?
What about websites that cover all games? Any reputable ones? I'm genuinely curious, because if I found a decent and objective, unbiased website, I'll go there. I'm not being sarcastic, I really would like to view some other gaming websites that pay any attention to MMORPG's. So if you can list some, I'll go check them out and add them to my favorites if they're any good.
Same thing applies to you, do you speak for a legion or just yourself?
You whine and cry like a little girl every chance you get... Wah, wah, aion sucks, how dare you guys like aion when I hate it! You bring it up in completely unrelated forums. You just can't let it go.
Grow the fuck up.
You just lost credibility when you quoted Ed Lover.
could try ten ton hammer, Warcry , last i checked the Pc Gamer had an mmorpg discussion area, and CVG.
Not meaning to be flippant here but what you're asking is really irrelevant to the discussion about the validity of the rating as pertaining to the content of the MMORPG review and then comparing it to other MMO reviews on this site.
You may feel these are exceptional points to make but apparently the MMORPG reviewer did not feel the same way. I can only assume that if he personally felt these were worthy of mention, he would have. Yet, he does go out of his way to point out that, in general, Aion does nothing really new or spectacular ...
The point is completely relevant considering the fact that people keep mentioning innovation as a sticking point. So if there's no contest to the questions of what Aion brings to the table then obviously it is innovative and therefore should contribute to the rating regardless if the reviewer that is being critiqued did so or not. In otherwords if someone is going to use that against the reviewer then they better be able to answer to the things that are indeed innovative.
I haven't read past this but I feel it necessary to answer your post since you feel that what you mentioned here was from your point of view, "innovation". You are unfortunately wrong on most, if not all of the points you mentioned which shows your complete lack of MMO experience and how rabidly you want to defend this game. Your posts remind me of the idiots who tried to defend AoC. So here goes...
1. What other MMO has done aerial combat? Try CoH/CoV or Champions Online....both do aerial combat. Nothing new or "innovative" about this sytem.
2. What other MMO has done a chain skill system? LoTRO had it at launch with group chain skills, have added more in. The basis of AoC was skill chains. Again, absolutely nothing new or innovative about this system in Aion.
3. What other MMO blah blah layers? I'm really not sure wtf you are even talking about here. What "layers" do you see in this game that seem to elude me? PvPvE, umm yeah Warhammer had the exact same general type of system. Ever MMO has layers to it. Not even sure what you meant here. Artifact system is very similar to L2 and to some extent Warhammer as well to help turn the tides of sieges. Again, not really sure this is an "innovative" idea.
4. Personal hand crafted guild icons? Go play some Eve online.
5. Rift System? I'll give you this one as I cannot recall any MMO that implemented this system off the top of my head. /kudos
6. Crafting/harvesting in Aion is almost an exact replica or rip off of EQ2 and other MMO's.
Aion does exactly what it's designed to do, which is take systems from other games and repackage them into something with a new wrapper.
You just lost credibility when you quoted Ed Lover.
come on son, come on :D. you got to watch the youtube vids, he is amazing ! he gets an 11/10 !
Ahhh haters haters and more haters....LOL Why do I come to this website agian? *shrugs*
To get your chuckle on.
As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I don't think there's 1 website that's going to get it exactly right. My suggestion is to take a look at multiple websites and reviews. See what the reviewer has to say on positive/negative, does this jive with what other reviewers are saying? Try to formulate a complete picture based on several different points of view and the whole starts to come a little more in focus.
LEt me say I'm glad people are enjoying the game, kids in 3rd world countries enjoy throwing sticks at a turd, does that then mean that it should be scored as high as Baseball ? Have fun in the game, but try and fool yourself and everyone else that this game is in some how far superior then anything else released to date. THe reviewer was in my opinion amused to easily by the shiny things and didn't fully take in consideration that mmorpgs have always been about innovation in some shape or form. The "take everything done before and make it polished" has been already by Blizzard, time to move on. Aion takes you back to2003 with it's lineage 2-eque mentality that people will grind and pay for gold online.
Lineage 2 only got rid of the botter and farming 4 years into the games existence, they fully raped the player base with sub fees and creating a market place so steepo that you had to buy gold online. Aion follows so many rules of lineage 2 in it;s theory that the reviewer failed to explore that avenue of the design and concept of the game that it leave him looking like a complete and utter tool trying to get a job at NcSoft Austin studio.
To get your chuckle on.
Exactly. About all this site good for these days. I'm having a blast playing Aion but if I wasnt I could care less if others enjoy it. I have more in my life then just video cards thankfully. It really is sad how most the MMORPG community treats each other on this site.
I;'m glad you love the game, but be completly honest with yourself and the people of this website. Does the game feel like a standard mmo ? Does it have the deep story line like LotrO, the massive land area of Vanguard, and amazing fast paced pvp combat of AoC ?
Is flying combat new to you ?
Boy, this was a real love letter to Aion that glossed over its many shortcomings. Here's some player reviews/critiques over on Aion Source that do a better job of highlighting the problems:
http://www.aionsource.com/forum/reviews-critiques/73580-another-cancelled-account-favor-wow.html
http://www.aionsource.com/forum/reviews-critiques/77547-after-several-days-not-having-urge-logon.html
http://www.aionsource.com/forum/reviews-critiques/76058-parts-aion-would-you-like-see-improved.html
Honestly dude, I could care less. I'm playing Aion because I was looking for something new and its fun. I didnt sign up to compare it to other MMOs. What does it matter if its as deep as LOTRO, or as big as Vanguard? I'll go play a different game if I perfer something AIon doesnt offer.
I have better things to do with my time then think about other video games while I'm playing video games....LOL
Because you have to put your troll posts someplace? BTW there is no such word as hater, you might try the correct word sometime it is called a critic. Usually a forum is supposed to be a place where you discuss things and not everyone likes everything, it would be a boring world if so. It is also good to know all the positive and negative aspects of a game.
I disagree with others many times, but they are all entitled to their opinions. In the case of Aion it is a well done game that looks beautiful, but saying the author of this piece glossed over some of the negative aspects of the game is an understatement and others need to know that.
Maybe you should troll someplace else if that bothers you.
The funny thing is we keep on seeing you here flaming, is this the only way you have to pas time during your day? can't play the amazingly story driven lotro or the tactical pvp in eve or the limitless content and pvp in AoC?
Thanks for the kind words. So far I have written 3 articles about Aion, one from 1-10, another from 10-25, and my most recent one covers 25-40ish, as I am currently a level 40 ranger. I personally think a lot of the MMORPG.com official reviews are a little light in the loafers. I wrote more about the level 1-10 game than the official reviews did in his entire review. I still stand by my suggestion of having MMORPG.com completely redo its review system by having each game reviewed by multiple people so that readers can not only get a wider array of opinions, but have a better chance of finding a reviewer with similar MMO background as them.
Not sure who this is directed at but some people have jobs, and during those working hours we need something else to do besides work. That's why we come here, bitch on the interwebz about video gamez, porn, our wives, whatever. Then we go home and play our game of choice so we can go back to work tomorrow to troll forums.
Think if you are enjoying Aion, you have never played an mmorpg before, clearly the review pretends he didn't , though he has over 2 year xp on Warcry network.
I'm not sure what genre you have been playing because it definitely isn't mmorpgs. MMORPGs have been a lot of things but innovation definitely hasn't been one of them. The MMORPGs of today play pretty much the same as they did in the early 2000 years with some more quests added.
I haven't seen anybody who agree with the score say it's the best mmorpg of all time, just that they agree with the score which is on par with the average review score it's been getting everywhere.
Your comparisson to Lineage 2 is absolutely laughable. The economy and overal playstyle of Aion is nothing like Lineage 2 at all. Don't even try to compare Aion's so called grind to Lineage 2. It easily took about a year of hardcore playing to reach the cap in Lineage 2. To compare, The first western Aion player to reach the cap in Aion took about 2 weeks.
Aions design is much more similar to WoW.
Not sure who this is directed at but some people have jobs, and during those working hours we need something else to do besides work. That's why we come here, bitch on the interwebz about video gamez, porn, our wives, whatever. Then we go home and play our game of choice so we can go back to work tomorrow to troll forums.
My fault for not quoting the person but thought it was a bit obvious I was talking about solareus.
The difference between a hater and him is that this guy/gal posts sarcastic comments on aion pics, bury of course and makes fun of almost all of them. Has the tendency to bash aion whenever he can (almost 8h+ a day?) in many threads and this is not something that happens one day only so it's pretty obvious.
Gameloading, we have not battled in a long time, but this is one battle I use scroll of escape /zip ... and you obviously didnt play lineage 2 when ncsoft developed the "race track" for the gold sellers to have an out of area place to sell gold. And you are right, at least there was point in playing Lineage 2 , control keeps of land area... i wait, Aion does that too but now they float in an Abyss, better know to real gamers as an " Lack of content area" . You knack for polished turds doesnt dissapoint.
Since I asked you, I began my own search. I'm not adverse to doing my own research afterall. Here's what I found and what I think from a quick look through the websites.
The Good:
Gamespot.com
GameTrailers.com - I won't visit this site probably. I spent the last 15min trying to figure this website out and what I've learned is that they don't give any reviews or offer any opinions of their own. At least they didn't for the games I searched: WoW and WAR. However, they earned my Good list because they do a very good job of organizing informtion for each game. They have all the news and coverage out there (that I know of) for the games I searched, no matter how old the news was. mmorpg.com does a well enough job covering newly released information, so I don't see this website as necessary.
The Bad:
ONRPG.com
G4tv.com - although they give entertaining and wordy reviews, if you watch the AION review, you will see that they don't put any effort into actually playing the games, making their reviews worthless.
On the Fence:
IGN - They write good reviews, but they're flawed because they're written too soon. They cover a lot of games, and offer similar things as GameSpot. I guess it'd be a choice between the two, but IGN gives hasty reviews, so I side with GameSpot.
Do you know of any other websites and do you have any opinions of the ones I listed?
And why is it a lack of content area? Because it isn't filled with NPCs telling you to go kill XX for you?
g4tv needs to stick to console gaming and fps's. IGN is pretty good and not selling out . The hallmark of ratings for pc gaming is CVG , computer and video gaming, owned by Future Publishing, once that review is out then the real battle begins, this is just a warm up exercise here on mmorpg.com.
You're not new to mmorpg's so whyre you acting like it ?
"Level 32 Quest Blue Bow
There is a very easy Quest that gives a great level 32 bow, you go to like Agrorius Village in Elten (Help me out here guys I can't remember and I can't login to check), and there is a quest called "Hannah's (Something)", which tells you to talk to a guy within the Fire Temple instance and has a reward for some Green boots. After you go inside Fire Temple and talk to this guy, he tells you to walk outside and turn in the quest to a chick out there, she then tells you to kill the final boss of Fire Temple to get your blue bow!
If you want to do it one run, have your group help you get outside, takes like 5 min, then continue on to the final boss and you save yourself from having to endure that terrible instance again.
Those are some random things I've learned, I'm 36 and a half now, going to try and push 38 before I go to sleep. Good luck and happy grinding!"
Your not new to mmorpg's so whyre you acting like it ?
I'm not acting like i'm new to mmorpgs, I asked what the area is missing.
I'm a fan of PC Gamer. I sometimes buy their magazine when I see something interesting on the cover. I like how they focus on PC games.
Missing the cohesiveness of an actual gaming world. With floating rocks that resemble the way AoC does it's game design, excpet for the actual land part. Also Chronicles of Spellborn came up with the Abyss style game theme already with the floating shard, as well as Koas War coming up with the concept of Aions core charactor features.
Age of Conan is nothing like Aion, I'm not sure why you brought that up. There is also nothing wrong with the cohessiveness of the world, it's a pretty standard mmorpg world.
It doesn't matter who did it first, nearly everything WoW and Lotro did has been done before, but these are still great games.
The question here is did you read the post? I don't give a damn about your point. My question is to you and everyone else saying the same thing about how the review is worthless and too positive, since you seemed to miss it, was "Do you only get credible information on a game by the negative reviews that are made about it?"
THAT is my question. And btw, if you actually read the thread...you would have seen several things posted about what the MMO does bring to the table that is in fact new. You might be tired of the genre but Aion does bring new things to the table. I guess because I enjoyed WoW during my time there and several others in the vast array of MMOs I've experienced that I've obviously a fanboi for each of those games too and that it can't just be that I know a good game when I play one? I don't give a damn if you don't but don't try painting me into a picture just because your threatened by a review.
You want to talk specifically about why this review is a bad one and what about it you disagree with and why then let's have that discussion.
I get your point
Age of Conan is nothing like Aion, I'm not sure why you brought that up. There is also nothing wrong with the cohessiveness of the world, it's a pretty standard mmorpg world.
It doesn't matter who did it first, nearly everything WoW and Lotro did has been done before, but these are still great games.
Find it funny you used the word "Standard" I agree with you on this point, but you just said your self "standard" with LotrO, with Vangaurd , with Aoc, there are elements that are beyond standard, elements that makes them a unique game experience for the fans. I would love to understand the apsect of Aion that weighs the above qualities in visual aesthecic, content, mechnaics, that are disimilare to Lineage 2 and more innovative then the 3 other games I;ve listed. One of the only qualities ofAion is the character creator, which is more or less a refined CoH editor.
As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I don't think there's 1 website that's going to get it exactly right. My suggestion is to take a look at multiple websites and reviews. See what the reviewer has to say on positive/negative, does this jive with what other reviewers are saying? Try to formulate a complete picture based on several different points of view and the whole starts to come a little more in focus.
Yes I realize this. That doesn't take much thought to figure out. However, picking websites to do that with who have good reputations takes experience or a ton of research. I just spend some time researching myself, and Sol helped suggest some others, so now I have a good 3-4 websites to look at.
Okay, for those active in this discussion, what are we talking about again. I've read every post in this thread, as most can tell, but I've sort of lost track of what we're arguing about. I want to know so I can either contribute or leave.
Find it funny you used the word "Standard" I agree with you on this point, but you just said your self "standard" with LotrO, with Vangaurd , with Aoc, there are elements that are beyond standard, elements that makes them a unique game experience for the fans. I would love to understand the apsect of Aion that weighs the above qualities in visual aesthecic, content, mechnaics, that are disimilare to Lineage 2 and more innovative then the 3 other games I;ve listed. One of the only qualities ofAion is the character creator, which is more or less a refined CoH editor.
Explain this please? Because I played CoH for quite a while and built multiple heroes and the editor is nothing like Aions IMO
Find it funny you used the word "Standard" I agree with you on this point, but you just said your self "standard" with LotrO, with Vangaurd , with Aoc, there are elements that are beyond standard, elements that makes them a unique game experience for the fans. I would love to understand the apsect of Aion that weighs the above qualities in visual aesthecic, content, mechnaics, that are disimilare to Lineage 2 and more innovative then the 3 other games I;ve listed. One of the only qualities ofAion is the character creator, which is more or less a refined CoH editor.
Explain this please? Because I played CoH for quite a while and built multiple heroes and the editor is nothing like Aions IMO
Edited, I mistook your point.
Thanks Solareus for being so consise in your critque of this review, even if you are way to harsh about it. Giving them the benefit of the doubt would probably help your argument.
I don't think I would go so far as to say the reviewer is a shill for ncsoft, but 8.7?? come on! That makes it the highest rated game on here, the highest rating ever given by an official review.
8.7 might be a "B+" in high school, but that grade on mmorpg.com is relative to the rest of the ratings on this site. 8.7 is saying this is the greatest game ever made... and as cool as Aion might be, I think we can safely say, that is BS.
I would hope to see a new review and score or a revised one, with the past history of scoring other games taken into account.
People come to this site to find out unbiased information about games they are considering purchasing, the official reviews carry alot of weight. And so, people hold mmorpg.com to high standards, and well they should. That is why you see such reactions as Solareus'.
This site should thank the people who critique their reviews, as it brings about better content, demands their staff writers make decent reviews, and makes mmorpg.com better than it would be otherwise.
Thanks for the kind words. So far I have written 3 articles about Aion, one from 1-10, another from 10-25, and my most recent one covers 25-40ish, as I am currently a level 40 ranger. I personally think a lot of the MMORPG.com official reviews are a little light in the loafers. I wrote more about the level 1-10 game than the official reviews did in his entire review. I still stand by my suggestion of having MMORPG.com completely redo its review system by having each game reviewed by multiple people so that readers can not only get a wider array of opinions, but have a better chance of finding a reviewer with similar MMO background as them.
I agree with you, but what you touched still reinforces my point that the review was almost done too quickly. Most reviews on this site are more overviews than anything else and for some games that my work but for Aion it does not, as the game does change midway through and a player level 35-40 may see the game completely differently than one who is only lvl 20-25.
Find it funny you used the word "Standard" I agree with you on this point, but you just said your self "standard" with LotrO, with Vangaurd , with Aoc, there are elements that are beyond standard, elements that makes them a unique game experience for the fans. I would love to understand the apsect of Aion that weighs the above qualities in visual aesthecic, content, mechnaics, that are disimilare to Lineage 2 and more innovative then the 3 other games I;ve listed. One of the only qualities ofAion is the character creator, which is more or less a refined CoH editor.
Explain this please? Because I played CoH for quite a while and built multiple heroes and the editor is nothing like Aions IMO
You're right, the two games are pretty different when it comes to character creations. I really like the breadth of options AION has. CoH, and more recently Champions, have great character customization tools, but they're not the same and not equal in all areas. In short, they're different than each other, but both very good.
Your main point is that mmorpg.com should pay more attention to how they score the games in their reviews. Is this correct? If so, I agree with you.
Your second point is that AION doesn't deserve the best grade in town. Keep in mind that I quit the game out of dislike, but I'm trying to look at this from anothers point of view. We all assume people have played MMORPG's before if they're posting on this website. While this may be likely, it's an incorrect assumption. So let's throw that assumption out the window and assume rather than new people to the genre might be reading. In this case, referencing other games in the market would be a waste of time. So as a rule of thumb, I think referencing other games in a review should not be done. A game should be scored and left to stand on their own two feet.
Another assumption is that those who have played MMORPG's before, have played so many of them that they'd notice the similarities and differences. Not all gamers are like that, and some could argue successfully that most aren't like that. So let's throw that assumption out the window as well, and instead assume that a gamer will judge AION on what AION has to offer, not on what it doesn't offer or copies in relation to other MMORPG's.
Given this point of view, AION could very well be the best MMORPG they've ever played and these people may not really care what other MMORPG's have done in the past, nor should they. In this regard, we must ask ourselves, what does AION do well, and what is lacking in AION. This is why I believe in scoring a game based on tangible assets, and it doesn't hurt to throw in intangible assets at the end, with a large disclaimer that it's pure opinion after that.
If you list pros and cons of a game, you let the readers decide if the game is for them. I believe that the lack of pros and cons, meaning more objectivity, in the review is what people are complaining about.
how does a standard MMO get an 8.7? this review is bs
WHEN to do a review is a good topic of discussion, and I think this website should adopt some rules on this. Generally, I'd like to see a game have a Preview, First Impression, and Review. This is important, because a MMORPG offers plenty of benefits for getting into the game at release. So timing is paramount.
The PREVIEW should be an overview of the game based on initial playtesting that the previewer has done, combined with evaluating how the game looks on paper. This gives a professional opinion on what players might expect for the future release and can serve as a source of advice for those not entirely sure if the game is worth their money.
The FIRST IMPRESSION is almost a pure opinion piece. This piece is full of emotion, feelings, and subjectivity, but gives an idea on what the player will feel when they spend the first week in the game. Many people can relate to this and if the writer has a similar playstyle and game experience, it lends even more weight.
The REVIEW is a purely scientific critique of the game, and should only be done after the reviewer has played the majority of the game. Meaning they've tried all aspects that the game offers, such as solo leveling, group leveling, PvP, crafting, and endgame content. There should be little to know feelings or emotions in this piece, and should be approached objectively. This will let readers know the pros and cons of the game and will give them much needed information to help them decide on their own if the game is worth the purchase.
WHEN to do a review is a good topic of discussion, and I think this website should adopt some rules on this. Generally, I'd like to see a game have a Preview, First Impression, and Review. This is important, because a MMORPG offers plenty of benefits for getting into the game at release. So timing is paramount.
The PREVIEW should be an overview of the game based on initial playtesting that the previewer has done, combined with evaluating how the game looks on paper. This gives a professional opinion on what players might expect for the future release and can serve as a source of advice for those not entirely sure if the game is worth their money.
The FIRST IMPRESSION is almost a pure opinion piece. This piece is full of emotion, feelings, and subjectivity, but gives an idea on what the player will feel when they spend the first week in the game. Many people can relate to this and if the writer has a similar playstyle and game experience, it lends even more weight.
The REVIEW is a purely scientific critique of the game, and should only be done after the reviewer has played the majority of the game. Meaning they've tried all aspects that the game offers, such as solo leveling, group leveling, PvP, crafting, and endgame content. There should be little to know feelings or emotions in this piece, and should be approached objectively. This will let readers know the pros and cons of the game and will give them much needed information to help them decide on their own if the game is worth the purchase.
Totally agree.
This game is very polished and the combat is fun. The only problem I have with it is the gold spammers and bots. If NCsoft can clean that up they have a winner to build on. The expansion possibilities could be great with the x-y-z axis they got in this engine.
Your main point is that mmorpg.com should pay more attention to how they score the games in their reviews. Is this correct? If so, I agree with you.
Your second point is that AION doesn't deserve the best grade in town. Keep in mind that I quit the game out of dislike, but I'm trying to look at this from anothers point of view. We all assume people have played MMORPG's before if they're posting on this website. While this may be likely, it's an incorrect assumption. So let's throw that assumption out the window and assume rather than new people to the genre might be reading. In this case, referencing other games in the market would be a waste of time. So as a rule of thumb, I think referencing other games in a review should not be done. A game should be scored and left to stand on their own two feet.
Another assumption is that those who have played MMORPG's before, have played so many of them that they'd notice the similarities and differences. Not all gamers are like that, and some could argue successfully that most aren't like that. So let's throw that assumption out the window as well, and instead assume that a gamer will judge AION on what AION has to offer, not on what it doesn't offer or copies in relation to other MMORPG's.
Given this point of view, AION could very well be the best MMORPG they've ever played and these people may not really care what other MMORPG's have done in the past, nor should they. In this regard, we must ask ourselves, what does AION do well, and what is lacking in AION. This is why I believe in scoring a game based on tangible assets, and it doesn't hurt to throw in intangible assets at the end, with a large disclaimer that it's pure opinion after that.
If you list pros and cons of a game, you let the readers decide if the game is for them. I believe that the lack of pros and cons, meaning more objectivity, in the review is what people are complaining about.
My point is there is/should be a grading curve based on previous scores given by staff writers. I think their scores are usually good, lower than other gaming sites, because they are realistic, most of the time. If this site were to give out scores like Gamespot does, every new game would be 9-10, and once you have that as a standard then there's not much room to improve.
As for the reasons why this game does not deserve such a good score... as in the best score ever given out to a game. The game lacks content, is small, runs out of quests and forces you to grind, all things that are a step backward for the genre. It does things well too, but nothing so awesome to make it better than it's peers. That is just my opinion of course, but I think any reasonable reviewer would say the same, it is a decent game, but not the greatest mmo of all time...
I think people are bitching because they expect a higher standard of review. I would expect a staff reviewer to have a decent knowledge of past games and how the other staff members have scored previous games, he/she should know the grading curve.
Well lets see what happens after this patch and how it deals witht the gold spammers first and if this issue clears up then they can start finding other ways to deal with the bots.
See, normally I don't quote that much text, but in this discussion (28 pages, wtf...) this is one of the few comments that make a lot of sense and should be enough to conclude this otherwise rather inarticulate and thus pointless debate.
Haven't played the game myself but even I can tell that the review fails at being objective and mixes information too much with very subjective opinions. Writing a 'real' review is hard, I totally get that - so that means not everybody can or should do it....
The reviewer need to grow some balls and either change the score or come out and say "This is the best mmorpg ever"
At least then we would know if it's the reviewers ability to give scores or to review that is in question.
I have to say that Eurogamer review on the day the game was launched was more informative than this one. This review reads, atleast to me, more as a confession of a fan than an actual critique of the game. As such, it fails to inform its reader from the pros and cons of the game, rendering the review utterly pointless for anyone but those who are already playing the game. Then again, if you are already playing the game you hardly need anyone to tell you how good or bad the game is -- you are entirely capable to make that subjective decision all by yourself.
As I did read through all those 200+ posts about the rating given, I guess I have to comment that as well. First, the caveat, I do think that MMOs should be reviewed as such, not as potential. The game is somewhat linear and almost a single-player experience for the better part of the first 20 levels. Its quest-content thins out at around level 30. There are problems with sieges that result players to crash. The game isn't balanced around 1vs1 PvP, true, it is balanced around the "who brings most goons wins" -PvP. There are countless bots running rampant on top of the gold selling spam. The game has a nice PvP with loads of people, but so does Darkfall.
In the end, the current game is thin of content which results on repetitive gameplay in order to progress. And, as levels matter on PvP--and leveling through PvP is not a viable option--you have to level through the repetitive gameplay in order to be competitive on PvP. A place for accolade or for criticism? I think that atleast these are the issues a decent review should tell to its audience. Frankly, as a reader of a review, I am not overly interested from the personal preferences of a reviewer regarding the art style of the game, I want to know what is the art style. This review leaves me ignorant on the latter whilst being abundant on the former.
Eurogamer review is spot on.
Yay, yet another asian-style grindfest mmo with the same graphics as L2 basicly but with wings...
wow, 282 posts and counting ! this game is hot. anyway, my thought is :
1: At lv 26, i go no quest to do, I have to do those repeated quest ( 1/100 ). or farm AP in abyss.
2: the review never mentioned about the work-order in crafting, i love this feature. the npc will give you free materials for the crafting, and random reward once you completed it.
The main complaints about the review seem to be two main contentions that I agree with.
1. Does Aion deserve the best rating of any MMO on this site?
2. Does the reviewer have a positive bias towards Aion that goes above and beyond the normal amount of bias for a reviewer?
As for number one, I would say that after playing many, many MMOs and Aion to level 36, that Aion certainly does not deserve the best rating out of any MMO. It is a ridiculous claim by even the biggest fans of this game. However, this reviewer has chosen to give the game the best rating an MMO has ever received on this site.
This brings up a serious question about how credible this reviewer is. There are really three options.
1. He was completely unaware about how MMORPG.COMs ratings were delivered in the past and gave his own personal rating. This would tell me that he is completely out of the loop when it comes to what this site offers in general when it comes to reviews. He is possibly very young. Or possibly very new. This is unacceptable for any site that wants to consider it's site credible.
2. He thinks this is the greatest MMO of all time. This is a real possibility. However, based on him saying that it is basically everything we have seen before, I do not believe this is true.
3. He is a shill for the developing company. (I would rarely ever even think this is a serious option, but after reviewing the various reviews he has done for the game for various sites, it's hard to deny there is nothing there).
These are 3 very depressing options for me personally. I have basically been a lurker on this site up till this point. But I have to say that this review is embarrassing for this site and it has really given me perspective on how much responsibility this particular site would like to accept for it's reviews. Which is going to end up causing me to move on to others at this point.
I hate double posting, but I have one more thing to say about the reviewer.
I believe that as a person that has reviewed this game, he should be willing to come into the discussion somewhat. This is his review. A poor review by most accounts.
For instance, he should at the very least come in and tell us what level he got to. He should be honest with us about what he experienced specifically. The review was not specific about things that are very important to be specific about in an unbiased review.
Other reviewers have come in and commented in their review. Why should this person be any different?
Edit: I just made a Mojito.
It is hardly surprising he won’t answer here, to busy doing fanboy work elsewhere I guess. :)
The idea of a world of shards is very old in MMO’s there was a Dream MMO not sure of its name, launched over ten years ago which was set in a shard realm.
Find it funny you used the word "Standard" I agree with you on this point, but you just said your self "standard" with LotrO, with Vangaurd , with Aoc, there are elements that are beyond standard, elements that makes them a unique game experience for the fans. I would love to understand the apsect of Aion that weighs the above qualities in visual aesthecic, content, mechnaics, that are disimilare to Lineage 2 and more innovative then the 3 other games I;ve listed. One of the only qualities ofAion is the character creator, which is more or less a refined CoH editor.
And what makes Lotro oh so unique that makes it stand out from the crowd more so than Aion?
There is a reason why people play Aion instead of other games. It takes many successful aspects of other games and puts them all in one. Take the combo system and flying combat for instance. Sure these things have been done before in Everquest 2, Lotro and City of Heroes but all of these games have a heavy focus on PVE play, not PVP play.
Or take the faction vs faction combat.In most Faction vs faction games nowadays, pvp in the normal world is discouraged and the games encourage you to go into instances to have fair battles with pre set objectives. Aion doesn't really have those and the game encourages pvp in the open world.
Find it funny you used the word "Standard" I agree with you on this point, but you just said your self "standard" with LotrO, with Vangaurd , with Aoc, there are elements that are beyond standard, elements that makes them a unique game experience for the fans. I would love to understand the apsect of Aion that weighs the above qualities in visual aesthecic, content, mechnaics, that are disimilare to Lineage 2 and more innovative then the 3 other games I;ve listed. One of the only qualities ofAion is the character creator, which is more or less a refined CoH editor.
There is a reason why people play Aion instead of other games. It takes many successful aspects of other games and puts them all in one. Take the combo system and flying combat for instance. Sure these things have been done before in Everquest 2, Lotro and City of Heroes but all of these games have a heavy focus on PVE play, not PVP play.
It's always interesting to see the reasons people will hang exceptions on.
So... that other MMOs had those things before (FFXI has had a combo system as well since launch.. the Skillchain/Magic Burst system) doesn't matter because Aion is a PvP MMO and those games weren't? That's a significantly distinguishing factor to you? A combo system isn't merely "another combo system" if it's in a PvP MMO instead of a PvE MMO? Is it somehow different? Really? Do you not still chain one attack after another, etc? I remember doing that when I played Aion, and it seemed like a different approach to a familiar mechanic to me. It never occurred to me "wow... this is so different, because Aion's a PvP MMO".
The concept is the same, regardless of whether it's in a PvP MMO or a PvE MMO. You use certain skills which open up the potential for combos by selecting appropriate follow-up skills... You set up/execute the combo that would be optimum for the situation. It's the same concept. The setting of the game makes it no different.
I find you typically have good retorts to people, GL, even when I disagree with them (and I have plenty in the past). But that one bit in your post just reeks of spin to me.
I didn't say it was a distinguishing factor, I said it's a reason why people play a game like Aion instead of games like Final Fantasy XI or Lotro. It takes aspects of other mmorpgs and puts them in a different environment.
While the concept is the same, the execution is different because fighting players is very different from fighting mobs.
agreed 100 % :
this "review" reads like a payed? fanboi advertisement rather than a real review.
the "reviewer" does not join the conversation and explains to us all why this game is the best mmorpg released up to the current point in time!
this guy needs to grow some balls, as some other poster already stated, if he thinks this is the highest development in mmorpg-development he should say so.
skimming through the large ammount of pro aion/ncsoft stuff this "reviewer" has mass produced, this "review" is not only close to meaningless its counter-productive to the game as a whole!
One thing to remember, DAoC had combat combos long before any other MMO and was designed to be pvp. A smart pvp player can easily disrupt such combo's which I agree makes the combat in pvp very different than pve.
All Aion has done is basically copy from other MMO's. Only problem with Aion is they forgot to include an end game which many of the people playing will soon find out, but at least it will provide them with a few months enjoyment.
One thing to remember, DAoC had combat combos long before any other MMO and was designed to be pvp. A smart pvp player can easily disrupt such combo's which I agree makes the combat in pvp very different than pve.
All Aion has done is basically copy from other MMO's. Only problem with Aion is they forgot to include an end game which many of the people playing will soon find out, but at least it will provide them with a few months enjoyment.
The game is both a PVP and a PVE dungeon endgame. A lot of new content was added in patch 1.5, which went live at release.
So you say it's not a distinguishing factor.... but hen say that the execution is different because fighting players is different from fighting mobs... You are pointing out a distinguishing factor here. You're saying one situation is different than the other. Being a PvP game distinguishes it from being a PvE game in that you fight players instead of, or in addition to mobs.
No bashing intended here, but it just sounds like you're reaching for the sake of saying it's different.
The circumstances are different, but the process/execution is the same or at least similar... Select an opening move, select a follow-up move to create or complete a combo, select a closer, etc... The process of what types of skills you choose might change based on the situation... but that's the case in PvE as well. You're likely to use different combos against different types of mobs based on their weaknesses, etc.
In either case, the process is exactly the same in execution, only the circumstances change. It's still the same concept at its core.
I just think you're grasping here.
My opinion of this site has drastically reduced because of this review and the author's prior positions of NC Soft and Aion. Giving Aion the highest rating mmorpg.com has ever handed out is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen on this website...and makes you guys look like, well, fools.
The game is fine. It doesn't suck. But it's also CLEARLY not the best MMO ever made.
Not that anyone cares, but maybe someone who owns/operates this site will realize that there's no way to objectively review a product that gives you money to advertise their product without introducing some sort of bias in to the results. It's IMPOSSIBLE.
Why do certain people have such a difficult time accepting the fact that people are enjoying AION? I hate WoW, but I don't doubt that its a good game that is enjoyed by many. Typical AION discussion:
AION player: "I like AION"
Hater: "Why? Its nothing different. Explain why you like it. Why is it better than X Y or Z? Did you know its Korean? I heard there was a grind"
AION player: "I still like AION"
Hater: "You must be a Noob/Retard/Carebear/Shill"
AION player: <Leaves thread, plays AION>
Hater: "I win! He left the thread, lol"
Add in a favorable MMORPG.com review.. voila...30 page thread of this crap, and people complaining about the website. If you don't like the game, and you don't like the website.....uh...maybe find something else to do?
.... What the hell are you going on about?
I think you're in the wrong thread.
Who's saying anything about others enjoying Aion?
This thread, in case you haven't noticed, is about a recent mmoprg.com review of Aion. People are questioning it based on various factors which do, indeed, raise an eyebrow. Even as someone who enjoys the game myself, I can see the point people are raising. It would be the same were it any other MMO in similar circumstances.
Why are you so bent out of shape over other people's opinion of the game?
.... What the hell are you going on about?
I think you're in the wrong thread.
Who's saying anything about others enjoying Aion?
This thread, in case you haven't noticed, is about a recent mmoprg.com review of Aion. People are questioning it based on various factors which do, indeed, raise an eyebrow. Even as someone who enjoys the game myself, I can see the point people are raising. It would be the same were it any other MMO in similar circumstances.
Why are you so bent out of shape over other people's opinion of the game?
Stikato does have a point though
/goes back to Aion
Well I did give a fair try to Aion, tried different classes, crafting, gathering, pve, pvp and got to 34, I know end game is 50 and the big dungeons, but the review from a leveling point to the end game point is equally important. Now this is all from the point of view of a ex-DAoC'er.
The Good
-Beautiful graphics and animations.
-Very few "loading" areas, in fact each zone is pretty big.
-Flying system is something new.
-Good storyline with campaign quests.
-Fort battles are good, not as good as DAoC, but better than other mmo's out there.
-Crafting system actually means something in the game and in the market.
-Some of the regular quests actually have some very good story if you take the time to read them.
The Bad
-Gold spammers, they can be blocked but that's not the answer, never in my life of mmo's (since UO) have I seen something so bad.
-Bots, they are every where, they are more than easy to spot (most have a name created by punching the keyboard), they will kill every thing in their macro program, even what ever you are killing. They die (by getting them trained, heh I'm guilty of that, or by pvp) and they automatically run back to their macro spot with rez sickness and all and continue their grind.
-NCSoft not caring, customer service is practically non excistant, you try to appeal a bot or a spammer and all you get is a command to report, which doesn't fully work, the reported player needs to be reported x amount of times before they even take a look at it, and you get 10 reports per session, so if you find more than 10 while you're playing you can't report them or you have to log off and on again. Oh and their help system needs some help.
-Slow respawn, from 1-10 you have 10 channels to switch around if the area is too populated, the 10-20 area is just 5, after that there are no more channels (one more zone has only 2), this makes it tough to quest or grind. It's logic that failed to happen in NCSoft, you got 3-4 channels full in 1-10, means you'll have 3-4 channels full in 10-20, and now you get all those players stuck in one zone without channels. I had several quests that I couldn't complete because the mobs were always camped with long respawn, by the time I finished them I was 10+ levels higher and the rewards were usless.
-Lack of quest or rewards, I'm not a WoWer, in fact I hate that game, but Aion needs more quests or at least make the quests matter, you can spend a good amount of time trying to finish a quest (for the reason why read the previous point) and you end up with a reward that gives you less exp in contrast with what you obtained killing what was needed for the quest, and a sellable item. I don't mind the grind, heck it was the only way to level in most mmo's, but as mentioned, too much ppl in the same areas killing the same mobs.
-Grouping, ok this can't be forced on anyone, but it's a mmo, group up, players that want to solo, play a solo game. Doesn't help that you get a good amount of [Group] quests, a legion helps but they are not always on the times you are on, or different levels, etc.
-Money sink, I think this is the first game I've played where I have to pay to bind in a town, really? If you don't craft you're fine, but if you like to craft, either to brag on goods, to help your legion, to be self supplied, you will have a big money sink, then you gotta pay to bind, to fly, to teleport, to cure rez sickness (that is understandable but it increases too much too fast), then you need skill books every 3 levels, oh yeah and to teleport inside the capital, I bet if those slow flying elevators were usefull you probably had to pay to ride them too!
-Lack of usefulness of some classes, while in my experience, and my server, the rangers reigned supreme, the gladiators were at the bottom of the feeder. The Sin could outDPS them in melee, nukers at range, Temp tanks better, the only good thing the Glad has, or should I say unique ability is the PBAoEs, which is fine if you solo and you keep an eye around to not hit multiples, but in a good, smart group, Glad's are usless because they mez, root, morph, the last thing they want is a Glad PBAoEing and breaking everything and wiping the group. Think the only ones that use the Glads extensively are the botters.
-All mighty healers, I know I know, but I for one don't mind healer archtypes having survivability, even the capability to solo, but when it comes to PvP and they can solo tanks, melee dps and some ranged dps, then there's something wrong, well besides crappy players, but healers being able to do decent dmg, heal any dmg sent to them and then rooting if the target tries to run away and finishing them off, a little too much IMHO.
-Legion Vault, most games have a guild vault where every member of the guild (some required assigned permissions) can go and place items to help guild members, in Aion it's made only for the Legion GM and it's officers with no way to change it.
-Server downtime, ok all games have them, all games give you a 5-10min warning in game, haha, Aion gives you 10sec warning, ok not an overly bad thing, but it does mess up groups doing instances or during a boss fight.
-PvPvE, this might just be me, originally coming from UO it wouldn't be a problem as I was used to that, but spending so many years in DAoC and then WAR I got "spoiled" to being able to PvE at my rythm, when I wanted without having to worry, and PvP when I felt like it by going to a separate, closed area (yet pretty darn big) away from the PvE. Aion's system like UO's is made for gankers and griefers, it's a tad tuned down since they need to find and use a rift to get to your lands, but it still happens pretty regularly.
-Range love, I had my good share of PvP both via rifts and in the Abyss, in both small scale and large scale PvP the ranged classes ruled supreme, at least the good kiters, melee classes are pretty much at the mercy of their healer keeping them alive, the Templar gets a nifty pulling Stigma, assassins can hide and stun/aerial lockdown opponents, Glad have to rely on their charge to reach the enemy and use their aerial lockdown (hard to find their root stigmas) and the Aion's Charge is the only one I know that doesn't ignore CC, what's the point to charge if you'll get rooted, snared, morphed even templar pulled, useless ability most of the time. Also flying while being ranged gives a good advantage as well.
Honestly it's a shame, this game has so much potential, it's just being developed and managed by the wrong company, and with all it's flaws it's still better than other mmo's out there *cough* AoC *cough*, if you are really bored from your current mmo and want something to keep you busy until a mmo you have in your sights releases, Aion is a good option, but from my point of view it's not a game worth playing for years.
As a former lineage 2 player i can say this is lineage 3. Same system, classes are the same. Whats different, faction pvp and wings.
I am disappointed in the review that this wasn't consider at all at the moment of giving a 8.7 score.
Stikato does have a point though
/goes back to Aion
He very well may. It's irrelevant to this thread regardless.
Thanks for chiming in, I guess?
I must say, I check this site all the time for early reviews of MMOs, I have been trying to replace SWG since way back when they butchered it. I have played everything and leveled to end game, some grinds, well most grinds since none of them had any purpose mid game. Only Conan I think as of late gave you armor that didn't look terrible until end game, till now.
I waited for 6 weeks to install my Collectors edition of AION. I waited because I was scared of playing another epic peice of crap or a mainstream copycat.
Aion deserved the 8.7, I noticed right away, a friendly targeting system, UI, Map, and lack of bugs. Conan was horrid the first few months, as was wow, and a few others. Actually Wow still cannot fix its bugs, it's to busy copying anything someone else comes up with, I am surprised they are not giving wings out yet tbh.
Aside from that, people that buy a game to get it finished need to quit playing, leveling is a big part of the game, adn the fact you are involved at 25 in the war, its great, its not like your showing your lvl to anyone, so its always a geuss of how the fight will go. I think this game has a good shelf life compared to the others as of late. I mean Monster companies like EA, Sony, etc have released garbage and people still played it, these guys pushed out a good clean product, yes with some issues at release, but overall a good game, and people still need to troll on it.
People are too worried about comparing it to previous games or current games and not just trying the game itself, try it, its worth the money ... i mean I blow 90 bux on ps3 games only to quit playing them in a month.
I can agree that NCsoft makes good games (bugs and thats stuff), but hey, do you really enjoy that in order to progress in the game you have to only kill and kill and kill mobs? Quests are insignificant, you get more xp killing mobs than actually doing the quests, and you have more chances of getting something cool droped by the mob instead of using the crap the quest gives you.
Another thing, doing pvp is nice, but having to look over your shoulder all the time, because grifers and pk are hunting you, makes it a pain in the ass, specially now that they can fall from the sky.
And i am sorry, i will say it again, this shouldn't be called AION, it should be called Lineage 3. Please do me a favor and look for info of Lineage 2, you will see that the classes you can play are the same, exactly the same. The game is actually the same, the only thing is that they make it prettier.
I am sorry, this game is all about pvp and graphics, and that only shouldn't give that high of a score.
For a game that is ranked to be the best mmorpg to have ever seen the light of day, I would have expected a review that was a bit more inspired and detailed. Instead this review was slightly boring and way to short to do the best game ever any justice.
I suppose it's easy to get confused if your observations are based only on screenshots. There are similarities between the two games (art direction, use of special effects), but there are also fundamental differences. If you want to look for a spiritual successor of L2, you should probably look towards Tera.
The game is both a PVP and a PVE dungeon endgame. A lot of new content was added in patch 1.5, which went live at release.
One, it is a known fact that two faction pvp does not work in an end game situation. Aion will prove no different despite their efforts to attempt to balance factions on each shard. Secondly, there is not much point to the pvp.
At the moment the end game content for pve is very limited. True they will eventually add some, but it is not even close to what the competitors offer.
Beyond pretty eye candy this game offers very little to keep players playing besides the opportunities to run alts through the same leveling grind.
Anyone who thinks this game deserves a 8.7 needs to get their head out of the sand and explore the genre. This game has almost no innovation in it at all. The bot and gold seller problems alone drop this game to around 7 and past experience tells us that NCSoft has not been inclined to fix that problem.
Hey, I am not saying it is not a fun game to play, there are many doing so, but my point is that sooner than later you are going to be very bored with your current character.
The current point of PvP (since the majority is still levelling) is keeping the other side from gaining a foothold in the Abyss. Already in my casual guild the people are annoyed when the other side gains a castle and are willing to help whichever Asmodean guild goes after said castle. We've been feeling pumped up when we owned all the castles last week and rather down when this week people didn't put as much effort in organising the attack and we lost them all.
I think Elyos are generally more organised in my server. Or it's maybe the greener grass mentality taking over.
you went definitely wrong here, because:
the discussion is not about a "favourable review" of aion, it is about telling us that aion is the best mmorpg that has ever been developed.
THIS is exactely what many feel is so much offside that the whole credit of this site is questioned.
Considering the mass produced pro ncsoft stuff this same "reviewer" has published, its understandable that there is a healthy discussion!
PS: until now i have not seen the "reviewer" to join the discussion and explain the rating more detailed to us -> why?
you went definitely wrong here, because:
the discussion is not about a "favourable review" of aion, it is about telling us that aion is the best mmorpg that has ever been developed.
THIS is exactely what many feel is so much offside that the whole credit of this site is questioned.
Considering the mass produced pro ncsoft stuff this same "reviewer" has published, its understandable that there is a healthy discussion!
PS: until now i have not seen the "reviewer" to join the discussion and explain the rating more detailed to us -> why?
Maybe because he doesnt feel that he as to explain his opinion about the game he reviewed to a group of haters QQ'ing a bout Aion being the highest rated review on this site.
Maybe because he doesnt feel that he as to explain his opinion about the game he reviewed to a group of haters QQ'ing a bout Aion being the highest rated review on this site.
or maybe, like some other poster already pointed out, he needs to grow some balls.
What I love about this whole QQ hater-flame situation is that the people flaming Aion (no, I havn't played it. No, I don't have an opinion.) will be hyping up the next game, or saying how much they love it when it comes out, and then somebody will come along from another game and say their game is shitty. Then, we restart this entire shit thread with an entire role-reversal until another game comes out for people to bash or glorify.
Honestly, it's absolutely amazing how nobody can pick up on this Deja-vu feeling.
You misquoted me or misunderstood me.
Yes, this site is focused on alternatives to what people were playing up to that point. That's why people are coming on this site. They don't come to hear praises about their favourite MMO (well, unless they are insecure). They come here to find alternatives when they get bored.
In this context and because WoW is popular and therefore will have the highest amount of people leaving it out of boredom, it is natural that the site will try to promote alternatives to this game. Most people coming here will be WoW burnouts (which is easy to understand from some comments against WoW), who are looking for something different. This site is catering to the need for differentiation.
There is nothing wrong with that. If you want to find the most popular brand, there are a gazillion other sites that do that. If you want to find alternatives, you come to this corner of the MMO world.
Did you actually quoted yourself on purpose? Do you know what that reminded me of?
Don't sweat about it overmuch. Our opinion and this site is but a blip in the whole MMO world.
Official? lol seriously?
Please stay on the wow section or go on wow's forums.
I think Aion is a nice polished game, but without bringing something innovative to the table, I think 8.7 score is too high. Especially compared to the other scores on this website.
So I guess that on this site, polish gets rated higher then innovation, replayability or diversity? That seems a little shallow imo. After all, its "A mostly standard MMO" . After reading the review I expected a 7 or so, not a score that would rate it the best so far on MMORPG.com .
Actually I have to say a pretty fair and good review!
Dont know why people think 8.7 is too high... I have to say my whole guild and me are having a blast with this game and are already heading into the 41+ ! Actually I think he could have written a bit more about the crafting system because if you really take some time to master it you have to realise that its actually very well thought out and has a real meaning in this game, not l ike others!
If you combine all the little details and polishing of this game it really deserves to stand out of the masses of all the many and crappy MMOs these days...
Oh and maybe its not the highest of innovations (even though if you really start to get used to the tactical combat with your limited flight time and the abyss etc. its really something new!), but definately a really fun and good game.
Well, seeing all the cheaters and botters in this game. It pretty much destroys the 8.7 in my view.
A game can be great and fun to play. But the moment it gets overrun by cheaters and botters. The fun and enjoyment ends real quick.
Especially in a highly competitive PVP game like AION.
Cheers
That's the crux of many people's problems with the review. Of course, you have to weed through all the hyper-defensive retorts from the rabid fans trying to spin it into "hate for Aion" so they can dismiss it and bash the posters, instead of dealing with the actual issue.
Most aren't even saying "it's a crappy game". People who play the game are even saying that given what's said in the review about it, and their first-hand experience with it, that the score seems way too high. They're questioning whether it deserves the highest score ever given to a MMO on this site. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that; it's a valid question.
Yet, it's driving many of the fanboys crazy that people would even dare question the unmitigated might of their (current) favorite MMO... so they're going into full on spin mode attempting to twist it into "people hating on and bashing Aion" (the first tactic used by many rabid fans - for any MMO - against any criticism about anything to do with the game in question).
Sadly, that's all too typical around here. Some people defend their preferred MMO as though they were protecting their only child from rock-wielding bullies on a playground.
Do enlighten us on how the game doesn't deserve that. Think about it for a sec its the first good game since lotro.
/agree
...though Aion didn't really float my boat when I tried it; a bit too cutesy anime for my taste. Certainly can't be denied that it's a quality product, though.
Yet another game to prove that quality and content trumps "innovation" pretty much every time. That's why we don't reinvent the rules for football every year.
Seems like a good enough review, still trying to gather information on this game to see whether it is worth the time/money. I hope that the PvP in the game is not so imposing that it could make doing raids inconvenient. That would be a deal breaker for me.
I think over 300 comments speak for themselves.
SEAN BULGER MAKE A FRIGGIN COMMENT ON THE FORUM ALREADY.
This will only be a round-about discussion back and forth until the person who wrote the review gives us some comments.
If you cant handle forum backlash on a review YOU wrote then you shouldnt review a game man.
EPIC FAIL - He has every reason to explain to us why this is the #1 reviewed MMO on the site, and if it truly is worthy, then it should be easy right?
Does it really truly matter? people act as if he killed one of their family members, that is whats EPIC FAIL.
Does it really truly matter?...... Then why are you posting?
To you it seems so, but to him it does not. Take it for it's value or not, play it because you like it or find another game to peak your intrest.
Anyone who still says Epic *fill in the blank* cant be taken seriously.
Anyone who still says Epic *fill in the blank* cant be taken seriously.
Moreover, your one line response to a perfectly acceptable statement (though not put in the best way) really puts merit to your words. Pot... meet... Kettle.
you have a lot of anger over a video game, was just a bit concerned for your health.
I don't understand what people find so crazy cool sooper interesting about Aion? Ganking people in the Abyss? If you find it very fun PvP - it will grow old on you very soon. Game is beatiful, yes its fine. Not the best I've seen, especially the landscape made to cartoonish sorta shaders. So you level, do repetitive quests like in any other MMO. If you ask me, even though I hate WoW - at least WoW has an atmosphere, the world even though I hate it all cartoonish there is some kind of life going on. Aion is all about stationary NPCs, repetitive quests, and PvP gankage. What all this hype was about I've no idea. I am lvl 29 and I am almost burnt out of this already. If I am not in group ganking Elyos' or doing Rift raid - game is quite boring.
LOL! I saw that screen shot and thought," WTH ! The graphics look TERRIBLE!! It looks like the grass in my 1999 MMO!!".
I just wanted to add this to the discussion since it seems relevant to me. On this site, the players generally give games a high score when a game is first presented and then they tend to fall over time. I believe this happens because the hype of the game is so enormous and people only have very limited experience actually playing the game.
Here is what the players feel on this site about the game.
Lord of the Rings Onli 8.38
Fallen Earth 8.36
Atlantica Online 8.32
EVE Online 8.29
EverQuest II 8.26
Vanguard: Saga of Hero 8.25
Ryzom 8.24
Guild Wars Factions 8.23
Warhammer Online: Age 8.23
Guild Wars Nightfall 8.23
Requiem: Bloodymare 8.23
Runes of Magic 8.23
Guild Wars 8.23
Dark Age of Camelot 8.22
Final Fantasy XI 8.22
The Chronicles of Spel 8.22
Rohan: Blood Feud 8.22
City of Villains 8.21
City of Heroes 8.20
Aion 8.19
Champions Online 8.18
This puts Aion, a very new game, at number 20 on this site according to the players. Of course this is no way to judge any of these games on this list, but there is an absolutely enormous gap between what the reviewer thinks (#1) and what the players think (#20). I doubt any other game possesses a margin of 19 spots between where the players rate a game and where the official review sits.
On a side note, Metacritic, a site that takes a ton of different reviews and averages them together came up with 8.1. This is surprisingly close to what the players rated this game at on this site.
LOL! I saw that screen shot and thought," WTH ! The graphics look TERRIBLE!! It looks like the grass in my 1999 MMO!!".
bah, that's like saying "I have a beautiful girlfriend" and then showing people the picture of her just waking up.
The devs have stated that part of their art design had to take into accuont that many pc's just can't run ultra high graphics so they struck a happy medium they thought would work. They have also said that they were considering putting out a high resolution texture pack for pc's that could go higher.
as far as the shot above, I don't know where that is but it does seem (operative word "seem") that there are some things toned down. I don't see any ground cover for instance.
I would never say that Aion when looked at up close had a lot of detail in the environments but there is more to it than that.
It's like a painting, you just don't get up close to look at it. You have to find the proper distance so that the artist's work can be seen correctly. In any case there is some ground detail that helps to bring the world to life. We will have to wait and see if they put out the high res texture pack.
bah, that's like saying "I have a beautiful girlfriend" and then showing people the picture of her just waking up.
The devs have stated that part of their art design had to take into accuont that many pc's just can't run ultra high graphics so they struck a happy medium they thought would work. They have also said that they were considering putting out a high resolution texture pack for pc's that could go higher.
as far as the shot above, I don't know where that is but it does seem (operative word "seem") that there are some things toned down. I don't see any ground cover for instance.
I would never say that Aion when looked at up close had a lot of detail in the environments but there is more to it than that.
It's like a painting, you just don't get up close to look at it. You have to find the proper distance so that the artist's work can be seen correctly. In any case there is some ground detail that helps to bring the world to life. We will have to wait and see if they put out the high res texture pack.
I'll own you with one picture, Aion is full of those and they look horrible, they also said they won't fix the ugly textures:
Yes that is true, they did say that they, to paraphrase, "they had other things on their plate than to change textures". However this is still the chance of a high rez texture pack.
No guarantees of course but it was mentioned in an interview in response to a question.
I suppose my point being is that there is alot good and bad but that in the end it's the art design that will carry Aion over high graphic quality. Again, part of that is to accomodate low end computers and in some areas, to allow for a great many players.
From my limited siege experience I have to say that there are some impressive numbers to be had on both sides. I know that some people are getting a crash bug, but as far as performance, given the sheer numbers, I am rather impressed.
You just aren't going to find that in some other games where there are limits on how many can be in a combat area.
Very nice review. You touched on things I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere. I agree with a lot you said about Aion, it's a really nice game overall.
I think it quite likely that the environment texture issue in Aion will get addressed. And that is a bad reflection on what their priorities are. The game already looks great, a texture upgrade is hardly needed, but players and MMO’s are obsessed with graphics. The paucity of non standard quests and the random middle level pvp are far bigger issues, just look at the posts on them. But yes, quite likely a texture patch will be seen as a priority!
Everyone complaining about graphics needs to remember the fact that part of the reason some other MMOs that claimed they would be WoW killers flopped (besides sucking) was because the graphics requirements were too high for most computers, so a lot of people couldn't run them, losing a lot of potential customers. The casual gamer doesn't make sure he always has a ton of ram, or the newest graphics card, but MMO companies still want to reach out to them, because they generate revenue, and stylized graphics and low system requirements are two such ways of accomplishing this.
Yeah #20 for Aion is about right. I would put Atlantica Online somewhere same with Runes of Magic - in the end of the list. While AO has some nice innovations like mercenaries and tactical combat system - the game still remains grind after all. Have to agree though that its better than Runes of Magic. Played almost all the games in the list and this is about right where they should be on the list.
I was actually stupid enough to subscribe to Aion for a year. Yeah I got a better deal, cheaper monthly sub overall but I am already struggling to stay in the game for longer than 1 hour.
Aion does have some nice landscapes and if you turn it all up and add some x4 Antialiasing - in some places game is quite pretty. But its all about the taste. I personally like landscapes graphics in say Risen or LOTRO much better. They look realistic comparing to cartoonish WoW style of Aion landscapes. Then again some people they are not that picky.
Its enough for them to have some pretty flowers here and there and green trees with blue water to make all the difference. I am one of the picky ones and landscape graphics throw me off in Aion. I am trying to ignore it though but some unpolished places like couple of pictures that other people posted they are really ugly. Overall game is ok, but Aion still has a lot of issues to treat it as a good game overall. Trust me after you get to 50 - there will be little left to say positive about the game. Grind, lack of GM in game support, channels are all full of goldseller adds, goldsellers sit in Pondemonium - central city of Aion on scripted personal houses and nobody does ANYTHING about that. Daily messages about hacked web sites and stolen accounts - this all just serves as a huge discouragement.
I am waiting for games to come out for Xbox 360 and PS3. That will be so much more fun than boring Aion. Too much hype and simply very little result. I don't give Aion much chance. As more people will hit 25 as more of them realize that Aion is just another Asian grind cookie cutter nothing special and in some places ugly and poorly supported game. And then like in puff of smoke Aion will become one of the games that will be talked about as didn't hold up to expectations.
This article sounds like either the writer didn't play the game long enough to see the boring and ugly side of the game or he just likes the whole concept and excited about the Aion like some other people. This game didn't really do it for me. I still consider LOTRO - the best MMORPG out there and I don't really care about what WoW, WAR or Aion can offer for PvP as RvR or PvPvE or whatever.
I've played several characters up to level 12-14 so far and even though I really wanted to like Aion, I just got bored after awhile, I know some people would say , " Yeah but you have play to X level before it gets good etc" but if a game has'nt hooked me in in some way after 10 to 15 levels well I dont think it ever will.
That being said I do hope Aion is a succes and maybe I'll jump back in at some point to give it another shot when I dont have anything else to play.
I dont really disaggree with the score really, because I know tons of peeps will love Aion, guess its just not for me is all .
I agree that if a MMO has not hooked you into playing it in the first fifteen or twenty levels then it is not a MMO for you.
Actually the most fun are first 20-25 levels. After that you get to grind a lot. So if game didn't do it for you during first 15 levels on multiple classes - it won't be any better later on. After 25 you can do Abyss PvP, but its all group based. Usually when people go to Abyss or Rift they go as raid and it all ends up raid versus 1, because thats the fastest way to kill. Thats how people usually farm Abyss points. There are other things like fortresses and artifacts. But those are really big scale PvP battles. It still ends up being raid versus 1.
A lot of deaths out there and lag because there are hundreds of people fighting against each other, just a crazy chaos. It may be fun for a while. But its not thought through content. So it just ends up as a mass PvP slaughter. There are some siege weapons, you have to buy them I think for a lot of money, then attack fortress and go in and kill people inside. But again, I tell you that its just not working the way devs thought it will. Its not DaOC. Also little by little people will drop off, cause game is hardly fun after 25. It is fun for a few more levels but after that you realize that all you have in this game is grind and PvP. When SWTOR is out this game will most likely die.
Granted at tewenty-nine the group aspect does kick in big time but at that level you have Eracus Temple, at thirty to thirty-five there is the Fire Temple, at thirty-five to forty there is the Aether lab. In the forties i'm sure there are two or three instance just to play in that level and when you reach near forty-five to fifty there are the Dark Poeta and dregion instances as well as the upper abyss fortresses with their instances too. There are the crafting recipes that you get from them also.
Can't deny that there is a grind after level thrity, but it's not that bad, it follows what most MMO's do when your nearing end game level.
Your kidding right? Let me guess some WoW person wrote this. Really? Runes of Magic and Ryzom...more importantly Requiem? The same Requiem that got horrible reviews? 6.5 at N4G, 6.2 Gamespot, Gamezone 6.5, PC Gamer 70....Give me a break. What "players" made this decision? What is the source for these review scores you posted?
Your kidding right? Let me guess some WoW person wrote this. Really? Runes of Magic and Ryzom...more importantly Requiem? The same Requiem that got horrible reviews? 6.5 at N4G, 6.2 Gamespot, Gamezone 6.5, PC Gamer 70....Give me a break. What "players" made this decision? What is the source for these review scores you posted?
This is why you guys aren't reviewers.
And he posted about the USER ratings. Not official ones. The users of Requiem, must like requiem. That's why it's rated so high. THAT'S why they play the game!
you're hilarious.
1 instance for every 5 levels... And you're saying thats fun? :) Come on... Asian developers - nothing else needs to be added. I wish Aion was developed by Turbine or Bioware. Game would be so MUCH more fun... Game even has a FEEL of Asian grind fest. I don't know what is it about Asian games. Its like they have very little creativity.
/sarcasm on
/sarcasm offActually...let me do better than that.
Boomtown 10/14/09 Review 8 out of 10
1UP 10/13/09 Review C
GameFocus 10/13/09 Review 9.3 out of 10
ImpulseGamer 10/12/09 Review 9.1 out of 10
AceGamez 10/09/09 Review 7 out of 10
IGN 10/08/09 Review 8.5 out of 10
Gameplanet 10/08/09 Review 9 out of 10
Gamer Limit 10/08/09 Review 8.5 out of 10
Cheat Code Central 10/02/09 Review 3.7 out of 5
NZGamer 09/30/09 Review 8.8 out of 10
Megacritic Review 81 out of 100
RPGFan Review 90 out of 100
Gamespot Review 8.5 out of 10
I could go all day. The overall point here is out of all the reviews I've looked at (which is alot more than what's even posted here) 1UP gave it a "C".
This is why you guys aren't reviewers.
And he posted about the USER ratings. Not official ones. The users of Requiem, must like requiem. That's why it's rated so high. THAT'S why they play the game!
you're hilarious.
No you're hilarious. I asked where the "users" scores came from? Did they come from a review? Did he go through each games forums and do a poll? Where did the information come from?
Can you name several games that had more before their first expansion?
Seems to me that I can't recall a game that had more per level or 2?
1 instance for every 5 levels... And you're saying thats fun? :) Come on... Asian developers - nothing else needs to be added.
Can you name several games that had more before their first expansion?
Seems to me that I can't recall a game that had more per level or 2?
You raise a good point but then so does the poster that you are replying to. On one hand I can't recall too many games that had a ton of instances before they put out an expansion. On the other hand you would expect more from a game that is competing in today's environment. I'd expect a new game coming into the scene to already have thought ahead and created several instances even before their first expansion.
Considering it's only been out for a year, yes as do a few other that find it fun enough. Flight combat is a creative design and so is so is the gathering of aether, then there are the unique transformations in game, and the title uses with stats imbedded.
Don't think either company would have done better than it is now, fun is still subjective to each and every person out there and only they can say what is fun and what is not, so far all the servers seem to have a healthy population of players and no major decreases in population yet.
I don't mind that there's a steep leveling curve tbh. I try to view a game as a game rather than as a job to do. I'll just continue to play casually and enjoy it while I do it.
The point is not that other review sites gave it good reviews at times. The point is that this site gave it the best review it has ever given an MMO. And this MMO is quite simply not even close to that good.
For instance:
RPGFan gave Aion a 90. They gave World of Warcraft a 95.
IGN gave Aion an 85. They gave EQ2 an 85. They gave 9+ for WoW and expasions. They gave LotRO an 8.6. They gave Guild Wars a 9. They gave WAR a 9.
Metacritic ended up with an 8.1 overall for Aion. They gave EQ2 an 8.3. They gave LotRO an 8.6. WoW is over 9. Guild Wars 8.9.
You can go to every single site and do this. And you can find more games on these sites that are above Aion. This site is the only one that is saying that Aion is the best MMO ever made through it's overall "official" score. And it's embarrassing. Unless of course they come out and say that Aion is the finest MMO to ever be produced. But then they would lose even more credibility.
The point is not that other review sites gave it good reviews at times. The point is that this site gave it the best review it has ever given an MMO. And this MMO is quite simply not even close to that good.
For instance:
RPGFan gave Aion a 90. They gave World of Warcraft a 95.
IGN gave Aion an 85. They gave EQ2 an 85. They gave 9+ for WoW and expasions. They gave LotRO an 8.6. They gave Guild Wars a 9. They gave WAR a 9.
Metacritic ended up with an 8.1 overall for Aion. They gave EQ2 an 8.3. They gave LotRO an 8.6. WoW is over 9. Guild Wars 8.9.
You can go to every single site and do this. And you can find more games on these sites that are above Aion. This site is the only one that is saying that Aion is the best MMO ever made through it's overall "official" score. And it's embarrassing. Unless of course they come out and say that Aion is the finest MMO to ever be produced. But then they would lose even more credibility.
No this site is saying that aion had one of the best polished launches.
MMORPG.com review a game when it's launched it's probably if they made a re-review of wow and lotro with their new expansions the rate would be higher but here the rating means most how was the game launched when released.
No this site is saying that aion had one of the best polished launches.
MMORPG.com review a game when it's launched it's probably if they made a re-review of wow and lotro with their new expansions the rate would be higher but here the rating means most how was the game launched when released.
A smooth launch is all it takes to be tops?
You are not thinking clearly.
A smooth launch is all it takes to be tops?
You are not thinking clearly.
Aion had a smooth launch and what it promised was already there working, yes there were small stuff here and there to fix and they still need to fix bots and gold spam problem but you could play normally if you could get pass the queue time.
While some other games (better not name them or some could QQ) didn't work well and took weeks to fix before people could play the game well.
For me if you can launch a game that has very few bugs/glitches at launch it already deserves a higher rate then one that took weeks or a month to fix before it could be playable.
Aion had a smooth launch and what it promised was already there working, yes there were small stuff here and there to fix and they still need to fix bots and gold spam problem but you could play normally if you could get pass the queue time.
While some other games (better not name them or some could QQ) didn't work well and took weeks to fix before people could play the game well.
For me if you can launch a game that has very few bugs/glitches at launch it already deserves a higher rate then one that took weeks or a month to fix before it could be playable.
To me, in order to hold the #1 spot anywhere you need to have a lot more than a smooth launch. Actually, a smooth launch should in my opinion have absolutely nothing to do with the rating on a game.
Even if a reviewer was giving a review and wanted to include LAUNCH as one of his categories, the other categories would bring the overall number down. There really is nothing #1 about this game at all. Not even graphics.
kind of surprised by the rating, 8.7 seems pretty high for this game. Felt more like a 7 to me, the graphics are great, the classes are kind of interesting but the grinding later on is a huge detraction for me. Its basically the cap that I hit and then stop playing because grinding on mobs is dull without some kind of shade of questing.
Got that right
A smooth launch is rather easy when the game was already out for a year in the east. :)
I wonder if anyone could tell us how well the original launch went?
As a matter of fact, I even had to re-read through mmorpg.com's review of World of Warcraft to figure out the reason for the score they gave. The overall review marks are high, most notably factors such as "fun" and "graphics" get 10 from the reviewer. But. There are two categories that makes the game plummet: service and performance. The main gripes of the reviewer are queues to most popular servers, occassional crashes and poor service, as illustrated by the quotes below.
"Another way Blizzard could improve greatly is in the area of customer service."
"Beyond that, there are just some bad decisions, like the recent banning of a number of people because of speed hacks and gold dupes. No doubt there were many cheaters in that group, but several innocent players were caught in the guilty-until-proven-innocent approach Blizzard took, including one player banned for having too much gold."
These were actually very much true at the time of the WoW review and made the review a well-balanced one. The decisions Blizzard made with the game at its early stages are imitated by NCSoft almost to the letter. You could end up being randomly disconnected and looking at your desktop picture, there is next to no customer service and the mass bannings done were using rather grotesque means to alleviate the botting problem. These same actions did affect the score of WoW, and most rightly so. Hence, the only review that needs to be re-done is that of Aion for the reviewer really can't give better score to graphics and fun than his WoW-reviewing comrade.
Edit: Typos, those poor bastards.
"It seems like customer support in the game is pretty awful."
I'd go from 'prety awful' to near non existant.
The forums are irrelevant as no one from NCsoft ever posts there, new posts in a thread dont bump the thread to the top, and the only moderation is in the form of deleted posts.
They have either no GMs in-game or they have the worst GMs ever.
Every public chat channel is full to the brim with gold spammers and the various good grinding spots are full of Bots.
Im pretty sure I saw something when looking for in game support that they dont work after 5pm UK time and not at all on weekends.
My sub is frozen now and will remain so until the company gets its act togther.
New posts do not bump threads and the only moderation is deleting threads? That is just taking the piss.
Service is pretty horrible. but thats NCsoft period. all of there games i've played were like that. if you don't like games crashing, either stop playing brand new ones, or learn to fix the stuff yourself.
as far as score goes. it's a review. if you don't agree with the reviewers thoughts and score, write your own goddamn review. bunch of f---ing whiners who have to follow the herd.
as far as the game goes, it's alright. graphics are nice, plays smooth. i have the liberty of having a system built for maya and the likes. my FPS spike like crazy sometimes, between 60-200, but i haven't decided if thats just my comp, or the game. could that new windows 7 bull too.
the animation is all done very smooth, but not really "real". can't put my finger on why, but something about it....
as far as gameplay goes. it's basic. almost a little too basic for someone who has played a mmo before... so sfor some experienced players, it probably will be "fast food". that depends on the end game tho, i haven't made it anywhere near that far.
it has a monotonous feel to it, but the game originally came from korea. to all the people complaining about grinding, i repeat.
THE GAME CAME FROM KOREA!
if you don't like grind games, don't play anything that even remotely hints to the idea of a korean origin. or asian (no offense intended to anyone).
The character builder is set up very nicely. a good mix of "preset" and "sliders". some hair length options would be nice tho, give it a bit more depth.
all in all it is a decent game. they obviously spent more time and effort on looks than they did content, but thats what patches are for. how many content patches has wow added? kinda like comparing a stock car to a tuned one....
I bought this game and played it for a month and was sorely dissappointed by the game play and what I had to do to reach the pvp content of the game. I was so fed up with trying to get to level 25 and enter the abyss that I actually gave up at level 23 because I was trying to solo, died tons, leveled sooo slow and actually got tendonitis in my wrist from playing this game. I am an avid EVE player and have tried almost every game on the market. But this game really needs to figure out there first 25 levels so they don't lose people like me, because from what I could see it's WoW with wings and thats it.
Aion, needs work, I basically look at it right now as a pay-to-play beta. The grind was never the problem for me, its was the crap customer service and gold spammers. Lag was another factor in why I decided to leave, I run a pretty high-end system here, found out NCsofts current servers dont handle high-population pvp very well. Try conquering a fortress where the lag practically makes little better than a slide-show or server crashes right in the middle of the fight. Also, found it rather interesting and somewhat funny how my character could fly but not swim, just walk along the bottom as if he was made out of lead and drown. Plus, there was disturbing news that some of the higher end quests weren't even translated....how the HELL am I suppose to read it?
The Verdict
Save your money, its simply not worth paying hard earned cash to play at this time.
Two questions...
is Aion a solo-ability game or group ability game or both?
How far can you solo? Thanks.
Though I did group from time to time and though there are a few quests/areas that require a group, I can pretty much say I mostly soloed to lvl 46. I am fairly confident that one could solo to cap.
The problem is that you are going to have to be resourceful because if you go into the abyss you might run into the enemy en masse.
Thank you!
When you reach pvp in the abyss is it usually even or is there a higher amt of peope in one faction.
In wow, it seemd like the horde was always had more players than the Alliance.
Depends on the server, depends on the time of day, etc.
Go to aionsource.com and check out the server forums to get a good idea as to what is going on.
I would suggest to everyone, do not buy this game. The service is the worse thing I have ever experience. In the past I have reported glitches with screen shots that blatently show there are huge problems in with the games programming. Their tech support blaims it on my computer though I know other players are experiencing the same thing. Also, they merged servers and did not take into account balancing the community. The lag is very bad. I also attempted to report that. Most people's toons (your in game character) completely froze during a raid. This is highly unusual as it is possible to play with out viewing character models. Though I reported that most people experienced a ping in excess of 9000 (i know wow) tech support didnt care and blamed it once again on my system
N ext, we have the GMS, who refuse to share information. Players are actually banned from asking NCsoft for information in the forums, it is their written policy that it is not allowed. Their GMS also insult players -alot- in the forums. I have seen so many players under minded it is rediculious. The GMS are trolls, isn't that amazing?
Finally, there is the issue of flight in the game. All advertisements make it out like you can fly around 24/7 and stay in the air for very long periods. The space in which flight is allowed is actually very limited and so many things can knock you out of the air, such as being attack, there is no point to flying. It becomes a hazard to fly as opposed to something thats a fun tactical attribute. The flight timer is 1 minute by defualt. However, other classes get bonuses on flight time/flight speed and there are items as well as equipment that can change this flight time. Despite that, it is still a very limited part of game play. It still has some glitches, such as falling in mid air causes you to die. But youre a bird.... They did this on purpose though it makes no sense. 4second fall=death 5seconds cd on wings to deploy. youre doomed if something knocks you our of the air basically.
Very limited story line, if you like roleplay, dont bother. The story line, there is none to really speak of. The game is rather dull in that aspect. The pvp is highly unbalanced. Spiritmasters (the game summoner) by level 50 have 3 fear skills which cannot be guarded against, except for the sin who has 1 skill that absorbs 1 magical attack. I am not even sure if that works tbh. They also have an aoe fear skill which will through an entire group off them into mobs that will kill them. Clerics are considered to be a class that no one should fight alone, unless they are an sm. They are almost impossible to kill. The put DOT (damage over time) on you and heal till you cant keep with their heals and DOT. The game is just rediculious.
Do you like events? Forget it... They put up 2d bulbs on 2 d trees for christmass and sold EXTREMELY expensive event things. Most games give something to you for free. The santa hat cost over 100,000 in game money. The suit, is over 200,000 I believe. The events, when they do happen, which is rare, suck. Also, gm's play in the game, though they don't help players. They just...well do nothing but sit there to have fun. Unfortunately elyos(1 of 2 races) has all of the gms, which means the other race (asmo) ends up getting the short end of the stick.
I refuse to invite my friends to play this game for free month of game play because I LIKE my friends and would like to KEEP them. Yes, the up keep of the game is just that bad. They refuse to give the community information about anything. They told us we would be getting a major patch, were late on it, didnt give us information about it being late till after it was already late, never apologized really, never explained why it happened.
I have NOTHING good to say about this game. The community is crap too because they never ban trolls or people how train mobs on other people. It is against ncsoft policy to do/be either, however they do not care. Also, main forts that are guarded by a barrier the other race cannot enter have a glitch in them, which people take advantage of. Unfortunately tiamat, a game gm, said it was 'acceptable' though it is blatently exploiting a glitch. The guards inside the barrier do not fight back... Why? Because they arent suppoed to have to. So a lvl 50 (our cap lvl) will come in, kill a bunch of people, get a butt load of ap(used to buy pvp gear) and suffer no repercussions.
Do NOT buy this game. I hate wow, but at least the moderate their community. Goatse was once all over our forum. Did I mention our forum is still broken? IT works, just barely.....
The only point in this entire post that has any merit is about the flight. Everything else is just hot-air spewing from someone who was massively disappointed because the game wasn't exactly what he/she thought it would be. If you're going to spew THAT much drivel, at least give some links to back up your nonsense.