Aion Review
It’s been a long time in the making and through the Closed and Open Betas, we’d gotten an early taste of this new MMO from NCSoft. Now, with the release (and early access for pre-orders), it’s time to review the hell out of this sucker and figure out if this really has a chance to keep you away from that other MMO.
Introduction
What a view...
Aion is a Fantasy RPG MMO with a hefty Asian influence. In fact, the game already launched in Asia almost a year ago and is grabbing a serious amount of marketshare there. Not surprising given the style of the characters and NPCs. If you’re a fan of Final Fantasy, I think you’ll be right at home. Huge weapons, cutsey animal people, and effeminate male characters are all there. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy this sucker. At typical resolutions, you aren’t going to be scrutinizing every NPC and mob’s details all the time. Besides, you’ll be working hard to get your wings and dive in to the PvPvE end game.
We’ll get to the details in a sec. If you’ve got ADD, scroll to the conclusion at the bottom or click here.
Character Building/Customization
Races/Factions
Elyos the light...
There are three main races or factions in Aion but only two of them are playable (for now): Elyos, Asmodian and Balaur. The first two are playable and outside of some appearance differences (i.e. differences in color palettes) there really isn’t much different between the two. The Elyos are “light” and the Asmodian (Asmod) are “dark”. Their worlds are generally aligned that way (Asmod areas are dimmer and painted with darker hues; Elyos areas are lighter and brighter). For some descriptive flavor text about each one, go here.
There are no race bonuses or anything related to these different factions. Maybe it’s a good thing but it definitely “dumbs” it down for the average player.
One distinction that does play into your choice of faction is server balance. Currently, NCSoft is limiting your ability to create characters on a single server for both factions. Once you pick a faction for your first character, all other characters on that server must be from the same faction. It’s an attempt to keep the server balanced with players playing a distinct side and being unable to switch back and forth.
You can always go and create a new character of any faction on a different server. You’ll just have to stick to that new faction on the new server.
Asmod the dark
I can understand the justification for this…a bit…but it seems a bit too artificial for me. Worse, it forces you to go through the same noob area (as we’ll discuss later) over and over again. Not that this is necessarily a new idea but at least some MMOs like World of Warcraft offer up differences both between factions AND within factions by having each race start up in a different area of the world map. That way you can create a new Alliance character as a Gnome or Dwarf and end up at IronForge or do up a Night Elf and end up in Darnassas. Here, it’s the same old starter area over and over again. Ugh. We’re hoping they’ll change their minds on this or at least figure out a way for us to start our journeys in different areas for some diversity.
Classes
Pick a Class...any Class...
Aion’s take on classes mimics Tabula Rasa, actually, but in a decent way. You start with your basic archtypes: Warrior, Scout, Mage, and Priest. Up through level 10, you have your basic limitations (armor, weapons, skills) that make you whatever the archtype is. Magic users tossing spells, warriors bludgeoning everything in sight.
Once you hit level 10, you get to choose one of two subclasses. Each class has two and once you pick, that’s your final class for the rest of the game for that character. Unlike TR, there’s no going back if you change your mind. You’ve got to start a whole new character and go down that path all over again.
It’s an interesting take on classes, giving you the ability to get used to operating as the mage or warrior before having to decide on a specialty that will either limit you or expand your abilities.
We won’t go into full detail as far as each of the classes and subclasses are concerned here. Plenty of sites have guides. Go here to see the general descriptions for the various classes.
Pick me! Pick me!
What is interesting is the breakdown of classes. The Priest subclasses are both capable (more so for the Chanter subclass) of melee combat. In fact the Chanter is more like a Paladin in their ability to wear metal armor and beat the crap out of people. Warriors are also interesting since the subclasses, Gladiators and Templars, are essentially DPS and tank warriors, respectively, though the Templars can actually cast magic (chants, incantations) to heal and grab aggro.
In the end, all the different classes are represented in some way: rogues (Scout/Assassin), hunters (Mage/Spiritmasters), and paladins (Priest/Chanter). Or:
Warrior / Gladiator = dps warrior
Warrior / Templar = tank warrior
Scout / Assassin = dps rogue
Scout / Ranger = pet-less hunter / ranged rogue
Mage / Sorcerer = standard magic user
Mage / Spiritmaster = pet class + mage (sounds cool, actually)
Priest / Cleric = standard healer
Priest / Chanter = paladin-like class
We’ve tried almost all of them but not all the way up the cap (you think we have that kind of time?!?). All the classes are geared towards PvP and PvE though obviously their play styles are different. Mages, Clerics and Rangers are all about ranged/remote combat. Warriors (duh), Assassins, and Chanters are melee all the way. We suggest following the path you like to start with (i.e. if you like support, go priest or templar; if you like hack and slash, go warrior or assassin; etc.) until you’ve had a chance to group up with others in raids and PvP. You’ll probably stumble on something you like which you can always go in and create as your alt. Don’t get stuck trying to start with one then another then another. You won’t get a great feel for the class until you’ve lived in its skin through at least 20 and into PvP.
Customization
From this...
The “big” thing with Aion character building is their customization engine. While it’s not necessarily THAT different from other character customization engines that have come out (have you see Champions Online’s one?) it definitely delivers on the idea that you can create a broad variety of character looks. There are some limitations but they’re minor.
You get all the sliders you’d expect to tweak nose size, eye position, mouth shape, everything. It results in a swath of different characters in-game. I created a giant (full height and full leg height) that ran like he was stuck in molasses (run speeds are the same for all characters so…) but he towered over the characters others made that were a foot high.
...To This...
The one disappointing aspect of this was the selection of voices. They’ve got all of four: Basic, Tough, Callous, and Young. The first and last are a bit too annoying. Tough sounds like some mechanic you bumped into on the street. And, Callous is probably the best of them all. You’d think this wouldn’t matter much but your character will make a LOT of noise while you’re in combat so be sure you like the voice you select…it’s not changeable after you submit your character (scratch that, there MIGHT be the ability to re-customize your character in-game which lets you essentially run this customization process through all over again).
You can pretty much do anything...
All in all, though, there is plenty to help you shoehorn your alter ego into this game without you wanting for much. In some respects, what NCSoft did here is pretty much where the bar should be in terms of diversity (class selection) and customization (character looks). It frees you up to try different ways of playing the game without overwhelming you (again, have you see Champions Online’s character builder?!?).
Score: 8
General Gameplay
This place must have cost a fortune!
The world of Aion is fairly large. I can’t say it matches World of Warcaft’s initial launch world map in size but it’s definitely not small. As you progress through the game, you’ll encounter all the expected accouterments of an MMO for better or worse. And that strikes at the heart of this game and how it feels: it doesn’t go completely overboard and try too hard to reinvent the wheel but it also doesn’t ignore the last 10 years of MMO history.
While some key assignments might not be the same (they were tweaking camera controls as late as Open Beta in response to people coming from WoW and expecting the camera controls there) you’ll find your usual suspects in the UI (action bars, chat window, map, etc.) and game systems (backpack = cube, auction house, bank, guilds, etc.).
C'mon baby, make me some money!
And despite some odd differences (your backpack is really a cube that can be expanded…no bag management here) there are also some great additions. For instance, your warehouse (bank) consists of two parts: the main warehouse slots for your character and an ACCOUNT warehouse that is shared amongst all your characters on the server. No more mailing items back and forth between characters. Now, you just drop it into the account warehouse and log in with your other toon to get it from the warehouse. Nice.
Anyone need a sword?
The auction house does things different as well. You get charged for each item you put up (and it’s generally reasonable though it seems to be based on item cost rather than auction length–which isn’t changeable) but you also get paid out from the auction house itself (no mail messages with gold attached). You also have a limit of 10 items you can have running at any given time.
The way they compensate for this in-game is something totally new: private stores. When you hit a key (Y by default) you’ll get a window with about 20 slots. You can drag in items and price them for sale. Then you can enter a short message and click Start. Your toon will spawn a small banner and a stool and display your message where he sits. Instant store. Other players can walk up and browse or buy the items in your store. You can’t do much while the store is active (it’s not like you can craft and sell at the same time though that would be clutch) though you can chat or check the map or whatever.
Private Stores are the new plague...
The downside? Flea markets in all sorts of stupid places and a glut of people sitting in store mode throughout the main thoroughfares of major cities and towns. It’s a sight to see when you walk into the major cities the first time and just see a crapload of people sitting there with their private stores while they’re afk.
Still, I’ve been able to offload stuff in remote outposts with no immediate access to my warehouse or the auction house and at decent prices.
Sooo much better...
Time will tell if this proves to be a winning feature or not but I think with some way to moderate it (i.e. you can’t place your store just ANYWHERE), it could be one of the best innovations Aion comes with.
UPDATE: The latest patch (1.5.0.7) removes the ability to leave your toon logged in while afk for ever by putting a 30 minute limit on your private store. Now, the streets are much more quiet…
Since Aion seems to be a game about customization (at least of your character), they also threw in a “stone” system and a dye system to let you customize your gear and yourself.
Step 1: Pick a manastone...
Stones refer to enchantment, mana- and god-stones. They all are essentially enchantments/buffs for your gear though manastones generally affect your stats while the enchantment and godstones affect your weapon’s stats and output. Enchantment stones are essentially like the product of a disenchantment on an item in WoW. Manastones and godstones are usually found as drops or quest rewards.
Step 2: Pick an item with a slot...
I won’t go into detail about the way they all work and what sorts of buffs/enchantments you can get. There’s a more detailed guide here. Suffice it to say it’s a nice little system that allows you to customize yourself or your weapons so you can tweak your stats towards dot damage or to slant your stats towards dodge/parry so you can use one of your attacks more often.
Step 3: Make it happen!
There are some dangers along the way: some manastone operations (like adding a second manastone to a piece of equipment) can result in the destruction of both the stone you’re using and any on the item…consider it the price of all this customization.
The dye system isn’t anything crazy special. It’s just a system where you can apply colored dyes to equipment to color and customize them. Again, like manstones, it’s something you sort of expect nowadays in an MMO and it’s nice to see it in there rather than being relegated to a later patch or expansion (largely because people are asking for it).
Combat
Triple action!
Ah, the staple of an MMO. Whether you like it or not, you’re going to end up fighting someone (or something). In general, nothing new (select target, start using your abilities) but early on you do start to use chain abilities, especially as a warrior or a scout. The animations look good and the initial chainable abilities will map to the ability that triggered it so you don’t have to waste action bar slots to be able to one-key a chain ability.
What's that? It hurts? How about this??
You also get two sets of slots for weapons so you can do a quick switch (there’s an action button you can drag to a bar) between weapons sets. This is useful for classes that allow for ranged combat (scout) so you can switch between your bow and your melee weapons or for warriors who want to switch between a weapon + shield and a 2H weapon. Or if you find you’ve got two different sets of weapons that make sense for different situations (maybe PvE versus PvP, even), you can set this up so you’re not wasting an inventory slot for a set of weapons and so you can quickly equip one of the sets.
Death is inevitable and involves you getting sent to the last place you bound to. You also get tagged (after level 5) with an XP hit and a rez illness that slows you down for a couple minutes. A “soul healer” will remove both penalties for a decent price. There is no tombstone, a la WoW, to run back to in order to avoid the penalty but you can be rezzed within a short time period by a helpful cleric if there is one nearby. It’s not a terrible price to pay for death and the bind spots tend to be relatively plentiful so you’re not running around the map TOO much…
One thing that is different about combat are power shards. Power shards are one-time-use damage boosters that you can activate at any time. A shard will boost your damage when you hit during an attack (with a weapon, no spell shards). They drop from mobs or you can buy them from the general goods merchants in cities and towns but they’re friggin expensive. The damage boost isn’t huge (or else these things would be worth the kinah you spend) but it can mean the difference between success and death in certain battles.
Power (shard) enabled!
Whether you use power shards or not is entirely up to you. You can store up the drops you get and use them whenever or you can shell out (like me) every once in a while to stock up a bit and kick them in gear when you need a little help. For a quick guide on using them and a list of the damage boost you’ll get for each type, click here.
The last thing to mention are DP. These are Divine Points. Once you’ve become a Daeva (level 10/post-Ascension), you start to accumulate these points during combat. Once filled (and it can be “uber” filled to multiple levels) and assuming you acquired the appropriate ability from your class trainer, you can invoke a special ability (usually combat but it depends on your class) that consumes DP. This ability can be a devastating attack that doles out 300 damage or an insta-heal of 50% of your HP and Mana. It adds another small dimension to your combat experience. But, given the limited use (it takes a lot of combat to fill that bar), it’s usually best spent when you really need it (like boss/elite battles). One thing to note: when you die, you lose all those points. Watch your back!
All in all, combat is generally fast paced and visually pretty stylish. As you add boosts (like godstones) and additional abilities, it gets pretty cool.
Quests
Campaign quests
Out of the box, so to speak, there are plenty of quests to keep you busy. It doesn’t feel like they’re anywhere close to WoW’s count of 2500 or so at launch but they’re definitely up there. The starter area (levels 1-9) has probably 30-50 quests in a very short period of time. It doesn’t seem like much at first but you’ll definitely find yourself with plenty to do throughout the game.
The game distinguishes between quests that fulfill a single-player plot line that moves you through the world and encourage you (or in some cases require you) to move along as you level up (Campaign Quests) and standard fare you get from NPCs that are not critical for your progression through the SP game.
Regular quests
There’s also a third kind of quest that’s for crafting called a Work Order. We’ll get into that one when we talk about crafting below.
The quests are what you’d expect from an MMO these days which means, yes, a lot of grinding. Collection, FedEx, and general slaughter quests abound. Rewards can be substantial for some quests, in particular the Campaign ones, so it behooves you to complete as many quests as you can. However, all the killing and collecting will inevitably get boring as you kill everything under the sun. If you’re like me and you tend to just collect quests and then group them by venturing out and grabbing what you need for 2-3 quests in each area, you’ll do fine.
The new !
I can’t say there were much in the way of “interesting” quests that just turned questing on its ear. This is unfortunate because it brings the game down a bit and induces boredom in places pretty quick. When you reach level 10 and enter the next area for your faction, you’ll find it chock full of beasties you have to slaughter in groups of 6 or 8. Ugh. Fetch this, do that, kill them.
There’s no sign, at least early on, of some of the more innovative quests out there. The best I could see was one where you decided which one of three beasties to slaughter to get a trophy for an item you have to deliver to someone. So uninspired.
Find me my prey...
One thing, though, that IS inspired is another nice “invention”: the Locate button. For every quest, there’s usually a target to kill or obtain or there’s a a person to deliver it to. They’re often highlighted as a link which, when clicked, will add an X to your map to help you find them. Brilliant. No more running around, spamming chat, etc. trying to find some mob. Instead, just click Locate and BAM, you’re on your way to it.
Level Flow
For Asmods, this is home...
Level flow is all about moving you from initial spawn through the world and up through the levels of your character. For this, Aion is actually about average. Don’t get me wrong. They definitely flow you in the direction of level progression using a combination of a lot of mountains and some (gasp) invisible boundaries. But, they also took a page from the MMO rule book that previous games helped write by guiding you through the land and into higher level areas via quests and story progression.
The thing is, the starting path is always the same for each race. And, there are a lot of notable similarities between the starter AND the levels 10-20 area that make you say, “Really?” Both have you start in the middle of nowhere, following a couple of quests to a village which gives you trainers, quest givers and merchants (i.e. your first base). You then progress through until you get to Ascension which makes you a Daeva (the winged creatures adorning everything Aion). Once you hit Ascension, you end up in the hub cities for each race, Sanctum for Elyos and Pandamonium for Asmodian.
I could get used to this place...
Then you’re ushered into the next area for levels 10-20 (roughly) which starts in similar towns that have a central square with all the merchants and quest givers around. They are both even surrounded by water and have two paths leading away. And, the quests lead you during your early teens (10-13ish) to the nearest small village.
Sure there are differences in landscape and look and feel of the environment but c’mon. A little diversity maybe? I know I’m biased because WoW did it so well…though they had multiple races per faction. But, we need to have at least one more starting area or one more path to progression in the early levels since we’re going to (if we like the game) want to create more chars. It might be nice knowing where to get all the quests and how to complete them all a lot faster the second time around, it also gets tedious and boring.
In some respects, I miss Tabula Rasa’s little trick where they saved a copy of your character BEFORE your subclass pick so you could go back to that character, already leveled up to the point where you pick your subclass so you can try again. Yeah, you might be limited to the same basic class but at least you can skip the “training” levels and create the other subclass of your class.
Flying!!
Aion gives you wings!
No discussion of your character (or Aion itself) would be complete without talking about flying. Yes, flying is absolutely frigging cool. Once you get your wings the first time, you’ll HATE the fact that you can’t actually use them throughout most of the maps. It’s actually ridiculous though it’s obviously a game balance/play decision (you can avoid mob melee attacks by just flying up a few feet…grab a bow or if you’re a mage start casting and you can breeze through just about any high-level area).
You need to become a Daeva (level 10 effectively) to get your wings but once you do you can either fly in designated areas (for instance, the main town in the level 10-20 area or in the Abyss where PvP is dished out) or just glide. You can still get some seriously visceral joy out of gliding off a high cliff though which is fairly easy to do. But, beware, your flight time is short and, though you can up it with level progression, buffs and equipment, you’ll never really be a permanent fixture in the sky.
The game incorporates some mildly interesting quests that involve flight (more like find the hidden npc or quest object that you need to fly up to). But, it has yet to show its full potential with flight. Time will tell if NCSoft properly leverages this “competitive advantage” over other games. It’s so different hovering and flying around compared to just running around on mounts or on foot.
Score: 7
Solo Gameplay
I don't want to hurt you...
Now, if you knew me, and maybe you do, you’d know I’m more of a soloer than a grouper. I don’t always have time to form or find a group and at times like just not having to deal with group dynamics.
So, I definitely paid attention to how the game played for me all by my lonesome. In general, most if not all of the classes and subclasses are soloable, though obviously some are better suited to others. Most of the melee classes are, of course, largely fine. In fact, the mages and priests seem to level a bit faster if only because using your spells properly keep you from getting damaged longer so you spend less time healing up between kills.
I can’t speak to the higher levels (20+) but for the lower levels, soloing is not a problem. If you manage your class well and don’t screw up the adds too much, you can generally plow through mobs on your way up the level ladder without having to group. I think the only times I remember grouping were only to help out some people so we didn’t have to keep waiting around for the same mob or objective to spawn.
Of course, PvP and raids and the like will eventually draw you out of your solo-play cocoon but for general leveling and fun, there is really no reason to group unless you plan on power leveling to get to the PvP.
Score: 7
PvP
Given PvP’s availability after level 20, I’ll leave this to a follow-up review on the PvP alone. One thing to note though is the fact that PvP has been advertised with two distinct characteristics: 1) you fly a lot more than you do in the PvE environment and 2) the third faction that’s not playable joins the fray. So, the PvP has actually been quoted as more of a PvPvE environment. Not only do you have to defend against human opponents from the opposite faction, you’ve got AI mobs coming at both of you. Could be stupid or could be fantastic…we’ll see!
Score: Not Rated
Crafting
121 k for Charcoal?
Ahh, crafting…my old friend. Crafting in Aion is somewhere between the complexity of Vanguard (terrible) and the (relative) simplicity of WAR and WoW. There are six main branches: handicraft, tailor, cooking, alchemy, weaponsmith and armorsmith.
Except for handicraft, they’re all self-explanatory. Handicraft is sort of like the bin for anything not covered by the rest. Handicafters will do carpentry and jewelcrafting. Staffs, bows, jewelry, this one profession does all of them. Great. If you’re looking for leatherworking, it’s under tailoring. Sort of makes sense I guess.
Crafting is all about a roll of the dice...
One interesting thing is that all professions are accessible in their early stages. So, anyone can level up in Level 1 of any or all–yes, all–professions. The limitation is money since just about everything requires a component you can’t gather or make and have to buy (at high prices) from a vendor. In the end though, you can only MASTER in two professions. The only real benefits I know of yet (haven’t mastered anything yet!) are a title and stat boosts for that profession. Not much of a reason (beyond cost) to pick one profession to roll with. Oh, and yes, you actually gain level experience when crafting objects that aren’t too easy, similar to SWG. So, you can, in effect, level up your character by just crafting (though it would take a hell of a lot of crafting time and money to do so…not exactly practical).
Can I keep the leftovers??
Another interesting feature in the crafting system is the Work Order system. Each master that you learn from (you pay an initial fee of around 3,600 kinah to learn a profession) offers up a Work Order that you can repeat multiple times. You gain skill in the profession as you craft and usuall get a random reward (of some sort of basic material you need for that profession) as well. After the first “level” (where your skill reaches 10), work orders require a component that they don’t give you so you start to pay out your hard earned money. This is the main expense of leveling up if you don’t craft actual items.
And, as mentioned before, even if you do craft your own items, you’re still going to end up needing to buy some supplemental components. For instance, to create Steel Ingots, which are the foundation of Weaponsmithing and Armorsmithing, you need a Charcoal Briquette. That costs about 121 kinah.
Time to go shopping!
To make a Steel Dagger, you need 7 Aether Powder (gathered), 3 Minor Weapon Flux (dropped), 5 Steel Nails (crafted at 2 Steel Ingots each), and 3 Steel Rods (crafted with 4 Steel Ingots and 2 Iron Acid–bought–each). A Steel Ingot requires 1 Iron Ore (gathered) and 1 Charcoal Briquette. Iron Acid costs 242 kinah. So, that’s 22 Steel Ingots at a cost of 121 kinah per ingot for a total of 2,662 kinah. The Iron Acid adds another 1,452 kinah (3 x Steel Rods where Iron Acid costs 242 and you need 2 so you’re talking 484 kinah each). Your total for one Steel Dagger, available to any crafter with 10 points of profession experience (which is easy to get) costs you 4,114 kinah before you even attempt to sell it. Very expensive.
The other downside to crafting is the randomness. During crafting you see two bars, a light blue and a purple one. The former represents your “Success” and the latter your “Failure”. Outside of your experience level in that profession and whether you’re crafting something ridiculously below your level, you’re presented with this little window while you watch the two bars work their way across to the other end of the window. What governs these and what ever is going on to determine how far they advance at any given moment is any one’s guess. They just pitter-patter across the screen and fail or succeed at random.
And, given the fact that a failure results in lost materials, it’s going to be a source of frustration when you get to higher levels and lost really expensive or rare components to some random die roll you can’t see/control.
It’s a bit too armchair for my liking but is definitely better than Vanguard’s crazy complex and tiring crafting system. I would prefer a little more interactivity or else a simple progress bar with some indication of failure. And, some recipes require a lot of work to put together. I don’t mind it but trying to keep up with multiple professions will prove a nightmare.
Score: 8
Technicals
Aion's definitely pretty in places...
Aion’s environments look really good even if collision detection is a bit annoying. At the heart of the game is CryEngine 1.3. This is the version of the engine that was used for the original Far Cry game. It’s been since (since Far Cry that is) updated to support 3.0 shaders and HDR lighting. This is NOT the engine that powers Far Cry 2 or Crysis which used a custom-modified version of 1 (Far Cry 2) and CryEngine 2 (Crysis).
Still, it’s a great engine in terms of looks and the artists at NCSoft really did a great job creating beautiful environments. There are times when, as I mentioned before, collision detection gets annoying (for instance, a piece of wood sticking out of the ground is a dumb obstacle when it’s not necessary for anything in-game). Not so much the game engine’s fault as it is the game designers.
Where'd everyone go?
Also, you will get odd behavior when the engine is loading on first load (i.e. when you log in for the first time in your play session) or when you enter a new area that’s crowded like major city crafting areas or teleport sites. Similar to the wonderful IronForge ghosts in WoW, you’ll get a funny scene where every mob or player that has a name tag is just not there while their name tag hugs the floor. In Aion, when a mob or NPC spawns, the name appears first at ground level and the model rises up from the ground. Almost eerie with the right mob. But a pain when you’re waiting for an area to load so you can select an NPC to get something done.
Now, I can’t say the engine’s graphics are the MOST beautiful I’ve seen (I’m still floored by Guild Wars’ graphics when I first used the game) but they do nicely. Colors are great, little details are even better. You’ll find some places have spiders dropping and rising from a Web and other odd details like giant elephant-like creatures that you just fight around (can’t select them…they’re more part of the scenery than anything else).
One thing they could do better on is the audio. The quality is fine but they really tried to make sure the game isn’t quiet. So, on top of the soundtracks tied to location and action (i.e. combat versus non), most characters have one or two greetings and your own avatar is pretty vocal too. With each attack or spell, you’ll usually get some sort of audio clip. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem except for the repetitive samples. The audio’s tied to specific spells and actions so if you’re constantly casting the same attack spell (which you will) you’ll hear whatever gibberish they’re speaking (“hari-sah!!”) over and over and over again. You could turn off audio but then it takes a bit away from the game.
It’s a shame because it looks like they put some effort into making sure as much as possible has audio (no more lifeless and quiet mannequins) and added variety (the different voices in character building) but didn’t think about how it would sound when you had to cast the same spell thousands of times.
Freigon was just added
On the server front, there has been some controversy surrounding the limited number of servers and instances for launch. There are 12 servers serving North America with the numbers split in half to cover West and East coast peeps. You can connect to whatever server you want but the idea is by playing a West coast server people will be on around the same time each day and will be in sync with you (i.e. if you log in after dinner every night at 7pm Pacific, you’ll find the same people who also sign in every night after dinner). Of course, we’ll see if it makes much of a difference on that front.
Within each “server”, there are multiple instances represented by channels. This is confusing because the chat uses channels as well. If you go to the main game menu (hit F10 unless you change the key map) then go to Support, then Change Channel, you can switch instances. The problem? If your friends aren’t on the same “channel” you won’t be able to see or talk with them. Bummer. Supposedly, when you get to level 19 or so, the areas where you’d be are all part of a single instance but of course, as everyone progresses into 20+, they might decide they need instances again.
What the hell is that?!
And that’s not the worse part…head start and launch both were plagued with long queues lasting HOURS. As of now, the queues seemed to have died down (likely due to the instancing mentioned above). My main gripe though is that they knew how many people would hit them during the Head Start (# = # of pre-orders give or take) and they still insisted the queues and server pops were exactly how things were planned and how they should’ve been. However, things have gotten better. Three days after the NA launch, I haven’t seen any queues (though I tend to play after primetime so…).
But, this actually points to one thing that stands out for Aion and it’s team at NCSoft. They’re very responsive. Community managers and producers are on Twitter and the forums and they’ve been pretty good at responding to queue, server load, farming, private stores and other issues during this launch period.
One would argue this sort of responsibility is a requirement but I’ve seen and heard plenty of irresponsibility when it comes to launch responsiveness. While I’m still not convinced the Aion team planned well for this launch, I think they’re doing a great job trying to rectify things and responding to the community. I will dock them points here though since there are still technical difficulties throughout (right now, there’s an unstable primary server and they’re working on the chat servers which are unstable as well…ugh). You can argue this is just part of the game for MMOs but in this day and age with everything everyone’s seen with all the other major MMO launches, it’s harder and harder to justify.
Score: 7
Replayability
I feel like I've been here before
For an MMO, replayability is less about whether you’d want to come back to the game (like a single player game) and do it all over again and more about whether you want to go through the first 50 levels all over again. You’ll hear it a lot from me but WoW and WAR to a lesser extent took care of this by having different starting areas for different races which included diversity in terms of environment and in some cases quests. Don’t feel like running through Stormwind and Deadmines and the like again? Fine, roll a Dwarf or a Night Elf and you’ve got a whole new experience. In general, you could find more than one area for just about every level range (though that thinned out a bit near the cap).
With Aion’s two factions standing in as races, you’ve got all of two starting areas. Yup, two. And, trust me, after rolling several characters during beta to try the different classes out, the starting area with the same quests, mobs, and NPCs gets pretty boring after a while. You just steamroll through the quests as fast as you can (and get good at it) but some of the FedEx missions really start to grind on you. Especially the one end quest before you Ascend at level 9 where you’re going back and forth and back and forth just to complete the damned quest. It’s so obvious it’s a time sink.
You can’t win them all I guess but for instance, right now, I dread the idea of rolling a new character…even if it means a different faction…because I really don’t want to visit the same lake (remember, the starting areas are very similar across the two factions) to kill the same mobs and get the same chain quests until I Ascend…yet again.
This is definitely a place where the TR class carbon copy would’ve been more than welcome, especially if it allowed you to switch classes or something. Or maybe you could get some special token (like the CE’s got) where you can activate an item and get more XP until you leave the starting area? I don’t know but there’s got to be something…
Ugh. I’m yawning just thinking about running through those early levels again. Sorry but this is definitely a downer on a game this good. It’s almost like they really didn’t want to waste much time worrying about creating even more content to populate the starting areas that people would leave anyway.
Conclusion
Damn you, Elyos!
All in all, Aion’s a pretty solid game coming out into a mature market. Is it a WoW-killer? Honestly, it’s doubtful it will kill WoW but it will definitely take a bite out of it. It won’t spell the end of 11-12 million subs for Blizzard but it might mean fewer new converts or at least that they might lose some peeps for a little while.
The game itself is probably best described less by what it does and more by what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t try to “reinvent” the genre by throwing out established elements of an MMO like crafting and PvE (WAR) or by trying to make your life difficult with limitations (professions). Aion brings many of the lessons learned from previous MMOs, embellishes them a bit, tosses in a new feature or two and then lays on a different fantasy element to give you a solid game that’s fun to play and does get addictive. Like any MMO, there are grinds and there are times when you wish there was a way to bypass some of the crawl. And, yes, people are tired of fantasy MMOs but with the Asian/Final Fantasy influence here and the beautiful game engine (I still like WoW’s but yes, it could use a few more polys), Aion keeps you from feeling the weight of yet another game with odd creatures (no elves though!!).
In the end, this is a game any casual or serious MMO player should play and try out. Whether or not you should ditch the Blizzard sub for this game, is entirely up to you and your circumstances. But, many guilds have established themselves in Aion already and if the PvP end game holds up, there could be a lot of people out there wringing their hands trying to decide if they should give up on their WoW sub.
Have fun and see you in the air in Aion!
Overall Score:
Character Building/Customization: 8
General Gameplay: 8
Solo Gameplay: 7
Crafting: 8
PvP: N/R
Technicals: 7
Replayability: 5
Final Score: 7.2
Developer: NC Soft West
Publisher: NC Soft
Release date: September 22, 2009
