Aion: The Tower of Eternity

[jgkitarel]

Putting this in here, since I've been at it since the closed beta and found it quite enjoyable. One of the nice novelties of it it actual aerial battles in places, though I am still grinding my way to the Abyss to take part in the PvPvE battles which can be quite interesting.

I'll put forth some points, both good and bad.

Good:

You can honestly fly, fight while flying, cast while flying, and ditch the wings for a fast descent followed by a glide when you fall far enough. A bit of warning tho, you can fly for a limited time, and many of the early PvE areas are no-fly zones outside of specific areas. Watch the flight timer.

Fairly easy to use interface. This is almost a requirement anyway, so I shouldn't have to expound upon this.

Skill chaining: Those of us familiar with MMOs know about arranging your skill bars for optimal use of skills. this takes part of that out of the equation, but linking the use of some skills to others, which are used by simply pressing the same bey a second, or even third time. If you wish to branch, which all chains do, it has nice helpful icons on the screen which you can click, and you havr plenty of time to click them (around three seconds or so)

Bad:

Prices: This is an Asian MMO, so the prices reflect the fact that you need to gold farm, often. While there are simplifications, like selling all opf your trash items with a click, this is a very time consuming process. At least the XP grind isn't as bad.

Unforgiving battles. The quest levels are there for a reason, and trying a quest at the minimum required level is going to hurt, a lot.


There's a lot more, but I seriously need to get some sleep, so Ill leave it at this for now.

[Uldihaa]

I'm currently playing this myself on Yustiel server. I have to admit I really like this game, though NCsoft needs to really work on in-game lore; at this point, the game barely has more story/background/lore than your typical FPS. It's also one of the most visually stunning MMOs I've played in quite a while, and yet has settings that will let just about anyone play (if you can play WoW, you can play Aion).

Crafting in this game is great since you don't have to make player usable items to get gains, you do special 'quests', called Work Orders, to get gains (though it does get expensive since most Work Orders require the use of vendor bought supplies). That means that the mats required for player items/gear, and that only drop from mobs, can be saved to actually make stuff you want to use or sell; no more wasting drop-mats for gains!

Those that play WoW will be happy to learn that Mining/Herbalism/Fishing have been combined into one gathering skill (though the name of that skill changes after completing the Ascension quest). The only other gathering skill (again gained at Ascension) is used exclusively for one type of mat, Aether, in either powder or crystal form depending on the level of the node.

Gear for the seven main slots (chest, legs, gloves, boots, shoulders, weapons, shields) all have stone sockets so that you can add whatever stat boosters you'd like to customize your gear; head and belt are the only armor slots without sockets. You can also equip a second set of weapons and switch between them with a single button, for example a Gladiator can have a polearm/great sword for DPS and keep a sword and shield for tanking and switch in midfight; or a Ranger can do the same with a bow and melee weapons. Another point about gear, that I only recently noticed myself, is that even if it has the same name it might have different bonus stats i.e. one chest piece might have +block and a second, with the exact same name, will have +hp or +mp or even +attack or +crit; so check all of them if you're shopping for new gear ;) .

I do feel that anyone interested in this game be aware that it is PvPvE, with a leaning toward PvP; once you hit 20, the 'main' questing areas will have the occasional player of the opposing faction running around, and everyone is 'flagged' for PvP all the time. So far the way it's worked out is that you might sometimes get killed by a player, but since they will be a long way from home, they'll usually get killed by the faction who own that zone. And since the game announces when a 'rift' opens (the only way to the opposing factions lands out side of the Abyss) and to where that rift goes, there is plenty of warning when to start keeping watch for opposing players (or to hunt them down ).

So far PvP has been rather... tentative. Most players are still trying to work out the mechanics and techniques of PvP in Aion. One of the things I was happy to see was that circle-strafing and 'step-through-the-target' techniques are pretty much useless in Aion; circle strafing because 95 percent of attacks/abilites/spells will stop the player from moving until it's executed, and 'step-through' because the game auto-orients on the selected target when attacks and the like are used (no 'you are facing the wrong direction' for the most part). Another mechanic is that your character will move into range of an attack/spell automaticly, meaning that running around erraticly is not very effective in PvP (though if you get far enough away the chasers will 'lose target' and stop).

The music in Aion is really top-notch, and I pity those that play with the music turned off; there really is a grand and epic feel to it.

Character customization is incredible, with quite a lot of things that you can do to make your character look unique. Altering character looks is done through use of a slider for a large number of features (including height). It reminds me more of Oblivion than most MMOs I've played. Sadly, hair is not as customized though the selection of styles numbers over 30 and color is customizable (as are eye colors).

As for money, the numbers can seem daunting until you stop thinking of kinah (in-game currency) as gold and more like the yen; at that point it becomes a whole lot easier to understand why things cost 1k+ kinah or more in the starting area. The player part of the economy is still rather erratic, so prices vary wildly. However, vendors do play a big role in the economy, meaning that you can actually make a decent amount of money just selling to them; you can also set up a private shop and sell things directly from your character (though the community is rather divided on this).

Well, that about all I've got to say about Aion right now (hey! I saw that eye roll and heard that muttered 'About time!' ).

[jgkitarel]

On Zikel myself with a 24 Gladiator. Had more fun PvP'ing in Asmodae when that little quest 'accidentally' sent me there. Needless to say, they didn't know what to make of it and bagged three of them before they realized what was going on.

You forgot to mention the abyss, where things get really interesting. Starts as PvP, and then after a side wins, you have to fight the non-playable faction, the Balaur. The PvP mechanics are fairly simple in comparison to most games (I've been running around there since the closed beta and made it to the abyss once.) It's not very forgiving to casters, so they have to jump in on an already ongoing engagement (as always), but the melee fighters can do some serious damage. There is a lot of teamwork involved, so the lopsided PvP those of us familiar with from WoW is less apparent, where it is kill them before they kill you (the relative lack of instant cast skills for burst damage/healing becomes very apparent here.)

On the other hand, most people are familiar with the WoW model, and there is some painful adjustment to make. For those familiar with Warhammer, think of it that way, but remember, winning the faction fight is only half the battle.

As for the economy, the personal shops are a nice touch, but had to be redone due to the abuses suffered when the game first started. Only 30 minutes real time before you have to reset your shop. This was done to keep people from using it as a means to stay in game while they were asleep, at work, eating, and so on.

Most people use the in-game trade brokers (similar to WoW's AH, but without the bidding, flat rate ony). The prices can be a bit daunting, and the gold, kinah, in-game currency farmers are advertising in force right now. As was said above, look at it like the Japanese Yen, or more appropriately, the Korean Won, and you get an idea.

[Uldihaa]

You forgot to mention the abyss, where things get really interesting. Starts as PvP, and then after a side wins, you have to fight the non-playable faction, the Balaur. The PvP mechanics are fairly simple in comparison to most games (I've been running around there since the closed beta and made it to the abyss once.) It's not very forgiving to casters, so they have to jump in on an already ongoing engagement (as always), but the melee fighters can do some serious damage. There is a lot of teamwork involved, so the lopsided PvP those of us familiar with from WoW is less apparent, where it is kill them before they kill you (the relative lack of instant cast skills for burst damage/healing becomes very apparent here.)

Yeah, the Abyss is fun (though I'm wondering what the Asmo side is doing on my server; they haven't taken a single fortress yet while my faction, Elyos, has at least two and sometimes 3 under our control). As for casters (and rangers), it's been my experience that they tend to dominate PvP due to roots, sleeps, slows, and knockbacks; it makes for quite a bit of frustration trying to get close enough to hit them (I'm a 28 Glad). I've also found clerics to be irritating due to the root'n'heal technique; though the heals are slow to cast, they heal for pretty much the entire amount for very little magic. At this point I just don't have a reliable interrupt ability; most of my attacks can interrupt, but it's pretty random.

As for the economy, the personal shops are a nice touch, but had to be redone due to the abuses suffered when the game first started. Only 30 minutes real time before you have to reset your shop. This was done to keep people from using it as a means to stay in game while they were asleep, at work, eating, and so on.

Most people use the in-game trade brokers (similar to WoW's AH, but without the bidding, flat rate ony). The prices can be a bit daunting, and the gold, kinah, in-game currency farmers are advertising in force right now. As was said above, look at it like the Japanese Yen, or more appropriately, the Korean Won, and you get an idea.

Yeah, the personal shop abuse was what I meant about the community being divided about them; well that, and the way players tend to clog up areas near teleporters. I personally find them to be kind of redundant with an AH to use and would rather see them restricted to certain areas; it's really annoying to port in and lag massively because there are 20 private shops around the teleport area and the only available option (currently) is to shift-F12 to keep my computer from trying to render player characters (which can be really risky in the lvl 20+ zones).

They'd be more attractive to me if there was a search/price comparison function with them. Right now, I just don't bother since I can't directly compare prices unless I go from player-shop to player-shop; I have way to much to do to spend my play time that way (leveling, crafting, gathering, Abyss points ect.).

The prices are daunting at the AH, but I think most of them will drop by half in the next few weeks when players start to see that that level 25 crafted blue sword selling for 500k isn't really all that much better than the green version selling for less than 1/4 that price (yeah getting a double high quality craft is pure luck, but no 500k worth of it). When there are more players doing instances, I'd expect a lot of the level 20-30 crafted items to fall in price. I do wish they'd bump up the drop rate on fluxes though or let players know that you can buy Morph recipes in the Abyss at captured fortresses that allow you to morph higher level fluxes into lower level ones (IF you have the DP for Morphing).

While I can say that Aion is no WoW 'killer', it's a very impressive game that is fun to play.

[Kirai]

Lag because of shops? Bah be glad you aren't playing EVE... one word would teach you about "lag"... Jita... well actually it wouldn't, not anymore at least, they managed to fix that black hole of lag down to a playable degree... love you CCP^^

anyways, something to do with aion and not with the clearly supperior game that is eve^^ (I'm joking by the way... mostly, otherwise I wouldn't play EVE after all^^)

If EVE is any indication, don't expect the prices to go down too much. In EVE items that are 5% better than the standart could cost 10x as much as the standart items. That should tell you something about what to expect in aion. Especially due to the pvp heavy content. Though I don't know if you loose your items, that might have something to do with the price.

[jgkitarel]

Actually, with a more than reasonable drop rate for greens, you really don't see too much hurt until you hit Titanium weapons, and there are drops that are semi-rare greens which are superior. In actuality, most of the prices are going to depend on the PvP value for some, and the PvE value for others (PvE item drops are vastly more common, while PvP is the opposite in terms of crafting.)

While Blue items are about 3-4 times more expensive than greens, you don't really see commons much after lvl20 save for manastones, which are the primary cash maker in the AH, not weapons, though the pricing can be competitive, it is steady income.

Creafted items tend to be much more expensive, since the crafters, who are usually trying to outfit themselves as well, are trying to recoup their losses from material purchases (they're relatively cheap, but the price quickly adds up).