Aion

[det]

So now we finally have OT forums, one dedicated at other video games - but no posts on Aion yet?

It has been a much discussed topic, even had a mod-created thread back in the days that became the field of heated opinions. People littereally begged for Aion threads to be allowed, it was hailed as the WoW killer, apparently surpassing WoW in subscriptions already.

So what has happened? Is it still good? Do people even play? Or was it one more in the line of games with high hopes, even higher bias and now it has just "failed" like AoC or WAR?

All I know it has been awefully quiet about Aion. People tugged in their tails and are back to fight the Lich King?

[Lusei]

The customer support (and the lack thereof) and the bots + forced PvP really did nothing for me.
Its still going but the initial rush has come back to WoW. Still it was a nice distraction while it lasted.

[Xheoul]

I love you, det.

[Naekiwi]

I tried it for the initial playtime and I leveled up a handful of characters, I really liked the combat and my favorite class, monk (or chanter as Aion called it) was great fun and felt monkish, then there's all the bad..

They adopted a Korean MMO and 'westernized' it, but they kind of missed the one glaring problem with all Asian MMOs. GRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIND, I found myself with 4 or 5 level 30 chars because once you hit level 30 there is very little to do for leveling except kill a ton of this and that. Mobs give around 10k-20k XP per kill, which sounds good until you realize that you have nearly 7 million XP to level, which usually increases by 1mil to 3mil every level.

There was a chart someone linked somewhere that wasn't 100% accurate but it gave a good idea of what to expect, they added up all the quest XP possible from quests each level, then the remaining amount needed to level as grinding, then the overall amount, it scaled horribly, something like level 30-31 was 1/4 quests, 32 was 1/5, 33 was 1/8th, etcetc.

The other thing that kind of bit was instances were usually just a waste of time, the first instance you do is pretty decent and you get almost 1 level per run (You can only run it once per day), though oddly the boss has about a 50% chance to not drop any loot, the XP kind of makes you not care.

The second instance you go to takes about an hour or 2 to run, the end boss has about a 65-75% chance to not drop anything, and the XP you get per run is absolutely abyssmal, like, the WoW equivalent would be one, maybe one and a half bubbles of XP, 2 bubbles if everyone in the group is the same level.

Honestly if they would've done something about any of that the game would've been a bigger success I think. I heard there's news that they plan on boosting XP from quests and grinding alot, but it's maybe a year away from that happening.


Oh, also I was never a "ZOMG WOW'S DED" person, though I did absolutely hate ToC in all its many many incarnations, I just liked some of the neat features Aion had, like the armor/weapon appearance modifying thing which I really wish WoW would do.

[det]

Wow..that grind thing would idd totally ruin it for me. Watched a few videos and Aion sure LOOKED nice - though raids seemed very tank and spanky.

Well..some people love the grind, but most seem to prefer questing after all.

In the end I am glad I didn't try it out...luckily enough guildies gave me a good idea how it would be.

[Capt_jesus]

Not to really derail your thread but WAR isnt all that bad. Sure if you played the trial (which sucked hard) you got dissappointed. However, a friend of mine left WoW back in 3.0 because he loved PvP. Hes very deeply in love with WAR PvP and RvR. So I guess if you're a PvP fanatic, WAR is for you.

[det]

That was why I put "failed" in quotation marks. I do not call any competing game worse - because it is all down to taste. A few friends from Diablo 2 times play LotRO with great enthusiasm.

It is more "failed" in the sense that every new MMO coming out has people hailing it as the "WoW Killer". Viceously attacking WoW and claiming how the new game does everything so much different that the community will leave WoW.

Aion once more was made up to be one of those "killers". I am sure you followed the 50 pages long rage on the forums here ..... now had died down to a 6 posts thread over 3 days with half the posts by me.... :/

[Marest]

Well, my take on it is that it is a bit flawed. It was hyped as hell before release to be the big "wow-killer" but received bad reviews from critics and never really got around to establish a strong playerbase. People still play it of course, I got multiple friends who do, but it's many flaws doesn't really work in the game's favor.

[Borigrad]

i figured i would try it, it was alright untill like previously stated level 30. I hate pointless grind, mostly because i find that it's very lazy on the game makers/quest designers part. At least in WoW or other mmo's you can quest the whole time, in aion once you do about 6 quests your grinding for a day for 1 level. So i found that it was a poorly put together grindfest, that need some fun questing... AND THE RUBBERBANDING...

[Nyuun]

Aion is pretty, environments are very nice and the weapons look great (Motherfucking Chainsaw Axe) and the character creation is sweet.
Shame it's a huge grindfest once you hit 30. If you're a mad asian powerleveller who likes games with nice graphics and Guild Wars gameplay, this is for you.

[Qtulu]

I played it for a month. Much stuff in it were really nice, but there were so many flaws..
Good stuff: The music was very impressive, the environments were nice, animations good, good creature design, good character creator
Bad: Very restricted world (Like narrow paths all over instead of open areas), parts of the world were only connected through teleports, no fking swimming, quests were highly uninteresting, griiiiind, everything felt repetitive etc.
Aion wasn't a big hit for me. The first levels were kinda nice, but then it just got more and more boring..

[Cheshi]

Just played it for a few days. I don't mind grinding, I even like it (played FFXI for 3 years) ;D

But the thing that made me quit was that people could steal your kill by bursting dps on your mob. Don't know if that is still unchanged, maybe if that changes I'll give it another try some day.

[Xheoul]

I often times enjoy grinding in an MMO is the overall playstyle supports it (sufficient rewards for the time spent doing so) but what I dislike about Aion is the overall art style. It's overall generic with the "pretty" graphics, and effeminate muscular men (in b4 blood elves...the fact they are effeminate and muscular does not mean theyre done the same way). This is also my main beef with what has become with Final Fantasy. All of these asian RPGs are looking more like the same every time.

[Baaadum]

When you jump into aion's "content pool," your feet hardly get wet. It's all grind, grind, grind! Grind isn't bad, it's how you have to grind. All mobs take about 30+ seconds to kill ONE mob (was cleric aka healer). The mass pvp they offered was ruined by the massive lag that would ensue... even computers with high tech specs have trouble running.

Also, if you think MMO's community is bad, aionsource's is so much worse!

Of course, all my opinions though. There are a lot of things in Aion I'd love to see in WOW. I just know after playing Aion my appreciation for WoW greatly increased. :P

[Sarcasm]

It happened with Age of Conan.
It happened with Warhammer Online.
Now it has happened with Aion too.

[PinkPenguin]

Aion as the "WoW-killer" Hah, what a joke. Yeah in the start it seemed like a nice game, awesome character customization, the enviroment was really nice, and it actually wasn't that confusing in the beginning. What annoyed me was when I hit like, lvl 5, as a Sorcerer or whatever, I could not even melee a creep down to ½ HP before I died myself...
Unless I missed it, it said nowhere, that you had to sit down to regen your mana, so I was kinda fucked when I ran out of mana. That was quickly solved when I actually figured it out.

Now, a minor, but imo, very annoying thing about Aion is, that whenever you killed a creep, it says a weird and annoying "Ding!" sound, I know I know, I could just turn off my sound, but it was annoying as hell.

When you get to lvl 10, you (finally) get your wings, I wasn't done in the starting zone by the time I got my wings, so I got back there and ofc I tried fly, just to discover I could not. I thought that was fair enough, it was the starting zone after all. When I was finally done, and got to the capital city, I was really looking forward to flying, except I couldn't... And after probably ½-1 hour, I finally got to the next zone where I could (thank god) fly, flying was however, rather slow imo, and you could only fly for 1 minute, then you needed to recharge, which imo, is just plain silly. As I was done in that area, I moved on, only to discover that I could not fly in this new area, which reaaaaaaally pissed me off, I had gotten the impression that you could all over the place, but noooooooo... After some rahter tiresome and boring quests, I got to a new area, where it said there was a city, I could not find it though, since there was a big tree in the way. A helpful player was nice enough to tell me that I had to fly there, which I had ofc not noticed that I could...

And the quests.... omg... You start a quest where it says you can choose between this awesome loot, you do what it says, turn it in, do you get the loot? Nooo, you have to do more of what the motherf*cker tells you to...

After getting to just lvl 18, I already hated the game, there were nice things, but the bad things outweigth the good, so very simple, Aion failed, WoW wins again.

[Daginni]

It bombed like all the other "WoW-Killers".

Seriously, the only real competition Blizzard has is Biowares SWTOR, and Blizzards next MMORPG.

[Yoshimoto]

Thanks for reminding me to cancle my account.

[Shuji V2]

Oke some news about newer versions of this game to fix a lot of problems people were having with this game.

You may want to see this video to see it for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WtzP-y-Ua8

If you're not interested in the video, I'll give a summary of what will be fixed this year. In the first half of this year Aion will receive it's first expansion and another expansion or major patch in the second half of this year. May it be noted that expansions are not something NCSoft asks additional money for and are free of cost.

Well to summarize, the graphics will be cranked up by a lot. This varies from a new lighting engine to new shadows, more polygons spend on environments and detail, a more living surrounding (e.g. massive flying beasts flying next to you, see video) and a new weather system allowing for summer weather, snow, heavy snow, melting of snow, floods and the likes. In terms of gameplay Aion has expanded it's worlds and is now offering a mount system. Instead of purchasing a mount and just ride it you actually have to catch your mount and then mount it for it to become yours. Also there is a mount fighting system in place. Upon expanding the world this also comes with under water cities, vast sea's and the ability to swim! Also alot of the animations have been redone and now come with collision check for even greater looking fights. There's also speculation (by seeing the video) of new classes using whips and unarmed combat. It's also been known that also Aion will use a talent system next to the existing stigma system for a greater customisation in how your character evolves. PvP and PvE has been expanded by a big deal. There are new raids and instances and also city sieges. City sieges you say? Yes, this gives you the opportunity to create a guild city and create/decorate your own house. There is also the ability to summon giant creatures to help in these fights.

These are just a few examples, if you want a good impression of what is to come this year to Aion please see the video.

[Zero44556]

Oke some news about newer versions of this game to fix a lot of problems people were having with this game.

You may want to see this video to see it for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WtzP-y-Ua8

If you're not interested in the video, I'll give a summary of what will be fixed this year. In the first half of this year Aion will receive it's first expansion and another expansion or major patch in the second half of this year. May it be noted that expansions are not something NCSoft asks additional money for and are free of cost.

Well to summarize, the graphics will be cranked up by a lot. This varies from a new lighting engine to new shadows, more polygons spend on environments and detail, a more living surrounding (e.g. massive flying beasts flying next to you, see video) and a new weather system allowing for summer weather, snow, heavy snow, melting of snow, floods and the likes. In terms of gameplay Aion has expanded it's worlds and is now offering a mount system. Instead of purchasing a mount and just ride it you actually have to catch your mount and then mount it for it to become yours. Also there is a mount fighting system in place. Upon expanding the world this also comes with under water cities, vast sea's and the ability to swim! Also alot of the animations have been redone and now come with collision check for even greater looking fights. There's also speculation (by seeing the video) of new classes using whips and unarmed combat. It's also been known that also Aion will use a talent system next to the existing stigma system for a greater customisation in how your character evolves. PvP and PvE has been expanded by a big deal. There are new raids and instances and also city sieges. City sieges you say? Yes, this gives you the opportunity to create a guild city and create/decorate your own house. There is also the ability to summon giant creatures to help in these fights.

These are just a few examples, if you want a good impression of what is to come this year to Aion please see the video.

I can't deny the content in the vision trailer looks good, but they never said anything about fixing the most glaring issue: a lack of quests and horrid grind, that's all that's wrong with the game in the first place, really