Free Aion Online Trial, CHANGED ALOT! Epic ;)

[willowe]

I have never enjoyed grinding creatures for experience, but i chose to pick up Aion on release. Having never played a Korean MMO I didn't know what was in store for future levels. Got to I think level 27 and i did the first dungeon, i was greatly disappointed when the dungeon was entirely tank and spank fights no thought at all. Now i research into MMOs alot more. Korean MMOs imo have terrible gameplay but their graphics are just astounding. (Ex. FF14, insane graphics, awful gameplay.)

Lol so, somebody didn't read the rest of the threadddddd.....

First of all 2.0 brought Haramel, a 18-22 SOLO instance. It has a ton of quests (some repeatable) that literally make you fly to 22, and with NTC shortly thereafter at 25 (once you finish the abyss training stuff, so more like 26) it's not that hard to level to 28.

Grind is preeetty much like WoWs now. They've upped Kinah/XP rates for like every quest imaginable with 1.9 and 2.1, and added a shiny new dungeon finder with 2.5. So easy, quick(er) grouping, faster levels. From what I've noticed from the old quest info at places like ZAM and w/e are the XP rates are 2-3x higher than before, some more.

It still takes a while past 40ish to level. Think of 40-50 the 'Northrend' of Aion levelling, as in Northrend when it first came out with no BoAs. It's not bad, and the average person can level to 55 in 4 weeks casually. Didn't happen for me, cause I'm too A.D.D to quest/dungeon all the time lol.

Oh and there's a BIG INTERACTIVE PIANO YOU CAN JUMP ON AT THE FLOATING DOCKS IN SANCTUM. It's from Christmas, but it's pretty fun!

[vaajtswv]

I have never enjoyed grinding creatures for experience, but i chose to pick up Aion on release. Having never played a Korean MMO I didn't know what was in store for future levels. Got to I think level 27 and i did the first dungeon, i was greatly disappointed when the dungeon was entirely tank and spank fights no thought at all. Now i research into MMOs alot more. Korean MMOs imo have terrible gameplay but their graphics are just astounding. (Ex. FF14, insane graphics, awful gameplay.)

Umm... FF14 was made by the Japanese from a small unknown company named Squaresoft.

[ragnarokvr1]

You're trying to convince wow players there's another mmo worth playing out there. You'd probably have better luck convincing cocaine addicts to suck a lollipop whenever they have a craving.

[vaajtswv]

I only want two things from AION, permanent flight and PVE servers (I don't care for pvp). Neither of which will ever happen.

[Deleted]

LOL Grind eh?

So the fact that they boosted XP for quests in 1.9 AND 2.1 didn't fix that? I swore it had. I've still yet to meet this 'Mr. Grind' since then that you so speak of.

Yes leveling takes longer per level. Yes the higher you go (in levels) the more XP is needed to get to the next. This game is NO more of a grind than WoW or Rift. WoW's 84-85 'grind' is worse than any level I've done in Aion. So much as I -hate- leveling thru Cata, due to that one damn level!

Dungeons aren't tank and spank, well once you get past Haramel and NTC, cause those are the 'beginning dungeons,' and like old DM/SFK/WC/RFC the fights were boring and didn't teach you anything. Past that is different.

Oh and did you happen to see that shiny new dungeon, called Empyrean Crucible? Care to look at that? Eh, didn't think so. I guess a 50 boss dungeon isn't good enough to be noticed lololol.

PvP isn't the most balanced, SM usually def melee, blah blah w/e. The reason is it not really 1v1 based. It's got duels, but PvP is more for Forts, and well, nobody solos those. It's more of a mob mentality. Whomever has more wins, but isn't that the same in WoW? If you're trying to take a flag in WSG and you have 6, and the defenders have 2, or 3, sorry but you're 99% of the time gonna get that flag. Just because it's it a more massive number (up to just below 200 ppl) doesn't make it ANY different.

As for 'community.' On Istraphel I have NOT had an issue with this. The legions (guilds) I've been in and the lolRP I've seen make me believe this game actually has a better community than WoW. 99% of WoW's forums is QQing about X class. In Aion, call me cynical, but we've come to realize that NCSoft isn't gonna fix things in a 'hotfix tomorrow' so we kinda bend over and take the little problems and balancing issues. This turns the 'OMG BLIZZFIXTHISNAO OR I LEAVE' talk to 'so post screenshots of your toon in fun areas.'

It's enjoyable, moreso than WoW. Only reason I'm still subbed to World of Warcrap is my RL friends are here. Though the Aion free trial is at least planting a seed of hope

I like this post. I dont play Aion but still. Its like wow have turned to a FPS game community with crazy ppl all over the place that whine and is just being dickheads.

And what some ppl say here regarding Aion is exactly what wow had for a long time (now I dont know how old aion is 2 years?). Tank and spank fights were pretty much the only thing in vanilla and there is still a lot of that in cata + you could fear and poly spam with no diminishing return in vanilla for a looooong time + it lasted waaay over 8-10sec.

btw I have tried Aion and I myself dont like the combat in it. It feels too stiff for me. No real nice flow in it imo.

[Scythias]

I like this post. I dont play Aion but still. Its like wow have turned to a FPS game community with crazy ppl all over the place that whine and is just being dickheads.

And what some ppl say here regarding Aion is exactly what wow had for a long time (now I dont know how old aion is 2 years?). Tank and spank fights were pretty much the only thing in vanilla and there is still a lot of that in cata + you could fear and poly spam with no diminishing return in vanilla for a looooong time + it lasted waaay over 8-10sec.

btw I have tried Aion and I myself dont like the combat in it. It feels too stiff for me. No real nice flow in it imo.

Really I'm levelling a glad and the combat seems pretty fluid, I like the way my character spins lol

[Tackhisis]

Aion is exactly what wow had for a long time

If Aion came in 2004, instead of Lineage II, your point would be valid. Why were they need to reimplement that fail game?

And combat when you just wait for cooldowns is not fluid, it's terrible.

[Deleted]

Don't bother buying if you enjoy PvE. If you are in to PvP Aion has more to offer than WoW though. It's a shame it has such low population and most of them are not very social.

It's funny you mention the lack of community and PvE. One of the main reasons I stuck around in Aion after patch 1.9 was because of the sense of a server community, and the friendly people I met in the game. I'm not part of a legion, I prefer PvE and I don't actively seek out PvP. I do however run Dredgion daily (think BG-gauntlet with an instance cooldown) but I'm not sure I would call that PvP. It's more of a race to finish first and/or train mobs on your opponents.

I've thought a lot about what makes me enjoy Aion, simply because it does have some major flaws: I have yet to meet anyone who enjoys the manastone system, siege-PvP with 40+ players is laggy due to poor resource management, quests are abundant but lack story and depth (the exception to this would be the campaign quests), some world zones feel lifeless and barren. Still, in the end it comes down to the way Aion's LFG-system works.

I've played WoW since around AQ was opened, and pretty much up until two months into Cataclysm. I was raiding in the beginning and slowly worked my way towards playing multiple alts and just enjoying a very slow pace.

If there was one wish I could get Blizzard to fulfill for me it would be adding an option to do a random LFG-search on my own realm; I would not mind waiting 1 hour for that. Yes, I could go about looking for people using trade-chat, but I can't do that outside of capitals (ie, while gathering, exploring, daily questing).

The cross-realm-dungeons in WoW ended up being pure poison to me, with the way some people acted. I can only guess they acted this way because there are close to zero consequences from behaving like a total turd-sandwich, when you're grouped cross-realm.

The stuff I have witnessed while playing in a cross-realm-group underscores the fact that humans are no more than evolved monkeys who consider themselves demigods. The only thing that stands between chivalry and complete chaos is the fact that some of us have working frontal lobes.

Don't get me wrong, this happens in Aion aswell, but not nearly as often (in my experience) as in WoW. I attribute this to the cross-realm LFG-search.

There are other aspects of Aion I do enjoy immensely, but that also holds true when it comes to WoW. WoW's LFG-system is what made me look elsewhere for my dungeon-grinder-fix.

[Scythias]

Really i've been playing on zikel and Iraphel and theres always people talking and lfg in the chats on those servers, you just can't use them till level 10.

---------- Post added 2011-06-04 at 04:17 AM ----------

If Aion came in 2004, instead of Lineage II, your point would be valid. Why were they need to reimplement that fail game?

And combat when you just wait for cooldowns is not fluid, it's terrible.

That means you never got very high at all if you were just waiting for cooldowns, its better than, firebolt, firebolt, firebolt.

[willowe]

I like this post. I dont play Aion but still. Its like wow have turned to a FPS game community with crazy ppl all over the place that whine and is just being dickheads.

And what some ppl say here regarding Aion is exactly what wow had for a long time (now I dont know how old aion is 2 years?). Tank and spank fights were pretty much the only thing in vanilla and there is still a lot of that in cata + you could fear and poly spam with no diminishing return in vanilla for a looooong time + it lasted waaay over 8-10sec.

btw I have tried Aion and I myself dont like the combat in it. It feels too stiff for me. No real nice flow in it imo.

The -only- part of the combat mechanics that get annoying are the 'chants.'

As in every time you cast 'x ability' your character says something as she/he casts. It's not -horrible- but it gets...meh after 500+ times.

[Mothhive]

Played a little bit of the reactivation event thing last night, and while it was nice to be playing my old main again, the combat is still pretty fun, and I was finally able to get a Kirka as a pet (love those little squirrel things!), I was having a hard time enjoying anything else. It seemed to be buggier and ran alot worse than last time I played it, and I have 2 new graphics cards since then, both way better than the one I used to have!

Also, the voice acting seems to have gone downhill, and it wasn't a particularly high hill to begin with!

Will be playing it on and off over the next week or so since it's free, but I don't think this event is rerally going to tempt anyone to come back and re-subscribe.

---------- Post added 2011-06-04 at 01:37 PM ----------

The -only- part of the combat mechanics that get annoying are the 'chants.'

As in every time you cast 'x ability' your character says something as she/he casts. It's not -horrible- but it gets...meh after 500+ times.

You can turn off the chanting. Yes, they are incredibly annoying.

[Artoflife]

I've just been dabbling with the free-trial and I've noticed a LOT of improvements since launch in 2009. I purchased a new CD Key and I was pretty pumped about starting a new account but just got full-time employment and don't really have the time. If anyone here is interested in starting fresh in Aion, I'm trying to sell an unused CD-Key for $15. Nothing fishy here, the key can be used to create a new account with 30 days of time and you get a free panda pet. PayPal is cool if anyone is interested. Not a chinese-scam farmer, just a Uni student in Canada trying to make a living, haha. I can provide a screenshot showing the code is legit from Direct-2-Drive and all that.

---------- Post added 2011-06-05 at 05:14 PM ----------

Bump! Will sell the key for $10 over PayPal if anyone wants it ASAP.

[willowe]

Played a little bit of the reactivation event thing last night, and while it was nice to be playing my old main again, the combat is still pretty fun, and I was finally able to get a Kirka as a pet (love those little squirrel things!), I was having a hard time enjoying anything else. It seemed to be buggier and ran alot worse than last time I played it, and I have 2 new graphics cards since then, both way better than the one I used to have!

Also, the voice acting seems to have gone downhill, and it wasn't a particularly high hill to begin with!

Will be playing it on and off over the next week or so since it's free, but I don't think this event is rerally going to tempt anyone to come back and re-subscribe.

---------- Post added 2011-06-04 at 01:37 PM ----------



You can turn off the chanting. Yes, they are incredibly annoying.

Could the graphics issues be due to the 2.5 update? They did toss up a higher 'tier' of graphics (think how Rift does theirs with 2 renderers).

Oh and I'm re-subbing. Totally. Then again my 2 day lapse of playtime was very smartly placed (luckily) just before the 'omgcomebacktoAion' event started. So. Well.....free 10 days and gifts when I'll be subbing again anyways.

Muahahahahahaha!

[Swiftstryder]

I don't understand this how is that any different than wow? and that is just during levelling. and how are other mmo's not grindfests? take 4.2 for wow for example you have 7 bosses to kill for the next 4+ months, riveting stuff right there.

Sure they are a grind, but no where NEAR as much as Aion.

Some people like the grind. I for one don't. Neither do many people.

---------- Post added 2011-06-06 at 04:27 PM ----------

And yes there is absolutly no support by NCsoft whatsoever. IT's pretty sad

Again im not bashing the game. I loved the pvp and just the combat system in general. But boy oh boy did it get rough at 30

[Xuvial]

Hmm seeing splendid screenshots of the amazing graphics (CryEngine 1.0 was it?) frustrates me even more, knowing what amazing potential Aion has/had. But sadly the game is owned by NCSoft and comes with all the -standard- shit that Korean MMO's are infested with.

My "grindfest mmo" days ended around 4-5 years ago back when I played Runescape....and I don't plan to play such a game ever again, work and family simply doesn't allow for that (and I don't have the patience anyway). WoW allows me to play casually for an hour or two and get things done, in Aion I'll need to invest 200 hours before I even see anything.

[Konics]

Dam shame....they had their chance like 2 years ago but deiced to do nothing and let a game with great potential die and 90% of the people playing after release quit and never looked back....majority of people who were playing (in the US/UK at least) will not come back no matter what they do now 2+ years later.

MMOs have the smallest window of opportunity and so many companies destroy that window. Ncsoft was obviously content with what they had in korea and didnt care much about the major flaws in their game that koreans look pass so when westerners tryed telling them how broke their game was they didnt listen.

There is a good chance if they had done all this back when it came out, fixed the epic grind, added content, fix the drop rates, and make actually pvping worth while (instead of grinding on mobs all day even after you cap) along with other things I could probably go on forever about alot of people would still be playing.

I had so much fun playing aion until the realization of a dead end grindfest of a game it was (although it may have changed now its just too late). After seeing how ncsoft reacted to their game plummeting into a deep hell hole less than 6 months after release I lost all faith.

[Rukh]

I don't really mind grinding that much, heck I played FFXI for 3 years... but how is the endgame content? WoW is soooo boring now at endgame. Maybe once a week you'll have a fun raid night, but after you grind heroics, or now grind troll heroics, or grind battlegrounds, there's just not really anything to work for. I need goals in the game to work towards. Long term stuff, hard stuff. WoW just doesn't have that.

[Xuvial]

Well to be fair, you could say the game was a "Korean-port". It's like a game designed for consoles with a shitty port to PC (e.g. Assasins Creed), the "port" is simply done for the sake of it and was never intended to make the company any major bucks.
It was primarily targeted at asians/koreans from ground-up so NCSoft haven't really lost too much, the majority of their playerbase (i.e. koreans) will continue to play.

Maybe once a week you'll have a fun raid night

You need to find a guild that raids a tad more often o_O.
Once your average gear crosses 359'ish there's no longer any reason to grind ANY heroics, and once you have full Bloodthirsty/Vicious there's no longer any point in grinding BG's. Many people are at the stage where the only way forward is raids and arena, and for me both those aspects are still extremely fun. 2v2/3v3 with my RL friends never gets old (we do so much funny shit) and my guild is full of positive people who have strong attendance
These are the things that keep WoW going for me.

[Mega Gengar]

Just got back into this myself, GF also bought it so been playing with her. Game has changed alot for the better, less grindy and looks even better

[Stixxz]

Once hit 30 or so levelling went slow, was either go to abyss to grind mobs or stay in the PvE side and do some grinding quests that were annoying to do. The mobs were re-skinned, felt like there was only a couple different types. The combat was heavily ranged dominated if you didn't have stigmas that would change the fights. Heavily gear dependant to kill someone. The way enchanting works, if you fail to enchant you lose all of them in the gear and the enchantment stones also, cost a lot and have chance to lose them. Mobs have loads of health, seems like you are attacking them for ages and if one or two mobs come to attack you while already attacking one, you will almost certainly die or come close to dieing if you're lucky. It was just a huge grind fest that didn't keep me interested past a certain point.