Hey guys, I havn't been on the forum in a while, I got a lot going on right now. I've been doing karate and MMA, lots of school stuff, driver's crap, and of course, playing Aion. I got Aion the day after the release. I WILL NOT BE DISCUSSING THE RELEASE, THE BUGS, THE GOLD SPAMMERS, QUEUES, OR ANY ISSUES LIKE THAT. I am reviewing the gameplay and content. Madd spoilerzz (not really, but just incase) Spoiler When you first start up the game, you will pick a server, pick a race (Elyos or Asmodians), and pick one of the four classes to start as, warrior, mage, scout, or priest. Then you get to sculpt your character however you want him or her to look. I want to avoid as many WoW references as possible here, but the character customization options are very deep compared to WoW. When you start, you will watch a short cutscene and start your quests, just like......most MMO's. The combat system is done very well, at least for now. For the first 9 levels leading up to your ascension, you will be playing a very fun and unique game, and you will probably like it. No game has ever made the starting zone so much fun. But what after that? I will tell you. At level 10, you pick a class to specialize in. For my Elyos warrior I picked gladiator, a 2h polearm melee specialist, and for my asmodian priest I chose to go Cleric, the main healer in Aion. I hate the capital cities. With a passion. They are WAY too big, WAY too complicated, and you just have no sense of home or community as you did in say, Orgrimmar or Stormwind. You also spend way too much time in them. Also, you cannot just walk or run to them, you have to take a stupid teleport up to your little faraway city up in the clouds. There are only 2 cities in the game. I was so disappointed. Well, not a big deal, there is plenty fun ahead of me, right? Lots of new things to do, lots of new gameplay, right? Not so much. After level 10, you go to a new zone, and, with the exception of being able to fly with those cheesy wings (in select areas), you will be doing the same exact stuff forever. My biggest turn off with Aion was the fact that you will have 15-30 quests in your log at any given time. You will have 4 campaign missions to do and about 10 normal quests to do all around your level. On top of that you will have to do work orders for the TERRIBLE crafting system. While the zones are very pretty, and combat is semi-entertaining besides doing about 4 abilities over and over for 20 levels, I am not a fan of the layout of the game. There is no connection between the zones besides portals. You don't feel like you are in a massive streaming world, rather a set of distant planes. Want to travel one zone over? I hope you are willing to pay to make some scrub port you. This is my biggest complaint about Aion: there is minimal to no sense of being in a world or vulnerability. By now you could probably tell I am not a fan of the game. However, there are some good qualities about the game. The storylines are really cool, and it makes you feel like you are a real hero for your race. The spell/ability animations are very cool. The graphics are very nice. But all these things are just not enough to cover up the big problems that I have with it. But some people may like these things. They are not unintentional problems, I just DO NOT like the way Aion is laid out. If you are wondering, I cancelled my account with a level 22 gladiator and a level 18 cleric. I just could not waste my time with any more senseless and dull running and smashing. One last thing: Before you all ***** and moan that I did not even experience half the game, my friend let me play his level 36 sorcerer for a week. The abyss system is really cool. At first. I almost thought it had given me motivation to continue playing, but as I got him to 39, I realized that the PvPvE system, however cool and unique, got pretty boring quick. I liked it, and lots of people may love it, but I don't think many WoW fans at least would make it a month after they dinged 50. Pros: Good graphics combat system is new and refreshing, for a while epic story awesome animations beautiful score Cons: No sense of bigger world gets deathly boring from levels 10-24, and then after 30 or 35 Cities suck. In every way. Just not that much fun to play. Gets tedious. Death System sucks. It is horrible. Have fun paying money to walk back from your home location to where you were questing. And dying is very easy to do in this game. My verdict: While unique, and the abyss system is cool, if you want to spend your hours doing things other than constantly beating on things or walking, or dying, and want to feel part of a big, decent world, look elsewhere. I know Aion has only been out for like 3 weeks, and things will change, I will not be playing it anymore. I will not be playing WoW anymore. Aion just made me want to take a break from MMORPG's. I sold my account for $40 to a friend. Some people may have fun with this game, I just did not. Thanks for reading!
My beefs: -Every starting zone for every race is the same. Unless they've changed this from the last time I've played at the very end of BETA. -No swim mechanic. I can understand no swimming, really. However we just run full speed underwater until we start taking damage? That's bloody retarded. -Casting bugs. This is prevelant for every class. Let's say I just spent 1.5 seconds casting <insert spell> I need to stand there for another .5 seconds while my character does some stupid *ss animation instead of being able to move away to gain some distance or whatever. -Kill stealing. It doesnt matter if I attack the mob first, if someone else runs up (most likely higher level) and out damages me, he gets the loot and half the xp. That's utter BS. -Boss camping. Killing a boss on one dimension (or whatever), then going to a safespot and going to another one, killing the boss and going to another one and so forth. Their fix for it didn't help. At. All. -You HAVE to level gathering. You get a crapton of quests higher up that involve gathering, and if you don't level it you have to go back to older zones, level it up or you're boned. Seriously? -Wings. Look, I got two problems with these things. A) When I'm running from something and I need to get up and fly away, why the bloody heck do I need to do some 2 seconds animation of me having a gasm while my wings come out and I'm getting hit? Why can't I just as easily let my wings out and fly in the air? B) Melee is SEVERELY underpowered against Casters/Long Range in air battles. No question about that. -Just a little thing I saw in a YT video. The Elyos and the..Whatever the other race is (just woke up) have an almost 100% identical movie for when they 'ascend' in that quest. -The voices are absolutely stupid. It's like they went on the pedophile website and just took people by random to do some of these voices. -YT video -The sound effects are even more stupid. I hate how everytime I hit something, my character HAS to go "KAI KAI KAI KAI KAI KAI" I got enough of that when I finished those Link games. -They are making the game too similar for everyone. I already touched on this slightly before, however they are making all the classes, chains, and so forth all too similar. If you catch what I mean. -The quests are totally cliches. "AMG YOU'RE GOING TO DIE IN THE FUTURE, GOTTA STOP IT!" and "AMG YOUR PAST. YOU FORGOT IT IN A GIANT BATTLE, REMEMBER IT TO UNLOCK YOUR DESTINY!" Seriously, they couldn't think of a better reason? I can understand if this game was new, but it isn't. THis game has been out for a year now in Asia, all they did was change the languages from Engrish to English.
I honestly cannot believe that IGN gave this game an 8.5. I respect their opinion, but I think most things in the review came from nostalgia.
I don't think it is that at all since Aion is much more like new age MMOs like World of Warcraft than the older ones such as Ultima or Everquest. I think it comes from the art design, balance of the classes, and polish of the game even though its your typical quest grinding MMO. Aion does a lot of things well in MMOs that a lot of people take for granted these days such as class balance believe me I've played a lot of MMOS that have had horrid class balance.
