Aion: The Tower of Eternity

[Krandor]

Is there a Beta out or something? Wikipedia says the game isn't coming out until fall. I'd gladly join Bluegartr Aion though.

Speaking personally I'm in the friends and family alpha for the US version, but I haven't touched it for awhile since the 3.1 patch in WoW has kept me occupied with my video game time.

[Aro]

for the people playing the beta-

if I played and really enjoyed WoW, would this be a good one to hop into as soon as it comes out?

Hmm, well so far in China there is a fair bit of grinding once you pass lvl 20ish since quests aren't as common. I can't be sure if you'd like it. What do you look for most in a MMO? This game has a strong PvP focus, while doing PvE stuff is starting to get bigger and bigger as they add updates.

[Purrrfect]

for the people playing the beta-

if I played and really enjoyed WoW, would this be a good one to hop into as soon as it comes out?

or should I hold out and see if people hate the game. ala AoC and Warhammer(somewhat)

I didn't play wow much, only to 25 or so. I liked the game, but I couldn't stand blizzard's art direction in the game and the engine was just lulz. That said I like Aion much better. I don't know if I like it better than FFXI though, we'll see in 5 years. I'm anxious for them to add more PvE content, specifically stuff like assaults or limbus. It is pretty much PvP at endgame from what I understand. If you aren't worried about dropping $30-40 on the game I would pick it up, the best time to play even if it doesn't last would be when everyone starts up. I don't think it will be as big as wow, unless they refine it a lot before US release, and even then you have the shit ton of wow fanboys that won't even listen when you mention another game.

Yeah if you google the Chinese OB there's a bunch of threads with instructions how to do it and common errors you encounter.
Can anyone here that reads Chinese help me change the game resolution from the launcher please? It defaults in one that my monitor doesn't support, I'm so emo ;;
I clicked the only button that looked like it could be options in the top right corner and I played with like every check box there to no avail.

Send me a pm if you're on msn or aim and I'll hook you up.

Is there a Beta out or something? Wikipedia says the game isn't coming out until fall. I'd gladly join Bluegartr Aion though.

No beta for US release. There will be a beta for the japanese release in July sometime, and there is the mention free time on china's new server groups until middle of the month.

[Gulkeeva]

Is there a list of what you should have for max settings?

and yeah I kind of want to try the game out when not doing too much in wow, I'm nearly at the limit for max characters on 1 account, and all of them are max level basically ;/

[Weltall]

rich, count me in to whatever guild you are joining/creating XD It would be fun to get a BG group going for Aion.

This is absolutely my next major invested MMO.

[Katlan]

should join up for the China retail weltall since no "real" US date yet and it may be a good many months away, game is awesome. Only "real" gripe I have w/ the game is the "claim via dmg done" system. Basically there is no "mob claim," instead as many ppl can atk crap and the person/ (or party of ppl) who does the most dmg gets the loot. Will be interesting for world bosses if they are designed around this way to be zerged by multiple legions at once... but for farming NM's it sucks to be a healer

for the people playing the beta-

I've been playing in China retail ever since it went live... Yes, Aion has characteristics of other mmo's (obviously)... I mean I get a FFXI vibe from it, I get minor WoW vibe from it. You can lv solo if you want, but you will be forced to group for a good amount of missions/quests throughout the game. These are designed well in that there are TONS of group quests/missions in "X" area. So you will have to revisit "X" area multiple times to complete all the stuff. This is nice because you can group w/ ppl on later quests/missions (in the same area) and still complete yours (vice versa).

While you can theoretically lv the entire way to 50 solo, you will be rly gimped in the access to gear and other stuff since you need to complete missions to get access to other areas/aspects of the game. These group missions/quests give a strong FFXI vibe because XP is great while you do them also. Kinda feels like FFXI party'ing and made me want to make a rly good PT to chain mobs lol.

When you die you lose XP (you don't down-lv), but you can purchase your xp back for gold. Game's economy seems rly nice... you will be AH camping at times to find good deals on stuff. Money is kidna odd in the game since there is only "kinah" and you just get tons of money at times so prices will seem a bit escalated early on from what your used to from other mmo's.

at 20 you get access to the stigma system w/ is kinda like a talent system w/a twist. You can only hold so many stigma's and some are obtained via quests, some via NM's, other's rare world drops, ect... You can change them up as necessary (you lose the stigma stone when you do this), but they are the way to make one "priest" diff from the next "priest" for ex

Game is a lot of fun, but if your used to completing everything solo or killing mobs fast (ala WoW) it isn't gonna be your cup of tea. I mean i don't feel weak vs mobs, but mobs don't die like candy either and take effort. You will die, you will die lots (lol)... it's just that its a harder game then ppl who are used to WoW are familiar w/.

Oh yeah... crafting is time consuming but more in line w/ what you expect in FFXI then WoW. You can only craft at your crafting center, and you can lv up your craft early on by just work orders. But you will have to do some intensive farming for mats and it takes a lot of money. And it reminds me more of FFXI in that... for ex: crafted gear is some of the best end game gear you can get atm (alongside PvP gear), but lets say you get a "white item" recipe. If you Crit (HQ) that recipe you will get the higher green version of it. But if you double crit the recipe (crit off of the crit) then you will get a "blue item" (naming is diff, but explaining it in WoW terms). You can also desynth your old items (lv of desynthed items depends on what you desynth) and apply the raw material to your gear to +1 it. can do it multiple times to +2, +3, ect... but if you fail at applying the raw materials your item will go down a lv (if higher then +1). Oh yeah, crafting builds on lower recipes... aka: making low lv ignots for higher lv recipes.. and if you fail a synth get rdy to lose your mats lol

[OzzofAsura]

should join up for the China retail weltall since no "real" use date yet and it may be a good many months away, game is awesome. Only "real" gripe I have w/ the game is the "claim via dmg done" system. Basically there is no "mob claim," instead as many ppl can atk crap and the person/ (or party of ppl) who does the most dmg gets the loot. Will be interesting for world bosses if they are designed around this way to be zerged by multiple legions at once... but for farming NM's it sucks to be a healer

I think being ex-FFXI players is gonna end up being a big advantage to things like this though. The difficulty and intricacy from XI will probably translate to quite a bit in most other "less-challenging" MMOs.

[Lordwafik]

for the people playing the beta-

if I played and really enjoyed WoW, would this be a good one to hop into as soon as it comes out?

or should I hold out and see if people hate the game. ala AoC and Warhammer(somewhat)

I am in the NCsoft friends and family beta, and as someone who's played both WoW and Aion, Aion to me feels like yet another WoW clone (yeah yeah). Walking past the Training dummies made me cringe on the inside, I thought there'd be some more originality. Hell I typed "/who" out of habit and got a search list. Went and found flight paths, and talked to my trainer to level up my class, and then went to my delivery box and found it was another write/send system.

Here's some screens to show you what I'm talking about :

Spoiler: show

http://wafiks.com/images/Aion0004.jpg

http://wafiks.com/images/Aion0012.jpg

http://wafiks.com/images/Aion0013.jpg

http://wafiks.com/images/Aion0020.jpg

http://wafiks.com/images/Aion0021.jpg

This is a good and bad point, obviously the game later branches out in different directions, but at the core I felt like I was playing gothic-fantasy WoW. I'm not of any level to raid or anything so I can't comment on that, the exp is kinda fun, there's something similar to Skillchains (more like self skillchain), they're combos that you can use moves in succession to make more powerful.

If you're not a competitive player, this game is not for you (unless you like to just stand around and roleplay and craft).
You're gonna hate exping here if there's assholes playing on your server because first person who tags the mob doesn't get the loot, it's the person who does the most damage. This game is made for competetiveness at heart, later on after lvl16 I think it was, you are sent to pvp, and the rest of the game dabbles in pvp and pve for questing and exping, later on quests die off, so it's not really a choice, it's more forced. PVE exp becomes grinding (like a merit party). Later on there's a zone called the Abyss, and that's the heart of the current game (think of it as Campaign, but other players instead of monsters for FFXIers, and Wintergrasp for WoWers), there'll be castles for guilds to capture, and you will have access to NPCs and Vendors specially for you, you can also earn abyss points and buy gear from pvping people, some of the best gear comes from this. If another faction has a castle, you can then fight their castle to take over it after a few hours have passed (it'll become open for attack).



The good point to this is it's extremely familiar for anyone who's played WoW for a few weeks, the down point is people who are looking for something different might be annoyed at the similarity.

A few people who have been playing Korean ver on message boards say that the game was overrun with gilsellers and the AH / money is a big issue in this game. I dunno if that got patched yet or not.

Music is spiff, love it a lot, the people who worked on the music for this game deserve an award, it just flows so beautifully through the whole game, it doesn't sharply cut off or start anywhere, it all flows into itself, graphics are ok too.

Ex-FFXIers will definitely have an advantage as they're used to Asian RPGs (grind grind grind repeat repeat repeat), but I think the advantage is going to be from people who are used to playing a PVP game (Warhammer, Conan, PvPserver WoW, etc) Ballista doesn't count because ballista is a joke.

Despite what I said, this is my own review of the game, I don't enjoy it more on the sense that it's not offering me something fresh. Everyone has their own opionion, try it when it comes out to find yours

[Gulkeeva]

mmm "who does most damage" exp/loot eh, reminds me of RO... it at times really sucked, when you find a rare mob and you are semi struggling with it and some guy comes by higher level and just massacres it.

The combo system thing isn't "too bad" i've done it before, only thing that may suck is if the mob does some attack to move you or it moves, or someone taunts it etc from you and messes you up... or you lag etc ;/

[Katlan]

The combo system thing isn't "too bad" i've done it before, only thing that may suck is if the mob does some attack to move you or it moves, or someone taunts it etc from you and messes you up... or you lag etc ;/

Combo system is done well.. You have a grace period to enter the next command. I've started a combo before where the next part in the chain is on CD for 5 more seconds and still was able to pull it off. And combo's aren't limited by the mob - you could essentially do it FFXI style and start your chain on "X" mob to use your finisher on "Y." Getting stunned out of your chain is the main thing that will stop you. That and getting a resist/miss.. resists/misses don't progress your chain

[Weltall]

I'll look over this thread later, but I am kind of busy right now. How can I get the Chinese retail version up and going?

[Conformity]

I'll look over this thread later, but I am kind of busy right now. How can I get the Chinese retail version up and going?

Talk to my nigga qui-jin over in shanghai. I just went to his factory to check on a prototype, he told me that alot of people are playing on his server from america. PM me and I will send you his details.

[Akanei]

I thought there'd be some more originality. Hell I typed "/who" out of habit and got a search list. and then went to my delivery box and found it was another write/send system.

Blah blah neither of these are WoW firsts, blah blah.

Seriously, you can only do so much with a mundane system. I don't see why this is even brought up when people review games.

[Weltall]

It seems they have taken things that work from various games. Why reinvent something that already works well? We have seem companies try this with newer MMOs (Age of Conan / Warhammer) and the conclusions have not been pretty.

[Olo401]

Hm.. downside is graphically it looks eerily like WoW with an upgrade and that's gonna be a turnoff. But the GUI looks more polished like WAR.

[Blabj]

I think the reason that it's quite similar to WoW is because WoW's UI is better than FFXI's and the like... It's more intuitive anyways, FFXI always seems so limited.

It looks decent but I don't think I'm going to have the time to play an MMO anymore, not with Modern Warfare 2 being released around the same time. It'll be interesting to see if they can make anyone jump ship from FFXI etc.

[Purrrfect]

Hm.. downside is graphically it looks eerily like WoW with an upgrade and that's gonna be a turnoff. But the GUI looks more polished like WAR.

I cannot understand how people can make this statement. Must be more subjective than I figured cuz I can't stand the look of wow but I love this game.

@Wafik, are those shots of an actual F&F event or using the english patch on another version? I was hoping they'd get the text clipping fixed on the quest dialog windows. My legion is scheduled to participate in some upcoming F&F events been details haven't been released yet.

I do hope they fix a few things before a US release, which I fully would not expect before Oct.1 personally. I think they know they have to have shit spot-on to be successful here.

@Katlan, You can HQ the white recipes and get greens from them? I though the greens only came from green recipes and the blues were HQ of the greens. I read on aionsource some guy was saying that craft level has no effect on HQ rate, which I have a REAL hard time believing.

Man I love Gulk's sigs. Need to visit that site again...

[Halion]

I cannot understand how people can make this statement.

I do hope they fix a few things before a US release, which I fully would not expect before Oct.1 personally. I think they know they have to have shit spot-on to be successful here.

Agreex2.
Seriously, WoW-like graphics? Seriously? Seriously dude? Seriously?
Main issues for me atm are looting is down right annoying and the last two pages of a quest dialog often feel redundant. Click click click click. Sometimes I randomly stop auto-attacking after using an ability which I assume is a bug as well as gathering too soon after last gathering will make you start for a split second then stop again and emote. Early releases are probably always like this though because companies want out get their game out making money instead of polishing it off with what ends up being about the first years worth of updates, adjustments and bug fixes.

Thanks to Purrrfect <3! I got to play some and I'm not sure yet if I'll be buying it when it comes out but I do like things about it. It's not as Guild Warsy as I was idly hoping it would be but it does enough common MMO elements right that just the setting, graphics and music are strong reasons to play over another game. I need to do the Elyos ascension quest now but I find it interesting that Asmodians consider them the evil faction and if anything they said in the Asmo ascension quest is true then they pretty much are. Maybe not "evil" exactly but not the perfect Angels their looks want to make you believe they are.

If I do buy it I also need more RAM c.c

[Hyan]

Yar I think the graphics are more like FFXI upgraded which is a huge plus to me, too bad I won't be playing this. But I don't think they're anywhere near WoW.

[DnightX]

It seems they have taken things that work from various games. Why reinvent something that already works well? We have seem companies try this with newer MMOs (Age of Conan / Warhammer) and the conclusions have not been pretty.

Warhammer was bad because of end game in my opinion, when you hit lvl 40 ( when i was playing) you had the best pvp area to play in.... but after that there wasn't much to it which made me really sad ;(