Aion: The Tower of Eternity

[Pooky]

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 ;(

That and the total lack of polish (due to EA's pressuring to release) were the worst things about WAR. Once you hit 40 there's *nothing* to do but grind RP, which as a Zealot means outside healing in SC's forever -.-;

I started playing the Chinese release of Aion last week, and I absolutely love it. The Exp grind is really not bad, a bit steeper than WAR, nowhere near as punishing as FF though. There are a few minor things that bug me, (Lack of UI customization, no dual targeting) but on a whole its a really good game so far, I'm really having fun with it.

[Conformity]

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 ;(

God damn that game pissed me off. YAY UR IN TOP TEIR NOW U GET TO GRIND THE SAME PVP INSTANCES 4EEEVVVEEEERRRRR!

I wish they made pvp consequential, like losing exp and/or one item loot like back at rallos

[Purrrfect]

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.

Lots of people have the auto-attack turn off issue. Personally I think it comes from lag/server and client getting something out of sync. For the gathering thing, some have said its to allow others to use the gathering node, others have said its to keep macro bots from spamming the right-click. Either way if you wait a few seconds between gatherings it seems to not happen.

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

I have heard that if you read the lore for both sides it looks like the Elyos are the reason the Asmodians are stuck in the ice world they have, so they are right bitter. I haven't read for myself yet. From my systems 1gb is really doingthe game an injustice (it swaps tot he pagefile so much the game really suffers), 2gb of ram runs pretty ok, 4-6gb means it loads stuff once and thats it.^^

I started playing the Chinese release of Aion last week, and I absolutely love it. The Exp grind is really not bad, a bit steeper than WAR, nowhere near as punishing as FF though. There are a few minor things that bug me, (Lack of UI customization, no dual targeting) but on a whole its a really good game so far, I'm really having fun with it.

Yeah grinding is quite a bit faster than FF.^^ I did that last night thru lv13 since I was on a dry spell of quests I could solo and was done in no time (like <30mins I think, as a healer/support class).

BTW, so up until 14 at least my chanter would kick my templars ass all day long and twice on sunday. Hoping the templar picks up at some point.

[Koul]

mmm... that monster tagging system is lame....

I don't know. I kind of want to play this in a casual mindset but I don't think I could lol.

meh, I'll wait and see what becomes of it.

[Pooky]

Yeah grinding is quite a bit faster than FF.^^ I did that last night thru lv13 since I was on a dry spell of quests I could solo and was done in no time (like <30mins I think, as a healer/support class).

BTW, so up until 14 at least my chanter would kick my templars ass all day long and twice on sunday. Hoping the templar picks up at some point.

It does, around 20. Dueled one the other night on my chanter, and actually timed out of the duel because I just could not kill them. All the templar had to do was wait until I ran out of mp and kill me lol; he killed me twice then on the third I got off a mana treatment and timed out -.-;

[Jaybar]

After reading most of this thread (well, post page 11..) I really want to get this game now. I lost my feel for MMOs after FFXI and briefly AoC/WAR, but I feel like I might like this one a lot better. Of course, now I need to get a PC to play since my laptop is now completely outdated.

[Ragnus]

The game looked a lot better in the class demo I saw on youtube...

[Katlan]

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).

Not to sound like an ass wafik, but i think ur looking too hard for reasons to not enjoy the game. And I learned that while mobs loot is based on a "total dmg" system, healing counts towards that also so healers arent SoL. And frankly I think the game is more familiar to FFXI then WoW. Saying the game feels like WoW just makes very little sense to me because the only thing similar to WoW is questing... and that's not even original to WoW. You want a party grind system? That will never happen in another mmo like it did in FFXI, so unless a new lv'ing system is created I don't see a diff trend happening. There is no talent tree, there is very little similar to WoW imo. But to each there own.

There is an abundance of quests if you like to PvP and go into the Abyss. At lv 25 your encouraged to go to the Abyss... and if you decide to PvE all the way to 50 you will run dry of quests, its just how it works in Aion. But if you PvP & PvE you will very rarely run out of quests unless your skipping stuff along the way because you can't find groups and stuff. I dunno how crowded the F&F Beta is, but on my China server it's easy to find groups for anything you need.

@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.

I'm currently lv 132 Armorsmith and I've been taking the easy route to lv up off of Work Orders. So I can't say for certain on HQ and HQ +1. But some of the best PvE end game gear is crafted via HQ +1. You know when you gather how you get a crit that pushes the bar forward at a further rate? Thats a single crit... A double crit is when you get the purple gathering bar that is an instant win lol. Now I'm not sure if you need to "end" the synth/craft w/a finishing crit or double crit to get HQ/HQ+1 results (since I haven't tried yet) or if it just needs to happen w/in the crafting process. Hope that makes some sense.

And yes, high lv's does make crit'ing lower lv recipe's easier. If you have ever gone back and tried to gather a lower lv node you will know what I mean. What maybe took you 10 seconds before is usually insta crit and takes like 2 seconds to gather. It's not always the case, but it's definitely an enhanced rate. I don't think the system of crit'ing lower lv recipes is as deep as FFXI's as you still have a good chance to single crit equal lv recipes (double crit is just plain luck and may be harder on lower lv recipes since you finish them faster w/leads to less "chance" - but I may be wrong since I haven't gotten to indepth yet).

BTW, so up until 14 at least my chanter would kick my templars ass all day long and twice on sunday. Hoping the templar picks up at some point.

at 30 Templars/Guardians become a beast. They are kinda lacking compared to assassins/rangers earlier on... but if you keep up w/your Templar you won't be disappointed later on. Templars kinda seem to get the shaft early on as they are like Cleric's and get their "dps" abilities later on compared to other classes. Prolly has to do w/ them getting more "tank" oriented stuff as an earlier priority and how cleric's get their healing stuff as a priority

[OzzofAsura]

Today at 7PM EST Liv will be interviewed live (!) on "Loading...", Ten Ton Hammer's weekly live podcast. She'll be answering questions too, so definitely get in on this!

Taken from Aionsource.com, if anyone is interested.

Link for your pleasure: Loading... Live Dev Chat with Aion Tonight | Ten Ton Hammer

[KoalaTrap]

I'm looking to make this the next MMO I try as WAR and AoC and WotLK-WoW have all failed to keep me longer than 1-2 months.

Aside from questing/PVPing for leveling how are the other areas of the game? Crafting was abysmal in WAR and AoC, is it better here? I guess what I'm asking is aside from the normal old questing and level grinding what else is there? I always thought WoW had great atmosphere/casual content like the exploration, fishing, rep grinds and want a new MMO that can provide a similar variety of things to do if you don't just want to grind.

[Aro]

I would say EXP wise Aion is pretty demanding, comparable to FFXI for sure. At least in patch 1.0. If you find the *best* grind spots you can maybe get a lvl from 30+ every 3-4hrs. And no doing quests is not more efficient.

[Koul]

Hmmm... interesting. I'm in the same boat as some people. Lost my WoW spark 2 months into WoTLK. If it's more like FFXI but not... it... then I might actually enjoy it more. Kinda excited for it now.

How is the PvP?

does shit break with crafting?

I lvl'd BRD and WHM in FFXI and holy pally/priest in WoW so slow soloing/questing is fine with me.

[Purrrfect]

Yes you can fail a synth in Aion. I'm not sure if it is just some possible loss or 100% loss on materials though. And the crafting is a lot more like FFXI. You can level up a craft by making stuff per usual, or the guildmaster will give you a quest where you have to make X of an item, and the guy gives you one of the ingredients and you find the rest (these are quest recipes so you don't learn them and you can't make them without having the quest, but you can't uset he result item anyways). The downside I've seen (only up to 62 armorsmith) is that for every single synth through the guild quests you have to buy an item, so it does cost munies. Of course the things to buy are rather cheap. When crafting its like gathering where you have to progress bars, one success and one failure, and the one that fills first is the result. If you HQ a craft after the success bar fills you get another pair of bars to determine something, I've only done it once and don't know if its just hq-success/hq-fail or hq1/hq2. They also have an option to set how many of a synth you want to do and a synth all (teh awesome). Oh, and you get exp for synthing, albeit very little.

[Akanei]

You fail, you lose everything.

[Aro]

PvP is alright, so far on my server Elyos almost always win (due to uneven numbers) and there are usually gank parties roaming the Abyss. One thing I love is "Mini-pvp Arenas" and duels anywhere. So if you like PvP, you will probably like this game. One other thing is how they take it to a 3rd dimension (flying) and it offers a whole other opportunity to strategize.

[Halion]

All this comparing to FFXI or WOW seems mostly from people who never played one of the 5 billion free MMOs out there. If you've ever played a Korean MMO at all you will recognize Aion as Korean MMO-like, but there are plenty individual things to appreciate even if they are not "unique". The "FFXI-like" and "WOW-like" elements are MMO elements. Each game has a similar but not quite the same take on the same things. It's like arguing over Halo v CounterStrike v Socom. Realism v Fantasy, First person v Third person, Flying v Vehicle Combat, blah blah blah.
I love the setting in Aion, it has a realistic feel with the environment, medieval style castles and housing, and beautiful fantasy armors and monsters. However just like every other MMO you are killing beefed up version of the same Spriggs you killed for your first quest at lv40.
The main reason however to choose one MMO over the other is PVP. If you want the PVE to be the main focus of the game Aion isn't for you. They may add a lot of side things to do like FFXI has now but at the moment you aren't going to have much to do if you try to avoid PVP altogether. Personally I don't like how PVP is in WOW where Aion seems to have a better take on it. Despite being able to use wasd and skill bars in the same way I also find it much easier to maneuver and kite in most Korean MMOs I've played where I simply cannot get used to doing it in WOW and pretty much flail around until I get killed whenever I'm faced with an opposing faction member. Aion also doesn't want you to choose one or the other, they want PVP and PVE to be commonly accessible and enjoyable to everyone.

I have 1 GB of RAM and it takes being in a city for about 30 minutes before I can actually make an attempt to run anywhere with a hint of smoothness. I have everything turned down as low as possible including muting the sound. I close every background app on my computer. It was OK until I got into Pandaemonium and then Altgard. I can't have weather but I can turn the detail up and the music on outside of the cities. I don't have lag problems in WOW for the most part on ~medium settings unless I try to go to Dalaran. Max settings on a beefy system on this game could be breathtaking.

[Kitha]

After reading most of this thread (well, post page 11..) I really want to get this game now. I lost my feel for MMOs after FFXI and briefly AoC/WAR, but I feel like I might like this one a lot better. Of course, now I need to get a PC to play since my laptop is now completely outdated.

Yes come Jay, join the dark side! Pee on laptops while FLYING!

[MisterBob]

Is there any negative to playing the China retail? If the NA version came out, would I have to restart to play on NA servers?

[Purrrfect]

Is there any negative to playing the China retail? If the NA version came out, would I have to restart to play on NA servers?

The negative would be you can't understand 99% of the players? When the NA version comes you will have to start over, and you will be on a different server so no transferring anything.

[Vail]

nothing much to add other then I'm greatly waiting for this game to come out state-side, it'll be nice to play a single class game again