Why Aion?

[ringthree]

Then you have zero interest in Aion.

You want PvE? Go find a hardcore wow guild on a PvE server or play EQ2 I don't know.

What is it about PvE that you like so much and PvP you can't stand? A lot of people think your way with PvP in that they don't like it but after trying it its not that bad, its just PvE in the sense that people who are good and excell at their class and game knowledge will preform the best in PvP the only difference is its a bit more fast paced.

Buying Aion with no intention to participate in PvP is like buying a car for only the air freshner and throwing the car out, its just not for you.

Remember, I was just wondering what people like about Aion because I just wasn't understanding it. If I pick up the game it will be because I am testing it out and it's fun from time to time. I still play FFXI full-time and I enjoy it very much, so I never had the intention of picking up Aion as a full-time game.

I don't mind voluntary PvP, in fact I enjoy it. But when I want to do other things in game, I don't want to be forced to PvP or have my enjoyment lessened because someone enjoys ganking. That said, if I were to play Aion I wouldn't complain about the PvP obviously, because now I know what I would be getting into. It would be a factor in my decision, it is not something I would complain about after the fact.

[Liseth]

From someone who played FFXI for five years, and WoW for around two I can easily say that Aion improved on some aspects of both games, but also created a couple hallmarks of it's own.

WoW is fun while leveling, and extremely easy and forgiving in regards to getting gear. Also like a few mentioned above, raiding 5 and 6 nights a week gets old real fast. WoW's PvP is very unbalanced even after the recent resil changes. Most arenas take about a minute and favors certain class combos. WoW was great for the amount of quests available, and pretty easy to make gold. WoW had repair bills.

FFXI was PvE only and for some wasn't so forgiving with gear. Honestly, if you weren't one of us who spent years in the HNMLS scene you had nothing to do really until campaign came out. I guess you could shoot for a Maat's cap or w/e but other than that there wasn't much else to XI besides PvE. Face it PvP in XI sucked hard. Quests originally didn't provide exp or decent items either. FFXI if you died, you lost exp and that was it.

Why should you play Aion? Well first, I should say Aion isn't perfect. The difficulty curve might be a tad too hardcore for casual folks. Dying in Aion is annoying as well at higher levels. You can recover exp, but it's really expensive to keep up with it. Thankfully, money is somewhat easy to make, though you'll need more and more of it as time goes on. Aion has perfected group PvP imho, as an SM I've had 5 to 10 Elyos wailing on me and I've gotten away, in WoW that would never happen, and also in WoW people could camp your body if they felt like being dicks. That can't happen in Aion. For someone like me who didn't PvP or do BGs a lot, I'm transitioning well into Aion's PvP aspects and enjoy it very much. Experience can be done in both groups or solo, though I tend to prefer a bit of both. Unlike XI you can actually make some head way just from soloing a la WoW, but grouping up reminds me of XI almost in every way. There's always people looking for tanks that don't exist, Gladiators remind me of Warriors in XI in that people often try to use them as tanks when a Templar isn't around. Questing in Aion is really the only thing similar to WoW, although, they tend to be much more difficult. There are actual cutscenes as well in Aion making the experience much more rich than XI lore wise. Unlike WoW or XI, Aion is a real MMO imo, as it integrates some older grindy content even more so than the other two games.

Aion is fun if you're looking to explore something entirely new, and aren't expecting everything on a silver platter.

[Weltall]

I am a Templar and get tells constantly about joining for X Y or Z...it rocks :D

[OzzofAsura]

Next however I have to say I hate what I put in bold. Thing about FFXI that I like is that is has somewhat of a maze to it. Some things go to far (hi AV) other stuff tho, like getting around sea and some other areas i can not spell are big mazes. I like that, ya I can look up a map now, thats only because its all been mapped was not always the case.

In aion it points you right to the area, no joke a X is put on your map even if you have not seen the area and cant see it on your map. That, in my mind is a bit to much lol.

I always thought this was one of the worst parts of the game. I'm always up for a challenge, but most of those quests gave no indication as to what they wanted you to do or where you could even begin finding such a thing. Imagine playing XI with no guides whatsoever, and without being told by someone who happened to have found it. If you noticed, in Aion, it doesn't point out everything, just things that would be a drag to click around to find. Some things it says "xxxx is a hard to find location" and you're on your own to find it.

I am a Templar and get tells constantly about joining for X Y or Z...it rocks :D

lol yeah, whispers are always either "GREAT PRICES ON 1M Kinah!" or "You wanna do some missions?"

[Weltall]

Are they banning the people who buy gold somehow? Not been keeping track of any of that. I just turned off /1 lol.

[arus2001]

You don't even need to use the location finding, either. So I don't really see it as "hand holding" as it oftentimes it just cuts out the step of alt-tabbing to another window if you're lost. And even then it's not perfect. Fuck you Black Widow.

[burnation]

I actually like the leveling system. Where FFXI makes you group up with a party for any chance at a decent xp on most jobs, and WoW is pretty much a solo /wrist fest from the minute you make your character to 80, Aion lets you take small groups of pretty much whatever, anywhere, any level and rock.

You could do this in WoW too somewhat but meh, I never had a whole lot of luck with it, it seemed to hurt xp more than it did help, or it was a total tard fest. But with Aion I can log in, give a shout for looking for duo/trio partner for grinding and be ready to go within a few minutes and have a lot of fun doing so.

It's actually nice to be back in an MMO that isn't so...empty.

[Anakron]

Another thing I've found is a lot of times, monsters will drop green items that are a couple levels ahead. For example, a level 11 monster dropped a level 14 green weapon, so you can often "ding into" stuff that you find, which is something very rare in WoW.

I suppose lots of people will go to the Broker or craft almost exclusively for gear (I do), so it's not something that truly impacts gameplay, but it's still a nice touch, to be able to effectively use things that you find.

[Kerberoz]

Gaiters in XI = camp a 3-5 day pop with a holding party vs multiple other holding parties in a zone where the surrounding mobs are of no benefit to you whatsoever, then if you get the claim and your linkshell isn't asleep, pray they drop, because everyone just wasted a lot of time if they don't.

Aion gaiters = collect 100 molars while you grind out tons of EXP and loot or collect a bunch of abyss points while you quest and get exp/loot and PvP or get lucky on a craft or get lucky on an NM drop, while said NM can actually drop other things and not waste your day.

[MogKnight]

What really surprised me more about Aion is the fact that there's so many people wanting to play the game when it's really just more of the same from what we've seen already out there. You throw in a bit of FFXI, a bit of WoW, a bit of Guild Wars, a bit of Lineage 2, a pinch of K-Pop and some cheesy rock and you end up with Aion.

After playing the game though, you start to see why people love it and why people hate it. I think one of the first misconceptions though is that this is a "WoW Clone" and I can tell you that yes it is... and no it isn't at the same time. It's like WoW in the fact that yeah, you generally go through a rotation of skills and abilities, you run instances to get loot, you do quests to get XP, so on and so forth. What makes it not a WoW Clone is that a huge majority of XP is not gonna be from quests, your rotation can greatly deviate itself based on proc chances and there's more of an open world type environment in Aion (just like FFXI) but with instances being laced around (just like WoW). So, you would get yourself into a grinding XP party out in the open world or you could be doing runs for loot in instances.

Anyways. Aion can really be called your typical Korean MMO. There's quite a bit of content in it though but there's no real solid "end-game" element that you would see in other MMOs. In this case, the end-game is more towards the PvPvE element of the game in the Abyss area. What really does make this game particularly shine is the entire concept of the PvPvE. There's a whole entire world (the Abyss) where it's World PvP and there's really no rules or anything against ganking lowbies or whatnot. The thing is, the Abyss has PvE content and the rewards from there are pretty damn nice. There are also fortresses that you can take over. These fortress battles are almost exactly like Wintergrasp in WoW. They open up at a set time, you have a certain period of time to overtake the fortress. There's PvE mobs you have to kill in these fortresses and you have players of the opposite faction trying to screw you over. Taking over these fortresses, much like WoW, gives your faction some added bonuses.

The very nice thing and I think this is the thing that really sells me... You don't have to hit end level to do this. Sure, it's recommended so that you don't become cannon fodder but you can still contribute in other ways in the battle without having to rely on your own character's level to do anything. Also, character levels are completely hidden from the opposite faction so if you were to weave into a group of high levels, there wouldn't be any way for anyone in the opposite faction to tell if you're lower level or not.

As for people that wish to take part in strictly PvE, you can pretty much completely avoid anything PvP related to a certain extent. If I recall, they added some content in 1.5 where you have some way of leveling from 25 to 50 without ever touching the Abyss or even going to areas where rifts (portals that take you to the opposite faction's area) can occur.

As for the actual gameplay, you can say that this is indeed a WoW clone... but that's kinda like saying that the King of Fighters was a clone of Street Fighter. There are subtle differences between both games. In WoW, you had abilities that you spammed into a nice rotation, a talent tree, a bag system, instances, a wide range of classes with 3 different specs. In Aion, you have abilities that also fall into a nice rotation, the Stigma system, a cube system, instances, and 8 classes that can play sorta differently when you switch the Stigmas around but not anything dramatic (i.e. a class doesn't have a Healing/DPS/Tanking spec). It just becomes a matter of preference. Aion's battle system is faster than FFXI but slower than WoW. There's a lot less "one shotting" that can occur that tends to be very frequent in WoW and usually you do not end up being screwed over within 1-2 global cooldowns. There are fights that you "will" lose but that's mainly because the game's PvP (much like any MMO really) isn't balanced out until 50.

All in all, Aion is really just something you either like it or you hate it. Aion, for me, just combines what I liked about FFXI (slow progression of items, a slower coherent battle system, positioning in combat having a lot of importance) and what I liked about WoW (Vanilla WoW's honor system, more freedom in combat, barren's chat, quests for XP, PvP) and just random crap (wtf techno battle music in the abyss).

[Gryffes]

and just random crap (wtf techno battle music in the abyss).

Haha this made me wtf at first as well, but I tend to listen to techno/trance/hardcore while grinding anyway so it's nice to have an ingame option similar to what I listen to anyway

[Priran]

IThing about FFXI that I like is that is has somewhat of a maze to it. Some things go to far (hi AV) other stuff tho, like getting around sea and some other areas i can not spell are big mazes. I like that, ya I can look up a map now, thats only because its all been mapped was not always the case.

In aion it points you right to the area, no joke a X is put on your map even if you have not seen the area and cant see it on your map. That, in my mind is a bit to much lol.

so what you're saying is, you can resist the urge to have your destination pointed out on a map if you have to go through all the work of opening a new tab in firefox, but if the locate button is RIGHT THERE you just can't say no

[dejet]

Gaiters in XI = camp a 3-5 day pop with a holding party vs multiple other holding parties in a zone where the surrounding mobs are of no benefit to you whatsoever, then if you get the claim and your linkshell isn't asleep, pray they drop, because everyone just wasted a lot of time if they don't.

Aion gaiters = collect 100 molars while you grind out tons of EXP and loot or collect a bunch of abyss points while you quest and get exp/loot and PvP or get lucky on a craft or get lucky on an NM drop, while said NM can actually drop other things and not waste your day.

Becaust aion gaiters break the game as much as the FFXI ones do? lol not be a prick but movement speed + breaks FFXI for solos.

so what you're saying is, you can resist the urge to have your destination pointed out on a map if you have to go through all the work of opening a new tab in firefox, but if the locate button is RIGHT THERE you just can't say no

re-read, that part of the game is gone, it use to be there for namis, many zones and even lots of mobs. That is all gone now with wiki and forums much like this. If you also missed I quit FFXI for the most part outside once in a blue moon.

That is one of the reasons I quit, what use to be hard is a joke. before you troll think about something better to troll about. Aion was never a maze unlike FFXI that was nuts to try and do anything in its early days.

Shit aion has their own wiki made for stuff like that right off the bat.

maybe you where not around pre 1st nerf of prom's but the graveyard was out of hand even when I did it with like 20 people when it 1st came out. the maze in the 40 cap(50?) that changes based on the day was not perfectly graphed till like a year after. FFXI updates no longer add anything like this, zones have a few blocks and that is it.

edit: hell namis is still a maze sorta(depending on your group skill), and salv we dont fully understand. name one thing in aion that works on a maze style such as pulling salv NMs/the boss.

[Mayareira]

Remember, I was just wondering what people like about Aion because I just wasn't understanding it. If I pick up the game it will be because I am testing it out and it's fun from time to time. I still play FFXI full-time and I enjoy it very much, so I never had the intention of picking up Aion as a full-time game.

I don't mind voluntary PvP, in fact I enjoy it. But when I want to do other things in game, I don't want to be forced to PvP or have my enjoyment lessened because someone enjoys ganking. That said, if I were to play Aion I wouldn't complain about the PvP obviously, because now I know what I would be getting into. It would be a factor in my decision, it is not something I would complain about after the fact.

Most of the time, MMORPGs are either good PvP's or PvE's, not both(excluding WoW, which is somewhat a jack of all trades). Chances are quite high that you won't be able to enjoy Aion too much.

I still play FFXI full-time and I enjoy it very much

You can play Aion "casually" I suppose. I have a 3 year old WoW character that's level 27-30. Every once in a while I reactivate it to explore, level, do quests etc. Something new/different every now and then always helps.

The "exploration" aspect of MMORPGs can be pretty enjoyable. Aion looks stunning and I am sure it'll provide a fair amount of fun.

[dejet]

Most of the time, MMORPGs are either good PvP's or PvE's, not both(excluding WoW, which is somewhat a jack of all trades). Chances are quite high that you won't be able to enjoy Aion too much.



You can play Aion "casually" I suppose. I have a 3 year old WoW character that's level 27-30. Every once in a while I reactivate it to explore, level, do quests etc. Something new/different every now and then always helps.

The "exploration" aspect of MMORPGs can be pretty enjoyable. Aion looks stunning and I am sure it'll provide a fair amount of fun.

It looks good when you can put everything up. I play on my laptop it video card is not bad but unless i play on my PC i cant make aion look all that great. When I do play on my PC it looks good tho ^^

[burnation]

No need to open flight paths and no need to update silly addons is love, and much more love. There are so many minor improvements that I love that pretty much keeps me from going back to WoW forever. Not like I was going back anyway.

[Priran]

re-read, that part of the game is gone, it use to be there for namis, many zones and even lots of mobs. That is all gone now with wiki and forums much like this.

wow, you must have gotten pissed and quit ffxi a couple months after launch because I played for 5 years and the only time you couldn't find exact details on how to finish a quest was if the quest was added in a patch less than 30 minutes ago.

[Gryffes]

wow, you must have gotten pissed and quit ffxi a couple months after launch because I played for 5 years and the only time you couldn't find exact details on how to finish a quest was if the quest was added in a patch less than 30 minutes ago.

Not even true w/ all the forum datmining posting quest names/dialogue before patches were even out

[Hyan]

Gaiters in XI = camp a 3-5 day pop with a holding party vs multiple other holding parties in a zone where the surrounding mobs are of no benefit to you whatsoever, then if you get the claim and your linkshell isn't asleep, pray they drop, because everyone just wasted a lot of time if they don't.

Aion gaiters = collect 100 molars while you grind out tons of EXP and loot or collect a bunch of abyss points while you quest and get exp/loot and PvP or get lucky on a craft or get lucky on an NM drop, while said NM can actually drop other things and not waste your day.

So trade a shitty and overused method for getting a piece of gear for another shitty and overused method? Can't wait to try out the game now!

[ringthree]

Gaiters in XI = camp a 3-5 day pop with a holding party vs multiple other holding parties in a zone where the surrounding mobs are of no benefit to you whatsoever, then if you get the claim and your linkshell isn't asleep, pray they drop, because everyone just wasted a lot of time if they don't.

Aion gaiters = collect 100 molars while you grind out tons of EXP and loot or collect a bunch of abyss points while you quest and get exp/loot and PvP or get lucky on a craft or get lucky on an NM drop, while said NM can actually drop other things and not waste your day.

Or an AF quest that gives you double the movement speed at night...

/facepalm

You really aren't comparing the in-game stats on gear between games and then comparing the difficulty of getting that gear between games? You really aren't comparing these things without even considering the differences in movement between the two games.

This defines /facepalm.

Do you think that FFXI gear sucks because WoW gear has better stats?

/facepalm