AION - New NCSoft Title

[Bo Jackson]

This game looks like of like a spiritial successor to Lineage 2 where they address a lot of the problem that game had(has?). I always loved the art and graphics, the pvp and economy, and the fact that not everything was BOP so you could hand items down because they were very difficult to gather mats for creating. It really game guilds sweet because you could help each other out so much.

The farmers and grind just ruined that game completely I'm going to keep a close eye on this one though. It looks very cool This could be my next MMO post WoW. Every time I quit playing one I always say "never again" and I keep crawling back.

[Grumpy Old Fart]

You loved the completely insane PvP system in Lineage 2? You somehow - even mistakenly - get yourself "red" and you can't even fucking defend yourself from the 50 newbies that proceed to farm you for your hard-won gear? That system was one of the most retarded in the history of PvP games.

And the economy? That game had no economy at all, other than keeping a few slave shops running in Hong Kong.

Shit, I quit that game six months after release (I was in NA beta a long time too), and a solid 30% of every server was rang rangs.

I'd bet that without the rang rang sub cash, NA Lineage 2 would have been shut down a long time ago. I'm sincerely hoping NC-Soft has learned from their NA Lineage 2 disaster what *NOT* to do with Aion.

[Mir]

Originally Posted by Draegan

I think I read somewhere that there will be separate servers for different world locations. I'm pretty sure they will haver NA, EU and SE Asia servers.

If anyone kind find any official information in regards to this I'd be a big help. The main deciding factor on wether I even bother to pick up a box is if this will have a deadicated group of NA servers.

[Korioni]

Originally Posted by Mir

If anyone kind find any official information in regards to this I'd be a big help. The main deciding factor on wether I even bother to pick up a box is if this will have a deadicated group of NA servers.

NCSoft used to aim at the Asian market, like Blizzard does with World of Warcraft but instead for the NA/EU market making the game casual friendly and releasing WoW/TBC in NA/EU first. With Aion, NCSoft's plans are to develop it for the western market, instead of the asian one.

Taken from Article: Aion: The Tower of Eternity, Preview - 1st Part @ 09.01.2008 - 04:10 | Nihilum.eu - MMORPG Gaming Guild and Community

and

The game will be localized (texts AND voices) in English, French and German (of course Korean and probably some other Asian languages...). There will be servers for US, EU, Asia. We don't know: if servers will be localized in EU, if there will be oceanic servers and if account allows playing from any zone (eg having a EU account and playing on a US server)

It's a Nihilum article, so not official, but quotable at any rate.

[Draegan]

The games probably not coming out to Q3-4 2008 so you have a while anyway.

[Kolle]

i just wanna know if any significant portion of the game involves grinding

[Zindan]

Originally Posted by Kolle

i just wanna know if any significant portion of the game involves grinding

Of course it does, no matter what the Korean dev's say about making the game more "western", they are still Korean, and thus unable to really make a game without a grind.

Listen to the interview where that dev describes the questing and leveling up...I cringed when he said the words "a long period of time" needed to finish some quests, or needing to spend many days to get through a level (at the higher end). =)

The only difference I can see happening is that they will have enough quests for people to do which will keep them occupied while leveling up, though I am sure people will run out of quests during each of the higher lvls. Don't be surprised if the "common" quests have you go out and massacre like 500 or more of some mob, or require getting hundreds of uncommon drops.

[Kodylan]

That article isn't entirely correct. They're very much designing this game for the market in Korea. It's even being beta tested (and will release there) first. However, the Korean team in charge of Aion is designing it with more western gameplay elements than your typical Korean MMO.

Edit: The localization comments are spot-on though; it's going to have all of those language versions (and maybe a few others they haven't talked about yet).

[arkhaal]

Hi everyone, I've just read the thread and thought I could make some adjustments and precisions/details.

There is some official informations in nihilum's articles, like the localization for languages & servers, PC requirements, the lore, classes details, pvpve system but I didn't highlight them because all the content comes from beta feedback, interviews and korean fansite, so it's like everything is final, of course there will be some details about to change, but it's not like it'll change the whole game.

I didn't talk about economics, tree-skill, pvpskills or crowd-control system because we don't have enough informations on it, so you can consider that all informations are almost correct (and if there is some old infos, I indicated it)

Abouts the design being oriented for Western, well, of course I was suprised like other fans, that NCSoft give full informations for Asian websites and the Beta/release for Korean first, but it's normal, why ?

NCSoft is a korean company, so it's easier for them to have feedback with korean players, first because of the language (translation english/korean is very difficult, so it's easier for a devs to fully understand a feedback in his own language), because they know them and because they have to sell the game not for only NA/EU but for Asian market too.

And it'll be western oriented because they implements more roleplay, more customization about your character design, there will be quests with short-time objective with good rewards, there will also be differents types of quests, it won't be : kill 8500 gobelins, but mostly : steal the underwear of the nymph living near the fountain, pick some herbs in the forest, kill 10 gobelins, bring this letter to Mr lolicon etc... Of course there will be kills quest like wow, and group quests, like every mmorpg. But the number of quests is pretty large, and they only unlock 5 level/weeks during the Korean Closed Beta Test probably for having a nice leveling curve.

The level cap is 50, and there is 200 quests for lvl 1 to 20 (for both asmodians & elyos). So that makes 100 quests for each side, and if you check wowhead, there is 90 quests for human side in WoW for the same level range.

There is multiple parts in the Closed Beta, the first part was about the leveling and the begining of the Abyss. The second part will be about balancing skills in PvP and the full release of the Abyss system.

NCSoft is the compagny having the most experience in MMORPG in the world, and the team developing Aion is huge, there is 150 persons working on it (wow has 135, but perhaps more before the release). AoC and WAR get more hype than Aion, but if you compare thoses 3 games, I'd put my confidence in Aion, WAR report the release and pause his Beta, AoC just delete 2 classes 2 months before the release... NCSoft know that players wants a flawless game at the release and I'm sure they won't miss !

The leveling curve near the level-cap might be longer than wow, and will be longer than wow but seriously, RPG is about leveling and doing quest in group, I don't have any "pleasure" to level solo a character in 4 days of played and I like the fact that when you reach the level cap, you know everything (or almost) about your class, not only 2 keys that you used doing your leveling....

And I think that's the definition of MMORPG, it's not like a FPS "choose your character, play at full capacity 2 days later", players forget about that when playing at WoW, it's such a casual game that you didn't remember what's a RPG :/
I don't want a full grind MMORPG either, but most feedback report that the game is a mix with WoW and l2, and the played for reaching the level cap is accounced to be 1 to 3 months, depending on your play time.

NCSoft already lowered the XP requirement during Friends&Family beta, the first part of the closed beta being closed, they have probably made other adjustements and they are doing events in Korea during while the beta is paused (will resume in february).

About bots/goldfarmers, there will be a full team of GM dedicated to this problems, there will probably be tools available to them, and the design of aion is being changed for avoiding this.

I'll perhaps rewrite the first article with the paragraph talking about the western orientation, because if you quote 1 sentence of it, it's not correcly formulated, but if you read the entire paragraph with the last sentence saying that NCSoft have to satisfy both markets, it's more accurate

I'll bookmark the thread and try to post sometimes

Zindan : do you have the source about that interview saying that you'll have quests with huge objective like killing tons of mobs ? I can't remember it, and that surprise me, after parsing 47 pages of the main english fansite of aion :/

[Kodylan]

arkhaal: The mention of them gradually raising the level cap in beta is very encouraging to hear. It sounds like they're taking a Blizzard approach to polishing the content chunks at a time and then moving on once it feels "finished."

Aion may very well be the best MMO of the year if they pull off the polishing end properly.

[Rhym]

They've said to reach max level should take 1-2 months. Game looks amazing: the boss cut scenes, flying pvp, strange looking monsters, character models. Check out the youtube vids for each week of beta. Pretty sick.

[Grumpy Old Fart]

Originally Posted by arkhaal

About bots/goldfarmers, there will be a full team of GM dedicated to this problems, there will probably be tools available to them, and the design of aion is being changed for avoiding this.

It would only take *ONE* GM with a will and an IQ over 90 to vastly relieve this problem. If you get twenty petitions per day saying, "There's a Troll Hunter named Xianwang in Felstone Field that's painfully obviously a bot", that GM could spend 30 seconds observing this character, then perma-ban that account/IP. Of course, in WoW this same situation would involve their "team" investigating the accumulated 4,718 petitions that said the exact same thing about the exact same character, then maybe banning that account 4-5 months later. Aion would have a lot more loyal customers if they actually exhibited some commitment to hiring this one GM.


Edit: Hell, hire me for this GM job. You'd have to quadruple my current income to make me live anywhere near a big city, but I guarantee you the bots, hackers, gold sellers, and gold buyers would disappear from your game within a week if I had the right tools to work with. A piece of "Wool Cloth" sells on the AH for 1000g? Buyer and seller fucking *BANNED*, etc. That would be a fun job. I'd even handle the customer service bitching replies to the banned assholes myself! Within a month, your game would have a reputation as a refuge of sanity and good, honest gaming, and you'd triple your subscription base.

[Draegan]

As long as we don't get a never ending grind for levels. Looks like it's getting there. First time through WOW to 60 took me 2 months playing very casually (10-15 hours a week?)

[bubblegumbo]

If the pvp in this game is like Lineage II, without the shitty and unforgiving penalties and the insane grind in order to gear up, it will definitely attract and retain many customers.

[Ronne]

The penalties in Lineage2 are half of what made it fucking rule. Talk about needing social connections.

The other half was burning a castle to the ground with your dragon.