AION - New NCSoft Title

[woqqqa]

Originally Posted by Draegan

Just be warned a lot of the forum threading is full of L2 players that very much like soul crushing korean MMOs. But the info on the game over there is pretty much complete for what's available.

How can anyone like a soul crushing Korean MMO? I get liking the art, or the music or the PvP sieges or other gameplay aspects (using Lineage 2 as an example here), but the grind? People actually like that?

[Itzena]

You know the poeple who like Verant-era EQ?
Same thing.

[Gnome Eater]

Originally Posted by Itzena

You know the poeple who like Verant-era EQ?
Same thing.

If you read the vanguard beta boards that the horrendous community that festered around those, you'd get a whole bunch of people that required their existence be validated around the most painful unfun experience possibly available.

[wild_whiskey]

It's not that people wanted it to be painful, but that they were trying to re-create the feeling of original EQ, and many people inappropriately attributed this to the grinding, difficult nature of Verant EQ.

According to what I've read, the game is quest-oriented, like lotro and wow.

[Pyros]

Well there's grind and grind, if it's boring ass grind where you have almost no chance of dieing and you press your one key over and over, it makes you want to die, but I found stuff like AE grinding to be rather fun(like when you make a mistake, you die), especially coupled with a few different abilities. Lineage2 was in the first category as far as I remember though. But I don't mind grinding so much when it's "challenging", and when I can actually see my xp bar moving after I'm done killing a mob/group of mob.

Anyway Aion sure looks interesting still, hope they release soon/go open beta or whatever, so I can check it out by myself.

[Draegan]

If you can see your exp. bar moving that can't constitute a grind.

Aion, from what I've heard, will take 1-3 months of 20-25 hour weeks to level. Something like that. There are some videos around (I think I linked them in this thread) where the lead producer talks about the curve. He's borrowing a lot from WOW in terms of ease of entry. Which is good.

[Wodin]

Originally Posted by woqqqa

How can anyone like a soul crushing Korean MMO? I get liking the art, or the music or the PvP sieges or other gameplay aspects (using Lineage 2 as an example here), but the grind? People actually like that?

Relative to most other MMOs progression in Lineage 2 was very simple - it was almost entirely level-based, each level had a large increase in power (relative to the much more fine-grained progression style that WoW / EQ2 / LoTRO favor), and gear was simplistic and had a single progression path with one or two major choices at any given point. Those characteristics meant that total time spent makes a much more substantial difference than it does in a game like WoW, which is something some people like.

The sieges and PvP over valuable resource areas were absolutely awesome, and I really miss that aspect a great deal. If the bots hadn't killed the game, or if the grind had been just a little bit less(ok, like 50% less), I might not have quit.

Lineage 2 had AE grinding if you were the right class and could get critical mass of 3-4 of them(Warlord / Bounty Hunter / Smith), but it actually took a lot of skill (due to having to literally guess where the AE from your polearm was going to hit because everything was serverside) and you needed a pretty focused group and control of the right zone because a lot of monsters had abilities that made AE grinding impossible (heals/stacking dots/etc).

[kyo]

For those of you who don't visit aionsource.com

Interview from April 8th, 2008 with mostly known infos, but a good rehash
Aion: The Tower of Eternity, Preview | Aion @ Curse.com

Cool video from cursegaming with class intros. Looks like they are more on the side of actual gameplay and less staged. Though you can't see the interface.
New Class Video 8 April | Videos

Video showing off some of the areas.
New Aion Video, April 8 2008 | Videos

Video of a newbie running around the newb area killing things such as a water buffalo.
Aion newbie area video april 2008 | Videos

[Hatorade]

New class vid is awesome.

[DMyst]

Moving to south-Korea.

[Draegan]

Here's what I was forgetting about customization:

Stigma

This is a system like the materia in Final Fantasy VII, it's another way to customize your characters. You can get 5 slots of Stigma and buy stones that will give you enchanting of weapons or armors. That's just a basic idea of how it works, but if you apply this system with other classes spells; you can become a Mage with stealth and a Rogue with plate armor, etc. It's definately a system that got a lot of potential.

[Draegan]

Originally Posted by kyo

Videos

Holy seizure inducing spell effects batman.

[Draegan]

Here's some gameplay, with the interface.
http://dory.mncast.com/mncHMovie.swf...4223&skinNum=1

[Pyros]

"PVE

There will be raid bosses in both instances and in the persistent world. A party will consist of 6 players, and a raid will be composed by 4 parties (24 players). 2 types of raids: the first one like Lineage 2, with huge amounts of players, and the second type requiring more strategy then mindless zerging. And there also a possibility of raid encounters influencing the faction war if said boss is important enough.

There is 10% of the world being instanced, and most of them are used for story telling."


Thought someone said previously in this thread that there would be no pve endgame, so interesting to note. Game sure looks awesome though. Probably cause I've been raised in anime and japanese consoles, but still. The archetypes are pretty basic however, they didn't go for original stuff, which is a bit sad.

[Draegan]

You're never going to get away from those archtypes in a fantasy RPG. You can call them something different but they'll always be the same.

Another thing I read over at aionsource is that the first 10 levels are channeled for overflow. Like TR and EQ2.