Aion - The Tower of Eternity

[Jait]

Originally Posted by Sharmai

I just haven't decided yet if I am going to play this game. I got burned with Hellgate london CE (Admittedly my own fault) and Warhammer CE and really glad I never bought the Vanguard, or AoC CE. So will this game last? Are the CE bonus worth it long term?

I got burned with the WAR CE too. The book was neat, but nothing in game was worth it. If nothing else you're saving a million gold that you'll need to spend anyway.

I really like Aion personally. Despite not having the ability to change it's form at release, when I read patch notes like 1.5 I can see they're moving in the right direction. WAR's biggest problem was releasing way too early, maybe Vanguard too. Aion really has a lot going for it and we get to see it's post-release development before it goes live.

[Azrayne]

Someone told me they're going to stick with the 'pay per hour' model for the western release instead of swapping over to monthly fee, is that just a dumb rumour or is there something to it?

[Sharmai]

Unless the per per hour model is cheaper then 15$ a month it won't have a chance at surviving. Therefore it's likely a false rumor.

[Rhym]

For reference: lvl 13 Enchanter

Of course the abundance of quests probably stop at high levels (maybe not considering that new content patch) but so far there's a crapton of quests. I like the campaign storylines and the little cut scenes they give you. Nothing amazing, but kind of neat. I know some people won't like that 80% of the quests are "go kill X" or "go kill X which drops Y," but i like these quests. The least favorite quests for me in WoW were the really elaborate ones where'd you'd have to use a bunch of quest specific items or use vehicles, etc. For me leveling should be relaxing and I don't really want to bother reading all the fine print of every quest. I know, lots of people are not like that, but I am.

The atmosphere is awesome. I like fighting whole new creatures and races instead of the same ol' goblins, orcs, elves, dwarves, blah blah. The zones look fantastic and have a great feel. The game runs amazingly smooth and I don't have that great of a rig. Usually, getting 60-70 frames and the only time it dropped to 30ish is when I was at a massive pool of water with tons of reflections. The animations and areas feel very asian like straight out of Final Fantasy. The character customization is the best in any MMO i've played. Tons of options and lots of cool choices.

The UI is solid. Nothing fancy but it allows for enough customization for me so far. You can set it up to look almost the same as WoW. Nothing crazy new in terms of skills or unique combat features. You have skill chains which is: Use skill A and then you can use skill B which does something cool. I'm guessing these get more elaborate and better at higher levels.

Things to nitpick at:

- After a completion of a casted spell I can't move my character until the animation completes which is about half a second. I could see this being annoying for PvP

- Whoever tags the mob first gets it just like in WoW and will get to loot it, however; if someone assists you and damages it they will get experience which I believe comes out of the mob's exp pool. I literally started nuking or whacking anything i came across if I was traveling somewhere if someone was fighting it because I knew I'd get some experience when it finally died.

- Unless I can't find them there don't appear to be global or zone channels. On one hand this is nice so you don't have to hear aa bunch of mouth breathing idiots babble about nothing, but then not having it hurts in trading and lfg.


Overall:
Really polished MMO, but at this point I've played so many that the usual low levels aren't that exciting. Game will be made or broken at the high end PvP and PvE content which we'll probably never see in these events. Regardless, I'll be checking it out at launch because even if the end game doesn't deliver it'll still be a worthy diversion for a month or two to level up.

[Pyros]

Originally Posted by Sharmai

Unless the per per hour model is cheaper then 15$ a month it won't have a chance at surviving. Therefore it's likely a false rumor.

The chinese one is arguably cheaper, for 15 you get ~208hours, or 7hours a day, which is more than what most people play.

That said, rumour, they haven't confirmed anything yet, but I highly doubt they'd go for this system, as I said, they get a lot more money from a 15$ a month system than if they had hourly(especially since hourly based stuff can go from month to month, you never "waste" it if you don't play much for a couple of weeks).

Edit: Rhym few notes:

First, I think it's by the end of 13 that you somehow have to end up doing lvl15 quests or grind, I found it annoying, doesn't get better as you level either. I'm half way through 14 and I have quests having me kills 4dots lvl15-16mobs, which is quite annoying, and one quest I can't solo(even though nothing indicates it until you get there and find the named 4dots with 2 adds). Still, it wouldn't be so bad if I grouped I guess.

The freeze after casted spell seem to go off if you use a chain ability. I'm unsure if it's because of the chain or just because of bad coding, but with a sorc if you chain off the firebolt or frostbolt, you can keep moving. With Smite however you're fucked, and yeah it's a bit annoying.

For the mob tagging, actually you don't tag mob, the tag happens at the first 51%, whoever did the most gets the mob. Xp is shared equally between people though.

The global channels are turned off for beta, because NCsoft are retards with their beta. Nothing new here, but yeah very gay. Then again the level of stupidity they'd be filled with would probably crash my computer, my brain, and the very fabric of reality.

[Erumaron]

Friend talking about the game:

I stopped doing quests and holy shit did they pile on
guildie said he did 118 quests by Lvl18

That's a lot of questing....do they pace alright or is it pretty tedious?

[Rhym]

Ah, thanks for the info Pyros. It is probably just Smite on having to wait for the animation because for my heal spells I dont have the problem.

[Man0warr]

Around 16-17 you pretty much have to group unless your a Spiritmaster, all the quests have you killing 4 dots. Grouping is rather enjoyable though, we said screw the quests and just did Blackclaw Outpost to kill 4 dot Elites with a full group, was getting 6k per mob and found a named that dropped blue ring/belt and just camped it - exp was way faster than questing.

[Draegan]

Originally Posted by Sharmai

I just sold a white sword non-magical of the forest on the on the trade broker for 10k. So apparently sell absolutely everything on the trade broker that is not grey. As far as the pricing I still don't know yet.

It's beta, no one cares.

[PerritoBites]

Originally Posted by Man0warr

Around 16-17 you pretty much have to group unless your a Spiritmaster, all the quests have you killing 4 dots. Grouping is rather enjoyable though, we said screw the quests and just did Blackclaw Outpost to kill 4 dot Elites with a full group, was getting 6k per mob and found a named that dropped blue ring/belt and just camped it - exp was way faster than questing.

Not true... you can skip those quests just like you skip an instance in WoW. There are alternative quests you can do... and I did that twice.

[Grumpy Old Fart]

Originally Posted by Rhym

Whoever tags the mob first gets it just like in WoW and will get to loot it, however; if someone assists you and damages it they will get experience which I believe comes out of the mob's exp pool. I literally started nuking or whacking anything i came across if I was traveling somewhere if someone was fighting it because I knew I'd get some experience when it finally died.

Since you're obviously an MMORPG newbie, I'll offer some gentle advice. Somebody who goes around hitting mobs other people are fighting to leach some of the XP are known in MMORPG technical terms as "a total, fucking, loser asshole". I highly recommend you don't do that when the game goes live if you don't want 100% of the server's population to hate your guts.

[Vehn]

hmmm pretty sure (100%) it's whoever does the most damage to the mob that gets the loot. I remember their being some elite mobs that I hit first and some other group killed him and they got the loot. Happens when questing to when you and someone else DPS a mob and whoever does most damage gets to loot 'em. Both people get XP though

[Rhym]

Lol, you are aptly named. It's Beta and I wanted to see how their tagging/exp sharing system was working. Now go pull out the broomstick that's stuck up your ass.

[Draegan]

Played a ranger up to 13 or so Asmo side. Fucking tough class to play. Not many abilities to use and I can't take two mobs at once.

At 16 you get your first range chain. So at the moment I'm constantly switching hotbars and weapons.

[Pyros]

It was Hatorade I think that said Rangers sucked until 19, then got much better at 22, from the chinese beta stuff. Scouts in general suck at low level, Sins get ass raped quite a lot too. Mages are probably the best classes for early leveling, Healers aren't bad(but Cleric seems extremely slow) and I guess Warriors is decent(templar is slow as shit though).