Aion - The Tower of Eternity

[Stromni Redbeard]

Okay, excuse me for not reading the last 100+ pages (my last reply to this was on like page 5) but a friend of mine from WoW is seriously tempting me to do the preorder to play some Aion beta. I am extremely leery of korean MMO's since playing Lineage 2 so i have a few specific questions before i lay down the cash.

1. Simalarities to L2(this is a long fucking question containing many sub-questions lol)

A. How similar is this game to Lineage II as leveling goes? I have been reading that the leveling up to 20 isnt too bad, and that largely doesnt bother me, but i remember i got a guy to around 33 and ended up quitting because i played for like 3 days, and he still wasn't level 34 yet. Is the grind still huge in this game?

B.Does the game totally revolve around money. I remember in L2 the game pretty much came down to how much gold you had to buy shit. Am i going to have to always stay stocked up on soulshard (or this games equivalent if it has something similar).

C.Can everyone craft, and will the crafted goods get you by till you can afford to get PVP rewards? Will you be predominatly buying gear from merchants or will there be a healthy player made economy?


2.PvP (i cant belive im about to say this) But i cannot play another MMO that does not offer a healthy pvp environment. Having played WAR now for several months, i love open RVR and small group PVP and i love focusing on that aspect in an MMO.

A.Is pvp here goal orientated similar to objectives and RVR lakes in WAR, that give specific rewards and gear to further yourself in the game. Will i be able to level up through PVP?

B.Is pvp largely just religated to PVP area's? I play right now on Dark Crag in WAR and i like mixing it up whenever i see someone to go at it with. In fact i would almost love it if Aion came out with a strictly full RVR server.

C.Is the mix between PVP and PVE good? Tough question , and it varies greatly on personal opinion but anyone playing the beta right now just give yours and i can live with it.

D.Is the game riddled with CC? I am not going to play a fucking ranger or mage, the joy i get is running in and mixing it up, i am leaning right now towards Assassin or Templar/Bezerker. Am i going to get to max level or close, only to find that im going to spend half my time CC'd as my slayer and chosen are at level 40 in WAR.

E.Is pvp here a zerg or more smaller situations? I know in Lineage 2 their other "warrior" class and im assuming the Zerker in Aion was just a polearm wielding AE class. Is that what this game is going to become, all about AE's? I know in WAR its whomever brings the most AE's to the table wins right now (well 1.3 allievated some of that but its still the norm).

Anyways thats all i can think of right now, just getting a general feel for how it plays compared to some of the MMO's i have played in the past. Coming from EQ onwards (recently when resubbing for a few for EQ2 i checked and it amazed me that i first subscribed to EQ in 1999) lately i am really loving the PVP aspect of MMO's. WAR has been a suitable replacement for the boredom that was WOW but as much as i want to love WAR it's just falling way short of what it should be for me to pay 15$ a month for. Anyways, any replies would be great, if this all has been aswered in the past 100 pages, then feel free to neg me or whatever, but a consolidated response would be supar!

[Pyros]

I'll try to answer some, however do understand most of my experience is limited to US beta, and lots of reading on websites and such for the rest of the info.

1-

A) There's still grinding, but it's at more acceptable levels. NCsoft has yet to make any change to the leveling curve, but the lastest patches that we'll get on release increase the amount of xp gained through quests and add quests, that said, unless they change numbers, you'd expect somewhere between 12 and 16hours per level after 40. How much that is, that depends on you obviously, and these numbers are subject to change. Max lvl is 50, 10-20 is like one day played or so, then around 5-7hours per lvl to 30 and 7-10 to 40, something like that, your class and how you level will determine exact values obviously.

B) It revolves around money quite a bit, but it's more because of item enhancing. there's soul shots here too but they basically suck. There's consumables(potions, foods and scrolls) that you want to use, but yeah most of the money will go through enhancing items to +10 once you have good items, see last page, buying wings upgrades and paying for your xp loss rez stuff ^^.

C) Crafting seems like a viable alternative route until level cap and even after it, critted crafted items look pretty good even compared to endgame gear. Not quite as good, but still decent enough that most people would get crafted gear before they get their real endgame gear. Consumables crafts are also good and even more so in endgame.

2-

A) It's somewhat goal oriented, starting level25, you can choose to level in a full PvP area(the abyss) where you can get points for completing certain quests(involving killing the 3rd NPC faction or other players), killing players and doing sieges. Not sure sieges start that early though, probably not. You can also stay in your own faction zones to level, but the xp is worse and you get no points, and you can raid your opponent faction zone by using random spawning rifts in your own zone to go there and gank.

B) Besides capitals and the 1-20zones, everything can potentially be PvP. Your own zones are safer because the opponents have to go through the rifts to get there, but you also get less xp so leveling is slower. If you level in the abyss, the whole zone is a pvp zone basically.

C) No idea what you mean by that, the PvE looks very basic however, besides design which is original, everything looks very tank and spankish with a few "AE run out" and "adds spawning now" stuff, but not much. There's more in endgame that might be more complex though, they have plenty of instances and dungeon at max level(they added them in the last patch).

D) Hard to say, on all the videos I've seen I haven't seen any huge amounts of CC, Rhym was talking about it thinking there's quite a few on the spelllist, however most are Stigmas(they have to be equipped in the capital, you have limited slots for these stigmas) which have 2+mins cooldowns with relatively short durations, while others are DP ability(think the WAR rank4 abilities, only that they charge much much much slower, assuming you have a full bar on engage and your cd for your food is up, 2 per fight max, food cooldown is 30mins I think). Every class can use anti CC potions to remove CCs(30secs or 2mins cd, unsure), and Clerics can instantly dispel all negative effects from people without any cooldown. Also AEs don't work very well on flying targets(both because it's harder to hit ppl spread in the air and because the code sucks for AEs in the air). All these should make it much less CC ridden than WAR is. There is however potent single target CCs, but again, cleric dispels are instants and no cd, unlike WAR dispels, so as long as you're in range and the cleric is able to, you can dispel CCs.

E) There's pretty limited AE damage, the good AE damage are DP abilities again. There's no massive rain of fire bullshit. Gladiators(what you call zerks) do have the best base AEs, but they're also a melee class which obviously limit the amount of stuff they can hit at any time, and forces them to possibly overextends themselves and die due to running out of range of stuff. There's also an AE pull like the bullshit in war, but again, DP skill.


Overall, Aion could be considered a less gay Lineage2, or a korean DAoC. It has elements of the various pvp games before it, but doesn't seem to have too many flaws. 1vs1 are relatively balanced, zerg vs zerg relies more on single targettting gibbing people than AE the shit out of the other zerg, so it's not whoever has the most AE who wins. Again however I could be wrong, but every video I've seen seems to confirm that, even the terrible 24 vs 24 ones.

[Zaphid]

Ingame economy: What you are describing is pretty much L2 effect all over again, while some people will be happy that they can "play the market" and make a lot of gold, I look back at that week when I was sitting in town and selling/buying stuff so I could afford better gear as the week when I came dangerously close to losing my sanity. You simply couldn't buy anything with money you got while leveling.

Unless they start swinging banhammer Mythic-style, it's gonna get ugly really fast.

[Draegan]

2.C : PvPvE is in the game. With the latest patch (our release version 1.5) you will dungeons in the fortresses in the Abyss that only the faction controlling it has access to. There are also raid targets, over world raid targets (I think) that are in the Abyss that you will most likely have to defend against if you try to take them down. There are also instanced PVE dungeons where you race and compete against another group. It seems really interesting. You can choose to finish the instance first or mix it up by getting in the other teams way however this info is from translated patch notes, no idea on the accuracy.

2.D : There is a decent about of CC in the game with a few of the classes (nothing like WAR), but if you're specced for PVP (i.e. spec for resistances rather than pure pve stats) you can easily resist a lot of it according to some Koreans. You might be able to compare it to having PVP and PVE gear in WOW. Where a person without resilience will suck vs. another guy with a full set.

[Rhym]

If you've played warhammer this long and relatively enjoyed it, I think you should really check out Aion. Aion looks like a much improved version of Warhammer. I dont think it's going to be a miracle-like amazing game, but definitely a nice PvP upgrade over the poopy Warhammer.

*also as Draegan said...if you enchant for magic resist (which is seems about 95% of all CC is magic effect) then reports are you resist 50%+.

[kedwyn]

Curious if they have a AH or if it is Lineage 2 styles where everyone sits afk in vendor mode at the gates?

[Vekruul Shuth]

Originally Posted by kedwyn

Curious if they have a AH or if it is Lineage 2 styles where everyone sits afk in vendor mode at the gates?

Both...But the AH seems lacking for features.

[Pyros]

Originally Posted by Vekruul Shuth

Both...But the AH seems lacking for features.

1.1 main UI additions were to the AH, once we get a real version it should probably end up being more useful. It's not that terrible currently however, there's name autofilling feature which in my opinion is the #1 stuff you want in an AH. Alt click or whatever it was, lets you check prices for what you want to sell fast.

[kedwyn]

Originally Posted by Pyros

1.1 main UI additions were to the AH, once we get a real version it should probably end up being more useful. It's not that terrible currently however, there's name autofilling feature which in my opinion is the #1 stuff you want in an AH. Alt click or whatever it was, lets you check prices for what you want to sell fast.

So why do the self vendor thing? Are the fees high or something?

[Ninen]

Fee's aren't high, but they're there. Also self-vendering lets you target folks who aren't in town, or who don't know proper pricing.

[Pyros]

Advertising too, and setting up out of town. You can setup any message you want which can be catchy stuff that people might not be specifically looking for on the AH. You can setup near dungeons or remote places, proximity is a good factor in being able to increase your margin.

[Draegan]

It also allows you to stay in game and afk.

But you can setup near a dungeon, spawn point, etc. and sell pots and food you craft. You can also advertise like Pyros said.

I think they're pretty cool.

[Tonic]

The afk merch stuff was in Ragnarok, and it wasn't too bad all things considered. It does take a while to find what you're looking for though. Hopefully they'll implement some sort of in town pvpve assault thing though (like DB's originally were in Rag) to kill all the afk'ers every now and then.

[Senen]

The AH works decently enough and if its recieving improvements hopefully that will be the prefered method. Its faster and easier to find stuff instead of sifting through a few hundred people in vendor mode. Unless they put in some kind of global vendor search option kind of like EQ used to have in the Bazaar.

[Ninen]

Atlantica Online has both an Auction House, Player-Vendors, and a global Player-Vendor search/buy mechanism (so nice, never have to look at them all one by one; now if only they'd segregate them away from teleport spots...); so the full mix is certainly viable if Aion Devs wanted to implement it.