Aion Review

I spent some time at the end of the Aion open beta checking out the game. I have been itching to try a new online game out, and somehow I just found out about Aion last week.

The game itself installed pretty easy.  NCSoft has a launcher to manage which game to run, download patches for, etc.  So if you have any of their other games I suppose your already part way there.

I use Vista as my OS (ya I know) and everything ran smoothly for the most part.  I did have trouble with GameGuard.  Gameguard is the protection software NCSoft uses to make sure no cheat/bot software is running while you are running Aion.  For some reason my game would just quit after 10-30 minutes with a non-descript gamguard error.  No number, no detail.  Just that gameguard has stopped.  Eventually I reinstalled gameguard, and then started running Aion as Administrator.  One of those two changes seemed to work as I didn't have another issue.

The game itself is beautiful.  You start off with a hand full of basic role types.  Mage, priest, fighter or scout if I remember right.  The level of detail you can go into in customizing your character is also quite impressive.  There are only two races to play, one for each faction side.  So everyone around you still looks mostly the same, even if they are short/tall, etc.

A note about the factions.  I wasn't all that clear from the game about the lore, and point of end game play.  It seemed like there were two races fighting against each other.  You can play either side.  At some point in the game Player vs Player activities become available.  I suspect that is the main point of the end game but I never got that far so it is purely speculation.

Once playing the game you arrive in a very visually stunning area.  The graphics engine is impressive for sure.  You jump right into questing.  The quests are easy enough to understand and some of them are main story line vs just sideline.  The main story line quests sometimes have visual cut scenes.  They were too short to add value for me.  Just reenactments of a sentence or so. 

I also had a hard time keeping track of who we (good guys) were, who the flying people were (the are 'better' then mere humans and what we aspire to?) etc.  The starter quests did have tutorials and videos to help people learn the interface and systems but frankly I think they were not paced right at all.  At least for a mass audience.  After an hour I started to get bored.  Collect 10/Kill 10 is about the same in any game regardless of how odd looking the wolf looks (which by the way looks like a furry fish).

One part that I liked a bit was the ability to set up your own store.  Basically you list items in your inventory you want to sell, then just sit down and become a mini store.  Then you can go away from character for a while and come back to money.  This is very similar to when I played Lineage II.  They also have an auction house available.  I did use the auction house just a bit, but it wasn't really effective during beta.  Hard to know just how the economy will be on live servers.

I found myself really hoping that at lvl 10 or 15 or something in the near future would be a big change.  The big event that took me from newbie collecting bug parts to actual game playing.  At 10 ish you ascend and it is a big moment for the character.  You start to branch off on your class.  As a priest I could go the more damaging route, or pick the healer path for example.  You can also start to fly.  Yes you get wings.  But only for a short period of time.  This was the time I thought I would finally be able to do something interesting.  Where are instances, or some new game play that the game has introduced?  Well I didn't find them.  I asked around to those much higher lvl that said they had multiple characters.  Nobody could tell me about any of the game different from the first 10 lvls.  That isn't to say the game is all the same as the first dozen or so levels.  Just that I didn't see it and couldn't find anyone else who would tell me anything about it.

I continued to the second town for questing, then the farm land, etc. A few more levels of questing. Same basic stuff.  Sigh.

I was hoping to try out crafting.  I collected herbs and ore, and some other etherial type of stuff but never actually found enough of anything to make anything.  I suppose I could have spent more time trying to find the crafting district or area to really try it out but at that point real life required my time.

Bottom line: 

Some people will LOVE Aion.  No doubt.  Just not me.  My wife and I have played WOW since beta.  Almost 4 years I think.  We have both played many other games in between.  For now I stick with WOW as it has my friends and family and it is still entertaining to me.  Aion didn't offer anything different except new looking monsters and better graphics.   In fact, it offered less in other areas. That just isn't enough to even buy it.  There wasn't the kind of story/creativity/detail in Aion that moves a person.  I didn't laugh, I didn't care about characters.  About the only thing I cared about was trying to sell more stuff for $ that I had nothing to spend on.

I know the game has been out since late last year in Asia.  It is already version 1.5 from what I read.  I suspect that it will have a strong following.  Nothing the size of WOW but that doesn't make it a bad game.  Rather the game isn't made for me.  It is made for someone who is looking for a different kind of endgame playing.  Raids, pvp, and amazing graphics.  Hopefully it is able to deliver.