Aion previews

The above post is somewhat uninformed. There IS a talent system using Stigma and stigma stones, which become available after level 20 (the first beta only allowed people to play up to 20 and the second beta only allowed people to play up to level 10).

In response to the translation, I too was disappointed, but the NCWest representatives assure us that we're only getting a preview of v1.0 and that they will hopefully be releasing the game with the v1.1 or v1.2 patch when the servers go live (Korea is soon to get the v1.3 patch with adds a few more dungeons etc). I won't judge the translations until I see the final product.

Gameplay is fairly repetitive for some classes (Ranger is particularly bad from level 11–19). However the levelling is fairly quick so it's no big deal. It took me 4–5 hours to get from 1–10 and about 15–20 hours to get to level 20.

I think there's more than enough variety in armour for the lower levels. It's just that the sets of gear that drop off mobs are fairly infrequent and there's a very small chance you'll get a full set of gear to use for a decent amount of time before you've outlevelled it anyway.

One thing that annoys me is the private shops. I think they're somewhat redundant as there is also an auction house in the game. They do nothing but clutter towns imo.

It also remains to be seen what NCWest will do about botting, given their terrible track record with Lineage 2.

All in all, I think this game certainly has potential. I wouldn't call it a WoW killer. But personally, I'm liking it more than WoW and certainly a lot more than Warhammer Online.

After having spent a few hours playing Aion in Beta (both open and closed), I'd be suprised if I'm still playing this in a year's time. Sure, it's pretty, but so far it's very content poor. Sadly, probably my favourite part of the game so far has been designing my character.

It plays like a poor cousin to WoW, with only two starting areas/races, and many of the quests for those areas are so similar that they are undistinguishable. The classes at low level are also too similar to bother playing more than one or two (Priests wearing mail made my blood boil, but that's a personal issue I need to work through…). Sure this might get better at higher levels, but who can be bothered slogging it out through the same starting areas again?

In terms of story-line (something WoW got so right, and then so wrong, in my opinion), there's a thread, but it's not terribly engaging. I have very little empathy for my character even at the ripe old age of level 14.

The quests are so simple that there's no real need to group up unless you're doing instances, and the “locate” function in the quests means you barely have to read what to do anyway. Fantastic, if all you're interested in is grinding, but somewhat irritating if you'd prefer some mystery.

All in all, I think I'll probably play this until the new WoW expansion comes out, then go back to the classic.

Having recently participated in the first North American beta for Aion, I can safely say that this game will not live up to its hype. I was looking forward to this game for months… and then I played the beta. Disappointment all around.

While the graphics are superb, the gameplay is not. Sure, it's an MMORPG and grinding on mobs, doing quests, etc is to be expected, but this game does not make these tasks fun and interesting.

I tried a couple different classes, and neither of them had interesting attacks that were “cool”. The animations were well done, sound effects weren't bad, and the special effects were neat, but it all felt kind of tacky.

On top of that, there is no talent customisation, unlike other MMORPGs. You just buy new skills as you level up, but can't assign nor pick-and-choose certain ones. The game hardly seemed to present any level of depth. You can learn professions to craft things, but that's nothing new.

Another annoyance is that the game just felt clunky and unpolished. I know it's only a beta, but moving your character felt too glidey and loose, the interface felt like it was slow to respond to your actions, and NCsoft's poor Korean-to-English translation doesn't help. Even the emotes were printed in such a way that made people go, “huh?” Plus, there seemed to be a very limited number of armor models; gear was often regurgitated with new colours.

But to end it on a good note (or as good as I can say), lag was not an issue connecting here in NZ, acquiring your wings and flying around is neat, the ability to set up your own shop is cool, an abundance of quest-specific waypoints on your minimap means you're never lost, the character and weapon models are superb, the player interaction is great, and it's certainly playable.

However, its lasting appeal seems fairly uncertain. Unless the game has awesome end-game content, I wouldn't be surprised if the full game becomes boring and uninteresting pretty quickly (and leveling up doesn't take long).