Con #1: Server Queues

Honestly, starting up the Aion application just to get kicked off the app when there’s no server space available and have to reload the whole app, again, would suck, so the fact that there’s a queue system at all is nice. Another nice thing is that NCSoft were able to predict just how much data transfer and stress their servers could handle before any national or international launch dates, so the only actual crash that happened was very short lived (less than 30 minutes and it just happened to be my server). All of this, however, does not explain away the fact that waiting between 2 to 8 hours in a queue of thousands to play a game that is paid for on a schedule of time is pretty ridiculous. In fact, it’s beyond ridiculous. It’s annoying at first, then irritating, next unbearable, until finally it’s forgettable. What I mean is, no one is going to sit around and wait for hours to play a game when most casual players don’t even have more than two hours to devote to a single playing session. There were even queue times in “headstart”, which persons like myself were required to pay extra for if they wanted to play before thousands of others. It’ll probably get better, though…

Con #2: Lack of Trainers, Inventory Space & Kinah

Running around all over Atreia, being forced to fight overt mobs and leveling through quests you happen to pass by all equal experience points (and an ass-load of items clogging up your inventory). What would be nice is to have some trainers in these cities you travel to, so that you can learn new talents as you level, but, instead, Aion has skills in the form of inventory items that can only be bought from one place. If you feel like having even less inventory space, you could carry some with you, but with the serious lack of NPCs around to sell items to, you’ll be waisting time sorting your inventory after almost every kill. Also, that method will leave you with less kinah (the in-game currency) since you have fewer items to sell to NPCs. The other option is to run around questing & collecting items as you like, but with severely reduced survivability because of your lack of skills on par with your current level, and then to run back to the one and only location where you can get new skills (way the f*ck away), in the hopes that you can save up enough kinah to afford to buy more inventory space to carry around skill books with you in later levels.

The whole way it’s set just makes it annoying and even more time consuming to grind through levels early in the game, when it could have been designed differently, so that new players could focus more on quests, lore & environments rather than logistics of inventory and kinah management that they won’t need later.

Con #3: Character and Environment Mapping

If you read my previous post and first impressions of Aion, then you’ll know without me saying so, that I think the game, overall, is beautiful. Though it could be argued that Aion is seriously lacking in the graphics department for a PC game, it is an MMO with PvP, so loading times are an issue. Anyway, my problem is not the textures, colors or shading. My problem is the base wire-frame that everything in the game are built out of, specifically, for the objects protruding from the landscape. The dislike I have with the way these environmental objects are designed is purely aesthetic. Since I’ve seen an incredibly similar landscape design in an F2P (free to play) game, I consider Aion’s design cheap; too cheap to pay for. Similarly, about the characters, I think their movements are not complex enough, since their waists seem to always glide parallel to the ground, while their legs and torso bump and move. I’m familiar with this type of character movement in other, older games, that are also F2P, now. Yet another reason for me to not pay for Aion, one of the newest and most anticipated MMORPGs, ever.

Con #4: The Players

The part of an MMO that really makes or breaks it, especially one that you spend as much time playing as an MMORPG, are the other players. The way most MMORPGs are designed, it’s impossible to experience all of the in-game content without having other friends to help you. Whether that help is needed getting into difficult to reach areas, going into instances that actually require more than one player to even enter, or to get items killing mobs you could not ever, ever kill solo. The players I have had the displeasure of interacting with in Aion, so far, have been very unhelpful and very rude. My character’s level was higher than the common MMORPG player, meaning that the only other players doing the same quests and leveling in the same areas as me were also experienced MMORPG players. These are the players that will establish the MMO and define it from a player standpoint. From creating terms other players (and maybe a culture, like WoW) will use, to setting the pace of the in-game economy, to defining the parameters of player-to-player interactions that all players will eventually assimilate to, these few at the top are the ones who make the game. These experienced players were almost constantly rude with text, almost constantly spamming every possible chat channel, and did not follow MMORPG etiquette that has been set over many years. The one etiquette rule broken the most which is a personal pet peeve (and probably is for you, too) was steeling gather-able resource nodes as another player who is trying to reach that node distracts the mob guarding it.

It’s a far cry from the helpful player base fans of FFXI may be familiar with, but it is a change that has been progressing over a long time, can probably be measured best from interactions in games like, WoW, and is most likely due to the decreasing age of the common MMORPG player. This pattern of general player behavior may be a trend that will not ever change and will be an irrevocable part of all MMO’s in the present and future. Most likely, the only way to get a more mature gaming experience would be to find other players out of game, on forums and the like, and hope that you have a schedule that matches theirs so that you can get the full enjoyment out of a game, and it’s updating content, for which you pay over, and over, and over.

I’ve been waiting for Aion since I first heard about it, which wasn’t so long ago. I haven’t been anticipating it’s arrival for years, like the hundreds and thousands of U.S. and European fans chatting up in forums. I’ve merely been waiting for about the last eight months. I even downloaded a Korean launcher and tried to get into the beta they were having and did the same when the beta went to China. All of the work was for naught, and I was unable to experience true gameplay, first hand. Until this past weekend.

Me so tiny. ME SO BIG.

After the 20+ hours of downloading the launcher and game files, I was finally able to log on. I was greeted with a sort of Japanese version of holy-pop-concert music that made me feel like I was about to watch a kickass anime. The login screen was pretty pimping, too, with a display of a large, white city built on a mountain side with overflowing lush greenery and smooth flowing water falls. After I was finally able to stop gauking at the login screen, I went into character customization and spent about an hour making eight different characters, one of each class and four for each faction.

The customization options for characters has more options than any other pay-to-play MMO I’ve ever seen, even more than SWG. Lip size, smile arc, tattoos, breast size, hair styles and more! I actually spent a good bit of time customizing some of my characters to look like real people I know. It turned out well. To illustrate the incredible differences in customization, I took a pic of the smallest and largest available heights.

After I got into the actual gameplay, I was beamed into a generic sort of starting area remeniscant of many Chinese made MMORPGs. For the first 10 minutes, the game felt very much like Runes of Magic, actually. Running around, picking up quests while killing level 1 mobs that are just walking around, and gathering nodes of plants nearby.

But as I ventured farther and began to accept more quests, I noticed that not all was as similar to free-to-play MMOs as I had previously conjectured. When I approached the first city or small village, I was just sort of running around turning in quests and picking up new ones, checking out what the vendors had, but then I stopped for a minute to just look around. Everything looked fantastic. From the textures on the floors and walls, to the NPCs and other characters around me. The food vendor was holding a basket of food and picking items to show off to the crowd. I decided to take a bit of a closer look at the scenery and ventured to a small stream nearby.

Catching fish in the stream. Sushi time, bitches!

The only reason I went to the stream was to check out the water effects (which were great), but then I got something extra. My character started reacting with the environment around him, started checking out the fish. He’d reach in to try to catch one, miss, try again, and catch one! It didn’t loot an item to put into my inventory or anything, it was just for show. In fact, the character even threw the fish back into the water.

Hiding from the rain.

From then on I would stop every so often to see how my character would react to new environmental conditions. The rain was great. It wouldn’t always just storm harshly or sprinkle lightly, in fact, it would alternate. Also, the rain wouldn’t start out of nowhere, the sky, environmental lighting and sound effects would clue me as to what the weather change would be. I remember seeing a flash of light and everything in the forest I was running through, all the objects, static, player and NPC, having yellow light cast on them, but not overlayed. Instead, it was faded from one side, as light hits an object in real life. Then thunder. Flash and thunder, again. Then I heard the rain falling through the trees before I finally saw it.

When it wasn’t raining, the scenery was just as beautiful. Critters were running around with the overt and passive mobs. Everything was attack-able, except for the NPC’s. Which leads me to another part of the gameplay, the quests.

A lovely day for giant-insect extermination!

I enjoyed the story-line, very much. But in the structure of the quest a feature I enjoyed the most was the ability to make choices in a particular quest line. For instance, one quest had a a smitten fisherman wanting you to give flowers to a nearby fisher-woman for him. After gathering the flowers, I opted to take the flowers for him, hoping maybe I could get some nooky or at least some sort of reward, but instead I got a disgruntled fisherwoman and a heart-broken fisherman. I wonder what would have happened if I told him to take the flowers himself?

Frank's meat pie was always the hottest dish on the plains!

Another feature of the quests that I really enjoyed were cutscenes. This little tidbits would help show you where you needed to go for what part of the quest, just in case the instructions on the quest journal weren’t clear enough (you, dumbass). The best part about the quests, however, were not how some merely tied into the local culture and people, as most quests in MMOs do, but how the main story-line unfolded to let you in on you being a part of something much bigger.

Turns out, all this fighting skill that you have is not natural; you were trained. You just don’t remember. A giant tree in a mystical forest helps you figure that out. He’s guarded by walking trees, sort of Wizard of Oz-esque, and helps you remember things long forgotten. You start to remember a war that happened a thousand years ago that tore the planet into two halves, and that you were a part of the war that rages even still. You are a great warrior, and you don’t get to just hear about and watch cut-scenes about it, you get to play as it!

You’re transported to this other realm, well, not really, you’re simply remembering it. But either, way, it’s still cool. There’s a line of soldiers there to greet you and you’re dressed all like a badass. They salute and cheer for you, proclaiming that now that you’re here, the war will soon be over! You get to fly around through the rift of space to a small chunk of land, forged around what look to be wyrm bones. You easily fend off several beastly looking mobs at a time and then a boss appears. The he/she/it thing goes down pretty easy and it looks like you’re about to win, until CUTSCENE! It knocks you back and flings you into a wall. You struggle, but end up passing out and wake up next to the crazy talking tree, again.

BAMF!

From then on out you realize there’s definitely something spectacular about you; you are some kind of chosen human-type dude with wings that can fly’n shit. So, you get some help to be transported to the friggin awesome city where all cool wing-type hero people hang out. It’s effing beautiful, btw. Once in the city, a parade of people salute your awesomeness and your return to the war effort. You are knighted as a true badass of badassed-dom.

After I was crowned King Badass of Badassadoria, I decided that the first thing I should do is run around, prancing like a sissy woman-like-man and check out what the city had to offer before I got booted off the server. I stopped at every shop I came by to check out the cool armor and weapons. The accessory shop was pretty spectacular because it offered different types of masks and sunglasses, all with different looks and all with stats (I like them not being jsut for show).

I'm sexy when I cook.

Then I spent the rest of my time checking out the crafting system. As far as I can tell, there are four professions. I only got to check out cooking and tailoring. It looks like a player could learn as many crafts as they have money for and what was pretty awesome about the crafts is that they give you quests to level. For levels 1~10, they give you all the materials you need to complete the quest and you simply repeat the quest until you hit level 10. Then a new quest becomes available for 10~20. It’s at this point that you begin to buy some of your materials yourself from a vendor that’s 3 steps away for dirt-cheap.

OH! That’s another thing. The commerce of the game. I forget the currency used, but it might as well be called “gold”, and it didn’t separate into silver and copper or whatever, it was just numbers. Like, at level 5 I had 1,300 gold and then at level 10 I had 15,000, with learning a new crafting skill costing about 6,000, I think? Also, I was clicking around on the user interface and noticed that as you gain reputation with areas, prices on things you buy decrease and you get more gold when you sell stuff in that area. Then I saw something else about taxes and there was a percentage next to it. Maybe that’s how much you would pay for a house or something? I didn’t see anything about lodging, hotels, or user decorated rooms.

I assume that if the game has any sort of personal lodging, it will be very similar to mog houses of FFXI or maybe even neighborhood-thingies, like in LotRO. The world didn’t look anywhere near expansive enough to build player cities, like in SWG. But that’s fine because I’ll trade player cities for streamlined gameplay and environment, any day.

All in all, I’d say from my experience so far, I rate this game an 8/10. It’s not perfect (which would be a 7), but I can already tell that it’s going to hook me in for a long run (going to be a 9 in later levels), but I have yet to play the perfect game (which would be a 10). I think I might have actually fell in love with this game because of the music and scenery coupled with crafting (I love crafting) and story-line.

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For more information on all of Aion’s features visit AionOnline.com. For information concerning discussion of classes and game play and much more, visit AionSource.com. If you’re a part of the closed beta, find out updated information at the Aion Beta Forums. If you want to get in on the closed beta, I suggest either pre-ordering the game or following the Aion members on Twitter: @Aion_Ayase @Aion_Liv @Aion_Xaen