So over the last couple weeks or so Aion was released to much anticipation. I myself having vowed to not play another MMO ended up succumbing to my darkest desires of social gaming and bought a copy. Why oh why dear gaming gods did you let me do this? Blagh!
Anywho, after purchasing and installing the game, I have hardly done much else besides play the game in my spare “alone” time. Which by the way has also been drastically wtfpwn’d by the addition of a new family member seen here. Bringing the total dog count up to two, and the total amount of time spent being mauled by love filled puppies, to double whatever it was, surely a large amount of time though. <3 Puppies!
Back to Aion! So of course I pick a cleric as my class, healing archetypes are always my poison and why should this game be any exception? The first thing I notice is that Aion is AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL! Its tons of eye candy around every corner and the musical score to back it up is surprisingly refreshing for a fantasy based nerdgasm… er, game. At one point I believe I even made the comment to a friend that the combat music in a particular zone sounded distinctly like Sonic the Hedgehog which was completely unexpected and pleasant. Other than that the game feels very much like the now ingrained MMO experience I had playing WoW and the WAR beta. You have zones, you gain levels, you collect boar intestines for rewards and money. Pretty much anything you have done in a previous MMO you do here now. There are a lot of neat little things that are fun, such as each spell having its own unique and very distinct animation that make the game enjoyable but there are the annoying things as well. Such as gathering, something that starts out as fun and interesting and then quickly turns into boring and monotonous. Level 25 as it stands is essentially the stepping stone from the game being largely PvE and quest based to becoming more of a PvP run world. The grind (and yes its a grind at times) to 25 is almost too much of a chore if you are doing the content solo, but if you manage to pick up a leveling buddy along the way, or you have lots of patience (that one is me) then content just flies right by. The following should be used as a summary of the 1-25 levling experience:
1-10: Fun new and learning.
10-20: Wings!!!! Also questing is fairly fun and the landscape even though small is diverse.
20-25: Definitely a bit grindy at this point. You are basically holding on for the PvP which starts at level 25.
Overall though the game has been rather fun. It is nice to have something fresh to play, after five years of World of Warcraft one tends to tire of the same content over and over. Another great thing to note is that due to the Korean release a year before then coming to the North American continent definitely helped squash out the defects in game. I can’t say I have had anything really just bug out on me in my total time clocked, though I have had a couple random game crashes to the desktop. Very very few and far between though. Anywho at last it is time to try out this PvP stuff and hope that the game remains and becomes even more fun than it is on my way from 25-50. Be back on a report of me getting owned in the Abyss!