An honest review of Aion after 7 weeks

I want to ask you guys a completely opnion based question here. There are no right or wrong answers, just feel free to voice how you feel about this issue. Aion. I stopped playing for three reasons.

• 1) I don’t have the time to dedicate to a game like Aion as it’s entirely way too grindy and there’s no sense of progression.
• 2) NCsoft has a track record I should have researched for shit-canning a lot of their titles into extremely niche markets that ultimately fail.
• 3) The level of botting and RMT is staggering and if not for the grind oriented game mechanics, could be easily remedied.

So here’s my question. Do you agree at all with any of these statements. The game for me was kind of a complete fallout, I was promised something and it was not delivered, the game was sold to me under the guise of pretty profound lies. NCsoft claimed to lessen the grind (quoting exactly “this game isn’t just another Korean grinder) for the Western market as we’re not fucking robots here in the USA – the game is still a complete and utter grind-fest.

NCsoft are repeat offenders.

NCsoft pretty much fucked City of Heroes since grinding and farming was pretty much the entire basis of the gameplay soon after its inception. You may have also heard of a little game called Lineage II which is essentially played only by bots with nothing at all done to change it. Coming back full circle to Aion, NCsoft deems it a worthy solution to remove chat from the game entirely until you reach level 10 at which point you can enter the chat channels which are typically still full of RMT spam or people complaining about the game. I won’t even get back into the tirade about their utter failure of a launch. As for server balance? Yeah you can say they’re balanced, congratulations on that, PvP in the Abyss is still tripe where the land is ruled by the few no-lifers who sat down and grinded for something like a week straight, most likely using bots or popping enough caffeine pills to raise the dead.

PvE? Not here.

As for my progression comment, there is none. Some fanboys will spout off saying “oh you have to earn your gear in Aion.” Bullshit, go fuck yourself. The earliest you can run an instanced dungeon is at level 25. It has a cap of level 29 so the moment you hit 29 you cannot enter the instance ever again and if you level up inside and you die and release, you’re never going to finish that run. Ever. After you run the instance you realize that the trash pulls don’t drop any loot at all really except some coin and anything you would normally find (and as frequently) outside in the regular world. Then the 5 or so mini-bosses drop absolutely nothing. Then you finally hit the last boss the big badass general, you kill him. He has no loot table. Sometimes he will drop an item. Sometimes he won’t. I ran the dungeon 12 times and saw loot 3 times. In the end, I lost the roll for the staff I needed as I hit 29 to another player (a cleric that would never use it to its potential like I would as a chanter) who was level 25. There is no need or greed just roll or pass.

Aion Community managers, making the game better by parading like assholes in the street.

Say goodbye to your family, your sex life, and your health.

So you grind all over the game. You enter a dungeon and really, it’s just instanced grinding for exp. You PvP in a fortress and more often than not you’re attacking the Balaur which is the NPC faction and also more often than not, players will come and gank your group or essentially ruin your raid.

I wasn’t asking for handouts, I was asking for a sense of progression. Not billion kinah money sinks, I feel I should email NCsoft and take them to court so I can get my share of a stimulus package and player kinah bailout. I level up and should feel good, I don’t because it’s 92,000+ kinah to learn 3 new spells all of which really don’t do shit differently than the previous ranks. Flight? Restricted, get ready to buy a million kinah at $6.00 a hit so you can afford the consumables that you’ll need to be chain popping just to keep in the air, that is of course until some ranger comes out of the blue and pushes your face through your own rectum – you know, fair fights and all.

I like PvP, when it’s balanced. I was promised this and got nothing. I like to feel like I’m making progress, I spent hours and hours watching a little blue bar fill up ever so slowly until I died and watched half of it vanish and the game asked me for 45,000 kinah to buy back the past 8 hours of exp.

And what are the people responsible for making good on their claims and for delivering a wonderful gaming experience doing? Striking poses like a bunch of douchebags on Facebook celebrating how awesome they are for making money hand over fist on a game that really isn’t anything new and most definitely isn’t any better than a glorified slot machine with no jackpot. Keep up the good work fellas, you lucked out that most if not all your players were World of Warcraft burnouts and I give it another two months before they either quit MMOs entirely or go back to big Blue.

Over the last year, gamers all over the world have been introduced to Aion. This new lifestyle has grown into an overwhelming passion that transcends nationality, religion, or race.

Really? Are you fucking kidding me?