Posted by Spooner | 73 Comments

NCsoft’s Aion Vision Trailer, unimpressed.

So they have a trailer out right now for a speculated expansion for Aion. Let me tell you how people will react to this.

Fanboys and players that still find the game enjoyable are going to hype it up and blow everything way the fuck out of proportion. They’re going to cum in their pants over mounts in the game which should have been there from the start. They’re going to shit their pants and love it over the graphics, which at this point don’t impress me in the least since the odds are you’re going to need to drop a lot of money in order to build a PC capable of running this game, fuck even their little machinima trailer is choppy and lagged. Finally they’re going to start foaming at the mouth over the prospect of in game housing.

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Posted by Spooner | 10 Comments

Aion & WoW side by side, a Spooner Q&A Session

I got an email from a reader the other day named Lew. He’s got a pretty solid question and it’s taken me a little bit to get the answer for him. In a nutshell, he’s requesting a fact by fact comparison of Aion to the World of Warcraft for the purpose of translation ans transition not to judge which is better or worse.

I want to point out right now that even though I read every single comment posted on this site, I’ll be personally moderating this article to make sure it’s being used as a reference source and not flame bait. So let’s begin:

Transportation – Mounts? Flying Mounts? I heard that you get wings, is there any other mode of faster movement/travel?

At the moment the only way to travel in Aion is either through flightpoints, running, gliding, or teleports:

• You have to spend kinah (money) in order to use the flight points in game however, unlike WoW you do not have to learn them before using them. Just being in the zone at all will grant you full access to all the flight paths in the zone. You will also reveal the map as you fly over it through the use of the taxi but revealing parts of the map don’t grant EXP. Teleports are pretty self explanatory. All the zones in the game are instanced from each other but you can travel between them typically through normal paths (going from one zone to the next like you would in WoW into you hit a loading screen in between) or through teleports given by an NPC right next to the flight master.

• Running is pretty self explanatory. There are stats on gear, potions and scrolls, and class buffs that increase run speed by a significant amount and this makes a big difference in PvP for the most part.

• Gliding is the primary means of quick travel. When you ascend to a daeva at level 10 you’ll get your wings. Now you can only fly in areas with high aether concentration like the Abyss and certain parts of Atreia but you can glide anywhere. Mastering how to glide and get lift is pretty essential to getting by quickly. Gliding is fast and actually a pretty cool mechanic and somewhat replaces the need for ground mounts. You can fly but flight is more of a strategic battle thing than just a means of travel.

• There are currently no ground or flying mounts in Aion. It has been said already by the developers that they have plans in the works for ground mounts and flying PvP mounts but no solid details have been released.

That about covers all the bases for travel so far.

Servers – Is Aion like other Asian based games where you can play on ANY server after you create your character? or like WoW where once you create your character on one server that is the one you have to play on every day unless you realm xfer?

The 2nd thing you said. Creating a character is almost exactly the same as it is in WoW only the faction rules are like Classic WoW where if you make Asmodian you cannot make an Elyos on that same server, and vice versa.

How stable are the servers and how long are maintenance times? Are there huge random chunks of time for server maintenance at peak hours, or do they have scheduled times?

Maintenance is maybe at most 1-2 hours a week and typically on Fridays from what I’ve seen. Sometimes they apply a very small patch 5MB large and that’s it. The servers are actually stable, but that depends on the server. The high population servers (like Azphel) are pretty much bogged down ass during peak hours but smooth and flawless during off-peak.

The server I play on is actually flawless and never down once since it’s launch. I have not seen servers go down for maintenance once during peak hours unless it’s a crippling issue. Servers have gone down as of this writing because of latency problems and other crashes due to overpopulation though. Yes they are allowing server transfers in the future as early as November.

Are there a few amount of servers with huge populations creating immense lag, or are there a variety of servers with differing population bases?

At the start, few servers with a lot of lag. They’ve launched new servers which has helped some but for the most part it’s very dependent on your realm. Some are bogged down all the time and to prevent lag, there are long queues to get online. Lag is still there but minimal. On other servers, there is no lag at all and no wait time to get online.

NCsoft has been adamant about not throwing tons of servers at the problem because in a game so incredibly PvP oriented, faction balance is VERY important and causing a bunch of one sided near dead population servers will hurt the game in the long run. It sucks in the short term because people have to wait, and that is unacceptable with some of the times being tossed about. But in the long term, it will help the game because as more people level up to fight in the Abyss, it’s going to be VERY noticeable if you’re outnumbered by 10% or not.

Questing – Is it like the normal grind? WoW grind or Asian mmo grind? How different are quests? Is it mind-numbing kill after kill or are there riddles or puzzles you have to figure out?

You can level to the end cap pretty much by only doing quests. The questing is identical to that of WoW in that you get a quest, complete it, then turn it in to the NPC. There are repeatables, long chains, gathering quests, kill quests, group elite quests, instance quests, PvP quests, and so forth. It’s not mind numbing and they do provide an in game wiki with the quests so you can locate and mark on the map where your objectives are. Sometimes the objective is harder and you have to explore.

Good news though, there’s no mindless faction grind or daily quests that limit your play and progression. Most repeatable quests have a 100x limit but there’s a lot of them and some are as simple as “Deliver these supplies for me on the other side of town then come back and I’ll give you 3,000 kinah”.

Leveling – Is there a level cap? How hard is it to level?

Level cap is 50. It’s not hard to level. You gain EXP from questing, killing mobs, gathering and crafting. There really isn’t any excuse as long as you’ve been keeping up with your gathering and quests to ever have to brainlessly grind for EXP. This is of course my observation from Lv 1- 24.

PvP – Are there severe disadvantages vs. certain classes? How do level differences factor into PvP? How does gear factor into PvP?

Gear plays a role but not as massive as it is WoW. Armor types are noticeable in that cloth is very weak and plate is extremely strong, versus physical damage. The gear and weapons in Aion are very simplified so more emphasis is placed on classes and player skill.

As far as class balance goes, it’s relatively fine. The game is in no way balanced around a 1v1 level; when you PvP it’s assumed that you’re going to be in a group or fighting a group and so the classes really compliment each other dramatically. The only out of whack factor seems to be in duels where most of the time a healer (Cleric or Chanter) will win out because of their heals, or versus a Mage archetype (Sorcerer or Spiritmaster) since they have a lot of defensive spells and really strong nukes.

Fighting a sorcerer is downright suicidal most times as their burst is very strong, however. If you can break through their mana shield skill (Stoneskin) they have the lowest HP pool of any class int he game and fold really quickly. Also they run dry on mana very quickly int he earlier levels so exploiting that is crucial. Every class has a weakness – melee is highly susceptible to kiting and few have any ranged attacks to compensate, cloth users have shit health, Rangers have no real defenses if they fail to kite you, and so forth.

PvE – One of the main problems I had with classic WoW, or for anybody that was a true raider back in the day, was that you needed 40 people to raid. That meant 40 people wanting bathroom breaks, needing a beer, smoke, or what ever other fix there was. So it was always you having to wait for other people to get to see end game content and gear.
How is Aion different?

Currently the max group size for a party is 6 players and that’s where most of the “instanced” dungeon action is. You can form raid groups called Alliances with many more but there aren’t any instanced raids as we’re used to in WoW. You will see A LOT of massive group raiding in the Abyss for PvPvE sieging of enemy player fortresses which can be captured, or NPC controlled Balaur strongholds which can also be captured.

There are also a lot of world raid bosses which consist of these massive epic legendary monsters wandering through zones that drop great loot.  There are plans to bring large scale instanced raiding in the future to Aion but very few details are available right now.

If you all have any comments, corrections, or additions to make here please leave them in the comments and keep it civil.

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Posted by Spooner | 4 Comments

Aion Video Podcast Episode 4: The Aion Global Community

Lani is a lot of fun to listen to. Don’t misunderstand, I’m actually not perving out at the moment. It’s refreshing to see people passionate and really fulfilled by their creations. I know that some Blizzard developers don’t play WoW as much as they’d like to.

Coolest thing that stood out for me in that video honestly, was the PC cafes. That looks pretty fucking sweet, big soft comfy chairs, little high-end PC stations in a big lounge type setting. Maybe a few sexy girls walking around with food and drink… I’ve got an idea for my next business venture…

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Posted by Spooner | 9 Comments

Aion Lead Designer says Mounts in the works

Mounts aren’t really something new and innovative but, there seems to be a spin on this little announcement:

“they will be used for something other than transportation, since we already have wings for that.”

Perhaps attack mounts such as flying ships or large Gryphons? Overgrown Zaifs with battle armor? Large Drakes that can help siege a Fortress in the Abyss?

This little nugget of information came from GamesCon 2009 that went down last week/end funny enough, during Blizzcon. Interesting how Blizzard’s timetable was pushed up to coincide with what appears to be their main competitor’s show of force. Hmmm…

A lot more information came about in this interview video between Aion West Producer Liv and Aion Lead Designer Yongchan Jee. It looks like they’re already planning on player and legion housing and the Balaur will never be a playable race as long as Jee’s in charge. There are already expansion plans in the works and I for one can’t wait to see how Aion is going to rope me in.

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