As MMOs are such huge beasts that really can’t be accurately reviewed in a short amount of time, like a ‘traditional’ game, this will be part one of several features detailing the gradual progression of this epic MMO and Jen’s journey through it.
Game: Aion Online
Publisher/Developer: NCsoft / Aion Development Team
Genre: Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG)
Verdict: Finally a new MMORPG with the potential for true greatness
Pros: Welcoming to new players, without dumbing things down too much.
Cons: Server queues to join are currently rather long at peak times.
Must. Not. Stop. Playing.
These four words sum up how many avid MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) gamers feel with their MMORPG of choice. I’ve certainly been there before, twice in fact. Back around the start of this century, I was hooked on Everquest 1. The game was quite a harsh, unforgiving lover. It was easy to get killed and a simple death resulted in losing all of your equipment and a huge chunk of experience, which could quite easily take hours to regain. The fact that it felt so important to gain this ever crucial experience and to never die, is what made it all the more addictive in reality. In retrospect, it would have made many MMO players of today cry with its harshly punishing nature. My other great addiction was the MMO behemoth: World of Warcraft. The opposite of Everquest 1, I loved it because it was so simple to level up quickly and I could gain so much, so easily.
As you can see, it might not have been the most sensible move for me to delve into the world of a new MMO, but when I was offered the chance to play Aion, the latest MMORPG from NCSoft, I couldn’t resist. Wow was I glad that I made that decision. Sure, my social life is now in even more tatters than it was previously, but I can certainly feel that spark of love that I once felt with the aforementioned MMOs. That’s not to say that Aion isn’t flawed, but…well, you’ll see.
There’s a large part of me that simply wants to dispense with a ‘proper’ review and simply say go give Aion a try. MMOs are very personal experiences. For the large multitudes of people who love World of Warcraft or Everquest, there’s an equal number of people who hate them. I wasn’t keen on Eve Online when I played it, nor Lineage 2, but they are still hugely popular. If ever there is a genre that is ridiculously subjective, it is MMOs. Throw in the fact that every game is only one patch away from being hugely different than it was previously, and the concept of a review becomes quite redundant about five minutes after finishing the draft. So think of this as not quite a review, more a guide of my personal experiences within the first fifteen levels of Aion Online.
Upon loading up Aion, I immediately had a good feeling about it. It’s shallow, but it looked pretty and the character modeling of the classes looked like a nice cross between realistic and cartoony. Characters were not so realistic that it was boring and drab, while also not appearing childish in its portrayal. I had a choice of two races to pick from: Elyos and Asmodians. The good and the evil, simply put, although it is a little more complicated than that. Once you choose a race, you learn that you can’t play as the opposing race on the same server. I went for Elyos because I like playing the ‘nicer’ side of things and being a goody two shoes, plus Elyos just looked ‘nicer.’ Next came the much harder decision, choosing a character class. It’s a big choice and I would always recommend trying out all the available classes before settling on the one as your main character to focus your efforts on. I started out with the simplest looking choice for the newbie: the warrior.
The class system is pretty nice overall. You start out with four choices: scout, mage, warrior or priest. This is pretty much the basic set of classes that you would expect to see in any classic RPG. Once you hit level 9, things open up further with the ability to specialize. Specializations break down into skills such as a scout becoming an assassin or ranger, or a warrior becoming a templar or gladiator. All the class types should be quite familiar to experienced MMO players, including a healer class (cleric), the all out magic caster (sorcerer), the pet class (spiritmaster), tank (templar and gladiator) and of course the damage dealers: assassin and ranger. This system manages to be both familiar yet different, all at the same time. It proved to be a perfect combination to ensure that I wasn’t out of my comfort zone, while not feeling too predictable and stale either.
I found the first nine levels prior to specializing to be tremendous fun. There was a great buzz of excitement that, dare I say, reminded me of the first few days of World of Warcraft. It felt like everyone knew that this was something special. People were talking excitedly in the general chat channel, discussing where to go next, how to solve quests, and an increasingly rare thing in MMOs: teaming up, just because it was fun! The quests available were fairly typical fodder, the usual ‘kill so-and-so number of beasts’ or ‘deliver a random egg to random citizen A,’ but the stories around why this was required had a little more originality to them. Some back stories missed the target a bit, but others were interesting enough that I did take the time to read them, rather than just the ‘go to position B to pick up Quest C’ portion.
Leveling seemed a little slower than the likes of World of Warcraft, but this isn’t a bad thing at all. On the other hand, it was nowhere near as slow as Everquest or Dark Ages of Camelot, but rather, slow enough that it felt satisfying to gain a level. The simplicity of World of Warcraft’s leveling system removed the satisfaction for me, so it was nice that Aion forced you to put a little more effort into the leveling mechanics. Having said that, it didn’t feel like a grind either. It was perfectly pitched. The questing system itself was geared towards me following a certain path: the path to the next city and class specialization, but don’t fret, there were also plenty of side quests at my disposal.
Once I hit level 9, I gained my wings and got to explore a huge sprawling city based in the air, known as Sanctum. It was huge and surprisingly complex, but I was pleased to see that my PC managed to survive it without too much of a hit in terms of graphical lag. Hooray for a game engine that can scale well, even on relatively modest PCs. Oh and did I mention the flying? It’s a small feature so far (though I’ve heard it becomes much more useful later on), but how damn cool is it to be able to tap a button and take off into the air? It’s a pity that you can’t do it anywhere you want, as unfortunately you are restricted as to where you can use it.
I spent much of my time in Sanctum, exploring the surroundings and figuring out the crafting system. There are plenty of different crafts to learn such as alchemy and tailoring. Each of these craft skills can also boost your experience, making it worthwhile to master them beyond the obvious benefits of being able to create your own equipment or items. Once I’d sated my urge to make random bits of armor out of even more random pieces of dead creatures, I moved onto the next main zone: Verteron.
Verteron is full of quests, in fact, I would go as far as to say that it’s absolutely stuffed full with them. Complimenting the high quest count are plenty of enemies to grind your way through, if that’s how you prefer to level-up. There were numerous great quests that kept me both busy and suitably entertained, while also giving me the opportunity to give my wings a proper try. So far, I’m about halfway through Verteron and I’ve managed to vanquish many bandits, worgs (quite violent wolf type creatures) and kobolds and er…. crabs. Needless to say, but I’m still hooked. I’ve heard that there are plenty of PvP and instances awaiting me in the later levels and that’s without even considering the fact I want to try out some more classes.
For now though, I implore you to give Aion a try. Is it a World of Warcraft killer? It’s too early to say for certain, but let’s not forget that World of Warcraft has a four year head start. However, it is the first MMORPG that I’ve played that seems to have the potential to be Warcraft’s equal. Be sure to stay tuned to GamesAreEvil.com for more tales of Aion, coming soon.
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