Aion

[Hitmen]

Has anyone else played this at all? I've been playing the past couple days after finally getting the chinese version installed. Getting the game installed was kind of a pain but I wanted to try it without preordering it/dealing with the retarded way they are doing the US beta and the game is already live in china (and there are lots of English speaking people playing, especially on certain servers)

I've actually been having a lot of fun with it. Certain aspects are fairly derivative of WoW (no way!) but it is different enough to be a refreshing break. The first couple levels are slow but it starts to speed up, and at like level 10 you sprout fucking wings (for some reason I didn't pay attention to/don't care about). Flying feels a little clunky but I think I just need to get used to it, and you can glide in zones where you aren't allowed to fly as long as the area slopes downward slightly, its a lot of fun and speeds up travel time a bunch. And just killing stuff is pretty fun with the combo moves, and having lots of abilities in general even at the lowish levels my characters are (10-15).

On the bad side, the UI sucks. It is 'pretty' I guess but it is awful at doing what it should do: give you information you need without having to look in 23 different places on your screen. Also professions look extremely boring. While they can make some of the best items in the game at the moment, they are a blatant timesink. You don't even need to gather materials to do it, you just talk to the trainer who gives you progressively harder "work orders" as you skill up, that provide the base materials you need. Then all you have to do is walk 2 feet to the vendor near him and buy some cheap reagents, then walk 2 more feet to the anvil or stove or whatever your profession needs, then you click "craft all" and then go back to watching TV for 20 minutes.

I doubt it is something I will buy when it goes live here unless a large number of my friends decide to play, but its fun for now and since all these game in china are paid for hourly it is cheap to play just when I want. In the end I'm out just under $4 that I spent on a block of 40 hours of playtime (there is no initial game/account setup cost) and a couple hours of following guides and google translating chinese webpages to make the damn game work in the first place.

[Warrior]

It looks really cool, cant wait for the Open Beta.

[Lead]

NCSoft? Isn't that the company / group that did Guild Wars?

[Warrior]

Yep.

[Krazed]

This game looks like it may be the end to WoW.

[warz]

This game looks like it may be the end to WoW.

I doubt it. I haven't really felt the hype of Aion at all. Also, I don't think those japanese or korean style mmos typically do very well here. Apparantly they play differently - there's much less instructions on what to do, and stuff.

Also, Hitmen's review didn't sound particularly awesome.

[Hitmen]

This game looks like it may be the end to WoW.

I doubt it. I haven't really felt the hype of Aion at all. Also, I don't think those japanese or korean style mmos typically do very well here. Apparantly they play differently - there's much less instructions on what to do, and stuff.

Also, Hitmen's review didn't sound particularly awesome.

Fortunately unlike most asian MMOs you can level pretty much entirely through questing, instead of having to spend the vast majority of the time grinding mobs. It also has a nice little feature that makes questing less of a pain, in the quest log you can click on some objects/people/places and it gives you a description and often a "locate" button which will put a marker on your map in the general area you need to go.

But really, except for maybe a fraction of the hardcore fan base, this game is not going to put a dent in WoW. It really isn't all that casual friendly, which is the vast majority of WoW subscriptions. For the most part, you are not just going to faceroll through leveling. For example, if you are leveling a sorcerer, mobs will kill you very fast. If you don't want to die you need to snare/cc the mob while you kill it. Is it hard for people like us who (hopefully) aren't completely stupid? Not really, but tell that to the 10 million people who can't spam one button and not stand in fire at the same time. Sometimes mobs only one level higher than you can kill you, and sometimes pulling a second mob can kill you even if you are at full health and stuff. It definitely feels less forgiving than warcraft. Though it might give WoW some stiff competition in China, the servers have been down there for a while as they are changing the company that runs it, and Aion subscriptions supposedly shot up into the millions. But I doubt it will have that kind of "success" in western markets.

But for those of us who are not retarded, it is still a fun game. I've leveled 4 classes up to 10-15 so far and I'm still having fun playing around with them all. The only real problem I have with it is the lack of UI customization, I couldn't imagine healing in endgame raid or PVP content with the default UI, yuck.

[Towelie]

The only real problem I have with it is the lack of UI customization, I couldn't imagine healing in endgame raid or PVP content with the default UI, yuck.

I remember I had a blob of 100 buttons in the middle of the lower part of my screen when I played WoW , I don't know what I would do without that. I would have gone crazy in raids looking for spells

[Hitmen]

Here's my cleric showing off her sexy wings:

[warz]

I just tried the beta for a few hours. I got a priest to level 8. I can't say that any part of the game was really enjoyable. It does have some nice touches to questing, such as the "locate" npc button that Hitman brought up. The graphics are good looking but for some reason the art direction just isn't my favorite. You can just feel the japanese influence flowing from the game as you play it, which mostly annoyed me. Every time I would cast my Smite attack, the character would say something really annoying in a language that I don't understand.

I guess I'd give the game a 6 out of 10, in its current state. I'm not going to be buying it, though.

[Holly]

interesting reviews i must say. i played WoW since beta and decided to quit about 8 months ago since they basically ruined the game for what made it so enjoyable for me and lots of people for years.

anyways, i have a friend that plays this but im still iffy on mmos since of what blizzard did to WoW. not so much as other companies but just play style in general, wasting a lot of time for little return in the end, etc.

on a side note, that angel pic looks really cool and i wonder how well the game will actually shape up for release time.