It’s 2:40am and I’m putting a bit of time into Aion.
At the moment, I haven’t played for roughly a week, and I’m not really sure why. I love mmorpg’s, however, I’m beginning to think that I may be done with with genre for a while. I have been really enjoying Aion so far, but I think it’s just a mental block of getting involved in an mmorpg again.
After playing WoW for nearly 4 years, you begin to be spoiled with content. I can’t help but compare a lot of the features and play style to WoW, it’s instilled into my conscious. I find myself only playing Aion now for only about an hour max before loosing interest.
Another thing which I think attributes to my lack of interest in mmo’s in general is that I’ve also begun to be much more involved in my own web projects. I’ve stepped up my involvement with my work and freelance designs. Also, I think it’s because I don’t really feel like leveling at the moment, I just want to experience end game content.
The warrior class is meant to deal damage, but also to handle quite a beating themselves. Focusing mainly around physical damage, the warrior class does not use ranged weapons. Their skills are meant to brutalize their victims with massive crushing blows, demoralizing shouts, and to roam the battlefield in heavily clad armor. Warriors are meant to be the ones in battle to absorb the damage, but also have the potential to do uber destruction. After the ascension quest at level 9, players can choose to take the path of either a Gladiator or Templar. Choosing a particular path opens up a whole new level of game play for the player. However, choosing one path restricts you from taking the other, so research before jumping into the game is very helpful.
Warrior Ascension
At level 9, the ascension quest is available for the warrior class. Upon completion of the ascension quest, players are able to choose from 2 different paths: Gladiator or Templar.
Answer: The level cap in Aion is currently level 50.
Aion scales gracefully, as players ascend to new levels daily. Levels 1 – 10 are fairly easy and can be accomplished in just a few hours. As the game progresses, zones widen, adding dozens of quests to each area. Because these zones are increasing in size, so is the XP, so you’ll often find yourself running around a lot more compared to some of the starting levels.
As players reach towards level 50, they will find it much more difficult to solo, as the mobs have also increased in health and damage.
How quickly can one reach the level cap? Who knows, but there are power gamers out there that can burn through a game in literally days. These power gamers usually play in the beta before hand, so they know all the sweet spots and quest chains, eliminating the chore of learning new places and figuring out how the play the game.
As players become more experienced, their leveling rate also increases. What I’ve noticed is that once you’ve hit max level in mmos, you generally move on to working on an alt or twink. The second time leveling through is even easier because you are able to give your lowbie character extra gold or any gear you were saving for them.
I wonder how long it will be, before we see multiboxers in Aion.
There are many forums dedicated to Aion already, but how many of them are any good? AionOverload is going to take a look at some of the best Aion forums out there. Although this isn’t a very big guide, it should help you find a great community.
Official Aion Forums
The first stop on our way looking at Aion forums are the official Aion forums by NCSoft. The design of the forums are really great, a a bit WoW-esk. The official Aion forums are divided into various sections:
News and Information
Community
Sever Forums
Class Discussion
Aion Discussion
Technical Discussion
Although the official forums had a bit of a hiccup lately, they’re still a great place to post and find information about all the various aspects of Aion. It may take a while for the forums to mature, but every game seems like this, and it takes time to find decent moderators to slam the bannhammer.
I like AionSource alot, and you probably do too. These guys (and gals) know what they’re doing. Brought to you by Curse.com, the AionSource forums are some of the best out there right now because the maturity of the forums are top notch. Although you still have troll posts (when isn’t there a troll post?), there are tons of helpful guides, tips, and Aion information packed in these forums.
The AionSource forums are divided into:
Aion News
Server-Specific Forums
Aion Gameplay
Schools and Classes
Guides & Analysis
Legions
Everything Else
What’s particularly great about the AionSource forums is that the structure is well intact. It’s extremely easy to navigate, and the moderates do a great job at making sure the best posts are available to read.
AionForums is the first result you find when Googling “Aion Forums”. This site is simple a vBulletin set up with plenty of sub-topics to choose from. The AionForums are mature, with roughly 3,000 members. The overall design is exactly what you’d expect from a template on vBulletin, but don’t let it deter you from finding a lot of great information.
The AionForums are divided into:
General
Aion: The Tower of Eternity
Factions
Classes
Severs
Off-Topic
Although the color scheme is a bit bright for my liking, it still has a lot of great posts to check out, very helpful information.
Overall, I find it pretty interesting to see that the Official Aion forums opened so late for the NA release. With the success such as WoW, I figured NCSoft would want to keep all of the traffic upon their site. On the flip side, it’s really awesome when a big game company doesn’t support certain aspects of the community, allowing it to build by itself (just look at all the 3rd party WoW sites).
Over time we will see which of these sites will hold the dominant user base, but my bet is on AionSource. The combination of Curse.com, and an amazing group of posters already on board, will make them stick out above the rest.
It’s been about a week after the release of Aion, and today we’re going to take a look at how the game holds up to expectations and handles in game play.
One week later, it doesn’t seem like a long time to asses Aion, but I feel it’s important to take note of the initial impression of the game and how it holds up to my expectations and how it holds up to other MMO’s I’ve played all over the years.
A Little Background…
I would like to consider myself an MMO veteran, playing the genre for almost 8 years now. Certainly not as long as other MMO veterans, but I’ve gotten around .
My first introduction to MMOs came with Everquest, no surprise at all. Although I did not spend a lot of time with this game, seeing I was still dominantly preoccupied with console games, it made the impression on me. From EQ I moved onto the abysmal game known as EQOA, however, I did have a lot of fun as it opened the door to guilds and meeting many awesome people online. From EQOA, I believe my next major game I moved to was Star Wars Galaxies, where I played almost every class, making quite a nice name for myself on Lowca as Seef Murlu. I still have very fond memories of pre-cu game play, and am anxiously waiting on the SWG EMU. From SWG I moved between a variety of other games such as Ultima Online, Maple Story, and many other free mmorpgs. Finally, when WoW came out, I purchase the game on the first day, and had massive amounts of fun raiding on Shattered Hand as Droogie in my guild Forgotten Lords. After years, WoW lost its luster and I decided to take an indefinite break from the game.
From early roots in EQ to SWG to WoW and then on to a slew of free mmorpgs, I’ve finally come back to P2P mmorpgs with Aion.
Enter Aion
Steaming with excitement, my friend Dez prepurchased the game after his GF had been playing the Open Beta. We all needed a fresh start, due to the fact that WoW had become more than dull. A few days later, I also purchased Aion. As the prelaunch came around, I entered the game and decided to take the path of the Spiritmaster, as detailed HERE.
Level 10 and upwards
I work full time (more like 60+ hours a week), so I tend to play casually, only playing about 2 hours a nigh, if that. I didn’t play any this weekend due to a rave (which was amazing), so I was only able to reach level 17 within the first week of the launch. I believe I have enough information now to make a reasonable assessment of the game.
One Week Later: The Good
These are some of the things I’ve really been enjoying about Aion thusfar:
Player interaction has been pleasant
Every player I’ve run into, besides the trolls, have been fairly nice and generally leave me alone. People aren’t kill stealing or been extremely aggravating. There seems to be a different level of maturity within the game so far.
The Play Style and Graphics are fresh
It’s nice to see a new game with new graphics and game style. I applaud WoW for being able to run on basically anything, but the cartoony graphics have hit their wall for me. Although Aion isn’t that far off from WoW graphics, I’ve been enjoying a lot of the scenery. I also have found my skills to be very fun, as I don’t have to bind every possible skill just to do a chain.
SpiritMaster Rocks
At first, I thought that the SpiritMaster was a mistake for me, until I got my multiple dots and DP skills. Once I pop my skills, I’m able to multipull and chainpull, which I love because I love multitasking. It adds a whole level of excitement having to handle multiple mobs.
One Week Later: The Bad
Aion has been quite an interesting game thusfar. Although I have no major complaints, I do have a few pet peeves about the game:
The controls feel a bit sticky at times
While casting, it seems that my character seems to either casts and moves around fluidly, or seems to get stuck in animation even though I’d like to move. I guess I’m too used to WoW, where I can cancel my casting by moving, but with no sort of stickiness.
The Quest tracker is a bit blah
The quest tracker is a bit annoying at times, because it’s somewhat helpful, but then also completely worthless. Some quests in Aion are very detailed, telling you where to find items and NPCs, while others simply just say to “do this”, but without any sort of location. I guess this would give me a better reason to read the quests, but I generally don’t care for stories in MMOs (as I think many people probably don’t either). MMOs for me are more about interacting with other players while having fun, not reading pages of text just to go grinding. It’s more like doing chores so that you can enjoy harder chores at different levels, which is one of the only flaws of mmos.
The Quests seem to be circular
Again, this is a subject that I feel I’ve been spoiled on. Many of the quests in Aion have you running back and forth in circular patterns, but there doesn’t seem to be any sort of interaction at times with the game. One quests you’ll have to go kill a group of mobs, just to run back to do something mundane afterwards such as open a box.
What’s Next?
Well, I intended to be level 20 by Sunday, but that day has already passed, and I’m 3 levels short. My friends and I don’t want to out level each other too fast, but with everyone’s odd schedule, we’re not able to keep in sync as well as we’d like. However, each of us have been enjoying the game throughly and it looks like Aion will stick around for a while (so far). The future holds a lot of temptation with the release of KOTOR, but being able to micro manage multiple games is equally fun.
Hey everyone, I just wanted to make a quick Aion Basics post on where to download the Aion Client. There are many keyloggers out there already, and you definitely wouldn’t want to get scammed out of your new game, so I’ve compiled a list of where to download the Aion client.
NCSoft Account
This is by far the easiest method to download your client.
Within the ‘Actions’ box, there is an option “Download PC Client”
Steam
Some have ordered Aion via Steam (which I have). This makes it easy for you to download the Aion client anywhere in the world. This only works if you bought the game via Steam.
Log into Steam
Go to ‘My Games’
Right click on ‘Aion’ and select update/download
FilePlanet
FilePlanet is fast and reliable for game downloads, which also happens to host the Aion Client.
These are just some of the different ways to download the Aion client. Remember, trust only sources that are legit. If it looks sketchy, avoid it, you don’t want to loose your account.
KFGuides is a website which offers leveling guides for Aion. These guides are very comprehensive, with a ton of detailed maps, and optimized for efficiency.
Not everyone wants to play through Aion, reading every quest log, doing ever quest. That’s just how it is. These players are often the power gamers, which love the challenge of speed leveling.
I often find myself trying to speed level after I’ve reached max level on 1 or 2 characters. It’s kind of like an iron man contest on a hardcore server. It’s just one of those things you do eventually to spice up the game. It can be really fun as well, grabbing a friend and seeing who can reach max level in the shortest amount of time, making bets.
Then there is also the person who would just like a guide. They make guides for every game, hence why you always see those Strategy Guides for console games. Well, online games are exactly the same. Often these people play during the beta stages and gather all of the information, trying out different leveling tricks, different routes, and so on. Some guides may be more comprehensive than others, while others may be more efficient.
KFGuides is one of those sites which offers guides for both Elyos and Asmodian. As a sample, they’ve released their leveling guides for the first 10 levels of Aion for both Elyos and Asmodian. There are tons of detailed maps for the starting zones, each giving off directions and numbers on where to go next.
If you’ve ever played WoW, you probably have heard of the Kopp’s, Zygor, Nyhmns, and others leveling guides. This is basically the same thing, except for Aion. Besides the leveling guides, there are member areas along with free videos of pvp, crafting, and pve. It’s a pretty interesting site imo, and should be checked out at some point, since you’ll probably see it around sometime.
But anyway, I’m going to shut up and let you check it out.
Congratulations if you’ve reached level 10, now you have wings and you’re ready to rock!
One thing you may have noticed is that your character will glide in Aion if you jump down slopes. This is pretty useful since you wouldn’t want to die from a fall. What you may not have known is that Aion also has a gliding system. According to Aion, there are “thermodynamics” in the game which allows a player to take advantage of gliding, so that they aren’t limited to their flight time.
For this Aion Basics, we’re going to cover how to glide.
How To Glide In Aion
Gliding in Aion is very much like walking, except in…the air. You use the same WASD controls, along with mouse look to move your character and camera. The first thing you’ll want to do is to get some height. Press either ‘Page Up’ or a hotbar button to begin flying, and get some air.
Once you’re in the air, press and hold the ‘Space’ bar for a second or two, and you’ll enter gliding mode. The ‘Space’ bar also ends your gliding.
Gliding uses your flight bar at a much slower rate, if at all. The benefits of gliding is being able to go very far distances without having to stop and go using regular flying.
To go higher while gliding in Aion, you press the R key. This allows you to take advantage of Aion’s thermodynamics, which lifts you higher into the air.
To go lower while gliding, you press the F key.
Using W and S while gliding is a bit like regular movement, except they determine your speed. The W key will speed up your gliding, while the S key slows you down.
You can’t glide forever, and will eventually begin to get lower to the ground, but there’s a little trick. Right before you hit the ground, press the S key, and it will bounce you back into the air a bit.
Because Aion has a thermodynamics system, sometimes gliding isn’t as proficient as a previous attempt. Sometimes you may hit a draft while other times you may hit a great pocket of air.
The main thing is to practice, practice, practice, and soon you’ll be able to cover great distances with no problem.
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