Aion Overload

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.

Here’s to the next 10 levels, /cheers.

I wish I was a balla.