It looks good - has some mixed reviews from the beta but enough positive support that I’m leaning toward giving it a shot.
While flying around on aerial mounts in WoW I always thought having an aerial combat component would have been a really cool feature. I’m especially interested in how the PvP turns out, since that was my favorite aspect of WoW and generally keeps me much more interested in an online game more than any PvE content can provide.
What do Dopers think?
I tried the beta last weekend. It was very good, don’t expect something very different than WoW though. Its still basically the same thing all MMOs boil down too: level up by doing quests, then raid or pvp. It looks incredible in my computer and runs better than the vastly inferior graphics of WAR, they actually have a decent plan to deal with faction imbalances and the grind is not bad at all like i feared for an asian game. I’ll be playing it, mostly because i gave WOW five years of my life and thats quite enough of one game, and everything else ive tried has been a horrible failure.
Considering I loved WoW and Blizzard has clearly mastered the MMO formula, I don’t expect it to be vastly different in that regard. Its main unique feature is the aerial nature of it, which just seems really cool. And pretty graphics are a nice plus.
The ad also touts “Innovative PvPvE: Aion introduces a new dynamic to MMOs by combining both PvP and PvE game play into an exciting new style.” This is of particular interest to me. Since you’ve played the beta, I’d appreciate any elaboration on how that works. Did you get to do any of the PvP stuff? Was it fun? Or are you one of those people who hates PvP? (there were many such players in WoW, and that’s fine, as I don’t think the hardcore PvPers and PvErs will ever truly understand each other)
Pvp is pretty much my only reason for playing online games. The way i understood their three faction system to work was that there’s a third NPC controlled faction that is there in order to help if there’s a faction imbalance (if one side is way outnumbered the NPCs help that side). I don’t know if it will work or not, but at least they have a plan in place to deal with the problem unlike every other game so far. I didn’t actually get to try the pvp since it starts at lvl 25 and the beta was capped at 10.
I’ve been looking forward to it for a very long time, but following my abysmal performance in WoW’s aerial combat, I’m sad to say it’s probably not for me.
Wait, WoW has aerial combat now too? I quit when WoTLK came out so I’m not entirely up to date.
Yep, riding flying dragons.
Yeah, but EVERYONE epic phails at the dragons, they just were not thought through well, and certainly not tested the way other mechanics were. A game with that as a feature will probably be much easier to get used to.
Based on the classes trailer, it looks very Final Fantasy-esque; I mean that in both the best and worst ways. Using ultra-flashy, tear-the-fabric-of-reality attacks just to kill a few buzzards would probably get old pretty quickly. I’ve heard that there’s still not much in the way of endgame raiding, even though it’s been out for seven months in South Korea.
I’ll be interested to hear how it turns out, but I haven’t had my fill of WoW just yet.