Aion
 

http://na.aiononline.com/en/

Aion is a new (to the US) MMORPG coming 2009-09-22. It runs fast, looks great, and has solid netcode (US people playing on the Chinese servers tell me they can't tell that they are playing on servers across the ocean).

Aion is a very Realm vs Realm oriented game with a third realm controlled by AI to help balance the fight (something WAR could probably use...). Aion is unique in that you can choose to engage in ariel combat, both PvE and PvP; in fact, the PvP end-game takes place among the smaller fragments of the shattered world. Both realms have the same classes covering four archetypes, each with two classes that you can choose between at level 10. Since there is virtually no difference between the classes on each side there should be no class balance issues.

I plan to play this when it comes out.

There are at least 5 of us in my barracks alone that are also going to play. You plan on playing good or bad?

As in WoW (and unlike WAR), there is no good or bad side. I'd preffer to play Elyos, but people I want to play with are going Asmodian, so there I will be.

by good and bad I meant Elyos or Asmodian, I was just to lazy to look it up. :) I will most definetly be playing a cleric. Warhammer has turned me into a core healer... love what being a good healer can do.

I played the final closed beta this weekend. The graphics were excelent and it ran smoothly. Flying/gliding is a ton of fun; it completely changes the experience of "exploring" areas that the devs didn't indend for you to reach (and there are very few areas that are unfinished and strange). You'll need to plan on a bit of grinding/not avoiding mobs on your way to complete quests, but you'll level up doing the quests pretty easily and I found most of the quests enjoyable. Also, there is a built in finder function that puts an X on your map where mobs/things are if you look them up, which is really helpful. I really enjoied customizing my character; I spent an hour messing arround and came up with something I really like.

There was some disapointment. You cannot invert your mouse look; this left me feeling sick to my stomach (motion sickness, I guess?) for the first few hours as I adjusted to up being down and vice versa. The UI is not fully customizable, though it feels pretty complete; my biggest annoyance is that I could not move the target unit frame down close to my action buttons.

All-in-all, I can't wait for the game to release.

Damn, not being able to invert the mouse would bug the shit out of me for sure. As far as UI goes, I'm not much into customization, so that won't bother me much.

Did you get a chance to experience both pve and pvp?

No, unfortunately. PvP doesn't start 'till your 20s, but I only got to lvl17 during the weekend.

I played Aion during the last two betas and got to level 20. Regardless of that, I wasn't very fond of the game. I found that the graphics and whatnot were great, but I found the gameplay to lack things I like about other games.

One thing is the zoom, incredibly small zoom range annoys the hell out of me in a game, besides a first person shooter.
When fighting with monsters the same level, the character was always running pretty low on HP, besides if you were a cleric really.
The characters themselves, move really, really, slow. Which makes traveling a hassle unless I wanted to pay a fee to fly to someplace fast.
The flying itself, was annoying. Limited flying time? Why? And if you fall from a high height or are flying in the air high and fall, you get hurt big time. Not that it isn't realistic, but it's annoying.
I found the 3D moving style reminding me of the first Resident Evil back on the PlayStation. I really did not like the way they handled the motion.
The mini map was annoying as hell, as well. Basically, you had to make your character spin in a circle to see the aggro monsters and non-aggro monsters around you. Isn't that nice? Because it will only show the ones in a cone-esque shape ahead of you, as well as the ones right next to you, which I really would have liked to have known before I walked backwards into them.

Overall, I was incredibly disappointed in the game. Graphics aren't everything if the gameplay sucks. Well, that's my two cents.

Is that not how it is supposed be? A fight between even levels should result in 1 dead combatant and 1 low health combatant... or a draw.

The zoom range is adjustable.

Actually, you move pretty fast in the game (unless you had walk enabled), and I could get where I was going on foot pretty quickly. The fastest way to get someplace, though, is to glide. Many people would zoom past me because they knew all the little ledges to use to give you the height you need.

As for the mini-map, chalk one more up to realism. Really, I'm not sure why this is a huge issue, considering that most MMORPGs don't even show all the monsters on your mini-map.

Overall, the gameplay is fun. Gameplay is more important than graphics. If I cared more about graphics than gameplay, I would have quit WAR and went back to WoW (because at the settings that you ultimately end up playing WAR on due to RvR performance, it looks worse than WoW).

A buddy of mine has a nice laptop, and I beg to play Warhammer on his because of how amazing it looks. I haven't really played on a computer so smooth before. I am used to choppy gameplay and Choppa's that teleport.

GLG are you still going to play the game when it is released?

I watched a few video's on youtube, reminds me a lot of SRO.

I went to the Aion booth today at Gamescom, it looked pretty good actually.

Oh really? How cool.

Anyways I am preordering this game. When you do that on Sept. 18th you can create 2 characters. Then on the 20th you can start playing 2 days before everyone else. Anyone else preordering?

I think we need to decide if a few of us are going to play, what server and faction. I think we should be Elyos because the other faction seems like it is going to be overpopulated. That gives us more entertainment for PVP later on. I don't know what the name of the servers are, but how about we all pick the server that has the shortest name.

My guild is playing Asmodean on Vaziel.

See you on the battlefield then. I will be Elyos on Vaziel.

I couldn't stand to play Elyos. Perhaps it's all the time playing Warhammer, but the Elyos starting area was so sugar sparkle happy it made me want to puke.

1 hour left before people who pre-ordered can log in and create 2 characters to have ready for sunday. Im going to try and get 2 much sought after names. Goku and Legolas. lol

So, did you get your names? I got mine.

Unable to contact game patch server.

Please check your internet connection or try again later.

If you want to skip the update step, force a launch using the right-click menu on the game list or main button.

Error Code: 36 (PatchServerCommunicationError):

Patch server communication error while performing operation:




Got that every time I tried to get on for a few hours until I gave up and went to sleep. Just woke up now and still getting that error.

edit: i fixed it, i got my wifes name and for my character jason was taken so I got 'Eylosian'

edit edit: I didnt like Eylosian, deleted and got 'Dutch' instead

Im trying to download teh game from NCSoft, where I bought it last night.. I got to about 50% last night, then went to bed. When I woke up the installer had stopped because my internet connect was kicked off. When I went to resume the download it started all the way back over from 0%. If this ever finishes downloading, I will be able to play.