Aion

So for the past 4 days I had been trying out the new MMORPG game Aion open beta. It is made by NCsoft, the creator of Lineage. The files were big and takes a while to install. After launching the game, you realise it takes a lot longer to load compare to other games. After entering the game, the login page has a really beautiful scenery as a background, it then plays a movie showing some sort of battle taken place. It's different compare to l2 or wow since they showed a gameplay movie instead of what we usually expect, a movie-like cinematic.

The character creation page has definately been upgraded from l2. The amount of details you can put on your character, from eyes length, angle, width, height to how long your legs can be. It has got more features than sims 2 I reckon. I created a female scout "Ayaka", reason for a girl cause I thought its only going to be for 4 days so just playing around and I wanted to name it Ayako first but it was taken grr.



Upon entering the world of Aion, I realised the ingame graphics was pretty amazing. The landscape is similar to wow's but more refined and the characters were more like l2's except more smooth. The entire game's graphics gives you an impression of 'nice'. Oh and the water looks really realistic. The music was really well used, it's hard to describe music but it just owns thats all I can say. When you enter combat, the music switches to an intense drum beating fighting music which is a neat feature. The first thing I realised when playing was the amount of people on the server. When you first start theres gurantee 5 other people standing beside you also starting. Everywhere you go there are people, there are never empty cities or training grounds.



Like all mmorpg games, this game requires you to kill monsters, level up and buy better gears. An easier way to get past the annoying thought of grinding is to do quests. Quest rewards gives exp, money or items which can only benefit you. There are 2 types of quests in Aion. One is campaign quests, they are the ones you have to do in order for the story of the Aion to move on. The other kind is just random quests which gives you additional exp, money etc. They are not all just kill X no. of mobs and find this item (I do hate those ones though lol), they vary from leading a pig home to delivering flowers to someone within a time limit. A new feature I found in this game was that there is a collecting skill, like collecting plants or mining for ores and you have to level it up in order to collect better things, it's a pain.



An exciting new ability in Aion is the ability to fly. Yes you have wings! At level 10 you can unlock this ability. You have like 40 seconds of flight time then you have to return to the ground to rest otherwise you'll fall and receive damage or even death. You can only fly in places with lots of Aether energy? or something like that. You might be thinking oh wtf I wanna fly everywhere I go, I hate walking. Well the answer to that is gliding! Even though we cant fly, it is still possible to spread your wings and glide from high places like jumping off a small hill. It really beats walking and it also takes some skills to bounce off and catch more air and try not to touch the ground. There are some places or quests which forces you to fly in order to get there so dont worry about not be able to fly much.



When you approach higher levels, the game forces you group up with others in order to complete your quests otherwise the mobs are too strong for you to solo. Luckily I had Jason playing with me, with his Spiritmaster, summoning different element spirits. I was a Ranger, one who uses bow. It was fun group hunting, I guess that is the real deal of mmorpgs, have fun with friends. For trading/buying/selling, Aion has combined features from wow and l2, an auction house and afk shops so take your pick and find the best bargain. I earned lots by selling items just a bit cheaper than everyone else.

Jason and I couldnt finish our quests last night and was about to do more today but the server was down and a new patch was released. No way I could download 620mb so I guess this is the end of my open beta. I played for 4 days and have not regretted one bit (ok except for 1 hour which I wasted trying to find this damn necklace). 70% chance I will play official server but it will have to wait until I finish exams at the end of the year. For people who are currently playing WoW or L2, I really recommend you to move to Aion. You'll find stuff you are familiar with and also new things to try out. :)