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Aion: Not Just a New Lineage
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com contributor Tricia "Seridove" Bennon writes this look at NCsoft's upcoming PvPvE MMO Aion from the perspective of a Lineage II fan.
After pulling the plug on their sci-fi title Tabula Rasa, NCSoft is refocusing and getting back into the game. We already know that NCSoft can deliver a triple A fantasy based MMO title. The question on everyone's mind is: Will AION be fresh and new or will it merely be a Lineage II clone?
If all it took was stunning graphics, a continuous and in-depth quest based story line, and involved large scale player versus combat then AION just might fill the role of being heralded as Lineage III. However, AION delivers so much more. It takes those elements we love in games and makes them better. No, it does more than that. AION spreads its wings and soars to new heights.
;)
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Good read, even better game.
Really looking forward to the NA launch.
Yeah after playing the COB for a few levels, Aion takes many game features and makes it it's own. Deffenitely a game worthy to play later ths year.
A very good read indeed.
After playing the CH Closed Beta I realise...
Finnaly! An MMO I've played and still want to play after the first 20 levels. The only MMOs I've really stuck to is WoW and WAR. I'm really looking forward to the release!
See ya'll in game!
I thought the same thing when I played the CB. I usually stick to console and single player games since I find those to be more fun. I player a lot of other MMORPGS and besides having fun sometimes during some PvP or huge raid I just get bored doing the quests but once I played Aion I actually had fun during my entire time with the CB. I enjoyed all of the quests so far and I really enjoyed the combat too. They added some cool elements to the combat system that makes it more fun than any other MMO I've played, including AoC. Your dodge rate increases when you move left or right during combat and theres other rate increases when you move back or forth but I forgot what they were so you're rewarded for staying active during pve and pvp combat instead of just standing there and auto attacking/skill/spell monsters to death like in other mmos which gets pretty boring for me.
Nice read
would have been nice to add a bit more detail for those who dont know mush about AIon yet
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
Right now,
Aion doesn't have any equal rival. It's already delivering in Asia, let's hope it works well here.
Going back through my graphic MMO history, all the way back to Ultima Online at launch, a single game stands out of the pack. It stands out as being the only game I (and my wife, and my two closest real life gaming friends) unsubscribed from prior to the end of our free month.
Now, why did we cancel that game? We cancelled it because it had absurdly identical player characters, because it existed in a strange developer-less backwash of time, two steps removed from the real authors of the game, managed by translators and ill-equipped gms, because it was filled with bot farmers, griefers, and exploiters using mechanics that had been fixed or removed months earlier in the Korean release of the game but were being fixed on the same exact release schedule in North America (fixed is a misnomer, the fixes which existed were being translated), because the economy had prices in billions and trillions of coins after a few short levels, because the crafting - a skill central to an entire player-race - simply consisted of finding a special dropped item, unique to a single crafted item, raising the question of why bother to have crafting when it would be virtually the same to just drop the items....
I could go on, but suffice it to say that there are reasons why Linneage II is my personal worst-ever subscription MMO. People say it has an engaging plot line, but I wouldn't know. I got distracted by the swarms of level 4 guys one-shot slaughtering everyone with level 50 swords, the hordes of bots dominating hunting areas to the exclusion of anyone else, and the general lack of ability to actually play through a storyline.
So, tell me: Does Aion have some of these same problems? How is Aion's economy? class balance? item system? Nowhere in this not-so-thinly veilled marketing blurb for the game did I notice any criticism. Does this mean Aion is perfect?
Great overview of the highlights of Aion! Was happy to see it was from the viewpoint of a veteran Lineage 2 player, too.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Can this whole article be summed up as : It's not Lineage III, it's Lineage II with more character models and flight?
Lineage II has flight?
and it doesnt take 2 months of time played to get from lvl1 to lvl10 in aion like it did in lineage2...if you didn't bot that is
Aside from my curiosity regarding how you were not able to outrun a level 4 with a C-Grade weapon...
Economy - so far lower level items seem to still have use for higher level crafting. This seems to indicate that new players will continually have a market for the goods they harvest.
Class balance - I honestly think there's really no decent gauge of this from the CN release yet. Korean release has 5 months under its belt, so I'm hoping someone who can translate stuff from their forums can post about balance. Class baalance means jack all in PvE but is important for PvP, which is level 20 and up.
Item System - manastones are regular drops and they have differnt bonuses. parry, critical hit, MP/HP, etc. All armour that I have come across so far has one or more slots to stick mana stones on them, allowing people to easy upgrade their armor with stats tailored to their playstyle or character strengths. Armor seems to drop frequently enough that it makes for good sell loot and for decent upgrades to your equipment.
I've been playing COB and I'm currently on the release servers, and I really haven't found any major bugs or glaring faults to the game. The client is stable, I don't feel like I'm grinding, the quests are interesting and the animations/graphics are appealing to me.
There's a lot of little conveneinces to the game. Like WOW, they seemed to take each aspect of the game and say "What will make this more fun for the players?"
Some examples:
Selling junk loot - in most MMOs, you have grey/misc/junk loot. It's the grey stuff that is only there for you to sell and serves no other purpose. When you visit a vendor, there is a "Sell all misc" button that dumps all your junk loot into the sell window at once. This makes perfect sense, since that is the only reason you have it in your bag. It's a logical convenience.
Recall to bindpoint - 20 minute timer. It's a reasonable cooldown in order to make returning to your base quick, but reducing the chance of abuse. No one looks forward to the journey back after doing a quest. There's also no overly long animation/delay to recall. A few seconds and you are whisked to your bindpoint.
Flying - it's not just for travel. Air space has been made useful for travel, PvP, and even resource gathering as aether - a common material for crafting - is found in the sky. Flying is also entertaining, and you can regularly find people using every opportunity to double tap their spacebar to take to flight off of even the lowest of ledges.
Idle Animations - These change based on the region and weather. In the desert, an idling character willdust himself off. When wading, the character will play in the water. When it's snowing, the character will extend their arms and look up and around, appear to acknowledge/watch the snow.
General animations - a nice collection of general animations exist along with keyword triggered behavior. When saying "yes" or pointing or other preset phrases, your character will do the related action and the emote will also be written to local.
Localization is a 'context by context' translation. The developers translated based on the message and meaning of the text as opposed to a literal or 'babelfish' translation.
All in all, it's a very polished and rather entertaining game. If you were put off by Lineage 2, don't let that impression taint your view of Aion. It is a completely different game.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
There are only two ways to fly in Lineage 2: 1.) having a strider(55+) and owning a fortress or castle and 2.) going to the new continent and getting transformed to fly over there. In Aion everyone can fly at lvl 10.
Aside from my curiosity regarding how you were not able to outrun a level 4 with a C-Grade weapon...
Economy - so far lower level items seem to still have use for higher level crafting. This seems to indicate that new players will continually have a market for the goods they harvest.
Class balance - I honestly think there's really no decent gauge of this from the CN release yet. Korean release has 5 months under its belt, so I'm hoping someone who can translate stuff from their forums can post about balance. Class baalance means jack all in PvE but is important for PvP, which is level 20 and up.
Item System - manastones are regular drops and they have differnt bonuses. parry, critical hit, MP/HP, etc. All armour that I have come across so far has one or more slots to stick mana stones on them, allowing people to easy upgrade their armor with stats tailored to their playstyle or character strengths. Armor seems to drop frequently enough that it makes for good sell loot and for decent upgrades to your equipment.
I've been playing COB and I'm currently on the release servers, and I really haven't found any major bugs or glaring faults to the game. The client is stable, I don't feel like I'm grinding, the quests are interesting and the animations/graphics are appealing to me.
There's a lot of little conveneinces to the game. Like WOW, they seemed to take each aspect of the game and say "What will make this more fun for the players?"
Some examples:
Selling junk loot - in most MMOs, you have grey/misc/junk loot. It's the grey stuff that is only there for you to sell and serves no other purpose. When you visit a vendor, there is a "Sell all misc" button that dumps all your junk loot into the sell window at once. This makes perfect sense, since that is the only reason you have it in your bag. It's a logical convenience.
Recall to bindpoint - 20 minute timer. It's a reasonable cooldown in order to make returning to your base quick, but reducing the chance of abuse. No one looks forward to the journey back after doing a quest. There's also no overly long animation/delay to recall. A few seconds and you are whisked to your bindpoint.
Flying - it's not just for travel. Air space has been made useful for travel, PvP, and even resource gathering as aether - a common material for crafting - is found in the sky. Flying is also entertaining, and you can regularly find people using every opportunity to double tap their spacebar to take to flight off of even the lowest of ledges.
Idle Animations - These change based on the region and weather. In the desert, an idling character willdust himself off. When wading, the character will play in the water. When it's snowing, the character will extend their arms and look up and around, appear to acknowledge/watch the snow.
General animations - a nice collection of general animations exist along with keyword triggered behavior. When saying "yes" or pointing or other preset phrases, your character will do the related action and the emote will also be written to local.
Localization is a 'context by context' translation. The developers translated based on the message and meaning of the text as opposed to a literal or 'babelfish' translation.
All in all, it's a very polished and rather entertaining game. If you were put off by Lineage 2, don't let that impression taint your view of Aion. It is a completely different game.
Thank you for these details.
My big concern about Aion has always been around whether it would be a grindfest or not. EQ1 bored me to tears with the endless hours spent fighting bats, snakes and spiders. Lineage II irritated me in similar ways. If Aion manages to have all these great things people are talking about while also staying interesting -- and it sounds from the COB comments like they've done exactly that -- then this game looks to be a winner.
Unfortunately yes the article is basically a summation of what has been said for years and lacks the things that mmo vets really want to know about.
But it is a good and visible preview for people who don't know very much about the game, great advertisment.
If the author had gone into the tidbits that to me really sets this game apart the article would have been a lot longer. :P Maybe that's not what they wanted.
There should be no PK at early levels as portals open up in only in higher level areas, (level 25 or 30 or so?) I hear crafting is really fun and while leveling the NPC gives you most of the mats you need to advance so you don't have to harvest like mad to get somewhere.
Armor customization, you can transfer the look of a beloved piece of armor to your next higher level and uglier piece. Cutscenes and voice overs, two things that set any 'asian' mmo to modern western mmos. A music score that'll give you shivers, a world that is unique and gets away from the usual fantasy deja vue.
It's the game that keeps on giving. :P Well so I hope.
(,,,)=^__^=(,,,)
I can try to answer some of those.
I've been playing LOTRO since release and I currently have a Level 24 and a Level 27 as my highest level characters. That in 289 logged hours of playing.
I have been playing Lineage 2 since release and my highest there is level 56.
In PotBS, leveling is retarded easy and I have only one Level 50 and two level 26s
As you can probably see, I spend more time exploring the game world and bullshitting in auction houses than I do leveling in MMOs.
In two weeks of Aion I have a level 19 character and have not felt any grind to my gameplay.
As for bats and spiders and boars... Aion does a good job of mixing in unique mobs with the standard fare of panther-like things furry humanoid-like things and insect-like things and such. Seeing the new fauna in a new area is part of the exploration of a new zone. I seem to make a subconscious effort to die to one of everything in an MMO, and Aion offers a wealth of new creatures just waiting to beat me senseless.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
"Aion: Not Just a New Lineage"
That's pretty much what they have been saying all along for several years. I'm more concerned about the how the clown farm (NC North America) are going to run it.
The clown farm isn't NC NA. It's NA Playerbase. If they can manage to play just one game without trying to illegally buy their way through it or annoy the crap out of other players for the fun of it, maybe it will do well in the NA/EU market.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Say... I have been dreaming for this feature for years!
Well considering that before they changed the grind some in L2, money was hard to farm with all the bots and early leveling was also hard too. From what i have read and played on COB the grind is not bad and money is easy to make so i don't really see a whole lot of bots making a show in the higher level areas. As to what the reformed NCWest will do, they say they will be vigilate about 3rd party users and have seen some progress in L2, so they should do well enough to keep it under control.
I played the Chinease CB, and found it surprisingly fun, interesting, and full of PVE quests. i got to around lvl 15 by the end and changed professions to a Templar. found it to be a true sucessor of lineage2. the character customization are top notch, i maybe came across one person that had even a small resemblance of me out the whole time i was there. only 1! the quests are fun, enjoyable, the flight is useful, without being overly restrictive, but you do have to strategize how your going to use it, and make sure to keep an eye on your timer. i used some pots to extend my time flying which helps alot.
overall this is a big win for me, ill be playing once it is released. the PVE and PVP are interalaced nicely in the abyss. the quests are fun, the class choices are thought well, with spells, combos, and reactive spells, and counterspells/combos. felt this game was thought out very nicely, and it looks beautiful. i would definitely play this over the long term. I agree with the author, in Lineage 2 the character customizations, or lack there of, really made you feel like a cookie cutter character, and didnt make u feel apart of the larger picture. the pvp was good, but it also was extremely grindy, i didnt mind so much as I had a great time with the community, guild/clan politics/conflicts were off the chain! loved it, fighting raid bosses, pking, and fighting in catacombs and other various places. With AIOn i think they took all the good things of lineage2 and added much more. i think this game will be very successful.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
Sow how's the combat sytem? Is it EQ style or something new?
Is it just target, autoattack and press buttons on your hotbar to kill stuff or is there some kind of other twist, like the real time combat in spellborn for example?
What is impressive is how flight isn't just randomly tossed in as a "oh-look.-it's-a-new-feature-we-tacked-on-to-make-this-game unique." When Lineage II opened up some flight to it's players, it was class and race restrictive. I wasn't about to reroll my level 63 SE just to run around with wings. For those who obtained flight through their striders...yeah..that was a goal that MAYBE only a handful of people could grind through leveling their pet and then be the lord of a castle ..sorry..I don't enjoy bleeding eyes
In AION, the feel of having wings and flying doesn't seem like an add on. Every aspect of the game incorporates flight...gathering aether in the air for crafting, to getting around (your wings are your mount
). The game also takes into account the landscape. You can't glide uphill (obviously) but there are a lot of hills and rocks set about on moderately flat areas that allow you to get some height so you can glide. Another thing that is neat is the fact that some areas have updrafts. First time I caught one I was like "YES" I can fly forever...well..till I fell to my death when my timer ran out.
So many games have tried to incorporate flight but used them as travel from one place to another (Warhammer, WoW). The only comparision to how incorporating flight is..would have been if you could have jousted with your horses in Dark Age of Camelot or something like that. The only thing I am really hoping for is wing customization. Since I'm going to spend a good portion of my game time looking at my wings, I am hoping that I can tweak them the way I want them to look.
well kinda of hard to describe. i remember with my templar I had to target and attack my target but it wasnt simple as just autoattacking, as depending on what spell/combo i used dictated how fast the mob went down, such as defense debuff, a stun, then certain times id get hit depending on the combo i used would start a reactive/counter spell/combo such as a shield stun and then id finish him or her off with specific combo/spell. ALso had taunts, for mobs if im in a group, to grab aggro. i wouldnt call it auto attack button mash, but its also not deep either, its in the middle id say. you do have to use some thought/tactics into your fighting.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
then you also have secondary combos that follow initial strikes/combos/spells. which i found surprisingly and fun.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.