Originally posted by mugengaia You're no longer required to click on mobs or players to lock-on, instead attack similar to action-RPGs with the exception of vast amount of skills. I don't know how well or even when a very promising title with this system will be released, but a tech demo showing Mabinogi Heros was really something.
Darkfall already uses this kind of system, and AoC too (although you still have a target in AoC it isn't mandatory).
Originally posted by mugengaia You're no longer required to click on mobs or players to lock-on, instead attack similar to action-RPGs with the exception of vast amount of skills. I don't know how well or even when a very promising title with this system will be released, but a tech demo showing Mabinogi Heros was really something.
Darkfall already uses this kind of system, and AoC too (although you still have a target in AoC it isn't mandatory).
BTW, great review
Yea, I remember RYL had a similar combat system too. You can switch between point and click or attack without target...but wdf...that game failed miserably.
GRIND sucks? You wanna be max level in a month? Since when did society award easy-goers and lazy-fools? MAKES ME PHOBIC OF STUPIDITY!
Boss Raids in open field is similar to what Everquest used to be. There are campers, especially of bigger and stronger legions waiting for Boss spawns. Although they camp, fighting the boss mobs are not limited to abusers. Sometimes different legions will gather for epic bosses and duke it out against each other. Whichever party or force does most dmg gets the rights to loot. One boss monster Menotios? (i have no clue what it's called in english) which spanws in the very core of the Abyss is open to both races, and becomes a very intense battleground for raiding and PvPing between the Asmodians and the Elyoss.
Please tell me I'm not the only one that this gave a giant hard on to? As an ex-EQ raider, nothing excites me more than going up against a rival guild to kill / claim / loot World Bosses.
You're not alone dude, I know the raids he's talking about (giant Ice-rock in the abyss core, and the betoni quest raidbosses) and its really thrilling. Casual players will have their dose of raids with instances, but for the hardcore gamers, open world raids with competition ftw.
They respawn once every 16 hours iirc, so there are a lot of chances to fight over them.
To the OP, I find your review pretty fair, I think the bots have lost their time nowadays in Korea due to an evolving community, which doesn't rely in them any longer, you still see them, but it's not like in L2 where the botters dominated, nowadays in aion KR the most aknowledged players are the ones streaming their gameplay in the abyss.
I'd also add that I miss a bit of PvE grouping in the abyss, I've always prefered party vs party ganks over solo ganks for high level toons (countering party ganks is doable, and really makes you feel good if you succeed), I've heard that they are working on something to fix this for 1.3, do you know anything about that Mugengaia?
Well, bots really have lost their place in Aion unlike the huge influence they had couple months ago. They can still turn on bots to leave their toons on to level on their own, but it's not going to be nearly as effective as grouping for xp or going through endless (i say endless because they still only have one instant dungeon "fire temple" for 30ish players) instance runs. Also they have to be on the look out just in case they get banned...(NCsoft is serious these days.)
As far as economy goes, bots aren't that useful anymore for aion gold either. It's because the economy has grown so much that the meager extra $$$ isn't going to help you much in purchasing high end gear. Even if they leave the toon on the open field of high level monster than the toon can handle, you're not going to get any, it not one or two, valueable craft items and weapons and armors worth $$$. Valueable gears are only dropped from stronger mobs either taken down by groups in certain fields or instances.
I mean I just succeeded in crafting a lvl45 legendary craft dagger with 19% aspd the other day, but the mats required to craft this item you're not going to get on your own. Plus, the dagger itself is worth roughly $200 US dollars on my server, which is far too much for a bot to bring in any short time.
Bots were so eminent in the beginnings of this game because the gold was hard to come by, but now the gap between the upper end content and low end content is so vast, running a bot is practically useless and inefficient.
If my assumption is right, time will kill off the bots much like WoW, in a different way though. In Aion time will kill off bots because they won't be bringing sufficient amount of gold, or very valuable gears.
GRIND sucks? You wanna be max level in a month? Since when did society award easy-goers and lazy-fools? MAKES ME PHOBIC OF STUPIDITY!
Thanks for the post. It was very informative/unbiased and I enjoyed reading it. I myself love what I have seen from the NA beta and I will be on the lookout for the OB, as well as awaiting for the release.
Originally posted by mugengaia In Aion time will kill off bots because they won't be bringing sufficient amount of gold, or very valuable gears.
Are you talking about the single "Boby Jones' at home" botters trying to improve their toons on their own, or the Chinese gold farming "enterprises"?
Because I don't really see what would stop these so called "companies". If more gold is needed I would think they'll just swarm the servers with even more bots.... ?
It shows some insight in to the future. Right now my Guild is playing CN CB and i can understand why like 80% of the ppl are bots on servers. I mean com on. If korean version have problems with bots why do they keep 1.0 ver on CN servers. Its like invitation for gold farmers and bots. Still game is fun even in early stage and patch notes and reviews from krean version bring more hope for the aions future
Great to see a review from someone with lengthy game experience, thanks for posting that.
One question, where did the 70k-100k banned account numbers come from? I know companies like to talk and put out PR spin about banning botters and whatever, but the reality is, at $15.00 a month, they just deprived themselves of over a million dollars if those numbers are accurate.
I have a hard time believing that any for-profit company would willingly give up that kind of money for something as intangible as doing the right thing and banning farmers.
Boss Raids in open field is similar to what Everquest used to be. There are campers, especially of bigger and stronger legions waiting for Boss spawns. Although they camp, fighting the boss mobs are not limited to abusers. Sometimes different legions will gather for epic bosses and duke it out against each other. Whichever party or force does most dmg gets the rights to loot. One boss monster Menotios? (i have no clue what it's called in english) which spanws in the very core of the Abyss is open to both races, and becomes a very intense battleground for raiding and PvPing between the Asmodians and the Elyoss.
Please tell me I'm not the only one that this gave a giant hard on to? As an ex-EQ raider, nothing excites me more than going up against a rival guild to kill / claim / loot World Bosses.
You're not alone dude, I know the raids he's talking about (giant Ice-rock in the abyss core, and the betoni quest raidbosses) and its really thrilling. Casual players will have their dose of raids with instances, but for the hardcore gamers, open world raids with competition ftw.
They respawn once every 16 hours iirc, so there are a lot of chances to fight over them.
To the OP, I find your review pretty fair, I think the bots have lost their time nowadays in Korea due to an evolving community, which doesn't rely in them any longer, you still see them, but it's not like in L2 where the botters dominated, nowadays in aion KR the most aknowledged players are the ones streaming their gameplay in the abyss.
I'd also add that I miss a bit of PvE grouping in the abyss, I've always prefered party vs party ganks over solo ganks for high level toons (countering party ganks is doable, and really makes you feel good if you succeed), I've heard that they are working on something to fix this for 1.3, do you know anything about that Mugengaia?
Well, bots really have lost their place in Aion unlike the huge influence they had couple months ago. They can still turn on bots to leave their toons on to level on their own, but it's not going to be nearly as effective as grouping for xp or going through endless (i say endless because they still only have one instant dungeon "fire temple" for 30ish players) instance runs. Also they have to be on the look out just in case they get banned...(NCsoft is serious these days.)
As far as economy goes, bots aren't that useful anymore for aion gold either. It's because the economy has grown so much that the meager extra $$$ isn't going to help you much in purchasing high end gear. Even if they leave the toon on the open field of high level monster than the toon can handle, you're not going to get any, it not one or two, valueable craft items and weapons and armors worth $$$. Valueable gears are only dropped from stronger mobs either taken down by groups in certain fields or instances.
I mean I just succeeded in crafting a lvl45 legendary craft dagger with 19% aspd the other day, but the mats required to craft this item you're not going to get on your own. Plus, the dagger itself is worth roughly $200 US dollars on my server, which is far too much for a bot to bring in any short time.
Bots were so eminent in the beginnings of this game because the gold was hard to come by, but now the gap between the upper end content and low end content is so vast, running a bot is practically useless and inefficient.
If my assumption is right, time will kill off the bots much like WoW, in a different way though. In Aion time will kill off bots because they won't be bringing sufficient amount of gold, or very valuable gears.
You've obviously never seen end game high lvl bot parties in L2, or Full on Raid Boss bot groups controlled by 1-2 who just assist off the main dmg dealer. Nothing is impossible if 1 someone has the money to pay for Gold. And 2 someone will do whatever it takes to take that money off your hands.
Sure one company can run couple dozens of bots at once. But about the over 100k accounts banned, if you go to AionInven or AionMeca they post news about Aion all the time. Plus major game magazine sites also reported what NCsoft press released. NCsoft reported back some months ago that they banned 66k or so bot accounts, and later 70k more botters. After they announced this most of the botters were gone when I logged in to check. But not too long after, only a couple days, they started reappearing. So yea, botters will exist no matter what as long as there is a good profit. But at least NCsoft is doing something....
I don't know if they are only putting more effort into the korean servers because it is their niche market, or they are really changing the philosophy of how they run their business, who knows? Let's keep on watching. But hopefully they've changed their mentality.
GRIND sucks? You wanna be max level in a month? Since when did society award easy-goers and lazy-fools? MAKES ME PHOBIC OF STUPIDITY!
Great review Mugengaia, best i have seen so far. I just have a simple quick question, Are there any 2 handed axes or 2 handed hammers in the game or is it only polearms and swords?
I just wanted to say I loved the review and the added information throughout the thread. It is a nice thing to see no one trolling or derailing the thread. We definitely need more honest reviews from Aion KR. People who base their opinion on this one weekend and the people playing on China's servers are selling themselves short.
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Great to see a review from someone with lengthy game experience, thanks for posting that. One question, where did the 70k-100k banned account numbers come from? I know companies like to talk and put out PR spin about banning botters and whatever, but the reality is, at $15.00 a month, they just deprived themselves of over a million dollars if those numbers are accurate. I have a hard time believing that any for-profit company would willingly give up that kind of money for something as intangible as doing the right thing and banning farmers.
Actually... consider that if you ban a bot account, the bot controller will most likely be back sooner than later. How? By opening another account, which of course requires the purchase of a new retail box (at the cost of roughly 3 months of play). So if you ban 70k bots and 40k of them come back within a month, you've actually earned about 1.7 times as much as you would have with the original 70k paying the regular sub fee. If you also consider that banning bots is good PR and makes it more likely that customers will want to join your game (particularly here in NA) it becomes apparent that banning bots is probably _good_ for business. I imagine that eventually the bots will get tired of the ban/re-sub process because it will get unprofitable at some point. Hopefully by then there are enough legitimate players that the loss of those few subs is not significant enough to NCSoft's bottom line that they re-consider their bot policies.
This was a great review. And, quite frankly you are right. However, it might be a WoW clone, it has very indepth PvP, great storyline, great graphics, and the grind is worse than WoWs.
I am holding out some hope for the higher level experience as the lower levels bored me to absolute tears. The majority of quests are kill X number of Y creatures. I am a long time gaming geek and am just sooo tired of that formula. I'll play Aion at launch in order to see how the experience goes in the 30 + range.
I have to give them credit for the graphics although I'm not huge on the art style. The customization is great.
I also think it is one of the most stable new game clients I've seen in the last few years.
When you are in the Abyss, do you use your wings/flight a lot?
I was wondering how often pvp is done while flying?
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Thanks a lot for the review! I am holding out some hope for the higher level experience as the lower levels bored me to absolute tears. The majority of quests are kill X number of Y creatures. I am a long time gaming geek and am just sooo tired of that formula. I'll play Aion at launch in order to see how the experience goes in the 30 + range. I have to give them credit for the graphics although I'm not huge on the art style. The customization is great. I also think it is one of the most stable new game clients I've seen in the last few years. When you are in the Abyss, do you use your wings/flight a lot? I was wondering how often pvp is done while flying?
Quite a lot and it looks like this: www.youtube.com/watch flight time can be as much as 10-15 min's depending on various of things (gear, pots, craft).
But understand it's not always pro sky pilots ! sometimes its all on the ground or a mix of both.
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So I'm an old MMORPG member who's been inactive for quite along time. Aside from that I've been playing Aion for the last 6months on the korean server (well, I am korean). My impressions of the game so far is that it is unfortunately a WoW clone working its way into refining more and more each day. The game does seem alittle unrefined compared to WoW, but considering the years WoW has gone retail and has had like 100,000x times of patches to amerliorate the game, Aion is pretty much going through the same process. There are alot of bashers of the game, because once again unfortunately, more than 90% of the bashers are WoW carebears. Ironic to this fact is also that alot of the bashers themselves have been playing Aion eventhough they say they hate it -_-;; (wdf? korean people are weird...or I just don't understand my country and its people) People in EU/NA already have this perception the game is a grindfest, but that is a half-retarded assumption only 'fanbois' of other games can make. Let's make one thing clear, until a recent patch, there was even a way to grind your way to lvl40 in a single day ( of course, this was patched not too long ago). The korean version of Aion seems like it's almost a rip-off because we have to pay to play such an unrefined game full of glitches and bugs, that only the few find and take advantage of before being reported and patched. Fortunately for you guys in NA, it will be alot different. Rumor has it, all the koreans think NCsoft is taking the koreans like test subjects to make profit and refine the game for foreign launches. (I get this impression alot nowadays). The game does not start at lvl25. I guess for the early birds, sure it can start at 25. But those will be the ones who start from day 1 of open beta. The problem with the Abyss is that, once there are established players (lvl50s) new players going to the Abyss starting from lvl25 will have a hard time trying to do quests that involve going to different places of the Abyss that is already a huge ass map in itself. They implemented the Abyss to spread the Mission Quests and Side Quests that you can do to lvl up, and at the same time involve every player in a never ending open PvP arena basically. Fields of both Elyoss and Asmodian sides are basically open to PvP as well, but portals are only open every 2 hours, and sometimes random depending on which portals on which parts of the maps. Raids through portals are about the most brilliant thing in this game in my opinion, and it is very fun and thrilling. Overall there are three important aspects to the game. Those three are crafting, PvPing, and raiding for boss monsters. Leveing up cratfing skills is a tedious process, but there is a merit in becoming a mastercraftsman. One thing the game prevents is having a single character become a master craftsman in every category. You are only allowed to become one mastercraftsman in whichever category you choose. Weapon crafting for example is a big gamble. If you successfully have a critical while crafting you can create something of very big value, but if you are unsuccessful at what you decide to craft, it can really hurt your economy. Alchemy on the other hand is a very profitable skill that brings in stable income. Whatever you decide to do, it's all discretionary to the player. PvPing in this game is also in some aspects a big gamble. PvP in abyss has its benefit, but players are not enforced to PvP in the abyss. Usually, players live and die by PvP in the end game. Legions will gather and fight for forts in the abyss, and in the same process any player is welcomed to join players of other legions and fight against the opposing race. Taking down forts will allow you to gather silver and gold medals required to purchase Abyss gears, which are the best PvP gears you can acquire in the game (upper PvP gears have bonus % to attack and defense when PvPing). Having alot of abyss points also make you a target for the players of the other race either because they do not want you to gather more abyss points, or they can acquire more abyss points by killing you. The combat system is very different from WoW, you aren't constantly required to move around to get side and back bonuses. There are back hit bonuses for certain classes such as Assassins and their skills. Melee classes can take advantage of motion cancelling to chain skills faster, and in some cases do more dmg from behind an enemy. For example, archers using the right timing to jump cancel skill motions can do more skill attacks faster than just standing and running around while attacking. At first people were reporting this as a glitch in the game, but since NCsoft has claimed it is part of the combat system that players with better keyboard control can take advantage of. Only times when moving control would be effective is when you have weapons that stretch. If you use any skills that trap an enemy, you can run around from a distance to attack for back hit bounses and avoid attacks from the enemy because of reach. It is similar to Mage classes using mes to trap an opponent and attack from afar. They say moving attack is mostly useless because attacks auto-track anyways. But good players take advantage of moving attack given the situation. Micromanagement and tactics become very handy for the veteran players, and it is what separates the skilled and new players, as in any game. For mage classes PvP is totally different but similar to any game in that there are tons are counter skills and different mes skills for certain situations. A very good mage can be one annoying ass to deal with. Stigmas are interesting in that you can equip and unequip them, but it's not anything new. Only thing new about them is that you can acquire certain abyss stigmas with large abyss points. These abyss stigmas...are really good, however require extreme dedication from hard-core players. Boss Raids in open field is similar to what Everquest used to be. There are campers, especially of bigger and stronger legions waiting for Boss spawns. Although they camp, fighting the boss mobs are not limited to abusers. Sometimes different legions will gather for epic bosses and duke it out against each other.(most legions let random high level players into their party or force, noone's really left out unlike Lineage series, in which half those alliances were asses) Whichever party or force does most dmg gets the rights to loot. One boss monster Menotios? (i have no clue what it's called in english) which spanws in the very core of the Abyss is open to both races, and becomes a very intense battleground for raiding and PvPing between the Asmodians and the Elyoss. Otherwise there are instant dungeons as well. At this point there aren't many instant dungeons compared to the likes of WoW, but with each new update NCsoft is adding different instant dungeons with different gear drops and related dungeon quests.
The game overall is unrefined at this point, but with each new update it is becoming more and more promising. Although NCsoft fails miserably when meeting customer satisfaction, only reason more and more korean players are still and will play Aion is because they are waiting for better news with each update. (It's partly why I still play...) It took me two months to reach lvl50 with a casual play time of maybe 2-4 hours a day. Of course, there were days when i played more than 8 hours, but as many days not playing at all. People bashing about the grind is basically a misconception and probably an animosity they still have for NCsoft from the Lineage series. I will admit, there are certain points in the game when you run out of quests and are forced to grind out killing the same monsters over and over again. But like I said, with each update more quests, more stuff to do, and patches to what needs be fixed. I particularly didn't have too fun of time lvling in between 30 to 40, but heck...every game has its flaws...and Aion doesn't have as many as most of the other MMOs. The 6 months I played this game and still continue to do so, I don't regret. Only, they (NCsoft) could have made things better if they consistently listen to the gamers' requests. They have been taking care of the botters (which are mostly chinese gold farmers) and eliminated over 100k accounts. But these chinese gold farmers...they're like pests....they just keep making new accounts and appearing not too long after. I don't know if there is anything NCsoft can do about this, since it really is up to the discretion of the gamers to decide for themselves if they want to enjoy a game honestly. When NA players think of bots they mostly think it's a program or script that runs within the computer hard disk and should be regulated through a hack shield. Honestly it's not simple like that. There are numerous sites that sell little USB cards with scripts on them that bypass hackshields. Just as NCsoft updates its hackshields, so do the programmers that create these little USB cards with auto-bot programming.
All in all, I can't say you will love it...because you will hate it when you get backstabbed by assholes that cloack and run around hiding in the fields...or just the fact that certain fields are just infested with bots...even not long after 70k accounts were just banned....But hey, the game does have its merit. And it certainly has a character customization that is beyond anything out in the market. Did I mention? Character customization even got better with more option with the 1.1 update couple months ago... Hey, they're (NCsoft) trying...which was definitely not NCsoft's forte.
Thank you for this post.
Regarding the chinese gold farmers, wouldn't blanket banning IP's from China take care of most of this? I know there are proxy's, but must be a step in the right direction.
Hey Mugengia, is the endgame almost all PvP right now? For those of us who prefer PvE; is there enough content to mostly PvE and occassionally PvP? Is Raid content only in the Abyss, are raid mobs all overland or is there a raid dungeon as well?
I prefer doing dungeon crawls with friends rather than PvP, is the gear from dungeons comparable to the Abyss gear?
Very informative post about the game. But there are a few things I am still wondering about:
How sofisticated can the combat get? By that I mean, is there different ways to play classes that just doing damage or healing? Like debuff, crowd control and other indirect offensive abilities that you can specialise in?
Is there any point with the PvP beside getting abyss gear and points? By that I mean does a policial landscape exist where certain guilds/alliances control certain areas which are worthwhile to control?
Finally, I heard that the game has alot of customization options for how your character looks but zero customization for how your character behaves. I.e. all Spiritmasters have the same type of capabilities as others. Exception to this seem to be this stigma system. How well designed is it and how much does it allow say a Spiritmaster to be different from another?
I must say that reading the threads on this site every day, I've noticed that the people bashing this game aren't the "wow carebears". Infact, they are the people that hate WoW and believe that because Aion has similar qualities of WoW, they must hate on Aion aswell.
I am probably going to be one of those people who hate Aion and WoW. Its depressing being a huge fan of the genre, but being so burnt out on this style of gameplay. When a game finally comes out with a lot of polish, stability, and great looking graphics, I am faced with the sad fact that it plays exactly like the MMOG's that I played for 10 years. I am tired of Aion already and I've only played it three days. The only reason I can think of for hating Aion is because I so desperately want a MMOG of this quality that plays a little different. So the hate isn't even for Aion or WoW, but rather the stagnation and dumbing down of the genre as a whole.
I agree with that statement 100%. I dont care about WoW or Aion or whatever, so much to hate them. What I hate is that the MMORPG genre has been dumbed down and simplified so that someone with a IQ of 85 can be good at it. But I guess that is inevitable once a genre start to appeal to the mass market.
Great to see a review from someone with lengthy game experience, thanks for posting that. One question, where did the 70k-100k banned account numbers come from? I know companies like to talk and put out PR spin about banning botters and whatever, but the reality is, at $15.00 a month, they just deprived themselves of over a million dollars if those numbers are accurate. I have a hard time believing that any for-profit company would willingly give up that kind of money for something as intangible as doing the right thing and banning farmers.
You're wrong. These bastards create accounts, farm a lot of gold quick, transfer it away / sell the gold and do a charge back of the credit card.
Basically the scam John Smedly and some other CEO's were talking about in several articles about half a year ago.
And as companies get penalty fees on charge backs, sometimes even end up on black lists, because they undergo a lot of chargebacks...these gold farmers have become such a plague that the MMO companies are even losing money on it.
Well, it's not far off. That is to say, what you are hoping for. New titles in development such as Tera, not sure about Blade and Soul, Mabinogi Heros..., and supposedly Lineage 3 will have free roaming non target based combat systems. (From rumors they say Lineage 3 is going to be an open world with non target based live combat system.) Companies are definitely taking a new approach to MMOs and are dropping the target based auto-lock system. You're no longer required to click on mobs or players to lock-on, instead attack similar to action-RPGs with the exception of vast amount of skills. I don't know how well or even when a very promising title with this system will be released, but a tech demo showing Mabinogi Heros was really something.
I don't think that is what he is looking for, atleast it is not what I am looking for in MMORPGs. Basically what you are describing is FPS style combat and, altough that might appeal to FPS people, I don't see that as an evolution of MMORPGs; it is just an MMORPG with FPS ripoff combat (ala Darkfail).
No, what I am looking for is a game that has depth and requires intelligence, dedication and cooperation to be succesful at and an MMORPG that atleast tries to build on the concept of a persistant world instead of tacking a bunch of instances and repeteadable, nonensical quests that has no bearing on the persistant world as a whole; basically creating single player bubbles in a MMORPG. That I see as a degeneration of MMORPGs, started with WoW and now continuing with basically every MMORPG after.
Darkfail tried and failed, miserably, to do something different. Mortal Online is gonna go for another try but Aion, unfourtanetely, sounds like any other WoW clone with flying combat (already done in CoX) and pretty gfx (already done in AoC) with end game about a faction type PvP (already done in DAoC, WAR and WoW). Not saying that Aion wont be fun, I am still enjoying WoW clone WAR, but it is nothing innovative or challenging about these games.
... Aion, unfourtanetely, sounds like any other WoW clone with flying combat (already done in CoX) and pretty gfx (already done in AoC) with end game about a faction type PvP (already done in DAoC, WAR and WoW). Not saying that Aion wont be fun, I am still enjoying WoW clone WAR, but it is nothing innovative or challenging about these games.
I have no idea if Aion will end up being a good game, since it's not released in the EU and my experience with it is limited. However, you just described a recipe for success, aka, taking all the good things that various games offer and presenting them in a single package. It is a hilarious, because experience has shown so far that one of the toughest things for game developers is incorporating the best points of other games into their own.
The toughest thing of course is innovation, but honestly, I don't expect MMO companies to do anything more than baby steps towards that direction.
Comments
Darkfall already uses this kind of system, and AoC too (although you still have a target in AoC it isn't mandatory).
BTW, great review
Darkfall already uses this kind of system, and AoC too (although you still have a target in AoC it isn't mandatory).
BTW, great review
Yea, I remember RYL had a similar combat system too. You can switch between point and click or attack without target...but wdf...that game failed miserably.
GRIND sucks? You wanna be max level in a month?
Since when did society award easy-goers and lazy-fools?
MAKES ME PHOBIC OF STUPIDITY!
Please tell me I'm not the only one that this gave a giant hard on to? As an ex-EQ raider, nothing excites me more than going up against a rival guild to kill / claim / loot World Bosses.
You're not alone dude, I know the raids he's talking about (giant Ice-rock in the abyss core, and the betoni quest raidbosses) and its really thrilling. Casual players will have their dose of raids with instances, but for the hardcore gamers, open world raids with competition ftw.
They respawn once every 16 hours iirc, so there are a lot of chances to fight over them.
To the OP, I find your review pretty fair, I think the bots have lost their time nowadays in Korea due to an evolving community, which doesn't rely in them any longer, you still see them, but it's not like in L2 where the botters dominated, nowadays in aion KR the most aknowledged players are the ones streaming their gameplay in the abyss.
I'd also add that I miss a bit of PvE grouping in the abyss, I've always prefered party vs party ganks over solo ganks for high level toons (countering party ganks is doable, and really makes you feel good if you succeed), I've heard that they are working on something to fix this for 1.3, do you know anything about that Mugengaia?
Well, bots really have lost their place in Aion unlike the huge influence they had couple months ago. They can still turn on bots to leave their toons on to level on their own, but it's not going to be nearly as effective as grouping for xp or going through endless (i say endless because they still only have one instant dungeon "fire temple" for 30ish players) instance runs. Also they have to be on the look out just in case they get banned...(NCsoft is serious these days.)
As far as economy goes, bots aren't that useful anymore for aion gold either. It's because the economy has grown so much that the meager extra $$$ isn't going to help you much in purchasing high end gear. Even if they leave the toon on the open field of high level monster than the toon can handle, you're not going to get any, it not one or two, valueable craft items and weapons and armors worth $$$. Valueable gears are only dropped from stronger mobs either taken down by groups in certain fields or instances.
I mean I just succeeded in crafting a lvl45 legendary craft dagger with 19% aspd the other day, but the mats required to craft this item you're not going to get on your own. Plus, the dagger itself is worth roughly $200 US dollars on my server, which is far too much for a bot to bring in any short time.
Bots were so eminent in the beginnings of this game because the gold was hard to come by, but now the gap between the upper end content and low end content is so vast, running a bot is practically useless and inefficient.
If my assumption is right, time will kill off the bots much like WoW, in a different way though. In Aion time will kill off bots because they won't be bringing sufficient amount of gold, or very valuable gears.
GRIND sucks? You wanna be max level in a month?
Since when did society award easy-goers and lazy-fools?
MAKES ME PHOBIC OF STUPIDITY!
Thanks for the post. It was very informative/unbiased and I enjoyed reading it. I myself love what I have seen from the NA beta and I will be on the lookout for the OB, as well as awaiting for the release.
Are you talking about the single "Boby Jones' at home" botters trying to improve their toons on their own, or the Chinese gold farming "enterprises"?
Because I don't really see what would stop these so called "companies". If more gold is needed I would think they'll just swarm the servers with even more bots.... ?
Thanks alot for the Review
It shows some insight in to the future. Right now my Guild is playing CN CB and i can understand why like 80% of the ppl are bots on servers. I mean com on. If korean version have problems with bots why do they keep 1.0 ver on CN servers. Its like invitation for gold farmers and bots. Still game is fun even in early stage and patch notes and reviews from krean version bring more hope for the aions future
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Great to see a review from someone with lengthy game experience, thanks for posting that.
One question, where did the 70k-100k banned account numbers come from? I know companies like to talk and put out PR spin about banning botters and whatever, but the reality is, at $15.00 a month, they just deprived themselves of over a million dollars if those numbers are accurate.
I have a hard time believing that any for-profit company would willingly give up that kind of money for something as intangible as doing the right thing and banning farmers.
Please tell me I'm not the only one that this gave a giant hard on to? As an ex-EQ raider, nothing excites me more than going up against a rival guild to kill / claim / loot World Bosses.
You're not alone dude, I know the raids he's talking about (giant Ice-rock in the abyss core, and the betoni quest raidbosses) and its really thrilling. Casual players will have their dose of raids with instances, but for the hardcore gamers, open world raids with competition ftw.
They respawn once every 16 hours iirc, so there are a lot of chances to fight over them.
To the OP, I find your review pretty fair, I think the bots have lost their time nowadays in Korea due to an evolving community, which doesn't rely in them any longer, you still see them, but it's not like in L2 where the botters dominated, nowadays in aion KR the most aknowledged players are the ones streaming their gameplay in the abyss.
I'd also add that I miss a bit of PvE grouping in the abyss, I've always prefered party vs party ganks over solo ganks for high level toons (countering party ganks is doable, and really makes you feel good if you succeed), I've heard that they are working on something to fix this for 1.3, do you know anything about that Mugengaia?
Well, bots really have lost their place in Aion unlike the huge influence they had couple months ago. They can still turn on bots to leave their toons on to level on their own, but it's not going to be nearly as effective as grouping for xp or going through endless (i say endless because they still only have one instant dungeon "fire temple" for 30ish players) instance runs. Also they have to be on the look out just in case they get banned...(NCsoft is serious these days.)
As far as economy goes, bots aren't that useful anymore for aion gold either. It's because the economy has grown so much that the meager extra $$$ isn't going to help you much in purchasing high end gear. Even if they leave the toon on the open field of high level monster than the toon can handle, you're not going to get any, it not one or two, valueable craft items and weapons and armors worth $$$. Valueable gears are only dropped from stronger mobs either taken down by groups in certain fields or instances.
I mean I just succeeded in crafting a lvl45 legendary craft dagger with 19% aspd the other day, but the mats required to craft this item you're not going to get on your own. Plus, the dagger itself is worth roughly $200 US dollars on my server, which is far too much for a bot to bring in any short time.
Bots were so eminent in the beginnings of this game because the gold was hard to come by, but now the gap between the upper end content and low end content is so vast, running a bot is practically useless and inefficient.
If my assumption is right, time will kill off the bots much like WoW, in a different way though. In Aion time will kill off bots because they won't be bringing sufficient amount of gold, or very valuable gears.
You've obviously never seen end game high lvl bot parties in L2, or Full on Raid Boss bot groups controlled by 1-2 who just assist off the main dmg dealer. Nothing is impossible if 1 someone has the money to pay for Gold. And 2 someone will do whatever it takes to take that money off your hands.
Sure one company can run couple dozens of bots at once. But about the over 100k accounts banned, if you go to AionInven or AionMeca they post news about Aion all the time. Plus major game magazine sites also reported what NCsoft press released. NCsoft reported back some months ago that they banned 66k or so bot accounts, and later 70k more botters. After they announced this most of the botters were gone when I logged in to check. But not too long after, only a couple days, they started reappearing. So yea, botters will exist no matter what as long as there is a good profit. But at least NCsoft is doing something....
I don't know if they are only putting more effort into the korean servers because it is their niche market, or they are really changing the philosophy of how they run their business, who knows? Let's keep on watching. But hopefully they've changed their mentality.
GRIND sucks? You wanna be max level in a month?
Since when did society award easy-goers and lazy-fools?
MAKES ME PHOBIC OF STUPIDITY!
Great review Mugengaia, best i have seen so far. I just have a simple quick question, Are there any 2 handed axes or 2 handed hammers in the game or is it only polearms and swords?
I just wanted to say I loved the review and the added information throughout the thread. It is a nice thing to see no one trolling or derailing the thread. We definitely need more honest reviews from Aion KR. People who base their opinion on this one weekend and the people playing on China's servers are selling themselves short.
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Actually... consider that if you ban a bot account, the bot controller will most likely be back sooner than later. How? By opening another account, which of course requires the purchase of a new retail box (at the cost of roughly 3 months of play). So if you ban 70k bots and 40k of them come back within a month, you've actually earned about 1.7 times as much as you would have with the original 70k paying the regular sub fee. If you also consider that banning bots is good PR and makes it more likely that customers will want to join your game (particularly here in NA) it becomes apparent that banning bots is probably _good_ for business. I imagine that eventually the bots will get tired of the ban/re-sub process because it will get unprofitable at some point. Hopefully by then there are enough legitimate players that the loss of those few subs is not significant enough to NCSoft's bottom line that they re-consider their bot policies.
Just my wild speculation though.
That's a good point, I hadn't considered the additional retail boxes.
This was a great review. And, quite frankly you are right. However, it might be a WoW clone, it has very indepth PvP, great storyline, great graphics, and the grind is worse than WoWs.
Otherwise, i agree it is a bit of a WoW Clone.
Thanks a lot for the review!
I am holding out some hope for the higher level experience as the lower levels bored me to absolute tears. The majority of quests are kill X number of Y creatures. I am a long time gaming geek and am just sooo tired of that formula. I'll play Aion at launch in order to see how the experience goes in the 30 + range.
I have to give them credit for the graphics although I'm not huge on the art style. The customization is great.
I also think it is one of the most stable new game clients I've seen in the last few years.
When you are in the Abyss, do you use your wings/flight a lot?
I was wondering how often pvp is done while flying?
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Quite a lot and it looks like this: www.youtube.com/watch flight time can be as much as 10-15 min's depending on various of things (gear, pots, craft).
But understand it's not always pro sky pilots ! sometimes its all on the ground or a mix of both.
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Thank you for this post.
Regarding the chinese gold farmers, wouldn't blanket banning IP's from China take care of most of this? I know there are proxy's, but must be a step in the right direction.
Excellent and informative review, thank you very much, best review of this game I've seen on this forum. (and from a lvl 50 player too)
O_o o_O
Hey Mugengia, is the endgame almost all PvP right now? For those of us who prefer PvE; is there enough content to mostly PvE and occassionally PvP? Is Raid content only in the Abyss, are raid mobs all overland or is there a raid dungeon as well?
I prefer doing dungeon crawls with friends rather than PvP, is the gear from dungeons comparable to the Abyss gear?
Nice review. Thanks!
Can you say how bad is class balance at endgame?
Can you please describe how obtain silver and gold medals?
Very informative post about the game. But there are a few things I am still wondering about:
Thanks
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I am probably going to be one of those people who hate Aion and WoW. Its depressing being a huge fan of the genre, but being so burnt out on this style of gameplay. When a game finally comes out with a lot of polish, stability, and great looking graphics, I am faced with the sad fact that it plays exactly like the MMOG's that I played for 10 years. I am tired of Aion already and I've only played it three days. The only reason I can think of for hating Aion is because I so desperately want a MMOG of this quality that plays a little different. So the hate isn't even for Aion or WoW, but rather the stagnation and dumbing down of the genre as a whole.
I agree with that statement 100%. I dont care about WoW or Aion or whatever, so much to hate them. What I hate is that the MMORPG genre has been dumbed down and simplified so that someone with a IQ of 85 can be good at it. But I guess that is inevitable once a genre start to appeal to the mass market.
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You're wrong. These bastards create accounts, farm a lot of gold quick, transfer it away / sell the gold and do a charge back of the credit card.
Basically the scam John Smedly and some other CEO's were talking about in several articles about half a year ago.
And as companies get penalty fees on charge backs, sometimes even end up on black lists, because they undergo a lot of chargebacks...these gold farmers have become such a plague that the MMO companies are even losing money on it.
I don't think that is what he is looking for, atleast it is not what I am looking for in MMORPGs. Basically what you are describing is FPS style combat and, altough that might appeal to FPS people, I don't see that as an evolution of MMORPGs; it is just an MMORPG with FPS ripoff combat (ala Darkfail).
No, what I am looking for is a game that has depth and requires intelligence, dedication and cooperation to be succesful at and an MMORPG that atleast tries to build on the concept of a persistant world instead of tacking a bunch of instances and repeteadable, nonensical quests that has no bearing on the persistant world as a whole; basically creating single player bubbles in a MMORPG. That I see as a degeneration of MMORPGs, started with WoW and now continuing with basically every MMORPG after.
Darkfail tried and failed, miserably, to do something different. Mortal Online is gonna go for another try but Aion, unfourtanetely, sounds like any other WoW clone with flying combat (already done in CoX) and pretty gfx (already done in AoC) with end game about a faction type PvP (already done in DAoC, WAR and WoW). Not saying that Aion wont be fun, I am still enjoying WoW clone WAR, but it is nothing innovative or challenging about these games.
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I have no idea if Aion will end up being a good game, since it's not released in the EU and my experience with it is limited. However, you just described a recipe for success, aka, taking all the good things that various games offer and presenting them in a single package. It is a hilarious, because experience has shown so far that one of the toughest things for game developers is incorporating the best points of other games into their own.
The toughest thing of course is innovation, but honestly, I don't expect MMO companies to do anything more than baby steps towards that direction.