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2 day review (detailed!)
I've got my Chanter up to 14 and figured I'd give it a review. I'm going to compare it to other games I've played, mainly Lotro, Wow and War.
Graphics/Performance:
It runs smoother than any other game, with good graphics. My rig is a couple years old so it's not the best, but the character models are great while the scenery is good. I can actually READ the names over peoples head, unlike other games which I will not mention (*cough*, Wow, WAR)... The animations are nice and smooth... I've also been lucky enough to have mostly lag free gaming.
Combat:
Combat just feels good.... It's sort of got the speed of Wow, with the smoothness of Lotro. Skillwise I still don't have enough and I'm autoattacking too much for my liking. I'd say the skill progression is about on-par with WoW. I haven't really figured out how to best use the directional movement buffs, but I think when mastered will provide an advantage over an opponent. One thing I don't really like is how you can start or even finish a magic induction without facing the player. I guess it reduces *You are not facing your target* frustration, but I'm not sure they should make it that easy. Also when inducting and getting attacked by melee, it seems to be sort of random whether you get interrupted or not. THere's no induction knockback at all, just sometimes you are interrupted. Not sure what's up with that.
Questing:
It's very linear, mostly standard quests. Reading the quests they are decently interesting. It has more of a central story line than WoW, but not as much as Lotro. There is less time wasted walking in Aion than either WoW or Lotro which is nice. There is also much less downtime than WoW. Up to lvl 13 my chanter ran out of mana exactly twice. No sitting down drinking milk. Despite this, the pace of levelling is surprising slow at lvl 14. It just takes a lot of XP to level. Lvl 50 is going to be a griiiiiiind.
Crafting:
I think this is going to be a helluva grind... I know a lot of people want to do COoking/Alchemy for pots/buffs for PvP, but I think it's going to be a pain.. Only reason I'm saying this is because I've spent time gathering all the materials I can and I've only gotten Cooking to lvl 5. I vendored some items I needed for Alchemy, and I've found exactly 1 node that I needed for Handicrafting so that's why they haven't really been started.
Stats:
When you mouse over your stats, it doesn't tell you what they mean! What the hell does Crit rating of 27 give me? How can they go live without explaining these? RIght now I get new loot and I have no idea what it really does for me.
Achievements:
There's no achievement system like WoW, no deed system like Lotro or ToK like WAR... There is only 50 titles you can obtain from questing (I think they come from questing)... So I guess that's one less grind... But I sort of miss it. There is no incentive to explore. The goal here is to quest and level.
Interface:
It has its quirks... It's not customizable yet... Moving to target is quirky... Mouse is too slow... *shrug*.... But I guess despite this combat still feels good so that's a good sign.
Flight:
Flight is great! GLiding is also great! Pewing NPCs from the sky is fun 
It's literally another dimension to combat. I'm disappointed that you can't fly in quite a few areas so far. I guess the Abyss is all flyable, and that's where the game really starts...
Music:
So far I've heard traditional fantasy RPG music, electric guitars, and electronic music. It's really refreshing to hear this variety.
Economy:
Definitely good potential here. Enough items flying around and enough scarcity that people will really want to buy and sell.
Overall:
After the euphoria of "OMG the combat rocks!" and "OMG flying rocks!", I've settled into the grind. While still enjoyable, I really hope the Abyss adds something extra. But overall the feel of the game is good. THat's all I can think of... I'm going to try to get to 25 or maybe 30 before beta is over... Really wan tot see the Abyss
Comments
Good, honest review. Thanks for sharing.
They can adjust a game all day, but they can't help the issue between the keyboard and the chair.
Played: UO, DAoC, AC, WoW, EVE, TR, WAR, Aion, Rift, SWTOR, GW2, TSW, ESO, Elite:D
Play EVE for free for 21 days
Not to sound stupid saying this but, putting reality aside. If magic and all that bullshit exisited. I highly doubt you need to face someone in order to kill them by burning them alive or what not.
Thats something I never liked about wow. What does casting a spell have to do with facing the target. God forbid your 2 or 3 degrees off to the left/right. Then your spell wouldn't cast.
God saying this makes me sound stupid but yeah... thats what I think.
Veritas Vos Liberabit- The truth will set you free.
Finally someone who isn't spewing verbal diarrhea about this game.
Two points you made there I wanted to comment on. First one being the crafting. It has been discussed many times in the past, that the best way to advance your crafting in Aion is the use of the tasks, not in farming the mats yourself. Use the mats you collected to build the items you want to use/sell and take advantage of the system for the training itself. Sure its going to take time still, but I was able to jump over 100 in multiple crafts on multiple characters in one day during CB. Collect just enough mats to finish the quest to get your money back from buying the skill, then jump in to the tasks, best advice I can give on this one.
The second point you brought up was the Achievements. Personally I'm a badge-whore from CoH, and actually liked seeing WoW steal the concept for that game as it actually gave me something more to do there. However, that being said, it may actually be left out intentionally to avoid the grind inherantly associated with badge/achievement systems. I've only gotten 5-10 different titles in Aion so far, and as limited as it may seem so far I'm starting to see the advantage to it. A simple system that allows for individual recognition without requiring the grind (no kill 1000 Longbow to get this badge, or complete 452 quests in Aezoroth to get this achievement). As it is right now though it leaves so much more that can be brought into the game later if its needed. Personally I liked 'the book' from WAR concept when it comes to achievements. Afterall the person that cares the most about what I accomplish is me, and that lil book helped me keep track of it all.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
Not to sound stupid saying this but, putting reality aside. If magic and all that bullshit exisited. I highly doubt you need to face someone in order to kill them by burning them alive or what not.
Thats something I never liked about wow. What does casting a spell have to do with facing the target. God forbid your 2 or 3 degrees off to the left/right. Then your spell wouldn't cast.
God saying this makes me sound stupid but yeah... thats what I think.
Exactly, I don't have a problem with it either.
The whole facing is stupid. With Melee I can understand and that makes sense. But for magic users it's unnessessary.
So that is something Aion finally got right.
I agree with the OP. Nice honest review.
I like Aion so far, but at level10 - 11 I already slowly can feel the grind coming in.
I leveled up a Cleric... and I must say, that it's the first time I have fun with a healer class lol. So I guess that's a possitive.
I am sertainly in a mixed bag situation when it comes to Aion.
It's a beautiful game, scenery wise. Altho sertain ground textures here and there are dissapointing (probably to improve PVP performance).
But having played LOTRO and EQ2 for so long (EQ2 since 2004 off and on)... you just get spoiled by all the content and features these games offer. Especially when it comes to EQ2.
I like good PVP. But if The Abyss is all there is, next to the quest grind.... then I am afraid I am gonna get burned out pretty quick.
I keep playing on and off during OB. See how far I can get and if I can manage to run into rifts to PVP a bit. As seeing how the grind slowly runs in... I don't think I have the time to reach level25 before the end of OB.
But in the end I might hold off on my pre-order and watch from the sideline how NCWest handles this game and how fast the updates are coming in for this game.
Cheers
I think you have to increase your "concentration" attribute to avoid interruptions.
"Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought."
Just saying that proper MMOs handle the lag just fine and don't allow characters to disappear or warp at all - WAR had those at release but they are fixed now, players don't warp and there is collision in pvp so no one can run through you.
I don't see how the gear fest and ridiculously fast TTK and unbalanced classes in Aion is going to contribute to fun pvp, just saying - if you enjoyed WoW pvp balance you will enjoy it in aion.
I think 10 crit is 1% from the Korean data. However that was ver 1.3, not sure about 1.5.
So. 27 crit should mean 2.7%.
Aion kind of make you test your stats much like DAoC and FFXI where you need to first figure out those stat value and then calcuate how to optimize your mana/god stones and equipements to get a certain amount of boost. Stigma is there to enhance skills.
Movement bonus is not that hard to do once getting use to it. All of them have up sides and down sides, even strafing which does not seem to have a negative bonus actually have a weakness of becoming harder to keep track of and keeping proper distance to targets.
Nice fair review and even stated 2 days, a nice change from all the troll threads I been reading today.