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Should I avoid Aion?
RudyRaccoon
Member UncommonPosts: 475
in Aion
Should I avoid Aion? From the way I keep hearing, everyone hates this game, I even watched the 1.9 poscast video [link] and by looking at the comments there, the highest rated comments say the developers don't listen to the fans. Also I hear that there's a huge bot and cheating problem by lag spiking, no that can't be good. =(
Comments
Looks like Aion is truely a bad game. =p
Buy it and play it.
Only then can you decide if it's a bad game or not.
You can buy it at Amazon cheaper, so, yeah.
My personal opinion? Not a bad game, but it lacks alot of content.
Or maybe if you bothered looking at some threads in aion section you would have found your answers.
The game is a deccent game. It plays fine and there are quests/instances that you can play. Graphics are good (some of the best) and if you like PvP once you get the lvl it is also very good.
THe grind to get you max lvl is alot harder than most of the current MMO's. You also have to lvl in a PvP area where you can expect to get ganked by higher lvls.
Overall i still play from time to time and i enjoy the game for what it is. But please remember compaired to todays MMO's it will take you longer to lvl.
I'll answer your question with a question...
If a restaraunt announced a new hamburger, would you conduct an internet poll to determine wether or not you liked the hamburger??
"If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse." - Henry Ford
Well it looks ike you have made your mind up before getting a answer.
No its not a bad game at all. Asking here on the biggest flame forum is tho. Because you ill get lots of negative feed back.
Also the forums are just full of crying people who are never happy.
Its a good game and patch 1.9 is making it even better. And the bot/ gold selling problem is pretty much gone.
If you like the look of the game then try it, but if your a mmo hopper and just want to try it then maybe not, but id say that for any game.
Most moans is the aparent grind, but with 1.9 leveling will be easier, although i never found it hard. If people are not max level and kitted out in a month they moan, end off.
If your opinion of a game is based off youtube and mmorpg.com then every game made is bad and should not be played. Try it and form your own opinion.
Aion is a well-polished, solid, fun game.
It does take longer to level in than most other recent games.
Gold-selling and botting aren't any more of a problem in the game than they are in other games.
The only way you'll ever find out if it's a fun game for you is to try it.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
I played aion to level 30 in my first free month, never ressub'd after that... got sick of the garbage portal placement, the zillion some odd bots.. wether they were resource farming, mob farming whatever.. it was a major annoyance... Had a fairly decent computer at the time of aions release, the abyss was a lag fest.. basicly no one wanted 2 raid forts due 2 it crashed the abyss just about every time...
Class balance is wack... my buddy played a healing combat class and i was a ranger.. when we would duel the fight would last 30+ minutes... quite similar 2 how a majority of abyss fights went..
all in all my thoughts on this game is Garbage
I forgot to mention that I already own the game, from a design point of few it does look rather "uncool" looking, and it's a real drag that there are no mounts in the game, it takes ages to run to places so, yeah, I probably did answer my own question. Well, time to uninstall Aion and see what other MMORPG there is.
But these have already been fixed months ago, so there's no point in talking about them today!
Not that it would have made any difference concerning the OP though, he is basically ignoring all of the posts in this thread (and the other one) except ones dissing the game. Already has his mind set on not giving it a try me thinks.
Ah well, we all know he's going to find a game with no negative posts pretty soon on mmorpg.com right?
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
@ OP: Nytakito has the right of it. I NEVER base my decisons on what people say unless I know them very well, they know me very well and I have context for their comments.
Aion is a fine game.
Aion is a crappy game for those who are not used to its type of game play or can't adapt.
Every game has a botting cheating problem. Well, every popular game. WoW has bots. And gold buying. Don't believe me, do a search.
If you aren't used to a somewhat open pvp game and want a pve game, then you will be upset at Aion's system. If you are a hardcore pvp player you will hate its system. well, that is if you are looking for a strictly pve game or a hardcore pvp game.
Compared to actual open pvp games it is not an open pvp game. But for those who are used to battle grounds or limits on who can attack you, they might have issues. You don't really lose much in dying from a pvp death anyways. Some abyss points. Big deal. They can be easily gotten back.
I'm not saying Aion doesn't have its issues, but that "your mileage may vary". So you can either get a limited trial and try the game, though it really won't give you a good idea of how the game plays in the higher levels, take the plunge and buy it or just not try it.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Unless you're extremely bored and have tried everything else out there right, save your money. At best this game is only decent, and that's for the niche group that likes the game.
I liken the dislike of this game to FFXI, which I player for over 7(?) years. I liked the game, I had fun and enjoyed it. However, during playing it and now, I can admit to it's problems and the fact that it isn't that great of a game over all. See, I was a part of the 'niche' group. Nothing wrong with that, if you like a game, no matter how bad or good it is doesn't matter, now does it. Nope it doesn't matter because you like that game.
People in this thread saying overly positive things about the game are simply trying to save the game they enjoy by giving it good press. Self-preservation at it's best.
People in this thread saying you need to try it to know are probably the best in this thread since they're the most reasonable, putting less weight on their own opinion; though they are the least 'helpful' in regards to the reason you posted.
People saying negative things are either people trying to save you the frustrations they experienced or people who have a chip on their shoulder towards the game. Seperating the two isn't always as easy as it may seem.
Is Aion a good game? I think it's subscriber losses tells that story on it's own. If you isolate the western market for games like Aion or FFXI, well... let's just say if those games only had western subs, they'd be closed down.
My opinion is based off of over a year of playing Aion. ~7 months of betas/asian servers and 6 months of official NA servers. Countless (forced)rerolls, all classes to at least 30 and a low 40s character on the NA server. When I encountered issues with the game on the chinese servers, I chalked it up to all the bots and RMT. Sadly, NA servers didn't fix any of the problems, even after finally doing something about bots, all the issues I had remained. It made me a sad panda and I hope no one else has to go through the same. Giving credit where credit is due, aside from the over population problems that every new game usually has(and the bot issues I already mentioned), levels 1-30 on the NA servers at launch were a blast for me.
Aion: The Tower of Endless Wasted Potential (imo)
I appreciate what you're doing here and I, myself, would go try the burger.(depending; I don't just go and throw any new piece of 'food' into my mouth for the sake of it being new)
However, the notion that one can not read reviews, hear how people describe the taste and texture etc and then take that into consideration and apply it to their own taste to figure out whether or not it's worth bothering is perposterous.
Not everyone has a problem relating to and deciphering other people's words/descriptions into their own tastes.
I have a few critics on the net that I pay attention to and do the exact opposite of because I've found they pretty much have the exact opposite taste of me. More power to me as there's nothing wrong with that.
Kudos for making a clever analogy for an exhausted topic that usually ends up in flames. Censure for being simplistic to a fault.
There's just one game (maybe 2?) that are doing better than Aion in the West. If what you said was true, WoW would be the only game "alive".
Maybe it was an exaggeration on your part, but the fact is that Aion is doing better than most MMOs. I wish people would stop comparing sub numbers to WoW. WoW is an anamoly, something out of this world, it should never be a gauge for success.
If WoW players which were the overwhelming majority of those who have tried the game in the first month (for some reason, game was never for them from the start) didn't like the game, it doesn't mean that AIon is a bad game. It simply means that it caters to a different group of players, the one which is still playing.
Aion has got a lot of issues, but it is not because of these issues that a big % of the population quit during the first month (because the issues start at endgame). People quit during the first month because it was not the game for them (and bots and gold spammers, but these have been resolved long ago). Fact is it's a polished game, enough content and diversity from lvl1->50 to make it an enjoyable ride.
I would say I'm more of a PvE player myself, PvP isn't something I would sort after, it's more like a dish on the side sort of thing, you try it and if you like it then you'll like to have some more (like some sort of battlegrounds) but what I really hate is "ganking" when playing in an open world, it really put me off when I first played WoW and becoming prey to level 70's and 80's, not a good start for my first days of MMOing and I blame an old ex-friend for that.
You're not being entirely fair to YouTube -)
"Lately it occurs to me,
what a long, strange trip it's been". -Hunter
Honestly, I was in the exact same boat. I played my first month and didn't resub after that for the same reasons you are posting. However, as it's been said already (and apparently overlooked), most of the issues have been resolved. The last "major" lingering one is the 25+ grind, which is being addressing and worked on (1.9 shows this).
Why did I resub? Besides for their attempts to better the game overall, I realized that Aion actually provided a concept that just isn't common in today's MMORPGs: challenge. I was also sick of deciding what to play based off what everyone else was playing. I refuse to be a sheep.
I leveled several toons to 80 in WoW. After the last one finally grinded the heroics for the "free epics", I realized that I was quite bored. PvP was a joke, I was sick of running the same old boring instances 400+ times to get "starter epics" and sick of flying around farming plants/ores. I spent more time flying around than actually doing anything when we weren't raiding, which raiding became stale after the first month and becoming "farm status".
I spent a good month whining (yes, I admit when I whine. try it sometime guys) about no MMORPGs out there that actually make the player WORK for something. I contemplated EVE, but I tried that ages ago and found it wasn't my cup of tea. Then 1.9 patch notes came out, adding to the other patches I've been keeping tabs on and have decided to give the game another whirl. The real killer for me was turning in a quest at 23 and watching my XP bar go up 1/8th a bubble. The grind was starting and I was bored.
Aion really isn't for those who are "OMG WotLK IS THE BESTEST EVER" crowd. I advise those types to stay away and save us the "this game sucks compared to " crap. It's catered to those who are looking for a challenging game to play where you don't get your gear by simply pulling a lever on a vending machine and want to reach max level in a week. It's a game to be played, not played for you.
But as others have also pointed out, it sounds like you made up your mind before you even started this thread. So the question is, why the hell are you wasting everyone's time if you have no intentions of even giving it a try?
NEWS FLASH! PAYING THE SUB IN F2P = NO DIFFERENCE THAN P2P GAMES!
Why the hell can't the whiners comprehend this?
Stopped reading here:
Two reasons
Aion is not doing as well as you claim. Please show numbers to prove me wrong if you wish to refute. My numbers were the sub losses.(server merges anyone?) If Aion didn't lose so many subs, you'd be accurate. Aion's bulk numbers come from asia, which I am not talking about.
I wasn't comparing it to WoW. I don't like WoW and never will. In my mind, WoW doesn't exist because you are completely right about it being an anomaly.
Aion is becoming A very good game, I resubbed this month and am having a great time. 1.9patch will make this game so much better with less grinding too. I love the combat system.
As said before, Don't listen to the whiners on the forum just buy the game and try it, All the bots and spammers have been removed all is looking good for Aion.... HF.
Aion is still up and running. Aion is being updated at a decent rate. Aion shows no signs of being discontinued. How is Aion not doing well? You even agree that WoW is an anomaly but Aion which most likely has more subs than most current MMO's still is somehow doing poorly?
if an MMO is up and running and being updated normally, then it is doing just fine.
I played it for 2 months .. (I got an extra month free from them, for all the hassles i had with bugs)
It was a pretty decent game, Group based stuff was good fun.
Flight/Aerial Combat was the most underwhelming aspect really.
There was plenty of content for me to level on, so i never really understood the 'it has no content' threads.
All mmo's have bots/macro's somewhere, so this was a non-issue for me.
I did some small-scale pvp'ing, some classes were much better than others, but most MMO's are the same.
It turned out there was a robed figure telling me 'This is not the game you looking for', and i left.
Well, I suppose, based on what you said, I would say that Aion is not for you.
You will get ganked on occasion, there are some very nicely written quests but I would say that there are definitely a lot of "go kill 10 of x and bring back their ears and do it again" quests and though a person can forgo the pvp for the most part you will have to deal with it from time to time and I'm not convinced that as a pve only game, Aion shines.
And Alpheus, (poster above) does have a point.
One should be able to read a review and know, based upon your preferences, whether or not you might like a thing.
But the problem is two fold. Many of the posts on these and other forums aren't really great "reviews" and more like rants in the worst case scenarios. Statements are made but they are either highly subjective but presented in a way where it seems that they are just fact or not enough detail is given to really present the content in a fair way. Sometimes they are given in the context of someone who has played only a part of the game or played at a specific point in time and the game just doesn't represent that state in the present.
So for example, people will claim that Aion is festering with bots and gold sellers. Well, dollars to donuts it has as many bots and gold sellers as any other game. It is true that they were very in your face when the game came out. I have a whole folder in my e-mail with tons of replies from customer service for all the gold selling stores I reported. I would sometimes spend a half hour taking screen shots and reporting gold selling stores in game.
Now, it's MUCH better. The gold spam that used to fly by in chat is MUCH better as it is far more rare than the times when it would fly by so fast you couldn't read chat.
But still players would flat out say "festering with gold sellers and bots". So what is one to think?
The other thing is that you might be surprised what you like. For intance, my first mmo was lineage 2. I really just wanted a game with other people that felt like Neverwinter Nights but with the exploration of Morrowind. I read everything I could read about lineage 2 and though most of it sounded horrible, it was the only mmo that sort of spoke to me with the art design. EQ looked horrid to me, I tried shadowbane and it felt junky, I didn't like the 2 dimensionality and the dated look of UO's graphics and I'd never heard of DAoC so that wasn't a choice.
so I decided to just try Lineage 2 with the idea that I'd just play it for a week. I just wanted to see what these games were about. Well, yadda, yadda, yadda, I played for over 4 years.
Even though everything I hated about the game still held true, it was worth more than the sum of its parts and was an extremely good experience for me.
So in the end, I do believe that a review might set the stage but in the end seeing is believing.
Still, based on what you said, if you are looking for external advice, I don't hink Aion is for you. Take that for what it's worth which for the most part, along with a dime, will NOT get you a cup of coffee.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Since no released MMO ever keeps updating their actual numbers on a constant basis, it's useless to claim that Aion could have them, so there aren't any real numbers. However xfire, which has proven time and time again that its a very useful tool to calculate trends, has Aion at #8 and has been hovering between that and #10 for the past 6 months (Eastern players don't use xfire). Btw I never talked about Asia, Aion is more successful than most of the so called "Western" MMOs, in the West.
Aion has had a pretty stable (albeit slowly decreasing) population for months, and the only period where it has lost a bulk of players was after the first free month (and the month after it). What does that mean? It means that the players who found out the hard way that the game was never for them quit. As I said in my previous post (the part you didn't read), most of these players were WoW players and there was no way that Aion would cater to the majority of them.
Basically it was normal fare and nothing surprising for Aion (or any other game post-WoW) to lose a big chunk of players after the first month. The measure for Aion's (or any other MMO) success is afterwards: will it continue to drastically lose players month after month? or has the game found it's niche and is actually a good game but not for everyone? The game has proven that it is indeed the latter.
As people have said countless times before, server merges are coming now because they were late. They should have done them 2 months after the game's release.
The only reason Aion didn't go the way of WAR or AoC is because of it's huge success in the east. This is wonderful news for all the western Aion fans in a way. They never have to fear their game being shut down. Flipside is that western fans are dog meat in comparison and will be doomed to never get anything that westerners want if easterners aren't asking for it.
Besides, I never said Aion was failing and going to be shut down. I said it wasn't that great of a game and it's sub losses are proof.
I'm getting a decent amount of strawmanning in this thread.
We could argue forever about how inaccurate Xfire is. We could argue forever about how it's 'slowly decreasing population' isn't so slow as it was quite fast for at least the first 7 months I played.(I forgot about the free month before when I said 6mo) We could argue forever about how meaningful server merges within the first few years of a MMO's life are.(how does a game go from closing down servers in it's 'growth period' to gaining players in it's latter years/ "decline period"? You better hope NCSoft has a chat with FunCom; without new players, MMOs slowly die a slow drawn out and usually painful to it's player's death)
Ultimately it doesn't matter. It is what it is. It is now forever a part of the dark era of MMOs.(WAR AoC and now Aion) Now, there will always be people like me who pop up to say 'eh, it's not horrible, but you're better off saving your money'.
We at least agree that there was a mass exodus after the first month and that it was primarily comprised of 'WoW players'. However I do not agree that it stopped after that nor that it was ultimately WoW players who left Aion in general. *WoW player(with negative connotation) = first and only MMO = WoW (it's meaning for me)
It's not just 'WoW players' that have a problem with this game. Whether it be FFXI, LotRO, AoC, Cabal etc, oodles of players over long periods of time spanning much more than two months have left Aion to go back home. This is my personal experience(read: not made up to support my opinion) and it's meaningful. Refute it all you want but it won't change it's truth of existence. I'd sure hope that by now the game has stopped gushing players but it doesn't change what happened and why it happened. ^_^b
It's easy to be on the inside looking out, never aware of the whole picture. There's nothing wrong with being on the inside, unaware of it all, so long as you're happy. It's just silly to try and tell others who've been inside and outside that they're missing something. I mean sure, if I didn't give the game a fair chance nor listened to other opinions or was some anti-aion-fanboy, have at me... but that is not the case.
P.S. I used to defend Aion once upon a time as well