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Aion: Taking a Look at Assault on Balaurea
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
MMORPG.com's Carolyn Koh recently had the opportunity to look at the upcoming Aion expansion, Assault on Balaurea. She spent some time with Community Manager Andrew Beegle looking at some of the new features such as longer flight travel times, new instances, and the new pet system. See what discoveries Carolyn made in our exclusive preview of Aion: Assault on Balaurea.
On September 7, NCSoft will launch Aion’s first expansion, Assault on Balaurea where Asmodians and Elyos will bring the war to the Balaur, by invading their homeland. This expansion which can be downloaded for free, bumps the level cap up to 55 and introduces a new region, the homeland of the Balaur. There are 8 new instances and a pet system. It also brings more stigma skills, crafting, weapons and armor.
Read the full preview of Aion: Assault on Balaurea.
Comments
Oh yeah, a pet that eats and then poops out useful items. Goofy Asians.
" Leading up to the expansion, NCSoft is handing out free three-day passes to try out Aion"
Finally somewhat of a free trial. This is what the game needs, but a mere 3 days? Try atleast 1 week or more..
What?? Americans are still enjoying this "by the book" asian grinder??? I thought the american mmo taste buds of P2P were too good for grindfests like this?
This is a pretty good game if they didn't bann everybody for anything. Wish I could play Assault On Balaur , but unfortunately I was banned for having too much kinah.
I appreciate that some people might find Aion a grind but by no means is this a "by the book" Asian grinder.
As compared to what?
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
I can’t stand botters or those who support them, but I love to listen to them QQ after getting banned.
Thanks bro, you made my day.
BTW, NCsoft needs to be more aggressive about banning botters, not less.
Oh, you're so above the rest of the world in your gaming tastes.
this game SUCKS! the game basically ends at around level 25, because then it transforms from a game into a job.
Loved this game till i hit lvl 25 and got into the abyss and found out that for the next 20 lvls i was gona be the target of a gankfest. Doesn't matter where I go I get ganked by ppl 10-25 lvls above me 20-30 times an hour, was spending most of my time going from town to area I had a quest in, get ganked, rez in town and head back. Ask for help and was told join a guild but kept getting kicked out of active guilds cause I didn't meet kill quotas or wasn't online enough. If you enjoy this game i'm happy for you but I'm tired of begin called a carebear cause my lvl 35 chanter can't kill a lvl 50 and i've lost any abyss points i had from all the ganking, I'll take my sub money else where.
This game is good, and it needs this expansion really bad, it will draw back a ton of people who basically left, cause they hit 50, got full fenril, then full abyss jewls, and did the same things for months on end till boredom. As is, there is not enough to do, as this game grows in content and and balance, it will only get better, as the combat and gameplay is actually fun. The pvp needs more variety so it can happen beyond gank fest and zerg, a long with a more full PVE expierance as well, I will most likely be trying this when released, if not just to cap and to pvp in the new areas.
This game is pretty, but not good by any meaning of the word.
They substituted a huge grind to replace lack of an end game. Just like all the f2p games, except that you are paying for a sub instead. That and making people quest in pvp areas dominated by high levels is another joke. NCSoft does not understand what makes a MMO great.
*sigh* You all sound like a bunch of spoiled children. Just because someething doesn't suit your tastes doesn't make it terrible. I didn't like EvE, but I recognize that it's a fanastic game in its own right (and has amazing social dynamics), but not my cup of tea.
The grind argument is baseless and old. Granted, there does need to be more group content 35+, but in terms of grind, the game isn't any worse than classic WoW.
I made it to level 31 just the other day and I have really liked Aion so far. The way NCSoft structured the questing areas though seems kind of ridiculous. There is an area for the two factions to go fight each other (the abyss) and yet they feel the need to put rifts in so there is a constant stream of higher level players streaming through lowbie quest zones and ganking you while you are trying to quest. I'm not sure who thinks being ganked while you are trying to quest is something that makes an MMO fun, but whoever they are, they need to be slapped.
Fortunately, I have gotten very good at avoiding the gankers. I can tell when the game is loading up an enemy player's textures by a slight hiccup in my framerate, so I immediately stop what I am doing and look for them. Then I see the red diamond on my minimap and I immediately start hauling ass in the other direction. I got ganked half a dozen times and then I quickly began escaping nearly 100% of the gankers just because I was always watching for them and my computer gives me a little heads up when they are coming close. That being said, it is still like they tried to build frustration in to the gameplay.
Not only that, but the stories I have heard about some of the higher level quests where people spend millions of kinah to get rare mats to craft an item for the quest and then fail like 6 times in a row (and you lose your mats) just sounds like NCSoft is trying to punish you for playing their game. Apparently the asians believe you aren't having fun unless you are screaming and throwing your keyboard in frustration.
While I enjoyed my time up to 31, everything I read makes me feel like from here on out it just gets more and more painful.
I believe I will see what else is out there.
Currently playing:
Rift
Played:
SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot
World of Warcraft, AoC
This expansion is way too late to hope it will lure back all players- or even some - who have quit after couple of weeks/months . NCsoft isn't serious about any real commitment to western markets ( they have shown that time and time again ) unless the game is made in the west by a semi-external studio in the first place ,i.e. Arenanet . What they should have done when porting Aion to the West is outsource the entire project to a western-based studio ( keeping the physical stuff like graphics,sound and basic lore ) and have them make it specifically for western markets .
The way they did it doesn't work at all . One would have thought they'd have learned their lesson from Lineage 2 ,but nope. Aion will never become as succesful as they had hoped in the west and the only ones to blame are the suits in Korea who lacked the guts to commit to western market ( and still lack that guts ) .
As said before, the 1st 25 levels are brilliant. The game has it all then the fun factor it gone. I played as Asmo and found the areas really depressing to play.
I think most people quit the game before they got to end game, so this expansion wont bring many players back.
Please don't moan about being ganked, It happends in 90% of mmo's, The ganking is hardly a problem.
yeah i agree.. botters and gold sellers are always bad and i never support them.
however the Aion team seemed not to be able to handle all those botters so the just banned everyone at some point... a RL friend of mine for instnance,
he got hacked 3 weeks later the aion team gives him back his account... which has been used for botting for those 3 weeks. he got his account back, and i think it was a day later that he got an email stating that this account had been found guilty of botting and got banned.
he spent another 2 weeks trying to explain his situation with out any luck.
so in Aion's case, i wouldnt judge people to quickly when they say that they got banned for some retarded reason
Sorry for typos... dyslexic and just too damn lazy to proof read every post for 30 min
(yes i am aware of spell check but it does not help that much
It's simply not true the amount of ganking going on isn't a problem ( especially since the zones in which you have to quest/grind are PvP enabled ) . It's common knowledge such a PvP-system pretty much invites players to gank lowbie levels . When you just reached the Abyss it was near impossible to do anything at all due to camping of known quest zones ( add to that the amount of cash soulhealer and flight transport cost ). The only way in which to level was going back to previous zones and do instances ad nauseum . It was pretty horrible few months ago . Most players I know quit the game for those two reasons: incredible amount of grind past level 20-25 and the gankfest which was the Abyss . It wasn't designed very well.That is also due to the severe lack of questing zones .In EVE you have a huge "world " so there's always spots which you can avoid. The only other MMO I know of which suffered from the same problem was Rappelz ( and that's f2p ) .You can't charge for a subscription fee when you design it like that . It isn't the graphics or sound which were bad ,it's the gameplay itself .
Folks usually spend a limited amount of their hard-earned cash on any MMO and they're less inclined to pick Aion if that means they have to "work" in their free time ,especially with this many f2p titles around .The basic principle that games are made to relax and unwind has been overlooked by the Aion developers . Worst of it all is that they were warned for all of this during beta , but they chose to simply ignore those warnings .
The biggest problems I always had with Aion, is that after level 30, any sense of immersion was immediately crushed by the lack of content and the grind. They did add more quests (too late for me though), but then the endgame options were also severely lacking.
Then you also have the claustrophobic feel of the game which isn't good for the sense of freedom that this game should have; why should it have that? Well, the first images you see of Aion are those of wings and clouds, that is what they should try to realise then, freedom.
Speaking of wings, I'm happy to hear you get more flighttime, but that still isn't enough imo, the older zones should be opened up more. I agree with a flight timer, but the amount of flying to be done in the game is very limited, and problematic in PvP.
If Aion were to capture the world PvP moments that we saw in the beta, when the level cap was still 30, I'd consider coming back; but the fortress zergs and PvE grind for PvP points don't really interest me.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
I still find it highly amusing that this site gave the game a 8.7 score as if it was the next best thing to come along, when in reality it was nothing of the sort. It's your typical asian MMO that sits in the cesspool of all the other average MMO's. One of the all time hyped games in recent memory, especially on this site, that fell flat on it's face. Instead we stand here a year later and instead of being all that and a bag of chips, it's now this:
Irrelevant.
The really sad thing is Aion could be a really great MMO . The idea of winged combat etc. is awesome . They just failed miserably at its execution and opted to ignore feedback when this was pointed out . They were actively selling new boxes even while existing players were quitting en masse . Only now have they realized they needed to address the issues brought forward by players during beta testing stage. a Tad late I would think .
so true man.. so true
I didn't mind the grind in this game, hell i came from lineage 2.
What I couldn't stand in this game was the flight combat in the abyss, being melee in the abyss is terrible. The whole time you play in the abyss you are either chasing someone or flying away being chased.
The wings were good on paper but personally I think it was the worst feature of the game on how it ruined pvp.
Yea I had fun in the game till I hit 39 then the quests dried up and everything turned into a festitious grind. If there had been more quests to bridge the gap I probably would have stayed with the game but I cannot mindlessly repeat the same quests over and over again and have fun with that. It's a design flaw in the game that should have been recognized and fixed but it hasn't. I'm not so sure this expansion will remedy that problem either.
Imo a bit griding during leveling isn't that big problem, more or less you have it in every mmo. What i hated during lvling were penalties for death (basicly i stoped doing pugs becouse it simply wasnt worth of time) and penalties on exp. due lvl difference in groups, i could go and heal ppl 4-5 lvl higher in their quest areas just fine but i got just fraction of their exp, it's just stupid to penalize friends when their lvl difference is a bit higher .
Biggest problem i have with Aion is it's retarded randomness. Try socketing gold lvl 50 abbyss gear with green manastones ... spending milions just to fail at last one and loosing everything ... now thats just fail. Enchanting is similiar story . Suplements added in 1.9 are just bad joke.