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Aion: 1 to 10 on the Closed Beta 3 Weekend
AION: Getting from 1 to 10 in the Beta
I played in the closed beta #3 event this weekend and enjoyed myself quite a bit and I thought I would pass on my thoughts and observations. Please don't bother to reply if you are just looking to argue that Aion is a clone, a WoW killer, or what not but if you want to discuss various aspects of game play and how Aion is addressing them then I look forward to your comments.
Installation:
Aion is a 5+GB download so be ready to spend some time in getting the client downloaded and installed so if you are able to play in the next beta test and want to be sure to download the client early enough to not spend a big part of the play time waiting. Obviously at release this will be distributed on CD/DVD media.
First impressions:
Graphically, Aion uses a somewhat realistic art design with characters that are human like in appearance and shape and a real world that is somewhat 3D in appearance. It is probably closer to Lord of the Rings Online in overall appearance. It is not as stylized as the graphics in WoW but it is not as photo-realistic as Vanguard. Overall, the graphics are very attractive and immersive and a pleasure to look at. The choice to not go to an extreme level of detail allows the game to play well on most systems but as is always the case the better your hardware the happier you are going to be.
The appearance of the characters is slightly Asian-Anime in design and if you are fan of that style you will appreciate it but if you are not it is not so intrusive as to be objectionable.
The sound is a more of a mixed bag with a pleasant background music score for both combat and non-combat environments. The character vocals though do come across as sounding quite Asian and while they do fade into the background due their constant repetition it would be nice if they were replaced with Western vocals though possibly some might disagree with this.
Getting Started:
Once loaded and started and you have chosen your server you get to create your character. Character creation is pretty straight forward and there is a large amount of customizable components during the design of both the face and the body. This is one area where you can spend quite a bit of time if you are into getting the look of your character just right. I tended to just hit random a few times until I got something I generally liked and then to tweak that until it was something I was happy with. For body size the extremes are quite significant where some people have created elfin sized characters. And you can adjust for the peculiar if you want with a character that has very short legs and a very long torso and neck so in general you will be able to create a character that if not completely unique is at least not very common. All in all this is an excellent feature as most players identify with the characters and they want to look different from everyone else.
Once done with the character design you get to choose your class and there are only four starter classes to choose from that fall into the typical fantasy world with a Warrior, Mage, Priest and Scout. Later each of these classes at around level 9 get a quest series that will allow them to refine their choice to one of two types within the class each with a slightly different focus and advantage with for example the Priest class being able to select either a Chanter that is oriented towards buffing and close fighting or a Cleric that is oriented towards healing and ranged fighting. This creates a world with 8 classes of characters that generally cover most of the archetypes that people are familiar with.
The world is also made up of a light and dark side (good and evil, Alliance and Horde, etc) and both sides get the same classes and archetypes to choose from. There are some slight racial differences between the sides but in general other than for role playing purposes or personal preferences there are no differences between the sides. This should help avoid a number of problems that other games have had in the past where once side and/or class becomes dominant.
Yes it would be nice to have a few more classes but the experiences people have had in WoW and WAR with all the different classes and then the constant need to rebalance classes to try and even up the various sides through external means has been pretty disruptive. People tend to gravitate to what they perceive as the best class or side.
What this should mean is that when it comes time to PvP it really won’t make any difference which side you have chosen to play and other than the normal advantages that one class has over another you will be equally matched. This is not to say that certain classes will have the edge over others in a one on one PvP fight.
For me I created one character of each starter class on the same server and levelled them all to level 10 to get a feel for each class and see what would fit best with my personal play style.
Warrior: Typical close range melee fighter class with the normal range of fighting skills. I started to get frustrated with the amount of damage that my Warrior took and how often I needed to either bandage or sit down to recover. Until I hit level 7 at which point I got Shout which in addition to boosting some fighting stats created a damage absorbing shield around me and then I was able to progress quite a bit faster. So, the lesson here is don’t assume too much too early. All in all getting my Warrior to level 10 was pretty straight forward and fun. He did have the hardest time handling multiple mobs but in the early levels this doesn’t happen too often.
NOTE: If you stand around after a fight your MP and HP rebuilds quite slowly but if you sit down on the ground (use the comma key to sit and not the emote of /sit) you recover quite quickly. This is very old school but it is nice to see it make a return.
Scout: Typical ranger stealth type fighter that likes to attack from ambush. I was able with my scout on numerous occasions to one shot mobs or close to one shot them. Frequently taking them to 50% health with my opening attack was not uncommon. The initial burst DPS is quite impressive and the dual wielding fight DPS is quite nice. The stealth skill that you get has a limited duration and it’s re-use timer is a bit long and can slow you down your killing sprees. Fortunately not all mobs will agro so getting behind them to do a surprise attack doesn’t always require stealth.
NOTE: Moving around will allow you to move behind the mob and do your surprise attack again once it comes off of its cool down and in fact moving around is probably a good recommendation for Warriors and Scouts.
Mage: These are your typical ranged DPS nukers and they can put out an impressive amount of damage and combined with the ability to freeze mobs in place take very little damage while doing this. Where my Warrior would go through is hit points pretty quickly my Mage used up his mana almost as fast and required frequent breaks to sit and recover. This didn’t take all that long and in comparison to the other classes a Mage will still kill more mobs faster. If buffed and using stat food a Mage is likely to be a serious killing machine.
Priest: Your healer and buffer class gets an attitude check in Aion. I found the priest to be the easiest class to level up to 10 (and beyond) in that it does a decent amount of damage, can absorb are reasonable amount of damage and can heal themselves. The other three classes seemed to run out of either MP or HP quicker than my priest who was able to keep going on for quite some time until he needed to recover either MP and/or HP. But, on the downside it took him longer to kill a mob than anyone else other than possibly the Warrior.
The world (or at least the newbie zone starter world):
Once you have picked your character and fade into the world you will find an NPC nearby to give you your first quest in the game and to get you started. The starting zone is pretty linear in nature and will feed you fairly naturally though the first 9 class levels to get you to the archetype selection point. There are enough mobs and quests to get you a bit of equipment and enough cash to get started and overall it is a well designed and laid out zone that is neither too large nor too small. The mobs and resources respawn more than fast enough to avoid frustration even with quite a few players on and running about.
NOTE: Mobs do not become locked down when you attack them and other players can steal them from you though you will get some EXP when they die. I personally, would like to see this change as it makes Warrior especially vulnerable to griefing by Mages though I didn’t see too much of this but I did have a few mobs stolen from me and it is annoying when it does happen.
If a mob agros on you there will be an alert sound plus a yellow exclamation point will appear over the mobs head as they realize there is some fresh meat in the area. Having said that, the mobs in the game don’t display any great intelligence and as result unless you are a three or four levels below them or are low on HP and/or MP most single mobs will not present any threat to you.
Combat is pretty straight forward with you choosing which of your abilities or spells to execute but Aion has included the concept of chained abilities. This is where in order to execute a specific ability or spell you need to have executed one or more abilities prior to this. In some previous games this chaining was a nice idea but frustrating to actually do. Here what will happen is once you have learned an ability or spell that is part of chain when you execute the first step if the second one is available you will automatically execute the next step if you execute the same ability/spell that you did before. Also, in the middle right of your screen the chained ability will appear and flash for you to click on it if you wish to execute it. Now some abilities fork and you have a choice of what you can do as a result. The game allows you to specify which one take by default if you wish or you can drag to your action bar both abilities and choose which ever one you prefer. This is a nice feature and it has been implemented quite well.
Quests are the meat and bread of any MMORPG game and there has been some negative comments in regards to the lack of originality and quality of the quests in Aion. With the release of the content in CB3 the lore and quality of the text is quite good but yes the quests themselves are your standard help the farmer by killing the pests or take a message to someone courier quests. I’m not sure what could be done to change this other than to do something completely silly such as make the quests overly complex and probably tedious. Quests are tasks given to you by an NPC to allow you to advance in the game and acquire Exp and wealth and they are required component of the gaming experience. Personally, I found the started quests to be well written and they provided an excellent learning process to allow me to understand how my character worked and interacted with the world around them. In other words pretty much what is needed in a started zone where not everyone will have the same previous game playing experience.
There were even splashes of humour and creativity such as with the poor pet Porgus that you needed to find.
One area that was very well done was with quest management. The quest journal was easy to use and understand and allowed you to easy see what quests you had and what you needed to do next. The ability to locate people and places to a limited extent also helped in moving the game along and preventing frustration. One really clever aspect of the quest journal was the blue hyper links in the text where a place or person was mentioned that you could click on to get specific details. The quest journal also keeps track of the quests you have completed which as a quest fanatic is something I have always appreciated.
All in all the quests in the starter zone are well written, bug free (mostly), fun to do and give you a good feel for the game.
As you run around the world there will be some ground resources that you can harvest. Gathering them up is pretty straight forward and when you start you will see a window pop up that shows you how far along to pass or fail on that gather you have moved. Most of the time you will pass but sometimes you will fail. This same window concept is used in crafting later on and while nothing major does at least give you something to look at as you are bent over grabbing something up off the ground. The ground spawn do get locked once you start gathering but only for that gather and most nodes will allow you to gather three times before they disappear so this means that someone can run up and try to grab some before you can restart gathering. This is a sad behaviour exhibited by only a few people and one that I simply don’t understand why people do other than to be jerks which I guess is why they do it.
The good news is that during beta the respawn rate is very high and hopefully they will keep the starter zone this way for launch as I recall the foraging frenzy that happened when EQ2 was released.
The really good news is that gathering generates you Exp also so doing it is worthwhile even if you aren’t in dire need of the item in question though of course questing and killing mobs is a much faster way to level and probably to make money but the inclusion of some Exp for each gather is a nice little bonus.
Equipment:
Weapons and armour in Aion look to be both functional and attractive with a pretty wide range available to characters. For my priest once he chose to be a Chanter he got the ability to wear chain mail which means that for him he has a choice of cloth, leather and chain armour plus the typical range of blunt weapons that priests use.
Once very nice aspect is that early on mobs start to drop manastones that provide small boosts to your stats and abilities and these items can easily be socketed into your armour and weapons. Equipping them doesn’t require any special skill though it would appear that the process of installing a manastone could fail but personally for me it always worked. Removing them from your gear does require a visit to a specialist NPC and it does destroy the stone in question when removed. This is a very nice feature to have and to have it so early gives you a great chance to play around and further customize your character.
Equipment upgrades are provided by a few quests but a fair amount is dropped by the mobs you kill and the drop rate again feels about right for the amount of work and effort put in. You won’t get a lot but you will get a few bits and pieces.
Getting rid of kit you don’t need can be done in a few different ways. You could like that very kind player that ran up to me and gave me a wonderful hammer you could give it away. You can vendor your excess gear for a bit of ready cash which is always nice. You can also purchase a set of tools that will allow you to extract from your piece of gear an item that will allow you to enhance something else though I’ve not done this enough yet to know if it is cost effective. And, you can set up your own personal store.
This is somewhat reminiscent of Everquest’s bazaar where you could set up your own little stall and sell what you no longer needed or what you might have crafted. In this case you put what you want to sell into your personal store inventory and then pull up a chair and set up a banner over your head proclaiming your intentions and items and hopefully someone comes along and buys your stuff.
Another nice feature is that you are able to have two sets of main hand and off hand items equipped and you can swap them with a single command.
Crafting:
There are a number of crafts available to you and the crafting process seems to be well designed so far. When you purchase a crafting skill you can then do some training right there with materials supplied by the skill master. This allows you to skill up quickly without having to spend large amounts of money for materials or time gathering those materials. The resultant objects are of no value and are reclaimed by the skill master but you do get some Exp for the crafting and will get a random bit of material that you can use later including designs for more complex items. The crafting process is pretty straight forward and painless. You select the item you want to craft while at the appropriate crafting station and a list of needed items and the number of them you have on you will appear and if you have enough of everything you can then attempt to craft the item. You also have the choice to automatically repeat the crafting process if you have sufficient materials so you don’t have to sit there and push the button every time.
Once the crafting starts the pop up window that is used for gathering pops up and you are shown your progress towards pass or fail of the crafting process.
It feels like they have streamlined crafting a bit to get rid of some of the tedium but the complexity of what you need to make some items seems to indicate that making high end items will not be a trivial task and should be well worth the effort for people that enjoy crafting in these games.
On a personal note I do wish that they had included personal vanity items and player housing in the game as I enjoy collecting trophies and things for my house to show off to others. The player housing and what you could with it in EQ2 was quite good but Star Wars Galaxies was incredibly amazing with the types of houses that could be built and the items that you could put in them plus since they were out in the world it made for an interesting place to explore.
Inventory:
Doing all this means you need to collect and carry things about. Aion is avoiding what I consider the silly tedium of not providing sufficient carrying space just to make your life miserable. You start out with a storage cube that appears to be stored in some sort of interdimensional hyperspace that provides you with 27 storage slots that can be expanded reasonably cheaply to 36 (yeah 9 across odd that but I suspect that 10th slot has been lopped off by the field distortion effect). Also, gathered items stack in pretty large numbers. I am sure that there is some sort of limit but having only played to level 10 so far the most of any one item I have gathered was 120ish Angellica plants which all stacked into a single slot.
Once you get to your first major city there is a warehouse there and you move items into some additional storage there which some slots for private storage and some slots for account storage to allow you to easily transfer items to other characters.
You can of course mail items to other characters but you will find that the cost to mail an item goes up and in some cases it may not make sense to mail them at all. There is an option to express mail an item but then the price goes through the roof.
Exploring the world:
Getting around is pretty straight forward. There are teleporters and flight points scattered about though all of them will charge you a bit. Outside of certain areas and once you are out of the starter zone you can fly. There is a small map in the default GUI that shows where you are and what is around you which can be quite helpful in finding things and manoeuvring about. There is a larger map that can be brought up with the map command (M) and a transparent one (N) that allows you to run navigate to your destination without running into walls which is a very nice feature.
There aren’t any ground mounts in the game at this time nor or there any plans to implement them (as far as I know) but so far travel hasn’t been too tedious and being able to fly does help even though there are limits as to where you can fly and for how long you can fly.
Conclusions:
Getting to level 5 on each character took less than 1 hour and that felt about right. Getting to level 9 and out of the starter zone didn’t take a huge amount of time or effort and again it felt about right for the amount of time invested and the rewards received.
Playing the game and playing with other people was pleasant and there were no major problems or bugs that caused a lot of frustration. There was some issues with performance in very crowded areas and while the game itself ran fine it did seem to consume all of my systems resources so even when in a windowed mode it was hard to have a browser up and running at the same time.
The game even in a Beta stage appears to be well crafted and well run with a lot of refinements and is not simply a clone of any one game or genre. Aion stands well on its own merits and is a game well worth playing if you enjoy playing MMORPGs. If you are very happy with you are currently playing then I wouldn’t recommend that you change but if you are bored this is certainly a game to check out.
Warnings:
This is all based on levels 1 to 10 and it could all go horribly wrong still.
Comments
That was a really good write-up and I agree with most all of your points.
I have a question though, as you played much more than I did, is grouping feasable and is it neccessary?
One thing Ive really hated from WoW and almost every MMO after that was that grouping was completely not feasible or something people wanted to do unless they were hitting up an instance.
I remember the DAOC days where you really wanted to start grouping around level 6 or so. I miss these days as they make the game feel much more like an MMO and not a glorified single player game.
So my quesiton is how is the group, how does it work, is there benefits (xp bonus) that makes grouping good again?
Thanks!
I have been playing a warrior class (Amodian) (never liked magic class characters - but that's another story). I didn't do any real grouping for my first ten level. (I was in a group - but friends had been playing longer and already had 10+ characters). However, I was in a group or ten for a good part of the day yesterday.
I'm not a big WoW player - I played for a little while and didn't care for it, but the grouping appears to be quite similar - I'm not talking about instances. There are always benefits of grouping - especially when you start doing level 11+ quests and have a large number of mobs to deals with. I'm not sure if there is an xp bonus, I didn't pay that much attention - but XP seemed to be split from what I did notice, even when you are NOT in a group. Looting while in a group is like it is in WoW. I'm not sure again, but I don't think there are any instances (at least none that I've seen yet) in Aion. There may be the more I get into the game.
All in all, I think this game will almost "enforce" (not required, but advisable) grouping to complete quests, unless you level up a couple levels above the quest and then do it.
Early on there isn't much grouping.. or it isn't very necessary as you get to late teens and into twenties grouping is much more beneficial. I would imagine grouping will be a lot more useful in the Abyss so you don't get ganked and lose Abyss points. I plan on grouping from around mid teens to early twenties and all the way to end game.
I grouped once to kill a mob so we could get it done without each having to wait on it to spawn. Im not sure how it will be in later levels but i did see a few small groups of guild mates. Im reserving judgment for awhile but i really didnt see a lot of people who would even reply to a tell. I tried talking with people and was a bit dissapointed.
Once you hit about 17 there will be many quests you need a group to complete.
Tursin Garrison quests require atleast a tank healer and dps at bare minimum, but you can wipe with a group of six.
Excellent synopsis.
I leveled my cleric to 13 and found myself quite bummed that the beta weekend is ending, this game left me wanting more and I am now facing a long wait until September.
There were many things I missed and would like to try.
I was wondering where on the character creation screen you can choose body size? I love the idea of making a ranger and having her be the smallest possible size. Can anyone give me a hint on where to do this?
I enjoyed the pure amount of quests I could participate in. I had heard the term "grindfest" applied to this game more than once on other forums and fnd it not to be true at all unless the game changes significantly after level 13.
Overall, I came away from CB3 with a very positive feeling and hope there are more weekends like this prior to release.
I do have a very stupid question (no flames please). I am assuming that our beta characters will not be carried through once the full game is release. Can anyone confirm this or is it painfully obvious?
Characters are deleted from closed beta to open beta and then again from open beta to launch.
I have grouped a lot. But I think I have grouped with people that like grouping.
The social window will tell you what people is "LFG", and you can ask about the quest (you can link the quest on the chat) so you can get people that really need the quest.
I have done this CBT some nice teaming, both dificult areas, and just farming. It seems that the game favours teamming. But lets see...
[quote]Quests are tasks given to you by an NPC to allow you to advance in the game and acquire Exp and wealth and they are required component of the gaming experience[/quote]
Well... *real* RPG games sould work differently. You are a guy, and you discover something, and want to save teh world. More like a puzzle you want to solve, with everything connected to everything. Like in a webcomic, long arcs of history and short arcs. But most MMORPG games are not real RPG games, sadly :-(
CB4 is coming up pretty soon (grandpagamer stated the 17th in another thread but I haven't read that anywhere yet). CB characters are deleted during the transition to live servers. I don't think there will be an Open Beta (if there is those characters will most likely be wiped as well for the "head start" preorders are getting.)
Originally posted by grandpagamer
I grouped once to kill a mob so we could get it done without each having to wait on it to spawn. Im not sure how it will be in later levels but i did see a few small groups of guild mates. Im reserving judgment for awhile but i really didnt see a lot of people who would even reply to a tell. I tried talking with people and was a bit dissapointed.
A lot of people are just testing the game out. I know a lot of people probably aren't too familiar with the chat log yet (i missed quite a few tells at first). Once we're on Live Servers I think the community will open up quite a bit.
Thanks for the replies.
I have mixed feelings about losing my beta character. I really love the cleric playstyle and would love to get a jump start on levels at release. However, I was very quick at the character creation screen and don't really like my character's ascetics at all and would have likely re-rolled anyway.
I think if there is a CB4, I will level some of the other classes to get a feel for which one I like the best.
I didn't group very often while I leveled my characters but based on what each class was able to do and how they performed it felt as if they had all been designed with the intent to work as a group and I suspect grouping will be pretty standard. Like you I enjoyed falling into small random groups to move about and explore. I haven't seen any indication that there is a bonus for grouping but in the starter areas the mobs are always going to be somewhat scaled down to allow people to practice on. In later stages I understand that the mobs will be more varied and in those cases the advantages of a group will make them attractive.
As has been stated the servers will be wiped clean and that is fair since it would be a bit annoying for the game to start and for some people to be level 20, 30 or higher on day one. The one thing I hope is that Aion doesn't turn into this "I gotta be first" contest that WoW has become and that people take the time to enjoy playing.
Also, don't forget that at release there will be a lot more servers opening up and you may not want to play on the beta test servers so you would have to reroll on another one anyway.
To the person that asked about body size when you do the character creation you will notice on the right side of the screen the window where you can make some changes to the pre-designed options that you are given for your face and body. If look near the top of that window there will be a tab for advanced and if you click on that it becomes customizer heaven as you can pretty much change any aspect of your face or body style. For example most of the ears on the standard faces fall within normal human norms but on the advanced page you can extend the ears to give your character pointy elf style ears if you want though I didn't see an option for ear hair sadly.
People have mentioned that this is basically a released game and that the beta testing here is mostly for the text and such and the game definitely does have a high polish to it and for NA/EU is probably going to be one of the better game launches because of this. But, it will be rolled out on new hardware and be maintained by new support groups and all of them have to get up to speed so I suspect that there is a lot more testing and training going on in the background than some people realize.
One thing that did impress me was how much it seems that the developers have taken away from other games. I don't mean that they have stolen or copied in whole parts of other games but they have taken the concepts and made them their own and added to and refined them and this has added to the overall feel of solidness and quality to the game. Is Aion perfect? Nope but that isn't the point. Is Aion fun? Yeah so far it's been very fun and that is the point.
I agree with you, however I dont think that its possible to have a "perfect" MMO. there are millions of gamers, from millions of backgrounds, ages all with their own unique likes and dislikes.
But if Aion ticks most of the box's for a considerable majority of players then we are in for one hell of a ride
BTW OP - Great post, appreciate your time and effort to write this up.
very good writeup
i liked aion so far (till lvl 18 on templar) but coming from lineage 2 i know things can change.
if any veteran l2 player remember prelude or the first few chronicles or view how certain classes in l2 completely change even now from low lvl to high lvl it is indeed a good warning not to be too over enthusiastic till weve seen the endgame levels (well and the patches yet to come...)
if your bored, visit my blog at:
http://craylon.wordpress.com/ dealing with the look of mmos with the nvidia 3d vision glasses
There will be a 2-3 week open beta, however open beta keys will not be allowed the 48 hour launch head start before Aion's actual shelf date.
Might as well wait till the 48 hour launch then. As much as I liked Aion, I wouldnt want to level up several toons just to have to start over.
The one thing I hope is that Aion doesn't turn into this "I gotta be first" contest that WoW has become and that people take the time to enjoy playing.
You really need not worry about that, it most certainly will be become a rush to the end and a rush to be the first to "anything".
That is not a product of WoW, this is a product of MMO's in general. My crew is personally going to blow threw levels as fast as we can, thats simply the type of gamer I am. Progress, progress, progress, Once I have made it to the top... take a breath, Gear out, gear our, gear out, Dominate.
Might as well wait till the 48 hour launch then. As much as I liked Aion, I wouldnt want to level up several toons just to have to start over.
I'd do one toon as high as you can get it at least in open beta so you can see how the world/system/interface/zones work. Explore as much as possible join farm parties etc.. The most you know, the faster you will be able to tear through the 1-20 quests at launch.