Aion Open beta pishures + eensy review.
Hokay, eensy review first since the images will require a bit of load on slower connections.
Facts: Beth played until lvl 16 this time.
Beth got to see what more of the community would be like in-game as they added global chat.
Sorcerers and Spiritmasters (Mages and Warlocks for those of you familiar with WoW) are the hands-down best class to solo with.
Beth got to see Eriny in-game finally!
Pros:
1. Game is gorgeous. It tickles my art fancy so much, even now. The graphics can look great (although perhaps not extremely sharp) on lower-end computers.
2. Character creation is the greatest thing ever, soooo customizable (as far as facial features go that is.)You can make characters as beautiful or ugly as you'd like.
3. Leveling is slower than WoW, but still manageable and enjoyable for a casual gamer. Quests are easy to plug out, and have margianlly good rewards in terms of money and exp...how long the money reward will remain good will have to be seen once the retail version opens up and the market kiddies zoom in.
4. Learning the UI is easy, and many of the controls share similarities with those in WoW. You can also customize it to move more similar to that of Lineage 2, or City of Heroes.
5. Storyline is fluid, and surprisingly deep. Some quest stories are surprisingly inspiring.
6. Flying without aid of a mount is a fun, new addition to the MMO genre.
7. The GM team actually seems to be putting in a bit more effort at keeping the community from completely exploding than they do for Lineage 2.
8. Channels. There are several channels in the 1-19 zones so if you find your channel overcrowded, you can switch to another and level in peace.
9. You can have either a private store or use the auction house to sell your items. While this creates congestion in towns, it fits both people's fancies. The game also will auto-insert a recommended price. If this will scale with the game's economy state, it will make selling things tons easier, but I have a feeling it won't.
Cons:
Oh how I wish I didn't have to do this. Unfortunately, combining both the closed betas and open, this is all that has been prevalent throughout.
1. Much of the community is shit. It's filled with bored kiddies that live in Warcraft's trade/barrens chat as well as the angry, always looking for a fight, PvP addicts from Lineage. I can't even count how many times I heard people bash WoW, or tell people with legitimate complaints of the game to "Go back to WoW." I won't go into details cuz it'll just turn this into a rant, but the general chat got so bad that they shut it down the last day of the open beta, and it stayed shut down until about six hours before open beta shut down.
2. The game is incredibly linear. You quest in a certain area around a town or outpost, move down the road to the next one that your final quest at said previous area will lead you to. As a result, you have to compete for everything from mats to gather to monsters to level on with no hope of finding your own little niche and running around in circles ala Lineage 2. A few maps are large enough to compensate for this, but you still get a very 'closed off' feeling, like you're playing inside a tiny little bubble. Some people may like this style of gameplay, but I enjoy my open maps where I can go hide in a corner and play. The linear-ness of the game also creates bottlenecks in lvl 20+ zones, where the opposite faction can sneak in and pick you off one by one as you try desperately to run past them and get to the next quest hub.
3. Rifts. This is a topic of great argument in every single Aion forum from America to Europe and Australia. Rifts open up and allow the opposite faction to enter your grinding zone at lvl 20+ (and they're usually 10+ levels higher than you) and pick you off as there is NO PvP toggle. The plus is, if it's your flavor you can go do the same thing to them when you find a Rift, and you have from lvls 1-19 to level in peace. The negative is, they can stay as long as they want on your side, and kill everything from your quest NPC's to repeatedly griefing you.
4. Killstealing and training. This is also a major complaint on the forums that a solution has not been offered for. The greatest hit gets the kill, and people will train large amounts of monsters into you if they can.
5. Sudden toss into a classic korean grind. The game will start you off with a constant stream of quests that scale with your level until about lvl 15, when you have to start grinding out on monsters the classic Lineage 2/any Korean game way. Personally, I don't find this to be an incredible issue, as I played lineage 2 mindlessly for years and loved every moment of it, but it is a little annoying to have a great questing pace set up and then suddenly find yourself with quests much too hard for your level range.
6. bots. This is already beginning, people want to get to the top level to do the end-game PvP. I hear this is a major issue in China, and I'm already getting whispers about powerleveling sites.
7. Old grudges. People (mostly those from Lineage 2 I'm noticing) are carrying over old 'clan war' grudges and trying to start feuds in the new game. For instance, I got mob-trained repeatedly by a girl who I haven't spoken to for almost a year, who decided she hated me in Lineage 2 for a retarded reason that's so high school I don't even want to think about it. I left her and her grudge behind in Lineage 2, but now that we're in Aion she's trying to bring it back. While this is human nature, I think it's completely nonsensical to seek out people in a brand new game, or deny them help or inclusion in your groups simply because your clans were at 'war' in Lineage 2. It's a completely different game, you can't even kill your own side so there's no threat of 'betrayal' or 'spying' like there was in Lineage 2.
8. Instances have 8+ hour lockout. This means, once you complete it, it won't reset for 8 or more hours. the PvP monkeys are delighted at this, because they think it will give them more PvP since no one can go 'hide out' in instances. (Instances, for those of you not familiar with the term, are dungeons that are created privately for your group. In WoW you can repeatedly farm instances up to 5 times in an hour. These dungeons usually yeild great xp and armor/weapon rewards. The creativity level in some of them makes me feel like I'm going through an awesome funhouse.)
9. Flying is massively advertised, but very limited. You have a timer on your flight time, and while this can be extended past the 1 minute you start with, with gear and wing upgrades, it really goes against what people were expecting when the game was in it's advertising state. There are only certain maps, and the PvP zone called the Abyss, where you can fly without restriction--zone wise. You still have the time limit in the Abyss, which, IMO, kind of makes the aerial PvP difficult.
That's pretty much it....I know other people have had complaints about Gameguard and computer lag, but I haven't had much of an issue with either of those. My final thoughts: Make sure you know what you're getting into before sinking money into the game. It's not turning out to be everything it was hyped up to be, with one issue or another, but it does help with WoW/other MMO burnout a bit.
But unfortunately, I was already feeling a bit bored by lvl 16. :(
Ok, now the fun part, the screen shots from this beta. I added in some environment shots as well this time, Photobucket has re-sized them and for some odd reason you'd like them as a desktop wallpaper, I will email it to you or something.
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0046.jpg
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0045.jpg
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0044.jpg
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0034.jpg
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0033-1.jpg
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0020.jpg (Moar Shopuff and an asploded moon)
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0018.jpg (those aren't stars, that's the land of the opposite faction. They're on the top half of the world, which is kind of like an eaten apple. You play on the inside of the world instead of the outside.)
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0016-1.jpg (a shot of the ruined Tower of Eternity that used to connect both realms)
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0015-1.jpg (The Elyos' faction main city)
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0029-1.jpg
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0027-1.jpg (One of the places where the XP grind began)
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0021-1.jpg
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0023-1.jpg (Leyla showing off her wingses and dyed armor :) )
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0024.jpg (Flight example)
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0025-1.jpg (another flight example)
Environment shots
Characters I made for Scott this open beta (he only played one, but I can't resist making a ton X3)
Gatz
Ryonai
Calisan
Ballard
Ga'lent
Erik (the one he actually played)
My characters this open beta (I played two out of them XD)
Leyla (Played her until 16)
Jayleena (played her until 13--assassins are shockingly squishy :( )
Sharmin
Vuylay
Chitien
Annakiya
Aulakiriya, my token Asmodean this time.
There was an amusing glitch with one armor set during the beta, where the female design of the armor was displaying on the male characters. This led to much amusement, but poor Erik, if he were real and had the personality I always wrote him with, would be traumatized into a fetal state by it. Behold! MANBEWBIES!
This is an example of the frightening things one can do with the game's customization.
Last but not least-
O.o Popo?
Facts: Beth played until lvl 16 this time.
Beth got to see what more of the community would be like in-game as they added global chat.
Sorcerers and Spiritmasters (Mages and Warlocks for those of you familiar with WoW) are the hands-down best class to solo with.
Beth got to see Eriny in-game finally!
Pros:
1. Game is gorgeous. It tickles my art fancy so much, even now. The graphics can look great (although perhaps not extremely sharp) on lower-end computers.
2. Character creation is the greatest thing ever, soooo customizable (as far as facial features go that is.)You can make characters as beautiful or ugly as you'd like.
3. Leveling is slower than WoW, but still manageable and enjoyable for a casual gamer. Quests are easy to plug out, and have margianlly good rewards in terms of money and exp...how long the money reward will remain good will have to be seen once the retail version opens up and the market kiddies zoom in.
4. Learning the UI is easy, and many of the controls share similarities with those in WoW. You can also customize it to move more similar to that of Lineage 2, or City of Heroes.
5. Storyline is fluid, and surprisingly deep. Some quest stories are surprisingly inspiring.
6. Flying without aid of a mount is a fun, new addition to the MMO genre.
7. The GM team actually seems to be putting in a bit more effort at keeping the community from completely exploding than they do for Lineage 2.
8. Channels. There are several channels in the 1-19 zones so if you find your channel overcrowded, you can switch to another and level in peace.
9. You can have either a private store or use the auction house to sell your items. While this creates congestion in towns, it fits both people's fancies. The game also will auto-insert a recommended price. If this will scale with the game's economy state, it will make selling things tons easier, but I have a feeling it won't.
Cons:
Oh how I wish I didn't have to do this. Unfortunately, combining both the closed betas and open, this is all that has been prevalent throughout.
1. Much of the community is shit. It's filled with bored kiddies that live in Warcraft's trade/barrens chat as well as the angry, always looking for a fight, PvP addicts from Lineage. I can't even count how many times I heard people bash WoW, or tell people with legitimate complaints of the game to "Go back to WoW." I won't go into details cuz it'll just turn this into a rant, but the general chat got so bad that they shut it down the last day of the open beta, and it stayed shut down until about six hours before open beta shut down.
2. The game is incredibly linear. You quest in a certain area around a town or outpost, move down the road to the next one that your final quest at said previous area will lead you to. As a result, you have to compete for everything from mats to gather to monsters to level on with no hope of finding your own little niche and running around in circles ala Lineage 2. A few maps are large enough to compensate for this, but you still get a very 'closed off' feeling, like you're playing inside a tiny little bubble. Some people may like this style of gameplay, but I enjoy my open maps where I can go hide in a corner and play. The linear-ness of the game also creates bottlenecks in lvl 20+ zones, where the opposite faction can sneak in and pick you off one by one as you try desperately to run past them and get to the next quest hub.
3. Rifts. This is a topic of great argument in every single Aion forum from America to Europe and Australia. Rifts open up and allow the opposite faction to enter your grinding zone at lvl 20+ (and they're usually 10+ levels higher than you) and pick you off as there is NO PvP toggle. The plus is, if it's your flavor you can go do the same thing to them when you find a Rift, and you have from lvls 1-19 to level in peace. The negative is, they can stay as long as they want on your side, and kill everything from your quest NPC's to repeatedly griefing you.
4. Killstealing and training. This is also a major complaint on the forums that a solution has not been offered for. The greatest hit gets the kill, and people will train large amounts of monsters into you if they can.
5. Sudden toss into a classic korean grind. The game will start you off with a constant stream of quests that scale with your level until about lvl 15, when you have to start grinding out on monsters the classic Lineage 2/any Korean game way. Personally, I don't find this to be an incredible issue, as I played lineage 2 mindlessly for years and loved every moment of it, but it is a little annoying to have a great questing pace set up and then suddenly find yourself with quests much too hard for your level range.
6. bots. This is already beginning, people want to get to the top level to do the end-game PvP. I hear this is a major issue in China, and I'm already getting whispers about powerleveling sites.
7. Old grudges. People (mostly those from Lineage 2 I'm noticing) are carrying over old 'clan war' grudges and trying to start feuds in the new game. For instance, I got mob-trained repeatedly by a girl who I haven't spoken to for almost a year, who decided she hated me in Lineage 2 for a retarded reason that's so high school I don't even want to think about it. I left her and her grudge behind in Lineage 2, but now that we're in Aion she's trying to bring it back. While this is human nature, I think it's completely nonsensical to seek out people in a brand new game, or deny them help or inclusion in your groups simply because your clans were at 'war' in Lineage 2. It's a completely different game, you can't even kill your own side so there's no threat of 'betrayal' or 'spying' like there was in Lineage 2.
8. Instances have 8+ hour lockout. This means, once you complete it, it won't reset for 8 or more hours. the PvP monkeys are delighted at this, because they think it will give them more PvP since no one can go 'hide out' in instances. (Instances, for those of you not familiar with the term, are dungeons that are created privately for your group. In WoW you can repeatedly farm instances up to 5 times in an hour. These dungeons usually yeild great xp and armor/weapon rewards. The creativity level in some of them makes me feel like I'm going through an awesome funhouse.)
9. Flying is massively advertised, but very limited. You have a timer on your flight time, and while this can be extended past the 1 minute you start with, with gear and wing upgrades, it really goes against what people were expecting when the game was in it's advertising state. There are only certain maps, and the PvP zone called the Abyss, where you can fly without restriction--zone wise. You still have the time limit in the Abyss, which, IMO, kind of makes the aerial PvP difficult.
That's pretty much it....I know other people have had complaints about Gameguard and computer lag, but I haven't had much of an issue with either of those. My final thoughts: Make sure you know what you're getting into before sinking money into the game. It's not turning out to be everything it was hyped up to be, with one issue or another, but it does help with WoW/other MMO burnout a bit.
But unfortunately, I was already feeling a bit bored by lvl 16. :(
Ok, now the fun part, the screen shots from this beta. I added in some environment shots as well this time, Photobucket has re-sized them and for some odd reason you'd like them as a desktop wallpaper, I will email it to you or something.
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0046.jpg
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0045.jpg
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0044.jpg
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0034.jpg
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0033-1.jpg
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0020.jpg (Moar Shopuff and an asploded moon)
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0018.jpg (those aren't stars, that's the land of the opposite faction. They're on the top half of the world, which is kind of like an eaten apple. You play on the inside of the world instead of the outside.)
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0016-1.jpg (a shot of the ruined Tower of Eternity that used to connect both realms)
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0015-1.jpg (The Elyos' faction main city)
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0029-1.jpg
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0027-1.jpg (One of the places where the XP grind began)
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0021-1.jpg
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0023-1.jpg (Leyla showing off her wingses and dyed armor :) )
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0024.jpg (Flight example)
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c207/LizInverse/aion/Aion0025-1.jpg (another flight example)
Environment shots
Characters I made for Scott this open beta (he only played one, but I can't resist making a ton X3)
Gatz
Ryonai
Calisan
Ballard
Ga'lent
Erik (the one he actually played)
My characters this open beta (I played two out of them XD)
Leyla (Played her until 16)
Jayleena (played her until 13--assassins are shockingly squishy :( )
Sharmin
Vuylay
Chitien
Annakiya
Aulakiriya, my token Asmodean this time.
There was an amusing glitch with one armor set during the beta, where the female design of the armor was displaying on the male characters. This led to much amusement, but poor Erik, if he were real and had the personality I always wrote him with, would be traumatized into a fetal state by it. Behold! MANBEWBIES!
This is an example of the frightening things one can do with the game's customization.
Last but not least-
O.o Popo?