Firstly, I must say I am quite taken by Aion. After 2 years-ish of WoW, going back to such an aesthetically pleasing graphics just soothes my soul. I am no longer the angry little priest running around hahaha…

Ok Aion… As everyone already knows, I tend to only create the healing class. This is something I am firmly established and used to being, and this is where I will most definitely stay. The idea of dying to incomprehensible idiocy just don’t fly very well with me. I NEED to know that if I do die it’s coz I fucked it up ^_^ So whatever I do know and experience is quite from a healer’s viewpoint.

also, comparison will be drawn between Lineage 2 and WoW since those are the 2 games I have any longevity with. AoC is a useless game and should not be used as any comparison, and I didn’t play long enough in Warhammer to justify anything.

Aion’s lore mentioned a race divided into two by conflict. not so much evil versus good, just different ideals with a common enemy. due to the conflict, it rendered the race into 2 and the world into half, with one that remained in the light and beautiful, while the other had fur down their backs all the way down south….!

The game itself has so far been awesome in many ways:

1) The UI is beautiful. it has taken hints of what works from WoW, the various mods that people have created for wow as well as from L2. While you can’t mod the UI, you can change the locations of the various things so it’s almost the same anyways.

That said, I do have 1 gripe. While in L2 it was easy to lodge a report to the GMs, and WoW does have it’s lengthy process, I can’t seem to find a /GM key anywhere.

2) Again, graphics are so beautiful, yet not the resource hog that Age of Conan was (which blew anyways). Like someone said, I don’t need to see every single strand of hair whispering to the wind. It works if my character’s beautiful and realistically so. The environment itself is gorgeous too, especially the Sanctum, which is the hometown for all of those on the Elyos side. Pandaemonium is the main city of the Asmodians, the distant relatives of Elyos.

The first thing that drew me to the game though, wasn’t the beautiful graphics or the environment. It was something I expected from NCSoft, the creators of Lineage II. however, what drew me was the fact that characters can sprout wings and take flight. Fights are also fought in the air too!

While not quite the resource hog that AoC was, do be forewarned that it can still chug when there’s alot of characters within the same viewing field. Therefore, like in Lineage 2, graphics would need to be tone down during pvp, especially if multitudes are expected.

3) Character customisation has exceeded that of both Lineage 2 and WoW. Of course, anything can easily exceed Lineage 2′s customisation nowadays. However, this… you can literally create something that looks like YOU.

I will stick to underage girls.

4)

some people might dispute this, but I am enjoying the gameplay. WoW has spoilt alot of gamers and casual gamers since it’s inception, with easy quests that rewards you leaps and bounds. Lineage 2 was a heavy time hog that, if you don’t have the time, you will flounder badly in the game. There’s few quests to aid your levelling on top of that too.

Aion is a nice niche in between. It’s not so hard that it’s a time hog and you can’t solo anything. It’s not so easy that you get max level in the week either. Therefore, you are really getting a grip of the lore, if you are into that, making the necessary acquaintance along the way with some grouping and yet there’s the ability to somewhat solo (i say somewhat because apparently that kind of tapers off after the 30s).

the game isn’t perfect, but no game out there is. The few things I have noticed that irks me is:

- how I can’t find a gm easily (as above)
- the multitudes of currency sellers in the game already, right from day 1! and the ceaseless whispering they do!
- The lack of flexibility to make your character’s skills much different from the enemy’s. everyone gets the same skills within the same class.
-The poor layout of their official website… half the links are broken!

People whine about the queues on to the servers as well as lack of communication when servers went down in the first few days. However, seasonsed players should already know this. Launch week is never without bugs, much less queue times. It is good that they have started out with few servers because, like AoC, the player base might be big now but it might taper off sharply too. so, instead of embarassing themselves and forcing players to adjust to new playmates, it’s better that we start with just a small number of servers.

will talk more about the game play… tomorrow!

here’s the answers as to why Mandrill and Lemurs reminds me of the game!: