Aion Online

[Fid]

Ahhh, cheers guys - might give Chanter a go then! :D

[dead.cell]

Ehhh... I'd rather suggest Cleric over Chanter, if you like healing. Healing in this game is pretty easy. A lot less stressful than WoW since MP isn't really much of an issue, especially if you have your DP up. (DP skill heals your HP / MP for 50% of your max) All you've got to do is make sure you're not a jackass and stand in the way of an incoming patrol, when in group with others.

Solo'ing is certainly doable, but it'll take a bit more time to get things killed. It's certainly not as bad as WoW though, since you're not a squishy by any means (mace + shield, wearing chain). ;)

Chanters aren't really all that much for healers. They do bring DPS to the table though, but not in the traditional sense of how much damage they do specifically. Their buffs provide the DPS increase for everyone else though. That said, they are useful for a party.

I just like the fact that I will always be needed when it comes to a group's survivability. :)

[Emn1ty]

Does anyone know if there is ever going to be a free trial for this game? I really don't want to spend money on something I most likely won't play.

[dead.cell]

Does anyone know if there is ever going to be a free trial for this game? I really don't want to spend money on something I most likely won't play.

Eventually, most likely. Many MMO's I've seen don't really start off with trials up and going right away. I waited a while for Warhammer Online even to check that game out.

Just give it some time.

[Xilo]

There was a free open beta... Why didn't you try that out?

[Emn1ty]

Because I didn't hear anything about the game until the Beta was over. I haven't been too into the PC gaming scene for a while since nothing has really been happening there at all.

[bjoswald]

My friend has been pushing me to get this game, but all the reviews I've read share the same verdict of "decent". I'm not expecting a WoW killer anyway, but I don't want to slap down $60 for a "decent" gaming experience. Is this game worth the money or what?

[trag3dy]

My friend has been pushing me to get this game, but all the reviews I've read share the same verdict of "decent". I'm not expecting a WoW killer anyway, but I don't want to slap down $60 for a "decent" gaming experience. Is this game worth the money or what?

That's the thing..everyone's opinion on it is slightly different. I don't mind how long it takes to level, I don't mind how everything is a time/money sink, I like pvp, I like pve, I like how my gladiator plays (at level 30), I love the looks of the armor and weapons, and generally speaking the graphics are awesome. So depending on how you feel about those things it should answer it for you.

However, within the next two months (hopefully) they're going to up the exp rewards you get from quests by in some cases 600%. So if you don't want to "grind" as much, I suggest you wait until after that patch. The thing is if you're waiting for that patch to play then you might as well just play because you'll be that much closer to 50 by the time it does come out. That's just my opinion, though.

[Argi]

That's the thing..everyone's opinion on it is slightly different. I don't mind how long it takes to level, I don't mind how everything is a time/money sink, I like pvp, I like pve, I like how my gladiator plays (at level 30), I love the looks of the armor and weapons, and generally speaking the graphics are awesome. So depending about how you feel about those things it should answer it for you.

However, within the next two months (hopefully) they're going to up the exp rewards you get from quests by in some cases 600%. So if you don't want to "grind" as much, I suggest you wait until after that patch. The thing is if you're waiting for that patch to play then you might as well just play because you'll be that much closer to 50 by the time it does come out. That's just my opinion, though.

2 months after launch is a long time in the MMO genre.

[Neoauld]

2 months after launch is a long time in the MMO genre.

game will start dieing way before then, hell its already begun

ppl are quitting at around 25 because theyve realized its a grind straight to 50(theyd might as well have not added quests tbh, cause the imaginary 4500 quests theyve added no ones seen)

PVP in the abyss in 2 months will be all lvl 50's ganking lower levels

most ppl dont want to grind, its repetitive and boring, and totally mindless, making the game dull

so in the end, there gonna have no casual players, just the hardcores(which statistically are less than 10% of mmo players), and thatll be it

im lvl 30 and i gotta say its become my last resort game, its THAT boring with all the grinding, and the quests are dull to

[bjoswald]

game will start dieing way before then, hell its already begun

ppl are quitting at around 25 because theyve realized its a grind straight to 50(theyd might as well have not added quests tbh, cause the imaginary 4500 quests theyve added no ones seen)

PVP in the abyss in 2 months will be all lvl 50's ganking lower levels

most ppl dont want to grind, its repetitive and boring, and totally mindless, making the game dull

so in the end, there gonna have no casual players, just the hardcores(which statistically are less than 10% of mmo players), and thatll be it

im lvl 30 and i gotta say its become my last resort game, its THAT boring with all the grinding, and the quests are dull to

See, that right there is what I'm talking about. I can't stand the lame direction WoW has taken with the tedious daily quests and reputation grinding, not to mention the grinding aspects (even though WoW is mostly quest-based). But WoW has a great community (for the most part) and years of development backing it up. Aion, on the other hand, hasn't even been out that long and people are already jumping ship? I think I'll wait for this so-called Holy Grail of a patch. I have my doubts, though.

[Neoauld]

See, that right there is what I'm talking about. I can't stand the lame direction WoW has taken with the tedious daily quests and reputation grinding, not to mention the grinding aspects (even though WoW is mostly quest-based). But WoW has a great community (for the most part) and years of development backing it up. Aion, on the other hand, hasn't even been out that long and people are already jumping ship? I think I'll wait for this so-called Holy Grail of a patch. I have my doubts, though.

the grind after max lvl doesnt feel as painful

Grinding endgame content is fun, raiding is fun, NOT killing the same mob, over and over and over and over again for 4-5 hours per lvl

Theres no way anyone can enjoy that, ppl just do it cause they dont have lives

In WoW, at least you moved around more, grouped for instances for rep, did quests that were somewhat interesting(that werent just gather 10 of this, kill 10 of that), AND it was faster

Aion is 100% grind oriented, even crafting is a huge grind cause you need max DP to do it, so you kill stuff for an hour before you start crafting to get better chances of critting, and endgame looks like you gotta go nuts with consumables, which cost money, and grinding. Gathering is absolutely horrible in the game with the fail/success bar, and the random debuff coming up where you have to enter a CAPTCHA image to keep goin

Aion's as good as dead in terms of being a big success, itll be another AoC, where most of the ppl that bought it will never touch it again, and theyll be begging customers to come back with free trials etc etc(maybe not th efree trials, cause NC isnt depending on this game alone)

waiting for that patch wont help also, alot of quests are PVP, and the abyss is PVP, in 2 months, lvl 50's will be swarming the place that the lvl 25+ people are levelling in

[Xilo]

Final Fantasy XI = grinding on same mobs for hours.

It's a niche game but still going pretty strong.

[Prosidius]

Thought game developers would learn from EverQuest that the grind for hours to level idea is long gone and was replaced by a quest oriented system, someone should tell NCSoft.

On a side note even though the game is very grindy I do still want to play it sometime.

[Gotenks98]

A couple things, the lvl 30 wing will save you over 1 million kinah plus you get 10 more seconds flight time than if you bought the million kinah wings. That to me is well worth it considering how much of a money sink the crafting system is in this game. Secondly is the thing about the durability vs paying the for soul healer. The cost over all is going to be about the same but at least with dying in aion you are less likely to die again because your armor doesnt break so that does give you a slight advantage. I still do think clerics need to be on their toes. With that much healing no one should ever die at least not the tank of course.

Actually being a healer is alot harder than you think. You can pull some hellified aggro as a healer just from healing and buffing. I have had instances were I was doing "drive by heals/buffs" and ended up pulling the aggro away from a templar and I wasnt even in aggro range of the critters he was fighting. Often times I see healers go down dead first.

[Gotenks98]

About the grind people are complaining about, I just dont see it at all. True enough there are some forced to group quests but people need to get out and explore the map so they can find all the npcs that give side quests. Just when I thought I was going to run out of quests I went to the next zone and got about 20 more quests. That should at least get me to 25 before I need to get more quests.

[Neoauld]

About the grind people are complaining about, I just dont see it at all. True enough there are some forced to group quests but people need to get out and explore the map so they can find all the npcs that give side quests. Just when I thought I was going to run out of quests I went to the next zone and got about 20 more quests. That should at least get me to 25 before I need to get more quests.

are you elyos

its already established you guys stole all our quests

When i got to 24, there were 5 quests, done within 1/4 of a lvl

At 23, there were 2 quests

According to my friend on elyos, hes barely grinding and ive seen his quest log packed with quests before

Its also been reported on Aion source that elyos have a much easier lvl curve

pretty poor design on the dev's part

[BoDEAN]

About the grind people are complaining about, I just dont see it at all. True enough there are some forced to group quests but people need to get out and explore the map so they can find all the npcs that give side quests. Just when I thought I was going to run out of quests I went to the next zone and got about 20 more quests. That should at least get me to 25 before I need to get more quests.

Is there not a lot of grinding in this game?

[Neoauld]

Is there not a lot of grinding in this game?

I play Asmodian, and 1-18 is fine

Then at 18, you have to go into group areas to do some quests, the xp from killing and the quests will get you to 20, then from 20-22 you gotta go back, with a group,and grind for a full day

Then at 22, you do some quests, and grind to 24, do a few more quests, grind to 25, then go to the abyss, finish your quests, grind some more

It gets worse

As elyos, according to my friend, its not so bad, theres still plenty of grinding later on, but not as much

Keep in mind this game revolves around repetitive grinding, so expect to be doing that even after you hit max lvl(after a cpl weeks if your REALLY hardcore)

[Spookie]

pretty poor design on the dev's part

That's how the Koreans like their MMOs though.

[Neoauld]

That's how the Koreans like their MMOs though.

this isnt a korean market though

they want this game to be successful in NA/Europe, and people here cant play like machines till they drop over dead in an internet cafe

[trag3dy]

the grind after max lvl doesnt feel as painful

Grinding endgame content is fun, raiding is fun, NOT killing the same mob, over and over and over and over again for 4-5 hours per lvl

Theres no way anyone can enjoy that, ppl just do it cause they dont have lives

In WoW, at least you moved around more, grouped for instances for rep, did quests that were somewhat interesting(that werent just gather 10 of this, kill 10 of that), AND it was faster

Aion is 100% grind oriented, even crafting is a huge grind cause you need max DP to do it, so you kill stuff for an hour before you start crafting to get better chances of critting, and endgame looks like you gotta go nuts with consumables, which cost money, and grinding. Gathering is absolutely horrible in the game with the fail/success bar, and the random debuff coming up where you have to enter a CAPTCHA image to keep goin

Aion's as good as dead in terms of being a big success, itll be another AoC, where most of the ppl that bought it will never touch it again, and theyll be begging customers to come back with free trials etc etc(maybe not th efree trials, cause NC isnt depending on this game alone)

waiting for that patch wont help also, alot of quests are PVP, and the abyss is PVP, in 2 months, lvl 50's will be swarming the place that the lvl 25+ people are levelling in

The part about dp raising your crit rate while crafting is still under debate. At the highest it raises (if it even does) it by 5% with max dp and a 400 crafting skill. If it does affect the crit rate it's by no means required and has very little effect. It's been theorized that crafting items closer to the items creation level gives you a higher chance of criting and creating the noble version, too. The game hasn't been out long enough for their to be sufficient information regarding these things one way or another. And also, unless you're playing on the test servers, the captcha isn't even in game yet. It will be added in the same patch that will raise exp for quests, so please don't post false information.

And in my experience, I've only played my a friend who is a cleric, and we've had very little issues with running quests. The only trouble we had with this was that I started helping them when I was 17 and they were 10. By the time they got to 20 I was 22-23 so I just grinded while they did quests so I wouldn't get further ahead. Now at 30 we're both even and still have a quest log that is more than half full. I should add that I'm playing asmodean side, as well.

And the abyss is the main pvp place..so I don't know why you'd go there without the idea that you're going to get ganked. That's the whole intention of the place. Again, it wasn't really meant to be a place for people to level 24/7. It's the main pvp area.

It seems like you want a game that is a clone of WoW with WoW's five or however many years of development and polish put into it. If that's the case just go play WoW.

Edited October 21, 2009 by trag3dy

[Neoauld]

The part about dp raising your crit rate while crafting is still under debate. At the highest it raises (if it even does) it by 5% with max dp and a 400 crafting skill. If it does affect the crit rate it's by no means required and has very little effect. It's been theorized that crafting items closer to the items creation level gives you a higher chance of criting and creating the noble version, too. The game hasn't been out long enough for their to be sufficient information regarding these things one way or another. And also, unless you're playing on the test servers, the captcha isn't even in game yet. It will be added in the same patch that will raise exp for quests, so please don't post false information.

And in my experience, I've only played my a friend who is a cleric, and we've had very little issues with running quests. The only trouble we had with this was that I started helping them when I was 17 and they were 10. By the time they got to 20 I was 22-23 so I just grinded while they did quests so I wouldn't get further ahead. Now at 30 we're both even and still have a quest log that is more than half full. I should add that I'm playing asmodean side, as well.

And the abyss is the main pvp place..so I don't know why you'd go there without the idea that you're going to get ganked. That's the whole intention of the place. Again, it wasn't really meant to be a place for people to level 24/7. It's the main pvp area.

It seems like you want a game that is a clone of WoW with WoW's five or however many years of development and polish put into it. If that's the case just go play WoW.

wrong

In less than a month, the abyss will be virtually inaccessible to lower levels due to the ganking, thats not pvp, thats jut being killed in a defenseless manner

The DP critting thing is off an NCsoft website

As for a clone of WoW, no, but id like a MMO released in a way where you can just play without problems, as it stands Aion is broken. Players with high end PC's cant participate in fortress battles due to crashing every 5 minutes, and lag. The game lacks levelling content. Theres not much communication/information on the progress of a fix for the crashing. The games anti-cheat system was broken and was removed, so there are mass botters now. Im sure when/if its re-introduced more problems with occur. The sad part is that this is the best MMO release since WoW.

But telling ppl "just go play wow", when theyve already played it for years, isnt an answer. Aion advertised itself as being WoW-like, and having "4500+ quests" added to make it comparable to WoW and more appealing to our market. This was a blatant lie. Ill try when they iron out the issues, but by then itll be 'just another mmo'. And really, theres nothing special about aion, its added nothing new to the gaming word.

[trag3dy]

wrong

In less than a month, the abyss will be virtually inaccessible to lower levels due to the ganking, thats not pvp, thats jut being killed in a defenseless manner

The DP critting thing is off an NCsoft website

As for a clone of WoW, no, but id like a MMO released in a way where you can just play without problems, as it stands Aion is broken. Players with high end PC's cant participate in fortress battles due to crashing every 5 minutes, and lag. The game lacks levelling content. Theres not much communication/information on the progress of a fix for the crashing. The games anti-cheat system was broken and was removed, so there are mass botters now. Im sure when/if its re-introduced more problems with occur. The sad part is that this is the best MMO release since WoW.

But telling ppl "just go play wow", when theyve already played it for years, isnt an answer. Aion advertised itself as being WoW-like, and having "4500+ quests" added to make it comparable to WoW and more appealing to our market. This was a blatant lie. Ill try when they iron out the issues, but by then itll be 'just another mmo'. And really, theres nothing special about aion, its added nothing new to the gaming word.

How is it wrong? Open pvp area is open. Again, if you want it to be 100% even then you want instanced pvp, which Aion has never been advertised as having and most likely never will. If you want that you'll want to play WoW, or god forbid, Warhammer Online. If you go into the abyss thinking you're going to be able to grind out some quests and mobs and have free reign to do as you please then that is the only way I can see someone taking your view on it. But it's not and never was meant to be that sort of area. When you go into the abyss, you're going to get ganked, that is 100% fact. No matter if it's by a level 50 character or a group of 10+ people from the opposite faction.

I do agree about the bots though, that's my biggest issue with the game as of yet. It's so blatant a blind person could see it. Yet somehow NCsoft is failing to do anything about it, which just boggles my mind.

If the game is dieing as hard as you say already then how is it #1 in PC game sales for the month of September and is getting more and more positive reviews? They just need to curb stomp the botters and adjust quest exp rewards stat and then the game will be just fine until they can release an expansion and/or new content patch.

http://na.aiononline.com/board/notices/vie...D=134&page=

Oh yeah, also, the website that you're talking about is a wiki...need I say more? Read the comments in that section if you want to find out what's really going on.

http://powerwiki.na.aiononline.com/aion/Divine+Points

Scroll down to the bottom and you'll see discussion threads on it. I'm not disagreeing with you on this, but there is no concrete proof yet that it does in fact effect your crafting crit chances. Not yet anyways, they only way we'll know for certain is if an NCsoft dev says it does, which they never will. Also there is food/pots that will restore some dp to you. It's just at this early in the game no one has really made them in any large amounts yet.

Edited October 21, 2009 by trag3dy

[Neoauld]

How is it wrong? Open pvp area is open. Again, if you want it to be 100% even then you want instanced pvp, which Aion has never been advertised as having and most likely never will. If you want that you'll want to play WoW, or god forbid, Warhammer Online. If you go into the abyss thinking you're going to be able to grind out some quests and mobs and have free reign to do as you please then that is the only way I can see someone taking your view on it. But it's not and never was meant to be that sort of area. When you go into the abyss, you're going to get ganked, that is 100% fact. No matter if it's by a level 50 character or a group of 10+ people from the opposite faction.

I do agree about the bots though, that's my biggest issue with the game as of yet. It's so blatant a blind person could see it. Yet somehow NCsoft is failing to do anything about it, which just boggles my mind.

If the game is dieing as hard as you say already then how is it #1 in PC game sales for the month of September and is getting more and more positive reviews? They just need to curb stomp the botters and adjust quest exp rewards stat and then the game will be just fine until they can release an expansion and/or new content patch.

http://na.aiononline.com/board/notices/vie...D=134&page=

i am aware of the future patch, i will try the game again after that

The endgame looks like easymode regardless, those bosses even fighting back?

as for sept sales, there wasnt a whole lot of competition, and that was pre-order time. Right after release it sunk. Thats how most games are. Borderlands is currently #1 now and its not even out for PC yet. A games success is if it maintains good sales after release. My friends playing say the starting areas are virtually empty on the 2 servers they play on, indicating new players are not coming to the game. People are dropping though fast in the 23-25 range though.

As for your abyss comment, the abyss is a big part of post lvl 25 levelling, if you cant go anywhere without someone 10+ levels higher than you killing you, theres a prob. And with the way this game is made, there will be non stop ppl patrolling around murdering lower levels. This will further put a bad taste into peoples mouths. A successful MMO attracts casual players to fund it, and Aion seems only appealing only to the hardcore players that live and breathe the game from their parents basement. Theres nothing a casual can get out of aion. Im a mix of hardcore/casual, i was in a top ranked guild for a long time but we somehow didnt play even half as much as the people below us, and i can safely say aion's design requires you to have no life