Aion: Ascension

I wasn’t really planning to write about video games here, but I felt I needed to talk about this one, so here it goes Aion Ascension…

Aion: The Tower of Eternity is a Chinese released (NCSoft), Korean developed MMORPG, combining PVP with PVE elements. It came out somewhere in the end of 2008 in Asia, and a bit later, in 2009, worldwide. The game was pay-to-play with monthly subscription, and being the poor church mouse I am, it wasn't something I would go for. I did try it though, sometime back in 2010. How could I not? It had angels in it. Well sort of… in the trailer it showed off winged flight and I just couldn’t miss that, could I?

Anyhow. With its CryEngine, it was pretty taxing on my poor old PC (which ironically ascended to heaven on Christmas last year, but that’s an entirely different topic) so I played it for about a month before the staggeringly low FPS forced me to just give up. The game does look amazing that much I give it.

 Well, a couple of months ago I received this random email from my past registration in NCSoft saying that Aion is now free-to-play. So with my new super-awesome-special laptop, purchased powerful enough to run the latest Photoshop, and Aion becoming free... What the heck, let’s give this thing another go, I thought.

Story and Lore: You have two races, Elyos (White Wings) and Asmodian (Black Wings). Naturally, I went for black. The back story is pretty generic, shattered world, tower of the gods, conflict yada, yada, here for those interested.

It offers a choice between 4 classes (Scout, Mage, Priest, Warrior), which at level 10 fork into 2 subclasses (Assassin and Ranger, Spiritmaster and Sorcerer, Chanter and Cleric, Gladiator and Templar).

The interface is okay, I guess. For me it’s not the most convenient, definitely worse than World of Warcraft, but at the level of Lineage, so it’s bearable. The monster killing is also ok, even if a bit sluggish at times. It’s not exaggeration to say that some monsters on your level take either forever or are impossible to kill depending on class and gear. Overall, it’s the generic bash-on-the-head-until–it-dies system with some flashy and quite nicely animated moves when using skills.

There is a variety of professions: Alchemy, Handicrafting, Armoursmiting, Weaponsmiting, Tailoring, Cooking, and, a new one, Building (will elaborate later.) So yeah, pretty general stuff. The profession interface and system is pretty good, according to me, my friend who tried the game with me tended to disagree. The thing is, you have Work Orders (quests) where the trainer gives you materials, you need to buy supplies, like needles or powder or salt or whatever depending on the profession, and just craft. It is relatively slow, 100 points, in the begging, are made for about an hour, with price of ingredients and time increasing per every 100, to a max of 549. You can, of course, gather materials and build your own items, thus leveling the profession, but I found the Work Order easier, even if a bit dull with my character standing in place crafting for literally hours. (Also we must consider that every 10ish (10+, increases with skill level) craft you need to tell your character what Order to do next, and every time you complete it, you need to go back to the merchant and buy supplies. I am starting to get why my friend was sort of annoyed by it.

 You must also level your gathering or Essencetapping and Aethertapping (leveled separately) skills and buy an extension every 100ish points much like the professions.

I found the quest system pretty good too. You have the regular, sometimes grind-y, quests and then you have the campaign quests that are actually progressing the story. I like MMOs with a story.

There are several types of party, from small 6 numbered group to unlimited alliance of groups. There is also a guild (Legion) system. Targeting party members with the cursor can get a bit hard the larger the group grows, but there is a short-cut system which solves the problem.

Can’t say much about the raid and instance system, never got that far in the game. The first instance opens around lvl 18, and is actually solo with extremely easy kills and stable amount of items and money (kinah) for the level. The later instances, however, are pretty tough and mobs impossible to kill unless you have at least 2 healers, a stable tank and enough dps to take down the elites before the tank runs out of skills and the healers out of mana. There are also these annoying, and when I say annoying I mean hell of annoying, areas with elites that are practically impossible to pass without a full-fledged alliance. It wouldn’t be as annoying, though, if major campaign quests didn’t demand running those particular villages/zones.

The PVP system is ok, for those who like that stuff.

Well it all sounds great right?

Not really. It has most of the generic MMO stuff, plus some interesting ideas and pretty graphics, but there are a couple of major issues, not limited to the gaming community of the Aion world, which I can't overlook.

The month, nearly month and a half, spent on this game, developing my character who barely came to level 30 for reasons I will mention later, was literally a waste of precious time. I hadn’t felt so cheated by a game since I played Indigo Prophecy. (Another game that I might tackle some other time for the sheer amount of What The Bloody Hell it contained.)

So, classes, no complaints other than how overpowered the Chanter is. Graphics, again they were great. And I already mentioned my problems with some mobs.


Something my friend pointed out: The World. It’s pretty, yeah, but it just doesn’t feel diverse. Usually, in MMO’s you are tempted to explore and find new places. In Aion, there just isn’t such a drive. The areas feel limited and you are forced to follow certain paths unless you are willing to go through hordes of overpowered mobs. And that, takes a hell of a lot of time. The limit in movement and the overpowered mobs make the game feel like a drag and the grinding to stick out. Thing is, all MMOs have grinding, but the good MMOs manage to smooth it out and make it feel less… tedious. But back to mobs. After each kill you need to stop, sit down and wait for your health to restore, unless you are a healer. In WoW, for example, you eat, which brings you back to full health in 30-50 seconds. In Aion, if you don’t want to wait about 5 to 8 minutes after each mob (time increasing with level and HP) you need potions. Potions give you back some points immediately or over time, and a few foods increase natural restoration, which wouldn’t be that bad if good potions (foods) weren’t that darn hard or expensive to get (unless you are an Alchemist (Cook)). There are also the so called Mana and Health Treatments, skills that give you back a small amount of mana or HP after consuming a stack of pretty expensive reagents, which makes them literally useless. But moving on.

Flight.

Ahm… yeah flight… what the trailer doesn’t mention is that your so called “flight” is limited to one minute and usable in very few zones, usually only cities. All you can do everywhere else is float if you jump from somewhere high. And even that is limited to about one minute. I do not count the Abyss, and will tell you why in a bit.
Of course, you can buy wings and get accessories and armour that extend flight but that is... provided you have the money.

Which brings me to another issue. I’ve played WoW, I’ve played Lineage and Guild Wars. A couple of other free or not so free MMOs. True, not for long, but I did try them. And in neither, believe me, not one of them have I seen such a greedy, selfish number of little pricks. (Not to mention the hordes of gold sellers spamming everywhere, who the mods can't bother banning, which forces players to fill their LIMITED block lists). So money... Money is everything in this game. You have money, you have everything, you don’t have money, you can't even get a basic armour set.  

“You can’t even wipe your ass with a million Kinah here.” An actual quote from the actual world chat. True, although I would have been glad to have at least half a million to get me skills, because skills can get pretty expensive, or at least a pair of low class wings (which actually cost 900 000 kinah).

 It’s not that it’s hard to get the money. It’s just impossible to keep them for long. 10k for a flight here, 100k for a level of profession there, 200k for your new skills, then 300 more k for some coins to exchange for armour or ingredients or whatever. Not to mention paying off your soul sickness every time you die... And then paying even more to travel back to where you initially were. All that easily avoidable, (not the sickness, you get it whenever you die) if the selfish little priest class pricks decided to instead of passing by, herpily-derpily, ignoring your corpse’s existence, to... I don't know cast a resurrection spell maybe? But I guess 6-8 seconds of their lives is just too much to give up to save someone else about 20 minutes of pulling their shit together.

But back to the money. The auction house, the centre of the “economy” of the world is full of overprized crap, some of which you desperately need. Can’t blame the sellers though, since a single house costs at least 12mil, not to mention the good wings. And yeah, you can actually buy houses, build yourself furniture and such with the Building profession. But forget the house, that’s not the issue I had. The issue is the armour. To get a good set of armour, you first need an adequate crafting skill, and good enough luck to find or buy the right manual. Then you need to go around the world and gather some materials. And finally, you need to either grind to the death those impossible instances, or the Abyss for the special mats required. You can buy them on the auction, of course, but guess what? They only cost your soul.

Or you can do what I did, and buy the coin reward armour sets that are rather mediocre, but still better than regular drop of grey crap. Of course, you will need to grind the hell out of the coin quests, which are daily and therefore doable only once per day. (You need about 30 coins for full armour at lvl 20, then about 100 for a fill lvl 30, and then it goes up to 100 per piece for lvl 30+. In total it takes you more time getting the coins, than passing to the next level decimal, and you then you can't use the coins you got to get the newer armour as every zone has its own type.) The faster way is to buy the coins off the auction. Which brings us back to the need to have a large amount of Kinah in store.

Brian Cook

Of course, all this wouldn’t have been such a big problem if the monsters weren’t that damn hard. But forget the monsters, even with basic armour I can handle those beasts. The thing that drives a stake through my final drops of patience is the PVP-PVE mixture. It’s not only likely, but certain that you will encounter at least a group or two of enemy players at any 20+ leveling zone. So imagine going around on your daily errands and quest in a peaceful little land infested with giant crabs and walking mushrooms when out of the sudden, as you are picking flowers, cablush you see a giant cone of fire and next thing you know, your wings are flapping in the nether world. It's bloody impossible to beat the buffed up and geared players, on your own. Also by on your own, I mean on your bloody own. The moment an enemy attacks, all the allies that just now were crowding around you, killing all your quest mobs and gathering all the stuff you need, vanish. Every brat for themselves is the rule here.
And the few brave, generous players who try and help you… well they die shortly after or before you.
 

All right, it happens, so you respawn, pay the fortune needed to heal your soul and go back to plucking your flowers. But guess what? The “small” enemy party or another similar is still there. It’s everywhere.

You are left with two choices. One, wait for a benevolent high level, bored out of their mind, to come by and chase out the parasites, because your legion is silent and too busy standing in the middle of the capital picking their noses to come and give you a hand. Or two, you can go to that one zone that is fully PVE and consist solely of heavy grinding, no coin reward armour and not a single Campaign quest in sight.

In short, for those who came to play for the story or for the PVE, tough luck, you need to be an expert PVPer in order to get to those quests and even a greater PVPer to actually finish them, as often they lead you straight into the heart of the enemy territory. But wait, you say, why not level a bit and then do those quests, it will be piece of cake. Well tough luck again, when you get to a certain level you can no longer use the rifts to teleport to the enemy zone in close proximity to the quest. You can only go to a higher level zone and make your way back through hordes of enemies. Easy if you are scout type, impossible if you are anything else.




In short, what I am trying to say is, if you are a PVEer, stay the bloody hell away from this game or you are going to have a really bad, mind numbingly infuriating time trying to finish even one single campaign quest after the level of 20.

Well to be fair, I am slightly exaggerating as I happened to play mostly at a time of a huge PVP event. But even before it (and after), the chances for a player to get camped over and over by a group of highly overpowered enemies is pretty high and many quests lead you straight into the heart of the enemy territory, as I mentioned. In short, the PVP-PVE mixture doesn't work as it forces players to engage in PVP, which wouldn't be that bad if it didn't interfere so much with leveling and armour attaining.

Which brings us to the Abyss, Aion's pure PVP zone. Well as pure PVP zone as every other zone in the Aion world (other than the small, boring PVE desert I mentioned earlier.)
 The Abyss is also the only place you can actually fly everywhere. For as long as your wings can carry you, of course. In my case, 1 minute since I never managed to collect a million and buy those darn low class wings. Not that it would have helped much, just about 30-40 seconds. And when that time is close to running out, you need to land and wait about 5-10 minutes to restore flight. Unless you are suicidal and willing to plunge into the darkness and die because the Abyss is a series of floating islands, many quite a way apart. So while you wait, or while you quest, or while pretty much anything, you need to either have a huge party around you or be on your guard and ready to fly at any moment as the enemy is… well still everywhere.

Thing is, there are these fortresses to conquer and those evil Balaur to kill in the Abyss. Which is all great. Unless you were an Asmodian on my server. We, the great Asmodians, at all times, had between 0% and 10% percent of the land, while the Elyos stayed solidly around 30-40%. What does that matter you ask? It means that everywhere you go is an enemy territory teeming with Elyos, making it even more impossible to finish those Campaign quests that lead you into the Abyss.


Which brings me to the main reason I got stuck around 35ish. I simply could not finish the Campaign quest chains in any of the 20+ zones. I could have, of course, gone to the next zone, abandoning all my quests, but not having finished even half of the story line just renders me emotionally unable to move on. I am obsessive-compulsive like that.



But back to the Abyss. Why go there if you don’t like PVP, you’d ask. Well other than the campaign quests, some of the mats for the super special awesome items are found only there, naturally through extreme grinding. Not to mention more kinnah. Yup, if you want to be rich, the Abyss is the place for you.

Just learn to PVP then, you say. Well, not that I am particularly busy, but I just don’t have the time, and more specifically the patience, to deal with this crap. I came for the story not to kill players. Usually games have role-play or PVE realms for that (or leave the mass PVP for endgame), but Aion, until now, doesn’t. Also I won’t even bother when the freaking controls are so inconvenient.

 But let me explain. Movement controls are limited to the classic WASD, or left hand. You cannot move your character with your mouse only, and you cannot turn with keyboard only so you need to use both hands for movement at all times, which makes casting (bound to numerics).

So yeah, Aion is a place where everyone bickers for instance items, not to use but sell, and whenever you are in need of PVP help, everyone is suddenly… gone. Not to mention how hard it is, even in your own legion, to get help to kill a single elite or finish a group quest.

Really helpful community indeed. I have never seen such an exhibition of utter selfishness and concern only for one’s own ass.

So if you are a casual player or a PVEer, stay away. If you enjoy marketing, economics, piling money, spending the best days of your life on grinding, and endless PVP, this is the game for you (no sarcasm).

I believe I covered everything I had in mind, so my work here is done.

http://arrkhal.deviantart.com/

Geronimo

I wrote this a few months back but didn’t have the chance to finish it till now. It might be somewhat outdated but what the heck here it goes:

So… Today I’d like to shortly tackle another example of the new and aspiring hit songs from Europe. To be honest the European pop stage had always amazed me. Whether it is crap or hit or whatever, you never really know what they will throw at you. America on the other hand is easy.  A few hours alone with the TV and you pretty much know all trends and formulas that are going around at the time. It is predictable, simple and a bit too dependent on the shock effect. It is sad, however, that we’ve reached times when Europe is becoming more and more like America in that respect… and what I am presenting today is an example of that phenomenon. I am talking about no other song but Aura Dione’s Geronimo.

But let’s begin with a little bit of backstory. Aura Dione is a Danish song writer born in New York who debuted in 2007. So I made an actual effort, I found and listened to her songs, read their lyrics, then listened again for something I might have missed the first time, for what I heard on the radio definitely wasn’t like this. What I am saying is she’s not the best, no, but she is good. Her music is energetic; it has a charm to it, and even has lyrics that mostly make sense.

Example: Breathe, Something for Nothing, LullaGoodbye, etc.

So enter Geronimo, the song, Aura Dione released in fall 2011. It took a few months before it reached the Americas but thorough December and then back in March-April 2012 it circled some of the radio stations around here. At first I didn’t pay any attention, it was just one of those stupid songs with catchy tune that made me want to claw my brains out, and no actual contents. Still after a few times hearing it, as it usually happens, I actually stopped and listened to what it said. Thing is the music was pretty good for a radio song, but the lyrics were an obscure mystery. At first I thought she had some weird dialect or the song was in a weird language, or perhaps something had gone wrong in the studio, because no matter how many times I heard it the only thing I could make out was gibberish. So like any dedicated know-it-all I opened google and searched for the song. At that time I didn’t know name, nor singer, or anything about it at all so it took me a while to go through the radio stations listings (since I didn’t have many worlds to go with either) but eventually I found it…

http://www.cutebeerfloat.com

Aura Dione obviously has a voice, I don’t deny it. (Unless of course there’s some miraculous editing software I don’t know about.) So why I asked myself, why wasn’t she using her voice to actually sing… you know… words…

 

It was then that I took a look at her previous work which made me wonder how it came to this even more:

Lyrics? Phh too mainstream!

http://www.cutebeerfloat.com

I couldn’t help but notice a pattern here. Somewhere in 2009 she released I will Love you Monday and unlike most of her other singles it was accepted pretty well. Thing is in that song there was already certain decay of lyrics. Realizing the tastes of her audience, I suppose, she did the only logical thing, push it even further. If retarded lyrics was what the people wanted, then retarded lyrics was what they would get. As for grammar… Having good grammar in media? This is not the middle ages, for god sake, who needs grammar! But wait, says a cheeky producer in a neat costume, or worse the actual artist, I have even better idea, why not remove lyrics at all and substitute them with odd alien sounds. Gaga did it, everybody loved it, let’s give them more of that…

 

Then why have a vocal at all I ask?

Next I took a glimpse at the writers of the lyrics: Aura Dione, David Jost, Joachim Persson, Ian O'Brien-Docker, Thomas Troelsen. Really? They needed five people to create this? I wish to think that there was some sort of inner strife that led to mass sabotaging and the distortion of any possible lyrics, but who knows what really happened... Perhaps they actually made the conscious choice to do it, which makes me wonder what kind of alien language they were using.

 

So I ask, is there some new trend of inarticulate speech pattern that I do not know of? I mean Gaga does it, but she’s Gaga I don’t expect anything else from her. Besides she doesn’t make whole songs like this, she has you know, words in there somewhere, even phrases, stanzas, paragraphs if she feels in the mood. Shakira too, but then again I don’t speak Spanish so I can’t really tell which is incomprehensive speech and which Spanish words.

But let’s focus on Geronimo here. And of it, the part that actually makes sense, sort of.

“And I'm breaking, I'm breaking away
I'm aiming power power shots
And I'm giving all I got
I'm fearless, I'm fearless today”

Ok not so bad thus far…

But then…

“I paint my face with teardrip-drops, I'm kissing underdogs” –the hell is that supposed to mean?

Now as you might have noticed I am a huge fan of lyrics and stories and let’s just say writing. I really like, you know, to be able to make sense of what people are talking about in their spoken/written/sung art without going through google windows and dictionaries and long mental debates over “what the bloody hell is that supposed to mean/say?”

Yes I know what the words mean; I even know what the combination of them supposedly means. What I can’t get is why? Were those five writes, all five of them, out of ideas what to fit in there? Couldn’t they find one actual poet to consult?

“…and what is more she does not write your stereotypical pop-lyrics either.” Her official web site says.

I can see that, but I am not quite sure it is a good thing…

But let us move on. I shouldn’t comment too much on the clip itself or we’ll be here forever. Overall it's not bad. It's well composed, with movement and colour and all. Its more matching for personal freedom theme than a supposed love story but we can overlook that. Still i have a few remarks. First, Aura, girl, I don’t know you did to your face, or you just need to shoot your makeup artist, but honestly you look like one of those aliens in whose language you are singing. Also judging by the clothes she wears throughout most of the video she’s actually trying to dress like them. I guess Gaga’s home planet is becoming quite popular in the pop world these days. We are looking at a full scale invasion if this keeps on…

http://www.smosh.com                                                         

But back to the topic, I always thought and will continue thinking that pop stars sound and look better before they begin whoring out. For that is what I think happened here. Look at Avril Lavigne for example, begins ok, sort of simple and normal, not too flashy but decent, and then she starts whoring out and it all ends in a musical disaster… But I can’t really blame it all on the artist. The issue here isn't that someone released a bad song, it happens, it's not a big deal. The problem is when it's the bad song, in an album of pretty good songs, that becomes popular. And the artists, they just do what the public wants, what the industry seems interested in. If society wants crap, it will get crap… and what makes me sad is people actually wanting that crap.   

 

Really though, what’s wrong with us people? Have intelligence and common sense become too old fashion? Is stupidity the new trend? 

http://clipartfort.com

Thing is, I know there are many smart, intelligent people out there. Probably even more than the stupid ones. But if the media - the face of the world, promotes this vision of utter retardness, how am I supposed to consider the world “sane?” Or for that matter… smart? If I were an alien looking from beyond, searching for a good, highly moral planet with great potential to share my knowledge with, to help improve, if I were looking at a catalog of worlds based on what is generally shown in them, I’d go for the Slug Empire, forget this tasteless, noisy, senseless pile of garbage in the pits of the Solar System with the tag line humanity. Let them rot in their own filth.

But still if the alien was to actually take pity and chose Earth, how is it supposed to determine what language it should speak to us when our grammar and sentences and even words have become “too mainstream?” How is someone else to learn our language when we don’t seem to know it ourselves? Oh how I wished this applied only to the English on the internet…

Which brings me to a different topic – the world of modern writing, but I’ll leave that for another time….