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.
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.
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/ |
To be truthful I don’t find it particularly bad, I’d even dance to it in
club, if I danced that is. Music and lyric-wise it’s just like all the other
mediocre disco crap out there. What I find particularly appalling is… it’s just
too noisy. I attribute that to the annoying female singer who won’t stop
squealing her lines through the whole thing. How old is she anyway? 12? Or is
she on helium or something. Seriously, is it just me, or does she sing kind of like a chipmunk?
