I was given a pre-order key to the new NCSoft MMO Aion which allowed me access to their new beta, so I thought I'd write a little preview on my weekend experience with Aion. To start of with I got my key fairly late so I didn't start downloading the Aion client until an hour before the servers went live so as you could probably guess the NCSoft launcher was getting hammered and download at about 80kbs which meant I wouldn't be playing the beta until the next day. I was reading the Aion Source forums at the time when the servers launched and there seemed to be a huge congestion problem which is understandable. But they were rectified within an hour which is pretty good going for a beta. Keep reading for more preview goodness:

 

 

A little background on my MMO experience, I have played a fair amount of MMOs in term of variety and genres all the way from Ultima Online to World of Warcraft but I have only played Lineage II and Ultima Online for an extended period of time as with most MMOs they just don't appeal to me after the first 2 weeks or so. After seeing all of the previews and videos from the Chinese beta of Aion I was really impressed with what NCSoft have done with their next generation MMO (the first MMO to use Crytek Engine) and I was hoping this would be a true sequel to Lineage rather than a completely different format which NCSoft have failed at countless times (Tabula Rasa). I had high hopes of Aion even before I knew about the beta I was just hoping as I was lucky enough to get this key that it would deliver.

 

 

Oh boy did it! First off I love the art style and I'm fairly partial to eastern artistic design including animes and from playing Lineage II for numerous months. I created my character as a Elyos Mage which are fairly similar to Elfs from Lineage as they live in a lush green area where it's always bright and all the monsters look cute etc which makes the game feel much more upbeat. The character creation is very tougher allowing you to edit most aspects of the character's form, it can be easily compared to The Sims including over the top ridiculous looking characters. I was unlucky enough to be making my character as my kitten jumped onto the keyboard which made me a semi-female looking male character which I didn't want to delete and lose my name. You are introduced slowly into each of the game mechanics such as looting, resource gathering, movement, melee combat and leveling which is great for novice gamers but would also contain a lot of reading if you were new to MMOs.

 

After completing the first 5 quests or so of basic training the game became much more enjoyable as quests usually had some general comedic banter behind them including trying to find someone's pet which had been cooked by gremlin type creatures (see picture below). The quests were very typical of MMOs including "kill 5 of these", "take this to so and so" etc but I think that has become such a key part of MMOs its very difficult to change but Aion tries by adding an campaign side of quests which are much bigger quests which including cut scenes and cool gaming story telling techniques such as flashbacks. Again with the fantastic looking areas and animations most quests are pretty easy to complete and very enjoyable, at the same time as you can sight see while slaughtering little lizard type creatures.

 

I was gaining levels fairly fast and it only took about 4-5 hours to reach level 10, the more advanced quests linked to your campaign are very entertaining and remove the normal grind slightly from standard questing. After reaching level 10 you are given access to the whole Elyos area of the world which again looks fantastic! Each area has a slightly different vibe along with different storylines/mythology of the area, such as one of the areas has huge cliff sides so you have to go flying about (you get wings at level 10) trying to find a hidden sea shell. This just adds even more variety to the game and I can't wait to explorer the areas further once beta 3 starts.

 

 

In conclusion of this brief overlook Aion is fantasticlly polished and well thought-out, the best way of explaining it is that it's a standard MMO after it has had it's initial 3-5 patches to fix and expand content along with a very detailed and well planned out storyline. My biggest love of the game has to be the art style and graphics, animations are incredibly detailed and numerous for example if you are idling near water your character will start finishing and if it begins to rain your character will magically make an umberlla. The art is just stunning with areas vast in size and feel really detailed as if it was a proper land rather than flat ground with some building on, each area has so much character it just draws you into the game more. All this adds for a fantastic immersive game that feels like you are actually part of the world with everything connecting seamlessly together. It may not have the highest textures but it defiantly has the best charm of any MMO out there and it runs flawlessly on my PC Rig with everything on high quality.

 

Bring on beta 3!