Aion review part 2

The last you heard from me I had embarked upon my great journey to the unknown. Many moons later now I return unto you, broken and scarred from my travels, to delight you with tales from the fabled Abyss itself. (Ok, only one moon later... I've been listening to a lot of Dragon Age cut-scenes lately and accidentally break into melodramatic fantasy monologue from time to time).

In the earlier review I told you that Aion is a game of much polish, much prettiness, and much grinding. I was willing to bear the grind so that I could see the Abyss - that ginormous PvEvP area of theoretical MMO perfection. My thoughts:



The Abyss is the coolest looking area in the game, by far. It's a bizarre, abstract, twisted area that almost feels like you're in space. A giant red sun, asteroids hurtling randomly at you from nowhere, jagged platforms drifting aimlessly around, and stargate-esque devices that recharge your flight timer. When I arrived I felt that it had all been worth it.



This feeling was enhanced when I got my first sniff of RvR. Running around with a giant group of people and being part of a mindless zerg is undeniably fun sheerly for the epic nature of it all.



Unfortunately these feelings of epic grandeur did not last. Being in a massive zerg was a performance nightmare, with framerate dropping to something like 2 fps. I had to turn all my graphics settings to minimum to avoid the frequent crashes that otherwise plague all who would attempt a fortress raid. Bear in mind, my computer is moderately beastly and handles other newly released games on maximum settings just fine. This is the only area where the game does not feel "polished". I'm beginning to wonder if anyone will ever release an MMO that can support a large number of players all doing things at once.

The performance issues were probably exacerbated by my ~700 ping to the American servers, playing from Australia. When I played Guild Wars on American servers my pings were less than half this - I'm not sure exactly what is up with their net code, but it does not seem optimal for overseas types.

Performance aside, fortress raids are relatively few and far between. It is actually advantageous to NOT capture fortresses since one of the best sources for XP and higher levels is to kill the repeatedly respawning fortress guards of the opposing faction. Capture the fortress and you lose that ability.

When I actually did get to go to fortress raids and manage not to crash, I discovered that my contribution to the attack on the NPC's was laughably pathetic. Even at level 32 my auto attacks did literally 1 damage at a time to the elite fortress NPC's. It made me feel so pathetically worthless - the whole point of an RPG is to create the illusion that you're a superstar ("wow, you reached level 12, you can now cast mega fireball of raining death, congratulations!") as opposed to making you feel like an insiginificant gnat. The level disparity is just as bad when fighting other players - when you see one fellow effortlessly slice through a dozen "lesser" players, you just have to shake your head and wonder what the designers were thinking.

I'm sure things would feel better at high levels. But the grind... oh, the grind. If I thought it was bad at the lower levels, that is nothing compared to the situation now that I'm over level 30. Do I want to punish myself that much to get to the maximum level? Is it really that important to me to then be the one that can one-shot a bunch of "n00bs" and feel like I'm so amazingly talented at the game, when in reality I am pushing the same 1-2-3 buttons as all the other players?

The answer is no. If the levelling was faster, if the level disparity was not so important, if RvR happened more often and without crashing my computer, then I would probably be all over it.

Game over!

Aion out, Dragon Age in

Yup, like what the title says. Aion wasn't fun, so I stopped playing. Dragon Age is RPG heaven! Every time my Rogue performs a backstab, an angel gets it's wings!

If for some reason I ever decide to play a Diku style MMO again, it will be WoW. Although I despise it for it's business model and grind-o-time-sink type leveling, it still does it better than any other Diku style MMO out there.

You don't need me to tell you about Dragon Age, because if you were serious about RPGs you would already be playing it. Love that backstab!

Aion: Bad Quest Design

Well... just about all quests in Aion are badly designed, but there is one that stood out more than the others. I received it when my Cleric reached level 17:


Yup, that's right, I have to resurrect 100 fallen allies. If you are wondering what the problem with this quest is, then hang your head in shame!

What's the fastest way for a Cleric (healer), who is responsible for keeping the entire group alive, to get 100 resurrections?

"Oh jeez, sorry buddy... went afk for a sec... here let me rez you.."

"Sorry phone rang, don't worry I've got rez"

You get the idea...

A good cleric would never let a team mate die (on purpose). So in actual fact, the quest is punishing the player for being a skillful healer. Furthermore the reward of 20,000 kinah is only really a large sum to a low level char. Once you pass 25 or so, you are making 20k or so off every quest run (drops alone). By the time I credibly resurrected 100 team mates, my character is likely to be level 40+. At which point the reward is useless.

Like I said, bad quest design.

Making peace with the Diku

Paying $15 US a month to grind endless hours away on repetitive tasks to gain minor virtual advancement, sound tempting to you?

After playing WoW for 6 months, I swore I would never go back to a Diku MMO. Oddly I played WAR for a month and am now playing Aion. What the hell dude??

The answer is simple:

• I knew there would be boring grind
• I knew that it would take a good 2-4 months to get anywhere in the game
• I knew it would cost me an ongoing subscription fee

.. and I didn't care.

All I wanted was to submerge my mind in a fantasy universe and brain out for a couple of hours a night. Maybe even get a dopamine fix here and there.

My expectations for Aion were low. For a Diku MMO that has only just been released, I was pleasantly surprised. The game has very few bugs, looks gorgeous and has relatively smooth combat. My only complaints are that the servers are based somewhere light years from Australia providing me with a 700+ ping. When they say 'Oceanic server', it would be nice if they actually put the server in Australia!

Anywayz, my point is that the world is going to keep serving up diku MMO type WoW clones. You can spend your gaming life slagging them for bad design, or you can enjoy them for the masterpieces of art that they actually are. So it's time to suck it up and make peace with the Diku. For now...

...grumble... subscription fee... grumble...

...grumble, when is GW2 out? grumble...

Aion review

So, I'm playing Aion at the moment. I was going to give a little synopsis and then proceeed into a piece-by-piece breakdown of the game, but I realised that for Aion (and perhaps for most MMOs) this is not appropriate. Aion is a game of fantastical highs but also drudgerous lows; you will either grind and bear it because you think the highs are worth it, or you will leave it by the wayside after being exposed to the horror of the grind. An overview would be of little use...

... Although "like WoW but with wings" would be a fairly good one.

I shall break things up into the most relevant areas that I think any MMO should be critiqued on. I'll start with the ones that Aion does well:

1) Wonder 5/5

This is what the Bartle "explorer" feeling is all about - that general sense of wonder when you experience new facets of a game. Aion is literally a wonderous experience. The zones are incredibly laid out and pretty to look at. Here is the 6th screenshot from my screenshots folder (in keeping with a recent meme):



As you can see, I'm flying, there are some giant elephant/dinosaur/kind of messed up animals, the water is quite lovely looking, etc. I'm really not a graphics whore by any means but this aspect of the game is very impressive. Note that the graphics themselves are not always great - some of the textures, and especially the flowing water effects in the game, can look quite low-tech. But the vistas themselves are always something to behold.

The flying adds to that feeling a lot. You may have heard that you can not fly in all the zones - this is true. However, you can always "glide", which basically means that if you find even a slightly raised hill, you can coast your way along for quite some amount of time. There is some level of skill involved (I dare say, more than in the actual combat system; more on this below) and this actually makes it quite fun traveling to various locations. The wings are obtained at level 10 which felt like it took a couple of hours to get to (i.e. not too long).

2) Polish 5/5

People always talk about the famous Blizzard polish, which I'm sure we're all quite sick of hearing about. Aion is really, really well polished, so get ready to hear more of that term. Performance is great even for me connecting all the way from Australia. The translation from the original Korean is in flawless, flawless English - even the jokes are well localized. There are a couple of typos here and there but it's actually better than any other Western game I've played. There are voice-overed tutorials for key game aspects. There's hyper-linking of items and map locations and quests into the chat. You can even save map locations from other people - for example I've downloaded a location text file from the forums containing the locations of all the PvP rifts that open from time to time (joining the two separate worlds). There is a "locate" function for finding the next mob you're looking for or difficult to find NPC's.

The list goes on - the game is just smooth.

3) Character appearance customization 4.5/5



The character generator does not have the same flexibility of City of Heroes, but this is purely because Aion is not a superhero game. In terms of non-over-the-top customization, Aion knocks the competition into the water. In other words, yes, you can make a ridiculously hot female character to ogle if you're a man (I'm not so sure about the sexual attractiveness of the male characters; sorry ladies).

4) Achievements 4/5

I class Achievement features as pretty much anything that goes "ding". Between leveling up your character, your items, your crafting skill, your PvP rank, getting rich, completing quests and obtaining titles, there seems to be a lot to do to keep all the achievers occupied. There is really nothing new over what WoW brought to the table hence why it can't be given a 5 (disclaimer; I'm not really the biggest "achiever" type, so I'm basing this somewhat on what others say in-game and how similar to WoW it is).

5) Travel 4/5

As said above, you can fly, which gives automatic bonus points in my book. A flying mount is just not as cool. There are also fast flight and/or teleportation NPC's in most places that you need to go to. Some places don't have these, but are conveniently often located a long way away down gently descending land, meaning that you can glide there to your heart's content.

6) Zoning 4/5

The game is not instanced for the most part and there are no loading screens except on teleportation, so I know that will appeal to the "open world" fans out there. Again the game definitely plays up to the explorers.

However the game actually features multiple channels in the more crowded areas, which can be freely switched between every 3 minutes. This is actually a similar approach to what I've heard Age of Conan does, but where AoC was ridiculed Aion seems to be being praised. I think the difference is that it's quite out of the way so as not to break immersion (I didn't even realise about it until digging around in the settings), yet it still offers the massive convenience of getting around queuing up for spawns and general overcrowding.

So, that was the good, and there's been a decent enough amount of it to keep me playing. But you didn't think I'd go on extolling the virtues of a WoW clone for the entire review did you? Here is where Aion is really quite dismal:

1) Gameplay 1/5

Gameplay in Aion is non-existent. In this sense it really is WoW with wings. You have a bunch of skills that you mash in order, on cool-down. Changing the order is rarely if ever indicated as it will have little impact on the fight. There is a little more skill required in groups to prevent aggroing too much etc, just as in WoW. This is not a "gamey" game in other words.

One thing that really bugs me about games like this is the "one monster at a time" rule. The monsters are just too tough for you to be able to take on very many of them at once. Sure, if you want to provide me with no challenge then go ahead and do it - but could you at least make me feel powerful by letting me slaughter a horde of enemies at once instead of one at a time? Give me Diablo 2 any day of the week.

There are hardly even any AoE skills in the game, so it's not even possible to get a good group together and AoE a bunch of mobs down. Stuff like that could make the grind (discussed next) quite a bit more tolerable.

2) Grinding 2/5

There are some racist people who claim that Koreans love their grind games. At least, that's what I thought until I played Aion. The game is a massively soul sucking grind fest (hmmm MMOSG??). I felt this way about WoW, but Aion is noticeably worse. I am only rating it a 2/5 because I have heard that Everquest was worse again.

3) Grouping 1/5

Grouping is dismal, for only one reason - there is no bonus XP when in a group. This means that DPS characters are much, much better off leveling up solo. Even the healers are better off due to down-time in between pulls etc. I'm actually playing side-by-side with my girlfriend and we decided to split up and farm mobs separately so that we could level faster. That is a massive, massive design flaw for a "massively" multiplayer game (I can't remember what WoW does there).

4) Build customization 2/5

There are 8 classes currently in Aion. You begin as one of 4 archetypes (Warrior, Scout, Mage, Priest) and then each of these has 2 classes available to it, which you select one of (permanently) at level 10. So far so good.

However, up until level 20 you will have the exact same skills and stats as every other player of your class. There is no talent tree, no opportunity cost, none of that good old sit-down-and-knuckle-out-your-own-build kind of fun. Your stats can be modified somewhat by your gear, but generally the way to go there is just "focus on stat XX" - it's not very complicated. I'm not a big fan of needlessly complicated RPG mechanics (in fact I hate it), but this is too bare bones for me.

After level 20 things get better, as you gain access to "stigma" skills. These are basically extra skills that you can equip, however there are only a limited number able to be equipped at once so there should be some sort of opportunity cost involved. I am only level 21 at the moment so I don't have much more experience than that. It will be a long time before I get to tinker because the best stigma are highly sought after and expensive, so at the moment I have to rate build customization quite low. It's possible that I'll feel differently at a higher level, but really, every other RPG gives you character build customization at level 1 (or before!). That's supposed to be a staple.

5) Crafting 2/5

Crafting in this game is an even more epic grind than the actual game itself. Just like leveling your character level, leveling your crafting is even more painful than in WoW. The saving grace that prevents this from being a 1/5 is that there are "work orders", where the crafting NPC gets you to make something useless, but he gives you most of the materials. This is designed purely to allow you to level your crafting without paying too much money. This is very considerate of them; however, it is possibly the most boring thing I could imagine doing with my time.

On the other hand, it does allow me to read the forums and what-not. I am actually writing this entire review while my character busily works away at the crafting bench, which should give you an idea of how long it takes. You actually can level from crafting, but I wouldn't reccommend it. I spoke to a fellow yesterday who went from level 24 to 25 entirely from crafting. It cost him 400 k (about twice as much money as I have managed to save by level 21), and it took him 9 hours. Yes, the correct response is "lol" - however at least he was able to queue it all up and then go to sleep.

6) Enemies 2/5

The monsters in the game are for the most part quite ridiculous looking. On the one hand it's good because it's not the same tired old elves-and-dwarves fantasy fare. On the other hand, the enemies are so round, fat and squat looking that I want to poke them with a stick in the name of science rather than slaughter them. I don't think it's too much to ask for monsters that look a little more bad-ass. I am hoping that once I get to the abyss, the Balaur (the NPC faction) will look more intimidating. I know that the enemy players will look cool, so at least that's something.

7) Quests 2.5/5

Kill 10 rats. Good, now go and kill 10 slightly different rats. Nice job. Now kill 8 of these rats and 7 of those rats (some kind of psychological trick to hide the fact that the number of rats I'm being asked to kill is increasing, I'm sure). While you're there, could you collect X of this and Y of that - cheers.

In other words, standard MMO quests. However they do tend to make pretty much everything in any given area be something that you need to do for some quest or other. Kill a mob to satisfy one quest, collect the berries sitting next to it, kill the mob on the other side for some other quest, etc. It gives you kind of a "Ok, you're here, and you're going to be grinding for quite some time, but at least you're multitasking" feeling.

The quest text is extremely well written, but there's a lot of it, and as usual I don't read it. I have to say, if the game wasn't grindy, I probably would read it (I did for the first couple of levels).

There are a few quests that stand out from the dreary fare which I'd give 5/5 for general awesomeness (being teleported "accidentally" into enemy territory and being told to find my own way back was particularly awesome), but the dreary majority of quests has to lower the score.

The one thing that has been surprisingly left out of my review so far is of course PvP. The wonderousness of the game only gets me so far - the real reason that I'm putting up with the grind is because I want to get to level 25, which is the level that you can enter the abyss, which is the free-for-all PvP area. Call me old fashoined, but mention the words "fortress siege" to me and I just get all giddy. I'm quite excited to see how the PvP pans out after reading the hectic-sounding accounts in general chat. The "hostile to all" third NPC faction may be just what large-scale MMO RvR action needs.

It's a big let-down that I haven't been able to try PvP earlier than this. I went into the arena and fought a little against my girlfriend (who schooled me quite hard by the way), but it was devoid of other people. I miss WAR in this respect, where I could PvP all the way through the game if I wanted to, even from level 1. Scenarios were a great "jump in and have fun" feature as well and I definitely miss that aspect.

In summary, I'm still playing the game. I'm enjoying the scenery, and uncovering new aspects of the game and I'm very much looking forward to the PvP, and these things are allowing me to push through the interminable grind to the light of day at the end of the tunnel. If you're not much bothered by grind and are an achiever/explorer, I'd definitely recommend trying Aion. If you are looking for an MMO with engaging combat or great social aspects (grouping) then look elsewhere.

Stay tuned for further opinions, especially on PvP, as I get a bit higher in level!

Crimson's 2009 game list

There are a lot of fantastic titles scheduled for release in 2009 and I for one can't wait to play them all. If I had to narrow my list down to five titles that I'm most excited about, it would look like this:

1. Guild Wars 2
Anyone that reads this blog could have guessed that this was going to be my number one most anticipated game. I'm so pumped for this game that this blog will most likely become a shrine to GW2 once it is released. Although there hasn't been an official release date announced yet, I'm confident that GW2 will arrive in 2009. I don't think NCSoft or ArenaNet can last another year without giving GW2 the light of day. I for one can't wait to welcome the new messiah of MMO gaming ;)

2. Star Wars: The Old Republic
Bioware has always made great games, and I know that TOR will be great as well. My only concern is this TOR will launch with EA's stench all over it's business model.
If any game can get my girlfriend interested in MMOs, it will be this one. I hope it doesn't release around the same time as GW2, because I may be 'forced' to play for the gf factor alone ;)

3. Diablo 3
I'm still drooling from viewing the trailer of D3. I know it's not an MMO, but I was a huge (and I mean huge) fan of Diablo 2. It does concern me a little bit that the game will not support LAN play, as D2 LAN parties were always a favorite of mine.
I have a feeling that Blizzard are saving their D3 trump card for the release of GW2 and TOR, so expect to see it in 2009.

4. Aion
If Aion has the gameplay to back up it's amazing looks and list of features, it will do extremely well. Openedge believes that Aion will not be overly successful in the Western markets because of the Anime factor and I'm inclined to agree with him. Won't stop me from playing it though. The character customization technology looks very cool and lets face it, who wouldn't want wings for their character?

5. Jumpgate Evolution
I've got a soft spot for sci-fi games. I enjoyed Eve up to a point, but I wished it was more like Freelancer. JE looks like it might just deliver on my expectations for a sci-fi MMO. I've signed up for the beta, and look forward to firing dual tachyon canons across the hull of some unsuspecting alien battleship ;)

So yeah that's my list. If by some bizarre and cruel twist of fate all five of these games were launched on the same day, you can clearly see my install and play order. Not sure if I would survive the day though... MMO pleasure overload...

I'd be interested to know what other people's top 5 most anticipated games for 2009 are?