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[Aion] ITT we argue about MMO lore
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Sorry, just ignore me. I figured out what was wrong about 2 seconds after I posted, but I'm too goddamn lazy to edit my post.
Fuckin' lol
Call me your resident Q&A guy today, I feel very post-happy. ANYWAYS! This was discussed a lot in the other thread, but I'll give you a quick rundown.
Clerics are your heal-bots. Period. They put out some respectable ranged spell DPS, but they are your core healers. A Chanter can't even begin to compete in the healing department.
Chanters are the ultimate hybrids in Aion. They really shouldn't even be considered healers, because at higher levels they simply can't do the job without at least one cleric around. What you do bring to the table is this:
-Moderate DPS
-Best Buffs/Debuffs in the game
-Off healing, typically through the form of a powerful AoE HoT. (Chanters get the best AoE HoT in the game, but it's a Stigma I think).
-Awesome staff-fu.
Think of Chanters a bit more like a Bard and you're more on track. Or even a shaman without the crazy chain-healing. You bring great buff auras to the group, every melee attack you do as some kind of debuff associated with it, and you have short duration, high mana "wishes" for big boosts (think Heroism, for WoW-folk). You're not an amazing solo character, but you're a star in a group.
One last thing, on overlap. HoTs in this game don't stack, so the more powerful one takes precedence. Therefore, you actually mesh extremely well with the Cleric. The cleric gets to focus on tossing out big, powerful heals while you handle keeping a group HoT up. General consensus is a Cleric/Chanter combo for a party is better than trying to stack two Clerics or Chanters.
EDIT: Haha dang. The guildlaunch forums are blocked at work, but the PA forums aren't. Ah well.
Another question for those who have played: is this a game to be excited about? Do you expect to be playing for years to come, or is this one of those briefly exciting new releases?
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I dunno if I'll be playing it for years, but I think there's enough stuff to do now - along with any future expansions that may be released - to keep me busy for a good long while.
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That seems pretty obvious to me, though. Why else work with a subscription system? Or are we at the stage now where it's just normal to pay $50+a monthly fee to play any old online game?
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Really everything about the game has made me very optimistic. It's really polished, and they've shown they're up on fixing player complaints fast, what with the hotfix on Saturday to resolve the mouse movement/camera issues. The thing that will kill Aion, imo, is GameGuard. Plenty of people are already weary of the program, for good reasons, and it also doesn't get along well with Windows 7. I really, really hope NCsoft addresses the whole thing soon. I'd like to see them ditch it entirely, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.
I'm not sure Aion is what you're looking for if the somewhat-episodic part means grand new PvE encounters like FFXI or WoW. This is a war game. There is a smattering of PvE experiences to be had but the focus is squarely on defeating the other faction and working towards better gear so you can kill more of them. I'm not sure if I'll be playing it for years (unless they figure out some way to draw out the fun in this kind of dynamic) but I'm going to enjoy the hell out of the next six months. If you're not drawn primarily to PvP gameplay you're going to be disappointed in what Aion has to offer. But if you are interested in combat I can say that from what I've seen so far the PvP intensity is nothing short of spectacular.
And I can also say as far as social opportunities go that nothing creates friendship bonds better than slaughtering your mutual enemies together.
Whats sorta issues with Gameguard and Win 7? Im running the RC still, and I didn't notice any issues during my admittedly short time with the open beta.
They've tossed around the idea of removing GG for the western release, but nobody's sure if they will. They obviously know there's some issues, and are trying to resolve them before launch.
Well it varies. Some people report not having any problems at all (I think this is mostly Windows 7 64-bit users). Some 32-bit users can't even launch Aion though, because Windows 7 tends to treat GameGuard like malware (not entirely unfounded in doing so). Usually they'll either blue screen on launch or get a GameGuard error that will crash the game. Buddy of mine running 32-bit tried to play in the open beta this last week and couldn't at all.
Press and hold 'S' while gliding. You don't actually hit the ground, but come very close, then swoop back upwards a few feet. It's like when you drop a well-balanced paper airplane from a height; it drops until it picks up speed, then rises until it slow, then drops again... except in this case it ins't "real" so you can drop-rise-drop-rise nearly indefinitely. I wasn't kidding when I said it's possible to actually run out of flight time on a glide. (ProTip: flight time potions DO NOT WORK while gliding!!)
It's worth noting that ALL the servers are physically located at the same co-loc in Virginia. Ping times to any given server will be identical to any other server regardless whether they are "east" or "west" time based. The only thing that changes are the scheduled times for fortress and instance events. Those are based on "prime time" for the server, so east-coast servers will have events that are unplayable for working stiffs on the west coast, and west-coast servers will require east-coast players to stay up until 3am during the weekdays.
If it's a seamless experience and the PvP is actually good, I'm interested. This seems likely with the whole "PvPvE" bent the dialogue has taken.
Oof. As a person who won't even be able to play until 7 PM Pacific Time at the earliest on weekdays, this is kind of bad for me. I guess I'll definetly be committing to a West Coast Server.
What do I need to be looking up for more information on the scheduled content? It doesn't matter how good what I'm playing is if I detect I'm missing a big part of the overall experience.
Preselection officially starts at 3pm EST this Friday.
I understand there's a certain need for coherence, but it seems suiting each time zone will be doable as long as you're willing to enhance the group experience with some pubbies.
If more than two people want a further defined poll, then I'll go ahead and write one up on the Aion guild site.
Oh, and Prof. For expanding content, this game is pretty good at it. It has been released Aion Korea for about a year and has added 20 levels and a it's contents to the game. It is also from the company that made Lineage 2, and since Launch they created three expansive regions for the game, an additional playable race, 20 new classes, 50 levels of content and their dungeons, and there is even more to come.
I would say they intend to continue giving the game updates.
We shall fight in Hoth, we shall fight on the spaceports
and the orbital stations, we shall fight with growing confidence
and growing strength in the instances, we shall defend our Republic,
whatever the cost may be.
We shall Re-Spawn on the beaches, we shall camp the landing grounds,
we shall PvP Flag in the fields and in the streets, we shall gank in the hills;
we shall never uninstall."
--Winston Churchwalker
I believe the beta is over. I'm not sure about the headstart, though.
Beta is done. If you preorder you get into the early start though!
What exactly you'll get for preordering at this point is, as was said, the headstart on the 20th. You'll also be able to do the pre-select on the 18th, which allows you to create two characters on a server to try and grab a name you'd want to use.
There has been no official announcement on server-based event times yet.
Which is playing merry havok with most guilds server selections.
According to a recetn posting by the Community Manager, they will be releasing detailed server schedules either tomorrow or the next day, or possibly the day after that. Or Thursday. Maybe.
AionSource discussion thread link
Well, here's major launch mistake #1.
It was fun playing with you EST folks while it lasted.
Would be amusing to see the oceanic reaction right now, but I'm too lazy to go find it...
Have they said whether or not they plan to give SMs flying pets or any midair capability at all (other than that wing clip, which in my mind only sort of counts)? I want to play a mage of some sort, preferring SM because I love the look of the pets (holy shit the level 50 pets :shock: ), but I want to get in on that fancy midair combat, something SMs can't do far as I can tell
(edit) seriously look at these motherfuckers, they may be DP pets but goddamn:
click for big
EDIT: Sorry for beating a dead horse here, but I'm so close to prepurchasing this game and I'd hate for this one nitpicky detail to keep me from such a beautiful looking experience.
Do you guys know exactly which content is set to be scheduled? How intrical is it to the play experience? If I miss out on certain events, does the rest of the game still carry itself?
Chalk up another east coaster.
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Podcast 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MyiwRy40YA
Podcast 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KQiXqOa_XY&
Podcast 3 (from today):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tII8Tl6T8KU
Good to know. It seems pretty damn harsh to have the main point of the endgame be scheduled so strictly, though.
EDIT: With a broad idea of prime time, though, it shouldn't be too bad. If it goes from 6 - 12, for example, I could actually conceivably participated for 5 hours. Assuming being part of only a fraction of the experience acceptable, this would rock.
God fuck, I just want to play this so badly. C'mon, NCSoft, you nearly have me!
Same except I'll play Elyos, not Asmo. So, basically, I'm gonna be playing with whatever Elyos PA guild is the biggest.
it really isn't an issue as a soloplayer looking for a server, the problem you run into is as an established guild/clan/legion from another game with a diversity of timezones to cater to migrating to aion.
Having a window of increased opportunity one can argue adds a sense of persistence to the world and should you cap a fortress you have the opportunity to defend it should it become contested the next day.
This way a fortress will actually be fought over , as opposed to "well fuck it let them have it we'll just cap it when they go to bed." or having some taiwan crew just roll through everything while I'm asleep and cap everything uncontested.
I think it will definitely fracture some legions up a bit and will make it tough on oceanic players which is a shame but I'd rather deal with that than actually have to fight over a fortress , win , cap it , then have some off-hour crew roll through everyday uncontested and amass easy AP after your own hard fought gain.
I agree it is contrived and less than ideal.