Welcome to Aion
Do PA duders play? Well of course.
The Aion specific forums for PA homps are here:
[url=http://paa-aion.guildlaunch.com/forums/index.php?gid=108211
]Witchaloks & Sorcelators[/url]
To join the legion website without having to wait for me to authorize it you have the option of entering a launch code during the registration process. This launch code is wang
Elyos Legion: Elemenstors, Sorcelators
Server: Yustiel -- West Coast Time
Asmodian Legion: Witchaloks
Server: Ariel -- West Coast Time
Yustiel Player Tracker
Link to form
Link to resultsThe monthly fee is $14.99
This is not a free to play game like Guild Wars. This is a full fledged MMO
So let me tell you some things about Aion:
Aion is NCSofts latest MMO, launching everywhere that isn't Asia on Sept 22, 2009. Why not Asia? Because those fuckers have had the game for like a year now.
Story
I'm just going to rip this shit straight from the main site.
Once connected by the Tower of Eternity, Atreia was sundered by an ancient cataclysm. On your journey to bring salvation to the world, your character will traverse the inner surface of Atreia, exploring lush lands, floating islands, chaotic voids, and many other amazing vistas.
Each half of the shattered world is inhabited by one of two playable divine factions: the Elyos and the Asmodians. Isolated by the Cataclysm that broke Atreia apart, each side has brooded for centuries on the catastrophic events of the past. Their hatred for each other has only intensified.
Many centuries after the Cataclysm, fragments of the destroyed Tower began to float mysteriously in the air, and investigations revealed unstable portals that opened into a dimension of darkness and wonder where fragments of the Tower drifted. This place was named the Abyss. Within the Abyss, the once-lost power of flight is now commonplace. The Abyss is where Elyos and Asmodians contend to fight an epic battle for supremacy.
As the Elyos and the Asmodians uncovered new, more stable portals to the Abyss, they encountered a primeval terror that they had known only in storybooks: the Balaur. Banished to an unknown dimension during the Cataclysm, the Balaur are the ancient enemy of all the peoples of Atreia. The Balaur's continual war on humanity led to Cataclysm. Now they have returned, the survival of both races and Atreia itself is more uncertain than ever.
There's a lot more to it than that and the level grind is chock full of in-game story and lore that is actually pretty neat if you take the time to read your quests and watch the cutscenes.
Gameplay
In the beginning there isn't a whole lot of trailblazing here as far as gameplay goes. It starts out as typical MMO fare with fedex quests, collect quests, kill x creature quests, etc. If you've played WoW or any recent MMO you will feel comfortable off the bat with the controls and feel of the gameworld.
Combat feels different enough from your typical MMO however. At first you'll have one or two abilities and it just seems like spam spam spam. But then you begin to get combo skills, reactive skills, chain skills,
badass skills and combat in Aion really begins to shine and stand out above what else is out there in the MMORPG genre. It feels considerably more like an action game and you are in for more control of your characters behavior and functioning in battles.
As if that weren't good enough, at level 10 you get
wings. So what, you may ask. I can fly in a lot of MMO's, you might say. Well, can you participate in full scale PvE
and PvP
and PvPvE while flying in those games? Yeah, I didn't think so. Aion takes flying to a whole new level and makes half the game completely centered around the fact that you are an ascended being that can fly and makes full use of the ability in various ways in both PvP and PvE.
Races
There are two races in Aion; representing the two different factions. Elyos and Asmodeans. You are not limited to classes between the races, each race can be any class.
Elyos -
The Elyos are a beautiful and radiant people. The Cataclysm separated them from the Asmodians and left them to thrive in a bountiful world bathed in golden light and starlight. Elyos are comforting, warm, and friendly, but against foes, they are not kindly or benevolent. The ascended forms of Elyos Daevas have stunning, angelic wings, and their immense strength belies their graceful appearance.
The splendor of the Elyos physical form and the colorful, fertile land the Elyos live in has also led them to become arrogant. The Elyos believe that they are blessed by Aion, while the Asmodians, cast into darkness by the Cataclysm, are seen by the Elyos as twisted and cursed creatures.
The Elyos occupy the lower half of Atreia, known as Elysea. Their capital city is Sanctum. The Elyos serve the five Seraphim Lords who guided them to safety when all seemed lost. The stump of the Tower of Eternity that stands on Elysea is known as the Tower of Light. It serves as a constant reminder to the Elyos people of the terrible mistake perpetuated by the Asmodian people and their Shedim Lords.
Asmodeans
The Asmodians are a brave and hardy people. The Cataclysm separated them from the Elyos and plunged them into a world of ice and darkness. To survive such desolation is one thing, but to thrive and prosper as the Asmodians did is quite another. Asmodian skin is pale or dusky, and their eyes have adapted to low light by gaining an otherworldly glow that is most pronounced during combat. Ascended Asmodian Daevas are blessed with strength and the ability to fly, and their feathered wings are dark in color.
Asmodians are generous and fiercely loyal to their own. Asmodians would sooner give their lives in battle than see the life of a comrade taken away. They do not think twice before fighting ferociously against outsiders, showing little or no mercy against Elyos especially.
Asmodians live in the upper half of Atreia, known as Asmodae. Their capital city is Pandaemonium. They follow the Shedim Lords, the five Empyrean Lords ordered by Siel and Israphel to protect the upper foundation of the Tower of Eternity, which is now known as the Tower of Darkness.
As usual the pinkys are the goodies and the darkies are the baddies.
Posts
There are 4 starting classes that differentiate at level 10 into 8 more classes (you can't remain a base class, sorry).
Warriors -> Templar or Gladiator
Scout -> Ranger or Assassin
Mage -> Sorcerer or Spiritualist
Priest -> Cleric or Chanter
Wat?
Ok. To break it down (stolen from Transporter, clicky for more info):
Gladiator
Best Description: Gilgamesh.
Alternate description: Mortal Strike Warrior who can wield a shitton of different weapons, but never a sheild, for that is not MANLY. Good armor, good offensive capabilities.
Templar
Best Description: YOU WILL HAVE ON IN YOUR GROUP
Alternate Description: Tank. Not really much else to be said.
Ranger:
Best description: HAAAHAHAHA FUCKYOU MAGES
Alternate Description: They shoot arrows to make people die, from a distance. Especially mages, ESPECIALLY mages. Can kite virtually anything down if you're good save for a Chanter or Templar due to their stupidly high armor/healing abilities.
Assassin
Best Description: CRAAWWLING IIN MY SKIIIIN, THESE WOOUNS THEY WILLL NOT HEAAAALLLLLL
Alternate description: A blend of WoW Rogues, and Final Fantasy XI's theif class. If you expose your back to them, you're fucked unless you're not a high armor class. Highest Meele DPS in the game, but also the most fragile.
Sorcerer:
Best description: HA I HOPE YOU HAVE BURN HEALS
ALternate Description: Glass Cannon. All is well with the world.
Spiritmaster:
Best Description: Wait this isn't FF XI
Alternate Description: A summoner, with dots like a warlock. Who can also turn into an Elemental and rapefuck anyone within a Twenty Mile radius.
Cleric:
Do you really have to ask, really? Healbitch, rolled by girlfriends who are dragged into MMO's everywhere.
Chanter:
Best Description: YOU SPOONY BARD!
Alternate Description: A Priest, kind of, with a sheild, who loves to moonlight seedy bars on the weekend singing. Buffs/moderate heals all up ins.
Here is some video goodness. These are videos discussing the game design and whatnot with videos of story/pvp/pve.
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
Go here to post up what characters you are playing if you're in the guilds:
Want some screenshots? Well I'm just going to link you to the main site. They're quite good but they're embedded in the flash page.
http://na.aiononline.com/en/media/screenshots/?src=hdr
The game is quite probably the prettiest MMO on the block and your chracter will looks pretty damn nice even in the shittiest gear.
Speaking of that, and this is ultra cool: You can alter the look of any of your gear to match others. What? Say you have boots that are sweet but your chestplate looks like dogshit. Well, instead of looking like a clown like you do in many MMO's when you have mismatched gear, you can pay a fee to have all your gear conform to the style of the rest, while maintaining their stats and stuff. So there's no excuse for not looking badass.
Are you gonna clean it up?
There's not even a link to the guildlaunch forum or any info on servers/legions.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Tomorrow, yeah. I'm going to bed now.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
And now I totally am going to bed.
These dates are only valid if you are pre-ordered.
Pre-select is on the 18th. This allows you to log in to the character creation module ONLY, reserve names and spend 48 hours twiddling with the eighty-billion sliders that make up the character creator in the game. Yuo cannot log in to play (yet).
Headstart is on the 20th. This is when you can actually log in those characters you created two days ago and start playing.
Official release is on the 22nd. This is where it really gets fucked-up. If you pre-ordered, unless you have a physical retail box in your hands, your headstart account will be closed and inaccessible. You will not be able to play without entering a retail code, even if you pre-ordered the game in March, pre-ordered a Collector's Edition, or gave a blowjob to the lead designer at the Launch Party during PAX. Note that people who purchased the game online (from NCsoft) are considered to have pre-PURCHASED the game, which is somehow different from pre-ordering. Pre-purchasers will continue playing as if nothing happened, while those of us who pre-ordered (from amazon, gamestop, or bestbuy) are going to be left with unplayable accounts until UPS decides to grace us with the box we ordered oh-so long ago. (I don't know the status of the preorders purchased through steam; someone else can field that issue.)
EDIT: New patch btw. Beta now ends at 2:00am CDT on Monday according to the site.
Patch adds a bunch of balance crap, and some last minute updates:
The rest of the notes are here if anyone cares:
http://powerwiki.na.aiononline.com/aion/1.5.0.5%20Patch%20Notes%20-%2009/12/09
The end of beta note on the main site:
I hope there's a cool end of beta event. World ending and all that shit.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
UI/Menu stuff - A lot of it is personal taste but I find these things help.
Under Game options:
Uncheck "Your Name"
Check "Display Monster Name"
Check "Show Extra Quickbar 3" (2 also becomes really useful when you get a lot more skills)
Check "Fix Compass on North" (I hate it when my minimap is all over the place, disorients me)
UNCHECK GO TO AION WEBSITE AT EXIT This seriously shouldn't even be there at all.
Change Overlay Map Transparency to 50% or 75% if you're having a hard time seeing it at 50%
Turn UI size to .80
Turn UI Style to HUD Top
Set "Your Status Bar" to Hide
Check "Display Number on Status Bar"
Change Chat Font Size to Small
Change Max Camera Distance to Max.
Under Sound Options at the bottom:
Uncheck Use Battle BGM
*I love the music in this game. Every bit I've encountered so far has been fantastic. Except the battle music, it is terrible terrible terrible and it interrupts the wonderful music.
Outside of that some commonly encountered questions for general gameplay:
"X" puts you in and out of combat. yes, even if you're not attacking anything. You will often find that you are "stuck" in combat after defeating enemies; just hit X. *THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU WILL ATTACK* It just means you're in "combat" for combat purposes.
"C" sets you to autoattack. Alternately right click your target. For casters simply casting a spell doesn't put you into attack mode like it does for physical dps. If you throw a fireball you still have to right click or hit C to go into auto-attack
"," sets you to rest. This is how you quickly recover HP/MP without using bandages/potions. Alternately if you push "K" to bring up your skill menu you can drag the rest icon under "actions" to your quickbar.
Shift-Z swaps weapon sets. Like above you can also use an icon.
Hold Shift and right click to auto loot all. This doesn't work on quest items in the world for some reason. Quest items on mobs, yes.
Flying - dont expect "Spacebar" to do what you expect. Unlike most MMO's that you can fly in it does not increase your altitude. It sets you to auto-glide which is actually fairly terrible and I don't recommend it. Someone with more experence might enlighten us to its purpose.
R - Ascends, F - Descends. Alternately if you hold the right mouse button while you're flying you have full manual control and can fly in all directions in that manner; I heartily recommend doing it this way.
Generic gameplay tips:
"J" opens your quest log. Check boxes to track quests on your screen.
When you're viewing quest text, if you see a BLUE word you can click it to find more information.
At the bottom of this info window there's a "CLEAR" and "LOCATE" button. Locate will put a marker on your map and will tell you what area that thing is in. Not always though, some quest items are 'hidden' and you have to find them yourselves from the general quest hints (alternately ask in /1 like everyone else all day. Where is Mankriks wife?) Clear is supposed to clear the marker from your map but it doesn't always.
In the starting areas, 1-10, if you see a resource node (plant, ore, etc) you should stop and grab it. Not only will it help to start out at a decent gathering skill (gets transferred to the "ascended" version at 10, can't recall the name), if you do alchemy or smithing, it helps to come in with a pile of herbs/ore. It's not manditory but it just helps and you get a bit of xp per successful pick, most nodes have 2-3 picks, and it doesn't take too long.
Hmm..that's all I can think of right now. Nothing huge, just a few pointers that hopefully answer some questions before they need to be asked. These were a lot of things that I stumbled over at first, so I figured why not.
Oh. The cube is just north of the cauldron on the ground by the northern edge of the mines.
I'm not telling you where Tutty is
Aion Armory Is useful
Aion Wikia Is also useful but seems to be missing quite a bit that the Aion Armory has; it just has some things laid out better, like zone quest organization and whatnot.
EDIT: Also they changed commonly used hotkeys for no apparent reason.
Bags = "I" (inventory)
Quests = "J" (no clue)
Skills = "K" (No clue)
Character sheet = "P" (Player)
"B" Does not open your bags. It turns on your power stones if you have any equipped. If you're not paying attention and try to open your bags sometime using B and don't hit it again you can blow through a lot of power stones without even noticing.
Map = "M"
Map Overlay (ala most dungeon crawlers) = "N"
EDIT2: Blue arrows are quests, yellow are story missions. When you're doing the noob zone, do everything before you do the ascended mission.
Also use your titles. yes, many are stupid but they give stat buffs. I think you can turn them showing off in the menu anyway if it bugs you having everyone being a "tree hugger".
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Someone got paid to use 'belies' incorrectly.
Seriously though beautiful game, can't wait to pick it up and give it a twirl.
tumblr | instagram | twitter | steam
Edit: Also, are templars any use in PVP or are they that class that is awful 1v1 and ignored in groups until everyone else is dead?
Anyway, StuffGuy someone posted in the last thread (I'd find it but I'm in a hurry atm) that server populations on the Asian servers are about dead even. It might not play out that way on our servers but that remains to be seen. I think it'll be fine though.
Can't answer you about templars but I'm sure someone can.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
lol, that really bugged me how it filtered out parts of words.
Get hopping people. I'm going to need good numbers on a server selection if I'm going to issue a challenge to PvP or CAD to be our opposing force.
http://paa-aion.guildlaunch.com
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
They won the recent 1v1 tournament in Korea. They are at the bottom of the priority list in group PVP, but definitely have some annoying abilities.
This was before patch 1.5.
Nothing except a seething, base hatred of the depraved Asmodian vermin and a desire, nay a compulsion, to lend your sword to their reckoning.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Cool. I look forward to chilling with my glorious sun-blessed comrades come the 22nd. Or the 20th, for you Head Start folks. Holla!
tumblr | instagram | twitter | steam
I prefer west because well, I'm in the west but eh. I'll try whatever. If my schedule consistently doesn't match up with everyone playing from PA there maybe I'll just do Asmodean or something.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
The Assassin is actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be, and I don't even have the rune carving skills slotted in yet.
The Asmodean faction side is every bit as awful as everyone says, however. Every single design decision was made in the way that does not "hail" me at all.
Filters -> Brightness -> Dark-n-Brooding? Check.
Fat otters and cat people for enemies instead of super-awesome LotR-style trolls? Check.
Even the Abyss Gate thinger in Altgard forest looks bad to me compared to Vertreon - like somebody dropped their Marduk base from Macross II on top of the town. Terrible!
Sometimes, when I go forth into the Abyss and slay our enemy, I imagine I might feel a momentary twinge of pity for the Asmodean filth as our blades sunder them; this brief glimpse into their "world" will help to keep that useless emotion suppressed. For the light!
Your Ad Here! Reasonable Rates!
I could really do without the tails/beards that grow from Asmo backs. Cant imagine who thought that would be cool. Maybe if they were lizardlike tails instead of pony tails.
Asmos are all just half pony half monkey monsters.
And that is why I am making one.
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
More fun being the underdog, than part of the million strong "me too!" crowd :P
NOOOOOO!!! Well this sucks. I can't play Elyos. Everything from their city, to their quest line, to their lack of cool lore in the library irritates me. Their eyes don't even glow!
Besides playing an Elyos is the number one cause of irritable bowel syndrome. Think of those around you. Pick Asmodian.
Also as i got the preorder im wondering if any of you did aswell? looking forward to see you all in the abyss.
Personally I'm going Elyos, have tried rolling Asmo a few times now and it just doesn't work for me. Not sure if it's the dark world, the back hair, or what, but I just can't do it.