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Although the way they run sideways in slow motion is hilarious, I think I can forgive them. That is some fancy eight-foot-long-and-two-and-a-half-wide-swords-woman-or-possibly-man-ship. I feel guilty saying that, games with fancy animations have this unclean "you will drop a planet on a bunny rabbit and he WILL save for half damage after three hundred hours of play" vibe. Even if they claim that this is not the case. Especially.
It's a trap, isn't it?
You can't fool me with your awesome looking combos.
What? Only 1 class change? And there are only 8?!?
Lineage 2 had more than double of that, and its years older.
May be the 8 class will further branch out into something else?
Knowing NCSoft, I'll buy a copy for full price, play for 3 years +, and just to quit because of all the unregulated botters and RMT.
firekiun on
PSN ID : Kiunch
I play Blazblue, Soul Calibur 4, Street Fighter 4 and soon Tekken 6... yeah... so add me if you want to play any of those.
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spookymuffin( ° ʖ ° )Puyallup WA Registered Userregular
edited February 2009
I hope they throw in some new classes once in a while, like they're doing with CoX. I hate when a game comes out, and they just add content content content, and don't give you any new options on how to deal with the new content. I don't mind doing similar quests/missions over and over, if you give me new ways to complete them.
spookymuffin on
PSN: MegaSpooky // 3DS: 3797-6276-7138 Wii U NNID: MegaSpooky
Hello Everyone, I'd like to thank you for your patience while I collected feedback, comments and suggestions from various Aion communities' across Europe and North America. I used this information to create a list of questions that I felt needed to be addressed right away by our development team. This list does not cover all of your questions, I realize this, but I wanted to provide what information is available at present. The rest I am still working on. I have spent the last week discussing the current state of morale within the community and the general excitement for the game with our production team and after reviewing the community report, one member in particular wanted to address you all directly. I would like to introduce you to Lance Stites, Executive Producer of NCsoft West's Game Production Studio.
Greetings to all, As Executive Producer, my responsibilities include preparing and supporting the launch and ongoing operations of product for the "Western" market--including North America and Europe. I've worked with NCsoft since 2001, including 5 years in the Austin office and after a brief time away from the company I returned to spend almost a year in the European office. I've worked to launch or support multiple products or expansions, including the Lineage and City of Heroes franchises. As you've probably seen, NCsoft West is undergoing restructuring which involves the relocation of certain key staff. We're building a dedicated production studio to support titles like Aion and the Lineage franchise. We've added Lani "Liv" Blazier as our Aion Community Manager recently and she is already taking an extremely active role within the community. Within the MMO community, this role is of vital importance and great to have someone who understands the importance of the player base and will be a tireless advocate of the community needs. Liv has spent the past several days gathering information and answers that are important to the community. We want to continue this open dialogue with the players and look forward to more as we move toward and past our Aion launch. We really have an exciting time ahead of us in regards to ongoing updates to existing products, new releases on the horizon, and closer cooperation and coordination between the European and North American territories. Cordially yours, Lance Stites Executive Producer, Game Production Studio NCsoft West
The Community Team is committed to listening and responding to your needs. Please find below the answers to 5 questions that I wanted to make you had answers to sooner, rather than later.
1) When will Aion be released in North America/Europe? We expect to ship Aion in NCsoft West territories in the fall of 2009.
2) Why is localization taking so long? The localization effort is enormous, with a vast amount of content. Aion is not simply being translated, a team of dedicated content writers are re-creating the written dialogue and content to provide AAA quality and to ensure that it is culturally relevant for our audience. We are going to do this launch "right" rather than fast.
3) Has a date been set for our Preview Event? While we are not ready to release specific details regarding the Preview Event, we can tell you that participants will include those who signed up at last year at FJV, PAX and Leipzig. We will also be extending invites to long time NCsoft customers and dedicated legions. As we get closer, we will be offering more opportunities for fans to get signed up for this exclusive event.
4) Will there be community support for Europe? Absolutely. We realize that many in the community were surprised with our announcement regarding the consolidation of the North American and European operations. We are deeply committed to our European community and will have native speaking Community Coordinators for our supported languages (English, German & French).
5) Will there be servers for each region? We will have servers physically located both in Europe and North America for launch.
We know you have more questions and they are being addressed. My goal is to have another update for your within the next few weeks.
NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
I hope Answer 2 isnt just blowing smoke. It really is one thing to just translate words/meaning but another for cultural relevance. Working Designs was good with understanding that, but the execution was poor given that they replaced Japanese/Asian culture with (then) current Western pop culture.
I might have to try this out for a couple of months.
Nocren on
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spookymuffin( ° ʖ ° )Puyallup WA Registered Userregular
edited February 2009
Fall? Ugh. I hope they do this right, I would hate to wait all that time to play it for 2 weeks and hate it.
spookymuffin on
PSN: MegaSpooky // 3DS: 3797-6276-7138 Wii U NNID: MegaSpooky
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
MAn Fall? Ah well seems games that tend to be completed and work well get pushed back further and further. Maybe when it comes out it will be ready and not have much bugs. I think NCSoft does decently with that.
kidsol on
Rift: Sunrest - Ayaname (Warrior) - Steam: We Are 138 - XBL: Kidsol
Well, hopefully they'll fire up a beta a few months before launch to work out some language bugs.
That way at least some people 'in the know' will be able to fill in all of the unlucky saps who don't make it into beta, assuming they don't mind violating the NDA. Hopefully this will answer some of the endgame / pvp questions.
Fryhole on
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spookymuffin( ° ʖ ° )Puyallup WA Registered Userregular
What's up people. Infrequent poster here, but I do enjoy me some G&T browsing. Anyhow, not sure if anyone is paying attention to this game anymore, but it recently went open beta in China for server stress testing. I signed up to check it out and I must say this game is pretty impressive. Anyone who's seen a few screenshots of this game already know it's beautiful, so I won't really dwell on that (except later when I post screenshots).
I'll only touch on a few things quickly here because it's 5 AM and I want to sleep (damn insomnia). The gameplay is similar to any other MMO really. Fetch quests, mob killing quests, message delivery quests, story missions, you know the deal. The combat is simple, but it doesn't make the game itself easy if that makes any sense. The combat is also pretty fun because it is paced well. It's not even close to slow, but it's also not so fast that you'll be lost in a scrolling chat log of numbers and status effects. I have purposely avoided reading too many quest or mission logs beyond the bare minimum to save the lore experience for when it launches in the west so I can't say too much about the story so far. What I can say is that there is a good mix of reading logs and cutscenes in the game for variety. In short, anyone that's played a MMO in the last decade should feel right at home. To tell you the truth, I couldn't figure out what I found so captivating about this game at first. Then I realized that this game has taken all the good things from previous MMOs, built on them, and polished it twice. It sounds like just another MMO suckling on the WoW success tit, but now that I've played it, I see it has great potential. Of course the game has flaws, which I will write on later, but for a fresh MMO it's off to a good start.
Something that surprised me is the BGM of this game is epic and incredibly well done. The music fits the areas in the game perfectly so far. One other good thing to note, you don't need an ULTRA rig to enjoy this game in all of its beauty. This game runs like a dream. Anyways, I'm done rambling for now. Time for some hi res action (spoilered for the huge):
My cleric in her early days
Part of a playable cutscene
An assassin character I made, but abandoned because everyone plays asssasin
Flying around on my cleric, I ran into this large fella
Can you tell who is about to get fucking owned in this one?
Posing in new badass looking armor that is not actually badass
Flight travel
A city aptly named Pandemonium
At first I thought this was a good pic, but now I realize it just sucks
Something about this pic makes me want to trip on some shrooms
Back with more soon. Feel free to ask any questions and I'll try to answer. The beta ends Wednesday, so not a lot of time left.
Tre on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
The single biggest selling point this game is going to have over WoW is how absolutely beautiful it is. WoW has its own unique loveable style, but this game is just plain beautiful.
If the gameplay mechanics don't suck ass that's definately a bonus.
I've been playing this game in Korea for a couple months now, so I can give my impressions as a level 30 enchanter.
The first twenty levels of the game are pretty straight forward. Slightly grindy, but mostly a straight-forward quest / turn-in / quest / turn-in. After that, the quests either don't scale well or there's not enough of them, so although there are quests to do, you will be grinding. Not only will you be grinding experience, but you will be grinding your gathering skill (a skill that lets you gather everything, except "Ode"), your "Ode" gathering skill and any or all craft skills you choose. I've got one craftskill, armorsmithing, and it has stolen hours and hours. Crafting is boring, but when you craft, you have a chance to get an "improved" version of the item you were making and those are worth a good bit of money, so there's the incentive.
Partying is not necessary except for party quests and areas that involve killing monsters of a similar level, but higher difficulty, similar to WoW's "elite" mobs versus regular mobs. However, there are times when partying for experience pays off - but again, you'll be grinding. The max for a group is 6 people, but there are "forces" (raids) that combine a bunch of groups. I've never been a part of one so I don't know how many groups join them, I'd assume 4-5. Also, "dungeons" in the lower levels are non-instanced difficult-mod ridden areas that have named monsters on spawn timers. No matter what your opinion is on instances, they have a certain charm that you learn to appreciate when you don't have them.
The combat would be fun, if it wasn't so drawn out. It's like a slow version of WoW, with less abilities. The heralded "combos" system is really just a cover name for "chained abilities." Basically, you use an attack and it will let you "combo" your choice of another attack after wards, letting you choose from skills you've already learned. Combat in a party basically consists of tanking and spanking 1-3 mobs at a time and there's less synergy between party members' skills than WoW.
As far as classes go, there's 1 tank, 1 healer, and everyone else is either hybrid or pure dps. The gladiator can tank, but it's very obvious that he's not as meatshieldy as the templar, and the enchanter can heal, but has about 50-75% the effectiveness than the cleric does. The mage characters can both CC, though the sorcerer is better at it (and provides better DPS from what I can tell). There's a "Stigma" system that allows characters to choose a set of 4-5 abilities from their classes list to differentiate themselves from other players, but the list isn't too big and most everyone chooses the same skills anyways.
PvP combat doesn't have a lot of strategy to it, though I'm going to guess that will be different with a server full of Westerners playing. However, from what I've seen here, it's a fight for DPS and it's everyone for themselves. That said, that PvP aspect is similar to WoW on a PvP server, live and let live or gank and frustrate them. There's objective-based zones with capturable forts, but I've yet to participate in that. PvP is also not balanced very well as there are classes that are good at it and classes that are bad at it.
The music and environment in this game is very pretty, sure, but the characters look retarded wearing the armor they've got. There's just too much shiny. It's like the guy who decided all upper tier shoulders and weapons in WoW needed to look like fireworks displays designed the entire armor collection for this game. Not to mention, you really can't tell how they look until you zoom in real close for a pretty picture, since you're generally zoomed far enough out that all of the armor just blends together.
Flight: You can fly, but only in certain areas. For the first thirty levels of the game, you won't be flying anywhere except for the starting "towns" in each zone where you grind your experience while you quest. And when you are flying, it's usually to mine "Ode," another one of the various grinds you can partake in. However, in monster-zones, you can glide with your wings, starting at level 10. It can provide short cuts and safe passage down cliffs, so that's nice.
Character creation is neat - everyone's the same race, essentially, but you can alter your character to look like an elf, a dwarf, or other humanoid creatures. Everyone over here just makes very tiny characters... not gnome-tiny, but "hold still so i can click on you to buff you" tiny. Apparently they think it's "cute."
Basically, if you like Lineage or other Korean grind games, this is the most popular MMO in Korea, so have a blast. If you're looking for a WoW-killer, stay away. WoW is light years ahead of this game in every department except perhaps music and environment artwork - and even that is arguable. Why do I play? All of my friends play and I couldn't convert them to WoW.
If you have any other questions, just ask and I can find the answers for you.
The single biggest selling point this game is going to have over WoW is how absolutely beautiful it is. WoW has its own unique loveable style, but this game is just plain beautiful.
If the gameplay mechanics don't suck ass that's definately a bonus.
The gameplay mechanics are no worse than WoW. Personally, I have way more fun playing this than WoW. That may be because the community has been great so far even though I can barely communicate with them as opposed the douche fest in WoW.
Nice update, re-sparked my interest in this one. Any idea how grouping/parties will play out?
Parties can have up to 6 people. You can also have alliances, I'm not sure on the max, but I think it's 18 (24 at the most). At this early point in the game though, there is not really any optimal setup nor is it necessary to have all 6 spots filled. For me, someone who spent years playing FFXI, waiting for that optimal 6 man team just to get some EXP, this is a plus. A couple of days ago I teamed up with a sorcerer because the area we were in was just a little to hard for either of us to solo. Once we teamed up, we were an unstoppable killing force tearing through everything in sight with practically zero down time.
Depends on what you mean by grindy. To me all MMOs have to have some kind of a grind, as it just seems like the nature of the beast. If you're asking if it's necessary to form a party just for the sake of killing mobs over and over to gain EXP, then no. There are a ton of quests available (so far) that I've never had to form a party for the sole purpose of killing mobs. However, do I have to kill a number of mobs to complete some of those quests? You bet your ass. I haven't had to really grind for gold either. Quests have been providing some nice gold rewards, as has selling animal parts loot, as has getting nice weapon and armor drops. I had around 50,000 gold, then bought a whole bunch of new armor and socket stones and was down to 7,000. I thought I was screwed, but by the next day I was up to 60,000 quickly.
How grindy is it, how soloable is it, what's the max group size, done anything with combos yet?
To me, it's not really that grindy like some other Korean developed MMOs (Ragnarok Online ). In fact the grind actually seems to be less than WoW. Granted, I did not play WoW for long but I definitely feel like I'm progressing faster than I ever did in WoW. So far, it has be extremely soloable. Although, I'm playing cleric for the most part which is a very good soloing class (actually, just good class period), but I've seen every class solo with little difficulty. I must admit though, the recent region I started questing in, mobs have been handing me my ass where before I was usually handing out asses in places that were 2-3 levels above me. Combos are simple to perform, but fun to do. You start out with a level 1 chain skill to initiate the combo. Once you perform that action, there are level 2 chain skills that become available that do very nice damage. I believe there are level 3 chain skills that have some randomness associated with them. Sometimes they are available after a level 2 chain skill, and sometime they aren't. I'm not 100% sure on this one because I haven't learned any. I'm not sure if it's possible to skillchain your combo with another person's combo to create some sort of extra damage, but that's something I would really like to see. It would certainly add a nice dimension to party play.
Going to play some today and I'll get some more screenshots for you guys.
Do you have to form full parties to get EXP or can you do a duo or trio and still get good EXP? I've never played an MMO where crafting isn't boring, but is this the primary gold making avenue? Usually, I go the route of selling rare gears from boss mobs, but that's pretty much not an option if the best gears are crafted. Flying to me is a bonus. I really don't care if I can use it or not, but I can see how people would be upset at its limited use considering it's supposed to be one of the main attractions of the game I guess.
I agree with a lot of things you said Harlon, but shouldn't a game that's been out almost 5 years and has gone through 2 expansions be ahead of a game that just released in Korea not too long ago? Also, what can you tell us about the grind situation post 20? Why does every new MMO have to be a WoW killer? I understand WoW is wildly successful, is a comparison stick, and every MMO developer aspires to achieve the numbers WoW has. Let's be realistic, Blizzard didn't achieve 12 million subs overnight.
On average how many abilities would you say you use in combat?
In solo combat I hit 2 keys on the keyboard and click on 1. In a normal fight, I use a total of 6 abilities, but 2 are the first steps for "combos" and the following 4 are the actual "combos." This is at level 30/50. If things get rough, I might heal, or toss a HoT on myself, which would bring abilities used up to 8. I could potentially use 12 or so, but that would include rebuffing myself - and that would be the absolute max of all my abilities. It's not bad having few abilities used in combat, since you don't generally use all of your abilities in WoW or other MMOs as well, but where it does hurt is that you don't have very many "outs" or situational abilities.
Do you have to form full parties to get EXP or can you do a duo or trio and still get good EXP? I've never played an MMO where crafting isn't boring, but is this the primary gold making avenue?
The best group I've been in was a trio with me and 2 damage dealers. We were a few levels higher than what we were fighting and it was non-stop experience, making us good money as we were getting quite a few rare items from the named we were killed. I've made most of my gold from selling items from named monsters and from gathering. That said, this game treats crafted as though it's on the same quality as loot gathered from monsters, and thus it is very nice when you can craft those artifact armor / weapons and be just as good as someone with raid loot.
I wanted to add to this - crafting is usually slightly boring in most games. It is excruciatingly boring in Aion. You gain a skill point roughly 1/10 of the time you make the most difficult object you can make, and it takes 3~10 seconds per attempt. I've gotten to the point where I just leave it going while I take a shower or grab lunch. However, you do get experience while doing it, however small, so there is a little reward there.
Also, what can you tell us about the grind situation post 20?
At level 23, I finished all of my quests by 1/4 of the level in and spent the next 4-6 hours grinding to level.
At level 27, I quested the entirety of the level and felt no grind.
At level 43, My friend has quested and grinded experience for, what I have personally witnessed, 12 hours and isn't halfway to 44 yet.
I agree with a lot of things you said Harlon, but shouldn't a game that's been out almost 5 years and has gone through 2 expansions be ahead of a game that just released in Korea not too long ago? Why does every new MMO have to be a WoW killer? I understand WoW is wildly successful, is a comparison stick, and every MMO developer aspires to achieve the numbers WoW has. Let's be realistic, Blizzard didn't achieve 12 million subs overnight.
I make that comparison because there are people who don't want to play WoW, but are waiting for "the next game." I'm one of these people who jumps ship to the next biggest, greatest game - and I didn't want these people to get their hopes up. This game is Lineage III. It completely forgoes a lot of progress that Western MMOs have made, and is just an upgrade as the next big Korean MMO. It's a fun game that is full of grind and lacking substance in many areas, but it's pretty and I like hovering. If you liked Lineage, you'll love this one.
That said, this game treats crafted as though it's on the same quality as loot gathered from monsters, and thus it is very nice when you can craft those artifact armor / weapons and be just as good as someone with raid loot.
Is this really true at max level too? If so, that alone may be enough reason to dump WoW. Are there any English speakers who are at max level and might know for certain?
Few things are more frustrating in an MMO than not being able to get a better weapon due to not winning the rolls.
Is this really true at max level too? If so, that alone may be enough reason to dump WoW.
I just did a search in an item database website and it compared to the top items found through raiding / tokens. In fact, the best weapon in the game is crafted.
unfortunately looks like another lineage 2, a game that you buy just to see how pretty the world is until you realize the gameplay really sucks.
I know I keep spouting that it is Lineage III, but the game play isn't that bad. It's a less immersive party experience than EQ, WoW models, but it is still fun. Just very grindy.
I just did a search in an item database website and it compared to the top items found through raiding / tokens. In fact, the best weapon in the game is crafted.
Oh, wow. Thank you for the information. Can the best crafted stuff be sold to others?
Few things are more frustrating in an MMO than not being able to get a better weapon due to not winning the rolls.
Try EQ2, then. Crafted gear is pretty much the best gear you can get, and crafting itself is actually really fun if you're into crafting.
If you're of the opinion that crafting should be "push button, wait 10 seconds" then it might not be for you, though.
Oh, wow. Thank you for the information. Can the best crafted stuff be sold to others?
From my experiences, the only "bind on pickup" stuff is what you get as quest rewards. Everything else is generally "bind on equip."
Try EQ2, then. Crafted gear is pretty much the best gear you can get, and crafting itself is actually really fun if you're into crafting. If you're of the opinion that crafting should be "push button, wait 10 seconds" then it might not be for you, though.
If you want "push button, wait 10 seconds," play Aion. It's so terribly boring it'll make you tear your eyes out.
So how is the pee vee pee?
If you're a ranger, gladiator, or cleric, it's the bees knees. As an enchanter (hybrid healer / buffer / dps), I do very well - but I'm under the impression that it's because I'm used to a western style of PvP from games like UO, DAoC, WoW. It's hard to tell how Westernizing this game will change the PvP, but I would be willing to bet that it will be drastically different.
Aion = Lineage 3?
Air or Land?
Aion is not Lineage III, I just use that as a comparison so that people can understand that this game is very much Korean and continues the Korean trends, making them better and ignoring all of the progress that Western games have made in this genre.
99.9% of the game is played on land with a little bit of flying added as a "piece of flare," if you will.
I'm still trying to find some info on the endgame for this. Also, I'm pretty sure in a dev interview they said things are being changed for the 'western' audience, and this was above & beyond the obvious language translations. Maybe some of the mid to higher level quests will award more experience. It's all numbers in a database anyways right.
But it's all means to an end - is this going to have huge boss killing, ala WoW, or is it simply the non-instanced PvEvP keep siege in the middle area where you can fly constantly? Are there any instances at all?
But it's all means to an end - is this going to have huge boss killing, ala WoW, or is it simply the non-instanced PvEvP keep siege in the middle area where you can fly constantly? Are there any instances at all?
There are instances, I believe - if not just one. From what I've seen of other people playing the end game, they all raid the same instance, which reminds me a bit of WoW in that it's trash -> trash -> boss -> trash -> trash -> big boss - and each boss requires a different strategy. The middle area where you can fly constantly isn't heavily used, it's a great place for grinding and getting expensive crafting ingredients - but you're consistently under the threat of being ganked.
There seems to be a real lack of end game from what I have seen, but I'll ask around and get back to you with a confident answer.
Also, one thing I learned today - there's armor sets that you can get in the game that provide set bonuses. In order to acquire every piece, you must raise separate characters to the level of the armor set and have them all accept separate pieces, trading them to your main character. That's 5 characters for a full set, which then unlocks a quest where you can get a matching weapon. Are there any Western games that have something like that? It sounds ridiculous to me.
Posts
LoL: failboattootoot
Although the way they run sideways in slow motion is hilarious, I think I can forgive them. That is some fancy eight-foot-long-and-two-and-a-half-wide-swords-woman-or-possibly-man-ship. I feel guilty saying that, games with fancy animations have this unclean "you will drop a planet on a bunny rabbit and he WILL save for half damage after three hundred hours of play" vibe. Even if they claim that this is not the case. Especially.
It's a trap, isn't it?
You can't fool me with your awesome looking combos.
I'm on to you.
Lineage 2 had more than double of that, and its years older.
May be the 8 class will further branch out into something else?
Knowing NCSoft, I'll buy a copy for full price, play for 3 years +, and just to quit because of all the unregulated botters and RMT.
I play Blazblue, Soul Calibur 4, Street Fighter 4 and soon Tekken 6... yeah... so add me if you want to play any of those.
Wii U NNID: MegaSpooky
source: http://www.aiononline.com/us/news/general_news/a_letter_to_our_fans.html
I might have to try this out for a couple of months.
Wii U NNID: MegaSpooky
That way at least some people 'in the know' will be able to fill in all of the unlucky saps who don't make it into beta, assuming they don't mind violating the NDA. Hopefully this will answer some of the endgame / pvp questions.
New zone tour up. I like how they're doing little updates once in a while to make sure no one forgets about the game.
Wii U NNID: MegaSpooky
I want to be inside of it
so badly
Also, I lolled at the OP.
Was funny, would read again.
New zone tutorial. I really like the music they used.
Every time I watch Aion videos, I want to be in the places they show.
Wii U NNID: MegaSpooky
I'll only touch on a few things quickly here because it's 5 AM and I want to sleep (damn insomnia). The gameplay is similar to any other MMO really. Fetch quests, mob killing quests, message delivery quests, story missions, you know the deal. The combat is simple, but it doesn't make the game itself easy if that makes any sense. The combat is also pretty fun because it is paced well. It's not even close to slow, but it's also not so fast that you'll be lost in a scrolling chat log of numbers and status effects. I have purposely avoided reading too many quest or mission logs beyond the bare minimum to save the lore experience for when it launches in the west so I can't say too much about the story so far. What I can say is that there is a good mix of reading logs and cutscenes in the game for variety. In short, anyone that's played a MMO in the last decade should feel right at home. To tell you the truth, I couldn't figure out what I found so captivating about this game at first. Then I realized that this game has taken all the good things from previous MMOs, built on them, and polished it twice. It sounds like just another MMO suckling on the WoW success tit, but now that I've played it, I see it has great potential. Of course the game has flaws, which I will write on later, but for a fresh MMO it's off to a good start.
Something that surprised me is the BGM of this game is epic and incredibly well done. The music fits the areas in the game perfectly so far. One other good thing to note, you don't need an ULTRA rig to enjoy this game in all of its beauty. This game runs like a dream. Anyways, I'm done rambling for now. Time for some hi res action (spoilered for the huge):
Back with more soon. Feel free to ask any questions and I'll try to answer. The beta ends Wednesday, so not a lot of time left.
If the gameplay mechanics don't suck ass that's definately a bonus.
LoL: failboattootoot
The first twenty levels of the game are pretty straight forward. Slightly grindy, but mostly a straight-forward quest / turn-in / quest / turn-in. After that, the quests either don't scale well or there's not enough of them, so although there are quests to do, you will be grinding. Not only will you be grinding experience, but you will be grinding your gathering skill (a skill that lets you gather everything, except "Ode"), your "Ode" gathering skill and any or all craft skills you choose. I've got one craftskill, armorsmithing, and it has stolen hours and hours. Crafting is boring, but when you craft, you have a chance to get an "improved" version of the item you were making and those are worth a good bit of money, so there's the incentive.
Partying is not necessary except for party quests and areas that involve killing monsters of a similar level, but higher difficulty, similar to WoW's "elite" mobs versus regular mobs. However, there are times when partying for experience pays off - but again, you'll be grinding. The max for a group is 6 people, but there are "forces" (raids) that combine a bunch of groups. I've never been a part of one so I don't know how many groups join them, I'd assume 4-5. Also, "dungeons" in the lower levels are non-instanced difficult-mod ridden areas that have named monsters on spawn timers. No matter what your opinion is on instances, they have a certain charm that you learn to appreciate when you don't have them.
The combat would be fun, if it wasn't so drawn out. It's like a slow version of WoW, with less abilities. The heralded "combos" system is really just a cover name for "chained abilities." Basically, you use an attack and it will let you "combo" your choice of another attack after wards, letting you choose from skills you've already learned. Combat in a party basically consists of tanking and spanking 1-3 mobs at a time and there's less synergy between party members' skills than WoW.
As far as classes go, there's 1 tank, 1 healer, and everyone else is either hybrid or pure dps. The gladiator can tank, but it's very obvious that he's not as meatshieldy as the templar, and the enchanter can heal, but has about 50-75% the effectiveness than the cleric does. The mage characters can both CC, though the sorcerer is better at it (and provides better DPS from what I can tell). There's a "Stigma" system that allows characters to choose a set of 4-5 abilities from their classes list to differentiate themselves from other players, but the list isn't too big and most everyone chooses the same skills anyways.
PvP combat doesn't have a lot of strategy to it, though I'm going to guess that will be different with a server full of Westerners playing. However, from what I've seen here, it's a fight for DPS and it's everyone for themselves. That said, that PvP aspect is similar to WoW on a PvP server, live and let live or gank and frustrate them. There's objective-based zones with capturable forts, but I've yet to participate in that. PvP is also not balanced very well as there are classes that are good at it and classes that are bad at it.
The music and environment in this game is very pretty, sure, but the characters look retarded wearing the armor they've got. There's just too much shiny. It's like the guy who decided all upper tier shoulders and weapons in WoW needed to look like fireworks displays designed the entire armor collection for this game. Not to mention, you really can't tell how they look until you zoom in real close for a pretty picture, since you're generally zoomed far enough out that all of the armor just blends together.
Flight: You can fly, but only in certain areas. For the first thirty levels of the game, you won't be flying anywhere except for the starting "towns" in each zone where you grind your experience while you quest. And when you are flying, it's usually to mine "Ode," another one of the various grinds you can partake in. However, in monster-zones, you can glide with your wings, starting at level 10. It can provide short cuts and safe passage down cliffs, so that's nice.
Character creation is neat - everyone's the same race, essentially, but you can alter your character to look like an elf, a dwarf, or other humanoid creatures. Everyone over here just makes very tiny characters... not gnome-tiny, but "hold still so i can click on you to buff you" tiny. Apparently they think it's "cute."
Basically, if you like Lineage or other Korean grind games, this is the most popular MMO in Korea, so have a blast. If you're looking for a WoW-killer, stay away. WoW is light years ahead of this game in every department except perhaps music and environment artwork - and even that is arguable. Why do I play? All of my friends play and I couldn't convert them to WoW.
If you have any other questions, just ask and I can find the answers for you.
The gameplay mechanics are no worse than WoW. Personally, I have way more fun playing this than WoW. That may be because the community has been great so far even though I can barely communicate with them as opposed the douche fest in WoW.
Parties can have up to 6 people. You can also have alliances, I'm not sure on the max, but I think it's 18 (24 at the most). At this early point in the game though, there is not really any optimal setup nor is it necessary to have all 6 spots filled. For me, someone who spent years playing FFXI, waiting for that optimal 6 man team just to get some EXP, this is a plus. A couple of days ago I teamed up with a sorcerer because the area we were in was just a little to hard for either of us to solo. Once we teamed up, we were an unstoppable killing force tearing through everything in sight with practically zero down time.
Depends on what you mean by grindy. To me all MMOs have to have some kind of a grind, as it just seems like the nature of the beast. If you're asking if it's necessary to form a party just for the sake of killing mobs over and over to gain EXP, then no. There are a ton of quests available (so far) that I've never had to form a party for the sole purpose of killing mobs. However, do I have to kill a number of mobs to complete some of those quests? You bet your ass. I haven't had to really grind for gold either. Quests have been providing some nice gold rewards, as has selling animal parts loot, as has getting nice weapon and armor drops. I had around 50,000 gold, then bought a whole bunch of new armor and socket stones and was down to 7,000. I thought I was screwed, but by the next day I was up to 60,000 quickly.
To me, it's not really that grindy like some other Korean developed MMOs (Ragnarok Online
Going to play some today and I'll get some more screenshots for you guys.
I agree with a lot of things you said Harlon, but shouldn't a game that's been out almost 5 years and has gone through 2 expansions be ahead of a game that just released in Korea not too long ago? Also, what can you tell us about the grind situation post 20? Why does every new MMO have to be a WoW killer? I understand WoW is wildly successful, is a comparison stick, and every MMO developer aspires to achieve the numbers WoW has. Let's be realistic, Blizzard didn't achieve 12 million subs overnight.
This needs to be in the awesome screenshot thread. That is some cool as hell water reflection.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Wii U NNID: MegaSpooky
Damn limited webspace... Anyone know a good free hosting option that doesn't turn your images into shit? I'd like to post a lot more.
The best group I've been in was a trio with me and 2 damage dealers. We were a few levels higher than what we were fighting and it was non-stop experience, making us good money as we were getting quite a few rare items from the named we were killed. I've made most of my gold from selling items from named monsters and from gathering. That said, this game treats crafted as though it's on the same quality as loot gathered from monsters, and thus it is very nice when you can craft those artifact armor / weapons and be just as good as someone with raid loot.
I wanted to add to this - crafting is usually slightly boring in most games. It is excruciatingly boring in Aion. You gain a skill point roughly 1/10 of the time you make the most difficult object you can make, and it takes 3~10 seconds per attempt. I've gotten to the point where I just leave it going while I take a shower or grab lunch. However, you do get experience while doing it, however small, so there is a little reward there.
At level 23, I finished all of my quests by 1/4 of the level in and spent the next 4-6 hours grinding to level.
At level 27, I quested the entirety of the level and felt no grind.
At level 43, My friend has quested and grinded experience for, what I have personally witnessed, 12 hours and isn't halfway to 44 yet.
I make that comparison because there are people who don't want to play WoW, but are waiting for "the next game." I'm one of these people who jumps ship to the next biggest, greatest game - and I didn't want these people to get their hopes up. This game is Lineage III. It completely forgoes a lot of progress that Western MMOs have made, and is just an upgrade as the next big Korean MMO. It's a fun game that is full of grind and lacking substance in many areas, but it's pretty and I like hovering. If you liked Lineage, you'll love this one.
Is this really true at max level too? If so, that alone may be enough reason to dump WoW. Are there any English speakers who are at max level and might know for certain?
Few things are more frustrating in an MMO than not being able to get a better weapon due to not winning the rolls.
I know I keep spouting that it is Lineage III, but the game play isn't that bad. It's a less immersive party experience than EQ, WoW models, but it is still fun. Just very grindy.
XBL
Oh, wow. Thank you for the information. Can the best crafted stuff be sold to others?
If you're of the opinion that crafting should be "push button, wait 10 seconds" then it might not be for you, though.
Air or Land?
If you want "push button, wait 10 seconds," play Aion. It's so terribly boring it'll make you tear your eyes out.
If you're a ranger, gladiator, or cleric, it's the bees knees. As an enchanter (hybrid healer / buffer / dps), I do very well - but I'm under the impression that it's because I'm used to a western style of PvP from games like UO, DAoC, WoW. It's hard to tell how Westernizing this game will change the PvP, but I would be willing to bet that it will be drastically different.
Aion is not Lineage III, I just use that as a comparison so that people can understand that this game is very much Korean and continues the Korean trends, making them better and ignoring all of the progress that Western games have made in this genre.
99.9% of the game is played on land with a little bit of flying added as a "piece of flare," if you will.
But it's all means to an end - is this going to have huge boss killing, ala WoW, or is it simply the non-instanced PvEvP keep siege in the middle area where you can fly constantly? Are there any instances at all?
There seems to be a real lack of end game from what I have seen, but I'll ask around and get back to you with a confident answer.
Also, one thing I learned today - there's armor sets that you can get in the game that provide set bonuses. In order to acquire every piece, you must raise separate characters to the level of the armor set and have them all accept separate pieces, trading them to your main character. That's 5 characters for a full set, which then unlocks a quest where you can get a matching weapon. Are there any Western games that have something like that? It sounds ridiculous to me.