This past weekend I had the pleasure to try out the NA Aion beta. For those that don’t know, it’s an MMORPG from NCSoft with an Asian flavor of fantasy and Angel vs Demon vs Draconian type world. It’s a pretty traditional MMORPG with the biggest feature being flying. Brief overview commences:
Like all good MMO’s you start with a detailed character creation.
Archtype Selection
Starting with what you want to be. Each of these four archtypes have two classes that you’ll get to choose from upon reaching level 9. They’re pretty self-explanatory, but for those that don’t know much about MMORPGS: Warriors are tanks in a literal sense, they wear big armor and wield big weapons — their class choices are the Templar, tanking role, and Gladiator, more of a DPS role. Scouts are a DPS class focused on quick movement and fast attacks, their classes are the Ranger, a ranged damage class using a bow, and the Assassin, a close combat sneaky type. The Mage is for all your magic needs and typically fall into DPS/Support roles, their two classes are the Sorcerer, don’t know much about this one but it seems focused on ranged magic DPS, and the Spiritmaster, a pet class that summons different elemental pets. Lastly, and most importantly, is the Priests with their heals and buffs, the two Priest classes are the Cleric, seems to be the primary healer of the two but I could be wrong, and the Chanter, seems to be the primary buffer between the two. Once you’ve got your archtype selected it’s time to move on to designing your character.
Face Sliders
Face Options
Body Sliders
These three screens are basically the whole process. Starting with the head you can choose from over 40 different hairstyles (for the female characters, at least), dozens of faces, a full spectrum of colors, etc. To fine tune your character they have the sliders which let you adjust pretty much everything you could want to adjust. The body is pretty much just sliders, apart from skin color. Your character does have a voice, or will — it didn’t seem to make the transition from the Asian version yet. Once you finish up crafting your character you’re ready to be plunked down into the game world.
The game starts off in a newbie zone, you’ll be running quests from now on and doing the whole leveling thing. The story associated with the quests is quite good and worth the read — so make sure to do it at least once. As far as any unique bits of questing, about the most I can think of is the separation of general quests and main storyline — Campaign — quests. These are what drive the central story of your character through from your unknown origin to finding your memories and ascension as a Daeva. There’s some minor cut scenes and such even, it’s pretty good. It really gives you a better understanding of the world and a bit more structure as well.
Sneak Attack
During your time questing you’ll be doing a lot of combat. Combat in Aion is pretty traditional — if you’ve played World of Warcraft you know how it goes. The differences with Aion come in how they handle their chains, of which there are quite a few depending on your class. When you start a chain off the next attack in the sequence automatically takes the place of the starter in the hotkey bar — no keeping track of various hotkeys. In addition, the chains also appear on the screen near your character — a far better choice if you have multiple routes the chains can take. I will say that monsters tend to be a bit tougher in Aion than usual. You likely will die if you’re not careful and take the time to rest properly. In fact, in some of the really hard areas, you’ll see several deaths nearly every minute. It’s fairly surprising, really, considering the numerous ways characters can heal themselves. On my Gladiator, level 12-13ish by this posting, I could use the Rest emote — cheapest option and very good, but somewhat slow — the Bandage skill — uses bandages, a bit quicker but can require multiple uses if you have a lot of health — herbs — uses another material, nearly the same as bandages really, might be its replacement?, potions — most expensive option and really only useful during battle, and food that increases my regen. Priests get the benefit of healing themselves whenever they want, of course. So, plenty of options to stay alive, just make sure you start a fight you can win and keep away from aggro — basics!
Rainy Day
Have to add this in here, something I really enjoyed. There’s lots of small things your character does when in certain circumstances — such as rain, pictured here. Stand around a bit and your character will notice it’s getting rained on and pull out a large leaf to stand under. First time I saw it I really liked it, and I still enjoy it. The looks of characters haggling with merchants is another cool bit of the game.
Flying
Two more things here and I’ll be finished. The first is titles. Titles are just that, extra bits that you can attach to your name to show you’ve completed something — the only difference is that these titles also add benefits to your character. Not necessarily new, it is a nice thing to have. The second is flying. Once you’ve become a Daeva you gain your wings. These wings are fairly limited to begin with, you get a minute of flight time before having to recharge them. It seems this can be increased later on. Flying is useful to reach higher places (duh) and for gathering certain materials that float about in the sky. While I can’t go deeply into flying at the moment, I will say that it is very fun and something you’ll get to use early on in the game. It’s kinda like getting a limited flying mount at level 10, fun.
As a note, I did do quite a bit of crafting but forgot to take screenshots… sorry. I’ll see about covering that in its own post later. I think it might have to be next week, however, as the beta is likely only the weekends at this point.
Anywho, it’s fun and looks great — keep an eye on it.
*Edit: Seems the next beta test will be June 19th… a bit under two weeks from now. So I probably will do a short post on the crafting tomorrow without the screenshots.
