Author Topic: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl  (Read 18388 times)

helvetica

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Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« on: August 05, 2009, 04:26:54 AM »


So yeah, this crazy KR mmo from NCSoft that isn't really like typical crappy KR grindfests is like, coming out in like September :V  It's actually legitimately good from what I've played and seen in play videos.  It's going to be a standard monthly subscription MMO rather than the crazy pay for hour system China and Korea has.

The game is typical fantasy bullshit setting with a few good gimmicks and clean design.  It's PvP centric, the endgame consists of the two races, Asmodian and Elyos, duking it out in The Abyss, a giant open battleground with castles to own and such.  You get points that you use towards special abilities and skills everytime you kill someone, but at the same time you also LOSE points if you die.  And the top 20 highest scoring people of each side get to be chosen as Avatars for their particular side, and the top person becomes a fucking Gundam.  Oh, and you fly.

The game has CRAZYYYYYY deep character customization.  You can be anything from a 3 foot loli to a 12 foot version of Shaq.



Here's the GDC video showing off the immense character customization as well as a few other things. The game is built off of Crytek's CryEngine (FarCry 1's engine) and looks amazing for an MMO, while still maintaining very good performance even with lots of people onscreen.  People with 3 year old Dells can play the game fine and the game runs without a hitch even with 100+ people nerdslapping eachother.

Following stuff below shamelessly stolen from SA as there's just way too much shit to go into and I suck at generalizing.

The Factions
Elyos - For justice, nobility and feathered hairdos

The humans who would become the Elyos were the ones on the bottom half of Atreia, now called Elysea, which was bathed in the light of the nearby star and became a lush paradise. As a result the Elyos are vibrant and fair-skinned people. Believing themselves to be the blessed people of Aion, they pursue art, music, grand architecture and the extermination of all Asmodians for being ugly. Their capital city is called Sanctum.

Asmodians - Claws, talons and lots of back hair

The humans who would become the Asmodians were the ones on the top half of Atreia, now called Asmodae. They got the shaft big time, since Asmodae recieved none of the light from the sun and became a dark, desolate wasteland. As a result, the Asmodians are rather more bestial in appearance than their Elyos cousins, sporting blue-gray skin, claws on their hands and feet, great manes down their backs and eyes that glow red in combat. They too have risen to civilization, but only through great effort. While grim survivalists, they are not the "bad guys" by any stretch and place enormous value on family, friends and honor. They also hate the Elyos for being self-righteous, not helped in the least by the Elyos returning that aggression. Their capital city is called Pandaemonium.

The Classes
For a great look at the Aion classes in glorious HD action, watch this video.
Aion players start with 4 basic class choices on character creation: Warrior, Scout, Mage and Priest. These branch into two classes each once the player reaches level 10.

Warrior Classes
Gladiator
Wielding giant fuck-off swords, axes and other weapons that are sometimes the size of their own bodies and dressed in heavy plate, Gladiators are exactly what their name implies. They can be considered the offensive tank of Aion.

Templar
With sword, shield, heavy plate armor and lots of toughness, Templars are the defensive counterpart to the Gladiator.

Scout Classes
Ranger
Rangers are the bow class, though they have melee ability with dual-wield as well. Their abilities mostly focus around staying at range and pinning down enemies.

Assassin
Assassins are the lightly armored melee powerhouses, comparable to rogues from most other games. They stealth, they stab and they kill people dead.

Mage Classes
Sorcerer
A sort of logical extension of the Mage class, Sorcerers excel in CC in all its forms as well as launching the elements at their enemies, usually in the form of balls of fire or frost as well as giant boulders in both nuke and AOE forms. They wear robes and therefore die quickly from melee.

Spiritmaster
Aion's pet class, Spiritmasters retain some basic Mage abilities such as nukes and CC, but their class is based around summoning spirits to do their bidding as well. This is their best form of protection, since they wear robes like their Sorcerer counterparts.

Priest Classes
Cleric
Clerics are full-on healers, continuing their Priest roots to their logical conclusion. They can put out more raw healing than any other class. They wear chainmail and can use mace/shields or staves.

Chanter
Chanters are something like a combination of Priest, Bard and Red Mage, and could be generally described as the buffing class. They also wear chaimail and can use mace/shields or staves like the Cleric.

The classes are customizeable by use of stigmas, which grant additional skills and trait to your class similar to how talents work in WoW. They cost a small amount of "stigma shards" to swap out from an NPC in a town. A whole lot more about the Stigma system can be found here from the crazy people at Aionsource.

Flight
At level 10 (which takes maybe 5 hours casual play), your character gains the ability to fly through a quest chain that also does lot of other nifty things I won't go into. Flight is a major part of Aion, as you may have noticed from the mountains of art and screenshots of characters with wings. Much of your time will be spent flying around. You may fly anywhere there is aether, that stuff that the Tower of Eternity used to be a source of. Now it's in a lot of places, and anywhere a high concrentration of it can be found, you can fly. Flight has a time limit, however: the initial limit is 1 minute of flight with twice that in recharge time, though there are methods to increase that as well as refill your time limit such as potions or gates in the Abyss, where flight and flight timer management are incredibly important.

Flight is very well done in Aion, as it is more than simply point-and-autorun-from-point-A-to-point-B. You can dive, glide and swoop around, and on the whole flying feels very natural and dynamic since your character will animate properly for many of the maneuvers you can do. You won't quite be doing loop-de-loops or anything overly fancy, but knowing how to fly well is one of the most important parts of the game for both PvE and PvP. I found myself flapping around just for the hell of it sometimes. Nearly all abilities are useable while flying (though you have to stay still for things with a cast time, just like on the ground), encouraging its use in PvP.

Also, you may use your wings at any time and any place to glide from great heights, regardless of the presence of aether. You can also glide to pick up lots of speed, making use of higher terrain useful for catching fleeing targets or ambush them from above.

PvPvE
Aion begins encouraging PvP at level 25 through the use of rifts which semi-randomly connect players or groups of players directly to opposing faction zones, allowing them beat the opposing faction up to their heart's content. After completing a certain level 25 quest, players can also visit The Abyss, the centerpiece of Aion's PvP both figuratively and literally. This huge expanse of floating debris and islands is rife with captureable castles and rifts to it are open almost constantly. The Abyss is the source of some of the best rewards in the game and constantly encourages players to capture parts of it for their faction. Resources are easily gathered from the areas around the castles, which means both player and NPC crafters will love you for capturing them. The guild that captures a castle gains taxes from their use and their faction will love them since holding those fortresses lets them get to certain items, resources and rifts not otherwise accessible. The Abyss is also a good spot for leveling so all the people still leveling can grind space crabs to their heart's content.

Besides the Abyss, PvP action can be found in your opponent's lands; the end goal of both factions is to shatter the stump of the Tower of Eternity on the other faction's half of the planet, and of course city raiding is in and gives the best rewards in the game. With rifts constantly opening and closing between the halves of the world, a huge part of Aion is popping over the opposing faction's lands and ruining someone's afternoon.

"Wait! You said PvPvE!"
That's right. Remember those Balaur guys I talked about way up in the story section? They're the third faction, and they'll be right there in the Abyss and faction lands popping through rifts, capturing fortresses and making things interesting. They're controlled by the server, hence the PvE part.

Combat
Combat is the usual hotbar deal typical of most MMOs. However, many skills are parts of combo chains, often with branching options to each chain and animations that flow well through the entire combo.

In addition, flight adds more options for classes, particularly in ranged combat; although of course a melee character can fly as well or simply hide behind things and wait out the flight timer on his opponent until they're forced to land.

Finally, another interesting thing they've done with the combat in Aion is dynamic movement bonuses, which reward moving in combat. Now all your jumping and strafing around in MMOs actually does more than just abuse lag and give your opponent a headache; strafing increases your evasive stats, moving forward increases your offensive power and moving backwards increases your defense. These apply while flying as well, so feel free to combine the two mechanics to swoop down and smack someone with a sword!


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He thought that on that same day he was to take the city of Priam, but he little knew what was in the mind of Jove, who had many another hard-fought fight in store alike for Danaans and Trojans."


helvetica

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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #1 on: August 05, 2009, 04:27:27 AM »
People playing Aion
List of people currently preordered or planning on buying Aion at launch and racial preference.

TheStupidOne - Elyos
Link (Nazrin) - don't care

Next Beta Weekend
August 14th-17th

For about 3 bucks you can join the next beta weekend and get a taste of the game without having to commit.  All you need to do to get in is get a $3 preorder key from Shattered Crystal and you're in.  Shattered Crystal will give you $3 dollars off the retail purchase but otherwise you are not obligated to buy the game at retail if you don't care for it.  You can also get a key from Best Buy or Fry's for like $5 bucks or whatever.  Any site or store you can preorder from should give you a code as well (Steam will definitely, NCSoft's site will too).
« Last Edit: August 05, 2009, 07:36:14 AM by TheⓈtupidOne »


Twitter: @hipsterfont | Discord: helvetica#0573 | LINE: hipsterfont

He thought that on that same day he was to take the city of Priam, but he little knew what was in the mind of Jove, who had many another hard-fought fight in store alike for Danaans and Trojans."


Hello Purvis

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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #2 on: August 05, 2009, 04:32:33 AM »
Isn't this the MMO that WoW elitists are trying to hype up as the WoW-killer, like they did with Warhammer Online and a few other games, before they actually played the games and then fell over themselves trying to out-hipster each other about how bad it was?

Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #3 on: August 05, 2009, 04:47:17 AM »
They do that with ever new mmorpg that comes out.
Anyways the character design kinda looks like what would happen if Everquest and Guild Wars had a baby. If I was going to get this I'd go with Asmodian Scout b/c we all know it's going to murder ever other class and be op just like in ever other mmorpg.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2009, 04:51:58 AM by Cadmas »

Hello Purvis

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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #4 on: August 05, 2009, 04:51:48 AM »
Hey, how does flight compare to the flight in City of Heroes/Villains?

Cos flying was fun as shit in that.

helvetica

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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #5 on: August 05, 2009, 05:19:09 AM »
Flight is an integral part of the game.  It's not just for travel, but a part of combat too.  You'll regularly see melee characters duke it out in the sky, and there's a class designed specifically for swatting people out of the sky and killing them with fall damage.


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He thought that on that same day he was to take the city of Priam, but he little knew what was in the mind of Jove, who had many another hard-fought fight in store alike for Danaans and Trojans."


Hello Purvis

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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #6 on: August 05, 2009, 05:24:15 AM »
Got any idea how it controls?

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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #7 on: August 05, 2009, 05:24:29 AM »
Is this like Mabinogi
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helvetica

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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #8 on: August 05, 2009, 06:59:14 AM »
Got any idea how it controls?
Pretty easily from what I hear.  You can do crazy shit like intentionally leap from cliffs or buildings and use the fall and then tap flight to run people down and crazy stuff.

Is this like Mabinogi
Hahaha no, nothing like mabinogi.


Twitter: @hipsterfont | Discord: helvetica#0573 | LINE: hipsterfont

He thought that on that same day he was to take the city of Priam, but he little knew what was in the mind of Jove, who had many another hard-fought fight in store alike for Danaans and Trojans."


Hello Purvis

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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #9 on: August 05, 2009, 07:20:11 AM »
That's good to hear. City of X's flight meant well, but the controls were a nightmare. WASD or arrow keys for normal 2d motion. Space bar, I think, to ascend. Can't even remember what descend was, Shift maybe? Mouse to look around and target. It was extremely difficult to do any kind of melee with flight; mostly blasters just put themselves above melee. Though I had a habit of using flight to skim the ground.


helvetica

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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #10 on: August 05, 2009, 07:28:05 AM »
Next beta weekend is August 14-17th.  All you need to do to get in is get a $3 preorder key from Shattered Crystal and you're in.  Shattered Crystal will give you $3 dollars off the retail purchase but otherwise you are not obligated to buy the game at retail if you don't care for it.  You can also get a key from Best Buy or Fry's for like $5 bucks or whatever.  Any site or store you can preorder from should give you a code as well (Steam will definitely, NCSoft's site will too).
« Last Edit: August 05, 2009, 07:36:02 AM by TheⓈtupidOne »


Twitter: @hipsterfont | Discord: helvetica#0573 | LINE: hipsterfont

He thought that on that same day he was to take the city of Priam, but he little knew what was in the mind of Jove, who had many another hard-fought fight in store alike for Danaans and Trojans."


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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #11 on: August 05, 2009, 01:35:28 PM »
30 bucks on me playing it at a local joint, I am not paying an extra for getting the game.
that is the point of internet cafes.
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helvetica

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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #12 on: August 05, 2009, 04:11:48 PM »
Well duh they don't really exist in Amerikaa so the market prices are a lot different.


Twitter: @hipsterfont | Discord: helvetica#0573 | LINE: hipsterfont

He thought that on that same day he was to take the city of Priam, but he little knew what was in the mind of Jove, who had many another hard-fought fight in store alike for Danaans and Trojans."


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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #13 on: August 05, 2009, 04:12:59 PM »
Looks a lot like Lineage 2.

of course, coming from the same company and all..

Maybe I'll give it a try. I quit L2 about two years ago, and finally after graduating I have time again for MMO :P
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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #14 on: August 05, 2009, 06:05:39 PM »
Seems that all the new higher-budget mmos coming out these days are geared more towards pvp than pve.

helvetica

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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #15 on: August 05, 2009, 06:33:02 PM »
It's about fucking time too.  PvE requires a steady stream of content from the developers before it gets old fast, look at WoW as an example of 90% of the game abandoned for the 2% in new content.  PvP requires little interaction, the endgame feeds itself.


Twitter: @hipsterfont | Discord: helvetica#0573 | LINE: hipsterfont

He thought that on that same day he was to take the city of Priam, but he little knew what was in the mind of Jove, who had many another hard-fought fight in store alike for Danaans and Trojans."


Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #16 on: August 05, 2009, 09:36:34 PM »
Works better in Shooters than Mmorpgs. This game looks a little more skill based rather than WOW's system. A lot of people say pvp died in WOW when they took the titles system out. I say they killed pvp when they added in that 30 second respawn timer. Now the only way to get pvp gear is arenas and arenas suck.

Ghaleon

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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #17 on: August 05, 2009, 11:25:40 PM »
I find wow pvp to be dumb in every way.. I really dislike it. spawn timers and class balance and this and that.. it's all meaningless to me compared to it's huge gaping flaw.. It's just too fast. I don't mean requires quick judgement and reflexes fast.. I mean, oh I got stunned, oh I'm dead before I could move. Hey this guy just spiked me for 20k in 2 seconds, etc.

People say "get 1200 resilience noob lol". But even if you do that, you're still full to dead in 5 seconds flat in a group pvp situation unless heals are coming your way. I prefer pvp in shooter games and whatnot, where a player's skill is really the bottom line with how long they can survive just about any situation. A skilled player in wow can live longer than one who isn't given some situations sure. But mostly, regardless of skill, there are countless things that WILL kill you in pvp that you have no power to avoid. ICK.

I also dislike how pvp gear in wow is a totally different animal than pve gear. Players imo should be able to get gear that is good at both functions either way they please. I can sorta understand how there may be some level of difference between pvp and pve gear. But level of deviation between the two is just disgusting.

PVP based mmorpgs probably don't have 5 second battles like wow does but I think it would have to be quite an accomplishment if one ever ends up being as fun as a straight up first person shooter or other action based game that is built around pvp.


Hello Purvis

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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #18 on: August 06, 2009, 12:19:37 AM »
From what I understand of most PvP is you'll run into 10 opponents who are such idjuts they are hardly worth your time, then one who is omegatwinked and practically unstoppable if you aren't twinked as well, or aren't the one thing that's his weakness. Also game designers are generally less immature than PvPers. Arachnos stormtroopers generally don't drop illiterate homophobic shittalk for ten minutes before and after the battle.

So yeah, I never cared much for it either. =|

helvetica

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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #19 on: August 06, 2009, 02:42:09 AM »
I find wow pvp to be dumb in every way.. I really dislike it. spawn timers and class balance and this and that.. it's all meaningless to me compared to it's huge gaping flaw.. It's just too fast. I don't mean requires quick judgement and reflexes fast.. I mean, oh I got stunned, oh I'm dead before I could move. Hey this guy just spiked me for 20k in 2 seconds, etc.

People say "get 1200 resilience noob lol". But even if you do that, you're still full to dead in 5 seconds flat in a group pvp situation unless heals are coming your way. I prefer pvp in shooter games and whatnot, where a player's skill is really the bottom line with how long they can survive just about any situation. A skilled player in wow can live longer than one who isn't given some situations sure. But mostly, regardless of skill, there are countless things that WILL kill you in pvp that you have no power to avoid. ICK.

I also dislike how pvp gear in wow is a totally different animal than pve gear. Players imo should be able to get gear that is good at both functions either way they please. I can sorta understand how there may be some level of difference between pvp and pve gear. But level of deviation between the two is just disgusting.

PVP based mmorpgs probably don't have 5 second battles like wow does but I think it would have to be quite an accomplishment if one ever ends up being as fun as a straight up first person shooter or other action based game that is built around pvp.
Play a real PvP MMO like Warhammer Online.  WoW is a terrible example because Blizzard's idea of PvP is an abortion.   PvP can be very fun if done right, and WAR did do it right.
« Last Edit: August 06, 2009, 03:15:53 AM by TheⓈtupidOne »


Twitter: @hipsterfont | Discord: helvetica#0573 | LINE: hipsterfont

He thought that on that same day he was to take the city of Priam, but he little knew what was in the mind of Jove, who had many another hard-fought fight in store alike for Danaans and Trojans."


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Re: Aion Online: Be a magical flying 12 foot tall schoolgirl
« Reply #20 on: August 06, 2009, 03:07:18 AM »
Shit, as awesome as this looks/sounds I can't play becous my computer is shitty and I have NO MONEY
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