Aion

Preview from Matt - Friday, 24 July 2009 @ 1:44pm

World of Warcraft has been reigning champ in the MMO sphere since its release, and a few contenders have tried and failed to take on the MMONSTER. See what I did there?

Aion is a Korean MMO from NCSoft, who previously brought us Lineage 1 & 2, Guild Wars and City of Heroes/Villains. Their pedigree in the MMO space, especially in Asia, is undoubted.

In actual fact Aion is out in Asia already, having released in Korea and China in March. It's at 3.5 million subscribers, and is outselling WoW 3:1. That everyone already has WoW and Aion is new is an obvious counterpoint to the statistics, but nevertheless a solid effort.

But Asia is MMO heaven. There are a lot of titles that never see release here (Lineage is a big deal in China and Korea, for example) of if they do barely make a dent.

I have no idea why that building has clouds either

It's hard to tell whether Aion will do anything different, or different to Warhammer and Age of Conan before it. Both of these titles failed to excite MMO fans, the latter deciding to just go directly to nudity, even that failing. Maybe those titles came at the wrong time, in part? With Wrath of the Lich King, WoW's second expansion, coming fans weren't that keen to jump ship. I must admit I gave Warhammer a go myself, but it really didn't grab me. I found it oddly soul-less.

World of Warcraft has a major strength – it's really old. It's built up years of fan support, and had those years to improve its interface. It's also built up two expansions worth of content and lore, which is not insignificant. As well as being “big” WoW is also pretty easy on the system, and having been released nearly 8 years ago now runs on even a very modest PC.

World of Warcraft has a major downfall – it's really old. A lot of veteran players have been in the game for more than 6 years, and a lot are long burned out by an end-game that takes itself pretty seriously and requires hardcore play. Also the game doesn't exactly look the best anymore. The world is kind of rough and the models, while thankfully always quite stylised, are not especially detailed.

The first point, regarding the burned out veterans, is probably a key here. Many of Aion's initial buyers and subscribers will be WoW players looking for a new and more rewarding experience. That it will lure them in is inevitable. The question is not whether they'll come. It's whether they'll stay.

I feel kind of guilty. I've spent a lot of time talking about World of Warcraft, and not a lot talking about Aion. Unfortunately, that's kind of the nature of the market at the moment. Such is WoW's dominance of the MMO scene here that you simply can't mention a new entry to the market without strongly referencing the incumbent title.

Very pretty, and very shiny. The large courtyard in Pandaemonium.

So let's talk about Aion.

Aion is an upcoming MMO, due for release in Australia, Europe and North America on or around the 22nd of September. In not atypical fashion, there are two opposing factions (OMGNOWAI!), one good one bad. Actually the goodness and badness are a bit ambiguous. Both were once related until a cataclysm drove the two apart. The bad faction, called the Asmodian, are the more warlike it's true, but they're more about honour and courage than mayhem and carnage. The opposing faction of Elyos are not that good either, and the war seems to have plenty of blame both sides. The Asmodeans went to a darker place and ended up a little twisted and brutish. The Elyos ended up with the sun-drenched heaven realm and became shining golden gods made of gold and light and redundancy.

If you're thinking of the Eloi of H.G. Welles' classic The Time Machine then you're not alone.

The two factions differ in that the Asmodeans have claws and talons and black wings, and the Elyos don't, and have white wings. That's... about it.

Aion has only four base classes, by contrast to WoW's 10. These are Mage, Warrior, Scout and Priest. At level 10 these 4 classes split into 8 sub-classes. The Mage may become a Spiritmaster, which much like a warlock relies on summoned elemental pets, or a Sorcerer which is much like a mage everywhere – standard elemental magic. The Warrior is much like a warrior in WoW, splitting to tanking Templar or damage dealling Gladiator. The Priest becomes either a cleric, which heals (course) or a chanter which provides buffs to the party and deals some damage. The scout plays to 10 much like a rogue, and continues that as an Assassin, or makes a drastic change to the Hunter-like Ranger.

At this point comparing WoW to Aion is distinctly in WoW's favour. While Aion can fill all the roles acceptably there are four classes that can tank in WoW, multiple damage dealers, and four roles that can provide differing styles of healing. The classes are also vastly less limited. A warrior can tank OR dps and with the recently added dual specs they don't even need to change anything to do so.

Further on in character creation things shift more towards Aion, however. The level of customisation is very impressive. The initial faces all just look like different Koreans. Except the one who looks like Gimli. But you can fine tune things to a pretty impressive degree, with sliders a-plenty. Scale of the characters is particularly well handled, and you can make anything from some sort of SheHulk monstrosity to something that looks suspiciously like a spider monkey. This is ripe for abuse of course. I saw a child-sized character called Pedomage within my first day of play.

This depth of characterisation seems to go in Aion's favour against wow. Bang! One point! Seems to. But it doesn't. No points.

Excuse me while I kiss the sky. Or hit an invisible forcefield stopping me flying.

You see, what's more impressive than being able to adjust the angle on your character's eyebrows is having the more immediately recognisable combination of 8 different races with 10 different classes. Aion's characters look too samish, despite the level of customisation. The limit to one race per faction is understandable from a lore point of view, etc, but also leads to a lack of variety.

After creating your character you jump into the gameplay experience, and this isn't anything you wouldn't be expecting. Get quests. Kill monsters. Collect stuff. Hand in quest. I'd have liked to see more variety to the quests and there are occasionally some. But not really much. Frankly I'm not really sure what you can do in an MMORPG besides collecting shit and killing shit, so I'm willing to cut them some slack on this one.

One thing I really like is that many of the quests are introduced not with just a text description but a full cinematic. These cinematics are usually just a pan over the area to show the monsters you'll face, but they provide a nice sense of the “epic” of the quest. The funny thing is that the quest itself often just ends up being “Kill 5 Grumparr” but I still appreciate the effort.

You have two types of quests. Campaign Quests, which have great rewards, and Standard Quests, which are... well.. standard. Campaign Quests aren't always asked and received, often they are simply given to you as you hit a specific level or finish a previous quest. Campaign Quests are necessary to progress the story arc, and essentially they're “what you're doing here”.

Characters have an impressive amount of detail - also wings

What you're doing here is generally “being impressed”. Aion looks impressive. With 7 years development since WoW's release time has progressed, and looks very sharp. Aion actually uses a heavily modified version of the FarCry engine, funny enough, and it looks the goods. There are two particularly impressive things about Aion and its graphcs. One is the animations. Character animations especially are very detailed and smooth. A lot of attention to detail has gone into them, and even after countless hours of gameplay you can still be surprised by what your character does in a given situation. For example, if you leave them idling in the water the character will splash around in it. In the snow they look up and raise their hands playfully. I've watched my character idly brush dust from their robes or huffily pull a big leaf out to shelter under when it started to rain. This loving attention helps make a real and vibrant world, and both your character and (friendly and enemy) NPCs benefit from the same attention.

The other thing that impressed me was performance.

You see, my general machine is a year old gaming laptop, a Dell XPS1530. It's not the cutting edge and it's not a beast of a thing. I couldn't get Age of Conan even working due to driver issues. I got Warhammer Online working but it ran kind of like a dog. I expected the same of Aion. It's reasonable for such a new game that looks so good to run poorly on an older machine, right?

Wrong. Aion runs well. Very well. In fact, I could be wrong, but I think Aion runs better than WoW. I know I run it at a higher resolution than I run WoW. I must admit, however, that it does chunk down a little bit when flying through the world on the incredibly shiny (and fast!) gryphon equivalent, or when running through the major cities.

Pandaemonium. This is just the entrance door. The place is massive.

Speaking of impressive feats... The main cities in Aion are incredible. I was impressed with Ironforge the first time I saw it, but the city of Pandaemonium could hold IF in its lobby. In fact, I suspect you could fit Shattrath, Darnassus, Dalaran, Ironforge and Stormwind (can you tell I play Alliance?) and still have room for Orgrimmar. The thing is massive, and intricately detailed. Though I haven't seen it myself I'm told the Elyos equivalent is just as impressive. You can get to these cities at level 10, when you “Ascend”, choosing your future and getting your wings.

Ahhhh, yes, wings. 1500 words into a preview of Aion and I haven't mentioned wings yet.

One of the game's biggest selling points is flight. While WoW and other games allow you to get on flying mounts to travel around, Aion goes one better and lets you fly directly, even letting you engage in aerial combat, including PvP. Unfortunately the reality doesnt quite match the promise. The main issue is the limitations on flying. First of all, you fly with a meter that ticks down. You start with only a minute flight time, upgradeable as you go. But the major pain is that you're not actually ALLOWED to fly all the time. Some areas show up saying “You can not fly in this area” and my questioning of “Why the fuck not?” has not as yet received a satisfactory answer. This lack of flying in most of the actual gameplay areas leaves you running around like a noob a lot of the time. Wondering why you can't fly. Apparently this restriction lifts steadily over time, with later areas being more flying friendly.

The wings and flight also are a major focus in The Abyss, a central area between the Elyos and Asmodean that is the source and point of the PvP conflict encountered in Aion.

PvP is a major factor in Aion, to the point where it's not optional but a necessity. There are no PvE only servers for Aion.

Speaking of servers, all servers are (like WoW) hosted in the US. Australia has no dedicated hosts, though there are moves among the neophyte oceanic community to pick an “official” server for us, to ensure a decent density of players at our peak times. The lack of an oceanic dedicated server is a huge kick in the balls for Australia, in my opinion. A single server dedicated and timed to us is a necessity, not a luxury. World of Warcraft didn't have dedicated oceanic servers either, and while they did rectify that eventually it was too late for many of us who languished on an early US server.

If you're going to release a product in a country you have a responsibility to provide server access directly to that market. We are NOT in the United States, and I have 500 miliseconds here to prove it.

It makes sense to create a specific server for Australia, and host it in their Korean data centre, a major network hub a minor hop from Australia where they would already have servers. I call on QVSoftware and NCSoft to do exactly that. Releasing a product here includes supporting it properly, and that includes the infrastructure to enable players to have an adequate experience.

In any case, we've only had a taste of Aion so far. Of its level cap of 50, players on the beta can only get to 25, and I myself only took two characters to 14 and 13 respectively. I must say that there's a nasty dead zone for questing at that point. On my second character I didn't bother to do much in the way of gathering or crafting, and this has put me down nearly a full level. I have few quests left, none possible at my level. I think there needs to be a few more quests at this level to prevent players having to grind mobs for 2/3 of a level due to their extremely linear progression.

Gathering some iron - note the glowing shit going into you. That's good.

This gathering I mentioned is mostly to craft items. Unlike WoW you can learn all trades, though only to “master” level in one. Some things are weird. You have to level “Steel Ingots” separately for Armorsmithing and Weaponsmithing, for example. But in general the systems work well. Crafting materials are oddly expensive. For example you'll find iron everywhere, but the charcoal required to turn it to steel will cost you nearly 200k (kinah, the in-game currency). Just 5 steel made and you're out a grand. There's a nice system that's an improvement on spamming “LFW”, though, which is that you can simply ask your trainer for work, and he'll give you some. With almost all the mats needed being provided you can level your skills on the cheap. Nice.

Another thing I think is an improvement on WoW is the Broker system, an Auction House equivalent. It's overall more easily used, and feels faster and more fluid. There's no concept of bidding, however. Buy or get out. Personally I never bid anyway, so fine with me. The other nice addition is the Private Store. This allows players with “Neat Shit” to basically set themselves up as a vendor. Prices range drastically as they're created by the player, but it means there's often a source of upgrades when you're not near a big city, which is nice. There's a counterpoint to this, however. Players seem to feel the need to make private stores in the entry way to major cities. Pandaemonium's bridge is littered with them. This makes teleporting in a laggy mess as the system tries to load hundreds of AFK players who chose to be cockwittted fucktards and park their objectionable selves in the entry. Ncsoft need to stop players being able to do this, either by limiting where you can set a private store or by making the Brokers more attractive to sellers.

The other thing we've not yet been able to look at is the instances and raids system. I've raided more than my fair share. I've spent more time in dungeons than Josef Fritzl, and I know how critical this aspect of gameplay will be to the long term success of play.

What will tell in future, both after release and in future betas is depth. This is one thing World of Warcraft has plenty of. With so many classes fulfilling the roles, and talent points to assign, achievements, multiple specs, and a vast expanded world, World of Warcraft has plenty to see and do, and more importantly plenty of different ways to do it. Aion could end up being a shallower experience all round, which will hurt it long term.

I have to say that I've enjoyed my time in Aion. Much of it has been a lot of fun, and the detail and graphics remain impressive. The little touches and some of the features make the game a worthwile experience. The biggest mistake you can make going in is to assume it's WoW and criticise everything that isn't like WoW. I've seen people do it and it's a bad idea. Look at it through fresh eyes, and enjoy a fun new experience.

The best way to summarise Aion is to say that I put a fully paid pre-order on the Collectors Edition after playing the first beta weekend. I doubt anything I would write could say more than that. It isn't World of Warcraft. But that's probably the best thing about it. Whether it will have the legs to stick around for a while or will fade into the background is a matter of time. But personally I'm willing to give it that time.

Some really impressive scenery. These things aren't actually mobs, but they still look awesome.