Vis Maior

So the beta weekend is over, but I got a chance to play this a little (as did ermad, using my acct). Here are some general impressions.

-Good graphics, but not the best I've seen. The players/npcs/mobs have much sharper models than WoW, but the terrain isn't that different. The water effects a MUCH nicer though, as are the spell effects. Definitely stylized in an anime sort of way, and the NPC voices match (combat sounds like a cheesy DBZ remake). Graphics are heavily customizeable, so it can even be low-end pc friendly.
-A different interface. I can't quite say if it's worse or better than WoW... unlike Warhammer, it's not a blatant clone. There are some interesting binds that WoW doesn't have, such as a button which makes your character flip 180 and run the opposite way (but your camera doesn't change). Also, there are raid symbols and party binds much like WoW.
-While I haven't participated in any of them (level 5 lol), raids are World-only, not instanced (ala EQ).
-Tiered class system like in ragnarok. You start off as one of 4 base classes, and at level 10 you can then pick one of two optioins. (IE, Warrior --> Gladiator or Templar, Mage --> Sorcerer or Spirit Master).
-Made by the same guys who made Lineage, they know how to make a successful MMO. Seems the basics are covered, and even though the beta servers are heavily populated they were quite stable and lag-free.
-Quirky camera and you can't zoom out very far.
-Everyone can fly, and it is in fact a core mechanic of the game, especially in combat. You have skills that can only be used while flying, and others that are stronger/weaker while flying.
-There is an auto-attack mechanic, but specials can be chained in a combo type way.

If you have any other questions, I'll do my best to answer them.

From World of Ming:

Everyone that's played this game since day one, or hell, since season one arena usually has one thing in common at this point: They're almost all desperately looking for a reason to stop playing WoW. I can't really think of a single person that participates in high-end arena or end-game raiding at this point that is satisified with existing content or implementation. In fact, I know a large amount of players that simply pre-ordered Aion to get into the beta so they can have something to play besides WoW. And although I used to be in the same crowd of people sure to play Aion at release, after participating in the third beta event this weekend, I'm having second thoughts. I'll try and discuss a few of the concerns I have with Aion at the moment and how they compare to WoW's parallel implementation.

First and foremost: combat. WoW's combat system is far from perfect and there definitely exists a slight melee superiority in WoW, but at least it's generally controllable. In Aion, not only are spell interrupts entirely at the mercy of the RNG system (you have a chance to be fully interrupted anytime you're hit by attacks), but classes can full-on stack resistance against casters to make virtually every spell miss at the loss of almost no offensive power. Although this isn't overly noticeable at the lower levels that players are exposed to in beta, it gets to be a real problem later on. Despite this, however, melee are generally far more disadvantaged then casters in Aion. The mage classes have a myriad of CC options while the healers have incredibly longevity that is really difficult for a solo class to take down. The game really isn't balanced for 1v1 in the slightest, as it seems right now that 1v1 (dueling) is basically a food chain of mages defeating melee which are defeated by rangers and good clerics who in turn lose to assassins and such. The one surprising part of this all is that when NCsoft held an official 1v1 tournament in Korea after the live release of Aion there, one of the least likely classes to win emerged victorious: the templar. Templars are basically the tank class that are built to soak damage and can put out some in return but most people were shocked and really expected a sorcerer or cleric to win.

Moving on, we have travel. In WoW, it's pretty simple: you have flight points almost everywhere and then really fast flying mounts at higher levels to get you basically anywhere within a minute or two. In Aion, you have limited flight points, no ground mounts, and your flight consists of enabling your wings to fly which have a very limited flight duration (which also takes a while to recharge), and gliding which allows you to effectively glide down from a higher elevation to a lower one moving slightly faster than run speed. This is incredibly agitating when playing as Asmodian and finding out that you have to run literally miles between your starting area quests back and forth ad nauseum. Aside from the annoying fact that you obviously can't fly forever, I've personally found the controls while flying increasingly frustrating to manage at times as character control seems really clunky. As for death and wipe recovery, in WoW you basically appear as a ghost at a graveyard and run back to your body. Simple, right? Well, in Aion when you die, you can either be rezzed before releasing or opt to release to your last bind point (which can be extremely far) and have to traverse all the way back to where you died via running or a long route of flights. I really think NCsoft needs to improve methods of travel if they want to win over a significant playerbase for their North American release.

Next, there's the UI. As anyone playing WoW knows, the UI in Warcraft is incredibly customizable with literally hundreds of thousands of mods out there to make your game look and play exactly how you want it. As for Aion, despite being released in Asia for a while now, there are very few (comparatively) mods available and much more limited UI functions in the game. For example, probably the most annoying thing that I can't figure out is how (if it's even possible) to bind my left click button in order to pan the camera in Aion like I can in WoW with it. The chat functions are also really annoying at times with such quirks as forcing you to type out /legion to talk in guild chat, /group (full words only) to type in party chat, etc etc. The core of the WoW UI is there but there's so much more that NCsoft could have done with it. Perhaps I'm just not informed of a huge UI database for Aion somewhere, but the game loses a lot of points in my book for lack of available customization with the UI and game settings in general.

Although there's much more to talk about, I think the point I'm trying to get across here is that although Aion quite obviously tried to mimic a lot of WoW's best aspects and funnest selling points, NCsoft still has a long way to go if they really want to make any sort of dent in the WoW playerbase. Everyone may be bored to tears with the game right now and begging for a reason to cancel their subscriptions but throwing a half-assed WoW clone with pretty graphics at the market will only grab a temporary audience. Remember what happened to Warhammer and AoC? Now, don't get me wrong, as I still enjoy the game quite a bit and find a lot of aspects of it extremely fun... however, this statement comes with asterisks as the issues mentioned here as well as ones not detailed really hold the game back from being revolutionary. I fully plan to continue playing the beta in future events to hopefully be proven wrong, but the bottom line right now is that if you're looking for a better game in every regard because you hate Blizzard and they nerfed your class, you're better off saving your money at least until Aion gets some much needed polish.

The customizable aspect, at least, is partially wrong. The UI is just as customizable as WoW, if not more so. The issue is two-fold, however: the existing customs are found on korean sites with korean language, and the game itself has a much smaller community than WoW... hence fewer poeple who are likely interested/qualified to make mods.

The macros in Aion are also far more useful than in WoW, to the point that some might consider them overpowered (I was reading some caster thread, and they have single button macros to kill mobs).

It certainly needs work, but WoW has had 5 years to polish their stuff, and no one can deny Lineage was a massive success (especially in the east asian countries). Granted, it's probably going to take longer to level/grind/build professions, because it is an east asian game and those are notorious for long grinds.

I might try it because I kinda miss EQ/AC days where the player was the enemy and the devs job was to crush their soul.

Asian style games = grinding and taking too long to do shit, pretty graphics, 1fps in main cities due to everyone having personal stores, pretty graphics, lack of character customization, pretty graphics, usually free to play, pretty graphics, and WINGS.

If its f2p, I'll play it..but I don't think it looks like it'll be worth dropping money into. It is still in beta, so they can always change a lot of stuff, but at this point I'm sure the core concepts are already locked into place...all of them being what I just listed really. I had kept tabs on it for a while, hoping that it'd look more promising (not just in the graphic department) for a while, but it doesn't look all that amazing really.

Oh well, I'm still in the Huxley beta for something to hold me over!

Other games to keep an eye on though!

Blade and Soul:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtA1jSre ... re=related
T.E.R.A:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFlTEZEL ... playnext=1
Continent of the 9th:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-gkFL7G8ow

You are the bestest firby

How is huxley?

And is huxley slated to compete/compare with global agenda?

Heard anything about the latter?

I haven't gotten to play huxley yet, sadly. I was out of town during the short first phase of closed beta, but the 2nd one starts up in a week. I was hoping it'd essentially be Planetside 2.0, but it looks like it won't be quite that massive of scale..they are going for a 32x32 limit for release, and then will work on going up to 100vs100 past that. At least that's what I've read on the forums, and I'm not sure how that applies to the persistent areas..may just be for the pvp matches. The next phase of beta is supposed to be the current client, so will see what they have in it. First phase was only the Huxley Lite client, which contained like 3 small scale pvp maps, and a few solo pve missions.

I've looked into GA a little, but not all that much to be honest. From what I have seen, I've liked, such as the more diverse player classes, and the fact is very guild/clan/agency driven. Also it looks like it has more customization and weapon/gear options.

Huxley and GA both offer solo/group pve missions, group pvp matches, and then have persistent areas sorta like planetside continents (smaller scale to my knowledge). But that said, I'm not aware on the planned sizes (or more importantly, what will actually make release) for GA.

In the end, Huxley will be a free to play cash shop based asian shooter, while GA appears to be more of a pay to play american based shooter. The latter is much more appealing to me if I am looking for a quality game. Not saying Huxley wont be fun, it looks like it'll be entertaining (and free!). GA has the most potential of the two, but that doesn't mean it will actually turn out to be the winner. Will see!

Ya i heard GA was again going ot be smaller scale, and anything "larger" was going to just be instanced, like group 1 has to destroy something to get access into a base, and group 2 can access the base in real time sorta when it gets destroyed or something.

I think planetside makes up a good chunk of my best online gaming memories/experiences. It makes me sad to realize that there are just no games coming out that will try to offer the same gaming experience. Everything is small scale, and just standard online FPS games.

Firby wrote: Blade and Soul:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtA1jSre ... re=related
T.E.R.A:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFlTEZEL ... playnext=1
Continent of the 9th:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-gkFL7G8ow

Definitely been watching those, but I am interested in trying Champions Online at some point. I really liked City of Heroes/Villains (and still subscribe every once and a while to check out the new content and own face with Ash) and believe Cryptic will do an excellent job on this next one. Travel powers are just too much fun, heading to a quest while leaping from building-to-building was a mini-game in itself (let alone flight, teleportation, super speed, invisibility etc they're adding (web) slinging, burrowing, ice-man-like traveling and more). I thoroughly enjoyed the chaos on the screen during any CoX fight - people being tossed everywhere with ragdoll physics is 10x more fun than any thunderstrike/blastwave tussle.


I am also anticipating FFXIV, whenever that's going to come out. Anyone hear anything positive/negative about Mortal Online? I was very interested in Darkfall's pvp aspect but let it pass and I feel that Mortal Online might be something worth looking into for a medieval-like planetside. I agree with you though, some of my best moments/memories online were of playing Tribes (pretty much like Planetside) with friends at school.

My MMOFPS experience is limited to say the least. In all honesty, these games look cool, but devs always jizz about how great their games are going to be. *cough* Daikatana *cough* How much of the individual skill/good hitboxes of traditional (competition level) FPS experience is sacrificed for more team-oriented goals? I get team synergy, but I don't see how moving beyond, say 7v7, can maintain any kind of personal skill level w/out becoming a fuckfest. Am I completely off? I've always dreamed of a game like CS, but on a world as huge as WoWs. Dunno if that could ever happen. Unless it's more like, roving units part of a larger guild encounter each other out in the world, and sometimes come together for larger fights. I guess the hardest part would be balancing those two styles. The kind of one-shot, one-kill dyamic that you see in cs, q3, etc would be insane with 32 vs 32. I think that's more realistic, but would people play that?

Again, no clue what these games are actually like. I installed Planetside once, but ran around for 30 mintues w/out seeing a single thing to shoot. Bad/unlucky experience I'm sure, but still...

I think I'll still try Aion. It's basically WoW with more traditional EQ values like indecipherable quests, endless group grinding and trains which rival the great freight haulers of the Union Pacific Railroad.

Plus I'm dying for something new that isn't a carbon copy of WoW but is finished enough to play.