Pink Gamer

Good afternoon fellow gamers. Recently I began a new MMO called Aion.
I didn’t actually think I would like it as much as I do when I started, but it turned out to be pretty fun. It plays a lot like WoW – you have a starter area where you complete mundane quests and you follow a quest-line (the big quest-lines in this game are called “Campaigns”) to ascension where you become a Daeva with pretty wings. For about three seconds the other Daevas make fun of you because you started out as a Raider, but then all of a sudden they are clapping for you because you pulled out your wings for about two milliseconds. I thought that part was a bit off.
So once you become a Daeva you can do my favorite part of any MMO – crafting. The fun part about crafting in this game is that a) you can fail a craft (and gathering) and b) you can perform Work Orders to gain levels and a reward. You get a new Work Order every ten levels, but you’re better off doing the first FREE one until level 40 when you can no longer do it.
Now, I say you can fail a craft as if it’s something shiny and new, but FFXI also had this same concept, but crafting in FFXI was almost like pulling teeth if you’re not patience personified. I happen to love FFXI crafting, for better reasons than this, but that’s not what this post is about.

I have to admit, the one part about Aion that I don’t like so far is how linear it seems to be. I never really had that problem with WoW, there were always several places I could go to, and the Instance party creator made it easy to get into parties and run a dungeon. Now, I haven’t gotten very far into Aion, and once you get past the first 20 levels it may turn around and become really exciting in this aspect, but for now you run through campaigns and follow a set path of areas until you finish. I thought it might open up a bit after the starter area, but so far it’s still been a bit like playing out an already written storybook, which is fine (and the point) for RPG games, but a little disappointing for MMOs.

A really nice aspect of Aion is the short cut-scenes. Every once in a while when a campaign quest holder gives you a quest you will be shown a short scene of where you need to be and sort of what you need to do. They’re not so long as to be boring and they’re quite frankly really pretty. THIS GAME IS GORGEOUS – I think I forgot to mention that.

The battle system in this game is good. It’s pretty much like WoW – you have your 1,2,3,4,5,6,etc macros, you mash buttons and auto attack until the target is dead. There are four broad classes with two subclasses for each major class. Warrior, Mage, Scout, and Priest, and I’m pretty confident I don’t have to explain what each class does. The subclasses include Templar and Gladiator, Sorcerer and Spiritmaster, Assassin and Ranger, and Chanter and Cleric respectively. You’ve got Templar – the giant shield toting, main line of defense, and Gladiator – which provides more damage than a Templar but still a fair bit of defense. Every other class will never really want to take damage as Mages and Priests are squishy as hell and Scouts really aren’t much better. Chanters CAN wear mail when they ascend, but it doesn’t stop them from taking a fair amount of damage. The difference between the Mage and Scout classes are a bit obvious, but as for Priests, Chanters are primarily a buff/debuff with some healing capabilities and Clerics are what you would really think of as a main healing class. The difference isn’t huge, but most arrogant MMO snobs will argue the uselessness of Chanters over Clerics. Sometimes I hate MMO players. -.- <- Plays a Chanter and finds nothing wrong with it.

Anyway, like I said, Aion is a beautiful MMO. It’s pretty much entirely solo-able up to 50 level cap, which is nice for me because I like to play on my own most of the time, or with my boyfriend or roommate. All in all I’d say the game is pretty awesome, not really many complaints so far – except for the unavoidable irritating and immature in-city LFG chats. Guys, you aren’t cool and you certainly aren’t better than the rest of the world just because your character is level 50. Go get a job or something. Jerks.