Honestly I was not hyped all about Aion after hearing and reading news articles on it last year. It looked like every other MMORPG like Perfect World. So I decided to give the Chinese Open Beta which can be fully translated into English easily with about 10 mouse clicks. I wasn’t planning on playing the English version of Aion when it came out but after playing the Chinese OB so much I think I will need my North American Aion release fix soon or I will go crazy.
My sweet little angel… I mean devil.
I know all of you want to hear how grinding in this game is like so let me get into detail with that. Leveling isn’t that hard in this game at least for the lower levels of the game. Questing and Grinding levels your character almost the same but there are some quests that you should just skip and grind instead. Some quests will require you to gather/collect/harvest materials on the ground on air. I think these quests are quite time consuming. I would say you can get to level 25 in a week or less for the casual players and two-three days for the hardcore players. The game changes a lot after you reach level 25 first you will probably let off a big relief of finally hitting that level. You also learn 10-15 skills for your character of your class which will make them more PvP efficient. The best part of all after reachign 25 is the ability to enter the world of Abyss after completing special mission requirements of course. When you are in the world of the Abyss you can participate in Open battlefield PvP sieges, easier to get gank by the opposing realm, purchase special armor from your hard earned PvP points.
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Siege Tutorials very useful if you are planning to play Aion
As you progress through higher levels of the game you will start to noticing that there are just some missions that are simply impossible to solo. I didn’t like the idea of how you have to party to do some of the story line missions since for some people finding a party is would be wasting most of their time and not everyone of us have a lot of time on our hands! The mission below video will show you why this mission can not be solo’ed.
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Aion Online Hard Mission
A lot of people think that you can fly anywhere and anytime in Aion Online but let me tell you this now you can not fly anywhere and anytime. The only place where you can fly around anywhere are mostly areas near towns and the Abyss realm. Huh that sucks!? Yeah, but you can still “glide” around areas which is good enough for some players. Most of the terrain in Aion Online go down and you can glide on roads with the right gliding skills! There are also cliffs where you can leap to your doom or glide away from to travel to other areas faster. Another one of the biggest Aion misconception is people think you can fly for an unlimited amount of time. This is true in way if you stock up on a lot flight potions or exploit the flight recharge portals that you can find on the Abyss map. Even so your flight time is only 1-1.5 minutes under level 29. This will probably most likely change as you get through your higher levels and earn your self a new set of wings at level 30 and 40.
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Flying and Gliding is totally different!
Beautiful Scenery!
There are random rift portals that open around in the zone that you are playing. It is usually announced in the general tab of your chat if there are open rift portals in your area. There are two kinds of rift portals once is going to their enemy area and the other is the enemy portal coming to your area. The messages say which portal is which and that you should be on your guard because you never know when there is a group of enemy players deciding to gank everyone. In my case I decided to call a few guild members and jump in the rift portal to the enemy leveling zone.
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Guild Rampage
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Random Open PvP
My favorite type of PvP is living more in the dangerous side and mean side to other players. I prefer to go in higher level areas with lots of aggro and pick off players in the Abyss. The Abyss is place where everyone is level 25+ or higher and you can fly anytime and anywhere to their grind spots. Leveling in the Abyss yields good experience points but if you don’t keep your guard up you may be a victim of an evil assassin like Steparu. Even though I got ganked while trying to gank by a couple players in the video below I still managed to survive by always carrying HP Potion, Remedy Potion, and Flight Potions. They are the key to managing a safe get away! The biggest thing you have to watch out for while trying to kill someone is they can call for reinforcements. Aion implemented a system where you can use /shout and tell players to come to this area if there player/players trying to kill you.
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Unexpected Guest
The game has very nice controls WASD to move around and fully customizable macro’s in game. The graphics didn’t really shock me as much. Everything was a nice if you looked up in the sky but I felt that the ground terrains needed a bit more work in some areas it felt as if it was not complete. I was able to set everything setting on high and enjoy the game smoothly so that is a big plus in this game for me. The desert area was a bit stunning, they implemented a feature that makes your screen all wavy and giving it a very hot burning feeling when you are in the desert or other hot areas like volcanoes.
Desert Area
Like I said above after playing Aion Open Beta I am pretty convinced in paying and playing the official English release of Aion Online when it comes out as my other alternative MMORPG. There are still a lot of features I have not experience in the official Chinese Aion Open Beta like siege warfares because players need to be at least lvl 40-50 to participate in taking over enemy/npc castles. Overall Aion Online is a pretty good game that will probably have me hooked for half-year or two when it comes out in English version.
This is a little dated now from earlier this year but I thought it was a really good review and should be read by any Aion fan or follower. Thanks to steparu.com for the review. The Turtle will have another review up in a few days. Stay tuned.
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