Aion Impressions

I've been playing a bit of Aion over the past few weeks, participating in both the end of beta and the first few weeks of release. Having recently reached level 20, I thought it would be a good idea to take a step back and evaluate some of what I've seen in this game.

It's very difficult to give an accurate, comprehensive review of a game without leveling to the level cap and participating in all of the end game experiences that are provided for players. Regardless, I thought it would be a good idea to type up some of the things I like and dislike about the game. Since I've spent all of my time playing on the Elonian side of Atreia, some or all of my comments may not apply to the Asmodian playing experience.

Likes:

• Beginning area: The starting area of the game plays very smoothly and is fun. NCSoft has wisely decided to design menacing enemies to fight against--you won't be spending your first few levels slaughtering giant ants or garden rabbits.
• Graphics: Aion is gorgeous, and looks much better in-motion than it did in the screenshots I saw before I purchased the game. I have a higher-end system (2.4 ghz Quad core, 9800 GTX, 3GB ram), but I was able to play the game with a great framerate at 1680x1050 resolution with most of the settings maxed.
• Back-to-basics gameplay: This may not be a plus for you, depending on your particular preferences, but the pace of play in this game is definitely a little slower than World of WarCraft's. Although I've only played until level 20, to this point most of my combat involves maximizing cooldown usage. While you'll still obviously be doing all of your own targeting, the game helps you stay on target. If you are a melee character, your character always follows your target around if your target runs or is not right in front of you, provided you've activated auto-attack. This differs from World of WarCraft, where you have to chase down fleeing characters, or opponents can run through you, forcing you to turn around if you want to target them. All in all, Aion plays a little more like World of WarCraft's predecessors in the combat department.
• There is a ton of information about NPCs available to you: When you are questing, you will notice that all quest NPCs relevant to your objectives are displayed on the mini-map and the game map. In addition, many of the mobs and nearly all of the quest NPCs are clickable inside of quest descriptions. By clicking on them, you can read a little bit of background on the NPC, see some information pertaining to what region of the world they inhabit, and where to find them. This is particularly useful for areas that you have not explored yet.
• Personal stores: Have some useful loot to offload? Simply set up a store (hotkey Y) to put your items up for sale. While Aion has an auction house, the auction house costs money to use, and if you are in an area where people will find your wares useful, you can sell your items posting fee and commission free simply by setting up shop anywhere in the world. Once you have placed items from your inventory into your store and set prices (the game even helps you by making price recommendations), you can set a store message and click to immediately set up shop. I've had a number of people buy tradegoods and random armor/weapon drops from me. In addition, the game remembers what you put in your store, and what price is it set at, meaning that once you have stocked your store, anything that didn't sell during your first session is saved for the next time you open your store. This makes setting up shop a breeze, and is basically something I always do if I get up to watch tv, make dinner, or work around the house. It's also a great way to make you visually AFK if you're grouping.
• Item "gemming" system: Most of the weapons and armor in this game have sockets. Players can customize their armor by adding different runes into these slots. Although there don't seem to be any "rune words" or bonuses for gemming an item with a particular brand of rune, the gem system is definitely one of my favorite things to see in a game. From a developer standpoint, it makes designing armor much easier, since players can use one set of armor to do many different things.
  

Dislikes:

• Size of the main cities: Transportation in the game is a huge issue, but nowhere in Elonia is it more frustrating than the capital region, from what I've seen. Getting from one end of the capital to the other can take around five minutes, and if you want to get to an outlying hub for a quest or two, that can add an additional three or four minutes to the trip. The cities are so large, in fact, that there is actually a set of teleporters (2) to make travel easier. The main problem with these, in my opinion, is that they cost money to access, which frustrated me whenever I turned in a quest and ported back to the entrance just to remember that I needed to hand in another quest before porting back. Note to developers: Don't make your game frustrating. There is a big difference between challenging and frustrating. Challenging is when players can become frustrated fighting a monster or boss, but when they ultimately beat the boss, all that negative sentiment they've been building up makes victory all the more sweet. Frustrating is when you have mechanics in games that never provide for this experience. I'm never going to feel good about the hours I've wasted walking around your game because the transportation system is slow and inadequate.
• Charging for everything: This goes a bit off of the point I was making at the end of the last bullet, but in this game, almost nothing is free. Money is very easy to come by, meaning that transportation, resurrection, item fees aren't overbearingly expensive, but I personally get annoyed when multiple costs are imposed on game actions.
  
• Gold-farming spam: This has been widely reported on game websites, but farming spam is much worse in this game than it ever was in World of WarCraft or other MMOs I've played. Generally, I would say I received a gold spam broadcast about every second or two, and would receive a private message advertising a currency website about once every five minutes. I realize that fighting gold spammers can be difficult, but NCSoft has had over a year to fix it. Blizzard has definitely stepped up their game against gold farm spamming. I expected that NCSoft would have done a better job.

Overall, I've enjoyed the time I've spent with Aion. Aion is definitely the most polished MMO that I've played since World of WarCraft, and reminds me a lot of Dark Age of Camelot, which is probably the MMO that I've enjoyed the most. At the same time, Aion has made me re-evaluate how I spend my time playing games. While there was once a time in my life that I didn't mind spending hours upon hours questing or needlessly running around cities that are too big for their content, in the last few years my time has been at a bit more of a premium. While I've enjoyed the time I've spent with Aion, it has also made me realize that the MMO genre in general is just not the best use of my limited time.

-Jon