Aside from this silliness, which is witnessed on most, if not all, MMOs, players are friendly an helpful. A number of serious questions, which get asked repeatedly, are normally answered genuinely. For anyone playing Elyos, you will hear players yelling for the location of Tutty, Poppy, Belbua's Treasure, the Wedding Ring and the Fossil at least once every five minutes. Do what I did; when someone answers these questions, note it down so you don't have to ask as well!

I have been invited to groups several times during my time in-game this time around, and found that groups work well together. This brings me onto the classes and how they are designed. Before your ascension into Daeva-hood at around level ten, you must choose the path for your character. There are four main classes in Aion, each with two specialisation choices. For a Warrior, you can choose to be a tanking Templar or a damage-dealing Gladiator, Scouts can be Assassins or Rangers, Priests can be healing Clerics or Chanters who provide useful buffs, but can also heal. Finally, Mages can be Sorcerers or Spiritmasters, the only summoning class in Aion, meaning you are accompanied by a pet. Once you have made the decision, there's no going back, however you will still have access to some mutual skills. A Gladiator will still be able to equip a shield a get by as a tank, early on in the game at least. This means that groups in the starter areas, which can be a maximum size of six, can tackle most obstacles with the right mix of classes, regardless of specialisation.

Like many games in this genre, the first enemies you encounter are very easy to kill, and only fight back once you start attacking them. Once you leave the protection of the very first area, you come across mobs that will attack you from a certain range. You can outrun many of them, even some harder monsters, but be careful; remember that you incur a penalty if you die in Aion. If you're unlucky and are overcome, you have the option to respawn at your bind point, or wait until a passing Priest feels like resurrecting you (many, though not all, will gladly do so). You can also carry Resurrection Stones with you, which allow you to rez yourself. Whichever way, you lose some XP and get a nasty debuff for a short time that basically makes your character unplayable for the duration. You also have to regain your health once you are revived, so don't expect to be able to jump straight into battle. You can recover the lost XP by mending your soul at soul healers, located near to Obelisks in towns, but I found, especially as I progressed towards level 20, that this starts to get expensive. In other words, avoid death at all costs! If you have to rez at an obelisk, you also often have to travel quite a distance to get back to the place where you died.

You will probably find from quite early on that you struggle for space in your bags, and buying extra bag (cube) and bank space is costly, however, necessary. Be sure to make use of the trade brokers, the place where you can put your items up for sale to other players. The system is slightly more cumbersome than in other games though; there's no way to auto-complete the name of the item you wish to search for at the moment, and you are limited to selling ten items at a time. The Private Store feature is very useful too, and you will always see people selling their wares in cities, even in some out-of-the-way places sometimes. If your character is carrying anything that needs to be sold, it's worth setting up shop every time you leave your keyboard for a few minutes. Just make sure your prices are reasonable by checking the trade brokers occasionally.

I mentioned server queues at the start, and I'll just mention that here on the European servers, I've not had to wait once to get online, nor heard of anyone else having to. The game launches from today though, so this may change, especially over the weekend. NCsoft has also said that it intends to add a server to both US and EU clusters if required.

So, having enjoyed my time on the beta servers, slightly dubious about spoiling my experience by having to go over old ground on the live servers, I was pleasantly surprised when I realised that I was enjoying it more the second time around. Although there were plenty of people to be seen on the beta, the seldom communication between players made it out to be a somewhat solo experience. The buzzing atmosphere on live servers, albeit slightly childish sometimes, slots in that missing factor that I never knew I missed. Taking a look at the overall game up to level 20, I would wholeheartedly recommend it to any MMO gamer. So far, my time in Aion has been nothing but fun and there's no sign of it stopping any time soon.

Look out for my follow-up reviews as I tackle the next levels on my Aion journey over the coming weeks. Will the game retain its enjoyability as characters progress? 

For a more in-depth look at Aion's trade, professions, levelling, skills and quests, check out my beta previews and check the Podcast for further impressions.

Comment

Add a comment using your Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google or OpenID accounts.
blog comments powered by Disqus