It’s that time again, folks; another Aion: Tower of Eternity impression article.
If you just want the quick comments or the numbers, here it is: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

However, if you’re a savvy MMO gamer, you know that there are just way too many variables in an MMO to sum it up with a score or a simple sentence. So for the people who care and read our articles, let’s continue from our last two impressions on Aion: Tower of Eternity. (Here’s our 1st impression, and 2nd impression on Aion)

Today, we’ll be looking at some of the endgame related contents, with some of the ups and downs, the community response, and how it can or can’t satisfy your MMO needs.

While we were reviewing Aion, there was a Halloween event. Many MMOs have special events for almost every occasion, and Aion is no different. There was an interesting plot going on for the Halloween event, with promises of items. Actually, it was kind of hard for us to spot the Halloween spirit during the game because we didn’t notice any changes. Some people expected quests and cities full of Halloween decorations, but that never happend. Honestly, I was one of those people who expected more. Did they deliver the items though? Yes, they did.

Well, at least we got the pumpkin heads.

If NCsoft really wants to push their product to the western market, they should consider pushing the holiday contents because some people want more than just an item or two. More variety in contents always helps, no matter how many people want it. But in the end we were all happy to receive the pumpkin head.

The main highlight in Aion is Abyss, the PvPvE area with fortresses and artifacts that Elyos, Asmodians and Balaur can siege and claim as their own. On a random schedule, these fortresses are available for sieges, and the rule of PvPvE really shines throughout the event. You’ll have to protect the Guardian Deity if you’re defending the fortress, while the other side will have to break into the fortress gate and the Aetheric Fields. The defense can repair the gate as the other side tries to break in. While all this is going, the NPC side, Balaur, can come in and be the third player of this already-chaotic-enough siege. If the defender fails to protect the Guardian Deity General, the siege is be over. Whoever damaged the Guardian Deity General the most will own the fortress.

It looks crazy enough without the UI, right?

This PvPvE environment of Abyss works really well. We still haven’t seen its full potential because there are not that many max level players on the servers yet, but it’s already going well, especially when either side come up with plans, working each other’s legions and alliances.

Ahh, so many enemies to get rid of, yet so little time.

Abyss is definitely fun. You’re constantly on edge in Abyss, and with the addition of having wings to fly, it’s just too much fun.

One of the most important aspects of an MMO is content. So, does Aion have enough content for players to come back after a month of subscription? Aion is definitely fun for many, but may not be for everyone and here’s why.

If you’re used to MMOs that have a storyline with a low max level caps, like Guild Wars, then you might feel like you’re grinding too much. You might be used to hitting the max level cap in weeks or even days, so reaching level 50 might take longer than you expected. If you’re used to some of the hardcore MMOs, you won’t have this problem because you already know that to fully enjoy the content of a large size MMO, you’ll just have to work your way up to the level cap. So, who’s right and wrong? Nobody. They’re all right and they’re all wrong.

I am indeed a cooking expert!

Again, if you’re comparing Aion to the MMOs that have been around for a couple of years, filled with contents, Aion might not look so big. But from our experience, there are enough things to do in game to keep you busy. If you just have one goal, like reaching the level cap or finishing the whole story by yourself without grouping, you’ll lose interest rather quickly. If you take time to get into the storyline, doing other stuff like customizing the looks of your items, crafting for your legion members and friends, you’ll hardly feel the grinding. But isn’t this true with almost, if not every MMOs out there? Why would you want to give yourself a hard time reaching the end without enjoying all the other stuff to do?

Aion is not about reaching the level cap before anyone else, because eventually the server will be full of max levels. And if you put enough time into it, reaching max level cap isn’t too hard like some other MMOs. Once the majority of people can access the endgame content, it all comes down to who you play with, whether it’s joining a legion or grouping with other players for elite dungeons.

Customization and item remodeling are excellent features of Aion. After all, we're worth it, right?

So if you look at the big picture of Aion, we’re still in the early stages of determining the game’s lifespan. But from what we’ve experienced so far, —leveling scales, flying, PvPvE, spy quests, crafting and visual customizations— I think it’s safe to say that Aion can be great fun for many people. We really hope that NCsoft works hard to bring in more content for players to enjoy in the coming future.

Our Score: 8.5 /10

We love the PvPvE and the Fortress Siege idea. And flying is just too much fun. If you liked all of our hands-on impressions, you should really give it a try!

- UPDATE 2009.11.20: Looks like NCsoft’s latest patch did wonders for many of the crashing players. We still witness few forum threads about crashing but most of people reported that the crash in Abyss is gone. Well done, NCsoft!

Continuing from our first Aion coverage, we’ll talk more about the environment, which for those between level 15~25 will find themselves in the world of Atreia.

One of the first things that we talked about in Aion was the character customization. The more you play Aion, the more you witness the flexibility in character customization. Some people don’t take advantage of it, but many will stand out from the crowd. Funny or hot, we love the diversity in characters.

Yes, I know. I'm hot.

We also mentioned that you don’t have to grind much to level up. Like many other MMOs, constant quests can feel a bit like grinding. At least with Aion, you have a choice; you can either follow the main story campaign without being sidetracked, or you can try to do every quest out there. Or, you can just kill mobs and try to look for rare drops. It seems like as we level up higher, the quests don’t give out enough experience points for you to just stick to the main story. We will have to see how far we can level up before we grind.

Still feels like you’re out of options? Well, from around level 15, you can start getting quests that require you to group up with other players. That’s right, they’re dungeon style quests. Loots and boss fights; one of the true meanings of life in an MMO world.

People wouldn't go to dungeons with me since I rolled a couple of 100's on my dice.

Now, forming a group and going to the dungeons can be a great experience, but not always pleasant. Even if all five members are dedicated to teamplay, one single selfish player can ruin the fun. One time  I (as ClassicMoments) was in a group with five other people, but one Spirit Master couldn’t control his summoned pet, aggro-ing many elite monsters and ended up killing all of us. And there was this one time where two other people and myself formed a small group, but since we all knew what we were doing, we never had any problems killing mobs even with a couple of elite monsters trying to make us taste the dirt on the ground.

But isn’t that all part of an MMO life? Sure it is! Just remember though; no matter how good you (think you) are, you just won’t be able to overcome some of the obstacles that the dungeons will throw at you alone.

Just another typical day in Aion.

The difficulty of these group quests/campaigns/dungeons are well balanced, and so are the classes. No matter how high your level and skills are, you can never take on a dungeon all by yourself. Some players however, may prefer more options to the difficulty and class design. It’s always fun to find some clever way for a Cleric to become the ultimate tank or an Assassin with a one-hit-kill damage but with only 10% success rate of landing any attack. Yes, these alterations can sometimes result in a catastrophic unbalance, but options are options. If you’re worried about balancing though, you shouldn’t because it looks like NCsoft is keeping a close eye on it. Since Aion is well-balanced, it comes down to the skills of the players, and with the group, you can determine how good the player really is.

MMOs are all about varieties, and no one will enjoy Aion to the fullest by doing quests alone.  Sometimes you want to loot good items. If you’re into crafting, you might want to gather up some materials. However you want to play, the environment changes as you progress throughout the levels.

A scene I captured while resting between flights.

Aion is a very colorful MMORPG indeed.
If you’re a tech-sensitive guy/gal, you might notice low-res textures here and there, but compared to many other MMOs out there, it’s not only pretty and beautiful, but also vivid in colors. This was one of the reasons why NCsoft chose CryENGINE, and good for us that they’re fully utilizing its potential.

The art is also distinctive. We could tell that some of the designs are either western or eastern culture influenced, but many times we enjoyed the creativity.

We like the design so much, we're killing them with joy!

As the environment changes, we were hoping for fresh monster designs each time.  Compared to other MMOs, we witnessed fewer repetitive designs, but we could still spot a few of them. We’re not concluding anything about the monster designs yet because first of all, we’re (probably) only half way done with the game and second, many of the monster designs were still very impressive. Some of them were surprisingly ‘different’, but we’re not going to spoil it for you. You shall meet them in due time.

Once you get used to the group environment while following the main storyline, you’ll reach level 25. What’s so significant about level 25? I just have one word my friend, one word; Abyss.

The Abyss is where the various raids are happening, anytime, any day. What’s so intense about the Abyss is that it’s PvPvE, which means that monsters can attack either race, Elyos and Asmodians, while Elyos and Asmodians can battle each other as well. Simply put, anything goes.

I was playing with an Elyos character in Abyss, and another Elyos characters came and pointed over the horizon. He told me that there were many Asmodians getting ready to attack the area where I was. I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about, so I just ignored him and focused on the monsters. Couple of minutes later, I was screaming for help (literally) to my fellow Elyos, while I lay kissing the dirt on the ground I was standing on, under the feet of 6 Asmodians. An Elyos came and helped me, but we couldn’t take on 6 Asmodians, of course.

Flying itself can be heart pumping and intense, and now I have to look around and make sure that I’m not too far away from my race while hunting monsters. It can be stressful, but in a good way and same time it can be so much fun.

Because the Abyss can easily turn into a PvP battle ground, there are rewards for the players that survive. For killing the monsters and enemy race players, you can increase your rank within your Legion while ranking higher for Abyss Ranks.  You can also earn Abyss Points by killing monsters and enemy race players, and spend those points on Abyss weapons and armors. If you’re into the PvPvE stuff, Abyss is the playground for you.

Abyss can be fun, even if you don't like PvP too much.

Trying to reach level 25 can feel like a chore because accessing the Abyss is such a huge step forward as an Aion player. What we would suggest though is to enjoy the moments instead of watching your experience points bar slowly fill up to your next level, especially from 24 to 25.

So, we’re on our second impression of Aion, and so far it’s been a great experience. We might do another impression on Aion, and we’re planning to focus more on the game systems and varieties. Aion so far has been very satisfying and it is often compared to the best-selling MMORPG yet, World of Warcraft. You can’t deny that WoW has more content, and many times you might have more choices between styles of gameplay (quests vs grinding).

Aion is a relatively new game though, and what we want to find out is not if it’s a WoW killer, but to verify that Aion will have enough content to build its own fan base, large enough to survive for many years to come. No doubt Aion is good and that is why it’s compared to top-of-the-line MMOs out there, but we’re not even sure if we want to compare Aion with other MMOs. We just want to see if it has the originality and fun elements, and from what we’ve seen so far, there are a lot, and in high quality too.

As we reach level 25, it looks like it’s just another beginning. We’ll come back to it once we find more about Aion.

Aion sure got a lot of attention from MMORPG gamers.
And somehow, it was compared to the best selling MMORPG, World of Warcraft.

After many days and nights of test-driving Aion, we now understand why people are debating and comparing Aion to the best selling MMORPG. And through our experience, we agree that Aion well deserves the attention it’s received, and then some.

Before we go on, we want you to know that this won’t be our only Aion impression. As you might already know, MMORPG is a very progressive genre that can change dramatically with patches and expansions. It wouldn’t be fair for us to do a review and give them a static score for an ever-growing world.

One of the first things you encounter before playing Aion is the character creation system. We wouldn’t usually make a note about obvious steps like creating an avatar, but Aion’s a bit different.  Aion features an incredibly advanced character customization system like no other. Take a look.

That is some serious customization.

If you spend some time with it, you can re-create almost anyone you can imagine, physically of course. Handsome, cute, nice looking, mean looking, fat, short, thin, buff. You name it; you can do it. You can select your favorite out of the avatar presets and start your adventure there. Or you can select one from the presets, then change every major body part to be original. And while you’re creating and customizing your avatar, you have options to put clothes or armors on and off.  It’s like a whole new mini game.

Run little friend, run!

Obviously, we haven’t tried EVERY MMORPG avatar customization system out there so we can’t say Aion is the top of the line, but so far, it’s definitely high on the scale for character customization. And with CryENGINE under the hood, the game runs great with rich colors and details even close-up.

With a video card that costs little over than $120 (we used Radeon HD 4850), we set every visual setup to the max, and it had no hiccups at all. And for those of you a bit behind on the video card roadmap, Aion gives a nice optimization graphic option so that if the player visits areas with many players and NPCs, it’ll automatically tone down visuals a bit so that your computer won’t slow down.

The animation of NPCs and their AI was very nice too. Some of the action emotes are very well done. Characters don’t move around like robots, and if different territorial monsters see each other, they actually interact with each other.

"There's a perfectly good reason why I pee there!"

The background music and audio quality is something you’ll enjoy as well. There is a little bit of bad voice acting here and there, but not compared to many games out there, and you probably won’t even notice them with the great presentation and visuals. Sometimes the music can sound over epic, but not too much that players would notice. It blends in nicely and gives the game the right atmosphere. Yes, we haven’t played too much on the later chapters of Aion, but so far, none of the audio work has disappointed us.

Enough with the technical stuff; let’s get to the game systems and interactive experiences.

As we said, this is only part one of our Aion report, and as of yesterday, we have reached level 14, which is about 20 something percent of the max. level cap; 50. We’ll share our Aion experience to the point where we are at today, but some stuff can change over the duration of our play. And we don’t want to spoil you with anything so even though our information can be limited, please do understand our purpose.

Before you create a character, you have to choose a server to play on, then you have to choose a side; between Asmodian or Elyos. Be careful which one you choose; once you pick a side, you have to play as that race for the server you decided to play. It’s very hard to communicate between Asmodian or Elyos, so I suggest that you consult with your friends, or just check out the Aion galleries around the internet and pick your favorite.

The one thing some gamers point out about MMORPGs is that players have to grind a bunch to reach a point where they can actually enjoy the game. This is true with some games, but not entirely true with Aion, at least thus far. We’re at level 14 and we haven’t had a moment where we had to level up or beg hunt for money to enjoy the game. We simply did some side quests along with the main campaign, and so far it’s given us enough XP to progress to the next level. Yes, some quests involve dealing with monsters, but compared to many hardcore-grinding MMORPGs out there, we really felt like we were following the main/side storyline with undivided attention. If you hate quests and love hunting for goods/rare items or money, Aion provides that as well.

Quests or hunting, you'll be leveling enough to progress..

If you’re an avid MMORPG player, you won’t have too much trouble learning Aion at all. If you have a limited experience with MMORPGs, you might want to leave the key settings as default because it feels like any other major MMORPG controls. If you haven’t played MMORPGs at all, you shouldn’t have too many problems either, thanks to the helpful tutorial with videos. If you’re a space monkey from another planet like ClassicMoments, you might need some time to figure everything out, but it took less than an hour to master the keys, so kudos for the video tutorials.

One interesting control system that we can point out is the macro system. Gamers who want to cast several spells or skills in order, won’t have to press a bunch of keys to make it happen; you can just macro it so that one key can cast many different spells or skills to your enemies/group members. One step away from carpal tunnel syndrome before we quit gaming, yeah?

Once you reach level 9, it means that the avatar is qualified for Ascension. The main thing about Ascension is that you’ll be able to pick a class to carry on with the storyline, and you’ll get a nice set of wings! First when we heard about flying around with wings, we didn’t expect much. But boy were we wrong. We didn’t realize how much of an impact these wings had on gameplay.

How do you like my wings, you mere humans?

Whenever we fly to do quests, fight or just mess around, we felt our hearts pumping because first, you don’t get to fly around forever. You have a limited time to handle your air-time, so whatever you’re doing, you better use your time wisely. And second, flying around feels just damn cool. Controls are tight and simple, so anyone who can use a mouse and a keyboard simultaneously shouldn’t have any problems.

Another very interesting system is the “Trade Broker” system. In game, there are NPCs throughout the world who act as item trade brokers. You can give these trade brokers items to sell at the price that you want, while you’re concentrating on gameplay. It’s like a simple trading forum, and a very useful feature that’ll save many people’s precious time.

Trade Broker will do the dirty business jobs for you.

Another convenient feature we found is the ability to sell all the ‘misc.’ item drops to NPCs with a single click. There’s a “Sell All Misc.” button that will automatically put all the non-equipments and non-crafting materials to the selling cart. These little touches will be really appreciated by the time-sensitive gamers.

The only thing we had trouble figuring out was changing certain option settings. Aion has option settings for almost any player’s convenience, but some of them are hard to find. One of the settings that we wanted to check out was in between options that had no relevance to the settings we wanted to change whatsoever. It’s very nice that they thought of every possible taste; we just wish that the list of settings were a bit more organized. One of our editors pointed out that it would be cool to add more hotkeys like selecting the nearest item drops. We’re sure that they’ll patch things up once they receive requests from players. After all, this is the mere beginning phase of the game.

And though cinematic presentation was excellent, we wish there were more informative cinematics about the storyline itself. Though we can read texts and find more information about the story on the internet, good storytelling is never a bad thing, especially for an MMORPG.

If anyone asks about how Aion matches up to other major MMOs, I can safely assure them that we’ve found many good, working and proven elements of MMORPGs, with relatively standard controls and very nice graphics; yet, it’s very original. It’ll take us more time to make our words final, but we understand why almost 400,000 copies of Aion were pre-ordered. We haven’t reached the high levels yet, and we haven’t discovered all the cool places either. But we’re eager to find out more about Aion: Tower of Eternity, and we’ll definitely keep you in the loop with our future impressions.

The future of Atreia looks bright.

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