Collector's Edition includes the elements in play Aion, Black Cloud fin and the slope, the special title, exclusive color, and 2 characters emote. Also included is a 6.5 "hand painted figuirine Asmodians Soundtrack Goddess Aion Aion and the two sides. Impressive world: Explore a fantasy world filled with meticulously inhabitants of another world, ancient secrets and mysterious enemy. Innovative PvPvE: Aion introduced a new dynamic to the MMO, PvP and PvE missions combining new and exciting style. viscerally intense combat: Engage in a spectacular battle system and the evolution of using combos, chains skills, combat, and spectacular aerial combat. unprecedented customization Take individuality to a new level with a tool for building character in every detail, development and advanced customization vast subject.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
| Aion is a visually stunning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), where players ascend to divinity and fight in a celestial war. Here they will wield divine powers and the capability of true flight, to bring deliverance to your people and restore balance to a world shattered by cataclysm. Choose your side, spread your wings, and claim your rightful place among the immortal legions of Atreia. This is the glory that is Aion.
Explore one of the most amazingly beautiful and detailed MMORPGs ever as you fight to save a vibrant world ripped asunder by a celestial war. Choose between two divine factions, the Asmodians or the Elyos, and save your people from an ancient evil that threatens to destroy everything in its path. Over 1500 story-driven quests lead you through a wondrous and expansive world like no other. Experience the Thrill of Flight Engage in Visceral Combat Unprecedented Customization Key Features Battle in a New Breed of Conflict Battle for control of valuable strongholds and artifacts within the Abyss, a hotly contested battlefield resting between the upper and lower halves of Atreia. Plan and execute raids against rival factions, earn special ranks and rewards through victory, and prepare for unexpected attacks by the Balaur, an ancient race freed from imprisonment within the Abyss. System Requirements:
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Customer Reviews
Very happy with Aion
I had preordered the game so I was able to play in the closed beta events as well as the open beta and headstart event. I have played EQ and City of Heros, and I was really looking forward to Aion as I ultimately love a fantasy type setting.
What I like:
The graphics are amazing, the first glimpse of the floating city of Sanctum is breathtaking. I also love the character models. They are very customizable, and everyone should be able to make a toon to please them. Game play also seems to be a lot of fun. I tend to be more of a solo, casual player, and so far I haven't had trouble with that game play style. Now, not every class is going to have it as easy and be as quick. Also, I haven't played a character past level 17 so I cannot comment on the higher end game or the PVP aspect.
What I am not so keen on:
The game, at least in the beginning, is extremely linear. While the story and quests are very interesting, the fact that everyone is doing the exact same thing can cause some trouble. Also, I'm not sure how people will like going through the same storyline every time they create a new character. I will be curious to see how this is tweaked as the game matures. I also have concerns about the PVP aspect; I'm not a fan of PvP, and have not yet experienced that aspect of the game, but I'm hoping that there will be enough content with PvE that I can avoid the PvP if I want. Kill stealing can also be a problem, but not one I have encounted significantly so far.
All in all I have thoroughly enjoyed the game and will be playing for a while to come.
Great game! Lots and lots of fun!
This is a solid game and a lot of fun. Most press on this game tends to be focused around its graphics which are really great but to be honest that is just the surface of it. This game is just really fun, plain and simple. If you've played any other the other big games out there like wow, warhammer, lineage, lord of the rings etc you will feel right at home.
The first week or two the servers went on-line the game had some major hick-ups as they got the servers and loads balanced but the game has since evened out.
I've played most of the major MMORPGs out there (Wow, lotro, lineage, warhammer, conan etc) and have now played Aion up to max level so will give you a quick run-down on Aion here:
Character creation is extremely extensive. You really can pretty much make your character look like anything. Even your characters voice can be changed around. There are 3 races in Aion, 2 of which you can choose to roll (3rd race is server controlled). Any piece of armor can be used as a template for another so you can make your plate mail armor look like cloth etc. Every piece of gear can be modified in color as well for full customization. But the real character customization is not with the character looks but with how your character is. Titles, manastone, godstones, stigmastones etc. allow you to pretty much make your character into anything you like. None of the other MMORPGs released allow this much customization in player looks or abilities.
You have your typical mage, cleric, rogue and warrior types in Aion. You further define a subclass at level 10 for a total of 8 classes:
Sorcerer (Crowd control and nuker. They hit hard with spells but fold as easily as paper if hit.)
Spirit Master (Pets, DOTs and lots of Fears.)
Cleric (Healer. Sorry I personally think healing is boring so kind of hard for me to get pumped up here but those who like to heal seem to love this class.)
Chanter (DPS and buffing healer. Substitute main healer.)
Assassin (Melee DPS. Stealther. Posions. Assassins are great at pi$$ing other players off in PVP.)
Ranger (Ranged DPS. Kiting and crowd controls.)
Templar (Tank. They can do damage but they can't be killed easily either.)
Gladiator (A DPS tank. Melee mostly. Subsitute main tank.)
The classes are well balanced and of the 6 out of the 8 classes I've played so far all are a lot of fun.
The first few levels have a lot of things to help out new players of MMORPGs from in game help videos to lots of pop-ups with tips. Well done entry to the game.
At level 10 you choose your subclass and get your wings as you ascend and become a Daeva. You were a lowly human until then. You don't really use your wings though until much later.
Levels 10-25 are pretty much learning the abilities of your class. Tons of quests and gathering to do. Lots of which are only done in groups although you can solo all the way to 50 if you'd like but not recommended. At level 20 you may start to encounter the opposing faction and start doing some limited PVP. Up to this point the game is pretty linear and scripted.
Level 25 you do your abyss entry quests and enter a completely 3d world. The Abyss is huge. Larger than the rest of the world combined and you really do go all over the place in it. You will encounter both the opposing faction and the 3 race, the Balaur. The Balaur are a computer controlled faction and are used to balance out the two player controlled races. If one race starts to dominate too much, the Balaur come in and wipe the slate clean. You are often thrown in against both factions at the same time in combat.
Level 25 to 50 consists of quests, PVP, instances and crafting mostly. Tons of stuff and you never run out of things to do. Unlike most games you do all the quests all over the world map. You even have to go back into the starting zones a few times. So while the start of the game consists of doing quests in one area then move to the next, this ends later as they send you all over the place. In other words, the game is very linear at first and becomes completely non-linear later on.
End game consists of well the same things as above except you can actually work on getting your gear set. Tons of end game instances and PVP to do. Fortress sieges really start at level 35+ but are mostly done by the upper levels. There is a lot to do at end game already with more content on the way. When the servers first came on-line there were very few upper level characters but now the shift has changed and more level 50s then lower. This has made it much easier to do the upper level group quests and instances and PVP.
Instances:
First instance is level 25 and is designed to train you how to do an instance. The instance is even called Training Grounds. It's actually designed both to teach you how to do instances as well as teach you how to do the later fortress battles. It's simple and easy and a good way to learn. Most instancing starts at level 30 and up. There are several dozen instances so far and they have plans of adding quite a few more. You really don't run out of instances to do. Some instances have both mobs and the opposing player faction at the same time. Many instances are timed (Speed instances) and all of the instances are quick to complete 20-60 minutes). If you come from a heavily instanced game like wow you will have no issues here.
Loot:
Yes there is loot in the game but Aion is not a loot based game. You won't find any DKP systems or people checking your gear to see if they will group with you and such. Most bosses don't even always drop loot. Aion is about the game play, not the loot. It is very easy to make Kinah (Gold) and very easy to spend it. Money is tight until after level 40 but gets easier after that. Once again loot is secondary in the game to the game play.
Crafting:
Crafting is very extensive and takes a long time to complete. You can learn all professions but only master two. The professions are Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing, Tailoring, Alchemy, Cooking and Handicrafting. Crafting takes a lot of money and a lot of time. You cannot level crafting in hours like in some games. It will most likely take you months to level your first profession to max. Crafting is multi leveled and is more similar to the crafting system in Lord of the rings than any other MMORPG. Crafting in Aion puts some games (Warhammer, wow Conan) crafting systems to shame.
Gathering:
Gathering is not a profession per say. There are two types. Air and ground gathering. Took a while to get used to the gathering system but now love it. It is very slow at first but speeds up a lot later. Gathering is used quite a bit in Aion but some people do not like to gather and just buy mats in the broker. Air gathering is very slow but does teach you to fly better so I highly recommend it. I would not start learning any profession until you have your gathering up some.
PVP:
PVP starts at level 20 but to be honest you don't really do much until later. PVP is a complete free for all in that you can easily encounter people much higher or lower than you at any time. I suggest you make friends and stick together when soloing or are lower level as single players are often easy prey by passing players from the opposing faction. PVP is very fast and not easy at all. You are not gimped in what abilities you can use and there are safe places to go to avoid PVP but sometimes even the major towns are raided so you can't even be totally safe except for in one zone and your capital city. All the classes are fairly evenly balanced with none standing out as better or worse than the others. As you get higher in level more pvp is introduced and you are sent into the opposing factions areas for specific quests to do. There are several instances in end game where you have to fight both the instance mobs and players from the opposing faction. If you want to avoid PVP you mostly can but sometimes you will run into it a bit. You just can't avoid it totally. If you absolutely hate PVP, buy another game. If you love some or a lot of PVP you will love Aion.
Graphics:
Yep top of the line. Very difficult to find a game with better graphics than Aion. Lord of the rings online has great still graphics but sucky animations. Wow has very poor graphics compared to aion in almost every category. It's not just the looks of things in Aion but the animations and how fluent everything is. Sort of a cross between Conan (Looks great but horrible lag) and wow (Great gameplay but graphics are terrible).
They are talking about a graphics upgrade later in 2010. I doubt there will be much improvement though as its top of the line already. I'm not sure where they can improve. When you go into the graphics options, you can click the auto-detect settings and it will scan your computer and set the graphic levels to the best level for your hardware. Except for just downright piss-poor computers, almost everyone will be able to run Aion at max settings. Oddly enough even though the game's graphics are better than most games, the system requirements to play it at those levels is fairly low. Moving from any other MMORPG you will see an instant improvement in both looks and or animations.
UI:
The user interface is very easy to navigate around in. It looks good, it's simple but has enough to get the job done. There are no addons in Aion and to be honest I first thought this was a major set back. But after playing I realized addons are not needed. There really isn't anything missing from the UI and it's laid out about as perfect as you can think. It is highly customizable but most people I have talked to seem leave it at the default. Gone are the days of updating addons after every patch. When you talk to NPCs and accept quests, you have a hypertext type system in place which is really nice. Click on an item name in the quest text and it will give you the description of it in more detail including what types of mobs drop it. Click the mob name and it will give you a description of where to find that type of mob. Also included are place names and locations which activate maps and such. It's really well done. The world map is nice and even nicer is the map overlay which brings up a transparent world map. It's easy to navigate. UI in Aion gets a A+. Looks great, simple yet customizable enough for any need. Night and day difference in the UI between games like Lord of the rings and Aion.
Broker, mail, vendors, etc:
Yes there is an auction house but being this is not a loot oriented game, it is used but it's not a centralized part of the game. You won't be spending hours scanning the broker with addons and you can't even put many items in the broker at once. The game is just more oriented to playing rather than doing maintenance to get ready to play. All items stack to 1000 or 10000 and your cube (Bags) do get full but inventory control is not too much of a problem. You can expand your cube, warehouse (Bank) and legion warehouse (Guild or fellowship bank) via quests and from leveling certain crafting or by just out right paying for it. You do not have to repair your gear ever (Gear does not get damaged in Aion). Mail is simple and easy to use. Not used often actually but it is there. There are trainers for all kind of things and you can buy training manuals from a trainer before you level and learn your new abilities as soon as you gain XP and level. You can set up your own personal shop at any location. Some people love this. I personally don't use it often. All NPCs will talk to you and have animations and even move around from location to location. Some are hard to find. Some are only found during certain times of day or night.
Death, dying and time:
When you die you appear back at your obolisk. You lose a small amount of xp when you die but you can gain 2/3rds of it back by paying a soul healer. You cannot lose a level by dying. Buying back lost xp is optional, it does not have to be done. Any character can resurrect another in the game either vie spell (If there are a healer) or by using resurrection stones. There are even self resurrection stones available. If needed you can buy portable obelisks called kisks and bind to them temporarily so if you die you resurrect at your kisk instead of your permanent obolisk. This becomes vital when in enemy lands or during fortress sieges. Raiders often bring portable kisks with them so they can resurrect nearby. Time is accelerated in Aion and is a centralized part of the game. Many mobs and NPCs move around or are found at different times and locations. Some abilities can only be used during certain times as well.
Flight:
In Aion you can glide and fly. There is a difference which you will learn eventually. The first 30 levels or so very little flying is done. It's mostly used later in the game (Where you spend most of your time in). The game really is 3D. They do limit where you can fly in the first part of the game but open it up later on. 3D combat adds a lot to the game. I love closing my wings and dropping like a rock to escape an enemy. Flight time management is extremely important and adds to the difficulty of PVP and questing in the abyss.
You are constantly trying to customize your gear to improve your flight speed and time you can spend in the air. #$%^&! Spirit Masters can force you out of the air :( Ariel combat is often more about gaining an aerial advantage sometimes than fighting. Your characters stats change depending on if you are in the air or ground or even what direction you are moving.
Lore:
Those that get into the lore (I'm not one of them) like the lore in Aion. Aion does have a lot of lore behind the game but there are better games in this area (Lord of the rings). The Aion developers did a good job of adding long descriptive texts NPCs give you and there are tons of in game movies and cut scenes to keep you interested. Campaign quests really add to it. They have added lots of little things throughout the game to add to the lore. NCsoft says they hired well known top dollar fantasy writers to write the lore and quests in the game.
Music and sound:
Top notch. Really. You can turn on and off various aspects if you'd like but not normally needed. Really the game music and sound effects get an A+. There is no built in voice chat system. Most players use the normal vent, teamspeak, skype or yahoo.
Legions (Guilds or fellowships):
All standard stuff here. Guild sizes are limited (to 30 characters) but you can buy the right to expand the size of your legion up to 90 characters. When a guild gets to rank three you can design your own guild emblem which is shown on your characters cloak and on any fortress or artifacts you take. Legion commanders have all the standard controls over the legion like in any MMORPG.
Combat:
Combat is very fast paced compared to most on-line games. It's not like you just spam the same buttons over and over like in some games. One really nice aspect is the chain skills. Basically some skills activate to open up others. Chain skills can have multiple branches and go very deep on some classes. You are constantly making choices in combat due to the chain skills. Chain skills become very nice after level 35 or so. Server lag tends to be very low. The hardware and ISP NCsoft uses is very good. They have been making on-line games for years so have it down right. The first few weeks the game was released the game was very poor in this category but it is extremely efficient and works well now. Characters statistics change as you move in various directions and if you are in the air or not. Combat is just plain and simply a lot of fun.
Chat system:
The chat system could use some work but is functional. You can turn on and off or create additional channels and chat windows and choose exactly what you want in each. They need to add the ability to adjust the transparency of the chat window (Promised to be added later). Hardest part of the chat system is remembering what buttons you press for each function when you are used to playing in a different game. You can right click a character name to get a drop down menu with options but they need to expand this out a lot more. You can link items and locations and there is a notepad in game that you can save links, texts and locations in. One thing of note, you cannot use any chat channels other than /s until you reach level 10. This is to prevent gold spammers from creating characters and sending annoying whispers to everyone with advertisements. Luckily level 10 can be reached in one game session easily.
Quest types:
There are three types of quests in Aion. Campaign quests, normal quests and crafting workorders. Campaign quests are given to you automatically as you go up in level and are more based around the game storyline. They almost always have in game cut scenes and have greater rewards. Normal quests are well normal. There are tons of different types of quests; repeat quests, escort quests, quests with multiple paths to choose from with different endings depending on what you do, time quests etc. Pretty much any type of quests you can think of from all the various MMORPGs out there you will find here. Workorders are crafting quests given out by the crafting trainers. You can have up to 30 regular quests in your queue at once and unlimited number of campaign and workorder quests. Quests can be shared and done in a group, solo or sometimes in raids (If a raid quest).
Game content, world size, tech support:
Game world is fairly large and completely filled with content. Doubtful you will run out of things to do all the way up to max level (50) and beyond. Game is fairly well balanced between quests, crafting, gathering and pvp. Not too much of any one thing and if you get tired of one you can easily do something else. The game is not very grindy or repetitive. NCsoft has already added lots of new quests and content in just the first several months and has several large expansion packs to be added this year. The first couple months Aion had a huge bot and gold spammer problem but they have since gotten it under control. The bots and gold spammers are almost never seen any more. NCsoft is currently in the process of replacing their website and forums as they are pretty lousy. The forums outright suck actually. They do have a wiki right on their website and there are other utility websites with game databases and such out there as well. They promise the new website should be up and running March/April 2010. Tech support is very helpful and quick but their hours are limited. Luckily you don't need them too much but this is one area they could improve upon. What tech support they have is A+, it's just not open very often.
Misc:
Aion has servers in various languages and is world wide. Group size is 6. Raid size is 24. Aion is a channel based game. If any one area gets too many players playing in it, the game automatically creates a duplicate channel of the area so it is not over crowded. If you group with others, you must be in the same channel.
The Aion world is extensive and well done. The client and server software are not buggy at all and NCsoft seems to be adding stuff to the game already constantly. Patching the game is done automatically in the background and does not take long even with large patches. Servers seem to be populated and balanced well (They control this). Over all the game looks really good and plays even better. It truly is one of the next generation of MMORPGs. If you have played one of the older games like wow, warhammer, starcraft, lotro or guildwars, you will feel pretty comfortable upgrading to Aion. It really is an upgrade. If you have never played this type of game before, it is a good game to start with as they really made it easy to get into. Aion is subscription based and very well worth the money.
Pros:
Great gameplay. It's just plain fun.
Tons of content and well balanced between the various things to do.
PVP, combat system crafting and questing system is very well done.
Graphics rock. Game looks new and is easy to get around in.
Cons:
You have to be real picky to find much. They need longer tech support hours. They need a new website and forums. Chat system could use a bit of work but overall not much bad.
Great game overall. I've pretty much played all the MMORPGs out there and this one is easily the best of the bunch.
AION is Eons Ahead of its Time.
Well, maybe not eons ahead, but it certainly has caught my attention and that of many of my friends both online and off. Aion: The Tower of Eternity was first seen at a sneak-peak during E3 2006. Produced by the company NCSoft, Aion will not go unnoticed in their already large line games including; City of Heroes and Lineage 1 and 2. Korea and China were the first to check out the game, which allowed for a lot of time to beta-test and tweak things for the North American release on September 22nd.
Personally, I think this game is the embodiment of all of the things previous MMORPGs should have been doing all along, it's still not perfect, but it's currently as close as you are going to get with any game on the market. When you begin the game you start out as a "Daeva" which is a magical human enhanced by the use of "Aether", the back story to the game is original and certainly won't deter you from playing it in any way, but so far lacks the depth as many dedicated single player RPGS. However, to compensate NCSoft has created a pretty cool system of questing with a built-in quest tracking system which is nice since they have not yet announced that they will allow UI mods. There is a story-driven series of quests called Campaign quests, completing these will usually display a cut-scene featuring yours truly right in the middle of the screen, which puts you right in the middle of the action. It's a very nice feature since most MMORPGs leave you in the dust feeling like some story is happening but you are just there grinding through quests while the world passes you by in a flurry of instant quest text. Visually speaking the game is very pretty, based on a dumbed down version of FarCry's CryEngine the graphics certainly won't leave you asking more. One of the largest advantages to using CryEngine is that it's so scalable which means that if you are using grandmothers laptop or a custom built gaming rig with frames to spare, everyone gets to enjoy the beautiful scenery. People have told me that Aion has a subtle Anime look and feel to it, personally I can't really tell. The characters do look quite human though so don't worry, you won't be running around as a wide-eyed bobble head, unless of course you want to. Aion boasts one of the easiest to use character generators and one of the most detailed that I have seen since The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, what it does lack is the 2 hour process of designing a character to a perfect T only to still have it look like complete garbage which Oblivion decided to leave in. Your character can either be the most gorgeous elfin looking babe in the world of Atreia or the gnarly looking pirate inspired assassin of your nightmares. That is, if the assassin of your nightmares is a beautiful GQ looking model, the fact here is that most of the characters, no matter what faction you choose, are going to look pretty good if you stay within the realm of normal body proportions (you can go far beyond them if you like though). The factions in Aion are the Elyos and the Asmodeans, with the Elyos being the faux-hawk sporting good guys, while the Asmodeans are the clawed foot and hand bad guys and girls of the land. For lack of a good segway here I'm just going to jump in and say that the sound-track to the game is pretty good, Ryo Kunihiko did the composing, who you might have heard of from the famous anime "Emma" (I haven't, but you might have). Music is laid back and classical sounding, with nice bursts of upbeat fighting music as you progress though battles and kobold brains. Actually, bashing kobold brains and any other creature that stands in your way isn't a bad idea, since they have went ahead and made both grinding out mobs and questing (or both!) viable options for success in getting to level 50. Especially since NCSoft has incorporated a channel system which is reminiscent of Guild Wars where there are 10 playable instanced "sub-servers" which are shared on a single server, the difference here being that you can swap between then once every 3 minutes. In a game like World of Warcraft killing raid bosses is easy since it's all in a single instance, however grinding out those 10 elk hides might be a huge challenge since everyone and their mother wants a set. Problem no more! In Aion you can just do a little channel surfing and appear exactly where you were except now there is no more competition for the mobs. Don't worry though, it's not going to stop you from grouping, since you can chat, group, and interact with players cross-channel. Since so far NCSoft has only improved upon the creations of other MMOs they wanted to add a little flare to the game. Other MMOs have tried to make flying a legitimate option, which they have done and successfully at that. However, the flying system in Aion makes those games look like a little league team at the World Series. Flying in the world of Atreia is easy, smooth, and really fun especially since many of your player attacks and skills are modified or usable only in the air like the sorcerers Comet Fall. Well, you might be asking like I did "So I can just fly over or around mobs I don't want to fight, or zones I want to skip?" NO, but the developers did think about people like me and added a nice feature called "Gliding" which is initiated by pressing the spacebar to jump, then again while in the air. Which is especially useful in zones where flying has been disabled (but don't worry there are plenty of flying zones to spread your wings through).
If you pick up Aion you aren't going to be disappointed, you aren't going to be surprised either. The game is very playable, and if you've played any other MMO (or if Aion if your first) you should be able to start right up and have a really good time playing it. NCSoft has really done a great job with this one (which is saying a lot since I was not a fan at all of City of Heroes or Lineage) Really the game shines with all of the improvements that it has made on many other MMOs without going too far out into the realm of experimental. If there is any selling point I can make for it, it's the smooth details of the game that make it worthwhile. Take it easy and have fun, and watch out for my next review, and say hello to Grundy in game!
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