Posted on June 13, 2012, in Episodes and tagged aion, blip tv, episode 23, gaming, grinder, lineage 2, mmo grinder, NCSoft, wings. Bookmark the permalink. 42 Comments.
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MMO Grinder 
Hey gonna do a bit archaeology but need to voice something out.
EU version is hosted by gameforge (play a sound of thunder), which boils down to game not being as free to play as You may think http://www.aionfreetoplay.com/website/features/ if you don`t grind for gold pack well You are in world of hurt. Gold pack costs from 15 to 20 mil Kinah so if someone likes to play it a bit more casual i suggest to pass on this one.
the irony is i got ganked more in my time in Aion then in L2
its not that grindy actually, when 3.0 came out they doubled the exp gained from killing mobs and the energy of repose does speed things up if ur logged out for awhile. i got to lvl 30 with 7 characters in less then 2 weeks actually and was fun. also you can get 15% of energy of repose in an hr if u afk near the musicians in the housing areas, nice lil addition if u wana afk. (also energy of repose is the buff u get that increases how much bonus exp u get depending on ur lvl and how long u logged off, and it also increases the quest reward’s exp exp: 2mil exp reward would be 2.8mil exp since its a 40% increase and housing actually increases the speed gain of energy of repose)
if you havent even made it to lvl 25, ur bearly scratching the suface of the game, theres unique zones, musics and nice storylines in the game that u even havent seen. also depending on the voice u pick in character creation, there IS a difference in voice in CS because ur character DOES SPEAK in some of them and it does determine how ur character will sound like.
Also, theres another thing u can do with dp, if u have the scrolls (u buy them from forts if ur faction controls them) you can morph ur dp into items! so u dont have to hunt for the ingrediants, u can morph em! plus at lower lvls u can get dp quite fast and only uses 200dp per morph but u can make 1-3 items depending on morph design and how much aether u have.
p.s. you can reduce ur lag if u use Shift + F12, that unloads all characters on ur screen that isnt in ur group!
In today’s Aion, you can get to level 40 in a day with the help of a Mentor and quest knowledge so you can hit all the quests nonstop. That is if you have that kind of time to play this second job.
Some of the armor and weapon designs are very cool, but those really nice looking pieces are harder to get, unless you’re in a Legion that can farm that gear all day, then you’re good to go.
As far as flying is concerned, the higher level you get, the more flight time you’ll have from armor, accessories, and newer wings. If you have the time to get them.
All the servers except Kahrun, have restricted PvP in each factions 2 pvpve zones. So unless you play on Kahrun, you won’t know how bad the ganking can get. There are people who will gank you nonstop. The Abyss is the only true PvP zone for players level 25+, but it’s mostly dead unless there is a fort siege going on.
I usually stay out of the chat window and don’t contribute as much spam as most of the people on the servers. I just run along and do my routine of daily quests.
It’s best to get help by joining a Legion that has a lot of experience in the game. If you can find one that isn’t full of elitists or foreigners. Which leads to the other issue of people from outside of North America playing this game. They’re filling up like half of the servers.
I also turn off the battle music. The battle music kicks in the instant you draw your weapon, even when you’re not fighting. It gets annoying real fast. I sometimes even turn the music off. I’ve played Aion for way too long. LOL!
I’m not sure how far you made it in the game, but with more experience, you might want to update the review. I’ve only played maybe 70% of the game so there are some stuff which I haven’t done yet mostly because I don’t have the time or the kinah to do, but I do have two level 60s and a few level 50s across 3 accounts. Yeah, I run 3-4 clients on my monster PC. LOL!
I also tried to play Vindictus on my old Dell Dimension 4700, and it didn’t go well. Fortunately, about 2 months ago I had a friend build me a new gaming oriented desktop for about $950 with an Nvida GeForce GTX 560 Ti. I’ll let you know how it goes. Also, you’re not the only person still playing on a square monitor :) .
You should be fine. I managed to get it to a playable, but still choppy, level with that. I’m still rocking a GForce 9800 here.
Nice review. But I feel you should have warned people about the malware called “Pando Media Booster” that NCsoft makes you download in order to play this game. A unsuspecting user that leaves PMB.exe running on their system is pretty much being forced to seed files to thousands of users ALL THE TIME (Pando Media Booster has been reported by users to use up to 80+% of their internet connection’s upload bandwidth.)
The only reason I discovered PMB’s antics was because my ISP started throttling my connection. I had only been playing Aion for around 3 weeks at that point. Fortunately I was able to work things out with my ISP after discovering the truth. It’s a shame I had to uninstall Aion because of it. But I could not stop PMB from sucking up absurd amounts of my upload bandwidth. The limited “options” it gives you do VERY little.
Aion is a very frustrating game to review. You did a good job with what you had to work with.
The Vanilla areas you played in are overdue for some major streamlining; there is no reason to have new players play the majority of the game in 4 year-old content where people just twink alts and PvP is no longer existent.
I do think Aion has great content, especially for a free game. But its a grinder. What’s worse is, everything good about Aion comes after level 50. And especially after 55, Aion turns into a completely different game. There are huge highly detailed maps, and a new, cleverly designed PvP area. Unfortunately, much like Lineage 2, the amount of people with the patience to get there is very small.
Although this may have happened after you completed making your footage, but its now possible to buy AP (PvP points), in a somewhat indirect way in the cash shop. Although it could be worse, it was previously impossible to spend money to advance in this way. Cash shops are a slippery slope, so I would be cautious about the future of Aion’s.
“everything good about Aion comes after level 50.”
That is one of the two aspects that prevent me from getting into MMOs, 3 if you count subscription payments, but there is free to play afterall.
I mean, I know some games take a while to get into, because they slowly pile up all the concepts and abilities so it doesn’t overwhelm you at first, or so that you miss an important part of the gameplay. But a game that is intentionally designed to be a dozens of hours of boring grinding and cookie cutter questing until you can have fun and get to the endgame is the most mind boggling thing to me. It’s a terrible idea to prevent games from being any fun for as long as possible, especially a very demanding game like an MMO, which requires more time and money than any other genre of video game. MMOs do this almost ubiquitously too. All it does is the sour the experience, as any fun you can have will never match the time you put into it, because you had to spend the entire amount of time it takes to beat a humongous RPG to get to the enjoyable part of your typical MMO. I could beat some many other games and get more fun for my time and money, or pursue other hobbies or interests with the time and money it takes to get to the good part of an MMO.
I still enjoy ChaosD1’s videos though. :3c
I’ve always admired the Aion character creator for the truly amazing set of physique and face sliders. It nailed what Champions Online could not, which is to take one base face and edit it into a whole host of completely different people just via face sliders alone. As with most games this heavy on the sliders, you can easily create a grotesque abomination and getting something decent is difficulty if you’re not good with human anatomy, but the level of customization is still quite amazing. I’d still rate games with a full costume creator above Aion, though, since for as unique as you make your character, you’re still a fantasy dude/gal in a Fantasy MMO, whereas games with an actual costume creator can let you be a whole bunch of different things.
The wings thing, though… I remember talk around the City of Heroes forums – at the point one of the few games with true flight – about how Aion was going to revolutionise gaming when it came out and how well their wings were done. Yeah, turns out flight is SEVERELY limited in Aion, and for no real reason that I can determine. If you KNOW all characters in your game will fly, why not just design the game with that in mind and simply make the world more vertical? Remember that Vampire city in Soul Reaver 2 that Raziel lamented was built for winged creatures and his wings were useless? Yeah, why not build the game like that? The Aion world is already an apple core, after all.
The siren call of flight was what drew me to Perfect World… and that game actually delivers that, with one race capable of unlimited flight from level 1 and the rest getting flight at level 30. However… as it is literally a Korean F2P grinder MMO, many don’t have the patience (or the wallets) to get to high levels, when everything interesting opens up.
Wait, isn’t spiral knights pretty much pay to play? Regardless of all the gargantuan restrictions, how will jon even get enough footage or make enough progress in the game when he can only play it for like an hour every day for free?
Spiral Knights was actually kinda fun in its simplicity, but I don’t think there’s enough depth to do a full-length review on it. It’d be more suited to a side quest imo. Plus yes, it’s extremely hard to progress beyond a certain point without paying unless you incessantly grind for money to buy from the auction house or trade for energy. Otherwise, you need to buy energy to craft gear. No matter how fun it was that got to be a ridiculous stipulation and you’d wind up paying way more than you would for a monthly subscription, or spend way too much time doing inane things. Not worth it.
Very nice review :3
The only disappointments I see are limited flying (but any is better than none) & no PvE servers (though I notice you didn’t say anything about rampant griefers).
Okay…I just registered for Aion & my account did this: “NCsoft master account likalaruku has been permanently blocked.” WTF?
I lost my old NCSoft account as well. It’s why I made a new one for CoH, Lineage 2 and Aion.
My old NCsoft account was for the 3 days of City of Heroes I played before I gave up. All I wanted to do was fly, like, right off the bat, is that so wrong? ::cries:: I can’t imagine why I was banned. Inactivity? Hacked account? Well, that’s twice NCsoft has tempted me with flight & barely delivered on it.
Ya don’t worry I had that same mouse and it did the same thing. The stuff just wears off easily over time. Also the part after the credits made me laugh soooo hard lol. Keep up the good videos!
Glad to see you do this, I’ve been considering Aion for a bit now.. I think I might give a test drive. Thank you for your insight.
I’d love to see you do an episode on Saga of Ryzom, to my understanding it’s gone free to play, and, even today, has some.. odd or interesting systems that I think might make for an interesting episode. I’m not sure you’ve even heard of it, it’s not a new MMO by any stretch, but that doesn’t seem to have been an issue with some of the other episodes.
Azpheumbra fellow Asmodian
…
Wow that was embarrassing to say.
Anyway, I just gotta say that regarding the problems you had, I had absolutely none of them. Installing was just as easy as any other game I installed using the NCSoft launcher (or Steam), and I had none of the graphical issues or crashes you seemed to have. In fact, Aion is one of the smoother running games on my laptop (granted its a Lenovo Y570 with 8 gigs of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M graphics card, but I am comparing it to games like Champions Online, Star Trek Online, DC Universe Online, The Secret World, and TERA).
Anyway, glad to see you finally review this game. Can’t wait to see you review some other favorites of mine, and most importantly, glad to see you prefer Asmodians to Elyos.
By the way, do you think Asmodians look better with their black feathery wings, or do you prefer them the way they originally looked, with leathery bat wings?
Ok thats it im switchig to amerikan vercion since the Europian verson is a goddem hybrid.
Game was grindy and boring, worse since it went free to play.
Unless you like looking like an anime doll and playing simplistic, boring pvp, stay away.
And avoid crafting, god do you want to avoid crafting, nothing better then not getting what you need, spending tons of scratch on buying it, going to craft something and failing, thus wasting your time and game money.
Korean mmo is korean mmo, in shorter form.
“Most character customization”? EVE Online would like to have a word with you
No… I saw EVE’s char creator. They can talk when they allow people to create characters with tiny bodies and giant flat heads. Eve may have a lot of block options, but Aion has a vast slider for EVERYTHING. It seems Eve just has a ton of costume choices a’la CoH/CO, but the main body structure for everyone is exactly the same.
The theme for the Asmodians that you played was awesome. I almost want to play just to hear that again. Is the rock music a running theme for that faction?
I sympathise with your system requirements issues. I’m currently lamenting my lack of any real horsepower in my machine, and the original Crysis runs like a legless elephant through deep mud, even with all the settings dropped to low. Dual-Core bottlenecks are awesome.
I must admit, I actually liked the length of this video. I might be alone, but I really enjoy how thorough you are, and thus more of your reviews is a good thing to me.
Excellent episode, and looking forward to the next one.
All Hail The Divine Mouse!
When this game was released, one of my friends said (quote):
“It’s WoW, only good-looking. And good.”
Guess she was right.
Thanks, I feel this was one of your best reviews.
I used to play Lineage 2 in the past and because of that I was interested in AION as the next big thing from NCSoft. But I never actually got to play it.
Now I’m looking more at TERA or Blade & Soul open beta, but I might give AION a go once I have some free time.
Is there really any point to gaining the wings, aside from plot reasons? Can the minute time limit be at least expanded?
Yep, flight time can be extended to several minutes with armor, accessories, and even new wing feathers. And more areas open up that you can fly in as you progress. The Abyss itself has you flying a lot.
Still, it is rather disappointing when you first get your wings, and how few places there are you can fly, and how limited the flight time is at first.
Vindictus is run on the scoruce engine.
Lumiel is the “rp server” in Aion
You forgot to mention how everyone is a tiny toon so its harder to target them. =p
‘Asmodian>Elyos’
I whooped. :D FISTBUMP ME, BRO.
The warnings about just how much of a resource hog it is and the like where very needed, heh. But yeah, good job with the episode.
Anyways, the ending leaves me guessing Spiral Knights, but not sure if it fits, heh.
im guessing its the game in this video at 3:45 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRTtfsCwkrw
no idea what its called tho
That’s “Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes”. It’s a multi-platform turned based strategy RPG with a mode to play against other players.
Blasphemy how can the pain wear off such a divine gift!
What’s going on with your mouse is you’re using it so much that the paint is starting to wear off. Dedication to your art, no doubt. :)
I’m pretty sure my fingers are acidic.
Nah, it’s pure friction. (And yes, I know you were joking.)
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