Giant Bomb gives us 40+ Minutes of DC UNIVERSE ONLINE!

     This is awesome, for a game that is coming out the first half of next year, there has been SO LITTLE information out there.  I'm happy to see this.

Giant Bomb Gives us Dragon Age Origins MegaTrailer! Cause everyone loves Dragon Age!

COOP Big Brother Little Brother

COOP: Gamer Cribs, Overlord 2, etc...

Aion Online Beta and why I STILL KEEP PLAYING World of Warcraft!

    I was one of those people who managed to snag a Beta key for this weekend's Aion Online Tower of Eternity Beta Event.  I hopefully won the contest and get to meet the developers because I REALLY DO have some questions for them.

     I DID do some research about Aion; for instance did you know that this game was ORIGINALLY a free to play MMORPG in Korea?  Did you also know that initially the game was MORE popular than Lineage!  All of this is very interesting and it will possibly help you understand why the game works the way it does and why it probably won't be eating into Blizzard's profits; at least not once its' been out for a few months.

    The amazing part of Aion Online is also the most obvious.  The visuals in the game are AMAZING and probably rival ANYTHING in ANY other MMORPG and in fact many other non-MMORPGs.  The animations on the player character models are absolutely amazing and at no time did I ever see an action that EVER got old to watch.  All of the effects on the water, lighting, and special magical effects are incredible.  This is probably one of the only things that makes Aion Online SO HARD to not play when compared directly to games like World of Warcraft whose five year old stylized graphics are getting old VERY FAST.  What most people SHOULD realize however is that you need a pretty nice computer to run these graphics.  This is not going to run on your laptop unless you got said laptop from Alienware.  You should probably also watch your internet connection speed as it seems like, at least right now, that the game can chug here and there.  You don't want to be part of the problem, do you?  It's just too bad that the graphics are really the only jewel in Aion's crown.

   Unfortunately that is about the only brilliant part of Aion Online.  The game goes right back down the road of all other Eastern MMORPGS.  Which consist of  high degrees of grinding and repetitive quest structure.  They have a very low frequency of diversity in their quests therefore making them not very fun.  At least after a few hours anyway.

   The very nature of MMORPGs tend to be skewed towards grinding.  But Free to Play MMORPGs and JMMORPGs tend to be the masters of this particular mechanic.  Every quest giver wants you to go out and kill some monster 10-20 times and then come back and go kill something else 10-20 more times.  And there usually is no such thing as collecting all of these quests at once even if all the monsters are in the same area.  Because for whatever reason they don't do it that way.  Unfortunately, Aion Tower of Eternity is no different and it isn't even a JMMORPG or free to play.

   

   Of course the glowing beautiful exterior that the CRY Engine puts on this MMORPG will keep you from noticing for quite a while that you just keep basically doing the same thing over and over again.  Also, you might be a little put off when you first get your wings, because you can't fly right away.  But then, as if they realized this they let you fly in the very next area.  But then at around 11-12, just 2 levels above the level that you got your wings.  You aren't allowed to fly anymore.  I was SO INTERESTED in what kinds of gameplay they could come up with using the wings.  I guess they figured it was better to play it safe.  I'm sure you can fly later and apparently you can fly in PVP.  But the fact that in some areas you can and some areas you can't fly and they are actually separated by invisible walls is absolutely insane.

  I did end up playing both sides of the story; the angelic Eloys and the more demonic looking Asmodians.  The two sides are really only different cosmetically and while the Asmodians have a darker feeling starting area they are certainly much too similar to even discuss the differences.  By the time I was ready to stop playing (permanently  I'd logged in around 6-9 hours).  I played a Mage(Sorceror at level 10) for the most of the game.  I certainly loved the game up until they decided that I couldn't fly in the next area.  Also, not being able to fly in the capital city put me off as well.  Everything is kind of a long walk and you have to either pay a flightmaster or walk there.  There are lots of times when you have to keep going back to particular areas and even your (hearthstone-like) return home spell charges you to reapply it as you continue through the game and worse if you don't do this often you may end up resurrecting SO FAR from the last place you were that your going to spend 10 minutes walking back there.  Why am I walking when I have wings and can fly?  Cause the developers say so.  I also managed to level a Scout(which for some reason is some kind of thief/ranger/assassin thing, very odd that class) to level 9.  After level 9 which is pretty much just your introduction to how to play you get to pick one of two specializations for your class.  Which in other games, you usually just start out in that class or you put points into trees for them.  So here is how it breaks down:

       Mage: (Cloth weaing DPS spell caster)

      Sorceror : just like every other mage class in the world, you get to use a book or a magical stone.  The book is ranged the stone is a melee.

     Spiritmaster:  Similar to the Warlock in World of Warcraft.  You summon a spirit and that spirit helps you fight.

        Scout: (Leather wearing DPS Class)

      Ranger: just like the Hunter in World of Warcraft.

      Assassin: basically a Rogue

       Warrior: (Mail wearing DPS/Tanking class)

     Gladiator: Duel wielding melee DPS class

      Templar: Tanking melee class

       Priest: (Cloth/Mail wearing Healing class)

      Cleric: more weapon focused healer

       Chanter: more spell focused healer

   So nothing new or creative here either.  The worst part of the game is that the models for all of the monsters seem so well tread.  They seem to just change their colors and worse most of them are ugly.  With such a powerful graphics engine it's hard to believe they could have done just a poor job of rendering them.  It might have been the alien nature of the world but that to me just makes it all the worse that they couldn't come up with anything better.  Most of the monsters had stiff animations and most were incredibly hard to kill even when you were their level or one level higher.  I'm not sure that I feel really powerful when a wolf or bird can kill me.

    The part of the game that may be different is the PVP, but this also seems like something similar to Warhammer Online Age of Reckonings Siege and Area control mechanics.  Which is nice, but in Warhammer it isn't very fun for the most part and I think this may have a similar problem in Aion Online as well.  So I'm not exactly looking forward to that part either.  There was no hint of PVPs' hows, wheres, or whens during the beta I played but it might not even be implemented yet or perhaps you have to be MUCH higher level.  If the latter is the case, that's kind of sad and much too similar to Atlantica Online where you have to be level 20 to PVP.

   This is in no way a review of the game; as I certainly didn't spend enough time with it to have an authoritative opinion on it.  It is also a Beta, but I really didn't see anything that said to me that this game isn't done.  Just that what they have done isn't for me.  I did spend enough time playing it to not want to play the game anymore and to be relatively happy to go back to World of Warcraft.  Which I just started playing again recently and even though I'm playing on Alliance with NO ONE I know and seem to be soloing just about everything.  I really do love and want to level this toon to 80.  I'm finally working on the Night Elf Druid I all ways wanted and I'm pretty satisfied with her so far.  Although, the worst is yet to come as I'm only level 27.  I know the stop gaps that lay ahead and I think I'm mentally prepared for them.  I don't know why I love World of Warcraft, I just do.  Aion Online Tower of Eternity comes out on September 22nd for the PC and is available at Gamestop and for digital download at Direct2Drive, I hope you like the game more than I did.

-Devilsalias(Timothy Pecoraro)

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