FFXI, Aion, and what you should know.Follow

Hello everyone. I've seen a thread or two in the FFXIV forums discussing Aion, but I would like to give you a detailed description of it here, and what my fellow FFXI players who are thinking of trying it out should expect. I know a lot of FFXI folks are trying Aion out right now, quit to play Aion, or most importantly, are thinking of giving Aion a try. Before you do though, there's a few things I would like to fill in my fellow FFXI players about, from a FFXIer point of view.

I'm going to try and not to make this a "X_Game is better than X_Game" thread and simply point out the observations I've made so far, that most FFXI players would make as well. Another thing to note is so far Aion is a very new game, but again, I'm not going to lie to people or tickle their ears. If you disagree with me that's fine, but I'm going to point out the differences your average FFXI player might experience while playing Aion. This is not a thread about bashing any game or another, I just want to let my fellow FFXI players know what they're in for, from a FFXI point of view.

I have played FFXI since a few months after it was released in North America, however long ago that was. I have many level 75 jobs, I have enough gil to buy Jeuno itself, I've done pretty much every mission/quest/etc in the game, and killed every NM aside from Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden. I've done just about all there is to do in FFXI so when Aion came out, being bored with FFXI and seeing as a lot of my friends have quit, I decided to give it a try.

I've also tried to be one of the more "proper" types of people in FFXI, always checking my spelling, trying not to get hot headed about little things, etc. I'm sure not perfect and I'm sure plenty of people have their qualms about me, but I try to do my best at being a good citizen.

So enough about me, what does some one like myself who's very use to FFXI end game and the entire FFXI system think of Aion?

We all know Aion is created by NCsoft, which is the same group of people who did Guild Wars, City of Heroes/Villans and of course, Lineage 2. The only game out of these that I personally had any experience with was Lineage 2 for awhile, which was a good game but was much to PvP focused and had a very shallow end game. NCsoft is sadly known for more failure than they are success, as they try often building MMORPG's that tend to fall by the wayside. However they've put a lot of effort into Aion, and the marketing of it, so I and many others decided to give it a try out.

One thing I want to note is I hear a lot of people saying this game is a WoW clone, to which I will point out having played WoW a brief amount of time, it is not. They have indeed stolen many idea's, systems, even the interface from WoW, but the graphics and feel of Aion are much different than WoW. I wouldn't call it a clone, but perhaps a brother or sister.

So far, I've gotten a level 22 Cleric, a level 20 Gladiator and a level 13 Sorcerer. I've done a bunch of quests, missions, exploration, as well as NM's and Raids so far, and this is what I've noticed.

- The Chat Window.

The main thing you'll notice about the chat window is that it is tiny. Most people from WoW get accustomed to this easier than FFXI folks but it really will put a strain on your eyes. The worst part however, is the fact that you cannot change the transparency of it. If you put your cursor over the chat window it gives it a little bit of a darkened background, but not much. In some zones you won't be able to even read the text, even with a mouse over, without having to point the camera at some darker ground or something, and trying to read the text while the cursor is not over it is next to impossible.

- The Gold Sellers

Another thing that is horrible is the Gold Seller spam. When I first started right after the official release, when you signed in the game you couldn't see npc text, whispers, anything. It was text flying by you at the speed of light as about 20 gold-spammers at a time used bots to send a gigantic message in the chat window every half a second. At first, you don't know what to do, or how to block them, and asking anyone is impossible as the text would be going by to fast for you to see. Later on you discover how to block them, and NCsoft made it where you had to get level 5 to use the general channel, but getting level 5 only takes about an hour so it didn't stop them.

After awhile you learn how to add and create tabs for the chat that you want or don't want to see. A annoyance, but you get the hang of it. Once that is done, the battle seems like everything is fine, but it's not over. The Gold-Spammers will send /tells just like they do in FFXI, but way more frequently, and if you don't block them they will keep spamming you. Every day there's new gold sellers to block, and once your list fills up you have to manually delete them all, which can prove tiresome. When you sign on during a new day, you have to block new gold spammers.

The problem has been addressed in a few small ways by NCsoft but not enough to make a huge difference, and the problem is still there. But if that's not enough, there's much more to contend with.

In Aion you have a "Mailbox" which people can send you messages in. Anyone can send you a message, so every day expect to have a mailbox full of 10-20 new gold selling sites.

- The Claiming System

I haven't played WoW for a long time, but if memory serves me correct, they had this same system (correct me if I'm wrong). Whenever a mob pops, Notorious or Not, anyone can attack it at any point. Whoever gets the most damage in gets to loot it. The biggest problem with this is two different types of mobs. Quest Pop Mobs, as well as EXP mobs. When some one "Ganks" your quest popped mob (which they can) it means you lose the quest and have to restart it over, just because some random jerk decided to make your day bad. Don't think it happens? So far I've had this happen to me 3 times on three different quest NM's. People have done it and laughed about it just to be mean, people I never met. They do it with EXP mobs as well, which really puts a damper on your EXP gain as well.

This brings me to the next point...

- The Community

Now, this is where I might get some flack from some folks. I will say that I know plenty of people from WoW, who play WoW, or played WoW, who are plenty intelligent, awesome gamers. But sadly, for the most part, WoW is lacking in the overall community department, and the good WoW players can explain why and understand it (which allows them to have fun with it with their friends and bypass the idiots). I didn't come here to talk about WoW, but I'm mentioning this because so far 90% of the Aion community is from WoW.

This gets very frustrating. All the terms used in the game are WoW terms, and if it's not the player base using them, Aion's developers even rip off blizzards work. I can see why people do think this is a WoW clone at times. Most end game legions on Aion even require you have WoW raid experience to join. Whenever you join a group, people use WoW terms and WoW terminology. If you don't know what they're talking about they get all pissy with you and are not patient at all.

People act like this game is second WoW, and that you're suppose to know everything you knew in WoW and bring that knowledge over with you. It's very frustrating and annoying for people from other MMO's or who are playing it as their first MMO.

The "WoW" mentality and community can get extremely frustrating and annoying. People seem to have no manners. They will yell at you, get mad at you, talk quickly and stupidly, and 99% of the time use spelling so cryptic it looks like a foreign language. Not to be a grammar ****, as I have plenty of spelling errors myself. But I don't think I've seen "You're" and "Your" used properly once since I began, and am refreshed just to see people spell out "your" and not "ur". It's almost unbelievable how people act and behave, it's quite shocking.

If all this isn't bad enough, there's a "General" channel, which means a worldwide chat channel. Now, the reason this is bad is because anyone can basically say anything and chat it up on this frequency at any time. The sad part is it was "intended" to be for people looking for advice, or looking for members or groups for different things. Sadly, there's a few discussions that you will see on it over and over and over... Religion Vs. Atheism, WoW Vs. Aion, Politics, America Vs. Europe, and Men Vs. Women. These discussions are the kind you'd expect to see on /b/ and can last hours at a time. The bad thing is the GM's (as usual on NCsoft games) do absolutely nothing about it, not that they always can as they work a 9-5 shift.

The worst thing though is just how people treat each other. There's no real since of "community", rather it's more of a "every man for himself" and if you need a random mission or something you shout your brains out for a few minutes (with this cryptic and hard to understand language mind you) till you get a few people. That's when the real fun begins...

- Grouping

No one understand it, or the concept. People still have the "Every man for himself" mentality in mind, and do not understand teamwork. People will invite you to a group without asking, or without you looking for what they need. They will kick you if they feel like it for any reason, and will randomly drop for any reason whatsoever without warning. People also do not listen to directions, almost at all. The other day I was doing what appeared to be a incredibly easy mission (Sealing The Abyss Gate) where all you have to do is a dungeon crawl to a certain gate. As long as people stay together, and follow the leader, it's so easy a caveman could do it. Yet, these people can't.

I failed the mission for 3 days strait in various groups before getting a few people who could turn their brain halfway on enough to listen to each other, the leader, and come up with a slight plan to crawl through. Thank god for them as well, with them the mission only took 30 minutes, was fun, and easy.

However, as I said, most people don't know the first thing about even working with others. They have absolutely no manners, they have terrible social/people skills, and cannot even properly converse with one another. I honestly didn't think there was a crowd of gamers this bad, or this completely unbelievable, I was wrong. People really do abuse their anonymity, and will act any way to you just for giggles as they know there is no consequences for it. The type of people this draws out is saddening.

But, I will give you a disclaimer. I would say these people make up roughly 95% of the population in Aion, there's a 5% population of people who are intelligent, well thought out individuals who know how to work together, as a team, and make it a lot easier on you. The game is still new and even at that there are a lot of people on every server, so you'll find them, just keep your eye out for them (I've met a few great people already).

But, keeping on the note of the community brings me to the next part, which I will keep brief.

- EXP Botters

These are people who have bots that level their accounts for them, 90% of the time it's chinese gold sellers.

The annoying part is, the bots are incredibly stupid and don't know if some one is attacking a mob or not. The bad thing is, they're EVERYWHERE. Swarms of them, and if there's a place with even close to decent EXP, they are there. It's also annoying if you're questing and farming for a certain mob for a drop, and as you're killing it some one with the name "Qftgsjgkaf" comes up on their level 30 character (in a level 20 area) just to bot-zerg it off you.

They will annoy you more than any gil seller in FFXI ever has, so be warned.

Now, with all that being said, let's take a look at some of the qualms I had about the game that are attributed directly to the design NCsoft gave it themselves.

- Armor Progression

When you start out, you will notice the world of Aion is so mindnumbingly beautiful your eyeballs will try to jump into your monitor, and one of the first things you will notice is how beautiful the armor can look. Sadly, it's hard to get... Even low level armor...

The thing is, you don't get to go to the "Capital City" or any city with a Auction House till level 10, till then you have two options for armor. Buying from a NPC, or getting the drop off a mob.

When you buy from the starter NPC's you'll notice, unlike FFXI the prices are extremely overpriced for people starting out. You'll make 3-5k kinah or so without to much problem in your first 5-10 levels, sadly, the NPC armor costs about 15-20k per set, and is not even that good.

Your other option is getting the decent looking, and armor you will want, off of regular mobs. The annoying part is, most mobs that drop the armor can drop one of several pieces usually which is completely random. To make matters worse, it is HONESTLY about a 0.5% chance at a drop (you guys who played Lineage 2 will know what I'm talking about here). So by the time you could farm a set up you'll be way past 10 off of killing that fodder anyways.

So much for getting a basic set of starting armor, right? Ohh well. Let's get to level 10 and head to the Capital City, surely there's some armor there, right? RIGHT! It will look decent as well, but expect to pay around 15-20k per set once again for the full set. At this point you'll probably find yourself short, but you'll be able to farm it up easy enough at this point, and buy it up.

Now, all seems well for now, right? Well it is... For now...

You better like that set of armor, because you're going to be looking at it for a long time. You see, all the diverse armor in Aion comes in the later levels. Till then, you honestly only have a few sets, which usually have at the most 2 designs within 4 different armor types (Chain/Plate/Leather/Cloth).

Another thing is, all the armor you would be buying in these levels anyways, is going to cost you a arm and a leg, as it's been farmed up by folks in the level 10+ area's with equally as rare drop rates. These pieces of armor will usually go anywhere from 10-50k per PIECE. Not only that, but there's nothing to show you what it looks like till you put it on. Well, that's not so bad is it? You can always sell it back, right?

Wrong. When you equip a piece of equipment it uses a ability in the game called "Soulbinding". It basically means you cannot resell armor and most weapons. Once you equip it, that money is gone, and that stuff is yours. You end up NPCing a lot of armor, but even the npc's don't give you much for it, and surely not even a fraction of what you paid on the Auction House for it.

Luckily, there is one option you have. Doing the missions. From doing these, by the time you complete them at around level 20 you'll have a "decent" looking set of armor, but once again, be prepared to either pay a arm and a leg for a set that you might not even know what it looks like, and cannot be sold back, or do more missions up till you're about 30. Now, 30+ I'm not sure about a lot of, but from what I hear you need abyss points to buy most armor. This comes from the PvP zone known as the "Abyss", however I won't get into that. All I will tell you is that it's a grind so insane supposedly, it would make maat's cap look like a walk in the park.

With that being said, I'd like to make a mention of something else you will notice with Aion...

- The Databases

Or rather, the lack there of. Now, I'm going to give them credit as the game has not been out long, but finding information on -anything- is like pulling teeth. The information is either horrible, or asks you to litteraly sign up with a credit card to review some chinese gold seller special guide manual thing. AionArmory, and AionSource will get you by, but you won't find out all the answers, and you will be on your own with a lot of things, so don't expect to do like you do with FFXI and jump on Wiki, Alla, or BG to find the info you need.

Alright, onward.

- Cut Scenes, NPC Text, Voice Overs.

They are terrible. No, really, they are terrible. There is no getting around it. I try to have a positive outlook on things but they are beyond pathetic.

Don't expect many cut scenes, the majority of your quests will simply have you standing there looking at a NPC while a note book pops up with a WALL-FULL-O'-TEXT that wants to tell you about some extremely long and uninteresting story. You will read till your eyes start to bleed, then you will get smart and just start clicking the bottom option of "Yes".

Once that's over, prepare for your cut scene! And by cut scene, I mean something that is basically the camera flying over some ground, looking at a point, while the npc talks. They never last more than about 15 seconds maximum, and the worst part is the voice overs. Not only did they program the game to where the background music (no matter what settings you put it at) will generally drown out the soft npc voices, but the voice acting is terrible. I'm talking, it's so bad it makes the english dubs for Naruto look like Mozart. I honestly think they got either people off the street who were in a rush, or random accountants from the office who were overly shy.

They don't even speak in the proper tone to what they are role playing either. For Example, the Elims and the Shugo are the worst. The Shugo have their little "text boxes" as talking like the little squirrel creatures they are, saying things like "Yes yes, you bring us food, very good!" much like the qiqirn in FFXI, yet their voice overs have them speaking like new york executives with flawless english, grammar, and punctuation. Strangely enough, the shugo have the best voice actors in the game...

The Elim, who are basically talking, elder tree's of the forest have text diolouge as you'd expect, speaking like "You...Must...Help us... For we... Require the aide... Of humanity" with many pauses and what you would think would be a quiet, low key, mystic type of "elder" voice. What they sound like, is some one stoned out of their mind trying to ask where the toilet is. They even had several ***** ups where they didn't pause where they did in the Cut Scene text... It's hysterical honestly, and this is just the beginning. As I said, not to be mean but all the voice actors used in this game are VERY very bad.

With that being said, it brings me to my next point.

- NCsoft themselves

You think SE is out of touch, or doesn't care about their community? Aion has opened my eyes up to how wonderful we have it in FFXI like nothing else. Sure, FFXI still has things that need fixing, and devs who ignore a few issues, but you should see Aion! They really, flat out don't even care in the least. They will implement terrible systems, in which people can ask a change for, and will only make them worse or completely ignore people.

And you think server maintenance is bad in FFXI? Try having 5 hour maintenance 2-3 times a week, which is how it's been so far.

But NCsoft, being the nice guys they are, decided to award people with a gift of their appreciation for putting up with the maintenance. What is basically a 5 use EXP ring, much like the emperor band in FFXI. Don't expect to recharge it though, you didn't think they were that nice did you?

Ohh, but here's the best part. The way you got it, you didn't know you were getting it. You log in and there's a "Survey" at the bottom of your screen when you log into your first character. It doesn't say what for, or what you get, it just says "here's something as a token of our appreciation, etc. You click "Yes" and suddenly you have it. The bad thing is, once you get it? That's it. Lucky for me, I just happened to be on a mule, and got them on the mule. You can't sell it, trade it, or put it in your "account warehouse" so now my level 1 mule has these delicious EXP charges it will never use, while my main continues grinding away!

This brings me to the next point...

- The Grind

Ohh, you thought FFXI was bad? Ohh how I laugh. I honestly think if done right you could get a maat's cap with less frustration in a less amount of time than reaching the level cap once in Aion.

Once again, forget grouping. It kills EXP more or less, and people flat out don't do it. At least 30 and below from what I've seen. So be prepared to go to an area filled full of those exp bots and kill around 1000 or so mobs per level, solo, back to back. It gets boring really fast, and goes no where even faster.

But you say "wait a minute! You can do quests for EXP!" You're absolutely right. Leveling in Aion is extremely fun and pleasing as you could hope for, up till about level 20... Then the quests thin out, you end up finishing them up, and it's off to the o'l grinding grounds. The only ones left are repeat quests which usually have you hunting a specific mob, and might give you 10-20k exp per quest, the mobs themselves give 4-5k per kill (enjoy your 2 million TNL, at 23 which keeps getting bigger and bigger as you go on, while the mobs don't scale so much).

This is where I'm personally at right now. I've been grinding for 2 days trying to get a level so I can get some new missions, or just do something differently. After many hours of killing the exact, same, thing, over and over and over for days, and not dinging, you start wondering "Why am I doing this?" And start thinking of those delicious pieces of Abyss Armor... Which can cost up to 600,000 abyss points per piece, when you usually get 100 or so points per kill (from what I heard, I could be wrong. Feel free to correct me).

All that being said, lets move on to the OTHER grind, known as money.

- Kinah, and NPC prices.

First of all, let's talk about NPC prices and what they mean to you. Out of every flaw in Aion I'd say this is the biggest one. Look forward to teleport costs of around 1k-4k Kinah per port, and this is a game where you don't simply jump on a mount or walk some where. You have absolutely no choice but to teleport 90% of the time. The best part is, many quests will have you going from region to region, burning many thousands on teleport costs in a short amount of time. When you are not making much money, and trying to save up for armor, and can't sell previous armor back, you begin getting annoyed.

And don't forget the soul healing either! Every time you die (which is quite often in Aion) you have to get your soul healed. This usually costs about 5k Kinah from level 18 to about 25, and just keeps going up. The great thing is, Soul Healing recovers the exp lost when you die! Well, you don't HAVE to get that do you, just a luxury right? Well I didn't mention the part where if you don't get your soul healed, "rez weakness" lasts longer with each death. Longer, and longer, and longer. Ohh, but no big deal right? Once I get up to like a 10 minute Rez Weakness I'll just go get soul healed right? Sure thing. For 30k or so Kinah! As your rez weakness increases, so does the soul healing price! Enjoy your deaths costing you money!

If it's not the NPC prices, and things like minor potions costing insane amounts of Kinah, it's the over inflated market. You better hope you get lucky on some NM drops, you will need it.

And finally, I'd like to tell you about...

- The Music.

It can be very beautiful, but honestly not as good as Linage 2. The main thing that is annoying is that they reuse tracks, over, and over, and over. There's honestly about 7-8 tracks of music in the entire game that get reused over and over and over. And every zone has music. Prepared to be annoyed or turn your headphones off. The potion shops, churches, and buildings, you can tell they were equally lazy with. In the churches you will notice that there is quite honestly one, single, line or "note" of music, that loops over and over again very slowly, It's almost as if they are purposely trying to annoy you.

Overall, NCsoft appears to have been very lazy in developing and running Aion, and simply have tried to copy too many things from WoW. With that being said, you can expect to have some of the most beautiful graphics you've ever seen, and some amazing armor (you'll quit in frustration before you get). I knew this from the get go, but NCsoft is the kind of company who just wants to make a quick buck more than anything. That's WHY they're trying to attract the WoW crowd (Thank God for the Square Enix Devs saying they are going to please Final Fantasy fans first and foremost in FFXIV, there is hope yet for us).

What about the fun parts of Aion though?

Well, don't get me wrong. The first 20 levels of Aion is insanely fun, as long as you learn to ignore the community and don't get upset at people purposely making your life a living hell for no reason but for "The Lulz". Another great thing about Aion is the PvP. Most people hate open PvP, but it can be quite fun at times. Nothing beats treking along the path out of Morheim, to go help a Elim with his weed *cough* than to see a level 50 midget with a red name from the "other world" run up and 2 shot you then dance on your body. Don't get me wrong, I actually have had this done a few times to me as well, and it can be quite funny. Especially when you're the one doing it (Good luck getting to 50!).

All in All, I have see a ton of potential in Aion, but NCsoft needs to make some enormous changes that Blizzard and Square Enix has known about for years. That's the fact that you need to make a game casual friendly enough to where if some one is willing to spend 10 hours a day on it, they might can reach the level cap within half a year or so (You think I'm joking, but I'm not). A lot of the community has the immature view that they have not evolved out of like 99% of air breathing humans have had the luxury of by saying "But this is not a casual friendly game! It's not suppose to be!"

I've got bad news for them. In this day and time, you pretty much have to be, or you'll fail pretty hard in the MMO industry. It's fine if you have elements for the hardcore people, as WoW and FFXI both do, but making every aspect of the game so incredibly long and grindy that it makes even FFXI look like "instant level online" is not a good way to keep your MMO running strong for years to come. People have lives, and want to live them while still being able to enjoy a video game. And y'know what? When they have those lives, and play the game for awhile at night, and see nothing new or fun (armor wise, content wise, pvp wise) for weeks and months, they won't stick around.

Blizzard Knows this, Square Enix knows this, anyone who's not been living under a rock for the past 5 years knows this.

Well, I'm glad I got all that off my chest. I hope you find this little "Guide" helpful. If you really want to try Aion out go ahead, you just might like it, and as I said up to about 20 you'll have a lot of fun. It's a shame how much it slows down after that, and how the community can act some times. If only NCsoft would make some changes here and there, they'd have a pretty great MMORPG on their hands.

Thanks for reading!

And yes, I typed this out as fast as I could, so there's probably some spelling errors here and there. Please forgive me.

Edited, Oct 19th 2009 1:42am by EndlessJourney

Edited, Oct 19th 2009 1:46am by EndlessJourney

Bravo, thanks for posting this review of Aion. I've only watched the game at a friends house, but I wasn't impressed. I do have a question for you though. You brought up the grind to reach Maat's cap and compared it to Aion. Are you talking about FFXI pre-XP band, pre-XP reduction(lv50), and before FoV and level sync?

An an unsurprising response, and I'd even call this "review" slanted toward the negative end of the spectrum just to make FFXI look better. It happens pretty much every time a new MMO or expansion for them has come out. Frankly, a lot of the problems cited aren't Aion problems, or technically not problems at all, just the player themselves lacking in knowledge for the sake of what to do or what not to.

That said, the game is in its infancy still. Comparing it to something that's been around for 7 years isn't exactly what I'd call fair, but really, the gameplay problems can be fixed. Even at its simplest, the communication between NCSoft and the players has been greater than SE's managed up until this point.

I'll touch on the spamming, since that seems to be a favorite gripe. First off, there's technically little need to be seeing the world channels 24/7. Whenever you make a new character, before you kill anything you should customize your GUI how you want it. I have combat data on the lower right, legion/party/say/shouts/whispers on the left. I'm 38 now. I've gotten by just fine with this. If I absolutely needed to monitor the LFG channel, I'd switch to the tab I created specifically for that.

The most recent patch added a filter to help cut down on the spam, but as I'd warned people on the FFXI side concerning FFXI's own issues, the RMT simply changed how they delivered their message. The only true 'absolute fix' to this problem will be having someone monitoring the channels and banning as the messages appear. Since RMT in FFXI use tells and communicate privately, this isn't as easy to do. Regardless, in both games, message frequency can be monitored. There are level restrictions and cooldowns on how quickly you can speak. The best option to ward of unsolicited tells is to simply turn yourself /anon. You won't show up on searches. Done. I will agree the lack of chat box opacity blows and font size should have a wider variety of options than just small, medium, and large (which also get scaled depending on your HUD scale).

The next gripe I see people touch on a lot is how the game isn't like another. Or even better, IS as if said game created chat windows, buttons you could click on, quests, killing monsters for EXP, or standard fantasy staples like magic and swords. I dunno about everyone else, but I've seen some of these things since the late 80's when I first played Dragon Warrior on the NES. How DARE companies rip something off that two decades old! It's not like the word "genre" doesn't exist or anything. Nope. Everything's unique. Oi.

Equipment progression is something hit and miss at the moment. The economy's still young, and I dare say fragile. If the OP thinks newbie gear is expensive now, they should've been there at launch. Nonetheless, there are quests that'll get you equipped with some above average stuff, but crafted goods can last a while, too. Also, it's possible to view how an item looks on your without actually equipping it. But yeah, there are also some definite grind quests that lead to good gear, too. This isn't much of an offshoot of gathering Assault/Nyzul/Ein points. Good thing is you're not locked out by timers, just the general difficulty of acquiring said 'currency' for the quest. As I type this, there are 3 quests I can do for an earring, neck piece, and ring that require 360 enemy medals total. I could kill elite mobs to get them directly, or I could also do a mini-quest where collecting 60 water bottles from lesser mobs can net me 10. I'm at 125 medals now. I've just been working on them off and on between helping people or taking part in some of the world PvP events. Some of these 'grinders' you can even cut corners in buying the needed 'currency' from other players. Sure, some may be overpriced, but if for some reason you got a lucky drop and have some extra kinah laying around, why not?

Anyway, there are plenty of things Aion has done right. There are also things it hasn't done right...yet. In contrast to FFXI, which game will have a higher chance of seeing pressing issues addressed? My money's not on SE with this one. Especially with XIV on the horizon. Want proof? Well, let's touch on EXP. That blurb about people needing like a year to hit 50? ********* However, people have said a lot of quests aren't worth doing because the EXP rewards are too little? Guess what. They're getting buffed next patch.

Edited, Oct 19th 2009 7:24am by Seriha

I noticed most of the same things in beta testing of Aion, with the exception of the gilsellers and endgame armor progression.

The worse part is there seem to be a large amount of WoW players hemhorraging from it these days. I recently returned to LOTRO for awhile, and it's scary how much the 'general' chat channel has turned into WoW's. I think after the release of Blizzard's next expansion however, a lot of these players will leave all the stuff they migrated too, toning down the severity of the situation some. I have no problems with WoW myself, simply saying that it's 'tone' is taking over a lot of other games these days.

As for Aion itself...I wasn't that impressed. It felt like a better-styled version of WoW. Everything from spending money to combat to how you traverse landscape was eerily similar. I think the fact that NCSoft didn't have as much development time, and an extremely long beta is the reason for this. They had to gank their ideas from somewhere to come up with a finished product, and used a lot of beta player feedback. Most of whom were, you guessed it, WoW players.

I know FFXI is probably starting to feel 'dated' compared with some of the stuff that's getting released, but if you're one of those folks waiting for FFXIV, tough it out. The few games that have the same 'community' feel as FFXI are few and far between right now. Aion is definitely not worth the switch.



Edited, Oct 19th 2009 4:41am by Dallie

My experience with Aion so far has been nowhere near as negative as the OP. I'm a level 25 Templar, and so have access to the Abyss, and have gotten a bare taste of what it has to offer.

I really don't think the community is so bad as the OP stated. Yes, Aion has its fair share of morons (made much more obvious via global chat). However, I've done many groups for quests, and not one of them has disbanded early, or failed to follow directions. Roughly half of them even went out of their way to ask if anybody needed any additional quests while we were in the area.

Of course, that said, Aion does heavily feature PvP, and that does tend to bring out a certain.. aggression in people. The fact that Aion switches so fluidly from PvE to PvP at times means you will be dealing with both types of people.

I also never noticed any issues getting decent armor pre-level 10. The quest reward armor was more than adequate. The lack of sizing & transparency options for the chat window and gold seller spam are definitely problems however. And I will decrease the intelligence of this post ever so slightly, and call the claim system (or lack thereof) simply dumb.

As for NCSoft themselves? Well, I haven't had to deal with them as a company yet, but they have no less than FOUR developers/community managers posting and responding on Twitter, plus one posting in German. How many does SE devs keep us updated on their progress again?

I still prefer FFXI, and likely won't be playing Aion much longer (or perhaps just casually), but I really don't think things are nearly so bad as indicated by the OP. Don't let it scare you out of trying it if you want to.

To avoid whisper and mail from RMT, press V and set yourself as Invisible. I have yet to receive a single whisper/mail when Invisible. Not sure if you still play Aion or not, but if you do, I hope this helps.


I definitely agree, and as someone who doesn't play WoW myself, I'm sometimes a bit clueless. Luckily I'm in a good fun legion with people who are patient enough to help me out in explaining stuff.

To go off-topic a little bit, I'm a little concerned myself if FFXIV turned out to be a success and if this will happen in FFXIV too or not. It's clearly a pain to see people constantly comparing any MMORPGs these days with WoW. If FFXIV becomes popular enough to grab WoW people, I can't imagine the mess. ><! Thief will become Rogue, my friend XD


Personally, I just don't use any other chat than Legion, Combat, and Group. In FFXI, I really can't be bothered paying attention to people shouting stupid stuff at each other either. With the existence of General channel in Aion, it's definitely something to avoid. Again, luckily I have all advice I need from my legion people. I'm not sure if you have a legion or not, but if you haven't, it's really best to try get one that suit you. Aionsource is a good place to look for legions.

In FFXI, we know how crucial having a linkshell is. In Aion, having a legion is as important. If you don't have a legion, you should try finding one. If your legion sucks, I hope you can find a better one ><!


To be a bit more fair though, that area is the first "group" area. If the people who failed with you were new ones, they might have no real clue yet as to how a party should work. In FFXI, you'd imagine the mess for a dunes party if all 6 members are new players. Simple task of forming a party and then killing mobs, but can be very messy. I'd suggest to look a bit further and see if your next "group" area is better or not. If people are still retarded, then yeah it's a big issue. Maybe want to just ask help from your legion. Probably in terms of FFXI, people prefer to say static CoP with people they know rather than just doing pick up groups. In general, pick up groups are bad idea. In a game like Aion where it's solo-friendly, it's expected to be an even worse idea to do pick up groups. I really suggest to try get into a good friendly legion.


To be perfectly honest with you, before level 10, it doesn't really matter what armor you wear. Weapon plays much more important role. I personally did all quests to level 10 without upgrading a single piece of armor. It's a waste of money to change armor when mobs hardly can kill you at that level.


True, but at the same time, you can trade with people, or sell the unwanted one to fund what you want for.


I'm not sure whether I agree with this or not. What I see happening is that low level gear is quite in abundance at the moment because there are so many people doing quests, and with people undercutting each other, gear is actually very very affordable.


This is incorrect. Ctrl+Left Click will show a preview of how equipment looks like.


Soulbinding works on green gear (HQ1 equivalent in FFXI), the white gear (NQ) doesn't use Soulbinding. While you can't resell your green gear, you can use Extraction Tool to get Enhancement Stones by destroying the gear. More often than not, stones will give you way more money (through AH) than NPC-ing the green gear. Or you can use them to enhance your own gear if you want to.


To be perfectly honest, I'm really curious what you do in the game to make money because everything seems to be way out of what you can spend. I'll use an example of LV22 Researcher's Leather Set that I bought which cost me 100k for the full set. At that time, I had 200k. So I spent half of my money. Then I did quest, and just from the loot and quest reward, I went up to 250k as I hit level 25. Then spent about 75k to buy new skills brought me back down to 175k, and by level 26, again from selling loot and quest money reward, I was up to 350k. I'm really unsure what's so difficult in making money and why everything seemed to be costing you an arm and leg. I didn't do anything special. My crafting is only Alchemy which I used only to make my own potions. It saves a little money, but costs money too to skill up. In the end, I'm never actually "poor" so far while maintaining green gear.

In Aion, your spending basically: weapon, armor, flight transport, teleport, soul heal, AH cost, crafting, skill books. You can minimize flight transport and teleport cost by binding to the proper obelisk. You shouldn't die a lot at all since all classes can solo well for non-group quests/missions. AH cost is minimal compared to your gain. Crafting is ignorable if you don't want to. Skill books are probably the only "must spend" part, but even so, you should've earned waaaay more than the cost if you don't blow your money somehow. So that leaves weapon and armor. Weapon is more important, but even so, it can easily last you 4-5 levels if you really want (I went from Dagger 18-19 to Dagger 24). Armor lasts even longer (I went from 15 to pieces of 17 that happened to drop, to full set at 22).


AionArmory and AionSource are both great sites. Armory for info while Source for community/forum. I do wonder what else you will be on your own for. With quests/missions, it's pretty straight forward what to do (kill, collect, gather, loot, etc). Difficult part might be the location of the mob, but you have the Locate button for it to show where they are at. Not sure what's so confusing to be honest.


This is incorrect. While it is way more common to solo (it is a solo-friendly game after all), there are beneficial grouping if you want to make EXP PT like FFXI. You just need to know which mobs to target. It's always best to target elite mobs if you party. At level 25-29, you can enter Training Ground in groups, and they actually give A LOT of EXP (IIRC, can go about 80% of 25 to 26, then about 75% 26 to 27, and so on to 29). While it is uncommon, grouping can definitely be done in a beneficial way.


This is also incorrect. At level 20-25, there are actually two different areas to quest at. If you feel that you've thinned out of the quests, you should try to go the other area and do the quests there. Yes, you might still have to do a few repeats, but by a few, I really meant a few (2-3 times and no more).

[quote]And start thinking of those delicious pieces of Abyss Armor... Which can cost up to 600,000 abyss points per piece, when you usually get 100 or so points per kill (from what I heard, I could be wrong. Feel free to correct me).[/quote]
Abyss points vary depends on the rank of the victim. Mobs give little abyss points, but quests do give abyss points reward too.

[quote]The best part is, many quests will have you going from region to region, burning many thousands on teleport costs in a short amount of time.[/quote]
I think you're exaggerating here. Most quests involve killing mobs within the same region there's hardly any need to teleport. At your level, you probably only have 3-4 teleports anyway. You have your obelisk at one, that leaves 2-3 teleports if you must go to all areas. Remember you can always use Return spell for free warp back home to save money.

[quote]If it's not the NPC prices, and things like minor potions costing insane amounts of Kinah, it's the over inflated market. [/quote]
Don't rely on potions. Bandage/Odella is much cost efficient. Resting is great too as you recover HP/MP somewhat quickly. If you can't afford potion, don't waste your money there. If you need potion to solo a mob, you're doing it wrong. For everything else, you can just rest to save money if it's really a big issue for you. Again, I'm unsure what I did right or what you did wrong, because it seems that you're always poor while I'm never poor there. ><!

[quote]That's the fact that you need to make a game casual friendly enough to where if some one is willing to spend 10 hours a day on it, they might can reach the level cap within half a year or so (You think I'm joking, but I'm not).[/quote]
I don't mean to be rude, but about two weeks ago, two EU players had reached level 50. I bet they grind like nuts and play for more than 10hr/day, but they did it in about 3 weeks. It's very reasonable to see 10hr/day player getting to level 50 in half a year. Most of the people in my legion played around 5-8hr/day and they're mostly high 30s to low 40s already and we haven't even got the game for a month yet. I think it's all about knowing what to do in the game and doing it smart.

As last note, I'm not here to say that Aion rocks or whatnot, but merely giving you suggestions to better your experience in Aion if you're still playing it now. If you have quit, it's unfortunate, but I've always felt that it's pointless to play a game if you don't enjoy it anyway. So hopefully you'll be playing a more enjoyable game now.

Isn't that a bit of a horrible fix to the problem?

I mean it's like trying to overcome loud neighbors by filling your ears with rubber cement. Sure you don't have to worry about the ruckus anymore but you can't exactly hear anything else either.

Good review, I enjoyed reading it. Thanks.

I tried the Aion beta. Wasn't my thing, but I'm sure that other people like it. I know a lot of people who left 11 for Aion. But mostly just to do something different until 14 comes out.

So really, the name Aion: Tower of Eternity ought to be Aion: Killing Time Until FF14.

I think the pretty graphics and the wings are causing Aion to be a One Hit Wonder and as soon as FF14, Diabolo 3, and Star Trek Online come out everyone will have forgotten it.

That's a bit silly. A cap that is 75 and requires 1 million exp to reach at about 5k/hr is better than a cap that is 50 and requires 10 million exp to reach at about 10k/hr. That's 200 hours of exp versus 1000 hours of exp.

(Note: I know these exp/hr and total exp requirements are not exact, this is just an example).

The grind isn't about the exact numbers but the length of time it takes and how repetitive it becomes.

I've had no problems at all progressing in Aion in what is most definitely a very casual manner. There's a lot of stuff in your post that really makes me wonder what the hell kind of drugs you're doing. A lot of it is either rampant exaggeration or outright lies. 10-20 RMT spam emails per day? Honestly? I've never had more than 2. Thousands of XP bots? I can't honestly say I've ever seen anything I was totally convinced was an XP bot, let alone a plague of them, shadowing o'er than land like unto a plague.

Also for a FFXI player you seem unusually obsessed with how your gear looks. Parts of your OP made me wonder if you had played Aion, parts of it make me wonder if you played FFXI. We wear pointy hats and silly turbans. Our mages wear shoulderpads that look like refugees from an 80s hairspray ad. My summoner wears pants that levitate off my knees. One of our most well known pieces of gear is iron underwear. I can go on and on about gear in FFXI that looks absolutely ridiculous.

As for grinding, not only is it part of any MMO, but in Aion I've found it less stressful than a lot of them. For community it sounds to me like you need a better Legion to play with and talk to. Also learn to use the chat filters.

Edited, Oct 19th 2009 1:20pm by AnaxagorasZ

I encourage everyone to give it a try for sure, but I myself have found it more and more boring as I get closer to level 30. I don't know if I can exactly put my finger on it, but it just seems to channel the same spirit as WoW that left me wanting more. I don't really appreciate being forced into open PvP; You can't get anything done in the Abyss without being ganked 40 times by wandering groups. Without any form of organized PvP it just ends up being one lopsided battle after another. You could stay out of the Abyss completely but then why even play the game. I don't particularly enjoy an endless stream of "kill X mobs" or "collect Y items" quests. What is the reward for reaching the level cap? More PvP and more ganking I suppose. Me and my friends have all levelled up together and it's getting a bit hard to find entertaining things to do once we've done our daily instance run (which is terribly un-challenging so far). It just seems to lack flavor and variety.