FFXI, Aion, and what you should know.Follow

For a long time FFXI player you sure seem to have some strange views on things. You complain that Aion is too much of a grind...what the hell did you do in FFXI to get multiple jobs to 75 then? FFXI was a HUGE grind until they finally decided to make it a lot easier (helps newer players actually catch up a bit, a good move in MMOs that have been out for years).

You mention lack of armour issues...seriously, WTF is wrong with you. FFXI has this EXACT SAME PROBLEM for the first 20 or so levels (about the same percentage of the game as with Aion). Unless you already have gil (which new players will not have) you'll have next to no armour or weapon upgrades available at all in FFXI. How can having no armour available possibly be better than Aion's system of providing average quality quest reward armour at lower levels...oh wait, it can't.

You complained about the music in taverns, churches and the like. If you spend that much time in any of those places then you're just wasting time you could have spent doing something fun. Most, if not all of those places are run in, do something, run out places. And most of what you do there doesn't require sound to be active anyway. While tracks are limited in number, what tracks they have for actual play locations are beautiful and work well with the environments in which they are placed. None of the music gets in the way of the atmosphere, gameplay and such. Between closed betas the lack of Aion music was what I missed more than anything. In comparison, FFXI has a really varied amount of music, much of which is just not all that great to hear repetitively (San d'Oria's theme being one of the worst in the game and being in an area where you could find yourself for hours while needing sound to actually be active for other reasons too). There are some good tracks in FFXI, but very little of it really stands out, which is surprising given the quality of sound tracks for other Square titles (Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Parasite Eve, and many others). You didn't even mention that music changes dynamically based on location, battle and danger in Aion. The process is simple, but the atmospheric effect it gives is huge.

Aion uses a claiming system similar to some of the other Korean MMOs out there, basically a ‘whoever does the most dmg wins’ system. FFXI uses a ‘first claim only can touch it’ system, which while good in some ways, does not allow for easy assistance by outside parties. Wow uses a first claim system where outside parties can help if they wish, but they don't get anything out of it. The most dmg system used in Aion has bonuses and negatives. A bonus is that if someone tries to steal your mob, you can attempt to steal it back. You may not succeed, but you'll still get some exp at least. In WoW and FFXI if someone steals your mob, that is it. It is gone and you can't do anything about it.

Lastly, cut scenes, NPC text and voiceovers. The NPC text is a given. Almost all MMOs have this, FFXI included. The only difference is that FFXI disguises it by throwing it in the same area as your chat log, not necessarily a good thing. FFXI does have some nice cut scenes to go with what few quests it has (few compared to most MMOs currently out that is). Aion uses some cut scenes which can be quite average, though this is more due to cheap voice acting rather than poor implementation.

And that leads me to voiceovers (and voices in general). These were all redone by NCsoft when translating the game to english. That they went to so much effort to do so is impressive in itself, but the lack of quality voice actors is a sore point for many Aion players. In the end though, NCsoft is only responsible for the quality of the voices chosen. Cut scene design, NPC comments when interacting with them, and lip/text syncing type issues can't really be helped as much of this would have required a complete recoding of key parts of the game, not something NCsoft could really afford to do if they wanted the game out on time. Think of it as you would the english release of FFX. There was lots of talking in this...without the lip syncing being redone. SE would have known that they would be doing an english release as well and could have redone all the talking animations to actually be lip synced in the english version, but they didn't. Why? Probably to save money, or because they didn't care enough about the english release. NCsoft could have said that the Korean voices were fine and they'd only include english text, but they decided to take things further and attempt to give english players a more complete game experience. Sadly when it comes to these kinds of games and working on a budget, good english voice actors seme to be something that is lacking. I'm pretty sure though if FFXI had english voice acting it'd be unsynced and somewhat average too.

In the end, what it comes down to is that Aion is a game that sits somewhere between FFXI and WoW style MMOs. It has a grind and reward factor similar to FFXI but without the extreme restrictions on access that FFXI's group play only policy set up. It has an interface that while lifted from WoW, removes a lot of the garbage and includes most of the key features needed (some which still are missing from WoWs default interface). The game play is paced somewhere between FFXI and WoW as well. This means fights don't drag out as long as in FFXI, but they don't end as quickly as in WoW. I find this to be a good pace as it gives you time to think and react, but doesn't leave you standing there for ages waiting for some kind of special move to be ready for use. This makes Aion the first WoWish styled MMO I've played that actually feels rewarding to play, a very hard balance to achieve.

I agree with this.

Once again, in FFXI you have greater diversity and more "Depth" to the grind. Not only from partying with other people, and learning how to work with them as a team, but you're constantly going to new locations, and doing quests along the way, quests that take you to locations where you don't always EXP. Another thing is, I kind of like the zoning in FFXI. A lot of people don't like it, but I think it leaves more to your imagination. I think it's also better than say, going from a lush forrest to a barren desert right before your eyes. That "zoning" takes you from one distant land to another, and kind of eases you into your environment.

In FFXI you are constantly going through a huge diverse world with other people, changing locations for EXP all across the levels, doing quests that take you to places you've never been before, nor would go if it weren't for the quest. It gives it a real since of adventure and exploration.

In Aion, you quest in the same places you exp, and you EXP in pretty much the same places you always EXP in. It doesn't have much feeling of depth. Once you've been across Eltnen, once you've been to the abyss a few times, it starts feeling repetitive. Once again, when you grind in Aion, it's usually solo. You engage a mob, mash a bunch of buttons, stay alive, and move to the next. The fights don't last as long as they do in FFXI so they have less of a "epic" feeling if you will. It just feels like you're running around zerging things for hours and hours at a time. Again, it gets boring and repetitive.

Honestly, FFXI is a very grind heavy game. I will admit that. But the feel of FFXI makes it feel less like a grind, even when it does feel like that some times, and more like an actual adventure with people. Again, this is my personal opinion.



And people say I exaggerate? Honestly, you're coming in here saying people have no options in FFXI for lower levels, and that Aion has tons of them?

Let me explain it in truth and fact exactly how it is up to level 10.

In FFXI you are thrown into the game with a basic weapon, and 4 pieces of armor which is different for each race and gender, as well as a ring if you start in the correct city for your race, as well as a weapon.

Once you start wishing to change your appearance and buy armor you have the bronze armor set, which consists of feet/legs/hands/body/head, you have the robe armor set, which consists of feet/legs/hands/body/head, you have the Eastern style armor set, which consists of feet/legs/hands/body/head, you have the leather armor which consists of feet/legs/hands/body/head, you have the scale mail set which consists of feet/legs/hands/body/head, and you have the Tunic set, which consists of the feet/legs/hands/body and the head is part of the body.

You also have misc. equipment like bounding boots and such, as well as hairpins and different low level items. Not to mention event gear. You can mix and match as well if you're on certain jobs, and other jobs stay more specific to a set. All of these sets can be bought from NPC's for dirt cheep, even the poorest noobs can buy these up pretty easily. Once you get to level 12 you get several other new sets of armor open up, and more and more keep opening up along the way.

In Aion, you are thrown into the game with a weapon, and two pieces of armor. Legs, and body. Up till level 10, you have several options of obtaining armor. You have the npc option, which is very over priced, and will suck a noobs money dry quicker than it will in FFXI. Also, for the sets of armor you usually only have three pieces up till level 10 in most cases. I believe once you get to 10 you get sets (some) that have 4 pieces which are hands/legs/body/feet. If you don't want to buy the overpriced npc gear (which honestly you shouldn't, just save your kinah) you have two options.

Doing the quest missions, or obtaining drops off the monsters. Now, my first character to level 10, with all my killing and questing, I got 1 piece of armor. I was a sorcerer and it was a piece of leather armor, so it did me no good. On my second character I came across 2 pieces of armor, one cloth and one chain. Luckily I was a cleric and was able to use this one piece. This was from killing mobs, questing and grinding all the way up to level 10.

Usually, in the starter areas, most people are just selling Manastones or odd goods, just like you'd see in bazaar's in FFXI starter cities. In a rare instance you might find a piece or two of armor in some one's private store, but again it's rare, and I would be shocked and amazed to actually see a full set in one, it just isn't going to happen.

So this leaves you with the option of getting quest armor, which is the best bet. I believe you can get feet/legs/hands/body if I'm not mistaken from the questline. The quests are basically like the first line of missions. When you complete the missions and quests for a questline you get that piece of armor, all the way up to around 10 when you get the last piece. The sad thing is, this armor looks almost exactly like the starting armor they throw on you when you're level one. The color is slightly different, but it's pretty much exactly the same.

This is just the first 10 levels in Aion. After that you get to go to the capital city and a few options open up for you. But even then, till you start getting into quest armor, rare drops, and abyss armor, most of the armor is going to look a lot alike. Yes, you can recolor it, which is nice, and yes, you can keep a certain model if you wish (which is kind of useless as armor only gets better looking as you get higher up). All in all, it feels a lot less diverse though.



Wall-o'-text aside, you are not seriously insulting FFXI's music are you? FFXI has some of the most incredible video game music there is. You've got different music for the cut scenes, different music for different area's, and a TON more tracks than Aion has. Honestly, this is not a opinion or exaggeration. FFXI has a enormously larger amount of music tracks in it than Aion does. So far, if I'm not mistaken Aion has what, a total of like 16 different theme's not including the church/building themes that are usually just 1 line of music? FFXI has hundreds.

Not only that, but FFXI's music is very masterfully done. Aion's music sounds more like a disney soundtrack, and very rushed. The composers for FFXI put more heart into the themes and tracks, they sound more diverse, and different from each other, and flat out sound more rich and full. In Aion the music gets a LOT more annoying to me than the themes in FFXI, usually which are soft and can be replayed without being annoying. In Aion the tracks are short and simple and will have some pinnacle "loud points" that end suddenly, leaving you wishing for more and a bit annoyed.

To be honest, I thought NCsoft did a incredible job on the Lineage 2 soundtrack. I was shocked when Aion didn't live up to it. Lineage 2's soundtrack honestly rivals and can stand next to, if not beat out FFXI's soundtrack. It's amazing and I was going to judge Aion's music more off of that than FFXI. I was disappointed to hear that Aion's music wasn't a fraction as good as Lineage 2. If anyone would like to hear Lineage 2's soundtrack, you can do so here.



How is "if some one attempts to steal your mob, you can attempt to steal it back" a bonus? Especially when in FFXI that mob is yours once you claim it, and in WoW once you claim it that loot is going to you. I don't see how that is at all positive, but rather counter-productive.



"Disguises it by throwing it in your chat log, not necessarily a good thing"? Little things add up. Little things make a story feel more invoking, more interesting. Little things like watching a npc talk as the text is there as if they are talking to you, a bit at a time, and a lot of the time giving you several angles, watching people walk up and off, changing views, etc, gives it a more realistic since and feel, and captivates you better than simply the NPC standing there as it always does, and a notebook popping up with a wall of text in it.

Not only that but they OVER text a lot of the quests. They put too much text in it and it gets boring. Honestly, I don't want to read 5 notebook pages of tiny text to get into a story that quite honestly isn't usually that good or interesting in the first place. If they'd put a little more thought into their stories and make them more brief it'd certainly get them one step closer.



You've got to be kidding me. Do you know how easy it is to do dubs? Especially when you don't even have to match it to lip syncing. And hell, they can't even get it remotely close to good TEXT syncing. All that on top of the fact that the voice overs sound so horrible that one of them honestly made me start laughing in my chair, in the middle of a serious cut scene.



Yes, they are. And they did a horrible job at it. I'm sorry to say. But again, I'm not going to lie, and my opinions are often harsh and strait forward.



Ohh bullsh*t. You keep making these simple things sound so much harder than they actually are. The cut scenes don't even flow with other cut scenes, it's just one at a time, and how hard is it to either rewrite the text and the script itself or to actually word yourself more properly? This can be done easily by amateur anime dubbers. Why can't a enormous video game developer do it?

I could go on and on, I could list even more problems with the game than I have, and I could have even told people "Don't buy it" when in actuality I recommended they give it a shot. Again I've been telling people my opinion based on a hardcore FFXIers point of view, and what they to might experience being from FFXI. I'm still playing it though aren't I? Aion certainly has it's strong points as people have mentioned, you can accomplish a lot of things solo, although as you start getting higher up you'll need groups for things. The graphics are absolutely beautiful if you max them out. Once you do start getting nice looking armor, it is simply dashing looking, and the gameplay can be very fun at times.

More than anything else, the odd thing is that my favorite part of Aion is the PvP. Although it can get annoying at times. For example, there are "Spy Quests" where you have to go to the world of the other faction and give something to a npc, or kill a certain mob. Aion's worlds are so incredibly crowded as of now it's very hard to sneak around. Not only that but your name shows up in big red letters that you can see from very very far away.

If you're solo, it's very easy to get ganked, and for a couple people just out and about to gang up on you, which they will. If they spot you and you get away, they can give out your location even if they're dead, in the general channel. And if you try going with a group, the people who are out and about (who you will most likely annihilate with your alliance) will cry for help and Legions with high levels will come out and zerg you all till you're dead. I wish it either hid your name or made you invisible or something when you did the spy quests. Dare I say, it would be nice if you had one of those PvP on/off buttons?

If you're out for PvP though it can be insanely fun. It's a extreme rush having a 4-5 vs. 4-5 battle, or a epic 1 vs. 1 dual with some one of the opposing faction while you're in their world, or vise versa.

Sadly, there is still more frustrations in Aion than there is good times. Whoever said they haven't seen EXP bots are completely in denial. In fact, NCsoft (luckily) is supposedly doing something to change this soon, I believe in the patch on the 24th? If you don't believe me you can go so close as the Zam Aion Forums and see for yourself. The annoying part is for days, anytime I go out in just about any area to kill X_amount of X_mob for a quest, there are always a good amount of RMT bots out there. These bots are not people, they are programs which tell the character to find the nearest mob, fight it till it dies, stay a certain distance from aggro, and rest when their HP/MP gets low enough.

Not only are these things EVERYWHERE (at least up till 25 in the exp/quest zones) but they will attack and engage a mob you're currently engaged in. Usually they are too high for the zone as well, so as soon as they lock on what you would be killing for 30 seconds or so for EXP, they zerg it within seconds, killing your EXP and getting the drops you need. It's so incredibly annoying that I had to log off last night because of it. Each time I tried to go some where and get a quest done, they were there, killing the mobs I needed, killing the ones I engaged in.

Once again, they're everywhere, and they are there in large amounts. You can tell it's them by the way they behave, by the fact that they are much too high in the zone they are in, by the fact that they have terrible gear, they don't have a legion, and they don't have a title. Not only this but you can just watch how they behave, and attack other people, and their own mobs. Not to mention if you send them a whisper (which is a /tell in Aion) they will of course never respond. Normal people are usually kind enough to not attack your EXP mob unless they do so by accident, at which case they normally disengage. As bad as the community in Aion can be, they at least have some common since about some things.


But everyone knows about the EXP bots, stop being a in denial fanboy whoever said that. Even NCsoft knows it, and hopefully they will be fixing it soon, as it is the biggest turn off about the game right now.

Edited, Oct 22nd 2009 9:06pm by EndlessJourney

I'm interested about this part.

In FFXI, it's obvious that if you're new, you are pretty much forced to get help from others if you want to advance. Things like when at the dunes, you'd be asking help to get subjob items, being guided to Jeuno, getting Kazham pass, the airship pass, etc. While it sounded nice on paper, what really happened is that mostly these new players weren't really doing anything other than being carried by the helpers. I remember when I started and getting helped for all those, I almost didn't have to do anything other than being in the zone (e.g.: get subjob item from Gusgen Mines by simply being in the zone while the high level helpers solo the bones, following the high level to Jeuno while they try to keep you stay away from aggroing mobs, etc). Probably the only noticable quest is the nation mission 2-3 BCNM dragon+eye fight since it's cap25 so high level helpers can't just one-shot those mobs. But even so,the BCNM fight isn't exactly "challenging" either and mostly finished easily as players will use their 2hr.

Of course it's also possible for people to form 6-man PT level 25 and then try to get the Kazham pass, but did anyone actually do that at all? When the mobs can be soloed easily by high level helper, I don't think anyone bothered doing it by forming 6-man low level PT.

With the design of the game, FFXI's EXP PT and quest/missions are mostly done separately, and let's be realistic here, most people don't bother doing quests/missions until much later on in their game life. We don't really see anyone on their first level 30 job doing Promy. Eco-warrior quests are pretty much dead, and so on. It's more common to see people trying to get to 75 first, and then start doing quests/missions. The ones that people do early are the few ones that have good rewards (Warp, Ballad, Utsu, etc) or somewhat necessary (Kazham pass, airship pass, etc), but most are ignored til much later on or not being done at all (we still have quite a lot of people not completing ZM, CoP, ToAU, etc).

Is the main selling point of the quote above simply just about going to a location that you wouldn't have otherwise? Or is there something that I'm missing?


In concept, I agree, but I'm a bit not sold on the importance of this issue because when "exploration" is brought up, it's only exploration the first time you go to a location. Once you're there, you've seen it all and pretty much not as excited the second, third, fourth, etc time you were there as the zone itself doesn't really offer anything much (e.g.: you go to The Boyahda Tree .. what is there to explore really? The whole area is pretty much the same thing, and there's no difference being 1 minute from the entrance and 5 seconds from the exit to Dragon's Aery). And with transportation being quite a pain in FFXI (slow run speed, limited warp/tele points, limited chocobo availability, airship/boat timer, etc), is exploration really that exciting? Do people get excited searching for where their AF coffer pops at? I doubt it.


I'm not sure how you came up with this but came up differently when it comes to FFXI. In FFXI, the camps are pretty much always just that (e.g.: up to 20 in dunes, up to 25 in qufim, up to 30 in kazham, etc). Once you've been across Windurst, once you've been to Whitegate a few times, it starts feeling repetitive too, you know.


What happens differently in FFXI? You mean the 100+ chain merit PTs killing colibris in 20seconds for hours aren't "zerging things for hours and hours at a time"? Or is it actually "epic" to fight IT++ mobs for 5 minutes and get 200EXP? You mean being stuck at Qufim PT from 20 to 25 isn't "boring and repetitive"? I'm not dissing FFXI, but at least in Aion you fight different types of mobs because of the quests you're doing requires you killing different mobs. Whereas in FFXI, it's often that in your EXP PT, you're just killing one same type of mob for hours. At most two types and the second one just because either aggro, link or shortage of the first type. Not only that, it often lasts for a few levels too.

To me, it sounds more like you like grouping in FFXI while not enjoying soloing in Aion rather than anything else. It's fine if you feel that way though.


Wow are you for real here? Yes, you're right about the starting gear, but let's not get carried away about the others. Misc equipment like bounding boots and such are just out of newbie's league at all. Which newbie can have bounding boots? They won't even know what LL is. If they even see LL, at their level they have probably no chance of winning the fight. However, in Aion, you can actually obtain green gear from mobs at low level without having to camp NM.

Then event gear, I mean come on, event gear is mostly useless and only available when the event happens. We can't really count that, can we? Not to mention that they're pretty much just LV1 gear too, not an actual progress from RSE level 1.

Then here's a gem for you. http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Category:Body and look. Body armor level 1 to start with, then what level is next body armor? Level SEVEN. If you're a MNK,WHM, or BLM, you're actually getting the second body armor at level EIGHT. Then you basically go to level 10. So between level 1-10, you have 3 body armor (level 1, level 7/8, and level 10). How is that more progress than Aion?

Now go http://www.aionarmory.com/search.aspx?browse=1.2.3.3#items:0+2+1 and look at Aion's body armor options between level 1-10. Level 1,4,5,7,8,9,10 all have body armors, all available for all classes. You aren't required to always change your body armor if you want obviously (as I've said before, I did 1-10 in starting gear from level 1 and did it just fine), but at least it offers more options than FFXI, and very accessible as well (again, with the green gear dropping off normal mobs that you quest on).

Your "fact" is again twisted to suit your opinion. So yeah, you exaggerate yet again.


Just would like to let you know that this feature is used to avoid "mismatched" look if you prefer "proper set" look, to fool enemies in PvP by wearing a lowbie gear look, or simply to create your own "mismatched" look if you prefer it.

EDIT: Oh about music, I think both FFXI and Aion are as good/bad as the other. Some songs are great in FFXI (I love most final mission BCNM fight song), but there are annoying songs too (Sandy theme song, endless Campaign song, Al Zahbi, etc). Same thing in Aion. Some are good (I like Sanctum, Abyss), some are not so good (can't remember the location exactly, but there's one area in Eltnen that I kinda dislike the song).

Aion OST - Forgotten Sorrow http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeAxiIzaE-o is probably up there though for me. It's so beautiful. And again, not to say that Aion's music is better than FFXI, but simply just mentioning my fave Aion song so far.

Edited, Oct 23rd 2009 3:44am by Vaagan

What grid? Also, there's no need to try again, there's more polygons in in my 7 1024x768 pictures than there are in your 8 1600x850 pictures.

It's a pretty common experience I've had while playing Aion to be stunned by how an area looks. There are zones in FFXI that look good, too. You really can't deny there's a progression in FFXI as the game moves along, it's definitely not an ugly game as such, and the later expansion content generally looks a lot better than the early stuff.

As for the screenshots, Green just posted Sanctum, the Elyos capital, and some other zones you'd see while leveling and running around. For the shots Deadgye picked, they're pretty much the zones I would have picked. There are some really nice views and spots in FFXI, I would even go as far as to say that the Tavnazian Archipelago is the most beautiful area in the game (and thus the screenshots), as well as the approach to Castle Zvahl (which was the conclusion more or less of the original game and it's story, expansions add on to that, even the other ranks really coming from Zilart).

Aion is an extremely pretty game. FFXI has a beauty of it's own, but it's also pointless to deny that, while you can tweak the hell out of it and make it look good, to compete you also have to bring up certain zones to compare. Aion has it's dusty desert areas and things as well, but there's a lot of really great stuff to look at. Aion looks great out of the box with the settings the game was designed to be run with, FFXI can look great too but it has to be pushed to make it that way.

An older game is going to look older, there's no shame in it and trying to deny it just seems a little silly.

Frankly the whole thread seems to have run it's course, some. The OP, in my opinion, was trying to shy people away from Aion because he's probably afraid that people abandoning FFXI for Aion will result in the game being unplayable due to not having anyone to play with. It's, overall, an extremely negative review with a few positive phrases thrown in to try and make it sound unbiased.

Beyond that, the OP was clearly, and I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, very noobish and apparently didn't learn about a lot of things in the game that would have made his playing experience better. He exaggerates a lot and oversimplifies things. The whole review is a bit of a sham, and I think what bothers the people in the thread who do play Aion and like it is that it seems like nothing more than a silly attempt to get people to not try it. It's loaded with cautions and warnings that appeal to old school FFXIers.

"They don't group or understand how to group!" Well, honestly a fair number of the quests and such actually are aimed at grouping, and, of course, the way that you learn to group is by doing it. You don't have any need to group much pre-20, and why should you? The Campaign quests towards the end of Verteron, where you spend most if not all of 10-20 finally require grouping to be done at those levels, especially if you want any kind of expediency to them. You have to plow through large numbers of Elite mobs (to borrow a term from WoW, which is the devil to a lot of FFXIers), these have more HP, stronger attacks, and drop more Kinah (money) and experience points than normal mobs of the same level. In short they're designed to be fought by and with a party.

"The community is awful! It's all 8 year olds with E-peen obsessions ganking each other!" Honestly this sounds to me like the OP needs a better Legion, or doesn't have one at all. Sound familiar? It should. How often have those of us who've been around for a while told somebody that they need a better LS? I know I can look to my Legion for help and advice, and I'm happy to return the favor. Community is exactly what you and your peers make of it, nothing less and nothing more. If you feel like most of the people you surround yourself with are ********, make better friends.

Also you don't shout for a group, there's a chat channel that's shared globally for looking for a party. I have a chat tab set up for it, I generally don't have a problem finding a group when I need one. It's not like FFXI where you go to Whitegate and accomplish NOTHING for maybe a few hours while you try to get people to kill the Snoll Czar for you. You can head out there to do whatever you were doing anyways and you have access to that channel, where you can look for people for your quest/mission/whatever and keep on trucking. I've yet to have a group that took that long to form anyways.

"The RMTs are EVERYWHERE!" Well, the game is being hailed as the next big WoW killer. Of course there's RMT, there's RMT in every game. Aion devs are being more proactive and working harder to try to reduce RMT spam than most other games, and certainly a ton more than FFXI devs have been showing themselves to do. It's a problem that affects any MMO, the devs are dealing with it. Most people I talk to in game are happy with the fact that the devs are dealing with it, and some of them even think the devs are a little too hyper. At this point someone under level 10 can't send /tells, can't acccess the general chat channels, and if someone sends too many mail messages they lose the ability to send mail (and they aren't told when that is! Yes, the bot goes right on spamming with no way to tell if it's still working or not!) These are things that have been asked for repeatedly in FFXI and none of it has happened.

"The claiming system is buggy!" Well, there is no claiming system. Surprisingly, we're not all being ******** about it. Apparently the OP had a couple of bad experiences, it doesn't make it a plague or a huge problem.

I'm bored of this but a lot of his other points are extremely specious and often silly. I had zero problem affording armor for myself leveling 1-10 buying only from NPCs, yeah you have to farm (unlike which other MMO?). You get in what you put out, but Aion gives you a nice toolbox to work with.

Visually pleasing is a matter of opinion. And Aion vs ffxi is almost as distant as ffxi vs WoW. But god damn I wish these newer games would at least attempt to use better models. I wasn't lying when I said that there were more polygons in my pictures, imagine how much better Aion would look if the games had similar polygon counts.

I am currently playing Aion. I can tell you first hand that the community is... well, lacking. I have met some good people there so far, but mostly it is wow addicts trying to find a new fix.
Other than that, and the bots/RMT, it really isn't a bad game IMO. Graphics are nice, and the battle graphics are pretty sweet. The gear is a bit easier to get, but not much easier. You can camp shiki for 3 months to get that YinYang robe, and in Aion, you can spend 3 months crafting/gathering to craft that bad *** full set.

It's not the end of the world MMO, but it isn't as bad as some people make it out to be.

This can't possibly be abused.

There's more to it than that Seriha; There are 4 tiers to the system.

T1: Warning
T2: Reduced chance of Drops -30% exp/kinah
T3: -50% exp, no drops, no gathering, can't join parties
T4: no parties, no drops, no exp, no gathering, no anything


Now, there are some safeguards in place to prevent(or reduce) abuse.
You only get 10 reports saved up, that replenish at the rate of 1 an hour. You cannot report the same person within 30 minutes of each other. People in your Legion(ls) cannot report the same person, people on your friends list cannot the same person.

Thus; even if you got pissed at best you could only give them 'warning' status which has no adverse effects, because your friends and legion reports do not advance the tier.

Edited, Oct 24th 2009 12:13am by renasci

I'm late to this topic, but I must say it depends on the circumstances.

FF7 is prime example of terrible. You watch an animated movie and then see text below while they are all silent.... NO. If you bother with good animation then you better voice it too.

Aion however are fairly basic in its animation, so it could work with just text.

Wow another one who made comments without knowing what they're talking about.

LV1-10: very quick, very easy to be done, doing Ascension quest at 9 gives full EXP to 10 upon completion.
LV10-25: just keep on doing quests/campaigns and a few repeats here and there, should be easy enough to get there.
LV25-onwards: not as many quests available, but gains the ability to enter instances in which you can easily get A LOT of EXP in there when in group (e.g.: entering Training Ground at 25 can give you around 80% EXP to 26) so that you'd only need to do little questing outside the instance to level up. And so on.

NCSoft also already mentioned about the plan to increase EXP reward from quests, as well as adding further higher level quests to help make leveling up even easier in the future. Plus, there's always the Energy of Repose available too. To say that EXP is worse than pre-EXP band in FFXI is just way too silly.

I totally missed this in the first post. The OP is really giving out false information.

First of all, you have an option to purchase armor or farm it. A lot of Green colored Armor (Green means Rare and has good stats) drop from multiple mobs. I was able to obtain 4/5 of the Healer's Chain Armor for my Cleric by level 15 just from exping from 10-15. My friend was able to get the full Temple Guards Chain set by level 17 all from purely exping. Also on the AH it actually lists the selling price and oftentimes you will see the same item being sold for various prices. So while it may look like a piece of armor is being sold for 50k, if you scroll thru some of the pages, you are likely to find other people selling it for much cheaper because they simply want to get money as quickly as possible. Also, the OP was incorrect because unlike FFXI, if you are browsing the AH or an NPC for armor to buy, you can hit CTRL + Right Click and a small box opens up and gives you a preview of what the armor will look like on you and allow you to rotate your character model to see from different angles.

Second is Soulbinding. When you have a certain item (Usually Green Items) if you want to wear it, you have to Soulbind it to your character. That means that you cannot sell or trade it afterward. So the armor is useless after you level up right? Wrong. Once you have no use for the soulbound armor/weapon, you go to an NPC and buy extraction tools. These tools allow you to extract power from your armor/weapons and obtain an enchantment stone. This stone can be used to enhance other armor. For example: You have a level Soulbound Staff with has 80-105 damage. You obtain a new staff that has 95-120 damage. You use extraction tools on your old staff, and obtain an enchantment stone. You then use the enchantment stone on your new staff which can increase the stats on that staff such as adding +10 damage to the staff. It would be like taking a Kirin's Osode, using extraction tools to get an enchanting stone and using it on Usukane Haramaki and having the result being an augmented Usukane Haramaki with +5 in all stats.