Aion Closed Beta 3: Asmodian 1-20

This past Fourth of July/Canada Day weekend was the third Aion Closed Beta. I'm sad to have missed the second one, particularly because it meant I had to start from scratch to catch up to my friends, and by the end of the weekend I had only managed level 18 and 1/4, largely due to my insistence on making one of EVERYTHING. No, really. My character selection screen looks like a harem.

I played most extensively as a Chanter, a competent fighter with moderate damage output, supportive heals and buffs. I was pleased with the class - it's got great longevity for soloing, and will be a nice class to start out with when the game goes live. The damage output wasn't that extraordinary, which is appropriate. I found that Gladiators, Scouts, and Assasins all killed faster than me, but with greater downtime due to their lack of heals and mana regeneration skills. I seemed to kill at the same rate as a tank, which seems reasonable. So it seems relatively balanced for now - I sacrifice power for my hybrid status.

Long ago I played a Warden in DAoC. It was one of my all time favorite classes, even though it was extraordinarily underpowered. My heals were so small they might as well be non existent (not to mention my mana pool could not support them as my buffs were chants that constantly pulsed, drawing mana) and my attacks were ridiculously weak (a few low damage physical attacks, but reliant on auto attacking), but I supported a group and I loved the class type. I was pleased to see that NCSoft has created a buffing class that can participate in fighting, too. After years as a prophet - a real player prophet and not a second box - I am glad to get back into the action. No more sitting to regen mana and buffing the entire party, one buff and player at a time, EVERY TWENTY MINUTES. Just thinking about it makes me want to cut myself.

I had a wonderful time exploring the Asmodian starting zones. The Elyos starting zone, of which I saw less (I only created characters and played until level 5 in the first beta), is beautiful and tropical. Lush and vibrant, with bright colors and burning sun. I was concerned the Asmodian zones might be homogeneous barren terrain since they are dark and cold places, but I was quite wrong. The frozen parts were gorgeous and shimmery, and there was a fantastic diversity of terrain, ranging from partially frozen lakes to farmland and forested mountains. I should have looked around more and taken terrain screenshots - I found myself amazed at the variation in plant life and even in critters. I was having so much fun just running around the world that I didn't take too many shots, unfortunately.

Compare (click for larger image):
Left: Elyos starting zone. Intact buildings, warm colors, lots of trees and flowers.
Right: Asmodian starting zone. Shattered buildings (same as the intact ones for Elyos) and tents, cool colors, different types of foliage.









As for the hunting - at first I was underwhelmed by the variety of mobs to hunt. The models they do have are pretty nice - birds, beasts, and some humanoids. But as I flew over the world from one town to another (a very fast endeavor compared to WoW - the flight points were short and flight speed was very quick) I realized how small the world actually is, compared to World of Warcraft. Rather than a flight point on a mount, you are given beautiful magic wings and you zoom over the terrain. I began to evaluate the size and structure of the world and made a couple of awesome discoveries about how the world's structure impacts the gameplay.

Firstly, the number of quests for the first 20 levels is perfect and is part of what kept me from realizing how small the actual world was. You don't out level a place with half the quests left, and you don't really run out of quests before are done with an area. Since there aren't a ton of quests, there isn't the need for a lot of different types and camps of monsters. The quests keep you moving through the world at the correct pace, so for the most part you don't spend a lot of time hoofing it from one quest hub to the next just for new tasks, or backtracking a ton just to polish off old quests. This gives the starting zones a good feel in terms of size - since you don't spend tons of time in transit the world doesn't feel frustratingly large, but instead "just right" even without the luxury of flight or increased run speed. As an aside note - these quests provide you primarily with money and consumables rather than gear which I love. The longer quests and those in the "story progression" tab tend to give occasional item upgrades, which is perfect. With WoW you get random green quality quest rewards from everything, and there's a real feeling of "lets just finish up this quest to get my free loot so I can move onto the next" that cheapens the questing and turns it into mindless repetetive behavior.

A brilliant new idea is the use of "channels". Each server is a world, but within this world there exist 10 channels which, for WoW players, function like a limitless instance. It's essentially 10 layers of the same world stacked ontop of one another. If you find yourself unable to kill an overcamped quest mob, change to a less populated channel. If you find that you're unable to clear through an area fast enough as a healer or other squishy class and actually prefer a crowded channel for the security, search one out. There are also two different "map" modes. One functions like a traditional map - it's small and displays an old style parchment map with towns, roads, and NPCs marked. The other is an overlay of your area and is quite useful for finding your way around confusing locations such as the massive capital cities.

Also visible in this shot of the overlay map: the campaign quest log (left) and inventory (right). The Character portrait displays my health (red), mana (blue), and DP (orange/yellow) - daeva points. The DP are what cause my character to glow, and are used in special skills and some types of crafting (level 3 glow is very neat). The inventory is annoyingly small, but as per Lineage II, items have unlimited stacking (or so I currently assume, I got well over 100 for some materials).

This allows for the second quality: a fluidly designed world that is both small and large simultaneously. In WoW, flying from one corner of a continent to another can take quite a lot of time, as can navigating through a zone (especially at the lower levels). Aion is smaller, and uses the channels instead of vast expanses of wasted space to give people room to exist. An additional benefit is that the smaller size of the world allows for it to feel more dynamic and detailed. For the most part MMO's trade in flat spaces in their effort to balance the realism of a dynamic physical world and a practical maneuverable one. Aion, with instant flight and the ability to glide even in "flight free" zones gets around this general rule. The world that I have seen thus far has been incredibly detailed, but also varried in terrain which gives it a nice realistic sense.

The NPCs are also detailed. See below for a number of images.

Left: NPC tending a fire

Right:NPC painting

Series 1: My character discovers that it's snowing and reacts accordingly. For Elyos, I found that characters responded to the rain. Both races also splash around in water :)

Series 2: Here are a few emotes up close: (left to right) Laughing, Pondering, Disapproval. The full list of emotes is extensive, and a number of them are lengthy as well. Some are a bit silly, such as "comfort" that attempts to console a player lying on the ground. This is due to the fact that one of the dejected emotes involves a player throwing themself down onto the ground. I just can't imagine two players managing to time and position it so that the two emotes properly coincide...

Series 3: Striking a pose - interracting with the terrain. I was really surprised to see that I was able to stand like this. Normally, my character would just be standing with one foot on the higher terrain and the other "hanging off" in mid-air. The fact that I was able to interract like this with a normal object in the world without any sort of specific command to do so (such as chairs in WoW) was unexpected. I had just logged in to check my mail and was surprised to see myself standing like this.