AION Revisited: Population Balance

When Aion first launched, I predicted that Asmodians would attract power gamers and pre-established clans, and Elyos would attract a larger population but larger number of casual gamers. Whether or not that prediction was accurate, one year into the game it is clear that Asmodians have lost a much larger amount of their original population. The ramifications of this loss are colossal for the remaining players.

Earning PvP items takes a great deal of time because they are purchased with Abyss Points earned from fort sieges, killing players of the opposite faction and killing NPC monsters in the Abyss. With the Elyos holding a serious and consistent advantage in both numbers and the quality of their PvP gear, they are free to hunt in the Abyss at all times, amassing points and widening their lead. Those few Asmodians remaining on the merged Zikel server do not venture there due to the overwhelming presence of Elyos and this puts them at a severe disadvantage.

In the new zones, the Elyos have already conquered their two forts from the Balaur, which enables them free passage into the Asmodian zones, where even small groups are able to cause great disturbances. In the early days of the game, the Asmodian population was dense enough to immediately muster forces and push back any advances made by the enemy. These surprise attacks and counter attacks provided great enjoyment and added an unpredictable aspect to the experience grind. On the new merged Zikel, however, the population is so horrendously imbalanced that I almost never see any other Asmodians hunting and harvesting in our own lands. This makes it impossible to survive, as I am constantly encountering and being killed by Elyos players roaming in the Asmodian zone to hunt and torment us.

It's really a shame - the new areas and content added in Assault on Balaurea are fantastic, and the game would be terrific fun if the population were only balanced. During the times that the Elyos were barred from our zone (thanks to the NPC faction conquering one of the Elyos frontier forts) I had a fantastic time exploring our area and completing quests. Though frustrating, I did enjoy my return to Aion, if only to see how they expanded the content before my final exit.

AION Revisited - Goal Status

Here are the unfinished goals I had in January when I quit Aion:

• Done! Acquire 2,000 coins and purchase Shadetouched Staff
• Done! Reach 449 Handicrafting Skill
• Done! Obtain Fenris Shoulders
• Done! Complete Advanced Stigma Quest

Here are some more advanced goals I might be able to achieve before I permanently retire:

• Done! Reach level 55
• Failed Twice! Obtain Fenris Pants
• Failed! Obtain Fenris Chest
• Failed! Obtain Fenris Weapon
• Failed! Collect Anuheart Chanter Armor Set
• Failed! Reach 549 Handicrafting Skill
• Failed! Become Alchemy Master

Aion Revisited - Account Reactivation

Following PAX, I made what is likely a poor decision - reactivating my Aion account. I deactivated the account in January, only 6 months after the game’s launch, and it was an unexpectedly sudden end that left my character in limbo. I’ve wanted ever since to return, at least briefly enough to finish several projects I had been working on with her. In an attempt to find a bit of closure for my character and to feel as though I was ready to leave the game, I am revisiting it for one or two months.

Firstly, I had been farming religiously to earn 2,000 Platinum Coins. Coin quests are a carryover from Lineage 2, where you could kill certain NPCs for a low chance to earn specific types of coins which could then be redeemed in combination for different rewards. It was a way to earn added benefit from killing NPCs to gain experience. In Aion, each subsequent tier of coin requires significantly more coins to earn a reward. The early tiers provide a random reward within one “school” of item type, so that you might wind up with an item you can’t use or a duplicate. This is often frustrating, but can still provide a reasonable amount of profit.

Once you reach the higher tiers, such as the Platinum Coins I was farming, you are able to chose much more specifically. My 2,000 coin quest was to earn an attack speed staff for my Chanter, and when I suddenly quit the game I had personally farmed over 1,400 coins - quite an achievement as they were awarded in small denominations for repeatable quests. At that time, buying the coins was cost prohibitive (roughly 25,000 adena each) so I kept soldiering forward on the repeatable quests. However, I discovered on my return that the price had dropped significantly, and I was able to snap up several bulk lots for 10,000 per coin. This, combined with a heavy night of farming was able to put me at my goal. The difference with the new weapon is unbelievable!

I am hoping to finish up two additional goals, though I am not sure I will make the deadline before the new content goes in. I would like to earn my Fenris Shoulders - I am just over halfway done and now I am able to complete the quest much quicker now. I also need to complete 2 more runs through the Dark Poeta instance in order to gain access to my advanced stigmas, since I frequently sat out for a friend. This is key for my character, and I really want to complete this so that I can feel she’s “done” before I quit for good. It’s a lot more difficult to complete group instances though, since everyone I know has quit the game. I’ll be at the mercy of strangers for the next month as I attempt to finish these goals while exploring the new zones and content.I’d also love to finish out my crafting - I was three points shy of the cap when I cancelled my account, and this has been raised slightly so there is additional incentive to finish.

Aion Wrap-up

I've been working very hard these past weeks to develop my character in Aion, and even though it is horrendously slow going I am enjoying the process. Unfortunately for Harmonia, my little chanter character, I have decided to cancel my account. I am still enjoying the game, and the changes that NCSoft is looking to implement interest me greatly - I ADORE a game with player housing, and many of the other soon to be added features. Unfortunately, most of my friends have quit playing and I feel I should move on now since I have just begun the process of purchasing my own home.

So it's farewell to the world of Daevas and hello to the world of boxes and packing tape.

Future Visions

Wow. NCSoft has a history of releasing beautiful and action packed CGI videos in advance of expansion content for their MMORPG games, but they have shocked the AION community by unexpectedly releasing an incredible preview of the Aion of the future. It's important to recognize that this is a concept video, and it illustrates where the developers and artists hope to see the game. There is no telling which features are actually in production and which are still, literally, on the drawing board.

Much of the discussion following the video's release hinged upon unbridled excitement - how this or that feature/update looks amazing, is unexpected, is exactly what a player was hoping for. Much of the discussion also focused on pragmatic analysis (or cynical doubt) of what features were most likely to actually reach the game, and which were unlikely to ever be delivered. Regardless, the sheer volume of excitement generated by this one video is, in my experience, unprecedented. People who were stuck in the endless cycle of the slow XP grind have come alive again with a passion for the game.

The general impression from most people is that if NCSoft is able to deliver even half of these upgrades and updates, the game will be completely reinvigorated. I am personally ecstatic about the inclusion of player housing, as it allows for a player to truly become a part of the world, to shape its landscape and become a part of the structure. I am shocked at the aparent inclusion of world defense PvP of these housing zones - this is unprecendented in my experience, and has me really excited. The idea of defending my own home, in addition to my homeland, from invasion and destruction, is fascinating and exciting.

From my own personal experience with NCSoft and their occasional underdelivering, I was able to identify a few points in the video that seem a bit far-fetched, but then again - it's possible that they've learned from their past mistakes and are looking to remedy unfulfilled promises from Linaege II in Aion.

Aion Launch Rewind

As is usually the case when something major happens in an MMORPG, most players have been using sick days, vacation time, and pushing themselves to the edge of their sanity in the rush to conquer, and in this case - to level. As a general rule I love new releases - the idea of a fresh world to explore, a level playing field, and a race to the finish line all combine to put a sparkle in (and huge bags under) my eyes. It also seriously damages my ability to sit down and write even the smallest of blog posts. Now that the release has had some time to settle down and the push to stay ahead of the masses has somewhat subsided, I can take some time to reflect on the game launch and the game itself.

The Aion release went largely as expected. Server overload, population caps, log in queues that were no joke (they legitimately restricted the number on the servers at any time to minimize lag issues for those lucky enough to be in the game) and occasional crashes and downtimes. And of course, lots and lots of whining that it was "the worst MMO launch ever" from kids who clearly weren't around for the launch of WoW to see how poorly managed that was, even with its massive number of servers. The queue times sucked, but once you were in you were in, and it was (for the most part) playable.

For the first time ever I had very few problems with a new title - I had the game installed from the beta, and was able to play for a couple days without even needing to pick up my game. No technical issues until I attempted to upgrade my account to the Collector's Edition - that took about an hour's time during which it appeared my code had and had not been accepted simultaneously. Apart from that my only complaint was missing the first two nights of prime levelling time to go to a(n insanely awesome) Pearl Jam concert. Talk about bad timing!

It didn't take long for most of our predictions about Aion to come true. People started quitting the game in their late teens before ever hitting the PvP zones, or the early 20s before earning even half of their skills and equipping stigmas. The general complaints were that the game was "too hard" or the characters "didn't have enough skills" at level 20. It's not until the mid 30s that most characters really come into their own with a nice variety of skills.

It's a shame to see people forming bad opinions of the game (which they then spread) that are based on such a small portion of the gameplay. The first 20-25 levels are meant to serve as a tutorial in how to play your character, what the world is and why it is that way, and what your individual role is in the drama that's unfolding. All roads lead to level 25 and the abyss - the PvPvE zone that exists between the two worlds that comprise Atria. Though it's sad to see many people quit before ever seeing this zone and the future of the gameplay, it's not entirely unexpected, and the weak hearted will not be missed. After the first few weeks the server queues died down and now the servers appear to be well and evenly populated, thanks to NCSoft's careful control of character creation.

Thanks to the gameplay design, people are well entertained as they level. Characters are begining to peek over the level 40 mark, and explore exciting new areas. Forts are regularly conquered and lost, as are the artifacts surrounding them. Owning the forts allows each faction additional instances to be run once daily, which is excellent for experience and also for rewards. The first instance in the game is even structured like a fort, populated with Balaur, the game's third (NPC) faction. By taking each player through this dungeon with good xp and loot for rewards, the game also trains the players to know what to expect during a siege.

Aion Closed Beta 4: Wrap-up Coming Soon

Wow, what a weekend! Real Life intervened to keep me away from my PC for a good portion of this last closed beta, but I did get to spend a nice chunk of time on Friday playing around a bit more with the crafting system, Saturday night exploring Elyos lands in a small group, and Sunday rounded out with a failed attempt to polish off the last half of lvl 29 (there was just too much random stuff to do and see!).

I'll be writing up some comments, observations, and concerns for the live release this week, as well as posting some amusing screenshots. Right now I'm still feeling the withdrawal, and not really looking forward to tonight's WoW raid.

Aion Closed Beta 4 Announced

Levels 1-30 supported, which means that I am still lagging behind a bit and will have to stack on an additional 5 levels to stay competitive. I think NCSoft is trying to kill me.

Missing the second CB meant I started out at a 20 level deficit that I have been unable to eradicate. That's ok though. I'm not intent on busting through the levels and burning myself out before the game releases - I plan on finishing my current zone, checking out the desert zone a little, and playing a child sized Elyos to experience their content a bit. Hopefully it will help me chose which faction to play.

I can't wait for next weekend!

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.

Agency and Choice in MMORPGs

So I have a few interesting ideas about the quests in Aion. Firstly, I'm overjoyed to see that NCsoft has fleshed out this title with a decent number of real quests. Lineage quests....well, they weren't really quests. They were more like "since you are going to go hunting for 10 hours to earn a miniscule bit of experience, why not collect me five hundred tokens while you're at it. Did I mention that only one person in your party can get a token off each mob? Oh, and don't expect a 100% drop rate." So far, these are more WoW type quests - "help, I can't find my xxx", "help, I can't defend my farm please kill x number of xxxxxx" etc. There are also "story progression" quest arcs. The thought of these gives me shivers, but they don't seem even remotely close to the class quests in Lineage.

Class change, subclass, noblesse, and other "mandatory" quest lines in Lineage II were, in a word, arduous. Part of me misses that, the concept of working so hard for something, because that so greatly magnifies the elation you feel upon completion. In fact, for some reason I am recalling my very first level 20 class change quest, and the line up in the hallway as all the players who needed to complete a certain step waited for the one quest monster to respawn. We all sat there, waiting in queue, behind a little line of adena (money) on the ground. As each player succeeded, there was a miniature celebration, and then we all moved along to the next phase. If we'd only known what was in store for us at 35, 37 and 39 for those quest lines!

The level 10 "getting your wings" questlines seems pretty simple and straightforward, which is probably an indicator of the game's decreased difficulty (a mixed blessing). I like that they distinguish between these two types of quest so clearly - I think it paves the way for a very rich quest system, which is further enhanced by actual cutscenes even for early, low level quests. WoW drops the player in the world with a small video, and then ushers you through 80 levels of rinse and repeat quests for rewards, with a bit of storytelling mixed in - the long quest lines are more explicative than interractive, done for rewards rather than exploring the world. It's not until WoTLK that you actually begin to feel a part of the "grand history" told in the Warcraft cannon.

Not only are there "cut scenes" in which your character (not your faction, but your actual individual self) is "placed" into the global conflict and explained, but it appears as though the developers might be setting the game up for actual choices. From the progression of the quest dialogues, it's possible that players might be able to chose from multiple responses while progressing through a questline. I wish I had proper screenshots to demonstrate, but the window in which the NPC converses with your character doesn't contain a "next" or "complete quest" button. Instead, you click on a "link" of text that is a response. It triggers reactions - more dialogue, emotes, cutscenes. Even if there is but one option for the quest to progress forward, the player still "incites" the event that follows.

This leads me to the previously advertised interesting topic: agency and decision making in games. This system feels as though it posesses the room to grow into a decision tree system, where players may actually make choices at certain points along a quest line. Don't like an NPC's request? Instead of not taking the quest, deny him. Does this change your reputation? Do other quests become available to you for refusing him? There was a bit of discussion raised when WoTLK had quests that involved torture (yet stealing babies for other quests is ok. in fact it's so ok that it's a daily!) - what if they offered you the choice to take a moral stand against it rather than use it to get information? Lineage II had one step in that direction with class change quests, allowing players to turn their "generally skilled" character into one of several types of "specifically skilled" classes, with no ability to change. Instead of popping into the world "fully formed" and following one possible path, you had options - paths that diverged and never reconnected, and affected every second of gameplay. Your decision made all the difference.

Speaking strictly as an enthusiast and not as a scholar, role playing games always follow a set course. The character and plot develop, typically following a traditional narrative framework that builds towards a final conflict of some sort, usually with an epilogue, There are occasionally small choices made by the player in an RPG that may have small impacts on the story (I think of the Final Fantasy VII example, where how you respond to the female characters throughout the game leads directly to which goes on a date with the protagonist, and also to the player's ability to "skip" encountering optional characters that are available to join the party). These nearly always fall under the category of "sidequests" and do not actively influence the game's progression and are completed out of a desire for "complete" or "perfect" games.

MMOs break from this lack of agency by allowing players to craft their own social experience of the game. While the "global plot" is contrived by the game developers, players drive the daily in-game experience. In World of Warcraft, for example, the quests progress from A to B to C along a linear path, as do the raid instances - kill boss A to access boss B, kill boss B to access boss C. There is often some wiggle room, but chosing to complete one wing of a dungeon before another, or which quest to complete first when one does not hinge on the other has no impact on the content of the game, merely its experienced order. The few and far between instances of actual choices impacting gameplay in WoW tend to come in the form of faction allignment - in the Burning Crusade players chose to ally with either the Scryer or Aldor faction and thus became hated by the other. But these factions were essentially "equivalents" so the choice was just window dressing. The same can be said for the choice between Frenzyheart and Oracle factions in Wrath of the Lich King - there is no real difference between them except that each faction offers different vanity items. And as with the Scryer and Aldor factions, a player is free to switch at any time (though the process of "leveing up" the reputation is time consuming) so it does not constitute a serious "life" decision that cannot be altered. In Lineage II players could chose which to fight for the forces of Dawn or Dusk every time the new cycle came up (it was bi-weekly or so, one week to compete, one week to benefit from victory).

In tabletop RPGs, which I admit to never playing, the direction of the game is at the mercy of the dungeon master, but the individual actions and decisions are up to each player. That type of responsibility requires players to be creative (as it's open ended) and engaged with the game and its content. RPGs and MMORPGs lack this quality - they are so caught up in mechanics and repetition that players have virtually no capacity to influence the story of the game, they are simply along for the ride. Lineage II managed to avoid this by turning the PvE (player vs enemy -- monster slaying) into a boring, repetetive device that was simply a tool for the actual content of the game -- the PvP (player vs player) combat and server politics. There was no "end game" content for Lineage. You didn't progress through one dungeon after the next as you do in WoW, replacing your tier 5 with tier 6, your tier 6 with tier 7 - linear, predictable progression. Instead, there were places to level, resources to collect, wealth to amass, and a world to dominate. The conflict between players was perpetual, and drove everything forward like a real world in miniature. The alliances and wars drove the economy and politics forward in an endless and unpredictable cycle. I hope that this possibly open quest system (fingers crossed!) might instill some of the same chaos and unpredictablilty to Aion that made Lineage so exciting to play. But there's a reason games shy away from that type of model -- it's definitely somewhere between difficult to impossible to pull off, so we'll see if Aion tries to make that leap into the abyss.

Aion Closed Beta 1: First Thoughts

Very first reaction: Yep, I'm preordering.

I thought I would finally sit down and write up a little bit about the first Aion Closed Beta event in NA since I was a jackass and missed the second one that apparently everyone was playing together *grumble*.

For starters (and not surprisingly at all after seeing screenshots and playing at PAX) I spent a very large portion of time creating characters. This was also my chief form of entertainment when I stalked out a place (repeatedly) at the NCSoft booth at Pax 2008. I just can't get enough of the excellent graphics and level of customization. The first closed beta event opened up the first zone and 10 levels for the Elyos faction, who closely resemble humans and light elves from Lineage II. The girls are, of course, absolutely adorable. The male characters aren't that bad either. I was torn between making a cutie with freckles and messy hair or a hottie with a more polished look. In the end I settled for a girl who closely resembled a black haired Ashe from FFXII. My humorous aside note on this point is that in the second closed beta Jake managed to create an Asmodian Spiritmaster who looked quite like my Elyos Priest. What were the odds!

There's been quite a lot of discussion regarding the character creation so I'm not going to go into it very deeply, especially since the screenshots I thought I took of my harem of characters are missing. All that really needs to be said is that the characters you can create are unbelievably diverse and lifelike. As an extension to this, character emotes and idle animations are also unbelievably, well, animated. Facial expressions, reaction to weather and environment, and even "hawking your wares" as a personal shop (no more sitting on the ground, you get a stool now!).

I spent Friday night installing the beta and was only able to play for a few hours on Saturday, and I was still blown away by the level of detail in the environment and the obvious attention to each character action, whether it's talking to an NPC, setting up shop, or exploring the world.
It was most interesting to me to see how the game fused NCSoft's artistic style and gameplay with elements adopted from World of Warcraft. I have always and will always believe that Lineage II is a superior game to WoW (but that's a topic for another day) but there are many clever elements WoW introduced to make the game accessible and enjoyable to play. I was pleased to see Aion encorporates many of them.

Primary among the new features: a quest log (it looks better than the WoW quest log at first glance, with 2 seperate tabs to keep "questline" and "random" quests apart), an actual graphic interface (more minimal and aesthetically pleasing than WoW's and reminiscent of Diablo II, at least to me), in game mail, and the ability to jump and move fluidly with the keyboard. The NCSoft style is still heavy though (and it's mostly a good thing from what little I saw): point and click motion remains, everything costs money (even "binding" yourself to a location), and you train by buying books. As different as it looks from Lineage (the colors, oh my god...everything is just so detailed and colorful! Lineage had a fantasy mixed with realism art style, this is pure fantasy) I could immediately feel myself back in an NCSoft game. As dorky as it sounds, it felt like a homecoming.

I'll post some thoughts about questing later. For now I'm just going to smile and watch more gameplay vids and wait for closed beta 3.

Aion Beta!

Yay, signing up at last year's PAX finally delivered. I got my beta invite today for the first closed US beta :) It's only running from the 5th-7th of June, which is weird, but whatever!

I'm a little excited. And jittery. Now I regret skipping lunch...

Aion Aion Aion!

Server Downtime

...more old school screenshots, this time going all the way back to the days of lineage 2. These shots are making me quite nostalgic for my dear old prophet Soribel, the Angel of Rage (formerly Rage Prophet or CrimsonWhale from my days in CG). Lazy Prophet! I was not at all surprised to realize that most of my old Lineage screenshots were humorous conversations/fights or pictures of funny titles.

Why I once had "Slow Badger" as the title for my Spellsinger I doubt I will ever remember, though I do remember wearing "AquaSquirrel" for a time because my late night lisp would always mangle my Aqua Swirl spell.

Spring UI Cleaning: Mission Complete!

I finally managed to get my UI back to a simple, condensed view similar to what I used when I raided pre-Burning Crusade as a dirty, dirty Alliance Night Elf Hunter. I've been holding off on a large number of add-on downloads out of lazyness and my deep mistrust of curse gaming's addons.

But, now that I have finally sat down and fixed everything up (except for my damn minimap, which has resisted all the addons I threw at it) I am much happier. I even went one step further than I have ever gone before in customizing my interface - I moved my self and pet portraits down to the bottom of the screen, directly above my chat box. Now I can monitor my health and chat without moving my eyes, YAY. Not sure if this bit will stick or not. I'm having a hard enough time getting used to having my target and target of target boxes at the bottom of the screen. It's convenient in that I can monitor whatever I'm healing or killing without looking away from my skill bars or too far from my own character, but it's inconvenient in that I keep SHOOTING SHEEP because I can't see my target as well when i'm selecting targets without assisting someone off a main tank list...

Ideally, all these changes will begin to feel normal soon and I will stop fumbling around trying to find everything. I'm pleased that I managed to fit nearly every hunter skill neatly on the screen (minus a few melee skills - lawl raptor strike - and unused aspects) as well as a small variety of mounts and vanity pets!

A streamlined but informative UI is one of the most important parts of an MMO. Lineage II managed to master the art of the minimal interface, forcing all users to make due with the same skeleton interface. It was awful, but equally awful for everyone. Unless you used mods (banable offense) that told you the hp/mana/level/location of players every player had the exact same amount of information on every other - even if you were in the same party. There was a small sliver of extra information available to "trusted players" such as the clan listing a character's level. Otherwise, every interface provided the exact same information - there was nothing extra to be squeezed out of the game and displayed to players so there was no need for things like recount. Fortunately, the interface for Aion seems to have taken some much needed cues from WoW's in terms of layout and design - whether customization will follow or not remains to be seen (aside note: I want my beta key now).

I'll definitely be revisiting the topic of interfaces when I finally manage to weasel my way into Aion. I might even have to dig up some old footage/screenshots of older games to really make a broad analysis of the differences. After all, my ultimate passion will always be semantics and semiotics. MMO's are virtual worlds where every pixel is created for a reason. Every symbol and sign communicates buckets of knowledge to those who can interpret it, making each gamer into an unknowing semiotician. My last treatise on the topic ran a whopping 64 pages (hey, there were pictures too) and was for a research methods course for my master's degree. Hopefully I'll be able to speak more succinctly on the topic when speaking for an initiated audience (nothing like having to explain what a "mana bar" is to a bunch of professors...).

Finally, Finally....

Via Joystiq - At long last - Starcraft 2 beta.........

/swoon!

I'm so there...I just hope I get a response. I signed up for Aion testing almost a year ago and have yet to hear anything back yet. I haven't been in any beta testing since Lineage II's Taiwanese beta (quite illegally) and WoW's later stages of beta.

I can't wait for a shiny new time-sink. Protoss for LIFE!