Newb impressions
I got curious and got Aion. I wanted to write out my impression, just for fun.
I have only gotten to level 7 in the couple of hours that I have played, but so far it seems like a weird combination of DAoC and Guild Wars. It's like they had a baby, gave it LSD, rolled it around in Warcraft, and dropped it in Everquest II.
The good:
It reminds me of DAoC. There are bind stones and healers. You have to pay the healer to overcome your res sickness and to regain your xp. Pay a LOT. There are similar merchants. The quests look and sound just like DAoC, and you interact with the NPCs in the same way. Some have the same old silly movements. It's different in that when you bind to a new location, you have to pay for it. You sit to heal more quickly. I think they have instituted good old BAF, which I have sorely missed. The combat chains are very familiar.
You can have your own "lemonade stand" to sell your goods. That's nifty, but unfortunatly does clutter up the landscape with people sitting around selling their stuff. There are those jerks that like to set up right on top of an NPC, so it is hard to find the NPC and utilize them. However, this gives you something for your character to do while you are afk.
The bad:
It reminds me of Guild Wars. The progression is vey linear, and I'm back on those same winding roads through every 'level'. The characters look/feel/sound like Guild Wars (outlandish clothes, squeaky voices), and the combat is fast and flashy. The animation is not as substantive as I would like. I may not be male, but I'd like a little more testosterone to actual combat.
The colors give me a headache. It's like someone ate WoW and vomited it back up all over my screen.
You have to switch channels to be with people you know, although this is the only 'instancing' that I have seen so far.
There are only 2 realms. I'm not sure how PvP (or PvPvE, as they are saying) will turn out. Will we care? Will it be fun?
There are login ques. There was a 3 hour wait when I started yesterday evening. And, yes, I did wait 3 hours. I was around when I finally got to the character screen. Some unfortunate souls were afk, and if you are idle for a couple of minutes, it disconnects you from the character selection screen and you have to restart the 3 hour wait. That's a big negative. Many folks are outraged.
The UI is fairly ugly and uninspired. Peoples' names are huge and clutter the screen. I haven't found a way to resize, so I might just have them turned off.
The voices are squeaky and annoying. The women are dressed like teenage crack whores. I appreciated my somewhat sexy (yet relatively realistic) armor in DAoC. It made me feel more like a warrior and less like... a teenage crack whore.
I don't enjoy having copious back hair. It just bothers me. I KNOW this is where my wings will go. I don't care. Wings don't seem worth back hair when you're a woman.
The collection nodes for crafting are 'blinky' and hard to find.
There are gold spammers galore. No attempt will be made to stifle this, I fear.
The awesome:
They are balancing the servers at character creation.
There are a few really well done, short, and gorgeous cut scenes. (Unlike in Age of Conan, where every other quest led you into a mini movie, and boy did that get old).
There's a great tutorial with video, that you can opt out of if you like.
The mini map can be set to rotate or have fixed north. This is important to people with shaky map skills like myself. There is built in radar on the mini map, which I am not sure of how I feel about this yet. It shows mobs in white, and aggressive mobs in red, plus the NPC's and stuff.
Default 'auto approach' can be turned off! It's cool that they have this feature (target a mob and you run up and start whacking it), but I had to turn it off, because I tab target on occasion and that can get me into trouble.
The crafting looks like it may be important to the economy. I haven't gotten into that aspect yet.
So, please correct me if I am wrong, as I only have 2 hours under my belt. I wasn't in beta. I just picked up this game and rolled with it.
Enjoy!
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