It’s more then 6 months since European and North American launch of Aion. I belive it’s best time to take a second look at Aion and see what it became.

Most of us had a hope that Aion gonna be spritual successor of Lineage 2 with great PvP concept and grindless leveling. And looking at Aion from that perspective… it’s dissapointing. It’s because Aion is missing an intensive (open?) PvP. Of course in Aion we have a lot possibilities to get a fight – unfortunately only in theory. We have sieges, rifts and of course Abyss – the problem is that everyone of those is missing something.

  • Abyss is quite wast… and deadly empty place. It’s because it doesn’t offer almost anything to characters with level cap reached. You can meet there only people which have their 50level still ahead, or those who gank the first metioned ones.
  • Rifts are really great feature – so what’s wrong with it? The same thing as with Abyss – it’s hard to find any players there. The only chance to get 100% sure PvP is to attack some enemy city, which of course limit PvP possibilities. Alos you will need quite a few team mates to make fight more fair, coz as soon as you show up near guards enemies will appear in great numbers in no-time.
    Of course you can try to find enemies in the field but it’s very flustrating when you find out that in last 2 hours you have had meet ony 1-2-3 persons.
  • But the thing which dissapoint the most is… siege mechanic. Siege in Aion is simply zerg fight, without any sophisticated tactics it’s pure mass against larger mass. It had to be one of main features of Aion but in the end it became a nail into the coffin. Sure sieges are few times a day, they are random and it’s great – really, but also they are open to anyone without any restictions… which means zerg. The most funny thing about sieges is it was looking really great at the paper/concept but in practice it’s simply not working at all.

Well it’s not as bad as it seems, you just need to get used to this – to controll large amount of people, less tactical and more global wise. Rifts are still great and excting expierience, but if you want guarantie PvP you need to force attack a city. There also is a Dreadgion which shows true PvPvE mechanic – loved for ones and hated by rest. Definityvly PvP in Aion is different then in other mmorpgs.

By reading the part above you can get feeling that Aion in general is a fail, which is finally not true. Even if it have some flaws it’s really addicting mmorpg which offer a lot of good fun.

There is quite a few aspects that are done without a flaw:

  • Grind: It’s really huge step forward in term of grindless gameplay. Generally speaking I would say there is no grind (xp wise) at all. In my opinion sometimes even you level little bit to fast. Specially when you completing all quests you can find out that you where is some specific instances only once or maybe two, because your progress was so fast and there is no point to visit them again. Thats why i’m quite suprised when i hear opinions acording to which Aion is grind fest and only hard work make you level. I cannot agree with such opinion – especially when most XP you earn simply by doing quests – there is no time for grind. Of course if you really want you can chose hard way… but the question is “in order to what”? Sorry to say, but some people are simply spoiled… for those only after successfull creation of avatar you should get mex level with epic grear. Of course there is a grind for gear afer reaching level cap. But it’s whole another story, and it’s nothing different then we know from any other mmo out there.
  • About quests I mentioned a little bit above. They are divided into 2 categories (3 in fact, but the 3rd one “work orders” is only to level crafting skills). First – campagain quests, which push forward the story and second – normal quests from random NPCs. Both for sure are not the new definition of quests (with few exceptions) but i have to admit they are really nicely written and done. It’s good to acomplish them not only for large amounts of XP and items as rewards but also to get know the story behind them and to learn little bit about world we are playing in.
  • Another thing is flying and gliding, which are 2 main features of Aion – both are done simply great. Even if free unlimited flying is available only in few areas and of course in abyss, then gliding is available everywhere. Both mechanics makeing PvP in Aion a very unique expierience. The abilities they gives to players make the tactics totally different from what we get used to.

Sumarizing. If in Aion you where looking spiritual successor of Lineage 2 then this tile can dissapoint you. Luckily for all the others it’s quite good and solid mmo with rich and interesting world as well as fun PvP. Not without the flaws but exciting for sure. What’s more important incoming updates Aion Patch 1.9 and 2.0 hope to bring new content as well as fix some existing, which mean only one thing – it will be even better.