Aion Hands-on Impressions

PC

Blessed with a beta key, David took the chance to dive in to the world of Aion: The Tower of Eternity to see what all the fuss is about. With over 3.5 million subscribers already across Asia, Aion could possibly be World of Warcraft's strongest rival yet. Read on to see if it's worthy of your credit card details.

Aion is a tale of three rivaling factions, the Elyos, Asmodians, and an unplayable race known as the Balaur. The Elyos are a pretty people, blessed with sunlight and living in peace, whereas the Asmodians have not been so lucky, faced with hideous creatures every day, they have evolved claws on their hands and talons on their feet. The Baluar are an angelic race that has disobeyed the gods, and are pretty much the end-game enemies that you'll discover later on in the game.

For this weekend's beta test, we were asked to stress test the first ten levels. For this reason (we assume), the servers were reset and all characters were erased which meant we had to start over again. For a beta though, the servers are running fairly smooth. Unfortunately, living in Australia results in a bit of lag, but hopefully when the game launches here we'll see some oceanic servers.

Aion has four different classes to choose from at the start: Warrior, Scout, Mage and Priest. These classes then split off in to twos at level 10, and you get to choose which way you'd like to go. For example, Scouts split off in to Assassin and Ranger, while Mages split off in to Sorcerer and Spiritmaster. This means there are eight classes in the game, and they all have similarities to the eight basic classes of any MMO.

Questing is very similar to other MMO's in the first 10 levels of the game. You approach a NPC with a triangle over their head and read through their quest information and then set out on your journey. What we did notice is that for some of the trickier quests, the game cuts to a scene of the area you have to go to, whether it be a farm or a mine, it gives you a good idea of where to go for the quest.

Combat seems fairly intuitive with a few features that make it different to other MMOs on the market today. For starters, you can perform automated combos as you unlock the new moves. In the skills screen, you can check what skill leads to the next, and how much of a chance it has to perform a combo. This can be devastating at higher levels and is something we can't wait to actually do ourselves, instead of having to watch YouTube videos of it. There is also a clever feature where if you select an enemy and want to attack it but are too far away, your character will run towards the enemy until you're in range, and then begin to cast or attack. This means you don't have to measure out to make sure you're at the maximum range for a spell, and works really well for healing and casting classes.

We also got to experience a bit of gathering, which works on a luck scale as you're leveling it. There are two bars that gradually crawl along, and you can't change their progress in any way. If the top bar reaches the end first, you get the gathered item and usually level up in gathering. If the bottom bar reaches the end, it fails and you lose your chance of gathering the item. We hope this doesn't work the same way for professions that have you creating items with your own materials, as it would be quite frustrating to lose some high quality items for the sake of a luck-of-the-draw type system.

Every town you visit has an Obelisk in it which allows you to set your bind to it for a small fee. This means at any stage in the game, you can cast your Return spell to be relocated to the Obelisk of your choice. Also, if you die you are returned to the Obelisk as well. This is a bit annoying as it means you have to fight through wherever you were again to complete the quest, and you also have to wait a minute after respawning for your stats to be regained. The only way this can be avoided is if someone resurrects you, but the chances of this happening in the middle of nowhere while you're questing - particularly in a beta - are slim to none.

Fortunately if you forgot to change your Obelisk location, there are flight paths between most towns for a small fee. There is also a teleporter in some towns which allows you to teleport to key locations around the world, instead of having to sit on a bird for 15 minutes. This is a great feature that should be in more towns in the game and allow easy passage to areas with end-game content, as there's nothing worse than waiting for twenty people to fly halfway around the game to start a raid.

Aion: The Tower of Eternity is looking to be a worthy competitor in the MMO market, and we are eager to try out more in the game. Check back soon for more information on Aion, including a look at the flight aspects and PVP. Aion still has no confirmed release date for Australia but we are expecting it before Christmas, 2009.

Keep in mind that Aion is still in beta stages, so any bugs and glitches mentioned in this preview will most likely be ironed out in the final version. Check out the official website for more information on the game.