Aion

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by Aethyna Nov 20, 2014 | 2 Votes | 2 Played | 0 Reviews

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9.5 rate

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RPG , MMO

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Download , Mounts , Player vs Player (PvP) , Angels , Demons , Fantasy Setting , Dungeon/ Instance , Magical Horses

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NCSoft , Gameforge Aion has the archetype of a basic MMORPG. It consists of a rivalry between 2 races that are polar opposites of each other and each race offers a range of classes, such as warrior, mage and priest.Aion also offers questing, professions, trading, competitive PvP and raiding, legions (a.k.a. guilds), personal vendors and adorable non-combat pets. Play Now Similar Games Played Post a Review

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Community Graphics/Sound Conclusion

Summary

Aion has the archetype of a basic MMORPG. It consists of a rivalry between 2 races that are polar opposites of each other and each race offers a range of classes, such as warrior, mage and priest.Aion also offers questing, professions, trading, competitive PvP and raiding, legions (a.k.a. guilds), personal vendors and adorable non-combat pets. Previously being a subscription-based game, its transition into the free-to-play model has earned Aion plenty of new players every day. However, what sets Aion apart from the rest is its riveting lore and the best way to experience the story is to play Aion yourself! Sign up today!

Plotline

The lore behind Aion is rich, diverse and engaging, but most interestingly, the story differs depending on which race, or faction if you will, that you choose – Elyos or Asmodians. Elyos thought Asmodians as barbaric mutants with the manes on their backs and pointed claws while Asmodians thought Elyos as pretty boys or girls who are weak and is a disgrace to the ancient Atreians.

Elyos and Asmodians used to be of the same race. However, the shattering of Atreia into two parts - the lush beautiful Elysea and the harsh wilderness Asmodae - separated them. Someone needed to take the blame and in the midst of pointing fingers, portals into the Abyss appear, allowing both sides access to each other. Violent struggles ensued and the hatred that is now embedded deep into each Asmodian and Elyo persist until today.

As you journey through your chosen world of Asmodae or Elysea, you will unravel more clues and pieces of lore. However, ultimately, it is up to you to decide who is it to blame and to find out what has actually caused the shattering of the world?

Gameplay

Once you’ve signed up, you will need to choose between joining the elegant Elyos and fearsome Asmodians. As Aion will inform you, you can only choose this once. After joining, for example, the Elyos, there is no turning back. You can no longer join the Asmodians for any of your characters. If you fancy trying out both races, you will need to have another account to do so. Furthermore, different race will place you in different starting zones (right up to level 50). For Elyos, players will start in Poeta, Elysea while Asmodians will start in Ishalgen, Asmodae.

Next, you will need to select a class. There are a total of 6 classes in Aion, namely warrior, scout, mage, priest, technist and muse, each having 2 specialization paths (except muse – muse only has 1 specialization). Each class have their own signature weapon and skills, therefore if you prefer attacking from afar, then you should choose a class that have ranged attacks, such as scout, technist, muse or mage. Some classes are pretty much self-sufficient enough to allow for solo-levelling, but there are several classes such as priest and muse, that will require a group to level since they have weak attack skills and low health, but have plenty of support skills. If you like to experience all of the classes available, you can! Aion generously allows you to create 8 characters per account – this means you can get all the 6 classes along with 2 extras!

After selecting a class, you can then customise your character to your heart’s content! There are plenty of pre-set faces that you can choose from. You can even choose the type of voice you would like your character to have!

Your character will awaken in the world of either Elysea or Asmodae once you’ve done your customisation. Aion Online provides a fast-track server for most questing and levelling zones. This means that you will be able to interact with fellow Asmodians or Elyos from different servers while questing! Since there are even more players doing the same quests, finding an alliance (meaning ‘group’ or ‘party’) to do quests with is definitely easier.

Quests in Aion can be separated into various types, namely campaign quests, whereby the lore of Aion will be uncovered as you progress; and standard quests, which involve side missions to help out the inhabitants of your world. Most of these quests involve the usual gather X number of items, kill x number of monsters or deliver an item to another character – there are no escort quests in this game. Each quest completed will shower you generously with kinah (in-game money), experience points and occasionally, equipments. There are also profession quests, called work orders that will reward you with crafting materials.

After reaching level 9, a quest named ‘Ascension’ will be provided. This is the quest that will allow you to specialise your character class and ascend your character from mere human to a daeva! As aforementioned, each class have 2 divergent specialisations with muse having only one. For instance, technists can choose to either become a gunslinger, a duel-guns-wielding marksman or an aethertech, a master of machines and robots (you get to ride in a robot suit… just like Iron Man!). Mages, on the other hand, can choose to become sorcerers and deal direct magical attacks or become spiritmasters and have the power to control powerful elemental beings! As usual, once you choose a specialisation, you will have to stick with it to the end, so choose wisely!

Aion’s combat system is very similar to other MMORPGs, whereby your character will have a list of skills that you can use. However, Aion has some skills that are called chain skills. These skills, when used, can be used repeatedly, producing a more powerful chain effect.

PvE-wise, Aion offers both solo and group instances for players at level 18 and above. These instances vary in terms of the duration required to clear them and may require some strategic planning (do read up on how to tackle the boss fights). If you and your team emerge triumph, you stand a chance to win some superior or heroic loot, along with a nice chunk of experience points!

Furthermore, PvP in Aion mainly takes place in the vast Abyss, the middle zone in between the worlds of Elysea and Asmodae. Here, it’s each man for himself as players from their respective race strive to cull the opposing race to earn Abyss Points (AP) and improve their Abyss Ranking.

One of the most frustrating things in Aion is the lack of mounts. Mounts are not available for players to purchase at least until level 30 and they are very expensive for the average player. In fact, even higher level players can be hard-pressed get a mount, unless of course, you have real money to spend. However, Aion tries to compensate by allowing your character the ability to sprout angelic wings and fly in certain areas on the map. You are a daeva or an ascended after all! The catch here is that each flying sessions are limited by the flight time that you have available. Once the flight time is used up and you’re still in mid-air, you will fall spiralling to the ground. Still, it’s an amazing feeling to be able to fly.

Besides mounts and flying, there are several other ways you can travel in Aion. There are flight teleporters, who can take players to different locations in the same zone on the back of a magnificent and translucent flying phoenix, as well as a normal teleporter, who allows players to teleport between major cities in different zones, for a price. You can also pay a small fee to bind yourself to a bind point. You can use obelisks that are present in most towns to travel between locations on the map for a slightly lower price than flight teleporters, but every time you use it, it will trigger a cooldown. Obelisks are also important for when you die while you’re out in the world. You will be respawned at your bind point.

Deaths are taken very seriously in Aion. This is because after a player reach level 5, each death will cost 1% permanent loss of current experience point and an additional 2% recoverable experience loss. The recoverable experience points can be regained by approaching a soul healer. However, deaths due to falls or other special conditions or accidents, players will be immediately revived at their obelisks with no penalty.

Profession is a very intricate thing in Aion, especially once you’ve ascended and become a daeva. Every player starts off with having only 1 gathering profession, simply called as ‘collecting’. However, once ascended, ‘collecting’ will split to become ‘essence tapping’ and ‘morph substance’. Essence tapping generally refers to collecting items from nodes, but, as opposed to mere collecting, it also allows players to collect aether from burning vortexes. Aethers can then be morphed via the morph substance skill into crafting materials, such as herbs or metal ores.

Aion offers 7 types of professions, namely construction that crafts furniture for player-owned houses; handicraft, which allows the crafting of staves, bows and accessories; tailoring (cloth and leather armour); cooking, which produces food buffs; armoursmithing (chain and plate armour); weaponsmithing (this profession is self-explanatory), and alchemy, for all your potion and scroll needs. Each character is allowed to learn all of the professions, but is only allowed to level 1 profession up to expert level and 1 more profession up to master level. However, with the 8 characters that you can create per account, players, who enjoy professions, can level every one of them to master level on separate characters. Do note that the levelling rate for professions is very low (less than 1:1) and will take a very long time as well as a lot of materials. Not to mention, each crafting process have a chance of failure. Failed crafts will not produce any goods, but will still award you skill points. Higher level designs will have increasingly high chance for failing.

In terms of trading, Aion offers players an auction house that is mediated by a broker. Each item listed will be charged a registration fee depending on the item level and the item will be listed for a fixed duration of 8 days. However, this method of trading can be slow and rigid, hence Aion also allow players to have the option of opening up their private vendors. You just need to set an interesting name for your vendor and start selling! If you don’t like either method, there’s still the trade channel that you can use to your advantage. Not many people use the channel now though.

For a game as massive as Aion, the features mentioned cover just the very basics of Aion. There are plenty of other features in Aion that you can experience at your leisure in Aion, such as pets and housing (for higher level players)!

Community

Aion has one of the largest MMORPG communities, particularly in the west, placing it alongside other popular MMORPGs like Tera and Archeage. This community of players are separated into 4 highly populated servers, but are brought together in the fast-track server. It’s pretty fun to meet new people from other servers in addition to those of your own.

The community are generally friendly to any new players and this is most pronounced in the legions. There are legions that specialise in taking newbies under their wing and teach them the basics in Aion. With such legions, new players can easily ease into Aion smoothly.

Moreover, if you need any help with anything, there are plenty of experienced Aion players at the forums or in the chat channels in-game. There is also a class channel that you can use to ask about anything related to your class.

Graphics/Sound

Besides the storyline, Aion is famous for its astonishing sceneries and the amazing huge beasts that inhabit its worlds. Seeing a giant, stingray-like creature flying across the sky in slow deliberate movements for the first time can be quite breathtaking.

Aion also earn itself some extra points for providing different voice acting for your character. Since you can create some really weird-looking characters in this game, it seems suitable to offer voices that range from youthful to callous, and to tough. The music provided in Aion is very pleasant to listen to while levelling. There are a couple of soundtracks in Aion that definitely wins Aion further points as the music are so chillingly beautiful. The most notable music would be Sanctum’s music in the Lyceum, named Daeva’s Oratorio. Sanctum is a major city of the Elyos, so Asmodians, unfortunately, will not have access to the area.

Conclusion

Aion is certainly a MMORPG worth playing. It is popular for many reasons, including its amazing graphics, the immersive lore about the two races and the world and the variety of classes available. Travelling may be a bit tough and professions may be hard to level due to the low levelling rate as well as having a chance of failing, all of these challenging parts of Aion are balanced out by having a fast-track server that encourages players to co-operate and by the many methods to trade for the materials that you need. Aion is also completely free-to-play. Oh, and nothing can beat the experience and the feeling of gliding across the sky!