Aion: Tower of Eternity Beta 4 with Screenshots

Immersion – Some nice details and features
One of the interesting things I forgot to cover in the previous article is the level of immersion in the game. While this game is basically based on high fantasy, with its ornate cities and over-elaborate impractical armour and weapon designs, it still does attempt to keep the game immersive to a certain extent.

All NPC are placed in associated environment. Warehouse and Trade Brokers are behind desks and counters, surrounded by many crates and boxes. Merchants are in stores with merchandise. All these are nice touches.

All NPC will fight the enemy in the Abyss, even the quest givers. The downside is that they can actually be kited quite far away, although they smash through players quite quickly. You can be quite safe talking to quest givers in the Abyss.

One of the funny things about AION is how, when left to their own devices, they would perform some emotes. If it is raining, the Elyos toons take out a fern leaf to use as an umbrella. They fan the armpits in the desert, and yawn in boredom in the city. Emotes tends to be a little over the top, but it is high fantasy, after all.

Leveling and Classes – Looks like a little grinding in the horizon
Levels 1 to 20 will seem easy mode once you get into the higher levels. It took me one weekend to get from levels 1 to 20, and another extended weekend to get from level 20 to 25. I would imagine that all panned out, this game would take longer to level to max level than Pre-BC World of Warcraft and Age of Conan. I estimate 3 to 4 months of regular play several hours a day. Nowhere near as bad as many Korean MMORPG though.

There were ample quests from level 20-23, but the quests start to dry up before 25. I had to grind mobs for half of my level 23, and three quarters of my level 24. Grinding mobs is about downtime, so pairing up helps speed up the process, especially if one of the pair is a healer. I was playing my Chanter and could solo a level 26 mob at level 24 within 30-40 seconds, have no downtime, and move on to the next. Selecting mobs with lower armour ratings help a lot. Rumour has it that the best leveling duo is a Ranger and a Chanter, only time will tell.

The best PvE soloing classes would be the Spiritmaster and Chanter, from what I can see. The Spiritmaster can tank with their pet, while DoTing up the mobs. The Chanter can Parry and HoT tank normal mobs. What I like about the Chanter is that it is very cheap to maintain. I hardly use potions, unlike all other classes, which need to replenish their HP or MP frequently.

Stigma Stones – A missed opportunity
I read somewhere that the initial Stigma system was not intended to have class restrictions, it led to many OP possibilities which led to it being a dumbed down mechanic and a shadow of a typical Talent/Feat system. At level 25, I have two Stigma Stone slots. Each Stigma Stone gives you a skill, so you can marginally tweak your class by which of the skills you choose, the possibilities would be so much better if you had access to the Stigma Stones of other classes, but alas, they cannot balance it. A missed opportunity to have a headline feature for the game, like Guild Wars’ Primary and Secondary Profession system.

Together with weapon and armour choices, the manastones and Stigma Stones represent small differences between one player and the next of the same class. It can be dramatic if you stack most or all of the manastones of a same type. A Cleric with mostly +HP manastones is a lot harder but loses a lot of damage to one that stacks +Magic Boost.

Rifts – Awesome fun, but where is our cartographer?
One of the most interesting part of getting into the main level 20+ zones, Eltnen(Elyos) and Morheim(Asmodian), is that Rifts will open between the two zones. A hole appears in the sky with a conical beam that points towards the ground. If you go to where the beam is pointing, you will find a portal to travel between the two lands. Each rift is only one way, both entrance and exit rifts open at the same time, but in different places. Each rift has a fixed number of uses, and only allows a limited number of people through before they close. The problem is that it is hard to pinpoint where the beam is pointing towards. After a while, there should be people keeping watch of the various possible points where rifts appear.

Organised groups can send a large hunting party across the Rift into enemy territory to get some great PvP fun. There are also quests that take you individually to the enemy zones, and Infiltration quests asking you to perform tasks in the enemy lands. They are all good fun and lets one faction get a glimpse of the environment on the other side. Having played on the Elyos side all this time, it was refreshing to check out the snow covered and lava spewing zones in Asmodae.

The Rifts show the difference between the organisation and the lack thereof. We suffered several brutal lashings from large Asmodian Legions that worked together and killed people very fast. Mass PvP in this game is all about Assisting your target caller, you can take out players in mere seconds, so a large organised group can roll through a haphazardly put together defence of PuGs like a hot knife through butter. This is one thing that annoyed me about being on the Elyos side. It seems that all the PvP kiddies have gone to Asmodae, and I hope I will not be stuck in Elysea with only crafting and PvE-centric players. The lack of a global chat might actually make being an Asmodian palatable as you can minimise contact with hormonally imbalanced PvP kiddies while benefiting from their fervor.

The Abyss - Not many people made it through
If you think of Elysea and Asmodae as planets, you can think of the Abyss as a asteroid belt that lies between the two planets. It is what it visually looks like. Have jumppacks instead of wings, and you can reskin AION into a sci-fi planet hopping game. You heard it here first.

The Abyss is an all flying zone, with speed boost portals floating around. There are three levels that are accessible with special portals. The Elyos and Asmodians each control one asteroid in the lower layer to start, everywhere else is controlled by the Balaur.

The Balaur are a race of demonic beings that were created to watch over the planet, but turned malevolent. The humans fought the Balaur together, and it was the Cataclysm, a moment in history that tore the human race into the Asmodians and the Elyos, that the Balaur destroyed the physical links between the two halves of the world. They now rule the Abyss between Asmodae and Elysea, while the two human factions blame each other for allowing the Balaur to tear the world apart.

Mobs litter all the asteroids, as are quest givers. Most of the mobs are either made of the stuff of the asteroids, rock monsters, or ghosts of dead Elyos and Asmodians. The rest of the mobs are different minions of varying level controlled by the Balaur. Mobs start at level 27, which means level 25 characters can start playing in the Abyss and level there. The main problem with this particular beta event was that people took so long to get to level 25 that there were not many people in the Abyss, although we did get some PvP done there.

Fortresses and Artifacts – PvPvE
The main point to the Abyss are the several Fortresses and Artifacts that dot the larger asteroids. While the Abyss is all flying, the Fortresses have a force field that kills flyers. This is a mechanic to force the raids onto the ground. The players have to besiege the Fortress and destroy the force fields on foot. Then make their way into the depths of the Fortress to kill the main bosses in there. They would then claim control of the Fortress. I assume the Fortresses would be open to attacks from Balaur and Asmodians from then on.

Each Fortress has a few Artifacts around it. They need to be claimed individually. Each Artifact can be activated to become some sort of weapon of mass destruction. I saw all these in cut scenes. Whether these mechanics are fun or prone to abuse will ultimately make or break this game, since it is the main highlights. If people do not enjoy themselves in the Abyss, there is not much that sets AION apart from other games.

Abyss Points and the Legion – Might be elitist but intriguing
On top of the regular experience points you get from killing monsters, and the regular 1-50 leveling system, there are also Abyss points and Abyss levels. Ordinarily, this would be seen as PvP Exp, but the interesting thing is that you get Abyss Points for killing mobs and doing quests in the Abyss.

They saw it fit to tag the Legion (Guild) progression to the Abyss Points. The Legion needs to earn Abyss Points and pay kinah (in-game currency) in order to add extra member slots, and to rise in ranks. This will lead to an even more extreme elitist behaviour for top guilds, and everyone would be forced to PvP or risk PvP in the Abyss in order to progress. Abyss Points can also be redeemed for gear.

This encourages PvP, but it might just mean lots of non-stop zerg PvP, not quite sure if that is my cup of tea. I prefer something structured that requires a bit of brainwork like Guild Wars Alliance Battles and Heroes’ Ascent. We’ll see how it pans out. Every player has a stake, which may weed out casual players, for good or for ill.

Screenshots

Here I am grinding my way to level 25. I look less noob now.

Here is an example of a mob that you can encounter in the Abyss. Besides Asmodians, the Abyss has mobs as well. From the elite Balaur and their minions, to monsters made from the shards of the Abyss to the ghosts of Asmodians and Elyos.

Here is how you travel from one level of the Abyss to another, through special portals.

The majority of the environment in the Abyss looks like some sort of hell. This is a scene straight out of a Ma Rong Cheng comic book. The armies of the Balaur control most of the Abyss.

More hellish environments and their inhabitants.

Its not all doom and gloom in the Abyss, a few places are quite pictureseque. Here is the Elyos home base with its giant peach tree. What’s up with North East Asians and peach trees?

This is taken from the cut scenes introducing us to the Abyss. Players have to wrestle control of fortresses from the Balaur, and we get siege machines to help us. This is the equivalent of a raid.

And that would be the end boss of the raid. I think its going to be a wipe.

Aion: Tower of Eternity Beta 3 with Screenshots

Introduction
It has been a week since the end of of Beta Weekend 3 for the upcoming English version of Aion: Tower of Eternity MMORPG. I have been too busy to put this article together. Aion has been running in South Korea for a year, and won Best MMORPG 2008 there. It has also been running for a few months in China. So this is not so much a game beta, but a localisation beta. WYS is pretty much WYG.

There is plenty of websites and blogs out there talking about Aion, so I will not elaborate. These are my first impressions. Beta Weekend 2 limited the character to level 10, which means they were still on the starter island, and could not fly. That is right, fly. If there was one thing unique about Aion, it is the fact that all player characters can fly after level 10. There is true Z-Axis range, as opposed to most games with no Z-Axis range like Age of Conan.

There are two factions: Elyos and Asmodians. Elyos dwell in the bright part of their unique planet, and Asmodians dwell in the dark part. They are originally of the same human race but a major disagreement caused them to split. The story of your character is extremely cliche, you were a hero but lost your memory, that is why you are heroic and noob at the same time. Your life quest is to regain your memory and your life. Duh!

I am not completely sold on Aion, I am personally not a big fan of the Anime look. But it is not quite as extreme as Final Fantasy, so I think I can bear with it. It is new content, and after a year and a half of waiting for Age of Conan to come up with more content, I will probably give Aion a spin while I wait for Guild Wars 2.

Character Creation – Awesome possibilities
Besides feathered wings and being able to fly, the first thing that struck me when I gave the Beta Weekend a spin was how extremely customizable the characters are. I have not seen, nor do I think there exists, another MMORPG with as diverse a possibility of base character looks as Aion. You can make your toon two feet tall if you wanted. You could make a toon whose head’s mass is about 50% of its body’s mass. Yes, ugly’s the limit. If you cannot deal with pretty boy anime looks, you can make your toon as ugly as your imagination allows. Almost everything on the face and body is tweakable. Absolutely stunning.

Classes – Standard fare
There are four archetypes and characters start as one of the four for the first 10 levels. Warrior, Scout, Mage and Priest. At level 9 or 10, there is a quest to select one of the specializations. I played a Chanter to level 19.

Warriors can specialize into Templars and Gladiators. Templars are the tank class. They also have party buffs and can use polearms or sword and shield. Gladiators are the DPS off-tanks. They can use two-handed swords or dual-wield weapons. Plate armour in this game looks unrealistic but gorgeous, as do the massive swords and polearms.

Scouts can specialize into Assassins and Rangers. Assassins are the melee DPS class. They can go stealth and do massive DPS with their dual-wield daggers. Rangers use bows and firearms, they can Crowd Control mobs and shoot them down. Scouts have trouble surviving in solo PvE, so if you are playing this game with friends, group up when you are leveling.

Mages can specialize into Sorcerors and Spiritmasters. Sorcerors are your typical magical range DPS class. They appear to have quite a bit of Crowd Control skills. Spiritmasters are pet-based DPS class. Their spirit pets can tank and do damage while they cast spells from range. I feel that the Spiritmaster is the best solo PvE leveling class. Their pet can tank one mob while they kill another.

Priests can specialize into Clerics and Chanters. Clerics are your main healers. Their ranged spells are better than their melee, and they can wear Chain Mail and use Mace and Shield or Staves. The Chanter is the utility class. They Buff, Debuff, do melee DPS and heal. Anecdotally, they are the 4th class you invite to a group after you get your Holy Trinity of Templar, Sorceror and Cleric. They have more synergy with physical classes.

Graphics - Not good enough in 2010
I cannot help but feel that the graphics is not worthy of a game coming out close to 2010. Sure it came out in 2008 in South Korea, but after seeing Age of Conan in all its glory, not just with DX10, but stretching the limits of DX9, the bar is raised for MMORPG graphics. They need to narrow the gap with the FPS games.

The environmental styling is a cross between World of Warcraft and Guild Wars. The mood is definitely lighter than Guild Wars, with a good sprinkling of elements that children and ladies would enjoy. I would say that the overall graphics quality is better than Guild Wars, significantly superior to World of Warcraft, but lack lustre when compared to Age of Conan DX9.

Some textures are of disappointingly low resolution. Foliage is cover is low and some monster polygon counts are very low. However, the sophistication of the monster increase with level. Environmental moods are quite good, as are skill and spell particle effects. Character animations are quite decent, although the female toons jump, well, like girls. Cutesy more than realistic.

Considering that Guild Wars are absolutely obsessed with having as little clipping in their models as possible, Aion surprises me with how much clipping the armour has. Can be extremely bad. I suspect that it is the drawback of having such a wide possibilities of toon sizes and shapes.

Leveling – Seems easy and enjoyable enough
Over the extended weekend, I manage to get to level 19 by playing on Friday night, much of Saturday and Sunday, and Monday night. This is out of a max level of 50, if I am not wrong. So leveling is not so bad. Vast majority of it can be done solo, although you would need to ninja around monsters if you want to avoid fighting every one of them. Quests are of the usual MMORPG type. Kill X this and pick up Y that. The good thing is that they give you quests to encourage you to level your gathering and crafting skills.

Towards level 17-20, there are quests and zones with elite monsters that require a group. I personally feel that their icon to depict elite mobs is not clear enough. A friend of mine leveled to 16 without dying once, but accidentally attacked an elite mob and died. The group quests are quite enjoyable with decent loot. It is also doable with PuGs, which is also a bonus.

Combat – Pretty standard fare
The key part of Aion combat is with the skill chains. You can buy and unlock skills that need to be triggered by another skill. So you attack with skill X, and the icon changes to skill Y, allowing you to use the chained Y skill. Some skills have two choices of skills that can chain from it. This chaining allow the skill bar to be cleaner. Like many MMORPG, queueing the right skills to minimize cooldown time is important. Nowhere near as engaging as Age of Conan’s melee combat, but you still cannot afford to just do auto-hits.

There are no Talent or Feat trees, so there are no “specs”. You buy the skills you want, which is pretty much all the skills, lower level skills will get obsolete, and you just chuck them from your skillbar. Personalization of playing style comes with your armour and weapon choice, as well as what manastones you put in your equipment.

PvP is factional, the Elyos and Asmodians can fight each other. I believe that a part of guild (aka Legion) progression is tied to PvPing, I believe individual progression is too, but to a lesser extent. Beta Weekend 4 will pit the Elyos against the Asmodians for the first time in English.

Customization - No two characters need look alike
If the base character look seems customizable, Aion is a doll dresser’s paradise. You can sacrifice a piece of armour to transfer its look onto another piece of armour. So no two characters need ever look alike. Armour can also be dyed like in Guild Wars, allowing for some stunning looks even at low levels.

The practical part of customizing is with manastones. They are magical gems with stats you can use to improve your armour and weapons. White basic gear have one manastone slots, Green gear have two manastone slots. Blue gear are bind on pickup.

Another unique part of Aion is the fact that classes may benefit from wearing lighter armour. Cloth armour gives more magical and mana stats. Leather armour gives more evasion stats. Chain armour gives more concentration stats and Plate armour has the highest physical defence stats. A Cleric may choose to wear Cloth armour for more mana, or Leather armour for more evade, for instance.

Aion does not have the awesomely customizable UI that Guild Wars does. They offer two choices of UI, one with the map below, and one with it on the top. I am not sure if they will allow third party UI to be used.

Crafting - Pretty standard with its own slant
I have not had time to dabble too much in this, but there are gathering nodes and materials that drop off monsters that can be used to craft all types of items, from potions, foods to armour and weapons. Recipes for making higher grade items also drop from monsters.

For greater immersion, crafting has to be done at a furnace, or stove or alchemy labortory in the main city instead of in the middle of the wilderness. The unfortunate part is that it means that you have an umbilical cord connecting you to the main city.

Travel - You have your own wings, but cannot use it half the time
The first thing I realised is that there are no mounts. The character’s wings are their mounts, and they cannot fly in certain zones. I believe that mounts can add colour to the game, especially one with a light hearted high fantasy style. It also makes traveling in large non-flying areas such as the main city Sanctum much easier.

Travel between the main city and outposts are through teleportation. A portal is opened and you zapped across. Travel within a region is through a spectral bird. The character is enveloped with a transluscent spectral bird, who fly across the terrain much like World of Warcraft.

Character flight is limited to 60 seconds for low level characters. Wing upgrades with increased duration can be found, bought or made. The annoying part is that much of the questing areas are non-flying zones, which means you have to leg it, and cannot avoid monsters.

Economy - It might just work
Everything costs money in Aion, every mail, every flight, every death, everything. And being a South Korean game, the denomination is large. Get used to spending millions of “kinah” at a go. Aion has the potential to be the only game, besides EVE, to have a real workable economy, simply because there are so much costs of living involved. This leads to cap on inflation, encourages saving, and keeps prices stable.

There are two ways characters can sell their stuff to other characters. One is through the Trade Broker, which will levy an unrefundable posting fee, and another is to set up your own little store. When you are at work or asleep, keep your character logged in and it will keep working, selling your trash loot. The major downside to this is that the main city of Sanctum is absolutely full of vendors, clogging up load times, and draw distances. I personally feel that they should have adopted seperate trade instances like the Free Market in MapleStory.

Conclusion – Improvement but not ground breaking
Aion has learned the lessons of all the games that have come before it. Lower graphics means lower system requirements means more potential players. It is an interesting mix of Eastern and Western aesthetics that do not clash too badly. It successfully gets the mood across, with lighter elements that is more inclusive.

It runs well and will not have the launch problems that most other MMORPG are inevitably plagued by. NCSoft has the experience and the resources to keep the game afloat, especially when its pioneering market is in South Korea itself. It walks some well trodden paths and hopefully flying combat is unique enough to carry it into the future. I cannot wait to experience flying raids.

It avoids free for all PvP like in Lineage and Age of Conan. Learnt the economic pitfalls of not having living costs from almost every other MMORPG. I enjoyed myself but was not in love.

Screenshots

Looks familiar? I am sure I saw these before in some other game.

Kind of a mix between World of Warcraft and Guild Wars styling.

Flight travel within regions is with these spectral birds.

Krall seem to be a common humanoid enemy faction.

Get ready for some cute NPCs. These are Shugo, mongoose-men with Turkish clothes.

The water is not half bad, nothing compared to Age of Conan DX10 water though.
Oh yeah, you can fly but you cannot swim

A flashback of your past as part of the main quest line.

Some monster attack animations are quite nice.

The Tao of Bejeweled

The Tao of Bejeweled

When the cosmos align in your favour you can reach peaks beyond your imagination, twice as good as your usual ability.

As you set new heights of achievement, you will feel burdened by ever harder targets to meet.

Even when it seems that you are fighting a losing battle, keep fighting and the divine will deliver you. Its gifts are far greater than what you can achieve alone.

Worry only about what is within your influence, any gifts from above are bonuses.

There will be times when it seems that you just busy reacting and making very few decisions. But those few decisions might spell the difference between victory and defeat.

When you find yourself with nowhere to turn to, a fresh new slate will be delivered to you.

Simple acts can move mountains, as log jams are cleared, the dam will be burst.

Every opportunity you take will be another opportunity lost.

Every mistake you make may just lead you to greater glory.

The second worse thing to do is to do nothing.

The worst thing to do is to do nothing because of indecision.

Economic Downturn What?

Interesting article in Media magazine that I thought I would share. It goes a little to describe some symptoms of our current strange economic crisis that seems to hit certain industries very hard but leave other industries benefiting.

Illegal Sex Drugs Kills, apparently.

Saw this horizontal half page two colour ad in the Straits Times last week. Scanned it but never had the time to put it up. I am quite sure this slipped under quite a few people’s radar, so here it is. There are so many interesting things to talk about this ad, I could write a paper about it. The fun never seems to end with this ad, every time I see it I find something new.

At a recent The Association of Accredited Advertising Agents (4As) award show, the panel of judges had a casual conversation between themselves and they talked about how the “Ginseng Gives You Power” ad in Geylang Ave 3 was the corniest ad they have ever seen, but at the same time, the best ad placement ever.The ad has been refined with another headline, it has lost its corniness somewhat, but still has pride of place in Geylang.