Hello Google, I’m Human!

I am sick and tired of Google search making me do captchas to prove I am human.

How is Google determining when to put these barriers in front of humans trying to use their search engines?

I have had terms like “nvidia driver” , “best cooler for e8400″ picked up my the anti-droid police in the last few minutes. Hell, even “captcha” got caught. How are those not human things to ask a search engine?

Hello Google. For the last time, I am human. You’ll really be sorry if you keep putting barriers before your users. Perhaps Microsoft Bing will recognize my humanity.

Age of Conan: Tier 1 Raiding with Screenshots

I decided to write this after so long because I noticed quite a lot of people reading my Age of Conan: End Game post, which was nearly a year ago and no longer a fair representation of the game as it is now. I renamed it more aptly to Age of Conan: Level 60 to 80, and decided to write about end game raiding in this and subsequent new posts. Age of Conan end game raiding starts with four Tier 1 raid bosses in three dungeons. All of the Tier 1 raid dungeons are in Cimmeria.

KYLIKKI’S CRYPT
This is probably the first and easiest raid dungeon in the game Kylikki’s Crypt is in the level 40 to 50 zone Field of the Dead. As the name suggests, it is a crypt, so the environment is man-made. Kylikki is a Hyperborean witch, and she controls the Hyperboreans in Field of the Dead and through them orders the Vanir around. The trash groups in Kylikki’s crypt are perhaps the hardest trash groups in all of Age of Conan raiding, until you are fairly deep into Tier 2 raiding. They consist of groups of five mobs.

White Hand Guards - There are two White Hand Guards in each group who are minions and can be killed by minion instant kill spells that most of the DPS classes have.

White Hand Spellguard - Spellguards use cold damage spells, and is probably the most dangerous of the mobs. They do an AoE attack that can kill players in a few seconds, they usually do two of these AoE in succession, so you have to watch out for them and sprint out of range, stay out for 10-15 seconds before coming in to kill them.

White Hand Priests - These guys can hit pretty hard with their Smite attack, but they are pretty standard mobs that can be tanked and spanked. They also run and heal the other mobs when their health is low, but their heals are negligible.

Gurnakhi Honorguard - These are the warriors of the group. The biggest problem with them is that they constantly reset their aggro, so it is impossible to tank or kite them when other players are around. They also seem to rate healers very high on their hate list.

Early raiders had massive problems with these trash mobs. The players with minion instant kills are not taking down the Guards, the players are not paying attention and die in droves to the Spellguards, or the Honorguard is smashing all the healers to bits. There are a few ways to approach these groups, and they largely involve kiting either the Spellguard or the Honorguard around while killing off the other. We have a Guardian tank the Spellguard to one side while the raid attacks the Priest. The Honourguard will be smacking on players, but if the group is bunched up tight, his aggro will keep switching and he will not actually kill anyone. The Guardian tanking the Spellguard would call out when the Spellguard has finished his second AoE, and the whole raid will descend on the Spellguard, bringing the half dead Priest in with them. The Spellguard might AoE again, so the raid has to be alert, move out and back in. Drop the Spellguard, drop the Priest, and bunch up on the Honorguard and drop it. Clear about 6-7 groups of trash and you get to the first boss, the Champion of the Honorguard.

Champion of the Honorguard – This first boss is the easiest of the Tier 1 bosses. He is basically a tank and spank with a few exceptions. His most dangerous ability is Curse of Gwahlur, when he has that buff up, the whole raid must stop DPS, it is important not to use DoTs in this fight, and to kill off pets and idols and the like when the Curse is up. The buff lasts for 10 seconds, after which you can proceed to attacking him again. He also has a minor damage reflection  called Covenant of Pestilence, but this should not bother anyone who has a health pot running. At about 60% health, he starts to pulse an AoE attack every two seconds. This can hurt quite badly so everyone need to have pots running, and healers must be alert. Anyone dropping too fast should sprint out of range. He drops the Belts, Boots, Armbands and a Weapon. Another 6-7 groups of trash later, you get to Kylikki herself.

Kylikki – Kylikki herself is not hard to tank, however, she has some help during her fight. After the first 30 seconds or so, she spawns her two spectral wolves, called Kylikki’s Minions, but they are not minions in the techincal way and cannot be killed my minion instant kill spells. These wolves can be CCed and must be killed fast, they hit very hard. In another 10 seconds or so, she goes to one of the sides of her room and spawns 4 Spellguards who heals her. These are true minions and can be killed instantly. Necromancers always get a spot in a Kylikki raid if they have Shatter, the AoE minion kill spell. Kylikki will keep respawning wolves and Spellguards so the fight is all about tanking her, killing her minions and going back to DPSing her. It is not a hard fight but needs the group to be organised. Kylikki drops the Chestguards, Wristguards and Weapons.

YAHKMAR’S CAVE
Yahkmar is a giant slug in a incredibly huge ice cavern at the northern end of Eiglophian mountains. The raid dungeon is so large but has no trash mobs. The strategy to kill Yahkmar also does not require kiting it, so I have zero idea why it is given such large real estate. It is impressive nonetheless, and should have been easy to model and texture. Its a white and blue cave.

The fight has been buggy for at least the first 8 months of the game. It was either extremely easy to bug out the boss, and pretty much farm it 15 times an evening, or it was an impossible fight far exceeding the difficulty levels of a Tier 1 boss. I think FunCom has finally got the right balance of difficulty for this boss, and removed some of the exploitable issues. This is the fastest raid in Tier 1 because there are no trash, but no trash also mean no extra loot from the trash.

Yahkmar – Tanking Yahkmar itself is very easy, and a large part of fighting Yahkmar is to have the smallest possible tanking group on it, so that the rest of the raid can focus on the adds. I consider the adds the real boss split into small pieces and Yahkmar itself as the trash merged into one lump. We tank Yahkmar with a single decently geared Guardian and two healers, with a third occasionally dropping in to pop his big heal. You can have a Nightfall Necromancer and Assassins full time on the boss to speed up the fight. Another soldier supporting the tank group can be useful for bringing adds away from the tank group.

Another key to this fight is not to use fire damage on the boss. That usually relegates fire based classes like Conflagulation Demonologists and Heralds of Xotli to add duty. The boss stuns the whole raid if he receives any fire damage and that usually wipes the raid.

Wurmlings - Every 65 seconds, a group of 3 or 4 Wurmlings are spawned about 15m away from the boss. The Wurmlings hit really hard, and can overwelm a disorganised raid. Calling targets and grouping up to get the most benefits of buffs and heals help a lot. Good communication so that CCs can be rotated well will also ensure the raid lasts the distance. DPS classes that attract the Wurmling’s attention must resist the temptation of kiting them away from the group, as that prolongs the fight and can lead to a wipe. A decent raid should have 10-15 seconds of DPS time on the boss inbetween add spawns. Remember, no fire damage. A 10 min raid, in bang and out. Yahkmar drops Leggings, Gloves and Weapons. A quest from a hunter, Finelle for Yahkmar’s fur will yield an epic Bow or Crossbow.

THE DRAGON’S LAIR
The Dragon’s Lair is high on the mountains of Aztel’s Approach, you are led there by a series of quests from a Nemedian researcher Kurtz Mandros. He first gives you a quest called Trail to the Dragon’s Lair, where you have to find the entrance to the raid dungeon. He then gives you a quest called the Draconnus Hex, where you have to collect four inscriptions from within the raid dungeon. After which, he would give caster classes (all mages and priests), something called Vistrix’s Bane, more will be explained about this later. Kurtz then asks you to get Vistrix’s skull for a measly 15 silver.

There are two more quests involved with killing Vistrix. One is from King Conan himself, who would give you an epic Cape for killing Vistrix. Another is from Kalanthes and Cha in Kheshetta, for Vistrix’s tooth to make a charm for you to get into Black Ring Citadel, the Tier 2 raid dungeons. The dungeon is full of mixed groups of Chill Crawler trash. These monsters are snake like creatures with clawed arms.

Chill Crawler Mindrazers - These are the weakest of the mobs, and are in fact minions, so they can be killed by instant minion kills, and should be. They are able to stun and mind control players for a while, so get them down first. They can be CCed.

Chill Crawler Shadowbearers – These are not hard to kill and do not have any particular special attacks, usually just an annoyance. Just your average caster type raid mob. They are immuned to crowd control.

Chill Crawler Champions - The main problem with these guys is that they have am AoE fear, in fact two AoE fears, which they use back to back. Another problem with them is that they are rock hard, do tons of damage and take quite a bit of killing. A third problem is that they switch aggro very fast, similar to the Gurnahki Honorguard in Kylikki’s Crypt. Immuned to CCs as well.

Frozen Cadavers - These are frozen dead humans come back to life. They are easy to kill and can be CCed all the way.

Vistrix - Vistrix is an awesomely impressive dragon, with beautifully modelled, textured and quite good animation. Probably the most impressive boss in Age of Conan. There are a few mechanics to Vistrix, so getting them right makes all the difference. Every 45 seconds, Vistrix does a 25m radius stun. After which she would do a massive cone flame breath on a group of people who are stunned. When her health gets down to 75%, 50% and 25%, she would spawn a massive zerg of adds. Another thing that Vistrix does is to stack an armour debuff on the tanks called Vistrix Profanity. Tanks have to swap aggro so that their debuff can wear off.

The fight starts with the 2nd tank running in first to take the knockback that Vistrix does at the start of the fight. All through the fight, Vistrix will occasionally knockback a person every 30 seconds or so. This is usually not very disruptive, but the first knockback needs to be managed so the tanks have time to grab aggro, and the DPS can start earlier. Some raids like to only do white damage on the first DPS run so that the tanks build up maximum aggro.

As mentioned, Vistrix does a massive AoE stun every 45 seconds, so having someone call out the timer is essential. A Ranger can mark the 25m stun range. When the timer is called, the DPS group runs out behind the Ranger. The main tank group would then be stunned. At this point, a call is made for someone with the Vistrix’s Bane to sprint in and use it on the main tank group. The Vistrix’s Bane, the quest reward from Kurtz Mandros, acts to unstun players in a cone in front of the caster, and also removes a fire damage debuff. This allows the main tank group to survive the flame breath, and the DPS group can dash back into the fight until the next timer is called. At 75% health, everyone except the tanks should run out and await the zerg of Terrors of Tartaros, and Horrors of Tartaros, Chill Crawler type mobs.

Terrors of Tartaros - These are minions, they can be CCed and instant minion killed.

Horrors of Tartaros - These are regular raid mobs, I am not sure if they can be CCed.

It is good to have a list of Bane users and call out the next one. So the fight is a methodical one of the DPS group running in and out, and the Bane users running in, and everyone bar the tanks running out for the zerg. Not a hard fight, but it takes organisation and a raid that obeys instructions. Vistrix drops Helmets and Weapons.

So that is Tier 1 raiding. After getting Vistrix’s Tooth, the players get a few run around quests and are attuned for Black Ring Citadel (BRC), the Tier 2 raids.

Aion: Tower of Eternity Beta 5 with Screenshots

This Beta weekend saw a lot more people level to 25, so the PvP action went into full swing, both in the Abyss as well as in each other’s territory through the Rifts. While some legions (guilds) managed to get a lot of PvP done last beta, due to several members being quite busy, our legion only went into full swing this beta.

More about Rifting - An awesome way to waste time
Now that I  have done more Rifting, I can explain it a little better than last beta. Every so often, there would be an announcement that Rifts have opened in the worlds. The level 20-40 zones of Eltnen (Elysea) and Morheim (Asmodia) will be linked by an entrance rift and an exit rift. I assume that the corresponding level 30-50 zones also have such rifts. The rifts will appear in one of seven possible entrance and exit locations. Each entrance location corresponds to a specific exit location in the opponent’s zone. So rifting can be predictable, but still not easy to manage with seven possible locations.

When a rift opens, the sky will tear and have some sort of wormhole. This wormhole has a cone of aether that points to the ground. A rift entrance would appear at ground level. Rifts are not very visible from far, so knowing where to look for one helps a lot. You need to get up close to see them. Each entrance rift has a limited number of uses. I believe that they start at 50. You can mouse over the rift and it will tell you how many uses it has left.

Because of the wide range of levels in the zones, you very often ended up rifting to an area in the enemy zone with high level mobs that you need to avoid. These zones are empty now because the beta limits the level to 30. The point is to make it to the level 20ish areas and start killing the enemies trying to level there. A well organized rifting force can stay in the enemy zone for hours killing individuals. The lack of a global chat means that defenders have a harder time organizing a cohesive defence, even though they are likely to have a lot more people in the zone.

There is not a lot of Abyss Points to be had when rifting. The main reasons is to get some easy PvP done, and enjoy the suspense of being in the enemy zone surrounded and outnumbered, and seeing how far you can go, and how long you can survive. There is also the part about disrupting the leveling of the enemy players. This might be akin to why the US military wants to destroy Al Qaeda training camps, and why insurgents in Iraq bomb people queueing up to sign up for the security forces. Disrupting the enemy training means less trained enemies on the battlefield (The Abyss).

Bringing a portable resurrection point, a Kisk into the enemy zone helps the group stay in the zone for much longer. A Kisk can bought at the General Goods vendor and deployed where ever needed, 6 players can bind themselves to it. The Kisk cannot be moved after deployment, and can be destroyed. Players bounded to a kisk being attacked and destroyed will get an announcement.

More about the Abyss - Good grind spots attract PvP
As mentioned previous, a player gets to go into the Abyss after level 25. There are a handful of repeatable quests available at level 25 that are near the base camp of either side. These repeatable quests givers are of the same faction as the player, and will fight any enemy players that come near. Hence, these are reasonably safe grinding areas.

As you level up, the quest givers are further from the base camps, and some neutral quest givers will become available. As a result, the good grind spots start to get contested. This is a weird mix of PvP disrupting mindless grinding of repeatable quests, usually with a basic quest objective of killing X number of a mob, or picking up Y number of quest drops.

The number of quests available to level 25-50 players are getting revamped in the latest patch 1.5, which would supposedly add another 100 quests. This is most welcomed as grinding on the same mob can get boring. While mobs tend to be quite similar, they do have slight different skills.

The fun part about the Abyss PvP is that it is a flying zone. That means terrain in the Z axis makes a difference. There are a few areas where there are overhanging terrain features. These allow the enemies to group up above their enemies and strike hard at groups on the ground. Enemies can also fly up from the ledge of an “island” and attack unexpectedly. They purposefully made a short draw distance so that it is easier to catch people unawares, and also to reduce lag. A few seconds of flying and someone would be out of sight. So far, these features keep PvP fresh.

Instanced Dungeon – Will try it next beta
This beta weekend unlocked a level 28+ 6-man instanced dungeon, but my legion did not have enough people that got to level 28 for us to give it a shot, maybe next beta.

What I like about AION? - It is competent
AION works. The way it has designed its crafting, its economy, its gear, its classes, its factions, and its PvP look like they would all work, and work smoothly. That is much more to be said of many other MMORPG one year into launch.IT is a competent game, and it gives the right incentive to do every part of the game. You will find yourself quite out of pocket if you focused solely on PvP and neglected to grind and do your gathering and crafting.  It rewards people to PvP quite well, although it has no penalty for killing lower leveled enemies, but based on the storyline, it should not have one. It is up to powerful legions to take care of their own factions. With broken and imbalanced systems a major cause of complaints for most MMORPG, AION might buck the trend by actually delivering a solid system at launch.

Fears about AION – It could get boring real fast
One of the biggest fear for me about AION is that it could get boring real fast. It is not just the result of me playing quite full on over the past few beta weekends. The mobs are quite standard, the quests are extremely boring, and the elite zones are quite normal. Most boss fights are nothing but tank and spank. Age of Conan had this problem at launch but they eventually revamped a lot of the dungeons to be quite fun and exciting. Guild Wars and Age of Conan also make a point to write quests that are different and interesting. World of Warcraft’s newer raid boss fights are also very fun and  different from your usual tank and spank. There are no signs that NCSoft sees this as a problem.

You can say that the PvE elements are monotonous because this game is designed for PvP. But I also suspect that the PvP would get boring fast too. I suspect that the vast majority of the PvP would be whose zerg is bigger or zerg versus zerg PvP. Combat is nowhere near as engaging as melee combat in Age of Conan, and PvP is nowhere near as tactical and skill-based as in Guild Wars.

Another major issue is lag. On the beta servers, lag is quite a problem. Skills feel very spongy to activate, and none more stark as the heals. Someone described it to be like “healing underwater”. I hope the lag gets resolved in the live servers or it might be nigh unplayable. If you cannot rely on your healer, what else can you do?

The third fear is probably botting, hacking, farming and gold sellers. I seriously doubt Game Guard will keep any these out. The fact that the game is live in Korea and China means that the organisations have more understanding of the game, and have got a lot of practise cracking it. It is unfortunate that in this day and age, games are still using the Client-Server model. NCSoft distributes Guild Wars that saw and solved this problem 4 years ago.

A wormhole in the sky, with its aetheric cone pointing to the ground.

I always forget to take a screenshot of a rift. I had to steal this from someone else. This guy is an Asmodian Assassin by the looks of things.

I also stole this screenshot of an Elyos Templar and his legion deep inside Morheim, encountering a sea of red names.

A level 40 boss that wanders around the level 28 questing area. He looks like a meanie.

I quite like some of the monster designs, and many of their animations. The player and monster animations are top notch in this game.

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.

Flu-like Symptoms Part 2

With two schools announcing closure for a week, the entire 1st year cohort of Republic Polytechnic also staying home, and who knows what the NS guys at Maju camp are doing (I seriously doubt its home quarantine). We need to look at this stage of our fight against H1N1.

Already the disconnect between people who are panicking about H1N1, and people who are blase about it is showing. Someone complained on the Straits Times Forums today that her dad, who went to Maju Camp for IPPT test, and had flu-like symptoms spent $85 going to Tan Tock Seng Hospital and did not get a H1N1 test. Something is seriously wrong with the implementation of the policies.

How about the policies of shutting schools? For the abovementioned schools that are shut for a week, what happens when you have yet another case after this week? Are they going to shut for the whole influenza season? Are parents bringing the virus back home from their workplace? Several companies may already be affected, are we prepared to shut down whole businesses for weeks on end?

The question is this, are our actions to mitigate the effect of H1N1 causing more disruption to our way of life than if we let the illness run its course? Keeping in mind that once a person contracts H1N1, she would be immuned for life and the fact that 1 million Americans have contracted the virus but only 65 has died. Of course, like all medical statistics, it does not matter if the success rate is 99%, if I am to be the 1%. Considering the U.S. relative size and comparatively worse health care system, we stand in better stead to help those who contract the virus recover.

Of course, I would not suggest H1N1 parties, but perhaps keeping our heads level and treating this virus like it is: a treatable influenza virus that kills not any more than your seasonal flu. Let it run its course, let the ill take medical leave and get treatment and not panic about it. Of course, this is not considering the spectre of the virus mutating. Either way, we are wholly unprepared for the virus turning into a deadly strain. How many of us have 3 months worth of food and water stockpiled so we can stay home and avoid all contact for an entire influenza season?

Compared to the deadly H5N1 days, due to the non-deadly nature of the current virus, we are also not having as severe a witch hunt against the people whose irresponsible behaviour has caused infections.

Unfortunately, the reputation of being a virus infected country treats every country differently. While America has the most cases of H1N1 at 1 million, people are more likely to avoid Mexico than the U.S. Largely as an economic necessity. So why is this economic necessity applied to our own society? We are still sending people to Melbourne, the source to many of our H1N1 cases. There is no right way to handle this situation, but besides the saving of lives, maintaining our normal way of life is one of the main reasons why we want to contain viruses in the first place, so if the containment/mitigation effort is causing the disruptions, should it be reviewed? Or have we gone in too deep to backpedal without risking the reputation of the WHO and our MoH?

Fear the Shuffle

I never liked skipping tracks, I never liked shuffling my music. I listen to music one album at a time from start to finish, sometimes the whole discography of a band or artiste in chronological sequence. Old school? Very much so.

I have recently started shuffling some of my music, and have found that it can be quite disturbing at times. I once had a shuffle in Windows Media Player that was nothing but radio friendly hits, I cannot help but wonder if there is a software in there picking out top hits and playing them for some music publisher’s agenda. Not to be trusted.

Then I started shuffling on my MP3 player, I started getting paranoid as well. Knowing a teeny bit about technology, I know that nothing electronic is truly random, they are usually random enough insofar that a human is concerned. But the randomness usually works on some sort of an algorithm. Why are there days when the Gods of Shuffle decide to bestow nothing but depressing music into my playlist? Sure, it was because I had them in my MP3 player, but still the juxtapositioning of songs can be quite mysterious. I began to notice some songs being thrown into the mix more frequently than others. Also two songs by the same band being played in sequence, how in all probability does that happen?

Then there was that occasion a few days ago, when a friend asked if I would like to go see Aimee Mann. I am quite sure I would, but have not confirmed it yet. The bizarre thing was, not one but two Aimee Mann tracks was in my shuffle on the way home from work that day. That kind of sealed the deal for me.

Perhaps I am over thinking this. Surely a cheap MP3 is not possessed by some God of Shuffling that dictates what I listen to. Surely its just pure coincedence…or is it?

*cue Fear of the Dark by Iron Maiden