Monday, September 28, 2009

Blood in the Water

Most of my weekend gametime was spent playing Aion. Yes, I can now actually play! I have been pushing through the PvE content at a pretty good pace. Due to the smoothness of the engine, it actually isn't too painful. Although, I'm not sure I'll be able to do it a second time with an alt.

Sunday morning I reached rank 19 but had completed most of the quests in the zone. The final campaign quest required defeating a boss. I just didn't have a block of time big enough to get it done with a group. That left me with two options: grind it out or head to a level 20+ zone. I chose the latter.

There are two zones that have level 20 quests. Brusthonin is a PvE only zone and Morheim which has some rift based PvP. Morheim was the obvious choice for me. It turns out each side has a quest that takes them very close to the enemy starting point. The result is that there is PvP right next to the base.

It wasn't long before I had my first Aion PvP experience. One of my guildmate's (a Templar) engaged him and I hung back and healed. As this Elyos was alone, he did not have much of a chance. We won easily and I got my first Abyss points.



One nice touch about Aion PvP is that you cannot see the level of the opposing player. They all show ?? in their level circle. So you may want to choose who you attack more carefully, as they could be a higher level. I should mention that later on I also experienced my first PvP loss. It was my fault and I let a Ranger get to me while I was healing another player.

Much like LoTRO and WAR, I'm finding it tough to do PvE now that I have a taste of PvP. I spent the rest of my game time just hanging out and looking for Elyos. It would have been better spent getting to level 20, but not nearly as fun.