If you have been reading my recent articles about Aion, it should be no surprise that I have canceled my subscription. Since well before launch I have been cynical towards Aion, but the game at least deserved a try. Much to my surprise it was not as bad as I thought. In the end though, it just wasn't the game for me.
Here now are my thoughts about Aion, in bullet form.
- + Performance. Aion ran very smooth in normal gameplay.
- - Art Style. I'm not a fan of the anime influenced style.
- + Combat. The actual combat was very smooth and felt great. The animations were top notch.
- - Crafting. Way too much of a grind. Work orders were very boring. Many of the decent items required a crit of a previous item. This made materials very expensive.
- - PvE. The cut scenes were nice, but this is the same PvE we've been playing for years.
- + Rifts. I think rifts were a nice idea. They spiced up the PvE a bit and invading the other side was fun. However, it was an infrequent source of PvP.
- - Abyss. The Abyss sounded interesting on paper, but in reality it was one big gank fest. Allowing ranks 25 through 50 to fight in the same space, without a bolster, just was not fun.
- - Leveling. It's a long way to the top if you want to PvP. I am a big fan of PvP leveling and Aion just does support that style of gameplay.
- - Bots. Aion is crawling with bots. I shouldn't have to fight bots over spawns to get a quest done. It even had me thinking that maybe I was the one in the wrong by not botting.
- - Gold Spam. While they have fixed the issue somewhat, it still left me with a bad impression. In all my years I had never seen so much of it. The channels were scrolling with ads.
- + Guild. There are quite a few CoW's who play Aion and I will miss grouping with them.
- - Leveling Part 2. I am a casual player, and I am just not able to keep with with the folks I group with. Playing the game mostly solo is not very fun.
Aion
