In the MMORPG genre today, two main schools are clearly distinguished: Western (European-American) and Korean. The first is distinguished by respect for subscribers and attempts to make the game not very demanding of time spent online (most of these attempts have not been very successful so far), they rely on quests and interesting, varied gameplay. Games from Korea are usually more severe: numerous quests are replaced by grinding (many hours of exterminating monsters to gain experience, money and things), reaching the maximum level requires a lot of time, and death takes away experience. The advantages are very well-thought-out PvP, beautiful graphics in an oriental style and many small, exotic options.
Aion
falls out of this classification. The game developers are originally from Korea, but from the very beginning they decided to combine in Aion all the best from both schools and make an orientally beautiful game with powerful PvP - and at the same time with many quests, a minimum of grinding, a low entry threshold, etc.
Did it work? The developers will have many more promises to deliver (and we'll definitely be returning to Aion in a few months), but if the first weeks of the game are anything to go by, the answer is "yes, it worked."
Upside down
| The developers' attention to detail is amazing - in locations where the temperature is below zero, characters naturally have steam coming out of their mouths! |
For thousands of years, people lived in the world of Atreus in prosperity and prosperity under the protection of the god Aion. In the center of the world stood the Tower of Eternity, ruled by the Balaur, powerful and majestic, but bloodthirsty and ferocious dragons. One day they became so proud that they started a war against the inhabitants of Atreia, and became so strong that even Aion could not resist them. People were unable to cope with the dragons, and Aion sent twelve Servants of Eternity - demigods endowed with extraordinary power - to earth. They erected an ethereal shield, which stopped the Balaur.
However, the Tower, which maintained balance in the world, was still in danger. To protect it, the Servants of Eternity took the most talented people as their students and trained them into warriors equal in strength to the Balaurs - this is how the Daevas appeared. Over time, they became the support of people in the endless battle. But even the intervention of the Servants and the appearance of the Daevas could not turn the tide of the war, which lasted a thousand years.
| Assembling resources suspended in the air is a profitable activity. The main thing is not to get carried away and watch the flight timer, otherwise you may fall. |
The Servants came up with a truce plan, which, however, did not receive full support, and during negotiations in the Tower of Eternity, one of the Balaur leaders was killed. A fierce battle broke out, the Tower collapsed, and Atreya split into two parts, which scattered Servants, Daevas and people. In the southern part of the world, the light side of the tower remained, and a nation of Elyos appeared there, very similar to angels. And the Asmodians settled in the north - they were less fortunate, since the Tower of Darkness was on their territory. As a result, the Asmodians mutated: they became dark-skinned, they had a tail, burning eyes, claws, leathery wings and many other accessories of darkness. Since then they began to say that the Elyos are the chosen people, and the Asmodians are the damned.
Over time, both races met in the Abyss - the territory connecting their worlds. Then it turned out that there was not enough ether, which supports the existence of Atreya, for everyone, so one of the races would have to be sacrificed. To survive, the Elyos and Asmodians must destroy the Tower of their enemies. Thus began a new war - this time between the descendants of people - and the Balaur immediately intervened in this war.
In-game memes
“Conversation with the Abyss”
“You better go talk to the Abyss”
- Ruoff’s first meme, a universal answer to an Asmodian to any conceivable or inconceivable question or complaint. It originated during closed beta testing, when the Asmodians, persecuted and oppressed by the Elios, released a video epic in its patriotism. In this video, a sad Asmodian asks a red glowing ball “what to do next?” The ball blinks its eyes thoughtfully and this is where the video ends. The atmosphere of sadness and despondency present in this creation really pleased the Elios, and the video unexpectedly became a symbol of the victory of the cuties during closed beta testing.
Anal orb
- an epic prodigy, with the help of which magicians punish overly zealous opponents. The expression appeared during closed beta testing from a satirical parody post that described the difficulties of a PvP archer after level forty.
Hello Europe!
| Already at level 15-16, tasks appear that can only be completed in a group. |
Leveling up in Aion is not much different from leveling up in other MMORPGs. The player has access to two races - Asmodians and Elyos, while the Balaurs are a third force controlled by the developers, which intervenes when one of the sides has a clear advantage. There are eight character classes, their roles are quite familiar (see sidebar on page four), so there are no serious problems with balance. Of course, it was not possible to achieve an ideal balance - for example, assassins are best suited for PvP, and it is very easy for marksmen or wizards to level up - but there are no completely useless classes in Aion.
| Considering Asmodians “dark” is not entirely correct. Even they live in very beautiful, although a little dreary places. |
An interesting fact: at the start we choose only from four “superclasses”, and already at the tenth level we make the final choice from two more - for example, a priest can become both a healer and a sorcerer. Most likely, such a choice of class, divided into two stages, should give, albeit small, a chance to change your mind, because in an online game it is most difficult to decide on a specialization. However, in practice this trick does not work. The first ten levels are gained in a matter of hours - this is clearly not enough to think about. It’s also quite difficult to draw any conclusions about the style of play for a particular class. The same scout, for example, “breaks up” into an assassin (melee combat) and an archer (ranged combat), but at the first ten levels the scout does not know how to use a bow.
Races
As already mentioned, there are two main races to choose from - Elyos and Asmodians. The Elyos were sent light and prosperity, while the Asmodians received only lifeless wastelands, cold and darkness.
The choice of race at the first stage may resemble a choice between good and evil, but this is not so. The motives and goals of these races, despite their appearance, are worthy of attention. Asmodians, having the appearance of “demons,” honor their ancestors and never betray their relatives. The Elyos are arrogant and consider themselves chosen because their appearance resembles angels. As a result, their confrontation is based only on the fact that only one race can survive. There is no absolute good from evil in this game.
There are also Balaurs - a third race. She is not a gamer and takes the side of the race that is losing the battle. This is needed to maintain balance on Atreia.
No raisins delivered
| In any serious raid, even a small mistake, even an extra “pulled” monster can lead to a critical situation. |
At first there are a lot of quests, they are made well, but without any special features. There is a storyline, there are side quests, there are missions that can be completed multiple times to earn coins. In any case, you will have to do the usual things - reconnaissance, killing monsters, minor dirty tricks, collecting junk, delivering various necessary items, etc. In general, Aion is seriously inferior to Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
or
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
.
In addition, after the twentieth level, the good old grind returns. Yes, quests are available up to the maximum, fiftieth level, but the experience earned only from them is not enough to level up - you have to grit your teeth and go kill monsters in droves. It must be admitted, however, that grinding can be interesting in a fun company - Aion provides zones with dangerous monsters and mini-bosses, killing which brings a lot of experience and quite good loot. There was also a place for classic instances - they were made at a decent level and require the concentration of the entire team.
| Despite the presence of personal wings, in Aion you regularly have to travel by public flying transport. |
Another amazing thing that immediately catches your eye is the linearity of leveling. While developing, the character moves for a very long time along a strictly prescribed route through the same locations, which are also quite linear in themselves - the options “should I go right or left?” occur, but quite rarely. Over time, the situation improves a little, but the first impression is not very pleasant. In addition, the world of Aion itself is small, and there is no talk of seamlessness - there are only a small number of zones, travel between which is accomplished through teleportation. They are fighting urban overpopulation by creating additional copies of locations - canals. This does not interfere with communication, even if one player is in the first channel and the other, say, in the third. You can move between channels at any time, but no more than once every three minutes - and this regularly creates difficulties when gathering a group.
Stones in the bosom
From level twenty, the character gains access to stigma slots, the number of which will eventually reach seven. A stone can be inserted into each slot, giving the hero a unique ability - stigma. Of course, there are many more stones than slots, so by level fiftieth, characters of the same class can be seriously different from each other. Already installed stones can be removed and replaced with others, but this requires a certain amount of special points, which are not at all easy to earn, so you won’t be able to “reroll” your character every day. And mining new stones is not an easy task in itself.
Another way to customize your hero is by using manastones. Almost all items in the game have special slots into which you can insert... that's right, stones again, but this time increasing the character's characteristics. Good equipment has a lot of slots - and this is an excellent opportunity to upgrade one or two of the most important parameters.
Unlike most MMORPGs, combat in Aion is based on chains of skills: having dealt a basic blow, you gain access to two others - and quickly select one of them. The so-called daeva points also deserve special mention. While fighting, our hero very slowly accumulates special points and, as soon as their number reaches 2000, he can use very
strong skill. Each class has its own set - for example, the shooter has a transformation that increases movement speed and attack power for two minutes. However, daeva points accumulate for too long, so this is something of a pampering, an opportunity to feel very cool for a short time.
| The character editor allows you to create a hero with almost any appearance - for example, this funny hairy bearded giant... | ...or a youthful Barack Obama. |
Craft is the head of everything
Crafting enthusiasts in Aion have a choice of six specialties - gunsmith, blacksmith, tailor, artisan, cook and alchemist. You can learn all six at once, but you can only reach the maximum rank in two. There was also a place for gathering - resources are scattered throughout the locations and fall from killed opponents. Crafting is not very predictable: a crafter with a low skill level can do something wrong and lose all resources (on the other hand, sometimes things turn out much better than planned).
Another nice thing is that crafting in Aion plays a much more important role than in many other games. Good equipment here is not only obtained from monsters (as in World of Warcraft
, where you can buy literally a couple of useful things with gold), but it is also produced by artisans - for a lot of money. Alchemy also plays a huge role: there are a great many elixirs here, and in addition to the standard restorers of mana and health, there are, for example, potions that relieve one or another type of “control”.
| For each class in the game, spectacular skill animations are drawn... | ...so any battle here looks very colorful. Believe me, screenshots do not convey all the emotions! |
Content
- 1 Preamble
- 2 Dramas 2.1 Before the start of the Eurooff: Aion and Conspiracy Theory
- 2.2 Start of the Eurooff: Studio “Full Pe” presents
- 2.3 Start of Ruoff's CBT
- 2.4 Professional team of bot hunters
- 7.1 What they promised
Fly, kill
In general, the picture is not very happy - now Aion probably seems to you like an ordinary MMORPG with a couple of interesting decisions and a bunch of serious shortcomings. This is true. But there are several things for which Aion would like to forgive, if not all, then a lot.
| The icon to the right of the character means that we are now performing a combo. If you hesitate a little, the opportunity to strike a powerful blow will slip away. |
We will start, of course, with the wings. At the tenth level, becoming a daeva, our hero receives his first pair and learns to fly - however, this is allowed only in some locations, and the duration of the flight is limited to a couple of minutes (although this can be solved and depends on the sophistication of the wings). But all over the world it is possible to glide - just approach a small hill and press the jump key twice. If you choose the starting point for gliding wisely, you can fly quite a long distance.
Flying in Aion is used for a variety of purposes. There are valuable resources in the air - you can’t collect them without wings, and you won’t be able to enter some locations - you can only fly into them. But you can just have fun: take a couple of friends, find a higher point and organize competitions like base jumping.
Well, the most interesting thing is that most of the character’s skills continue to operate while in flight. As a result, wings are used both in PvE (for example, you can use them to evade a monster) and in battles between players, significantly changing the combat technique: completely different tactics are sometimes required against the same class on the ground and in the air.
| By the way, the delay for reusing the wings is ten seconds. Therefore, if you get entangled in the keys, you can easily fall to the ground. |
Another nice thing is the local PvP system. Or rather, even an RvR system (Realm vs. Realm): the Elyos here fight with the Asmodians, and sometimes the Balaur drop in to see them. Here you will encounter rifts - a network of magical portals that connect both fragments of Atreia, but open only at certain times. The appearance of the portal is a real holiday, because you can break into enemy territory, do nasty things and, most likely, get hurt in the forehead. The arrival of the enemy delegation is no less enjoyable - numerous raids gather to defend and capture the Tower, and everyone enjoys the exciting battle for a long time.
But the real war still takes place in the Abyss - the territory stretching between two fragments of the world. The Abyss looks... like an abyss with numerous islands of land scattered across it. Therefore, wings become the main means of transportation here.
Advantages and disadvantages
The game has been on the market for 10 years, which means there are well-established advantages and disadvantages. The advantages include:
- air battles;
- logical craft system;
- no limit on the number of players in PvP;
- skill combinations;
- dynamic battles;
- an unusual setting, unlike other fantasy.
The disadvantages include:
- scrupulousness when choosing a team, since potential balance is always needed;
- monotonous PvP;
- "corridor" PvE zones;
- The size of the world is not large enough.
Overall, Aion presents an excellent technical and conceptual balance. Disadvantages are replaced by advantages and vice versa.
In free fall
| Repeatable tasks are the easiest way in the game to get more or less acceptable equipment. |
Access to the Abyss is open to both sides, so they quickly meet and begin to kill each other. Adding fuel to the fire is the presence of castles that can be captured and held, receiving good bonuses for this.
Another incentive to destroy representatives of the opposite side is the rank system. Actions against the enemy faction - killing both living players and monsters friendly to them - are rewarded with special Abyss Points (AP). Moreover, if you kill a character of a lower rank, then very few points are given. But if some private manages to kill a general, AP will pour on him like a river. And since ranks are visible to everyone, high-ranking officers are regularly hunted here. However, in the Abyss, almost any action, including completing quests, gives AP. By accumulating points, the player grows in rank, and one hundred of the coolest characters on the server gain access to especially powerful skills. Finally, AP can be easily exchanged for a variety of equipment, and quite powerful ones at that. The only way to lose AP is by dying at the hands of the enemy.
By the way, AP loss is the only penalty for death. Experience, unlike Lineage 2
, they are removed only for death from the clutches of monsters, and even then most of it can be bought back from a special NPC.
In general, PvP in the game is a topic for a separate big conversation, which is worth returning to only in a few months, when a sufficiently large number of high-level players appear on European servers.
Eastern quality
Another positive side of Aion is technical. The CryENGINE engine was chosen for the game. The detail of the picture, of course, has been seriously reduced, but it still looks modern. The designers did a great job too. Yes, we criticize the game for its somewhat cramped world, but it is worth recognizing that every nook and cranny of Atreya is drawn carefully and tastefully.
The characters themselves are beautiful. The appearance editor built into Aion amazes with the number of settings: you can create a skinny big man with a huge head, a red-bearded dwarf, or even Barack Obama (see screenshots!). The equipment is also well made - even things “for the little ones” don’t look tattered here. Well, the armor and weapons of high levels are just a sight for sore eyes.
Another important point is that the game was released in Europe almost a year later than in Korea. During this time, the developers managed to fix almost all the errors. Monsters falling into the ground, impossible quests, non-working skills - all this is not in Aion.
Preamble
Propaganda poster.
Rumors about the release of another “best game in the world of all time” began to spread in 2006. As always, we were promised a revolution in the genre, unprecedented scale and a bunch of innovations that even the most experienced nerds will fap at night, having played it first. In fact, the game turned out to be just a clone of the old Everquest 2 with a bunch of quests, a la WOW, with the level of kawaiiness from Lineage 2, with flights and wings from Perfect World, drawn on a rather ancient CryEngine 1 engine (FarCry - 2004, for the inexperienced reader note: WoW and Lineika were released in 2003, which is a hint). All this was mixed in unexpected proportions, fried on expectations and public hype, and dumped on the heads of joyful hamsters at the end of 2008.
The expectations of the hamsters turned out to be so great that on November 14, 2008, when the game was launched in Korea, new world records for nerdiness were set: literally two minutes after the servers started operating, the number of participants was 11 thousand, tens of thousands were standing in queues. At the end of the day, 170 thousand nerds and 25 servers launched AION
to the top of the charts!
