A new mmorpg that has been in development for a very long time has opened their pre-orders 2 months or so in advance. If you preorder you can get into the beta. Which is obviously fairly complete if it's open to the public now. It's very pretty using the Crytek engine ( of course you don't need crysis powers to run the game)
I don't know much about it myself and was interested if anyone here is in the beta.
Rocky, I'm not in the beta. I've looked at the game videos and it is very visually impressive. No doubt of it. It looks wonderful! However ... just my reaction ...
The game will retail for $49 and change. Then, best I can tell from web flogging, there will be a $15 per month fee to play. Just me, but with video game sales currently down 25% it seems like a poor time to introduce a new game with a monthly fee. Now if I were going to lay out that kind of money per month I would rather pay to play a game with a proven track record like WoW (which I play off and on) or EVE Online that I played for a few months a couple years ago.
Also, notice that NCSoft is publishing this game. Perhaps it is a good time to remember that one of their recent previous games with a monthly fee, Tabula Rasa, was an amazing crash and burn failure. I think the Tabula Rasa servers are now completely shut down?
NCSoft also publishes Guild Wars. Guild Wars is not quite so visually impressive, but it likewise has no monthly fee! I play a lot of GW, 7 characters full up. (I like it best when it's free!) According to what ANet has hinted and leaked, GW2 is maybe a year or less from beta and GW2 will have no monthly fee either. Me myself, think waiting for GW2 what I do.
Oh I have GW as well. I've had it for maybe 3 years now. It's amazing! I love how you quickly reach max armor and level yet it's still engaging and has tons of things to do beyond leveling. That's the only problem I find in MMO's. They all have a 10+ slot skill bar and you don't have to be creative with what you put in it (compared to GW i think) Anyways, thank you for enlightening me about Tabula Rasa. Maybe I'll see you in GW 2
Tried it with a friend's fileplanet key. It's interesting. Gameplay isn't all that different from WoW. Obviously looks nicer.
"Free" MMOs have some resistence in the higher end North American market, since the main way they make money off them is through microtransactions, and those turn off a lot of players.
From my experience in the closed betas so far in the simplest manner:
"Aion is a GREAT alternative to WoW for those that are burned out, and has a much more compelling PvP aspect to it."
Delving any further would simply be my own opinion of the game. So there ya have it.
The one weekend i was able to play it gave me the nostalgic flair of EQ coupled with a modern and fantastic UI, insanely good graphics, which displayed flawless on my aging comp and a fresh story, that is not half bad.
If i ever subscribe to a fantasy MMORPG again, it will be Aion.
I really was awestruck, but that just me.
I agree here with ya man. The lore of that game is truly fantastic. So if your a Lore head and don't have nay interests in LoTRO, give Aion a try.
Guildwars is free because it isn't an MMO by my personal definition. You play in instanced area's that don't meet extreme load's like traditional MMO's such as WoW, FFXI, Everquest, etc.
I was really looking forward to playing this game, but since I heard that their software uses GameGuard, I'm afraid I'll have to pass--not because I want to cheat, but because I'm not willing to part with some of the popular programs that GameGuard renders unusable, such as Daemon Tools, Filezilla, Google Chrome, VMWare, and F-Secure. It even somehow breaks Steam right now, according to the Wikipedia entry.
If GameGuard can get its act together, I may be on board, but until then, count me out.
Gameguard? Welcome to hell. None of that here neither.
My friend owns an internet cafe and I see a lot of chinese people playing it on their chinese account. Okay, as far as the graphics goes, this is what i have to say. The character is very well done, even very detailed drawn. But...even if you have a very high end PC, the background as in everything on the screen that is not related to the character, that looks like Morrowind graphics. Yes, it is better than WoW, but don't expect Oblivion or Fallout 3 graphics for environment. For the hero classes, the fighting animation looks cool and very flashy. As for character facial animations, well they all look very asian. you can have a character with blonde hair, but if you look at the facial features closely, you can tell it looks very asian.
As for gameplay, the only interesting thing for me is that you can fly around. the entire game mechanics is not that different from World of Warcraft. You go kill x number of monsters to complete a quest, or collect y number of body parts from certain type of monsters, etc, etc. You can only fly in certain regions and only for certain period of time, other than that, most of the time, you walk/run around. And you can not fly until level 10. Means..you are stuck doing WoW style gameplay until level 10, but even with level 10 afterwards, the game play does not feel that much different. Because if you played WoW, you will definitely feel at home in this game. As for the story, well..it is just a variation of WoW, you pick a side and you go to war against the other side, and there is common enemies to both sides that you have to deal with.
Is the game good, well if you are looking for something different than WoW in terms of variety, then by all means try it.
My own opinion is that it isn't really any different than the PvP in early WoW... looks nice..plays same ole same ole..
Ohh yea I agree, I think what I meant is that the game is more centered around PvP than WoW is, ya know with the whole PvPvE and the HUGE abyss zone...its so pretty
Stop talking sense Annatar11 ffs! This is DRM we are talking about! Splitter!
Thats very strange, because on my client the environment is at least as good as the games you mentioned, if not better. Which is expected since it runs on the Crytek engine, that is leaps and bounds better then Gamebryo (is that the correct name of the Bethesda engine?).
Thats true, it doesnt invent MMORPGS new. I just think that the story and gameplay is done better then in WoW. But that is just opinion, of course.
The PvPvE mechanic is quite new, as well. For example, take a look at this:
http://www.aionsource.com/forum/general-discussion/20946-patch-notes-v1-5-update-shadow-balaur.html#post518431
There's actually an instanced dungeon where an Elyos group and an Asmodean group can enter at the same time and compete to get to the end boss, while trying to screw each other over.
I was going to mention that Annatar. Lots of people have mentioned it plays out very similar to WoW but it's the new stuff that intrigues me, the World PvP looks like a fantastic idea. Plus I wont miss WoW's elitest Arena game that rewards overpowered combos with the best gear in the game!
Well, there is some pretty good gear from the Abyss PvP with unique stats (reduced damage from players, increased damage to players), but all the PvP is using the Abyss Point system so regardless of what kind of PvP you do you can eventually get it. AFAIK, the blue and gold gear needs silver and gold medals that you get from sieging the Balaur castles in lower and upper Abyss (lower give silver, upper give gold). But in essence, there's just one PvP reward system, and a few ways to play within it
I'll probably try it out. There are a lot of nuances i'm hesitant about, like getting stat modifiers when moving (back is defensive, forward is offensive, strafing is dodging), and putting stat modifiers on the titles. The ego-centric character development seems kind of silly (you find out you're an ultra special immortal! it just so happens that so is mostly everyone else), and Korean MMO's are kind of notorious for being little more than an enormous grind (WoW does a good job of making the grind bareable).
Just have to try it out and see if any of my concerns are warrented.
(The trailer for the new Star Wars MMO looks pretty sweet though)
As someone still looking for a worthy replacement for EQ1 and has been casually following Aion, are beta testers permitted to discuss just how integral PVP is to Aion? Personally, I just hate PVP, but in games like WoW you can play perfectly well on a PvE server and ignore consensual PvP (though I ended up hating WoW for other reasons). However, I tried Warhammer earlier this year and, though I liked many aspects of the game, quit after a couple of months since there was little to do at max level except PvP, which was also integral to gear advancement, since many items (even those obtained in PvE) had a PvP exp requirment to wear. My fault really--although I knew the game was heavy on PvP, I was not aware that that the game centered on it so much that PvE was almost an afterthought. (And since, for both gameplay and community reasons, I still advocate the original hardcore EQ model of death penalties, forced grouping, and relatively long leveling time, I though it was absurdly ridiculous that I could hit max level in Warhammer in under a month of PvE solo play.) So, can you play Aion and progress in level/gear while ignoring PvP or is it essential to the game?
That's fine with me if some of the best items are from PvP, I just hate it to go the elitist way in WoW and ratings for gear. I was fine with that when I was front page in Arenas but when I stopped playing as much and couldn't be bothered to grind out all the best items in BGs to get the best items in Arenas it became completely inaccessible for me and a source of frustration that I was only allowed mediocrity on all my gear. And I was burned out from raiding in WoW at that point so basically Blizzard pushed me out of their game.
As a beta tester do you think you will be playing the game much?
Well, I got into a serious launch legion so yeah, I'm going to.
I can't really answer this fully. There's a GDC video where the developer showing off the game says the PvE end-game is meant to be balanced with PvP, and they've been adding new gear and recipes and new dungeons (see the 1.5 pach link I posted above, the North American release will be the 1.5 version). Since the beta windows are only 3 days every few weeks and level capped (going up to 30 in this upcoming test this Fri-Mon) we can't really see the endgame and how it compares to the PvP.
There are some Chinese Aion endgame boss videos floating around on youtube that you can take a look at.
Well, after being spammed by a friend for 3hrs with youtube videos i've preordered the game and will take part in this weekends beta
I doubt its going to have that. Very few people still want to make games with that design after Vanguard crashed and burned so badly that it left an impact crater. Outside of the hardcore EQ crowd, basically nobody likes that model. From what I've seen, Aion has a lot of soloing while levelling, with some group stuff tossed in. I'm nowhere near the beta level cap though.
I know after having a night where we kept wiping in Ulduar due to Comcast being awful and disconnecting our tanks, a game that gave me some steep penalty to grind back isn't something I would stick with for very long.
Oh, I'm fully aware that I'm in a minority and I don't expect to see a game anywhere near original EQ again--which is why I am left in the MMO wilderness. BTW, you're right that Vanguard was a huge failure but you're wrong to blame that failure on the hardcore EQ model. If anything, the opposite is true because of Brad McQuaid's bait and switch. The Vanguard forums were active for years prior to launch, and McQuaid, who posted frequently, promised a game largely based on the original EQ model, including meaningful death penalties a progression more difficult than WoW and its clones. Many stated, and hoped, that Vanguard would be the real EQII. The pros and cons of this model were passionately debated on those forums and the devs got cold feet during the (largely unsuccessful) beta. When the game launched the death penalty was pretty light (a bit tougher than WoW, sure, but a joke compared to original EQ) and solo play was the order of the day--I soloed a paladin to 35-40 before quitting. Now, I would not say that this was the prime cause of Vanguard;s failure. The game failed primarily because it was released too early with rough and unfinished content and, even with more polish, the underlying game was just hopelessly generic, lacking the charm and addictiveness of original EQ. However, a large chunk of the original player base were hardcore EQ players (like me) who were disappointed with the dumbed down game as released. if Vanguard had remained true to its original plan to revive the old EQ model, many of those players would have stuck with the game despite its other problems.
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