On the Aion bandwagon

We waited until the last minute, but decided to jump on the bandwagon for Aion.

Contrary to AoC and WAR last year, I think Aion is going to take those 500k+ pre-launch subs and keep them...and keep growing.

In the past few days since we've had a chance to play on the headstart, I can say this:

It's flawless. No glitches. Amazing graphics. Smooth as silk. We get 65+ FPS regularly, dipping down to around 50 in the most crowded cities...and with 1 hour queues during prime time, they are crowded.

Combat is a lot like Fable...very fast-paced, but also very complex. The higher you get, the longer your chains become, and the more branches become available. I can see this being a strategy game at the higher levels, needing to choose which branch to take dependent upon where the fight is, or if you are in a group or not.

Gameplay is easy, a lot like WoW. Very easy to pick up and learn. The storyline and cut-scenes remind me of the single-player storyline in Guild Wars, so it's very easy to get sucked into being "the main hero" of the story. While there is a lot of extra fluff quests to do, the main storyline is very linear, so it's impossible to get lost along the way.

Harvesting reminds me of EQ2. Crafting is fairly complex, actually, but also reminds me of EQ2.

Flying around with wings is...pretty damn cool. The first time I experienced it I was literally giggling like a little school girl with her first Barbie doll. Was pretty epic.

Also, the leveling is fairly slow in comparison to some of the recent games I've played. Took us about 5 hours to get to level 10, which is about twice as long as it takes in LOTRO or EQ2. Hell, in EQ2 you can get level 10 in about an hour, hour and a half.

So far...I'm impressed. It's a nice, new, fresh MMO, and I think it's going to keep us busy for the winter months. LOTRO just kind of grew stale, and the fact they are going to start charging for book quests now on top of the monthly fee just kind of put us off, even though it's Middle Earth and all. We may still play, but...probably only when Rohan and/or Gondor/the major expansions come out.

Anyway, yep...on the Aion bandwagon in our spare time, and loving it.