Impressions: Aion Closed Beta Event 3

By Jeffrey Philipp | July 13, 2009 | | Filed under: Features, Impressions | Tags: Aion: The Tower of Eternity, Beta, Impression, NCSoft

My other option would have been cleric, which is much more focused on pure healing. This split is illustrative of the choices that would be faced by the other three base classes of Warrior, Scout, and Mage. I personally think that this is a fairly good method of progressing a character, as it is a great deal less limiting than being stuck with your choice for the entirety of your characters career, and instead allows one to pick their general preference in role while choosing their preferred specialization later on.

Lastly I would just like to say a few words about my own personal bugaboo, and that is the motivating force behind your characters. This is a sort of good news, bad news sort of situation. There’s a great deal of explanation of what’s going on around your characters world, but sadly most of it doesn’t take place inside the game itself. On the other hand the campaign quests do function exceptionally well as goals in the medium term.

Also worth mentioning, especially for a game that is being localized from a Korean version, is that the writing is, besides actually being understandable English, actually fairly good. They aren’t quite as whimsical as anything you would get from WoW, but they aren’t quite as bland as some of the things that were present in the first EverQuest either. They inhabit a fairly happy medium of being quite functional while at least retaining a little bit of character.

I honestly didn’t expect that out of a product still in the localization phase so I do admit that was a pleasant surprise, however I’m not sure that they have finished the localization of the skill and ability texts yet, as they sound more often than not like they just came out of an on line translator. I hope that the current skill descriptions are largely place holders until the final product comes out.

All in all, Aion really is a well put together product that is likely to have quite a few dedicated fans and players. I honestly think that it does a fine job of at least trying something new, but the question for me is if it does enough new. I honestly wonder if Aion is going to have the staying power to impress the jaded people who have been playing MMOs for years. In the end though it builds on a proven formula and the experiments they are taking with flight and PvP centered around that flight could very well improve the image that they started with, and I hope they do. We’ll certainly find out more after the next few beta events.