Contemplation, Ranting.

So, with all the news out from Gamescon 2009, let's contemplate a little bit on some of the highlights. While I haven't made any formal posts lately, I did take the time to re-tweet the panel videos of Korean Lead Designer Yongchan Jee and Producer Brian Knox. If you haven't checked them out yet, you should! Warning: The following transcription is incredibly lazy and not at all word-for-word. I didn’t have enough time on my lunch break to accommodate!

Interview with Yongchan Jee

My sloppy readers digest of the questions:

1. What truly differentiates Aion's game design from the competition?
First, the concept of PvPvE- Aion combines PvP and PvE at the same time. Second, the flight system works not only for PvE questing, but for aerial PvP combat. Last, the method of transportation (gliding).

2. Why did you guys combine PvPvE?
In short, MMO's are massive multi player, and the game development team combined both concepts of PvP and PvE into one to satisfy all players.

My notes: I think they may have meant to stress that they want players to play TOGETHER in the world, as opposed to being in their own separate, safe little instances. A lot of dynamics are lost when you close yourself off to the other players in the game.

3. Is there going to be a playable Balaur race or 3rd playable faction?
In short: no, you can't play a Balaur.

My 2 cents: I kind of want to smack you upside the head. Granted, yes, I understand the curiosity. But the game hasn't even released yet, and people are asking this?? When you were being raised, were you ever told to 'try your food before seasoning it'? It is impolite to the cook who spent time making your food to season it before appreciating the hard work they put into the meal. Maybe they seasoned it already.

4. What advice would you give an aspiring game designer?
Most important is your passion. Try to experience as much as possible; do as much as you can with what you have.

5. Inspiration for the combat system, i.e. pattern engraving?
Sorry to disappoint, but our combat system blends many features and ideas and cultural inspirations.

6. Will there be low level instances before level 25
in development.

7. Will there be legion housing?
In development.

8. Implementing social networking API's or features?
Under discussion.

My thoughts: I wonder if the questioner Timmy meant things like 'wow armory' where you can search your guild or character and admire them all day while you're stuck at work.

9. New abyss zone?
Yes, there is one in development that will be much more compact and concentrated so that the battles aren't so far spread out.

10. Will there be mounts in Aion?
Yes, but they won't necessarily be used for transportation.

My thoughts: Frankly I'm irritated by this question. Yes, I understand the love for mounts. I love them too. I collected entire sets of mounts before. And also - I know I have only played until level 26. That’s just over half of the levels in the game. I can't help but think that the game changes significantly at level 50, and I wonder if we're going to be shitting ourselves over lack of mounts in that stage of the game.

Interview with Brian

1. Will there be any expansions?
Yes, this game is going to go on for a long time. We’re already launching with 3 major updates
my thoughts: really stupid question. Just sayin.

2. when/how is pre-selection going to work?
everyone who pre-ordered can go in, choose your names, races, character classes, customizations, and servers ahead of time so that you can hit the ground running on day 1 of release.

3. Coolest 1.5 features in Brian's opinion?
The Shugo pirate ship and the stigma system enhancement were his favorite features.

4. Were there any aspects in prepping Aion for western market that went unexpectedly well/easy?
The camera rotation using the left mouse button which was implemented. It was a small feature for developer's to change, but had a large player base impact.

5. When will 1.5 patch be available for download?
Working on it right now. Will be 4-5 GB and made available on torrent

6. Is the balancing between the classes okay so you won't find any overpowered class in PvP?
Typically people see things like this: “Whoever you kill is fine. Whoever kills you is overpowered. “ Skill has a lot to do with it, as does the customization you put into your character. I.e. the Stigma, armor, socket enhancements, and your use of the positioning system.

My thoughts: haha, glad you called out the playerbase on a very obviously skewed debate.

7. Plans for interface modification?
Under discussion.

My notes: Wish people would be more clear about add on’s.

8. Will there be other languages other than English French and German?
Not at this time, but it's not hard to adapt, so it’s really ‘as demanded’

9. Playing Aion on a Mac?
Play it on Boot camp.

10. Is there any info about alliances between legions?
Not at the moment.

11. Has a French community manager been chosen yet?
Not yet.

12. Talent system available in the game to make your character unique?
In short: You’re stupid. Please read Aion’s powerwiki about Stigma’s.

13. What are the Preorder rings about?
Pre-order rings are inventory bound items with visual effect that give small resistances.

14. Where can players get new color dyes?
In short: You’re stupid. Please learn to explore your capitol cities for dye vendors.

15. How much freedom does NCWest have to make game changes?
A lot - going forward our feedback gets incorporated into all updated patches.

16. When is open beta?
Announcement should be (this) week.

Audience questions
17. Oceanic community manager?
Not at this time, however we'll hire additional English speaking community managers

18. Sorry, this was hard to transcribe. The way the guy worded his question, it seemed like he wanted to switch between PvP and PvE, but couldn't figure out how to get to the abyss.

19. Will there be a 3rd front in a future expansion?
Never say never, but it’s not planned.

20. Housing system?
We have lots of features to implement, but we want to do them right. If we give you a house, we want it to be something fun, not just a box to sit in.

21. Can you expand on the Slayer System?
Brian didn't hear the lady's mic, so he starts explaining rifting.

Side Note - Slayer System:

Penalties of PvP in PVE Areas

If you go on a killing rampage in enemy territory (does not apply to the Abyss), you will receive penalties for doing so. This is called the Slayer System. The effects are as follows:

1. Depending on the amount of killings you will receive points. If your penalty points go over a certain limit, you will receive the penalty effects. If you kill lower leveled players than you, you will receive more points.

2. The penalty effects are categorized into two. One is a ?Curse? and you cannot use rifts. The second is a ?Judgment? and under this effect you cannot be resurrected in any Kiosk placed in the enemy territory, as well as use rifts.

3. The name of the Curse/Judgment depends on the race. If you are Elyos, you will receive Curse/Judgment of Asphel. Asmodians will get Curse/Judgment of Ariel.

4. Once you come under Curse or Judgment, your location will be revealed throughout the local map for the entire opposing faction members. Also, even if you are under a hiding skill, your title will be seen, making it even easier to be spotted.

5. You must go back to your own lands or the Abyss and wait for a certain amount of time for the Curse or Judgment to disappear.

6. If you or someone else kills a slayer, 12 nearby players of the dead body will receive buffs.

7. The killer of the slayer will be announced throughout the area chat under the format of ?[Race]?s Hero [Killer of the Slayer] has defeated [Slayer] while he was under [Judgment or Curse] of [Ariel or Asphel].

22. Is there going to be any maintenance or downtime?
Servers will be up for 24/7, patches will not take the servers down.

---

By the way, I read the feedback from the AionSource community in response to the thread stating 'give us your questions about Aion!' and I nearly turned my monitor off in shame. Or maybe I'm just a little shit who tries to come up with good questions, instead of reposting the same stupid questions over and over. You know, I don't really care that you can't swim in Aion. It's a unique feature of this MMO, I think. Sure, it would be pretty neat to glide off and dismiss your wings right into a pond. But I've done it before in beta. Yeah, I took damage in water. And? Is that going to fundamentally change the game if you're allowed to swim? More importantly, why are people so worried about swimming when you can F L Y ???

I never really read forums religiously, but I guess another sour taste in my mouth on the AionSource forums is some of the attitudes on there. I was browsing a ‘legion emblem’ forum where people were showing off what they found or made for their legions. And half of the posts were a bunch of kids making catty remarks about how this photo can be found on google and trying to OUT people who (obviously) modified images of tribal tattoo’s to fit the needs of their emblem. I was really unimpressed with some of these kids, and what’s more, is they have their legion name in their information (or maybe they’re posing under that legion name). But their actions absolutely affect how I look at their legion. No way am I interested in dealing with people who would take in a conceited little stray who thinks his shit smells like roses.

So that’s it for today! I guess.

Changes this month

Since closed beta #5, a few developments have been keeping me a bit busy on the Aion front. The beta legion I began with Gheist has come together quite nicely with a solid team of players. We have begun a temporary forum, and while we still have ventrilo to yap on, you people's have real lives and such to tend to. Anyway, we're going to settle on a domain name here soon, and move our work off of my buddy's private hosting. We captured some footage of making mischief, but sadly, no PVP footage yet.

We were held up last weekend by some level 30 Elyos players who were fighting in an area called Morheim. The Asmodian players starting in that area are level 20, so a good 10 levels below them. The Elyos team was trying to score enough abyss points to buy their Abyss pvp sets. Having never gone toe to toe with a level 30 before, my level 20 Assassin jumped into the fray with 5 buddies (yes, 6 on 1) and stared at the "miss", "blocked" spam and watch all of our stuns get resisted. I mean really, who wants to watch a video of you at your luckiest crit of 20 damage meanwhile the opponent's making alphabet soup with your legion name?

It was a bit disheartening that we weren't of level to put up a good fight. What was annoying is that it seemed like these players were preventing us from leveling. Throughout the weekend, we managed to climb to around level 24-25, but didn't complete a lot of the campaign quests we were working on in Morheim. Later, I had a chat with the opponent who was farming Abyss points on lowbies. She was cool - very nice and helpful in answering a lot of my questions. It's hard to pvp against players 10 levels above you, so naturally many people gave up quickly. Being a PvPer at heart, she complained that the Asmodian players were just disorganized and didn't want to pvp. She also didn't seem to care that she was preventing beta testers from getting to content, and possibly even leveling to the point that we could give her a good fight in the Abyss. We had a great conversation, and I hope this weekend I can dig deep down in my soul and find the constitution required to grind out 6 more levels, so that I will have a better chance of retribution!!

At the heart of the matter, I love PvP. I'm not great at it, but I enjoy it. Regardless of whether it was in an MMO like WoW or WaR, or in a text based game like a mud. Player killing makes things interesting. When retail Aion comes out, bring your best; Anytime, anywhere. I dare you. No, I triple dog dare you, if you've got the nads. For beta, I want to dip my toes in the water, bug report and spell check. Giggle when I see an NPC referring to himself as 'her' or vice versa.

I'm not too worried about it. It is beta, afterall.

Oh, I couldn't resist this warcraft video. :)

(Edited: Less QQ, more objectivity!)

Interview from Korea : Armor!

Another short and sweet post.

A small update before CB5

Good morning gamers,

It's been a while since I last posted, I know. I've been running around trying to get things sorted out in anticipation for this weekends CB#5! For these 48 hour crunches, it's good to have your flat stocked with all of the necessities. Healthier foods, plenty of accessible drinks, toilet paper... Do you guys do anything special to prepare for a weekend of red-eye power gaming? For Closed Beta #4, I think the only things I really remember stocking up on was cereal/milk, bottled water, and Twizzlers (0 calories, hell yeah!) This weekend i've got bowls of fruit, waffles (!!!!), and orange juice and Fresca.


But I'm sure you're probably more interested in the upcoming English voice over work that NCWest has been working on. In case you haven't already heard the samples, check my twitter or check the links here:

• The Cat-like Mau
• Elyos Lepharist
• Tease Voice Snippet
• Asmodian Onlooker in a cutscene
• An epic moment
  

The level cap has been raised to 30 this weekend, so I'll be very busy grinding my way to the Abyss.
I don't think I am going to do anymore work on professions in the beta. While someone needs to make sure there aren't spelling errors and whatnot there, 48 hours to get 13 levels doesn't leave a lot of room for proper bug reporting.

Above is a video that Gheist found at work today. Kudos to the wow player bringing a little Aion into their game! Truth be told, my resolve to wait for the NA release was about as strong as wet tissue paper, so this week I jumped on the Chinese release. While I will still be playing beta, I am trying to familiarize myself with the profession grind.

Alas, this is a short entry this week.

Before I leave you to your own devices, I wanted to comment on this article that was written a little while ago. There's 9 pages worth of commentary on the subject, which says a lot about the author in my opinion!

Aion CB4: My Thoughts Part I

Okay, Beginning the post that was promised. It's quite a lot, so you might want to go make yourself a sandwich and a drink. Or two.

Character Creation
Let's start at the beginning. After logging in and selecting a server, you start with character creation. You have two choices: Elyos, the angelic looking half of this once unified race, or the demonic looking breed known as the Asmodians. Now, people sit there and cringe at an MMO that only offers two races, but hold up, kids! You can make your new feather look however you want. Fancy a Wolverine look alike? You got it. Batting for an elf or dwarf? Do it. Orc? Make it happen. Into felines? They've got a mugshot for that too. Hell, if you want to look a little like Shrek's bride, you can. The customization is really impressive. You can make a midget, or go for a more youthful, childlike appearance, all the way up to massive amazon women and big beefy meat shields. Seriously? Seriously.



I should really show you some screenshots of the character creation, but since I was absorbed with all of the features, I didn't take any. So instead watch this video (one of many) from Youtube. One day I'll sit down and teach myself how to make a decent fraps video, but I'm a real novice! Five years of working in film doesn't qualify me as 'talented' in home videos or fraps. Though I took a few minutes of footage during the beta, the clips a little too short. But less about my lack of video editing talent, more Aion beta review!

On the beta server, I actually started off on a high population server and made a few characters, but decided not to risk having a laggy experience with a stressed server and overpopulation, so I switched to a low population server called Nezekem (at least I think that's how it's spelled). During the beta, NCSoft warned us to play on only one server, but did I listen? Nooo. Switching caused my characters to delete on the previous server. Oops! My bad. But I am not stressing about a repeat of this in the retail release because I read somewhere that they will offer free server transfers once a month.

Leveling
I am not a professional MMO scorekeeper, just a player. In last weekend's beta I leveled a level 17 assassin, a level 12 Chanter, and level 10 Templar - all Asmodian. I thought the XP::time ratio kept a good pace for the first 17 levels, and you aren't overwhelmed a laundry list of quests at the get go. Sure, you have your typical gather quests and kill quests. But all of the starting quests are designed to help you adjust to your character's abilities and how to interact with the environment.

Cut Scenes
There are cut scenes in some quests, but these were quick and to the point, so it wasn't a snore fest. For the reading impaired (which sadly I was in Wow - thank you Questhelper and Carbonite) these short video cuts show you what you want to look for in your quest, or who in some cases. Aion also uses these cut scenes to tell your story of ascension. And while it's not a secret that you ascend and earn a pair of wings in this game, I'm not going to talk about how it's done - a little mystery to a pivotal change in any story is a good thing.

Locate feature in quest log
A terrific feature that I instantly fell in love with in the quest log is the 'Locate' feature. The NPC's associated with your current task will show in the quest as a link (yeah, as in weblink). You clicky clicky, and you have the option to locate your target person, or the types of mobs if it's a kill quest. Aion then pops open your map and marks the spot. Wham, done. For the questing impaired, this is the koolaid in your water.

Storyline
The quest story was quite good, and while I am told that you begin with a case of amnesia, that wasn't glaringly obvious throughout the beginning questline, or maybe I interpreted it differently. I know the first couple of quests, my questgivers are asking what happened to me, am I all right? But I thought my character was another Joe Schmoe who quickly learned through various interactions and premonitions that I was meant for bigger designs. I didn't start the Elyos side, so maybe it's a more prevalent theme there? I'll let you know next round of closed beta. I mostly enjoyed the fact that as you complete and accept quests, your character is actually engaging in a conversation with the NPC, and not just clicking and accepting a summarized 1 page task right away. To the impatient and voluntarily illiterate, this might get on your nerves. The clicking-through of the stories sort of encourages quest reading, and I like that. (At least, the first time around.)

The game is very linear in the beginning, and there is only one starting area to begin your character. You start at point A, make it to point B, then C. This gets old when you level 3 characters in a row. I actually tried to level a fourth character (mage), but my attention span didn't make it past level 3. I kind of missed the expansive Wow world where I could jump to different starting areas, but on the flip side of that - too many options when you first start a game can be overwhelming. So, for you altaholics, make sure you have the stomach for redundancy. It is a lot of fun running around in such a beautiful landscape and checking out all the critters and creatures you come across, just be careful of deep water. I don't know why swimming isn't available, but my mind tries to convince me that it's damaging to our wings (or wing-capable bodies). Or maybe our makeup will run? Anyway..

Grouping
To group with a buddy, just /invite buddy and you form a group. Caution! You might want to make sure you and your mates are in the same 'channel'. This was a confusing factor for my boyfriend and myself since we have never played a game with this feature.

So there I was, lads, standing in my skivvy's on a hillside in Aldelle Basin. I group up with my man, and wait for him to meet up with me. Shouldn't take long, right? Within a minute or two, we're complaining at eachother to stop screwing around and hurry up so we can start questing together. "Go stand by the lamppost." He says to me. I wave my fist at him "I HAVE BEEN HERE FOR FIVE MINUTES." Huffing, puffing... Is this a bug? I relog, meanwhile he's off killing little critters, and I start turning shades of purple, growing jealous and a little resentful that I was the sucker who volunteered to relog... It turns out, I was in channel 3, and he was in channel 1.

Okay enough melodrama. But really, the idea for these channels is to reduce the lag you often find in overpopulated areas. Simply switch to a different channel and you will reload into the same bat place and same bat time, but a lot less players around, so you can go about getting your work done. It would have been nice to have some kind of pop up warning that explained this upfront.

I wasn't thrilled with some of the quest items drop rates. Unique items are ones that only drop for you. Then there are some quests that allow you and your group to loot at the same time. There are more quests in the game with unique items than there are group lootable items, and that makes the game a little grindy. The more people in the party, the more killing you have to do to get the collections complete. There are 3 looting options available: Round robin (Wow's group loot), Free for all, and Leader loot (master looter for you wowheads). Another thing is I never found a zoom option for the minimap, but I didn't look very hard. This was probably more annoying to my boyfriend (herein Gheist) and my good friend Bock, than it was for me. It was kind of annoying to see my friends go off to one corner of a field, and I'm hollaring at them to come back, only to turn my camera view and see that they're really not that far away after all.

More about Classes
Actually, now that I think about it, I will talk about the pivotal point in the storyline: Your Ascension. The one thing I will say is this: After 10 levels, you ascend - and along with your wings, you get to choose to specialize your character in a sub-class.

• Warriors become Templars (tanks) or Gladiators (dps)
• Mages become Sorcerer's (Glass cannon ranged dps) or Spirit Masters (Elemental Summoner/DoT dpser)
• Priests choose between Cleric (wtf heals) or Chanters (wtf buffs and melee dps)
• Scouts emerge as either Assassin's (melee dps) or Rangers (ranged dps).
  

In Wow terms, Templar is your Protection spec'ed tank, Gladiator is your retribution / fury / arms / enhance dps, Sorc = Mage, Spirit Master is a combination of shaman and warlock, Assassin is your rogue, Ranger is your hunter, and Chanter is like your paladin, only... cooler.

Don't make this mistake. In the beta, I failed to read the quest responses carefully, so when I thought I was clicking to learn more about Chanters, instead what I was clicking was the response "Hell yeah I'm going to be a Chanter. Screw that Cleric career." and ended up with a chanter instead of what I wanted to play: a cleric. Moral of the story: There is no confirmation about your class, so make sure you read your responses before you fire off a mouse click. However, I saw in the Aion Armory that there is a class change quest. So, you might have the option to switch, but I'm sure that's going to cost you a lot of kinah.

Kinah
Wait, kinah? Yeah, that's the currency of Aion. Instead of gold, silver, copper - it's just one flat kinah. The exchange rate in beta was a bit.. high for American standards. At level 10, some quests available to you have a 3,000 kinah reward. So if you're not familiar with currency ratings, and you're not so hot on math, you might feel a little uncomfortable figuring out what's a reasonable cost for something in game. Hell, even if you're pretty proficient with numbers, this will come as a temporary shocker. Have you ever seen Wow award 3,000 g for a quest turn in? yeah.. didn't think so. If you saw a canned drink in a vending machine going for 300 here in the states, you probably wouldn't buy it.

Bind Stones, Return, Flight Paths...
Since we're talking about money matters, here are some things you need to know. When you die in Aion, you lose a small amount of experience which can be regained by seeking the aid of a soul healer, who will gladly take your kinah and give you a little soul back. Now, I don't have a problem with this. Back in my mudding days, when you died, you lost levels, you lost your items, all the money you carried, you even lost your memories of friends (thus your friends list). The thing that does bug me in Aion is that when you enter a new zone and want to bind to a Returning stone, it costs you kinah. A Returning stone (note: i forget it's official name - maybe bind stone?) is the point at which you can 'hearth/recall/gate' back to every 20 minutes, and it also serves as your respawn point if you release after a death.

There are flight paths in the game that take you from zone to zone. The flight itself is beautiful. But these (no surprise) cost kinah as well. As does teleporting, which is available at the capitol cities, and other places I'm sure. The higher level the zone, the more expensive. I didn't like this because it discourages exploration, and I have to admit I'm a junky for those thrilling "am I gonna survive this?!$#@" runs through uncharted territory. So if you're like me, you are going to want to save up you kinah, sell as much junk as possible, and buckle down because chances are high that during your exploring you're going to trip over a virtual rock, sprain your virtual ankle, and get eaten by a virtual monster. In Aion, you're gonna pay for the soul sickness anyway, right? I just feel it is a little restrictive in that regard. I don't like to be discouraged from doing those things, and it's feels a little like a penalty.

Speaking of zones, there are two types: Fly and No Fly zones. Now, in a no-fly zone you can glide off of mountains and hills and jump cliffs... you just can't properly bust out your wings and take off. The reasoning behind this is because there is not a strong enough presence of aether in the area. But it kind of makes sense since you're still learning your ropes, and mastering new skills.

Flying
I have to admit, when I first got my wings, and got into a fly zone, I felt a little ripped off at the one minute flight timer, and the two minutes cooldown when you use up your flight time. I voiced this opinion on the betaboards, and instead of being flamed, I was reminded that this is, after all, the beginning stages of the game, and duration, speed, and style of wings improve as you play the game. This did comfort me, thanks guys. :)

Gathering
But I still have a gripe about flying. And that is harvesting in mid-air. I'd love to see the timer paused when gathering. I've attached a screenshot of my assassin getting some aether. Let me start off by explaining that when you have something to gather, the node generally has three hits. (you can harvest it up to 3 times before it despawns.) Note the Pass/Fail system used in gathering. At low levels, you have a higher chance to fail. It also seems to take a long time. While it gets better with time and higher skill, it sure is a pain in the ass! Maybe this is another case of growing pains, but it sucked to find an aether node, fly up to it, get 2 hits off of it, glide down because you're fly timer is out, and then wait 2 minutes before you can finish harvesting that node. Am I greedy? No, but I might be a little obsessive compulsive. I like to call it 'thorough'. Keeping a straight face here.

Okay, so I've mentioned a bunch of stuff so far, but I'm no where near done.
Hmm, well actually I might be about half way....

More of my review later!
Please feel free to comment or email any questions or opinions :)

Aion: Closed Beta #4

NCSoft held their 4th closed beta event this weekend. It happened to be my first in game experience, and wow I have a lot to talk about! But I need a little bit of time to compose my thoughts, so for now I hope you all will enjoy some of the screenshots I took.

A lot of beta testers have made recommendations on tweaks to the North American market, myself included. Will they be heard? I'm sure. Will they be implemented? Probably nothing drastic, but here is a quote from Lani Blazier from MMORPG.com,

"Because the game was designed for a global audience, we haven't had to change much at all. Our biggest effort and the most obvious changes will be in the localization/culturalization of the game. We have a talented team of published fantasy writers who have spent an incredible amount of time reworking the lore and NPC dialogue so that the content is culturally relevant to the Western market. Gameplay and all core mechanics will remain the same."

Create a Free Slideshow

I will be following up with my thoughts, some game features that I'd like to talk about, and more stuff!
But it's late, and the daily grind is sucking me into it's vortex, so I should prepare myself for that..

Introducing Aion, for the Wowheads out there.

This is my first public blog.

Or maybe the more accurate description would be blog with a purpose. But maybe I should introduce myself first: I am a girl gamer in her mid-twenties whose mostly been playing the MMO World of Warcraft during the last few years. And even though this blog will focus on a different, new MMO, you guys deserve to know where I'm coming from, because my target audience comes from this game.

As you read this, we WoW gamers are twirling our thumbs waiting for the 3.2 patch. At least, I am. My guild has been farming Yogg Saron for a while (server first, thank you), and while we are (were?) positioned to be the server-first kill of Algalon, summer has brutalized our ranks and left our raid... wait, what raid? OH. There is barely a raid left! Does this scenerio sound somewhat familiar? I'd like to know how many people are in the same situation. This blog is created for the Wow gamer who is looking for a little excitement in their MMO's again. As I said, this is my first blog, so if you have any questions, please feel free to ask them. Without further adieu, let me introduce you to Aion.


So... I'm a little burned out with my current game of choice. My Fix? A few months ago I saw a beautiful trailer for a game called Aion. This is a Korean MMO (brand new to the western world) brought to us by NCSoft (responsible for such games as Lineage, Lineage II, Guild Wars, and City of Heroes). Aion introduces us to the celestial wartorn world of Atriea, and when the game debuts on the North American market on September 22, 2009 you can jump in as an Elyos (an angelic looking breed) or an Asmodian (a demonic looking breed). Neither side is 'good' or 'evil'. In fact, they were once the same race; they have been radically evolved over thousands of years, adapting to the part of the planet where their ancestor's survived a great cataclysmic event.

I decided to go out on a limb and try for something exciting, so I pre-ordered the collector's edition from Amazon.com. One of the pre-order perks is access to the closed beta events (VIP, anyone?) along with a bunch of goodies:

All pre-orders come with the following:

• Access to Aion Beta features:
• Early head-start access to Aion live game [48 hours of powerleveling!]
  
• Access to Aion server and character pre-selection ["I dub thee Nemo.. er.. Neo.."]
  
• In-game items available after the game releases:
• The Ancient Ring of Earth (exclusive to Amazon.com)
• The Black Cloud Helmet (stat boost)
• The Lodas Amulet (XP boost)
• Beta Event access for the following dates:
• June 19-21 (explore the Elyos race and select zones)
• July 3-5 (explore the Asmodian race and select zones)
• July 17-20 (explore the Asmodian race and select zones)
• July 31-Aug. 3 (explore the Elyos race and select zones)
• August 14-17 (explore both races & the abyss)

This blog is going to be my experiment on how well I can grasp this new game, and to see if I can give you, the reader, a factual guide or answer to help you on your way in Aion. It helps if you are familiar with World of Warcraft, because I'll be referencing it a lot. For now, I invite you to check out the video (High Def, people!). I am beginning the Aion Closed Beta tomorrow. I'll see if I can put up some footage!