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!)

We interrupt this broadcast ...

Allow me to give you a small disctraction while I finish nail the rest of my review into a readable entry for this blog. Tim Burton and Johnny Depp? Bound to be awesome.

Later Edit: As some of you know, the San Diego Comic-Con is going on right now, and our NA Aion team is out there promoting our (hee hee, yeah, i said it..) game! Check out this interview, hot off the press by Producer Knox.

see what i did there? I nearly called him Professor Knox!

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!