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!)

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: 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..