Aion

[Sersokhi]

http://www.aiononline.com/us/

Okay, so my husband has preordered this, and he gets to play every beta because of that. Here are some screenshots from his game play this past weekend. They had a level cap of 10. Which is what is required to obtain wings.They have two factions currently, Asmodians and Elyos. One is like a vampire like race. Thats the one in the screenshots. They have these red glowing eyes sometimes and look pretty badass. The other is humanish.

You don't have flying mounts. You get wings. Also, your faces and stuff are very customizable. You can change your height, width, build, features. Dave's "mage" is a huge guy, he made him as big as possible because he thought it was funny. You can also change facial features.

You can dye your armor in this game too. Dave made his vest purple. lol.

And actually, I'm not quite as interested yet in this. But then again, I have a lot put into WoW, to just up and leave it for something else. I may switch over eventually if this becomes a hit. There are things I'm not sold on yet. Like they don't have Gold, Silver, Copper. They have all one unit of money. So you end up with 10000000000000000 of something. It was something they had on FFXI (yeah I played it lol) and I hated it.

The ui reminds me a lot of Everquest. Which is probably why hubs likes it. He was an EQ hard addict for a couple years lol.

As a Spirit Master (mage) you get to summon elementals, and they grow as you level. So this is like their first form. It's a floating piece of magma. lol.

They also Dance and it's pretty funny sometimes. I believe as you go through the game you can buy other dances too.

[NathansMum]

It looks really similar to Perfect World Int'l.  I played it before my husband convinced me to play WoW. 

I've been looking for a sci-fi mmo.  If I leave WoW, it'll be for Star Wars The Old Republic.

Cool SS's:)

 

 

[bkbecca]

Hmm..... and I thought that WoW had some bad dances.... LOL

[Sersokhi]

hahaha yeah they are weird. And the asmodian /cheer, he pulls out a lolly pop. Ta-da!! And Elyos pull out pom poms.

[MommyAnnaBanana]

O wow this looks pretty bad ass.  I am going to go preorder it next time I am out and about.  I cannot wait to try the game out.

I was looking at the official site and it looks like the classes are a lot like WoW.  That works for me, I loved playing a priest and pally. 

Has your husband had a chance to PvP at all?  I have always been on PvE servers on WoW and am a little nervous about leveling a healer in a PvP setting.

[Sersokhi]

Ah I dont think he has. He hasn't said anything about it. And the beta was only from 1-10 this past weekend. Apparently you need a group to go pvp.

Quoting MommyAnnaBanana:

O wow this looks pretty bad ass.  I am going to go preorder it next time I am out and about.  I cannot wait to try the game out.

I was looking at the official site and it looks like the classes are a lot like WoW.  That works for me, I loved playing a priest and pally. 

Has your husband had a chance to PvP at all?  I have always been on PvE servers on WoW and am a little nervous about leveling a healer in a PvP setting.

[MommyAnnaBanana]

I wanted to tell you (Sers) that I tried the beta this weekend.  I only got my toon to level 10 for the wings.  The game is pretty cool.  A little clunky with the combat but visually beautiful.  I am totally going to play this in September.  I rolled a priest (of course) and had a friend come with me from WoW.  He rolled a Warrior.  Tank/ healer combo for the PvE win.  I think I am going to roll a dps priest for the real game though.  I wanna PvP!

[sugaredempathy]

I'm definitely trying this out and so are two of my friends and my husband. :D

[Kattxbrat]

My hubby and I might try out this game, hopefully can get our two other friends we play WoW with who are also a couple. Only thing that is making us skeptical to try Aion out is we heard its going to be just a major grinding feast like FFXI was and painfully drags it out. Last game we had tried to take a little break from WoW was Age of Conan, and that was a major let-down. Hope to hear more positive reviews in the near future before it comes out in the U.S.

[Sersokhi]

It has quests too like WoW. Hubs does the beta. I dont think it's as MUCH questing, I mean there is a lot of grind too.

[Zeli]

I really enjoyed the bete weekend! My guildies and I have been keeping in contact despite the fact that most of us are done with WAR and waiting on SWTOR. We really needed something to fill the gap and Aion is not only perfectly timed, but actually interests enough of us to start an Aion chapter of the guild.  Some of us have been gaming together for about 6 years now, so it's really hard to let those friendships go.

I'm only level 14, so obviously we're not sure how end-game pans out, but so far we like the more challenging PvE. It seems like, instead of gathering 20 of something, the game has me gather 5 but because the fights are more difficult, it's about the same amount of time as any other MMO quest but I get into situations where I really have to think about what abilities to use. The details in the world are fantastic. When you interact with a merchant, your character and the merchant actually look like they're talking to each other. There's alot to discover too. One of my guildies found a merchant that sells additional emotes. I was running around a shallow pool and noticed the fish swiming around my legs, and my character started to brush the water around with her hands. In the desertlike areas, you see the waves of heat coming off the ground and your character will wipe their brow and fan themselves. Not that all that is crucial to gameplay, but it does add an amazing amount of emersion into the world. The character creation is fantastic. Usually I make the same character over and over and just use different classes since I usually only like one model best, but in this game, I have created 5 characters and they all look extremely different and I love them all. Although I haven't seen anything really innovative, the combination of ideas they've used really works. My husband says it's a great mix of newer ideas and some old-school MMO techniques that recently released US MMOs have gotten away from. The one feature I've never seen in an MMO I've played is Express mail. For a substantial charge, you can send an in-game mail, with an item, express mail and the recipient gets a notification that they have mail. When they click on it, an NPC delivery critter comes up to your character and hands you your mail item. It's awesome! One of my guildies said he'd buy the game just to show support for an MMO with that idea in it alone. So while there are lots of challenging parts, they've mixed in some wonderful helpful features into it too.

If anyone is looking for a casual and understanding-of-real-life guild, we're adults only and we're using some forum space here: ATARAXIA. We don't want to be a big guild, but that's never really been a danger. Most people want guilds that are trying to rule the world. We're just happy to have fun in it.