• the epic grind: i can live with seven digit numbers required to level up if the “grind” is masked by doing quests that require you to kill x or bring y or deliver z to some NPC. questing is something i consider essential to any RPG and it should give you sufficient amounts of xp. lotro does it right: there are more than enough quests to go around and you will easily hit the level cap by doing quests only. aion however has a minimal amount of quests (around 5 quests per level) that in turn give you around 5% of the total xp required to level up. so to fill that 95% of your xp you need to grind: kill the same mobs over and over again for hours on end. not my idea of having a good time in an mmo.
• the free for all zergplay PvP: for a game that claims to focus on PvP you expect epic battles and that skill > numbers of players. well, another disappointment here. skill doesnt matter, the side that brings the higher levels/more numbers win. at lvl 25 you enter the abyss, the huge free for all PvP area and there is little protection for lvl 25 characters: they will get ganked/zerged/killed repeatedly by bored higher level characters. at least in WoW you had a chance to move to another area if you got ganked and corpsecamped somewhere.
• the ridiculous harsh death penalty: if you die, you have a permanent xp loss and suffer from soul sickness, which requires you to pay a rather hefty sum of ingame money to get rid off. by doing so, you get a certain percentage of your lost xp back. granted, you dont suffer from permanent xp loss if you die to another player in PvP. however, if you take damage from another player and get some mobs trained on you that kills you, you get permanent xp loss. its not exactly fun to blow 80% of your ingame money on soul healing bills on one single evening. (trust me, that can happen easily.)
• the flying combat scam: flying around and fighting sounds like fun, but in reality it isnt. in most areas you cannot fly and when you can fly, your flight time is limited to 2 minutes tops. so if you fight in the abyss chasing opponents and you run out of flight time and there is no place to land safely.. you plummet to your death. and guess what? yep, soul healer bill here i come.
• PvE instances with bosses who dont drop loot: imagine you do a PvE instance for 2 hours, you fight your way through thrash mobs and when you finally kill the endboss he drops… nothing. not even money or some vendor trash. now how fun is that? your effort of doing an instance should be rewarded in some form or another. having endbosses of PvE instances drop some loot only once a blue moon… outrageous.
• crafting is just a time and moneysink because the crafting process can fail and you can lose the materials you gathered. same goes for slotting runestones into your gear: if your armour piece has 4 slots and you managed to put 3 runestones in it… theres a chance that the attempt to slot a forth one can fail and hence destroy all of your runestones in the item.

i guess i could go on why i consider Aion yet another mmo fail. one thing is for sure that i wont fall to the hype of upcoming mmos again… WAR and Aion did in fact teach me a lesson.

the game itself is standard mmo fare, you get quests to kill stuff, bring items or the famous fed ex type where you have to talk to someone or deliver something to someone. combat feels smooth although there isn’t any skill queuing so you do end up smashing buttons. however, there is something very asian about combat: your in and out of combat health/mana regen sucks and you do end up sitting down and resting a lot. several quests have nice cutscenes and your campaign quest chain is really very well done and prompted me to say “wow” several times.

classes are pretty generic mmo as well: tank, dps, caster, healer. at level 10 you get to chose a sub job and can specialize. the first char i tried was a scout (dps) and at level 10 i had the choice of assassin (melee dps) or ranger (ranged dps). i went for ranger but only to discover that its not my cup of tea in Aion. naturally you have to kite the mobs you are killing but eventually you will end up being in melee range and having to melee them down. to do that, you need to switch weapons because you can only have either your bow or two melee weapons equipped. i found that bothersome and the fact you need to buy arrow and carry a nice stack with them around made the decision to dump the ranger easy.

next i tried a mage and although being very squishy its the typical nuker/glass canon. at level 10 you have the choice between sorcerer (nuker with CC) or spirit master (dots and a pet/summon) and i opted to go for sorcerer. i enjoy nuking and seeing those big numbers on your screen.

i also tried a priest but i am not level 10 yet, so the decision if i should go cleric (main healer) or chanter (support class with buffs and some healing) still has to be made. currently i am tempted to try chanter because a pure healing class is most likely a pain to level.

i think i wont try the tank class. templar is the sword and board main tank and i can’t see myself playing a tank in a mainly PvP game. gladiator sounds like a dps warrior with aoe capabilities but again, i don’t think i want to be a melee class in Aion.

open beta still runs until sunday.