[Shanni]

Not going to be what most people think.
By: A Customer Date: Saturday, Jun 27, 2009
Let me start off by saying that I have played the Chinese Beta and Official release as well as the North American Beta.

China and the current beta run version 1.0. Europe and NA will get 1.5. Needless to say this means a lot of quests, dungeons and character customization through stigmas (which are basically like WoW's new talent spells without the filler talents).

I heard the hype, I was right there with it and I thought this game was it. After playing it from 1 to 50 that opinion was changed, however. The game is very smooth, it runs very well, has beautiful graphics and animations, as well as a very easy to use and clean HUD. Combat controls are also very easy to pickup and the combat is very fluid. Wings look cool and flying is very fun, and the main story quest chain is fairly interesting. That, however, is about where the good points end. Water kills you, period. If you can't stand up in it, you will die.

Swimming plays no part in the game so this is hardly as issue. Personally I find swimming quests draggy and tedious so I'm glad it's this way.

Also, flying is neat and all, but not when it is restricted to about 1/5 of the areas in the game, and you only have a 60 second to 2 minute fly time depending on what wings you have an what level you are.

Ok, the zone restriction is weird, but... complaining about limited flying time? Really? Would you really like and empty world where everyone just flies over, avoiding both NPC and enemy combat?

Leveling is very slow and very grindy. You can tell this was imported from an asian market. Almost every quest in the game is a go and kill, or a go and gather quest. There is never enough per level to get you to the next level anyway, after about level 20 you will be stuck grinding for the rest of the game. It starts out easy and fast with lots of quests, but quickly turns into the same old grind your character level, then grind your resource gathering, then grind your crafting type game as Lineage 2 and various other Asian based MMORPG titles

Fixed in later patches. We (as in western players) won't have the 1.0 version of the game live.

The game is extremely linear. You will be in the same exact areas from start to finish no matter which character you make, doing the same exact quests. It's like an RPG on rails, you have no opions of where to go to level, it's basically one area per level set, and one area only. Once you make one character and take it to max level, you will have seen the entire game. You won't even see new content if you reroll as the other race, much less just make a new class of the same race.

Personally I don't see this as a problem, but I understand why others might disagree. Even in WoW with tons of different zones I always chose the route I did before and was familiar with. That's just me *shrug*

Making it even worse is the fact that at level 25-30 everyone gets thrown into the Abyss, which is basically a giant Black Hole with lots of floaty rocks of resource nodes and mobs. Everyone, Elyos or Asmodian, is there from level 30-50 grinding and ganking or getting ganked. So basically there is half a game's worth of zones, which are the same zones for each race just with different textures (don't believe me? look at some side-by-side screenshots) and then at the halfway level mark everyone gets thrown into a giant void to kill, be killed, and farm resources. There is no such thing as PvP balance in this game, which is stupid considering it is supposed to be a PvP centric game. A few classes have the obvious advantage in every situation. If you are any other class and don't have a level advantage of at least 10, you will stand no chance. Certain classes can even take on groups of 5 or more other players, all 5-10 levels higher and still win. I'm not going to name these classes, in order to keep them from being abused any more than they already will be.

I don't even know what to say here, it seems... fake. I have heard the opinions of many high level players and I have never heard of anything of this sort. In fact, most agree that no matter what class you are you will most likely not survive 2 enemy players of the same level.

Classes in general are also very limited. You get a choice between basically 8 classes, and that is where the choices end.

I think Aion took the right approach with making 8 original classes rather than 24 washed up wanna-be different classes. It also makes the game more balanced.

Each class has a specific playstyle and this can't be changed. You unlock more skills to buy as you level, but every single person who plays that class gets the same exact skills. There are no feats, or talents, or attributes to spend to customize your character or make it unique. Every single Gladiator will be the exact same as every other Gladiator, the only difference between players is their gear, and depending on the gear that is a marginal difference at best.

Not true. Look up Stigmas, mana stones and god stones.

There is no endgame content. There are no instances, raids, guild cities, or citadel battles as of yet. They say they will add them, but I wouldn't count on that being any time soon. Basically the endgame content is grinding up your crafting level so you can have marginally better stats on your gloves than someone else, or farming lowbies in the Abyss for your PvP gear.

1.5 patch anyone?