The Aion Booth at Gamescom - Friday

Friday, 21 August 2009

Overall Impressions:
I wasn't sure what to expect from Gamescom in Germany this past weekend. For starters, I never thought a gamers convention was somewhere I would ever find myself heading to, but after spending three days straight in the "mosh pits" of the Aion and Razer booths I can honestly say I wouldn't have missed it for the world. The vibe at the convention was simply electric. People were buzzing around with new levels of excitement they had forgotten they had. Excitement comes to children so easily, but to see adults running around with grins stretched across their faces was just priceless.

I arrived with Possum on Thursday evening, where we headed to our hotel and prepared for an early onslaught the following day. The next day we found the Friday crowds were busy, but there was enough space to move easily so we were able to do a sweep of all four of the entertainment halls without too much delay. We stumbled upon the Blizzard booth and left very quickly to avoid the overwhelming smell. It was actually quite shocking, being that it was still early morning and already queue's of people around the Blizzard booth smelled like day old rubbish and foul body odour. There also seeemed to be a distinct increase in average physical "size" of the people in the Blizzard hall itself on Friday, which in some cases I actually found rather revolting.

We were pleasantly surprised when we found the NCSoft booth right at the entrance to the next hall we entered. In my opinion they had secured the best spot in the entire convention. It was very well ventilated and you didn't have to queue to try out one of the many Aion game stations they had available.

By far the biggest difference I noticed when entering the Aion booth was the vibe of the people gathered there. People were friendly, helpful and obviously happy to be there. Within minutes of arriving someone was already offering for me to take over their station and try the game. The first thing I noticed was that the Aion version being show cased was version 1.5 with premade level 50 characters, so I had a quick look around to see what was different.

Trying the Game:
I didn't want to hog the station, but I did notice the following things different in the 1.5 version they were show casing:

• There is an option you can tick to enable free looking on the left mouse button.
• There are 16 characters available for character names.
• No spaces are allowed in character names.
• We noticed quite a few enemy names had changed.
• There is a much larger number of preset character options, including a large number of westernised looking faces.
• There are now hotkey options that allow you to target the individual selections marked by your party leader.

In regards to the free looking on the left mouse button, this did create a slight issue with the use of 3D flight control. Previously in the beta events I had been taking advantage of the "hold both mouse buttons down" technique to get full 3D flight control. Now, if you enable free looking on the left mouse button you can no longer obtain 3D flight control from holding both mouse buttons simultaneously. This means you'll need to choose which is more important for your playstyle. Also, the free looking on the left button is linked to the "Disable Click to Move" option. If you untick "Disable Click to Move" you can no longer tick to enable free looking on the left mouse button.

The other great thing about the NCSoft game stations was that each of them was setup with a Razer Naga mouse, which hasn't been officially released yet, so it was a real treat to be able to put it through it's paces. After using this mouse for only ten minutes or so, I was hooked. Razer are calling it "imba" and this couldn't be a more accurate description. The panel of twelve buttons at your thumb, and an extra two for you index finger, make this mouse the bleeding edge of gaming gear.

The thumb keys aren't too small and the rows have telltale ridges on them so you can mentally navigate the buttons without needing to look down at them. I have long slender fingers, so I found that I would probably only use the first two rows comfortably with my thumb, but with a bit of practice I can see myself being able to use all twelve.

The only strange thing I found about the NCSoft gaming stations was that none of them had Gameguard enabled. I suppose it was just more convenient for them not to have to worry about Gameguard during the convention. I wondered if enabling Gameguard would have interfered with the functionality of the Razer Naga mouse, in which case it would make sense to disable it until any issues are resolved.

The Friday Mosh-Pit:
Sometime around Friday lunchtime we decided to join the "mosh pit" at the Aion both (that's the area directly in front of the stage) to see if we could get our hands on some of the free swag being thrown into the audience. The atmosphere in the mosh pit was excellent and the entertainer for the NCSoft booth kept the crowd at the peak of excitement with shouting games, songs, and giveaways.

Possum and I are both very tall (him being 6' 6" and me being 6' 1") so between us we were able to catch 9 t-shirts, 3 lanyards, 6 bags, 2 card maps, 5 badges and 1 headset without too much trouble. That said though, we kept one of each colour t-shirt for ourselves and gave away the remaining ones to the smaller children we saw trapped in the crowd who had no chance of getting swag for themselves.

I Defeated Amboss!
Possum and I made friends in the crowd with a German girl called Karla who was very helpful in translating some of the stage activity. I was grateful for meeting Karla because at some point in the early afternoon they had one of the "Defeat Amboss" challenges where a guy was called up on stage to beat Amboss at a 1 minute origami challenge to win himself a free game key. The rules of the challenge were that he could select someone from the audience to do the challenge for him if he didn't know how to do origami. Karla translated this to me and I told her I could do origami.

The next thing I know Karla was shouting to the stage crew in German and I got pulled up on stage to do the challenge. I had to fold some green piece of paper into something fancy within one minute to beat Amboss. I made a Lotus Flower (the simplest thing I knew) and I managed to beat him! Amboss folded something that looked a bit like Captain Kirks chair (or possibly a frog we're not sure) but the crowd wasn't convinced of it's authenticity, so the cheers for my little lotus flower were much louder. They gave a standard edition of Aion to both the original contestant and to me for beating Amboss!

Interview with Brian & Lani:
At 3pm on Friday we were spoiled as Brian Knox (Xaen) took to the stage with Lani Blazier (Liv) to give a live interview. At this point I was still at the front of the crowd and was lucky enough to be able to ask Brian two questions, which was more than I expected. My first question was whether there are any plans to hire an Oceanic community manager. Brian's confirmed that there are no plans to do so in the short term (which I expected) but he went on to mention that they may be looking at hiring an additional person to take some of the pressure off Ayase.

My second question was to ask Brian if he could elaborate further about the Slayer System and what we can expect from it, which he then explained, including giving a flavour as to how rifting is expected to compliment the game.

I have to say that overall I'm impressed with how Brian and Lani conducted themselves on stage, particularly given that the vast majority of the audience were German and the interview was given in English with no live translation. The MC asked the audience if English was ok during the interview and the majority seemed happy with that, but still I'm sure it would have been daunting not knowing whether the audience were totally understanding what you were saying or not. Kudos to them both for successfully keeping the attention of the crowd. I think the combination of Lani's personality and Brian's sense of humour made for an enjoyable interview.

Dinner and Bed:
After a night out on Friday to experience some authentic German hospitality and cuisine at the Fr?h am Dom, we stuffed ourselves full of Oxtail Soup, Wiener Schnitzel and Brauhauswurst then headed back to the hotel for some well earned rest before another hardcore day at gamescom.

Pictures
Check out a few of the pictures I took here, including some rather nice ones of Brian, Lani and Ayase.