Atrayente's PAX '08 Impression

[Atrayente]

Yes PAX is over. It is a 3 day event, Fri - Sun.


My AION Impressions:

My gameplay consisted of a couple trips to the booth and a 2pm-4pm free play session in the main hall for free play LANing.

Booth:

- Impressions:
Keep in mind all the characters at the booth were lvl 12 pre made characters, so my impressions are not anywhere close to end game classes. But I tried just about all of them. They were a mix of Asmodian and Elyos. The first I tried out was a Chanter. It was actually quite fun, I can't remember the buffs exactly, but there were some to increase max health and I think healing. It was a pretty fun class between having some heals and getting to use a bow staff to fight. One of the primary damage skills was a spell. I didn't really get to try Gladiator as much as I just watched most people play that class. It is very fast paced with little regards to efficiency, you never really run out of mana/stamina whatever they use for it. Spiritualist, well I had a few minutes, I never really figured out what to do with the pet other than just letting it run itself. I had the fire elemental. The spells were pretty cool, but very similar to that of a mage because it was only 2 lvls into spiritualist. Overall between that and Mage I was very impressed though. I had a lot of fun with the two casters. Spells were pretty cool with some good aoes even at that point and the slowing spell was nice. The combo off of that knocked the enemy back too. The fire spells had its own separate combo with a separate cool down then that of the ice. Templar I didn't try much at the booth, but you'll see it in my free play. One thing interesting was that one of the devs did confirm it had a healing spell later. Ranger I tried for a few minutes, pretty fun. It virtually split itself between bow and melee. It's not like WoW where you can just hit the mob with a sword instantaneously because you hit that skill. You have physically switch from bow to melee. The skills were very good for both, again as opposed to the piece of **** game I just referenced, WoW, you don't necessarily feel superbly powerful with your bow. Very good in both... again only two lvls into ranger though. Assassin was fun. The hide as you see in videos is very flashy and cool. Instead of just beginning to walk slow it actually has somewhat of a cast animation. They were very powerful, a lot like the mage except for behind the back skills were pretty vital. Clerics were pretty strong on heals, some of the damage spells were neat with the lightening bolts, but honestly I didn't put in too much time with them. They do get hit harder than a gladiator it seemed despite armor type, but that was very low lvl in my free play. I went into the character creations and it is very very in depth. One of the few games where you can actually make your character look considerably different than the face type, it really is possible to make everyone different in the game. Tons of color options for skin hair etc.

Oh I got a few snap bracelets two shirts and my preview/beta sign-up .

Options - I looked into some of the different features like graphics options etc. There were 3 different bloom effects although 1 and 3 weren't too much different. It kind of just blurs everything lol. There were tons of extra rows for adding skills. I noticed you could turn on and off your players helmet. You could also turn on and off your guild cape, but there was also the option of having it under your armor.

- Questions:
I chatted with quite a few different developers, some of which you'd recognize in interviews. That is really the best part about PAX, not necessarily just getting to play the game, but getting to ask the questions while you play. Whether or not some of the info is out I'm just going to write most of what I asked and there responses.
~Stigma - Drops off of bosses, are BOE. Not all spells are available to get, but there are some. Possible uses would be for example, a Templar using a fire bolt to pull a mob. I got the sense that it is something they are excited about that helps it differentiate itself from other games, but it is also not something that makes or breaks your character. You're not going to get the best spells in game with a gladiator etc. They are basically comparable to that of talents in another game.
~ Flying - The meter lasts about a minute, but the cool down is not a global set timer. It slowly gains back. So basically, you can get back into flight very past and it is very important to the game. I had the impression they want it to be used a lot. Basically what I mean by slowly coming back is, say for example you fly extremely high, by the time you are just about to drop you may have enough charge to throw your wings back out and break the fall. If you fly where a mob cannot get you they sometimes just say forget it and run away, though you can stiill attack, but it doesn't make it too considerably an advantage.
~ Weather - unfortunately i didn't ask what weather they expected to have, but they did confirm it has no affects on spell potency. Though there are "resistances." In the sense that Fire v Fire monster is weak.
~ Housing - will come out with the next expansion
~ Positioning - he did say that where you are positioned relative to the enemy does have modifiers. For example back, front, and side etc. So it isn't necessarily a good idea to run circles around your enemy like some piece of **** *** game you may have heard of. Should be a little interesting in group+ pvp.
~ Release Date - After January. So seemingly earlier in 2009.

Sorry I don't really remember anything else that was significant that I asked. I asked to much stuff >_<

2 Hours of Free Play:
I started out with Elyos. Sorry I didn't mess at all with any character customization here, just wanted to play. I hit random a few times to something decent and that was it lol. I did notice that there was a tattoo selector, but there were none to choose from yet. I think I had a healer to begin with. I didn't play long before getting bored of that class really (a healer with no one to heal if you know what i mean). And besides that i wanted to try out some others. The beginning started out with a video that was black with a couple white feathers flying around and someone unknown to me was telling me to wake up. I get up and I'm kind of in a pretty generic newb area. There are these rabbid rabbit type things running around. I have to talk to some general then move onto the next guy and kill a few mobs. Then grab a few grain bags then move to the next town. I read that as far as enemy names the color of their names indicate their difficulty to you. Yellow is normal, orange is pretty tough etc. When you hover there is also a range finder, it will say how many meters they are from you.
Next I made a Scout. I was Asmodian this time. You start out with just one weapon. but can get duel wielding at around 4, 5, or 6 I cant' remember. It was pretty fun. The evasion skill that makes you dodge one attack in the next 5 was cool. As far as the opening video there is not much for Asmo. You wake up with two stupid little newb monsters running over and awaking you. Then the identical thing as Elyos as far as running around to talk to two people and kill a few mobs then going to the next town.
Lastly I made a Warrior, Elyos. I partied with a healer, so that made it interesting and fun. I tried out the party elements. As far as the mini map it sucks for party members. We couldn't find each other half the time once one of us disappeared off of one anothers screen. I didn't have any aggro skills to test that, but it seemed that when he ran away distance had some sort of effect. Warriors have a really sweet looking skill with their shield. Think I got it at lvl 3, but it increases defense and all that junk, but visually you hold up your shield and walk a little slower. So it is a very realistic animation. When you use a skill you come out, but it makes it interesting as far as blocking. To learn new skills you purchase a Skill Manual from your skill trainer. They were 160-300 yellow coins (whatever those are) and I could purchase 2 or 3 when I was lvl 3-4ish so its not too much of a problem. Movement seemed good it wasn't clunky or anything at all. Camera was just fine. Idle animations are amazing. I left my character unattended while i was talking to the dev. It happened to be raining so my character took out a huge leaf to use as an umbrella. Emotes are equally cool. There is one for /cheer and you litterally take out pom poms and cheer on... yes even the male characters do and that was scary O_O. Or /chair you'd take out a little stool to sit on. /drink would make you drink a flask of water etc. I guess that pretty much covers everything.

Combos - pretty fun, but I didn't necessarily like that the combo would automatically shift over on top of the skill you used to get it. IE you can just mash #1 constantly without even paying attention if you had the combo to get it. Even using spamming it on the next mob since it stays active. I'd have preferred to have to pay attention to the game and click it myself, but oh well not a huge deal. They are there and that is great in general.

Graphics - to be honest it definitely looked good, but I wasn't as impressed as I thought I'd be. They really could use an update with some of the geographical textures. I was look at a cliff of rock before I finished crossing the bridge and it looked like I was on low textures 800x800, but everything was definitely maxed. Besides that the art was gorgeous. The colors are superb. The combat animations are very exciting and entertaining with all the stuff you'd want for an action packed game. The character models were excellent. So overall pleased and honestly this game does not look hard at all to run on a PC.

Sound - The music was great. I've listened to all of the tracks offered online and I recognized some, but not others. Combat music was very good as well.

Overall Feel - I thought the game felt very clean, nearly bug free, ran well, sounded well, lots of minor details that were above and beyond. Combat was flashy fun and slightly different. I think you guys will love this game, I did.

[Chaos_Theory]

Infos overload. Thanks. Stigmas are like the Epic power pools in CoX it seems when it comes to skills anyway. What do the bracelets look like that you got?

Housing in the next patch.......?

[Atrayente]

They weren't bracelets for anything special with any code or anything. Just one of those fold-able plastic ones you slap onto your wrist. They were fake leather with the white AION logo on them, pretty decent I guess lol. No I dont think he was referring to housing that soon. He mentioned that they were still considering a few things like what kind of space the housing would take up where we are trying to play etc. But he said it'd probably be in the next expansion.

One thing I forgot to mention was I looked through some of the maps. The game seems pretty big and fun. It's nothing you guys haven't seen in screen shots, but that was pretty cool. I got to hover the fortresses and stuff. They showed if they were safe, who they were occupied by etc.

[AionLuver]

Yea, the housing in the next patch is a little disappointing

[ahlad012]

I got psyched when i heard that it will be in the next expansion. There hasnt been much talk about it, but id be a lot more into playing the game than houses when it comes out.

And when you said after January, that also got my hopes up since it sounds like it will be earlier in the year than i anticipated.

Kinda dissapointed how they are ditching the weather-effecting-spells thing though =(.

Not too worried about the graphics since that was only cbt2.

[justamemory]

nice! ty for sharing. after jan 09...oh well WAR will keep me bizzy :X

Yea, the housing in the next patch is a little disappointing

don't want everything all at once now!

[Atrayente]

I'd be happy to answer any questions you guys post, when I get back from work. Roughly 10 hours from now with driving/lunch/8hours of work. Cya

[dalin]

wow, fantastic summary Atrayente... thanks so much for taking the time to put this together!

[Omgwhathappened?]

Wow, nice information in here ^^ i wonder how do housing system will work?

[justamemory]

Originally Posted by Omgwhathappened?

Wow, nice information in here ^^ i wonder how do housing system will work?

dibs on top bunk

[Ariel]

lol
Eventualy you will see this in aion
Global Chat:Ariel: Looking for room mate, 50/50, I WILL NOT COOK FOR U LAZY *** WHOLES!

[Killer 842]

thanks for this ^^

[Fleiva]

I've read it all, just a little detail, at first, you use combos like that, but later ingame you will have to choose between different paths of combos (ive seen up to 3 or 4).

[Sokar]

*sigh* The combo system sounds *SO* disappointing to me........ I just have dreams of spamming a single button over and over and over and over again during raids and pvp >_> I sure hope they modify it and make it so that it's a little more interactive than "the next skill in the combo takes over the button, so you just press it over again"

I'm a sad lil panda now =(

-Sokar