Aion Shaping Up For US Launch

One of the most promising MMORPGs in development these days is NCSoft's Aion, a fantasy-based offering built on CryEngine. It makes heavy use of flight as a gameplay mechanic, allowing aerial combat and easy travel around the visually stunning game world. There are four basic classes — Warrior, Priest, Mage, and Scout — each of which have two subclasses. For example, Warriors can be tank-like Templars, or berserker-like Gladiators, while Mages can turn into a scholarly Sorcerer or command the elements as a Spiritmaster. Early previews of Aion almost universally comment on how polished the game seems — this is partly due to the fact that it has been up and running since November in South Korea. "Being stable, scalable, reliable and fuss-free is far from a given in MMOs, but Aion is all those things, and can already stand alongside the genre's usability kings, EVE Online and World of Warcraft. Its expansive, zone-free open-world environments look terrific and run smoothly on a wide variety of systems. It just works." Since the game is already in a relatively complete state, NCSoft has been running closed beta "events," where a portion of the game is opened for testing. MMOGamer has a write-up from the latest such event. Aion is due out in September.

Comments

Re:Game is unplayable by all inelligent users

[Tei]

I have AION, and none of these problems.

Also, Botting is a social problem, not a tecnical one, so sould be stoped by Game Masters, not by a rootkit program. So I think this gameguard is stupid. But again... I have AION, and nothing has stoped to w|

Re:back in my day...

[Em Emalb]

You win.

I concede.

The day is yours, Trebec.

Re:Alternate Universe?

[vertinox]

I stare at a spreadsheet all day. Then I go home, boot up EVE and stare at a spreadsheet.

(In his best melodramatic voice)

Spreadsheets in SPAAAAAAAAAAACE!

Re:Aion.

[brkello]

Eve and WoW are not even in the same category. Putting them together like that is probably causing kittens to explode somewhere.