Slashdot Mirror
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.
Very beautiful? You'd think a game powered by CryEngine would produce scenes far more beautiful than what the video shows. WoW doesn't even lose to those graphics, IMHO.
Since when is EVE a shining example of a MMO UI? EVO works (for some people) very much *despite* the cluttered, poorly laid out, typographically flawed UI.
TODO: Something witty here...
Blah, I mean can we at least pretend to come up with some original ideas?
I guess original ideas don't make money these days.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
There is nothing unique or wonderful about this game, it's "yet another rehash" of any of the dozen other games out there.
I'm not saying its a bad game, it just offers nothing worthwhile other than a change of scenery and backstory.
I think they need to start developing evolving worlds and quit developing games. Quests should be a one time occurrence.
Goblins start raiding supply caravans from one city to the next. In the city over there is a shortage of x, y, z now... players can be recruited to make up that difference via tradeskills. In the mean time in the first city the merchants are losing merchandise and are interested in getting any of it that is salvageable back, players can do that, so can mercenary npcs. They go kill off a large portion of the goblins, recover the goods, but the goods are already replaced in the second city so the price on goods goes way down, and now there are excessive mercenaries in the city with nothing to do so they over throw the local government/become drunken louts in the bars/etc so on and so forth. Make every person, place, and thing in the world respond to the events around it... a player murders a npc or pc, they should suffer the consequences if they get caught, warrants go out on their head, make a death system that makes some sense (legends of kesmai had a cool one compared to any current mmo), make a rebirth and reincarnation system (ala batmud)... there is so much more mmo's could be doing and they seem to all get stuck in the mud with "lets be a clone of wow (or previously eq) that won't take 1% of their population." It's completely absurd at this point.
Innovate, not duplicate.
There is room for polish, a lot of room, but to make it effective you need to be at least reasonably accessible and you need to be innovative in at least a few areas. EVE does a lot of things right (but I'm not interested in space sims), and I'm looking forward to World of Darkness just for that reason... hopefully they don't screw the pooch.
#2 seems like it would be a good idea for a WoW addon.
That's why I'd kill for another well done first person MMO like EQ was (originally.) It was a pleasure to go to a new dungeon and they weren't afraid to make small passages because the camera would have a hard time seeing... I don't care if you couldn't see behind you all the time, a flick of the mouse and you could look around.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
except for Eve, they all either tanked or were cancelled before release, because nobody wants to play stupid sci-fi games.
Holy crap, that shit should be illegal.
I was going to try out Exteel and now I am glad I didn't. Slashvertisement Fail.
-- 77IM
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
You won't be missed. Thanks. :D
It's not DRM -- it's anti-cheating software. So if you are running some sort of scripting or bot program, this thing scans your memory, identifies that program, and kills it. It periodically downloads new identifications for new types of cheat programs.
I understand their goals (nobody likes cheaters), but I don't see how this differs in substance from giving full control of your computer over to INCA Internet. I guess that's no different than handing over the keys to Microsoft, and to Nod32 or AVG or whoever does your antivirus -- except that an operating system and antivirus software are supposed to benefit you, while this thing...?
-- 77IM
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
Aka the developer that releases like 2 new and utterly generic MMOs every single year? Forgive me for not getting too excited.
You've got to be shitting me. Surely you mean World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online, instead.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a bigger fan of EVE than World of Warcraft. But the EVE GUI has been shit since inception. And Customer UI suggestions go completely ignored for literally years , and that's just one thread that was alive for years with no sign of improvement.
EVE is wonderfully good at many things (nowhere else will you hear the term "pvp shakes"), and I've been in battles of over 1000 players with the game completely playable, but the UI?! That's their biggest failing.
Question everything
*sniff*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apeiron_(cosmology)
Also, building characters is a blast, esp the females.
i'd love to see a truly revolutionary MRPG. But it seems unlikely now that the formula for a cash machine is so clear.
1) Draw in the obsessive by pushing back the upper limits, having one more thing to do
2) Draw in the insecure by having a power curve that can make some characters many times more powerful than others.
3) Make the game reward time in game more than skill/understanding.
4) Allow player trade to encourage gold farming, twinking and mom's buying WoW gold for their spoiled brats.
PlanetSide is still my game of choice for most of these reasons.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Because Punkbuster is still under your control, mostly. At least if you're not completely clueless. You can turn it off and on as you please (of course, programs using it require it).
This thing installs itself not unlike the classic rootkit and getting rid of it is near impossible, not even talking about turning the processes off and on (or finding out whether or not they're running in the first place).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
*yawn* back to waiting for the KOTOR MMO, which I know WILL be innovative (Bioware usually doesn't let us down).