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

A what?

[Hurricane78]

One of the most promising MMORPGs in development these days is NCSoft's Aion, a fantasy-based...

That's where I stopped reading TFS. Why does it always have to be fantasy?

I have the feeling, that religion, fantasy and being dumb go hand in hand somehow, and that this is, why there is so much fantasy stuff popping up in the last years.

Where are all the sci-fi MMOs? Are there really so few people who prefer things that could actually really happen or that a bit of make sense in the basic physical way?

I wish those games would have two views (think database views). One where you play in a sci-fi world, maybe others, and one for the retards, with fairies, magic and all. (There. I said it. It's retarded. Go ahead, mod me troll. It's still true, and your non-logical reaction proves it even more.) The analogies are so strong, it would probably pose no problem at all. ^^