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

Game is unplayable by all inelligent users

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the presence of a rootkit that makes SecuRom look like unicorn dander and faery farts, I'll pass, thanks.

Re:Game is unplayable by all inelligent users

[Selfbain]

This is what he's referring to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameGuard

After reading that, there's no way I'd install Aion.

Re:Game is unplayable by all inelligent users

[mail2345]

*Looks at the wikipedia entry*:
Hides the process, monitors the memory for stuff, blocks calls to Direct X and the Windows API, places hooks into dlls , sometimes breaks in Win7, breaks Google Chrome, SpeedFan, Eclispe, various drivers, Steam, anti-rootkits(but that was expected). Oh, and a security problem to top it all off.
The bright side is that Aion works on Win7.
And I expected something this bad to come from EA first.

Alternate Universe?

[Tyler Eaves]

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.

Re:Alternate Universe?

[cthulu_mt]

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

Due to it's DRM I literally can't play.

[harl]

In some issues Windows XP users may have problems with GameGuard due to the fact that the same "Windows Product Key" is installed on two computers and on the same router.

Both my machines have the same product key. Both are 100% fully legal. Both are on the same router.

I am doing nothing wrong yet their DRM will prevent me from playing the game.