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NCsoft established itself as a giant among MMORPG developers with the Lineage series, which remains one of the most popular games in the Asian market. North America and Europe have proven to be a little more challenging for them, despite the relative success of Guild Wars and City of Heroes. Aion is their next big offering, and it's already doing well in Korea. They've taken a great deal of care to localize it for other audiences before it arrives on Western shores September 22.
These are my first impressions of the game based on playing the North American beta test.
Aion Lore in Brief
The Elyos and the Asmodians were once one people living in Atreia under the protection of the god Aion. Aion created the Drakan to rule over Atreia, but in time they grew powerful enough to challenge the god himself. In response, Aion gave a select group of humans some of his own powers, including flight, and created a refuge around the Tower of Eternity to save the humans from annihilation. Unfortunately, after years of war, the humans were betrayed and the Tower of Eternity was shattered, splitting Atreia in two. Asmodia is the dark realm on top, and Elyos is on the bottom in the light. They are separated by the Abyss, where descendants of the Drakan can still be found.
Character Creation
Aion gives you an abundance of ways to tweak your look while creating your character. An array of sliders allow you to reshape various body parts, and the color of most features can be adjusted to suit your taste.
The game leans toward pretty characters, but it is possible to create a character that is on the ugly side.
Graphics and Interface
Employing the Crytek graphics engine, Aion is certainly not hard to look at, and it scales exceptionally well to older systems. Characters are elaborate and the world is lush and enticing to explore. In a typical Korean fashion, the artwork has an unmistakable anime/Final Fantasy influence to it, but they still strive for some semblance of realism, placing it at the other end of the spectrum from World of Warcraft's cartoony art style. Another trademark Korean visual effect is the flash of light that goes with every hit, even when you're swinging an ordinary axe.
Although the early zones are rather linear, you're given considerable freedom of movement, with the exception of swimming. Traveling into water that is too deep is a sure way to die.
It would be folly for Aion to stray far from widely-used MMORPG interface conventions, so you'll find the most common controls intact when you jump into the game. With just a few clicks in the options panel, the UI becomes almost identical to that of WoW or EQ2. A couple of omissions do stand out, however. The current beta has no way to reverse the mouse axis for the camera, which remains a fairly common practice in North America, but they've promised to add the option before release. Left mouse button camera control has also gone missing, perhaps because by default, the left mouse button is used for click-to-move. I'd wager that this will also be added to the game at a later date. There is no support for WoW-like addons, but there is talk about introducing something similar after release.
Combat
Aside from being able to fight while flying, Aion's combat system is not a dramatic departure from the norm. Drag your skills onto a shortcut bar, select a target, and start clicking icons or hitting hotkeys. You will notice that, unlike WoW or EQ, you automatically run into striking range of a target after attacking and follow them around as long as the attack continues.
They've added a little depth with combination skills, which are essentially skills that are unlocked by other skills on the fly. Although it's nothing revolutionary, it breaks the usual combat skill rotation up a bit. You also have Lineage-style Power Shards, which are consumables that can be toggled on each hit, at your disposal.
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