Oyayu

With the Warhammer Online open beta coming to a close, it’s time for me to make some decisions about what I will be following through into the live release.

My initial thoughts, before I played beta, had me leaning towards a Disciple of Khain, however upon playing the class I decided that I didn’t really get on very well with its mechanics.

Going with the healer scheme, I tried out Shaman. Shaman is an interesting class to play, but again I was not sure about its mechanics. I found it quite annoying to play, but this may well have been because I tried Shaman out as a level 31 premade character in closed beta. Perhaps come live I will eventually get around to trying it again from scratch.

This left me with Zealot to play in terms of healing. Zealot I enjoyed right off the bat, the instant cast heals, HoTs, DoTs, and shields were very apealing to me - and would prove most useful on the RvR battlefields which is where I imagine I will end up spending a good deal of my time.

With my main class decided on, I started considering some alts. I’m quite prone to making alts, as the various level 70s (3) and 60s (4) in WoW prove. Now, a DPS class of some kind would be the obvious choice, so I spent some time going through them.

After briefly trying out each DPS class, I think I have narrowed the choice down to either Witch Elf or Sorceress. Obviously ranged DPS is going to have the mass advantage in RvR from what I have seen so far, so Sorceress is the slightly more apealling career choice here. I am however, going to follow Schozie’s advice of “Why not make both?”

See you on the battlefields!

With the Penny Arcade Expo 2008 (PAX) done and dusted, it’s time to trawl through the various blog posts and articles that have come out of it.

One in particular that caught my eye was the two Aion videos that have been doing the rounds. Now, Aion is an MMO that took my interest late last year when there was very limited information about regarding it, apart from some old gameplay videos on YouTube and a few tidbits of information. Having checked out the website again recently I can see that a lot more information is now available.

The thing that is especially striking about Aion is its visuals, there is no denying that Aion is a very, very beautiful game. I’ve included a few short clips from the videos that have been released below so you can get a rough idea what I’m talking about.

The game itself is set across 3 factions, two of which are playable, Asmodian and Elyos are the two playable factions, while Balaur is the common enemy. So you effectively end up with an RvRvR situation, at least this is my understanding.

You start off with 4 basic classes, which each spout 2 further advanced classes, much like a toned down version of what is available in another NCsoft title, Tabula Rasa. More on NCsoft later though. I don’t know if you’re forced to choose an advancement on your basic class, but I would assume so, giving you a total of 8 classes to choose from, which is enough.

I could make a few enemies by saying that NCsoft haven’t produced a title worth playing. Lineage and it’s followup were both mindless grind fests in my eyes, Tabula Rasa was a (frankly) terrible game which lacked in virtually all departments, City of Heroes / Villains and Guild Wars are the only two titles remotely worth experimenting with I believe, however I wouldn’t rate either of these games as serious MMO titles.

So, to me at least, NCsoft have a history of producing pretty games with lacking gameplay… Will Aion just be the next step in this? Or have they finally learnt their lesson and produced a game which is both welcoming to new players, but also including the depth and engagement which is required to hold players? I believe the term is “easy to pick up, difficult to master” - which to me is what MMOs are all about.

With varying sources on release dates for Aion, and Beta not yet underway - nor even a rough date for when Beta will be starting, it could be some time before we get to find out for ourselves.