I recently purchased Aion the latest and greatest mmo to hit the market, will it unseat World of Warcraft as the number one game on the net ?
I read all the hype online saw the pretty packaging the Ncsoft logo and debated if I really wanted to shell out fifty bucks for another Warcraft knockoff, knowing that Ncsoft also produced Lineage,Guild Wars, and City of Heroes had me almost convinced but the price tag was still looming large this game would sell alot better at a more reasonable price of say 39.99 or so.

In the end my curiosity got the best of me and I bit the bullet, it must have been the wings there gorgeous you have to admit, to bad you don’t get them until level ten, and come on shouldn’t they be customizable I mean this game has one of the best character creation systems I’ve seen and yet you get these one size fits all wings and flight is limited to only certain areas in the game world as is your flight time although you can gain flight skills and use potions and other things to increase it.

So I guess I’m halfway satisfied with the wings, gameplay is almost identical to Warcraft just enough differences to be able to call it something else there is a nice little twist that allows you to chain moves which I thought was cool this can also be done in Warcraft but you have to take the time to create macros to do it.

Objects and textures in the game seem a little flat to me compared to World of Warcraft and the mobs seem to be grouped together a little to tightly, they seem to be easy to run away from and will not chase you very far.

While this may be good from a leveling point of view it detracts from the feeling of immersion in the game remember Everquest when mobs would chase you through an entire zone, I use to hate that just goes to show there’s no pleasing gamers.

On the postive side the artwork itself is spectacular and a lot less cartoonish than Warcraft and I expect the objects and textures will improve by there first expansion pack.

I’d like to comment on endgame play but since I’ve only been playing for about two weeks my level twenty character isn’t likely to see endgame for awhile, however a dungeon or two would be nice more work seems to be needed in that area in my opinion.

All and all if your getting burnt out on Warcraft and looking for something new Aion might be the answer.

Is it a Warcraft killer ?

No not now anyway, but I think it’s here to stay and may be just the ticket while your waiting on the new World of Warcraft expansion.