I Am Back Writing!

So, after being away for a bit, I am now back and writing!  Some big, big news while I was away.  Open Beta has now been confirmed as being:

Open Beta: September 6 (Sunday) – 13 (Sunday)

Server and Character pre-selection: September 18 (Friday)

Head Start: September 20  (Sunday)

Launch: September 22 (Tuesday)

In addition, links for the 1.5 client have been released and can be found below:

Full Client
CBT-OBT Torrent

Looks like the time we have all been waiting for is getting close!  I am excited to see all that 1.5 has to offer!  I am going to close this post with an awesome video from Exfylina.  This one is filmed in one of the 1.5 dungeons and features a really cool mounted boss at the end!  Enjoy!

Sorry No Posts Lately!

Been on a short vacation.  Be back full-time on Monday!

Open Beta Dates!

From Keen and Graev’s forum.

Lots of threads popping up on forums with important dates.  The source of this info comes from pre-order info being sent to people and other websites.

Open Beta: September 4 (Friday)

Server and Character pre-selection: September 15 (Tuesday)

Head Start: September 20  (Sunday)

Launch: September 22 (Tuesday) (duh)

Full post located here!!

U.I. Mods? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ U.I. Mods!

A recent interview with Jongchan Jee, lead developer of the upcoming MMO Aion, brought up the possibility of U.I. mods coming into the game at some point in the near future and is causing an uproar in the Aion community.  Arguments raging across the Aion Source forums show that the Aion community is massively divided on the possible inclusion of mods, with many arguing that this addition will cause more problems than it’s worth.
World of Warcraft was, perhaps, the first MMO to make U.I. mods a near necessity for success.  Mods like Deadly Boss Mods, Proximo and Quest Helper not only make the game easier to play but are a requirement to get into many guilds in the game.  However, detractors of these mods argue that the mods “dumb-down” the game and simplify encounters and PvP that should rely on pure player skill, rather than mods, to determine the victor.

Many UI mods make for a beautiful user interface!

So, how do I feel about this?  I am torn.  On one hand, I love mods like WAR’s Squared mod, which truly makes healing easier and allows you to concentrate less on the U.I. and more on actually playing the game.  I am also in favor of any mods that will allow the U.I. to be moved around, bars resized or made invisible and similar.  I tend to be a minimalist when it comes to the user interface, the less clutter the better and mods certainly help to achieve that.

On the other hand, I really am not a fan of mods like the aforementioned Deadly Boss Mods, as I think it takes the fun and much of the skill out of playing the game.  Same goes for PvP mods, such as Proximo.  In fact, I tend to dislike all mods that can be made requirements to get into a guild or PvP group.  I know most guilds require Deadly Boss Mods or an equivalent and, to me, that’s just ridiculous.

Some, however, are just BAD...

Furthermore, I think mods like DPS meters and the like actually make most player worse at the game instead of better.  I can think of countless times when a group mate was so concerned with the DPS meters that he would pull aggro or miss a CC.  In contributes to false elitism as well, as guilds choose who goes on raids by who does the most DPS on the DPS meters.  Having raided in WoW and killed Ragnaros, had BWL on farm, AQ40 locked down and much of Naxx before Burning Crusades came out, I can tell you that high DPS is not the only requirement for successful raiding by a DPS character.

To sum up, I am in favor of mods IF they are used to customize the look of the U.I. and that’s it.  I do not want to see mods become a requirement to raid, PvP or group, nor do I want to see them dumb down the game with visible boss warnings telling me when to use and ability or when to get out of line of sight.  Let me move around the U.I., resize bars and I am a happy camper.  Any more than that and Aion will start to go down the road WoW has and I don’t like it.

List of Extendable Weapons

After yesterday’s video post of extendable weapons, I found a nice list of them on Keen’s forums.  Below you can find the entire list reproduced.

Extendable Daggers

Daggers, Level 35:

Dagger of Chaos

Kromede’s Silver Decorated Knife

White Flame Dagger

Daggers, Level 44:

Alukina’s Silver Decorated Knife

Daggers, Level 50:

Black Heart’s Dagger

Item 100200677 (No Official Name, Until English Translation)

Item 100200678 (No official name until English translation)

More after the break!

Video Sunday: Extendable Weapon Edition!

Alright, something a bit different this Sunday.  Going to showcase some videos that show off the extendable weapons in Aion.  What are extendable weapons you ask?  Watch these videos and find out!!

First up, Assassin level 35 extendable dagger:

Next, level 45 Assassin!

Level 35 Gladiator Poleaxe:

Level 35 One-Handed Sword:

Level 35 Extendable Mace:

Level 35 Extendable Mace:

Level 45 Extendable Staff:

No, screens tonight as I have not had time to compile any.  Off work tomorrow so I will catch up then!

Looks Like Open Beta Will Be 1.5!

From an interview with Brian Knox and Liv it looks like Open Beta will be using the 1.5 client!  This is great news, as it will give potential Aion players the latest build with as little grind as possible.  Full transcript below and thanks to Illi of the Aion Source forums for the transcription!

Interview:

Q: Will there be any expansions?
A: Yes. * It’s an MMORPG, this game is gonna go on for a long time and you’re going to see lots more content to come. We’re already launching with three major updates since Korea launch, so definitely expect more and more updates.

Q: When and how is the preselection going to work, and maybe you can describe a bit what preselection is?
A: So preselection is for everybody that preordered the product and there’ll be actual * create their characters, pick their servers and basically get everything in order so day 1 they can just, bam, hit start *

Q: What is in your opinion the coolest 1.5 feature? So as you guys know we’re launching with 1.5, what’s your favourite feature?
A: Ehm, I got two. Is that alright? So one is kinda the shugo ship that has all the pirate bosses(?) and it takes quite a long time I went through it, even cheating in it, it took me about an hour or so. It was kindof a *
Q: You cheated!?
A: A little bit. I gotta learn a little bit, so?
(From the audience, heard on the background: Booo!)
A: And then the stigma system enhancement, I really am kinda proud that we got it to the point where we wanted it to be because I know everybody at launch was, you know, kindof wanting a little bit more out of it and I think now we have a real way to diversify your class within your class and it’s really kinda where it should be now, so.

Q: Was there any aspects of preparing Aion for the Western market that went unexpectedly well or easy?
A: I * can tell we didn’t rehearse this. There hasn’t been all that many things are easy, I was happy that our biggest feedback from everybody was, they wanted to be able to rotate the camera with the left mouse button and it was one of those things, I talked to the developers and they was like ‘Okay’ and so it happened.
Q: * was a small feature for us to change but a huge thing for the players. Yeah, really important.

Q: When will patch 1.5 be available for download?
A: We’re working on that right now, we wanna make sure that we have the latest possible in terms of localization for all three languages, so that you don’t have to patch and patch again and so. We’re gonna be working with a lot of partners and working on getting it up on Bittorrent, so everybody can get it. It’s gonna be for all the betaplayers now about 4 to 5 Gigs, depending on your language, so to start patching up to 1.5.

Q: Is the ballancing between the classes ok? So that you can’t find an overpowered class during pvp.
A: I think that’s kindof one of those opinionated questions and whatever class you play tends to be the one that’s not overpowered and whoever kills you tends to be overpowered. But that said, I think every stage we balance more and more and we’re lucky because we have three updates that have helped * ironing out a lot of the kinks. No class is going to be balanced one to one with every single person, you know it’s a PvPvE, so it’s meant for large scale environment with lots and lots of people so there are some classes that are going to be better in support roles, some are going to be a little bit better in solo roles.
Q: And I guess a lot of it comes down to player skill, too.
A: Yes, definitely. There’s a lot of skill differentiators, like the positional movement system, just knowing your stats and how you create your character and your armour and your stigma system will give you a huge advantage. You could have the same set of tools in front of you but how you use them will make a big difference in the end.

Q: Are there any plans for interface modifications, so that everyone can create their own theme?
A: We’re actually looking into it. So it’s not dismissed yet, but eh, no promises right now.

Q: Right now we’re launching in English, French and German, will we be offering any other languages?
A: We’ve created Aion to be very scaleable in terms of languages, so it’s going to work very well with our launcher tool, you can select a language and we can easily patch languages, it doesn’t affect people who don’t need them. *

Q: How can people play Aion on a Mac?
A: I actually just bought a Mac. I’m really pushing for it, but eh, it does run perfectly fine in bootcamp, I ran it full settings on my * people will be * you sit down for an MMO, you tend to play it for a good amount of time, so booting(?) in a bootcamp isn’t all that bad of a deal.

Q: Is there any information about an alliance between legions?
A: Nothing at this time.

Q: Has a French community manager been chosen yet?
A: We’re still in the process of interviewing, so we wanna make sure we * is really important for that person to be able to take what the community says and make sure they get it right and that they don’t misunderstand so we can * developers and get the feedback in the game.

Q: Is there going to be a talent system to make classes capable of being different from one another?
A: I think I touched on that a little bit earlier with the stigma system so you’re really able to differentiate your class in that sense it’s a collectable item system as well, it’s easier for us to expand and grow that system.

Q: What exactly do the five preorder rings give and what is the difference between them?
A: So each of the preorder rings adds a small resist with each of the elements in the game and it also adds a visual effect. But it’s not an equippable ring, because when we were deciding on items, there’s been many times that I’ve gotten something in the beginning and later on it kinda became, you know, worthless and you * keeping it in the inventory is kindof a fake ring * it actually means you can always carry it around and always use it and will always be viable to you.

Q: Aion is known for its great customization, but what it really lacks is dyes. Where can players get new colours?
A: At the vendors in the town? ? And in our preorders.
A: Yeah, I was surprised by this question ’cause I’m like, there’s lots of dyes?

Q: How much freedom does the North American / Europe office have to make game changes?
A: A lot. We talk to developers every day and ??? the other day and * 1.5 is a combination of years of us giving feedback and input, it’s a lot like the closed beta but we had pre-alpha * you know, a lot of the features may be rolled out in Korea first, but that that’s from us * good idea that’s a good idea so they’re gonna implement it as well, it’s all the west * put them in their version as well

Q: This question was probably asked by every other person but, when is open beta?
A: We have an announcement today for open beta and *
Q: Announcement next week for open beta

NOTE: He didn’t say that open beta would be next week, it may still look like that from the cut up dialog above. The announcement will be made next week.

Next: audience questions

Q: Will there be a community manager position for the oceanic region? (reformulated, was too cut up)
A: Not at this time, we’ll have the English community manager, we’re looking to start hiring probably additional * as he may keel over if he tries to manage all English. If everything goes as planned and you know we really * and hopefully we’ll have, you know, 50 community managers out?

Next question was from someone asking about that in China beta, he read you can play only PvP and don’t have to play PvE, but he couldn’t choose, he thought he went to the Abyss. The question wasn’t quite clear due to really heavy sound cuts at that time and also the answer was rather difficult to follow.

Q: (With reference to DaOC) Will there be a third front in Aion?
A: Right now it is the three fronts of the Balour, Asmodians and Elyos, and that’s all that we have planned right now. * other features, it’s a growing game, it is a new IP and there’s lots of ways we can grow and a lot of it will be shaped by the communities * right now there’s not planned or announced.

Q: Will Aion get a housing system?
A: Kinda once again that goes back to that front, it’s like everybody, you know, we have lots of different features that we wanna implement and we want to make sure that when we do we do them right and we don’t just tag something on without any reason. If you give a house but there’s nothing to do within the house or no quest or items to collect and, you know, then you’ll just sit in an empty box all day like, and that’s not ? we wanna make sure that it’s fun and that there’s content to fill it so the housing system is definitely something we’re looking into

Q: More about rifting: which is quite cool * (rest of the question was not understandable due to multiple sound cuts)
A: It’s the ability to go across to the other side through different quests and it’s actually portals that open in random locations on your side of the world and will port you to the other side and when * a lot of problems that I know are in closed beta there were some issues too and * so a lot of those issues have been addressed and – the previous updates, you know, there’s lots of debuffs that are happening, you’ll appear on the map * there’s also a limited amount of people that actually can go to the other side, as well as when you die you obviously go back to *

Q: *
A: Yes, once we get eh? we’ll go through our open beta, which we’ll announce next week, and then when the servers come on for the headstart, from then on it’ll be 24/7 from then on out. We’ve used these last closed beta events as a way that get the Aion name out there and you know the IP * a way to test our infrastructure and billing system and make sure that every time you guys hit it really hard in the beginning that we’re able to stand up to the load, * a lot of people have had trouble logging in in the first 30 minutes so we’ve made sure that we set our infrastructure * place so we can start just * for launch, it’s been nice for us because we’ve been able to go up, you know, test something for three days, let people kinda have fun, go down, find out what went right, what went wrong, fix it and then bring it back up again. But once we’re live we’re live and it’s 24/7 and that means lots of night*

Q: There’s no more questions, thank you very much you guys, and thank you Brian!
A: Thank you everybody!

Source: Aion Source Forums

Mounts Coming To Aion!

Thanks to Liv and Twitvid, we were able to see a new interview video with Aion Lead Designer Yongchan Jee (nice mullet that guy has, btw!), in which he drops some interesting information.  On top of that list:

• As long as he is the designer the Balaur will never, ever be a playable faction.  From the answer, I think they have some tricks up their sleeves to make the Balaur more dynamic than they are currently.

Instancing should be a part of the game, not the whole purpose.

• They are currently looking at putting a couple of low-level (before 25) instances into the game.  This is nice, I liked low level instances in WoW and it really helped you learn how to play your character properly in a group situation.  At the same time, they need to be careful with instancing and not overdo it.  I don’t want an instance heavy world like WoW.  Give me open-world dungeons and I am happy.
• They are already designing housing for the game.  Sounds like both Legion and player housing.  They want to combine it with aspects of Aion, whatever that means?  Floating houses, maybe?

Kills Immersion

• They are currently looking at integrating social networking into the game, Twitter and such.  Not sure where I stand on this, on one hand it’s great to be able to contact friends easier in and out of game, but on the other hand it kills immersion.

A New Abyss?

• They are developing a new Abyss zone that is less spread out and more concentrated.  I am not entirely sure if this replaces the current Abyss or is in addition to it.  I hope, personally, that it is in addition.  Having Fortresses more concentrated is nice but so is having smaller fights and skirmishes.  Spreading out the Fortresses into a larger zone allows for this, in my opinion.

Perfect Aion Mount?

• Finally, they are adding mounts.  No other details but he cryptically states that they will be used for something other than transportation, since we already have wings for that.  Hmm, only thing I can think of is having them for movable Siege Weapons for Fortress fights.

So, lots of nice information in this video.  I am really interested in what we see coming up in the future for Aion.  Also seems that they are adding content at a feverish pace.

The video can be seen right here!

Straight From the WTF Department…

I have been meaning to write about this for awhile now and just now decided to sit down and do it.  NCSoft really confused me with this, everything about Aion has been beautiful and well done, from the character models, to the environment, to the character animations.  Everything I have seen from NCSoft, in regards to Aion, has been outstanding, except for this one thing.  What is this one thing you ask?  What Aion related, NCSoft sanctioned thing can make me ask what the f@#k??  Very simply, it’s this:

WTF IS THIS?!?!

This is hideous. Absolutely 100% unadulterated ugly.  It has no redeeming features that I can see.  Let’s take it piece by piece.

• First off, what color is her skin exactly?  The skin tone on her body looks is a sickly greyish tone.  She resembles Zombie Madonna more than an Asmodian.
  

  Madonna modeling for the Asmodian Figurine.

• Secondly, we have her facial skin tone, which is, amazingly, worse off than her body skin tone.  It’s not only that sickly grey but is also discolored.  As if she has a severe case of vitiligo, especially around the eyes.

• Her armor and weapons look horrible.  Too many colors that don’t blend well and all the armor is a flat color with no gloss.  This looks nothing like the gorgeous armor you get in end game Aion, hell it does not even look as nice as the armor my Gladiator had a level ONE, for God’s sakes!

• The wings are completely underwhelming.  They are not anywhere near the beauty or size of in-game wings, which dominate the silhouette of characters in-game.
  

  Now THESE are WINGS!

• Finally, and this is the worst for me, we have the hair.  The hair is horrible.  What developer okay’d this?  Everytime I see the hair on this figurine I believe the conversation between the developers went something like this:

Korean Developer 1: “Okay, we all know that Aion has been accused of looking to “Asian” by some people in the West, so we really need to come up with the most Western looking figurine that we can. Anyone have any suggestions on the hair?

Original model for the Asmodian female figurine.

KD2: Hmm, well I think we could really do well to model her after this: (holds up photo of Edward from Twilight)

KD1: Uhm, you do realize the figurine is going to be female, yes?

KD2: Yeah, so?

KD3: Idiot!  That’s a guy!

KD2: Are you sure about that?  Looks like a chick to me…

KD1: Any more suggestions?

KD3: I have the perfect one! She’s scary like an Asmodian, western and she IS a female! (holds up a picture of Joan Rivers)

Western. But possibly not human!

KD1: Western, yes.  Female, probably.  But I am not sure she’s human.  Come on you idiots!  Think of something that would truly identify her as Western!  We are running out of time here!!

KD4: I’ve got it!  I have the perfect hair style.  One look and you will be able to tell instantly that she is American!  This is the perfect American hair style, one that they will identify with immediately…

Group: Damn it!  What?!?!

KD4: Cornrows!  What haircut could possibly say American like CORNROWS!!!

Group: OMG!!  That’s PERFECT!!! How could we have not seen that

Still famous, after all these years!

before!  Those American’s love that cornrow haircut!  Look at this:

KD1: You’re right!  Bo Derek is still famous after all these years!  Those Americans love her!  It’s settled then, cornrows it is!  Great job everyone!

Yep.  That’s about how I imagine the conversation leading up to that decision.  The ultimate WTF?!?!

1.5 Impressions Here!! Get Your 1.5 Impressions!!!

A really nice article about Aion version 1.5 was put up Kotaku.com yesterday.  It gives us an idea of what 1.5 brings to the table and how NCSoft is handling content in the future.  Armor set bonuses, a tighter more integrated story, rested XP, tons more quests and even more character customization are all headed our way with 1.5, which coincidentally is the version Aion releases with in North America!  An excerpt:

Four of the 14 New Instances in Aion Version 1.5!

The one thing Knox doesn’t want to hear about Aion version 1.5 is the dreaded “G” word. Grind, in his opinion, is something that’s monotonous and Aion goes out of its way to never be that. It’s tough, he says, because the term “grind” has been blown out of proportion in the last five years of MMO history – and that’s a lot of time for his game to fight against. But he’s confident that his team has gone through the game enough to respond to criticism like “there’s nothing to do at level xx!” and prevent mid-level lulls.

A really fantastic read and you can find the rest of it right here!!