Aion announcement!

Aion recently announced that 4.0, the largest content expansion we have seen, will be landing in June. That leaves just a few short months before our world gets flipped upside down (In a good way, hopefully!). I'm working on a project right now, it's a tad different than my typical guides but still quite important in my opinion.

I'd like to put together a "Best of 3.0" presentation and I don't have a clue what it'll look like yet. All I do know is that I want to include things that were iconic and defining about the 3.0 era as I see 4.0 as a reinvention of Aion more than a content expansion due to the new classes and numerous core changes to the game's formula. Much will remain the same but so much will change so I find it important to at least try and capture some of the more wonderful moments of the game up until now. It'll likely be a multi-part project with perhaps a video and maybe a pseudo-scrapbook.

If this kind of thing piques your interest and you'd either like to contribute screenshots/video/ideas then by all means use the "Contact Us" function at the top of the page or leave a comment below!

-Fest

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Aion 3.0 Overview & AP

After trying several times to write about everything Aion's 3.0 update contains I realized that I was generating what I could only describe as a small book. So I decided to divide it up into a series of "guides" and general information posts discussing the various aspects of 3.0 and how to go about them. Some of these posts may be small tid-bits on quests I found or secrets discovered.

This first post will be on the new ways to gain AP in 3.0 that weren't previously available. The first thing I'd like to mention is the new Tiamaranta's Heart fort sieges and how awesome these sieges are if you participate in them. These forts go vulnerable three times a day and are a great way to assist both yourself and your faction in the AP department.

How these sieges help you: From all of the sieges I've attended thus far I believe the lowest amount of AP I've gained from dps'ing the fort boss was about 2.9k. This makes the paltry 800-1200 AP you gain from Gelk/Ing forts seem irrelevant considering it takes significantly less time to do the new TH sieges.

Typically both Asmodians and Elyos take two forts each and should a player participate in both forts during a vulnerability the total AP gain could be close to 6k. If you siege all three vulnerabilities you're talking 18k AP a day just from 20-30 minute sieges. Supplement this with frequent T-Dredges and PvP daily quests and you've got a rather large chunk of AP coming in every day.

How these sieges help your faction: The TH fortresses operate in a similar way as the Gelk/Ing forts, if your faction owns two or more forts a portal will open up. This portal will take you to Tiamaranta's Eye, a map that contains several daily quests, both PvE and PvP, that assist players in their AP gaining process.

This map also contains AP chests, like the ones found in Esoterrace, that come in varying sizes and may be opened by keys of the corresponding level. This is a fantastic way for people to gain AP since it is like having access to a 24-hour Esoterrace with PvP and a distinct lack of soul crushing-ness.

There is also a nice world boss in the Eye that spawns at weird times (on certain days), Governor Sunayaka. This big ol' dragon drops eternal grade weapons and accessories (Hairpin +?) at a high rate. These are some of the best weapons 3.0 has to offer and are on par with the Vasharti weapons from Rentus Base. Protip: This boss takes significantly less time than an instance and potentially spawns multiple times in any given spawn day. <- Great option for gearing up.

Unfortunately many players (On Tiamat-Asmo) don't take advantage of this zone and have displayed a minimal interest in fort sieges and the Eye's goodies.

That's all on this for now, more to come soon!

-Fest (Tiamat - Assassin)

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Lineage 2 Rebooted: Goddess of Destruction

Me and a couple friends decided to leave Aion to give Lineage 2 (L2) a shot since they turned it into a free to play and overhauled a lot of features to try and make it a competitor with other newer MMOs. However, L2 is not a new game by any means and this update doesn't change that as much as I had hoped. That being said, I know I had pretty high expectations for the update and since I have yet to reach the level cap (far from it) I can't exactly pass judgment on it but from what I've seen so far it's essentially the same game with just a few tweaks and added content. I'll talk about what I liked and what I thought they really needed to improve and didn't.

Starting with the negative!

Things I think needed improving that got completely/partially ignored:

1. The User Interface (UI)

2. I WANT TO JUMP.

3. Combat is still very much point, click, win, at this point (As I get more skills this will lessen)

4. Movement remains clunky and obstacles cannot be jumped over

5.Graphics are still "meh" but that's not a big deal to me

The User Interface: To me, having a shoddy UI is inexcusable for any game calling itself a current generation game or in L2's case, a game that can compete with current gen games. A good UI is not hard to accomplish by any means, games like Aion and WoW have fantastic UIs that are player friendly and don't require you to dig around through tons of boxes that are either unnecessary or just painfully difficult to access. This was probably the one thing I would have loved L2 to fix since it has a rather cluttered mess of a UI that might have been okay five years ago but that doesn't exactly fly. Now, you might say I'm too picky about this and people have no problem with it and I would tell you to eat a shoe if you've played L2 previously. You get used to it, no question about that, but when trying to appeal to a non-nostalgia market a good UI is critical and makes everything smoother for everyone playing. Maybe I've just played Aion for too long and it killed other MMOs for me :(

2. There is a reason most MMOs have a jump button. I mean when I am traipsing along through L2's absolutely MASSIVE world it gets a tad bit annoying when my character encounters a tiny rock and is like "WHAT IS THIS WALL I HAVE RUN INTO!?". Then I have to admit that the tiny rock is too much of an obstacle for my poor feet and walk around it shamefully. There is also this funny thing where some mobs will spawn ontop of rock formations, and they have bows...it then becomes a game of "find the spot" while you run around the rock looking for a way up onto it whilst being shot with arrows. You're still allowed to fall off things though, they couldn't take that away from me but you just sort of trip your way down hills and such. I want to vault myself off cliffs.

3. Fear my cursor. L2 still has its old combat system which was disappointing but I can't say I honestly expected them to rework their entire combat system since you could essentially label it Lineage 3 and people wouldn't find that to be outlandish. However it is still a point of annoyance for me since I like dynamic combat (they promised this by the by but we shall see if endgame delivers) and I especially like dynamic PvP and somehow I feel like I'm going to get blown straight to hell by mages and such since I can't move properly, which brings me to....

4. WHY DON'T MY FEET WORK?! After watching PvP videos of various L2 servers (Private and Retail) I still think they have made their PvP entirely dependent on planting your feet and getting into an immobile slugfest which I hold in the same regard as a rock em' sock em' robot battle. When I can't kite around my opponent and add that dimension of control it just encourages gear based PvP which I do not like (I put a bucket over my robot's head, you lose!).

5. Graphics. This is 50/50 for me because I actually kind of like how L2 looks but honestly when you make such a massive update I expect the graphics of this ancient game to be absolutely overhauled completely, totally, any other word that means something similar. Hell Aion even underwent a graphics upgrade about a year after it was launched (I like this a lot even though it is cosmetic it shows that the game is trying to stay current). That being said, I like the graphics they are definitely nostalgic from when I used to play avidly.

What I liked:

1. The world

2. The leveling curve

3. The gear curve

4. The player base

5. Quests are worth doing!

The world of L2. It is the single most massive world I have ever encountered in a game. If I walked from top to bottom it would take me hours. There is just so much terrain in this game and no loading screens to break the continuity which is just great. Despite every major town and grinding/quest area being packed full of people I was still able to find my own little personal leveling area simply due to the fact that the world they have made is big enough for everyone to do their own thing in. Since the update most of the main towns from before are now ransacked and lay in ruins and a lot of the previous leveling spots people used are far different than they were before the patch (I found this out the hard way).

Leveling! L2 was infamous for its debilitating leveling curve that either devoured your soul or made you quit the game. This has changed. Drastically. Essentially the first 20 levels take almost no time at all thanks to the new opening quest line and the rest of them are significantly lowered in terms of required exp which reduces the previously insane grind down to a pleasant playing experience.

I'm so shiny! The gear curve is better simply because they provide it for you. Since this patch was supposed to make L2 accessible to multiple playerbases and also involved a lot of people starting fresh on brand new servers they decided to implement a "Path of awakening" system that rewards you at various points along your leveling experience with weapons and armor suitable for your level. Some would complain that this makes things too easy and there is no doubt that it does make things incredibly easy compared to before but a lot of the playerbase consists of returning players who have experienced the grind for levels and gear before and don't exactly want to re-do that entire experience. It boils down to what will get them players and what will make them want to stay. The gear you receive is also limited though (The highest rank gear lasts 90 days) and they don't give you end game gear so this essentially levels the playing field on the way up to cap.

SO MANY PEOPLE *trampled*. I think it is absolutely hilarious that Aion can barely populate 2 servers and L2 had to open up a 4th server because all the others were running at capacity. You can be playing the best MMO ever but if you don't have a solid playerbase then you will undoubtedly fail, hard. Conversely, if you take an older game and give it an overwhelmingly huge amount of players you'll see a reinvigorated game. I firmly believe that the players make the game fun, MMOs are built around having that community, that competition.

Excuse me, I have to go save some maidens. Questing used to be a piece of crap before this patch. L2 was almost entirely a grind with very little quests since they few they did have were terrifyingly useless and time consuming. Now, we have quests that are simple and level you up quick, which is nice but the ease is offset by the sheer number of people trying to farm a limited number of mobs. I still found it easier to grind my way through the levels but once I get to a point where the quest areas are a bit less densely populated I'll return to questing.

Last thing I swear! It is incredibly important to remember that L2 is a free game now. How many free games sport all these things with such few flaws? L2 is a fantastic game and I love it to death, I am immensely happy to see life breathed back into it after such a long period of only having one server of bots/old players. Such a long post...kudos if you read it all.

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