It looks like Aion is moving forward and away from the pay to play model and moving into the free to play / micro transactions realm.  They are following Lineage II's "Truly Free" model that was quite popular.

In the past I was excited for this game (I even compared it to WoW.) and only ended up playing for about 5 months.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time playing the game the last time I played and to be honest I don't remember why I stopped playing. I plan to start playing again but this time I have a friend who wants to try it out with me.

The 3.0 patch is going live today and they are raising the level cap as well as adding all kinds of new stuff.  I plan on starting over with my friend and will report in when I see any differences.

In the red corner we have the defending Champion, tried and true, a fan favorite and even celebrities advertise for it! Woooorrrrrld of Warcraft! In the blue corner we have our challenger, winner of 2006's E3 MMORPG "Best Graphics", stated to have great character creation and recently awarded PAX's "Best MMO" Award! Aiiiiiiooonnnnn!

I stated last week that I have been opening myself up to games that I previously played and re-exploring them. This happened to open me back up to playing WoW. On the other hand I have been broadcasting Aion when ever I play it. One of the questions I get from every person that happens to walk in on my broadcast is "How is Aion Compared to WoW?".

This it seems is the perfect opportunity for me to compare the two since I have been playing both.

I've been playing WoW since beta and honestly when playing during that period there was a lot of controversy about WoW's graphics. I constantly heard complaint's about how cartoonish it was. Quickly those shackles were forgotten and the game has taken leaps and bounds making it "The Game to Beat".

WoW's selling points are constant content, great Arena and Battlegrounds PVP and the fact that if your in a room of about 20 people there's at least 2 other people in the room that have likely played the game as well. Some might not consider "Lots of people play it" as a selling point but most people will if all of their friends are playing it likely break down and give the game a go.

As far as how I rate World of Warcraft? Well I was not one of those people who thought the graphics were bad in WoW, in fact I was amazed on how smooth it was running on my old PC to even notice the graphics. I do have to say that I started as a night elf and like the way the graphics really match and flow with the game. I like the combat system in WoW and I like how Blizzard constantly tries to make the classes evenly powered. When the developers listen to its players and make those hard decisions to make changes, it really shows the quality of the people behind the game.

One of the major flaws in most games out today is the immense dialog that they will force you to read before you accept a quest. Seriously how many people do you talk to for the first time that tell you their life story in a day? Most real conversations when someone wants you to do something go like, "So you know Jacob? Yeah, he sent you over here? Great this is what I need." Not too hard to do but most games rely on the dialog to tell the story of the game. So its a tough decision for any game developer, I honestly think you should have to work for the person a couple times then after you've done some quest's your rewarded with the story as well as your money and experience. One of the really smart things that blizzard did do in this situation is separate out the quest requirements from the dialog, so bully for them.

I've been playing Aion since beta 3, when they started letting people who preordered jump into the game. As far as Aion's graphics, they are what pulled me into the game and have been getting constant praises. Aion's selling points are the Amazing graphics, Midair Combat, an Open world Faction PvP that affects hunting areas and an immersive storyline that puts your character at the forefront of the story. I find the cinematic scenes both help me better understand what needs to be done in the quest as well as pulls me into actually wanting to read the dialog.

I have not been to the PVP area yet in Aion but am excited to get into it. I can't sate enough how much I love the graphics in Aion often I'll just pan around with the mouse to look at the beautiful environments. Speaking of the environments, there are amazing little animations that your character does automatically when ever you are in certain area's. Standing on the beach? Your character will constantly brush themselves off. The hot Desert? Your character fans them self off. My favorite of them all though is when your character is in the water. Its really fun to watch them play with the water.

Combat is really intuitive and allows you some different combo's that really makes the game fun. You'll be doing the same combo's over and over but in what game do you not use the skills available to you over and over? At least these chain together and the best part is you don't need to set the chain of skills on your skill bar. When the next available chain skill is ready to be used you just press the skill that activated the chain again as it changes automatically to the next skill in the chain. I found healing to be a lot like WoW's healing. There's different types of heals, condition removals as well as heal over time spells.

I was talking about dialog earlier and Aion does not hold back on it. The problem I find is that I tend to skim through the dialog rather than read it. The problem with that though is when it comes to requirements for some quest's is if you skip through the dialog when you see the little quest requirements tracker you will sometimes be sitting there scratching your head wondering what you are looking for. Specially when they want you to find some sort of plant then then in the next quest tell you they want you to get some berries and your stuck looking for berries on a tree when they are in a barrel's on a little farm. As I said earlier though most of the main quest's have a little cinematic movie that tells you what to do making those really easy. My suggestion? Make it clearer in the quest tracker what you need to do. I know most of its my bad because I'm too lazy to read the text but I bet I'm not the only one.

Aion's flight system. The Dev's explain it as if your a baby bird and just learning how to fly and as you age you learn how to fly longer and faster. The best part is that they tell you which quest's to take to get more flight time and bonuses to your skills while flying right on the front page of the website.

My experience with flight is limited but I have died more than a few times by jumping and pressing space bar twice on accident and canceling my glide only to plunge to certain death. Aion limits where you can fly to only certain area's which makes sense but makes you feel a bit boxed in. On the other hand Aion does not limit you to where you can glide. Gliding is faster than running and really fun, often I find myself going to certain hunting areas just because there's a quick glide back to town. When you start flying you have a 1 minute time limit but as you level up you can do quest's for better wings etc. I would like to see in the future a whole system for strengthening your wings to increase flight time as well as speed.

Comparison between WoW and Aion:

Graphically Aion wins when it comes to the visual aspect between the two games.

In terms of music Aion stunned me with its beautiful music as well as the drum beats for when you go into combat.

I find I like to group up with people in Aion more so than with people in WoW. WoW groups are pretty much for instances it seems. One good thing going for both of the games is that you can choose to play the game solo and fight the regular mobs or you can group up and fight Elites. The good part is how both games separate the two making it easy to play solo if you want to.

I'd have to say that I am having a lot more fun playing Aion than I have ever had with playing WoW. There's just something about how the skills just chain together and flow together that makes the game really fun to play.

Who Win's? I'd have to say that as far as the games go I prefer Aion but in WoW I know so many people that play it that I'm likely to keep both subscriptions. Its really hard to compare such a tried and true game like WoW to Aion. WoW certainly has a lot more content but it's been out for quite a while so its hard to compare. Don't mistake my review for saying that WoW is not fun to play because I've have some good times with WoW. I especially like when you get to fight huge mobs.

Take this review as you will but for the time being, I'll be in both games kicking ass and taking names.

WoW:
I play as Seriene on the server Korgath.

Aion:
I play as Paulina on the server Triniel.

betI've been playing the beta for this game for about 3 weekends. I wanted to give you some of my first impressions of the game and how the game in general works.

One of the most prominent things about this game is how beautiful the environment graphics are. When you log into the game you are met with a scenic view that simply dwarfs any game I have ever played. I am running the game on a Laptop about 2-3 years old on medium graphics and the game runs great. So if you have a half way decent machine you can run the game really well. It seemed that the game sped up quite a bit the lower I set the graphics. So I see no reason to have to get a new PC just for this game. Though the game does scale up immensely as it is running on the same engine that Farcry was made on.

The Closer I got the more detail I would see.

Lets jump right in. The Planet is shaped sort of like an Apple Core where they live on the inside portion of the planet instead of the outside. The middle is where the Tower Of Eternity used to be, it's now the Abyss. The Asmodian are on the upper half of the planet where everything is Dark and the Elyos are on the bottom half where the sun is almost always shining. One of the most amazing things about the game is looking up into the sky. You look out and up and you see the other half of the world. Which is where the opposite faction of players are.

There are three different Factions in the game, the Elyos, Asmodian and Balaur. As a player you can only play 2 of the factions, the Elyos and the Asmodian.

The first character I created was an Elyos. You start out in this beautiful landscape away from the main city. You can just look around and the world seems alive and vibrant. The trees plants and animals are all high quality that just make you want to stare at them all day. From what I have heard the developers decided that instead of making the game all Lighting effects and bloom (Which slows down your PC) they just put in amazing artwork. One thing I did get to see was someone show off the amazing White wings while I was there. I started out as Elyos but I didn't get past the starter area before I made a Asmodian.

The Asmodian are very beautiful in a rustic sort of way. The characters that you create have instead of smoothed out hands and feet they have Talons, Claw's and a Tail. Don't be worried though, the character creation is the same for both factions although there are likely slight differences for each. The Asmodian starter area is a lot rougher edged than the Elyos side. I did however go much further with the Asmodian side of things. I worked my way up to level 22 almost 23. I was able to experience grouping with others, which I had good teams and bad teams. I'll go a bit more into the leveling and groups little later.

What I do want to get into is the scenery in the Asmodian area. What I was expecting was a really drab area which had no sunlight. I was wrong in this case but I do admit that the Asmodian side is a bit darker with more grey than anything. There's grass and some Drop dead gorgeous scenery which I did get some pictures of. There's a lot of ice in the upper half of the world as well as some crazy dark forest's. I do have to say that in both the upper and lower halves of the world, Lakes have to be the most beautiful and "Alive" parts of the world.


The Balaur are the 3rd Faction which throws the PVP for a loop while in the Abyss. The PVP style in this game is a lot like Alliance Battles in Guild wars. There are certain objectives that need to be taken to take control of the abyss. You are going to want to keep control of the abyss, because as you control the abyss you control the best area's for PVE with the best loot and leveling in the game.


Flight. At first flight seemed a bit aquard but after you set your keys up the way you want them (I prefer having E have my character fly up and C to make her fly down.) it was just another part of the game that made everything even more beautiful. Flight itself is not one of the most prominent things in the start of the game. Gliding on the other hand I use all the time and am extremely addicted to. There is a bit of a difference between the two. You can glide what seems a bit longer than how long you can fly. Gliding is where you run off a cliff hit the space bar while in mid air and your wings poof out as you drift around slowly (still faster than running) where it allows you to just take in the scenery. In the abyss you can fly almost infinitely. This brings up a concern of mine that I had which was answered. My concern was that flight was just going to be another way to travel. It turns out that there is in-flight combat as well as the ability to set your character up for either working better while in flight or on the ground. The Abyss is a vast open space where there is a ton of flight involved and its the major area for PVP so I bet you can guess which way I'm going for.

I died a horrible death for this picture.

I want to talk about combat a little bit and talk a little about each Class and their secondary classes.


The Warrior is a standard sword, shield and spear wielding type of character. The first sub group they split off into is The Gladiator. This class is more of a just all out damage dealing and stuns type of class. It can help by being able to tank when there's no Templar around but if you want a tank the Templar is the way to go.
The Templar is a tank through and though. On the PVE side I would take a Templar over a Gladiator any day. As for PVP I'm sure I'd like a Gladiator by my side instead though. Though I have not really experienced much PVP the Templar might be able to hold its own in PVP I just don't know yet.


The Scout is more of a mixed bag for the first 10 levels then you get to pick from two sub groups. The Assassin is one of those two groups. From what I've seen they have quick and precise damage with some nice stuns.

The other class that the Scout splits up into is The Ranger which I have not grouped up with. I did hear a lot of people saying that the Ranger seems under powered compared to something like an Assassin. Then again I talked to others who said that those people just don't know how to play a Ranger. It looked like there was a lot of running while you keep away from the monsters while soloing. Then again there was what seemed like a lot of pin-down effects which they had which could be good for keeping an enemy stationary. A Ranger I might take as a substitute for a Sorcerer because of the pin-down or slow down skills they have for a group.

The Mage is just what it sounds like a magic casting class. It splits up into The Sorcerer which seemed like a really useful class where it has a "sleep" skill which it gets early and is a good way to keep one mob asleep while the rest of the group kicks the butt of another. They also do massive amounts of damage which makes them all the more useful.

The Spiritmaster is the second half of the Mage duo. This class reminded me most of the Summoner from Final Fantasy games. They summon one of the 4 elements to help them in battle. Earth is supposed to be a form of a tank while the others all have their own uses. I did hear that having a spirit master can help a party with getting better loot. I had a chance to group with a Spiritmaster and I didn't really see much damage or anything that really made it stand out other than it having a pet that also did damage. I took a Spiritmaster instead of a Sorcerer and really missed the sleep skill from the Sorc. I say instead of bringing a gladiator I would prefer a Spiritmaster instead for a group.

The Priest is obviously a healing class which splits into the Cleric and the Chanter. The Chanter has from what I saw 3 buff's that apply to the whole team which raise important attributes for increasing damage output and the like. They can also be a very useful secondary healing class.

The Cleric on the other hand is what I played the most. You get two buff's with the Cleric and Chanter that increase health and defense. Most of the time while In a group I would spam my health over time spells as well as tossing a lesser heal here and there and a greater heal when there's massive damage being taken. Surprisingly mana seems pretty easy to keep up as at level 19 you get a skill that allows you to convert health into mana. You have to be careful because if you use it while in battle having low health can be a bad thing. The other thing I noticed is that Clerics can do some pretty good damage so helping with damage while healing can help quite a bit.

Did I mention Clerics have lightning?!

I did get to mess with the crafting part of the game a bit and from what I saw it was pretty expensive to do. Just like in WoW when your crafting rank gets to a certain point you have to increase the skills level. That in itself looked expensive and that's not counting the time it takes to gather the required items for crafting.

There's a couple options to sell loot. There's a Player store where you can pretty much just plop down and set prices for your items and sell them. There's also the option to sell them at an Auction house type of system. They both have a really easy interface where I didn't have any problems finding a weapon or armor at a low price with good stats. If you don't feel like using those systems you can just sell your loot to the vendor.

Leveling up was very easy and there was almost no grinding. The quest system is really easy to use as well as there's a share quest option. As you move forward while questing when you come back to turn them in there is always another quest to do. If there's a new area to explore there is likely a quest to move on to the next area at the end of that quest chain. There is also a couple map options. Pressing M opens a big map where it shows everything. Pressing N on the other hand brings up and overlaying map that shows everything but is transparent. Each quest comes with a couple of links where you can click them and they will tell you where you need to go by showing a purple X on the map which pops up instantly.

Here is the in game HUD.

There were some faults that I found with the game, one of which is there is no way to work off your death penalty. You HAVE to pay for it via a vendor which happens to be VERY expensive. This maybe different as you level up perhaps later you can have it removed by other players or some other option, but as of level 22 you have to pay the vendor to get back the experience lost. The other thing that happens a lot to me is while gliding if you accidentally hit the space bar twice you have to wait 10 seconds to glide or fly again which is more than enough time to go splat into the fast approaching ground.

Once you get past those two things you can't help but love the game. I do have to say that the game is not easy, but after you get to know whats what and how everything works you really don't want to stop playing.

Game Website: Aion