August 17th, 2009 -- Posted in World of Warcraft |
by Dave Taylor
This September MMO stalwart NCsoft is set to launch its latest MMO in the West, for which read the USA and Europe. Aion has already enjoyed a successful launch in its native Korea and China. It is a high fantasy MMO, and therefore can’t help but get compared to the ultra-successful World of Warcraft, but does it stand a chance against that behemoth?
While Aion may never see the heights of success that World of Warcraft has achieved – the retained Eastern flavour may put some blinkered gamers off – there is a middle ground of success for MMOs that seems to get ignored by pundits. All Aion needs is enough gamers to generate the monthly revenue to make it profitable and by extension to ensure that enough gamers are in the MMO world so that it has a convincing and engrossing social and gameplay environment. Aion does have enough new gameplay ideas that it should attract an big enough audience for this.
Comparing Aion with World of Warcraft is tempting because it is easy as they are both fantasy MMOs, but the backstory to Aion is very different. It draws upon legends and mythology from around the world, although most heavily from Korea. The whole game world then both looks and feels different enough from World of Warcraft for gamers to feel they are experiencing something new.
It’s not just the graphics and story that are a little bit different though, Aion has some new gameplay ideas. The main one that people will focus on is flight: at level 10 your character gains their wings, so the action turns into a 3D experience with some quests requiring you to fly around, and with some options for combat in flight. How fun it is to hover above the target out of their reach and blast them. There is a but, of course, which is that within the main game area, flight time is limited, for the obvious reason of ensuring it doesn’t make you invincible. It does add to the flavour of the game, and the PvP area does allow free flight, so it’s used enough to ensure you’re not frustrated by the lack of flying.
When you start Aion and create your character, you’d be forgiven for thinking there aren’t many class choices. There’s only four: Scout, Fighter, Priest and Mage. This is actually a strength of Aion. You can choose the basic class you like and then play 10 levels while you get a feel for the game and how you like to play it. At level 10 you can then choose a sub-class that best suits your style: for example, your Priest may like straight healing best, or prefer to do more buffing, and can select a sub-class based on this.
Level 20 introduces another way to customise your character – Stigma Stones. Instead of having the abilities of your character fully defined by your class, you can use Stigma Stones to allow your character to do something that the class doesn’t normally permit. For example, Cloth Armour too lightweight for your melee loving Mage? Not to worry, a Stigma Stone will allow you to wear metal armour. This way you can create a set of bespoke skills that mean your character is actually quite different from someone else’s playing the same class.
It’s not just the big gameplay additions that will warm you to Aion either. It’s little touches that let you know this is a well rounded MMO, like the semi-transparent map that makes it easy to navigate, the built-in Locate feature that makes following quests easier, the Private Store option to allow you to set yourself up as a vendor.
If there were to be a complaint about Aion, it’s that despite the extensive localisation, some people may still find the graphics non-conventional. The Talking Weasels might put some people off. It’s also a shame that NCsoft weren’t prepared to open the UI up to third party customisation and plug-ins, which is one of the big USPs for World of Warcraft. But these are minor points in what is looking like a well crafted and polished MMO.
Aion is due to be released in September 2009 and is a PC only MMO. It will be a monthly-subscription based MMO.
October 4th, 2008 -- Posted in World of Warcraft |
You’ve seen them on blogs, message boards, and people selling ebooks about it. They all say the same thing – “…How to make a billions of gold using my guide”. Ya right! I can tell you right now, that 99% of these people and their guides are frauds.You may have fallen prey to these “…make a million gold” ebooks and guides. Me too! I’ve bought so many of these so called guides that I can’t even recall how many. I don’t know why. I tend to think that these guys know what they’re talking about, and I was sold by these marketing schemes time and time again, even after being burnt by another!! Finally, after so many disappointments, I got FED UP. I decided to get to the bottom of this fascination we all have with the gold making guides, and ?nd out if there really were any LEGITIMATE guides out there for making gold.
I literally contacted the author of every gold making guide I could ?nd. Posing as a reviewer (which I am), I managed to convince the authors that I was seriously interested in purchasing their guide(s). But first I wanted to contact some of the people they listed on their site as “Satisfied Customers”, and as well as get a small portion of the guide itself to test it for review, and to make sure that those people are REALLY satisfied. This was tricky because it took some time to get replies back (if at all). However, some ACTUALLY gave me a full copy in hopes that with my knowledge of the “competitors” guides, I could trade them ideas. Well, I was disgusted with 99% of what I found. First off, once it was established I wasn’t some scammer, none of the “Satisfied Customers” letters were legit. Not surprising since this was an old ploy used by many website advertisers. However, there were quite a few that WERE legit, but they were old letters. Some were sent in prior BC! I managed to get a reply back from two dozen of the 96 emails (not counting fake and no longer existing emails). Many of the authors of the guide I spoke too (lots were just 16yrs old to 19yrs old) actually boasted about how many people they could get to buy their useless guides. I repeatedly found:
* Guides that have not been updated since Burning Crusade (i.e. Burning Crusade is not even covered in the guides)
* The links to their support site and other graphics or video links have either errors, or produce a 404 error.
* Some go as far as to boldly make you click on another link for the REAL secret, which in some of the guides, cost more money!
* no real email support – and the ones that do, can only vaguely answer you, usually with responses like “… really? thats never happened to me. check the forums to see if anyone else ran into that”
I quickly realized that these so-called Gold Making Guides were totally useless. And the authors knew it, yet they were laughing all the way to the bank! Needless to say, I didn’t respond when authors would ask, how was it, or the ones who let me use half the guide and wanted to know if I would like to purchase the other half. Even when they emailed me asking how is the review coming along, did I not give them the satisfaction of a response. Surprisingly, while sifting through all of the scam guides, I was actually able to locate a couple of individuals that actually had legitimate guides.
The authors were every day people like you and me that found a way to make extra gold easily and without some strange grinding method or scamming players with dumb tricks (these methods were used heavily in a lot of guides I read). The guides were impressive and well written (not some lame pdf file that the kids wrote with), with a good amount of quality information on how to crank out a few 1,000gp while still maintaing an enjoyable gaming enviroment. I even chatted with a few of their customers (wouldn’t you know, all the emails were legit, so I only had to read about a dozen) through emails, and they veri?ed that they were making a large sum of gold, just like the guides said and some even went so far as to say that the authors were under cutting themselves because with those techniques, some were making incredible amounts. It was like I found a few diamonds in the rough.
They are all legitimate authors, and professional, and answer your emails in a timely manner, which is to be expected for any legitimate author who are dedicated to helping you make gold (or level if you have a leveling guide). Very Friendly! Anyway, if you do decide you are interested in the guide, I put a link to it on my site.
Well, my search for legitimate Gold Making Guide has come to an end. I have to say I was thoroughly disappointed with most of what I found, and I strongly advise that you do not take chances buying ANY of the guides, other than maybe the one listed below! Whatever you do, happy leveling, and good luck with the Lich King.
Author: Richard Scorpio
