A Little on Aion
Aion came from completely off my radar to right in front of my face. Previously, I had heard very little about it but my first impression was to just shrug it off as another crappy Asian MMO - this time with angel wings. After reading some of the buzz on the Something Awful and Gamers with Jobs forums, I gave the game another look.
The storyline premise seems pretty interesting and apparently the game has an epic storyline with character cutscenes like Guild Wars. That aspect right there pulled Rynala and myself in immediately. The end game consists of massive groups of players (hundreds upon hundreds) participating in a PvPvE (player faction vs player faction vs npc faction) in keep and city sieges.
Another big aspect of the game is flight. You will spend a good amount of time just using your wings to fly and engaged in aerial combat.
The game was released in Korea last year and had a Chinese beta earlier this year. The US beta had initial testing last weekend and will continue testing next weekend. From everything I have read, the game plays flawlessly even when there are a hundred or more characters on the screen fighting. How they can pull this off in a game with such beautiful graphics and games like WoW and WAR cannot, I may never know.
Either way, I preordered the game this week from Gamestop and picked up two beta keys so Rynala and I can start trying it together. The Goons have had been talking a lot about the game on the forums and a lot of people are getting excited for it. If there is a large end game presence of the Goons after release, this game could end up being even more fun. I look forward to that.
Also, I may or may not have two addition beta keys coming my way. If I do, I will give them away here.
Spoiled By WoW
After being out of WoW for almost a month, I realize now how spoiled I had become by the game. While there were a lot of spoiling in-game conveniences, that is not what I am talking about as many games do in-game just as well if not better. What I am speaking of is the access to information out of the game.
Things like WoWHead, Thottbot, WoWDB, WoWWiki, Elitist Jerks and even the official forums have completely spoiled me. Due to the millions upon millions of people playing the game, there is more information than you could ever need. It never takes too long to find out what you need to know if you have a question.
Still not able to find what you need for that quest? Checking on WoWHead probably shows fifty comments of people on any little aspect of the quest.
Wonder what gear or build is best for your class? The official forums and Elitist Jerks are going to be filled with threads and posts by people who have crunched the numbers and can tell you which avenue is best.
This ease of information is not available for most other games. There have been multiple times in Lord of the Rings Online or Runes of Magic that I have been frustrated due to not being able to find answers to questions. People in game do not know, there is nothing on the forums and the wikis on the games are incomplete.
I think the game with the most complete out-of-game info is Guild Wars. The two wikis for that game are amazing resources filled with maps, mission walkthroughs, and quest information.
While many people may blast the WoW community, at least having that many people makes getting information easier.
Understanding Microtransactions
In the past, I have not been a fan of microtransactions. And while I am still not a fan of content that is exclusive to microtransactions or double dipping with subscriptions and microtransactions, I have come to a peace with the concept overall. This has mainly happened due to Runes of Magic.
Runes of Magic has a giant item shop where you can buy a multitude of items that are a nice convenience. This is the kind of implementation I like. If you do not like microtransactions, you could accomplish anything you wanted in the game without spending a cent. The items within the cash shop are mostly things such as potions to increase your experience gain for an hour, potions to refund your training points (sort of like WoW talent points), mounts, unique vanity outfits, and other items like this.
Furthermore, you do not buy the items directly with cash. You go on their website and buy "diamonds" and then use the diamonds in the store to buy items. It is a similar to XBox live currency.
Two of the aspects of the diamond system I like the most is that you can gift items to other people and you can sell diamonds on the auction house for gold. This benefits diamond buyers and those that play for free. For a diamond buyer like me, I can basically buy gold through a legitimate in-game method and for people that play for free, if they are good at making gold, they can buy diamonds and have access to cash shop goods.
I like this system. It allows me to play when I want to rather than feeling like I have to play the game because I am tied in with a monthly subscription. As it stands, I could see myself spending $15-$30 a month on Runes of Magic between diamonds for myself and Rynala.
Ixobelle recently talked about microtransactions and "buyer anxiety" when it comes to making a ton of micropurchases instead of having an "invisible" monthly payment. I do not think that buyer anxiety has ever been my problem with microtransactions and free to play games. It has always been something more like Syncaine actually talks about in a blog post he just wrote up today. Free to play MMOs have a terrible habit of giving people who play microtransactions a terrible advantage.
The person playing for free will not be able to compete when the paying players can buy gear and weapons that are incredibly better than anything else available in game. Free Realms sells level 1 swords that are better than anything a level 20 blacksmith can craft. In Runes of Magic, it is limited to items of convenience so in the end the free player will be on almost equal ground as the paying player.
I think that the microtransaction model could pick up greatly in the west so long as it kept with a business model of limiting the microtransaction items to only items of convenience, not blocking off certain classes or content as only obtainable via microtranactions, and not trying to double dip with both microtransactions and subscriptions.