Aion (Open Beta, Launch Day Info too!)

[Draegan]

I played on Aion Infinity yesterday and it was awesome.

If they had this experience rate for the retail version they might of been more successful.

1-10 is 2x
11-20 is 5x
21-30 is 10x
30-40 is 15x
40-50 is 20x

[Threash]

I played on Aion Infinity yesterday and it was awesome.

If they had this experience rate for the retail version they might of been more successful.

1-10 is 2x
11-20 is 5x
21-30 is 10x
30-40 is 15x
40-50 is 20x

What is Aion infinity?

[Draegan]

It's a private server.  It's actually Infinite Aion

http://infiniteaion.com/


edit:
I played a few Elyos toons yesterday.  Glad to 16 and a chanter to 12.  I'm going to roll Asmo tonight and see if I can make an Assassin.  I could never settle into a class with this game.

[Segoris]

I believe I'll try that out, how populated is that server?

[Draegan]

It's not crowded but the elyos newbie areas were packed.  This was all on sunday morning and afternoon too.

[Shatter]

I played on Aion Infinity yesterday and it was awesome.

If they had this experience rate for the retail version they might of been more successful.

1-10 is 2x
11-20 is 5x
21-30 is 10x
30-40 is 15x
40-50 is 20x

Ive also heard(and seen videos) that large scale raids that lag like a mofo in Aion do not on many of the private servers which makes you wonder why it hasnt been fixed yet? 

[Draegan]

I have no idea.  But I'm having fun here.

I played for about 20 minutes last night and leveled my assassin from 14-16 without trying.  I remember those being pain in the ass levels.

Then I said, "Hmm I want to play a cleric" and got one to level 14 in the few hours before I went to bed.

I know nothing about the population over 20 or how the pvp is etc.  I've been just making a bunch of low level toons.

[Pax]

What is the game like compared to retail, apart from the exp boost?
Judging from their website they are implementing features few steps at a time? Would suck to go into Dredgion and be confronted with a "sorry guys, we haven't added surkanas yet".

On second thought, though...

[Draegan]

I have no idea, my highest toon is 16.  A few quests aren't working and my Summon Holy Servent spell doesn't work as a cleric.

But I see people LFG adma or something all the time.  I really don't know the end game lingo at all.

[Shatter]

What is the game like compared to retail, apart from the exp boost?
Judging from their website they are implementing features few steps at a time? Would suck to go into Dredgion and be confronted with a "sorry guys, we haven't added surkanas yet".

On second thought, though...

From their website forts arent in which for me is a large part of my entertainment in retail...

[Threash]

Aion with no forts is completely pointless.

[Rendakor]

On the real servers, I think I hit the first spot where I just have to grind mobs to advance. I'm a level 18 templar, and I've done all the quests in Altgard except the ones in the Group area (Black Claw Village?), including the level 19 stuff. I've also done a good bit of crafting (one profession leveled to 100) and some harvesting, but I'm still only 3 bars into 18 and not really sure where to go next. I don't even know what the next zone is, level wise, nor if I'm high enough to go yet.

[Segoris]

If you can't find groups for BC quests/farming, I'd go to Morheim. Otherwise, there is Brusthonin which iirc is a pve only zone, so no Elyos can invade, and mobs start at level 19 or 20. The xp is lower thatn Morheim but it is an option. Just use food+potions and you should be fine.

Keep the weapon up to date and enchanted as high as you can afford, it makes a huge difference.

It's a private server.  It's actually Infinite Aion

http://infiniteaion.com/

Joined this last night, it's enjoyable. The starter area wasn't overly populated, but still had some people on from 11pm-1am cst. I levelled a glad from 1-15 in about 1.5 hrs. The increased drop rate really is just as noticeable as the increased xp. Most of the quests I saw were working, I think in the starter area there was only ~2 out of probably 15-20 that weren't working yet which is pretty good for a private server imo. The skills are automatically learned as you level which is handy.

The only issue I ran into was that some mobs aggro is kind of weird. The aggro radius is a little larger than live, and the mobs are more social (some that shouldn't be). Really, all this meant is that I died twice and had a short run back. Considering the xp rate it's no big deal.

[Rendakor]

Ok thanks Segoris; how does enchanting work here? Is it another profession I need to learn?

[Segoris]

It is not skill or craft based at all, anyone can always enchant their own gear. To do so, buy extraction tools and use them on armor/weapons (helmets/rings/neck/accessories can't be extracted or enchanted). You then get an enchantment stone and the item that was extracted is destroyed and the stone can be applied to a weapon or piece of armor. The better quality of the item, the higher level the stone you will receive. It will never be lower than the item it was extracted from.

When enchanting, you want the stones to be higher level than the item you're enchanting, I believe people use stones that are 8-15 levels higher then their items for a great success rate until about level 35 then they use even higher level stones later in the game. The reason for this is that if you try to enchant an item and it fails you lose 1 point of enchantment. So say you succeeded enchanting 3 times in a row, then fail, your item will now only be +2 due to the loss. It can't go lower than it started though, so no negatives. The level of enchantment is next to the name of the item that is enchanted. For example, a sword that has +3 enchantment will read something like "+3 Sword of Stabbity Stabbing."

Check the broker for enchantment stone prices, since a lot of the time the items can be extracted and the stones can be sold for more than the armor/weapon can be vendored or auctioned off for. This is useful for when you find items in the world, find quest pieces you don't want, or when you replace gear. 

Pretty decent run down of enchanting: http://aion.zam.com/wiki/Enchantment_Stone_%28Aion_Item%29

[Rendakor]

Oh wow cool, thanks. Didn't know about that at all.

Edit: Does that mean I should be disenchanting excess gear I craft (to try to proc Noble items)? Or can only Green+ quality stuff be disenchanted?

[Threash]

I'd like to point out that enchanting and manastone socketing comprise about 95% of the reason why i quit this game.

[Rendakor]

Why?

[Shatter]

I'd like to point out that enchanting and manastone socketing comprise about 95% of the reason why i quit this game.

Agreed this is a horrible part of the game.  THe amoun tof money you can spend due to failures is nothing short of retarded.  They implemented some new potions that "improve" socketing chances which are just as expensive as buying more manastones and its been proven the increased chance is only about 11%, so in other words it works like shit.  I dread everytime I have to socket pvp gear with 6 manastone slots because I know Ill go through a minimum of 50 manastones in the process of trying to get 6 in.  

[Threash]

Why?

What shatter said.  Not only do you have a high chance of failure, a failure wipes out all of your successes.  A piece of pvp gear has 6 mana stone slots, a manastone for an assassin was selling for 250k when i quit, each time you slot one the next one has a higher chance of failing, one failure wipes out all six stones.  On a good day of regular play i would make about half a million, it took between 25-100 manastones to fill out one piece of gear.  For enchanting in order to enchant a gold piece of gear you need an enchanting stone about 25 to 30 levels higher than the item, disenchanting an item gives you stones of random level which can be lower than the item you disenchanted.  A failure in enchanting removes one enchant level, it cost around 8 million to buy an enchant stone that had a high chance of working on a max level item, and you still have a chance of not only wasting it but removing an already successful enchant.  This was the real grind in Aion, not leveling, not AP farming, and it was motherfucking insane.

[Shatter]

Costs are higher now actually.  A +5 Atk manastone now is in the +350K range if not higher.  +15 criit are also insanely high.  I pretty much settle for mid level manastones I can buy in large qnty that arent the best but also dont rape my bank which in turn makes me much less frustrated when I fail repeatedly or as I like to think of it...being kicked in the balls by NCSoft. 

[Rendakor]

Oh wow, that is pretty retarded. I haven't messed with manastones so far (I've just been auctioning them), but that sounds painful.

[Shatter]

I thought this was funny.  Apparently NCSoft secretly approached the top 3 elyos guilds on Zikel(heavily elyos populated server) and asked them to transfer to Vaizel(heavy asmo server).  This is of course while transfers are on hold.  So these 3 guilds agreed to move and began to sell spots in their guilds for people to move off the server lol.  Good times....

[Koyasha]

If they ever put in the equivalent of blessed enchant scrolls it might not be quite so horrible.  A 'blessed manastone' that doesn't empty all sockets would be reasonable once you've got several sockets filled.  A blessed enchant stone that won't knock your existing enchant down by 1 would also be nice once you get the enchant level on something up pretty high.  I +10'd a few things but never anything over 30th level, cause the enchant stones at that point got crazy expensive.

-Blessed enchant scrolls, for those unfamiliar with Lineage II, would be enchant scrolls that didn't strip the enchantments when they failed.  They still had the same failure chance, but unlike a non-blessed scroll, you wouldn't lose previous levels of enchanting on the item.  This was even more significant there because failing a single enchant with a non-blessed scroll knocked all enchants off of it.

[Outlawedprod]

I thought this was funny.  Apparently NCSoft secretly approached the top 3 elyos guilds on Zikel(heavily elyos populated server) and asked them to transfer to Vaizel(heavy asmo server).  This is of course while transfers are on hold.  So these 3 guilds agreed to move and began to sell spots in their guilds for people to move off the server lol.  Good times....

Even more hilarious is how those 3 guilds even before they poach people would most likely dominate the new Vaizel by themselves.

Hopefully NCSoft can at least manage to keep enough people playing for one server to help subsidize Garriot payouts =p
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/102467-Lord-British-Wins-Big-Over-NCSoft

I honestly seeing this game dying almost completely by the holiday season. There are clearly less people playing now thanks to all this server nonsense and it's only going to take more hits as time goes on.  Then all the pve folks will bail when something new is out.

[Shatter]

I know a lot are going to FFXIV next month.  At this point many of their subs just want to move onto something new.  If SWTOR, Tera and GW2 all came out today Aion would have 0 people logging in lol. 

[ghost]

I know a lot are going to FFXIV next month.

I moved on to FFXIV quite quickly............

[Chimpy]

The thing about this whole server shit is that they tried to do too much at once. Doing a merge was not a bad idea (though they should probably have tried a 2:1 merge of selected servers instead of a 4:1) but making unlimited free character transfers right away too was just wacky.

Add to it all the BS from early on with the botting and RMT spam which turned off a lot of people and the totally obvious lack of any ability for NCWest to change the game to better reflect the customers in the US and EU boned the game.

I liked the mechanics and gameplay a lot. The amount of grind really didn't even bother me as much as the abyssmal drop rates and fucked up manastone/enchant systems. I am sure that NCSoft Korea will look at this and say "well, the NA/EU game sold enough boxes and subs to make a minor profit so we did good!" though.

[UnSub]

NCsoft would be anything but happy with seeing Aion tank in EU / NA. For a while there they thought they'd managed to build a game that spanned the divide and make them money in both Korea and NA / EU.

[Shatter]

If every new MMO they launch here is half as grindy as the last they should have a decent game sometime in the next 50 years

[Shatter]

http://news.mmosite.com/content/2010-08-10/aion_set_up_an_overseas_dev_team_for_more_localized_content.shtml


" To offer better game services in the overseas markets, NCsoft has decided to set up an overseas development team for its online game Aion. The team is expected to collect overseas players' opinions and suggestions, so as to offer different operation services in different countries.

As Lee Ji Ho, leader of Aion's overseas development team, said in the interview with the Japanese site 4gamer.net, Aion provides different countries in the world with the same game content till its 1.9 patch. But with view to the difference among different countries, Aion will present different versions starting from its 2.0 update.

Mr. Lee has made deep researches on the preferences of the players in different countries, and compared the PvP elements. It shows that players in Europe prefer PvP and fortress wars, while those in Japan don't show much interest in PvP. Meanwhile, many people in America like playing games alone. They prefer to enter the game to do quests and quit the game after a short while. Compared to South Korea, Japan and America have more players who like quests better.

According to Mr. Lee, the overseas versions will set higher quest EXP gains and fewer death EXP losses than the Korean version. In Aion 2.0, the overseas players will not only enjoy a higher item drop rate after killing bosses, but also experience more convenience in many fields. "

[Lantyssa]

Probably too little too late.

[01101010]

http://news.mmosite.com/content/2010-08-10/aion_set_up_an_overseas_dev_team_for_more_localized_content.shtml


" To offer better game services in the overseas markets, NCsoft has decided to set up an overseas development team for its online game Aion. The team is expected to collect overseas players' opinions and suggestions, so as to offer different operation services in different countries.

As Lee Ji Ho, leader of Aion's overseas development team, said in the interview with the Japanese site 4gamer.net, Aion provides different countries in the world with the same game content till its 1.9 patch. But with view to the difference among different countries, Aion will present different versions starting from its 2.0 update.

Mr. Lee has made deep researches on the preferences of the players in different countries, and compared the PvP elements. It shows that players in Europe prefer PvP and fortress wars, while those in Japan don't show much interest in PvP. Meanwhile, many people in America like playing games alone. They prefer to enter the game to do quests and quit the game after a short while. Compared to South Korea, Japan and America have more players who like quests better.

According to Mr. Lee, the overseas versions will set higher quest EXP gains and fewer death EXP losses than the Korean version. In Aion 2.0, the overseas players will not only enjoy a higher item drop rate after killing bosses, but also experience more convenience in many fields. "

No offense or anything, but this is the type of shit you do BEFORE release - unless Aion 2.0 is release and we've all been beta duped thus far. Glad I got out when I did...

[Shatter]

I thought it was funny they chose a Korean guy to decide whats best in other markets because you know....those Korean guys at NCSOft have done such a good job of that so far lol

[Mrbloodworth]

It's a private server.  It's actually Infinite Aion

http://infiniteaion.com/

That was quick.