Aion - NCsoft's comeback?

[Falconeer]

Ok, I know this is korean and all that.
But isn't this interesting diku-wise (or should we satrt to say wow-wise)?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1LeEpB52o8

Looks pretty "westernized" to me for a asian MMORPG. And good looking too, and fast paced enough. And the feature list isn't that bad.
Could it be a surprise?


EDIT: The game is marketed as "the ultimate PvPvE experience". I smell idiocy, but the idea is that 3 realms are out there warring each others, but only 2 are player driven while the third is MOBs driven.... mmm...

[schild]

The comments under that video are straight from the Twilight Zone.

[damijin]

NCsoft needs to survive in the west until it releases. And even then, I think it's not really going to be the most accepted take on christian mythology.

Angels? Yep, bibles got dem.

Demons? Yep, those are there too.

Dragons, yep th... hey wait a minute. What the Korea?

I don't know, maybe I'm crazy but I'd much rather play an epic battle of heaven and hell without gnolls dragons goblins and orcs. But, game mechanic wise, it is more western, and that has been their trend. Even with L2, every patch lowers the grind and increases the ability for casual play. Aion (and likely L3) will just be continuations of that.

I don't like the PvPvE thing though. Having an NPC race that "balances" a war between the two factions seems like a war that can never be won, so much so to the point of not even ecouraging the players to try and beat the other side. But it's so early in development (and so Korean), that it's difficult to tell what the game will actually play like. They have put a lot of emphasis on cut scenes and a more "story" experiences for your character. There are detailed movies at the end of instances, it seems, and they have mentioned that player actions will influence the structure of the server. I believe they said that if players on the server are evil then the sky will turn dark and the ground will be barren or something.

I don't know, it sounds interesting and certainly worth a try. But way too far off.

[Falconeer]

And even then, I think it's not really going to be the most accepted take on christian mythology.

MMORPG players care not of these things.
Their gods have strange names as Aggro, Mob, Loot, UI, Grïnd 'nfârm, Deekaypee and so on, and they seriously worship them.
As long as NCsoft doesn't mess up with this pantheon, MMORPG gamers are fine with it.

[Nija]

NCsoft's comeback? Nah, all the Koreans can do is badly copy other games. Key word there is badly.

It'll have a successful open beta/free period and they'll get their hopes up and it'll bomb.

I mean, just looking at that video you see all the typical problems that won't get fixed. Shitty looking flight paths, (dive bombs straight into the water) WOW copied stuff everywhere, (zone change popup gold text, ? !, etc), mobs spawning right on top of the guy as he runs through places, the first two different classes shown, despite having different animations, have the EXACT SAME effects on the creatures, (spins around, hits the creature, does something else and knocks the creature back and stuns it - then they back up and ranged attack it  a few times.)

I made it about 45 seconds into the video, and even if NCSoft sent a rep to my house and installed the game for me and served as my own personal game guide, I bet I couldn't make 45 minutes playing.

[Slyfeind]

The gameplay looks about the same as WOW, but the graphics are so intense that my computer couldn't possibly run it. I guess there's no reason for me to subscribe to Aion.

I wonder how many people are in the same situation as me.

[Yoru]

I played this at E3 for about 10 minutes because the dev giving the demo was kind of cute.

The game is what you expect from Korea. You run around in a (very pretty, very stylized) environment killing shit with (very) flashy powers to get exp to dinggratz. The UI was pretty bad, but there was a cool (noninteractive) flying cinematic. The only thing that seemed marginally different was that there was some kind of skill-chaining mechanic, where you either activated or did more damage with certain attacks if they followed other attacks.

I believe someone was claiming that NCSoft was going to completely overhaul it for North America. I won't hold my breath.

[HaemishM]

I'm really out of the loop. I didn't even know Guild Wars and World of Warcraft were dating, much less pregnant with a bastard child.

[damijin]

And even then, I think it's not really going to be the most accepted take on christian mythology.

MMORPG players care not of these things.
Their gods have strange names as Aggro, Mob, Loot, UI, Grïnd 'nfârm, Deekaypee and so on, and they seriously worship them.
As long as NCsoft doesn't mess up with this pantheon, MMORPG gamers are fine with it.

Generalizations are neat!

Also, I believe some people have translated form the Korean community that there will be interactive flying and combat either at launch or post-launch. I do not have a source at the moment though. I'll snoop around and see if I can find it.

Edit: ok here it is, unfortunately the website that this quote came from has been suspended by it's host ( http://www.aionsource.com/ ), so I'm just assuming the person who posted it onto a forum is not making shit up. From a dev Q&A:

"Tell us about the free-flying function in Aion. How is it being designed?

Though I cannot discuss any specifics at this time, I can tell you we are trying to design this feature so that it has a unique feel to it.

Free-flying will be one of the most important skills players will learn in Aion. However, you won’t have to spend an extensive amount of time in the game to be able to learn this skill."

That's all I got.

[Yoru]

Generalizations are neat!

Also, I believe some people have translated form the Korean community that there will be interactive flying and combat either at launch or post-launch. I do not have a source at the moment though. I'll snoop around and see if I can find it.

Wasn't in when I saw it; it was all noninteractive. Granted, that was 6 months ago. I don't recall whether I asked if interactive flying was on the docket or not. Rrava was there, though. Maybe he remembers.

[shiznitz]

Can the mobs be further away from the PC during combat? Yikes. This is a WoW twin, i.e. not quite a clone but most people cannot tell the difference.

[Falconeer]

Can the mobs be further away from the PC during combat? Yikes. This is a WoW twin, i.e. not quite a clone but most people cannot tell the difference.

I don't think this will do at all.
But Lots of games tried to clone EQ until someone eventually did it.. right.
We should expect for someone to be able to do Warcraft... better, sooner or later.
Or do you all think that WoW is perfect and can't be upgraded, updated, bested?

Obviously this is not the case, but I think that can happen somehow, and BEFORE Blizzard push out WoW 2, World of Diablo, Satan Online or whatever.

[damijin]

Generalizations are neat!

Also, I believe some people have translated form the Korean community that there will be interactive flying and combat either at launch or post-launch. I do not have a source at the moment though. I'll snoop around and see if I can find it.

Wasn't in when I saw it; it was all noninteractive. Granted, that was 6 months ago. I don't recall whether I asked if interactive flying was on the docket or not. Rrava was there, though. Maybe he remembers.

Yeah, yeah, this Q&A was well after E3. It was all non-interactive at E3 and they weren't confirming or denying controlled flight at the time.

[Nonentity]

Man, I got my grief on so hard at E3 on this game.

I made my little warrior angel guy, and you start off in this little castle. You fight out of it, click on the little ball of energy, and poof! You grow angel wings and go on a flight path to some little forested path. Once there, you go down the path, and it spills you out onto this beach. All of that takes about 5 minutes, tops.

Now, the beach immediately connects with the same beach that the other faction connects to. So, upon running out, I saw some caster-type character of the opposite faction at about half health. Presumably, he was at one of the other 8 or so systems playing the game that was centered around this area (the sections were split by faction).

Of course, my big manly plate-wearing spear-user ran up and one-shot him. I then ran around the beach killing some more of these big crab things that looked like bugs from the Starship Troopers movie. Then I saw a warrior of the opposite faction, killed him. By that time, the caster had respawned.

I spent the next 10-15 minutes just running back and forth killing those two players over and over. I think one of them was this very sedate looking asian guy who was sitting to the left of me, but he wasn't responding at all, so either he was very angry and hiding it well, or he was very sedate.

Could be fun, I dunno.

[Malathor]

Co-opting?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5096908451707643802

[Kail]

But Lots of games tried to clone EQ until someone eventually did it.. right.
We should expect for someone to be able to do Warcraft... better, sooner or later.
Or do you all think that WoW is perfect and can't be upgraded, updated, bested?

More or less, yeah (I wouldn't say WoW is "perfect," though).  Has anyone done a better RTS than StarCraft?  There have been a few games that have been (about) as good as StarCraft, but we haven't seen anything that's really gone high enough that someone can call it undisputably better.  World of Warcraft seems much the same to me.  The major problems with WoW are problems with dikus in general, and it would be tough to solve them without moving outside of that subgenre.  You can maybe get a game that's good enough to be competitive with WoW, but a diku that is unequivocally better?  I don't see that happening.

As for Aion, meh.  I admit, flying looks kind of neat, but I have this feeling that it will be A) Completely peripheral to gameplay (probably just a quick travel option) and B) Very limited somehow (requiring a huge grind to get it, or chewing up expensive resources to use it, or something).  Maybe this is me being prejudiced, but I have never seen a Korean MMO released here that has not been "revamped for Western audiences," but that doesn't mean that they're really comparable to EQ2 or WoW.  Half the ones I've played have just been a bunch of towns to buy and sell loot and a bunch of fields to grind monsters.  From the video, Aion doesn't look like it deviates much from that formula.

[stray]

Has anyone done a better RTS than StarCraft?  There have been a few games that have been (about) as good as StarCraft, but we haven't seen anything that's really gone high enough that someone can call it undisputably better.

SC was cool and all, but it isn't THAT great. It's just Blizzard. Big difference. Total War and just about anything Relic has done are better (and more original) games.

[Nija]

SC was cool and all, but it isn't THAT great. It's just Blizzard. Big difference. Total War and just about anything Relic has done are better (and more original) games.

I dunno. I'm not a big RTS gamer but having 3 very distinctive races that play very differently, yet have a decent balance, is something that comes about very rarely. Dawn of War... it's a good game, but I don't even think it's in the same league.

[lamaros]

Has anyone done a better RTS than StarCraft?  There have been a few games that have been (about) as good as StarCraft, but we haven't seen anything that's really gone high enough that someone can call it undisputably better.

SC was cool and all, but it isn't THAT great. It's just Blizzard. Big difference. Total War and just about anything Relic has done are better (and more original) games.

You have to be kidding.

[stray]

I'm pretty sure I wasn't. I actually thought TW, Homeworld, and DoW were better.

Anything else?

[EDIT]

At the very least, it doesn't deserve a response like "You have got to be kidding". Anyone who considered it seriously would have a hard time just waving those games off like that.

[Megrim]

Could we, not, have an argument about StarCraft? plzoplz? This being an NCSoft thread and all. Having said this though, the youtube thing looks like WoW with better avatars. Which i suppose will attract some players, but overall it would seem that NCSoft is going for a "quantity over quality" approach.

[stray]

You make it sound like we're on the brink of crisis. I've never once had an argument about Starcraft in my life. Nor have I ever seen one here.

As for NCSoft: Nothing on the horizon looks worth playing except Exteel. But even, there are better games on consoles that do, and have been doing, what Exteel does. Only better.

This other stupid piece of shit isn't even worth talking about.

[Megrim]

You've never seen one here?! Teehee....  :-D

[stray]

Nope. And I've been around long enough, I suppose.

We should start one. 

[Megrim]

No, no, really we shouldn't.

[Venkman]

Come on. Please? I rarely venture beyond the MMOG forum, so have missed whatever SC-vs-world arguments there were...

FWIW, I liked it a lot. And Homeworld. And Total Annihilation. Each very different. SC had tactics that evolved faster though, imho, because of the pace of the game.

Oh and Aion looked interesting, but only in the SUN sorta way: oh gee, another game with teenage 57-Chevy-Ear heros. I predict another game with microtransactions and ingame advertising played for free.

[Wolf]

Starcraft is the greatest competitive RTS game ever made. I'm pretty sure you can't disagree with that statement. There might be better single player games (homeworld?) or games with much greater differences between races, and as such "more interesting" (DoW), but no RTS will ever have the balance and/or pace that Starcraft has.

I've been playing DoW (Dark Crusade) a lot recently. It's great fun. But the balance is seriously fucked up. All you need to do is check out a serious competitive league to see that 8 out of 10 top players play with one particular race :)

[Venkman]

I don't know enough about RTS games in general to agree or disagree with "best ever made" part. The Koreans really love it though, as I'm sure a good amount of Westerners.

However, a caution:

no RTS will ever have the balance and/or pace that Starcraft has.

Versions of that statement have been made about almost everything that has ever been, whether nations, religion, books, drugs or games. And they have all been proven categorically short-sighted.

[Wolf]

I had this whole essay (read: wall of text) written on how RTS games become more complex and with that exponentionally harder and/or impossible to balance. And how in my oppinion Starcraft was the most complex game that could be balanced to almost perfection. Than I hit ctrl+w. 

I had examples and everything :(

[stray]

Homeworld (1 or 2) wasn't just single player oriented. Even the first one had a relatively big multiplayer community for it's time. No, there aren't 50 million Koreans dying of heart failure while playing it, but what the hell..

No, it didn't have the pace or simplicity of Starcraft, but it had far more depth. It's still deep by today's standards. It was far more ambitious in the gameplay dept. -- and one of the only games (in any genre) that actually delivered on grand ambitions. The negative side of all this is that it wasn't instantly accessible.

As for balance --- Of course Starcraft is balanced. So is the Homeworld series. Dark Crusade JUST came out. The original DoW shipped unbalanced, but, as with anything, many things get fixed over time. The same will happen to Dark Crusade. Or Company of Heroes. Or whatever other Relic RTS comes out. Just because StarCraft is balanced 10 years after release doesn't make it special.

[damijin]

I predict another game with microtransactions and ingame advertising played for free.

Do you predict any games NOT to be free with microtransactions and ingame advertising?

(I do agree with you on this one though... I think NCSoft might be ready to make the jump to microtrans with Aion. It's still a shitty business model that forces players to think of all their assets in terms of US dollars instead of gold though.)

Edit: forgot this was an RTS thread.

DoW destroys SC. Not because of gameplay, but because watching those little units rip each other to shreds is fucking great. This is how WoW will eventually be destroyed. Make the same game, years later, with way more kick ass visuals.

[Yoru]

Starcraft is the greatest competitive RTS game ever made. I'm pretty sure you can't disagree with that statement. There might be better single player games (homeworld?) or games with much greater differences between races, and as such "more interesting" (DoW), but no RTS will ever have the balance and/or pace that Starcraft has.

Uh, sure - anyone can disagree with that. For example, me. When I was on my big RTS kick during college, I and the crowd I played with preferred RTSes with a more drawn-out pace and larger scale. Starcraft was probably #5 on the list of RTSes to play, behind AOE2 (with expansions), Homeworld, Empire Earth (without expansion) and Total Annihilation. I'm far more stoked about Supreme Commander than any possibility of a Starcraft 2.

Starcraft is, however, without a doubt the most popular competitive RTS ever made. "The greatest" is a very subjective criterion based on play preferences.

[Falconeer]

Starcraft is, however, without a doubt the most popular competitive RTS ever made. "The greatest" is a very subjective criterion based on play preferences.

That's the Blizzard Signature finisher move: to craft "not the best but the most popular" game in any genre they touch...
Eventually though, and thanks to their extra long production times, their games get owned.
Until the next one...

[tazelbain]

I love the square flying.  Even EQ2 flying looks better than that ass.

[Kail]

Starcraft is, however, without a doubt the most popular competitive RTS ever made. "The greatest" is a very subjective criterion based on play preferences.

That's the Blizzard Signature finisher move: to craft "not the best but the most popular" game in any genre they touch...
Eventually though, and thanks to their extra long production times, their games get owned.
Until the next one...

Hang on, hang on, hang on... are you seriously claiming that World of Warcraft is about to get "owned" by Aion?!  Thus continuing Blizzard's unbroken string of failures?  We should start a pool or something...