I think buying Aion and not like PVP at all is really Risky!

swtor

Wow is wow and will continue to be a force in MMO's for a while to come but i think AION will give it a run for it's money...I've played Wow for years and was GM of the same guild for most of that time (only recently did i hand it over to an officer). Blizzard has another patch coming up and an expansion in the works, my problem with wow is a common one i believe with most of it's gamers that have been with it for the long haul. Original wow was amazing, with each expansion it loses some of what made it great. This is only my opinion but when u can easily skip through all of the original wow and TBC in a relatively short amount of time with lil or no real group contact or playtime it hurts the endgame. Wow is indeed wow and it will be around for a long time, but then again..EQ is still around too.

Overall, I just don’t see Aion pulling in numbers that compete with WoW fo pretty much the same reason I didn’t see WAR doing it. Gameplay mechanics aside, the setting is just not as appealing. WAR was grim, dirty, and had a twisted sense of humor whereas Aion, albeit beautiful, is very strange looking and has no ties to any preexisting IP.

WoW, on the other hand features an incredibly diverse and flexible setting for its players that is vibrant and familiar. Yet it is also a setting that reinterprets and puts a spin on traditional high fantasy elements. There's a safety zone there but also enough room for thematic exploration.

MMO veterans and adventurous players will certainly seek out Aion, but I don’t see million of people giving up their precious elves, gnomes, and orcs to play as something as bizarre as a “Deva”. The big competitor we're going to see is TOR, having an IP with a footprint so deep and beloved in our culture that its lasted for decades. Now that's something to look out for.

@ Amstrup
Sorry, but you really are ignorant. Wow isn't wow, a rose by any other name would still be a rose... But the issue here is that WoW is only WoW now days because of its name, hence it isn't WoW anymore. It has changed so much over the years that you can hardly call it WoW anymore.

Actually TBH, past vanilla, WoW has totally killed Warcraft lore. And yes, I am a long time fan of Warcraft. As well as the fact that Warcraft lore was NEVER unique or epic, it is just copy/paste from a whole lot of more original ideas (LOTR lore, Warhammer tabletop lore, Lovecraft's work [Cthulhu + Emerald Dream], Norse mythology, and many many more)... Of course if you were an honest Warcraft fan you'd know already that Warcraft is just blatantly using pretty much ALL other resources for their backstory instead of actually convincing yourself that it is actually epic.

And still calling WoW epic is rich, because 90% solo content and 10% easy mode is totally EPIC. Old WoW, was epic, it was hard, it forced you to group up yet at the same time had enough room for new players and wasn't as hard/grindy as EQ. Blizzard went too far towards the easy-side.

Honestly it looks to me that you are only trying to justify yourself, seems like you don't believe what you are saying otherwise you wouldn't feel the need to post.

Sarcasm detected. Engage shields.

Nevermind, just got another email (this time with the key field filled). Thanks for the code guys.

@Anticrawl - You can grab one here:
http://www.shatteredcrystal.com/index.php/free_items/

=)

Wrong news to post about CityXL keys, but since you posted... the contest feels somewhat empty. I think everyone won, and more-so, you can also get keys from nearly anyone who is hosting the file download too (like Fileplanet).

You know, you finally win something only to find out it is available anyway. First Paragon punks me by delaying Champions. Then NetDevil does one better by delaying their game indefinitely. And finally, I win a beta key only to be punked by discovering I could have picked one up anyway.

Dear MMO Developers and Press, please treat the playerbase/fanbase better? We are human too you know.

Oh well obviously they were more or less giving them away because there were no strict parameters to enter the beta, just an NDA. With Huxley first wave you had to have previous experience with Unreal 3 and MMO's as well as recommended or higher specs via dxdiag. Same goes for Global Agenda first wave and others. Huxley's first wave was so damn buggy only about 1/50th of the participants could even get the client running.

That was a good read, man. Nice work.

I'm really digging all the praise that Aion's game engine is getting. Nothing kills an MMO faster for me than low fps, hitching, and unresponsive controls (Vanguard, WAR... I wanted so much to like you).

The engine is great. It looks beautiful and runs well even on not-so-great machines. It certainly looks better while requiring lower specs than the two games it's being compared too. WoW doesn't require much, but is blocky and low-tech. WAR has the potential for nice graphics but requires serious hardware to display them without providing single digit framerates. Aion manages to look good AND run well, which is something most current MMO games should learn from.

Sadly, the class design leaves me limp. They're just not interesting, even though the game is executed extremely well. Aion is a high caliber production and deserves kudos, but the actual content of the game is fairly blah.

And, as we saw with Tortage in Age of Conan, you know *nothing* about the "end game" by playing the first 20 levels.