Official Aion website gets a make-over (redux)
by Brooke Pilley 
Sep 22nd 2009 at 6:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, Aion, New titles, News items
We bring you this breaking news from the cluttered desks at Massively headquarters: Aion has launched! Oh wait, you already knew that? Darn. Well, maybe you haven't noticed Aion's official website make-over featuring all kinds of never-before-seen goodies like official forums, character and legion (guild) search, server status/statistics, Abyss control, and player rankings.The new look is clean, bright, and lightweight. NCsoft have updated their Powerwiki to include a number of player guides and lore articles (still no crafting info though). The official forums showcase the latest discussion on news, community, servers, classes, and technical support. Players can even show off a 3D model of their character including their latest gear/stats. The server statistics page is quite cool too, breaking down individual servers by race, class, level range, and the number of legions. Asmodians hold a slight advantage across most servers, but not by much. It seems NCsoft's strict balance policy is working decently so far.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dranaerys said on 6:59PM 9-22-2009
You forgot to mention in "My Aion" you can check your character's in-game mail and status of AH items, among other things. Awesome stuff.
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DrewIW said on 7:07PM 9-22-2009
Unfortunately there's currently a 3 hour queue to access the website.
;)
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aion.naamah said on 7:14PM 9-22-2009
Most informative website I have ever seen for a game. Server balance, class balance, in game mail, auction house, 3d character viewer....its all there and its awesome.
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Elle Chase said on 8:00PM 9-22-2009
Unfortunately, if you actually try all the functions and features on the website, more than a few lead to:
500 Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable
to complete your request.
Click here to return to the previous page
The "click here" part fails too (of course!), since apparently you're ejected from the site. Even attempting to a read a post periodically triggers the error. While these problems may eventually be fixed, or smooth out once the queued-up players stop hammering the forums, it's seems this too is not working smoothly for NCsoft.
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Jack said on 8:54PM 9-22-2009
Just in case anyone is wondering WoW just today release 3.2.2 and the servers are a hell on to play at the moment things crashing all over and lag does not let players loot much.... Why you ask?!! Well there are so much players returning to the game for give a new go at the old raid :D
Now on topic Aion website looks really nice its good they take a page of the WoWhead book and copy whatever they where doing sadly Aion does not allow any addons :(
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Din A3 said on 9:19PM 9-22-2009
Jack said on 8:54PM 9-22-2009
Keep playing WoW. Don't play anything else.
---
There. I fixed it for ya.
remixedcat said on 9:50PM 9-22-2009
Wow take away any game art on the background and the pics and it looks and feels like yahoo.com or something LOLz. Too boring looking for such an epic game! At least WoWs site fits the game. This AION site looks too corporate now. WoW!
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Dranaerys said on 5:21AM 9-23-2009
I disagree, I prefer a crisp, clean interface over the cluttered mess that is WoWs site. I mena come on, theres a menu on the right, at the top, way too much clutter from a design point of view, it stresses me out.
Also, at least Aions site offers me some functionality other than reading community news and managing my account, Aion lets me check in game mail and AH stats, and the whole design is elegant and sleek. I love it.
What I dont love are the official forums, all those big thread icons and Social network icons in each post bloat the forums with too much empty space. The wow forums look better, much more compact. Hell, Aonsource forums look better. :P
heartless_ said on 11:50PM 9-22-2009
Just set of my anti-virus. Something fishy with the new Aion website. Anti-vir 2009 on Win XP 64bit.
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ZombiBambi said on 12:36PM 9-23-2009
Umm, isn't Antivirus 2009 malware? I wouldn't trust anything it says
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/uninstall-antivirus-2009
THAC0 said on 12:40AM 9-23-2009
It is indeed an awesome site. Easily the best game site ever. People will complian about anything.
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remixedcat said on 1:01AM 9-23-2009
Awesome features yes, but it seriously lacks in the looks department. Does not please the eyes as much as most game sites. game might be epic awesome but it seems a little out of place. Kinda like how Nintendo's site looks now. very whitewashed and bland as hell. There are real estate sites that look edgier and more epic then nintendo's right now and that just makes me LOL. Too many sites are doing this and it is boring as hell.
And before you go complain about 'accessibility'....
if white is the only color 'accessible' to everyone that I fear humanity has gotten so bland to the point no wonder why WoW is the #1 MMO, Miley Cyrus sells more albums then awesome dj's like ATB and epic rock groups like Within Temptation, and the hottest movie this summer was a remake of an older movie. I shed a tear for those......
THAC0 said on 9:00AM 9-23-2009
I don't think it lack in the looks department at all. I think its very clean and easy to read/navigate. WHich makes f9inding and using its features much easier. It doesn't look at all like Nintendo's site either besides having a white background.
I'm not delving into the coding of the site but I don't think that they made any special concessions for "accessibility" for special needs people but it still can be used by blink people with a reader because its mostly CSS. The wite color has zero to do with this.
I have no Idea what you think is Edgy but that in my book usually means experimental and hard to understand and thats the last thing people want to have when the go looking for information about a game. They want to be able to go to a site and go straight to the content they are looking for not sit and try to hunt for something or try to figure out an obscure "edgy" navigation.
As someone with a degree in web design and works in the field i think that Aions site is still cluttered with information but is ten times better then other game sites with tons of flashing .gifs and images and hard to read text. It gives me faith in their game design to see their taste in web design.
Hub said on 2:23AM 9-23-2009
No addons - Good! Lets have a game that takes a little skill again.
Screw damage meters that cause DPS characters to over aggro on raids trying to show off or spam how great they are, screw boss raid warnings and especially **** Omen and watching sliding bars rather than the game itself.
Ok, so keep GUI mods 'maybe' although the default one is just fine, but leave mods in WoW where they belong please.
I'd rather play and watch a game than a screen full of slide bars. So there :)
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CindyL said on 10:48AM 9-23-2009
lol ^_^ There is a place in the options menu to select UI themes, of course now it's set on default but it looks they do allow for UI reskins like LotrO, I look forwards to that!
Meagen said on 4:22AM 9-23-2009
Aion has launched!
Really? It's still listed under "upcoming MMOs". So is Fallen Earth *and* Champions Online.
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remixedcat said on 1:26PM 9-23-2009
THAC0 said on 9:00AM 9-23-2009
and
Dranaerys said on 5:21AM 9-23-2009
you must have boring tastes in web design. Look at Tibia or RuneScape's sites. They are simple games, but have very captivating sites with plenty of info and tools. Have a captivating site like those that that actually make it pleasing on the eyes to go to. makes you more excited about the game you're going to play. Imagine if aion took away the background image, and made its logo look like skype's web 2.0 logo. It would have an image crysis there.
I'm just saying this 'clean' interface standard is just making every site look the same and boring.. at least use something other then white, white, white. at least have some color and personality on your sites and not just sale old same old. This clean standard is taking sites personalities away
sci-fi channel had good programming before and an awesome purple hued site that looked futuristic and bad ass. Now they have syfy-and it looks like a tampon logo and site theme. They lost thier awesome edge and now are 2.0 'accessible' to the mainstream and all they have is b rated movies and they are not going to be focused on sci-fi anymore soley. I guess alot of sites designers need tampons.
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