Aion: Making Khadgar look Balanced

[Djfurball]

Hit 20 tonight. Got a Stigma Stone, which is kind of like a talent point in WoW, except it's not like the "5% better Starfire damage" talent points, it's like the "New Skill" talent points.

I will now take another month to get to 21.

[Myth]

Got the client, and a friend is letting me run around on their account, but I'm having way too many graphical errors for my liking.

Now and again my character's colors go awry and they look like an oompa-loompa, and the only hair color it displays is tan, no matter what color option I click (same with eyes/skin/lips)

Oh yeah, and I have massive audio-issues during the cinematics, which make them a serious annoyance to try watching.


*grumble*

[Djfurball]

Hit 20 tonight. Got a Stigma Stone, which is kind of like a talent point in WoW, except it's not like the "5% better Starfire damage" talent points, it's like the "New Skill" talent points.

I will now take another month to get to 21.

I hit 22 tonight! w00t!

[Djfurball]

Hit 23 last weekend. This weekend - Double XP weekend starting at 8PM! YESSS

ohwait i have to pack. fuck my life.

[Djfurball]

Got up to 25 last weekend in my 1.5 nights of double-xp awesomeness. Tonight, I see if I can get to 26.

I get to go into the abyss and get one-shot by level 50 Sorc's soon. w00ttttt

[rhetto]

Got up to 25 last weekend in my 1.5 nights of double-xp awesomeness. Tonight, I see if I can get to 26.

I get to go into the abyss and get one-shot by level 50 Sorc's soon. w00ttttt

Yea have fun with that... at least there is an instance there you can do that has no loot in it, woo?

[Kit]

Is there resting bonus in the game?  Would probably try it at some point when there's a free trial.

[Djfurball]

You get "Energy of Repose" when you log out for awhile. It's a 40% (i think) Xp-from-killing-stuff gain, but you can only earn it for something like a quarter-level's worth of your XP bar (unlike in WoW where you can get 100% bonus for up to 1.5 entire levels of your XP bar).  So it's not a gigantic gain.

The real kicker is the double-XP weekends. Those are heaven. Unfortunately they put the last two on Valentine's Day weekend and the weekend I had to pack up all my shit and move apartments. But the next one... is mine.

[Djfurball]

So, crafting in Aion. What fun.

Everytime you craft something successfully, you get a small amount of actual XP (~10% of the XP you'd get from killing a mob). You also get a hidden amount of "Crafting XP". You only get skillups when you "level up" your hidden crafting XP bar. You can also "fail" when crafting something. Failing sucks.

So let's say you're me. You're out grinding up mobs, and you suddenly get a Design! Woo! What did I win:
Craft: Worthy Titanium Mace. So I check out the stats, and yes, i want this. So what do I have to do? Well, I need to become a weaponsmith.

So I head back to Pandaemonium (think: Orgrimmar) and find the Weaponsmithing guy. He has Work Orders. So I grab it: Make me 6 Steel Somethingorothers. And he hands me a box of 8 Steel Pieces. I check the recipe and it says you need 1 Steel Piece and 1 Cheap Reagent Of Some Kind to craft. So I grab the reagents and hit Craft. After making 6 I get about one skill up! Yes! I walk back 10 feet and hand it in. Then he says "Do it again!" so I repeat this process for awhile.

3 hours later I'm at skill like, skill level 70, and still pumping out worthless work orders.

Seriously who came up with this shit.

Eventually by the grace of god I get to 130 and I learn my pattern. NOW what do I do to make this Worthy Titanium Mace? Well I need a Noble titanium Mace. A Noble Titanium Mace is just a titanium mace where I RNG'd at the start to craft the Noble version. Son of a bitch! So I make one, get the white normal version, and curse a little, then head to bed.

Tomorrow, I may try again and see if I can actually RNG the green one - at which point i can see if I can RNG the Worthy green one (which has the Noble green one as a reagent) and which can proc the Worthy Noble (blue!) one! Amg!

[Djfurball]

Hit 23 last weekend. This weekend - Double XP weekend starting at 8PM! YESSS

ohwait i have to pack. fuck my life.

Hit 26 last weekend. Double XP weekend tonight! YESSS

ohwait i have to drive to fucking new jersey tomorrow. fuck my life.

[Kit]

Hit 26 last weekend. Double XP weekend tonight! YESSS

ohwait i have to drive to fucking new jersey tomorrow. fuck my life.
[/quote]

   Ouch.  I feel your pain.  I've heard about crafting in Aion but didn't know it was that painful.  Just out of curiosity, what keeps you playing the game?

[Djfurball]

So the bad stuff:
- There's no mounts or anything, and all the hype about flying everywhere is moot because you can't fly in leveling zones. So traveling can be a little slow.
- It's grindy,  but on double-XP weekends you can burn through a level or so in a very short amount of time.
- LFG chat is all WoW/AoC burnouts complaining about random crap
- Getting ganked is annoying,  but it only happens 2-3 times a night I'd say.

The good stuff:
- Holy crap, graphics
- Healing mechanics are fun to use in small groups
- Grouping is really easy to get together and people are generally friendly. The couple outdoor elite zones I've gone through were pretty fun.
- People are amazed when Clerics actually know how to heal stuff ;-)
- Solo questing is kind of like Vanilla WoW, where even non-elite-3-dot mobs are nontrivial. You have to pay attention, occasionally heal yourself, etc.
- The zones are pretty varied in their environments, and they all look gorgeous

Basically, it reminds me of Vanilla WoW solo stuff, but with insanely better graphics and better solo combat. I like to log in, shut my brain off, quest around and maybe so some 5-6 person groupwork and then log out. I'm not in a Legion or anything, so I'm not obliged to be on for a schedule.

[Kit]

The graphics is definately a plus.  I also like how you can take the look of a piece of gear you like and apply it to a gear piece that has better stats but is not as cool looking.  I wonder when WoW is going to copy this?

WoW burnouts are everywhere.  People were talking about it when I was in Age of Conan, Warhammer, Champions Online, etc.

Solo grinding levels isn't doing it for me anymore.  I don't mind grinding as a group however.  I've spent whole days in a group killing civilians again and again in City of Heroes...... while playing as a Hero.  I know.

[Djfurball]

So I got from 26 -> 28 in about 6-7 hours of play this weekend (it was double-xp weekend).  If I'd had Saturday available to me, I'd probably have made it to thirty.

I don't know if it was people being superassholes during double-XP weekend or whatever, but I got ganked like 20-30 times. I've never had it this bad before.

Also, I tried again to craft that mace, and managed to get the normal one to proc the higher grade, and used that higher grade to craft another that was one step up. So i'm basically a 3-outta-4 rank mace. Not bad, nice upgrade.

[Djfurball]

DOUBLE GANKSPERIENCE WEEKEND!!!!