We can has houses plx?
Ncsoft releases trailer for future updates, labeled Aion Vision. Player base, including a lot of the people that left, goes crazy. Love is in the air. The trailer shows graphical updates, a housing system, explosive battles…all that good stuff. Everyone and their mother are suddenly considering a re-sub. After all, the trailer looks awesome. It’s the future, man! It’s the way the game is going to look soon! Wow! It’s all in-game graphics!
Hang on, hang on. Didn’t we forget something? Something important?
Oh yeah, that’s right. Companies lie.
Aion Vision does look great, it does. I don’t really care that much about the graphical updates, as I think Aion looked great already. Housing, if implemented, is always a good thing. Hey, I’m already wasting too much time moving furniture around in my house in Star Wars Galaxies and drooling over Stargrace’s Norrathian Museum-video. Don’t get me wrong.
But Aion Vision, at the same time, is marketing. Successful marketing, at that. A video managed, somehow, to erase the memories of the reasons why a lot of people left the game in the first place. The grind. The end-game bugs. The grind. The incredibly linear gameplay and the lack of an open world. The feeling that we’ve done this all before.
Remember this?
The dramatics in the trailer are all directed, put together by the game’s cinematic team. Cinematic teams, at least good ones, can work wonders.
If the stuff they are showing in Aion Vision all come true, that’s great. But please don’t forget that it’s marketing. Don’t forget that it doesn’t really say anything about how the game will be to play when it comes out. Sure, they are promising to lessen the grind, but don’t forget that Aion is already successful in Korea and they love stuff like that. How much will be changed for the Western audience, I wonder?
When I met the producer of Aion, he mentioned that players in Korea were complaining about that Aion had too many quests. That’s right. Too many. They see quests as a grind, we see the lack of them as a grind. I don’t see anything in Aion Vision that explains how Ncsoft will manage to keep everyone satisfied.
But congratulations to Ncsoft. You guys pulled it off! I really want to love Aion, I adore the design and a good PvP-game would be great, but it takes a lot more than a fancy trailer to convince me to come back.
You are exactly right. Nobody left Aion because he did not like the quality of the graphics / engine. Some might not like the eastern style, but this does not change with the new graphics either.
Did you notice the underwater graphics system? Seems as if Guild Wars 2 and Aion have a lot of technology transfer going on, both now feature underwater exploration prominently.
Final Fantasy XIV also has a great looking trailer. Still, the gameplay and preferences of the playerbase and designers are still eastern and as alien as it can get for westerners.
All this talk that people would resubscribe immediately and the fascination about Aion’s cool new features was probably demonstrated best by commenters on Keen & Graev’s Blog. They are bored, they can’t stand the grind nor getting ganked – yet they are excited about the upcoming features. It is amazing how quickly people can be swayed by mere looks and just one video. But at least Keen himself now apparently has a more sane view of Aion by also knowing the downsides and naming them.
Aion looks very nice and the client runs very stable. Combat is fun, if lengthy at times. I just loved how my Gladiator slammed hordes of monsters.
It is very hard not to love Aion somehow. Just like a pretty, friendly and always smiling girl that unfortunately is disgustingly simple and dumb most of the time.
I hope that ArenaNet produces a GW2 client that is up to the standards of the Aion Vision client – and has a more western approach to gameplay and fun. Now that could be the beginning of a wonderful and irresistible relationship! I already loved Guild Wars 1.
I have to agree, especially since I’m playing Aion at the moment – to be honest, even the stuff in the vision isn’t enough to make me think the game is any better (or worse) then it is. It’s the bots, the (extreme at times) grind, that bother me. The graphics are just fine. Flying in the air trying to harvest aether (and now they’ve added particular debuffs that will happen and prevent you from harvesting, as an attempt to get rid of bots but they work against players too) and having to grind grind grind is what gets to me.
Am I happy to see all the neat things in the visions video? Sure, it’s some fantastic stuff IF it gets to a game ready stance. But for now? It’s just another pretty video.
Totally agree, make sure to tune into Episode #7 of the Epic Elyos Podcast via Lagwar.com (which we will be recording today, so may not be out for awhile), this video is our topic of discussion.
Well since you have stopped posting about Aion, I guess you have stopped playing it. I halted my sub. 2months ago after reading about the lack of content in patch 1.9 and the unimaginable long time it will take them for patch 2.0 which is the patch that will actually bring some content.
The character balance issues are still growing and they are balancing classes with top end-game gear and not re-examining the gear.. the game is far too dependent on gear being overly powerful, much like WoW. This I think is a sad development.. Buying gold is easy and most, it seems, have done it.
Bots are less, but hacks are plentiful.
I properly won’t come back to Aion, GW2 looks promising and they do have GW1 and Aion as a how to do and not do guide.
Right now I am playing a little Allods, it aint too bad and I like that they took the steallin.. I mean borrowing, which WoW started, to another level.