Tag Archives: NCsoft

Quitting Aion

Posted by on March 30, 2010 No comments

Well, it’s been a fun ride, but the day has finally come where I quit Aion. While leveling up was fun, the game got extremely boring as far as end-game content goes. Additionally, if I’m playing Aion all the time I won’t have time for more important things in life, such as programming. I really need to start working on a project. So far I haven’t been very dedicated to the programming aspect of life because Aion used up most of my free time.

The one thing I’m going to miss about Aion is my legion, Marked Souls. They’re a great bunch of guys & gals. I look forward to reuniting with them in the next MMO I might play (TERA Online anybody?). Farewell, NCsoft!

Aion PvP Tip #1

Posted by on November 5, 2009 No comments

In Aion, it is easy for the enemy to catch you off guard when you are doing things like gathering, questing, and grinding. This is especially the case when you’re on your race’s side of the world where the enemy may only enter during certain rift events. Since we don’t want to always be staring down our radars and being completely paranoid, there are certain tools you can use that help keep you notified when the enemy draws near.

One tip I learned about is to use the chat system to notify you when the enemy is doing certain things around you. You can setup a special chat tab that will present textual information to you when the enemy does things like cast spells (e.g. when Assassins go into ‘Hide’ mode; this is especially useful), attack mobs or other players, or get attacked themselves. Below are the steps you’ll need to follow to set this up.

  1. Click your Chat Preferences Menu icon as indicated in the picture below.
    Chat Preferences Icon
  2. Select Add Tab in the Chat Preferences Menu.
    Chat Preferences Menu
  3. Name the tab whatever you want, I chose Combat (If you already have an existing tab called ‘Combat’ you can use that tab instead of making a new one, or simply delete it).
  4. Right-click the new tab and go to Tab Options.
  5. In Tab Options, expand the Combat – Others tree, and select the boxes shown in the image below. Also ensure that these are the only items checked. Anything else should be unchecked. For color, choose whatever you would like. I personally chose Red as my color for all of them, since I think it stands out more. The goal is to have this text get your attention.
    Tab Options
  6. Click Change and now you’re all set up! Now when a player enemy comes into range, you should see something like this:
    Combat Notification

I recommend dragging your tab out from the others and placing it in its own dedicated area of your screen. Placing it right above your typical chat tabs works well. I placed mine in the top-right of my screen, since it tends to get my attention more easily there.

I hope this has been a useful Aion Tip! I’ll post some more if I think of any.

Aion

Posted by on October 2, 2009 No comments

Traditionally, I’ve always been a huge fan of the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) genre. I played Guild Wars (All 4 volumes) for over 2 years. After that, I played World of Warcraft (WoW) for 2 years. Once I got tired of WoW, I tried many eastern MMORPG games.

Most of the eastern MMORPG games are “free to play” but are limited in what you can do. They make their money through micro-transactions. For example, while you play the game free of charge you might have to pay 50 cents to get a really cool sword or pay $5 to get extra storage slots in your inventory. I didn’t really like any of these free to play games. They were poorly designed, developed, and maintained.

Just when I was about to lose hope, I learned about a game developed and published by NCsoft called Aion. I knew right away this was going to be the best MMORPG I’ve ever played. So, I pre-ordered the game and played in 2 closed betas, one open beta (the only one they had), and finally got some pretty cool names reserved and continued playing on release. I have to say that even up to this point I am still becoming even more impressed with the game as I continue to play. There are many reasons why I love this game, but I’ll provide a few key points below:

  • It is the first MMORPG I’ve personally paid any attention to that has a chance at competing with the highly overrated World of Warcraft.
  • The NCsoft designers have somehow managed to make even the most seemingly tedious tasks entertaining and fun, such as gathering resources and crafting abilities.
  • Everyone can FLY! Yes, I have wings! No need to save up trillions of in-game currency to buy that mediocre mount that does nothing more than increase your velocity. I think they do have mounts in Aion (I haven’t gotten too far into the game to know for sure yet), but they aren’t as much of a key component to the game as they have been historically in other MMORPGs such as WoW (Funny how WoW has become the metric for MMORPG quality these days).
  • The game has had a fairly decent launch, relatively speaking. The point here is that NCsoft has learned from past mistakes made by their predecessors. This ensures not only greater stability on a technical level, but game design benefits as well. You can tell right away that the game has a lot of good UI design and features, especially in the social networking aspect. Yes, there is still a LOT of room for improvement, but for the most part they’ve done a good “first pass”.

Right now I have a Level 21 Elyos Ranger named Trap. I’ve posted a few screenshots below:

Aion0166 Aion0144