Aion is NCSoft's MMO With a Pretty Face

Eurogamer has an interesting review of a game that you might not have even heard about amidst all the hype for other games coming out in the near future. NCSoft's Aion is taking a stab at dispelling the myth that MMOs can be either beautiful or gameplay-rich, but not both. "Best of all, most of Aion's splendor is achieved through rich color and fine art, rather than particle effects and polygons, meaning it shouldn't be as expensive to run as it looks. NCsoft appears to have thought of everything. That's just as well - if it's going to bridge the abyss between the Eastern and Western MMO, it will need to. The big question is whether Aion can be all things to all MMO players, and still retain a soul of its own. We'll find out when it's released early next year."

if I could fly

[aerton]

The only thing I dislike is that flight seems to be heavily limited, the ether system sounds to be designed to keep you on the ground. I just hope there still will be enough so you don't hold on it for rare short bursts.

After all, it appears to be the most distinguishable feature of the game. Class selection, combat, crafting and even visuals do not seem to stand out of other MMORPGs that much.

Be original

[philspear]

I agree, the screenshots to this game look slightly better, but only slightly so, and that's the ones they've handpicked. Maybe they spent some more time on the design of things than usual, but I wasn't like "Wow, this is so much better looking than WOW or guild wars." I think what they actually mean is that it looks like final fantasy but plays like wow. It's never good when a new game tries to beat a dominant game at it's own game. All the "halo killers" turned out to suck (Resistance 1, looking right at you.) Zelda killers did too (dark cloud one). Why not make up something totally new? Worried you'll fall flat on your face? Guess what, you're going to do that anyway if you try to make another WOW.

I think a bigger myth that needs to be busted is that in order to make a successful MMO, it needs to be the same type of RPG as WOW. I haven't done an in-depth study, but it seems like developers either spend a lot of time and money on something that is a WOW clone, like this seems to be (a bit premature to call that, I realize) or they half ass it and it, predictably, goes nowhere. Gunz, a free over the shoulder shooting MMORPG seemed really interesting to me, then I find out it's basically broken, no one does anything but exploit gliches. You get what you pay for of course, but even the subscription based MMORPGs seem to either be WOW, WOW clones, or not worth your time.

Beautiful female avatars?

[AmiMoJo]

It would be nice if they could make the female avatars look good without resorting to the usual skimpy outfits as they seem to have done. At least the eastern ones usually let you have cutsie avatars as well as overtly sexual ones, or even just normal looking ones.

Re:Dispelling the myth?

[KDR_11k]

I think it's about the other direction, many asian-made MMORPGs just fall flat in the west, possibly because they tend to be too damn grindy.