Aion Open Beta Starts September 6th 147
NCSoft announced today that the open beta for upcoming fantasy MMO Aion will begin on September 6th, extending through to the 13th. The client is available now. The game launches on September 22nd in the US, with a two-day head-start given to players who pre-order. NCSoft has also said they'll be showing off Aion in more detail at the Penny Arcade Expo, expanding on the information they provided at Gamescom (video).
Gameplay beyond level 20: Unfair ganking. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a RvR game. To avoid the problems with PoTBS:
Don't join AION, if you can't handle ganking. Ganking in Darkfall could be much more fair than in AION, the "resistences" of a high level may make imposible to kill a players that is a few levels higher than you.
Played the Closed Beta (Score:2, Interesting)
I played the closed beta. It's not terribly impressive. People have been excited about the graphics, but they're kind of outdated... maybe top of the line stuff for 2004 or so. There are a few impressive areas in the game, though.
Gameplay and questing is not terribly fun. If you've ever done a Kill 30 Wasps or Gather 10 Herbs quest, you've done them all, and AION has a lot of this kind of stuff. I guess there's a story or whatever to read, and IIRC some quests have different options, but by and large I was completely bored while leveling up my character.
While I would like someone to knock WoW off its high horse (because the game really isn't designed as well as they think it is), I doubt AION is going to be it.
Re:Rootkits for everyone! (Score:1, Interesting)
Aion 1.5 (the version that will be in the open beta and used for release) does not have GameGuard. Unless they decide to put it back in before release, that is.
Re:Who cares? (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah, pretty much. I wasn't impressed and cancelled my order. Blizzard doesn't have much to worry about here. It gets really good when you get into the forced PvP part. Once people learned that, every single person in my WoW guild who had been interested decided not to bother.
It seems that being ganked isn't exactly a feature people look for in games.
It does get really good when you get into the forced PvP part, none of that casual carebear blueshield / pveonly server bullshit in this game. I was impressed, kept my Aion preorder and cancelled my WOW subscription. Different strokes for different folks.
Re:Gameplay beyond level 20: Unfair ganking. (Score:3, Interesting)
I was really looking forward to this until I read impressions from people playing on Korean servers that say ganking is almost out of control and the recent penalties have done little to stop it.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure pvp isn't for everyone, if you want protection travel in small groups. These games aren't designed for solo play.
Re:Rootkits for everyone! (Score:4, Interesting)
Best/easiest way to disable gameguard? Load it on 64 bit windows. Patchguard won't let it patch the kernel, so while it loads - it can't do anything against cheating. So if you are a hacker or botter - get Windows X64 and have at it.
No doubt about it - it is a rootkit. On 32 bit machine I've watched it read window titles, intercept I/O - stuff like that. One of the ways around gameguard on 32 bit machine is to build a rootkit that sits below it.