S3EKER
29-Mar-2008, 12:42
words: Mike Griffin
Harsh times recently for project lead Ken Choi and the Aion team: at the end of Phase 1 of the Korean closed beta test, almost the entire core staff fell ill to exhaustion and flu. Many sleepless nights toiling away and responding to the feedback of three thousand lucky participants had the team pushing too hard and they paid the price. This is NCsoft’s internal Studio 5, and they need a holiday. Besides the secret PS3 development group and ArenaNet’s elite Guild Wars 2 team back in the states, there’s no bigger or better-funded studio within NCsoft. Aion is positioned as the next major premium MMO from one of the industry’s biggest operators of massively multiplayer online games. The pressure is enormous, and with competition like Warhammer and Age of Conan right around the corner, it’s not going to get any easier for a new IP like Aion to make inroads with us westerners.
Aion’s subtitle “The Tower of Eternity” refers to the massive vertical structure that binds the two fragmented halves of Atreia, your persistent game world, together like weights on opposite ends of a dumbbell. The god Aion once ruled from this great tower. In centuries past when the world was still whole, Aion was closer to his subjects, the blessed Asmodians and Elyos. This was before the two chosen people went to war and nearly destroyed the world in a reckless, cataclysmic explosion. The Asmodians and Elyos were stripped of their god-like abilities and banished to opposite sides of shattered Atreia. Now only the Balaur, a race of dragonmen, reside near the tower—in a huge limbo known as the Abyss (a.k.a. PvP Central).
The Asmodians and Elyos are the races you get to play, while the AI-controlled Balaur act as a foil to any faction that is becoming too powerful. Elyos is the bright, nature-loving race. They live in the lower globe, which receives 80% of the sunlight, so their lands are filled with verdant forests and sparkling groves. The brooding goth-like Asmodians have nonetheless flourished in their darker lands. Both races blame each other for their fall from grace. You enter the world as one who bears the blessings of Aion, a heroic mutant of sorts among your people. The first part of the newbie game in Aion will involve quests that explain your origins and restore various godly perks, like your wings. Feathery and angelic for the Elyos and bat-like leathery for Asmodians, the wings are handy for crossing Atreia’s huge regions and accessing select aerial content, combat and item collection (like gathering bits from the branches of giant trees, way up there in Aion’s intriguing verticality). You can also complete quests to gain polymorph forms; shape change into creatures like panthers, parrots and drakes, taking advantage of abilities and mobility unique to each beast.
Aion’s game space is about 90% persistent and 10% instanced, so expect a huge array of open world distractions and obsessions. The main campaign quest line is supported by loads of well-directed real-time cut-scenes, lending Aion the kind of solid narrative you’d normally see in a single-player RPG. Content is thick, comfortably familiar and well-considered as you reveal your character’s great potential. Crafters will equip their friends and light up the auction house with opportunities in cooking, alchemy, weapon crafting, dyes, potions, gems, textiles and armor. You can do some interesting things here, like merging the appearance of a favorite item with the stats of another. So if that new sword kicks ass but clashes with your armor, you could choose to keep your old sword’s more compatible look. If you rarely approach the crafting tables in MMOs, be sure to help your friends by collecting materials for them in the wild. From Elysea’s ghost ship graveyard to Mycospora’s giant mushroom forest and the bleak desert tableau of Death Valley, Aion’s many varied lands are ripe for exploration. Capital town hubs like Sanctum, the Elyos’ huge floating sky metropolis, will serve your training, questing, crafting, duelling and socializing needs between adventures across Atreia.
Meanwhile, the Abyss can be considered the central hub of hardcore activity in Aion, where players will take on the most legendary PvE raid bosses with the best loot tables, and partake in massive PvP action between the player factions and the Balaur, as if the Great War never ended (see Abyss Action video below). While Studio 5 has only revealed one Abyss zone thus far—and of the many being planned, it’s reportedly a smaller one, it contained nine siege fortresses and a sprawling boss dungeon. All successful efforts in these hostile inter-dimensional warzones will yield Abyss Points, fuelling stats for the leaderboards and acting as a currency of sorts for alternate routes of progression. It is rumored that one of Aion’s ultimate end game achievements, graduating to a Hero class, may involve a portion of Abyss rewards. Heroes will be vicious top tier avatars, capable of demolishing several enemy players at once (in reasonably-spaced bursts). When a Hero player enters the zone, all opposing players will be alerted with a message. That’s how bad ass you are.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though. First you must create a unique and generously detailed character (see Character Creation video below) and choose his or her role. The early archetypes in Aion will be very familiar to any RPG player. I actually welcome the simplicity of the four basics: Warrior, Scout, Mage and Priest. The Warrior evolves into a whirling dervish Gladiator or damage absorbing Templar, the Scout splices into a backstabbing Assassin or the bow pro Ranger; the Mage can be a blaster as Sorcerer or a pet expert as Spiritmaster, and the Priest will graduate to portable medkit as Cleric, or a battle priest with stat buffs and skull-cracking staff attacks as the Chanter. What class did you just pick? I’ve been a good scout most of my RPG career, but it’s healer time in Aion; a very desirable party member for the many six player dungeon crawls and twenty-four player boss raids.
Back in 2004 as I recovered from a hangover of MMO marathons, I can recall playing Far Cry and thinking how glorious the CryEngine would be for building persistent online worlds. Surprisingly, Aion is the only MMO to have licensed Crytek’s first power suite. So what can this engine produce in 2008?
Consider Aion’s art style: unmistakably Asian high fantasy, from palette choices to character designs, and by and large this dream-like world design is very appealing. At first glance the angles and polygonal complexity may recall the typical Renderware or Unreal 2.5 MMO mod. A closer look reveals a great deal more rendering muscle in Aion as the CryEngine goes to work: expressive, higher-poly player avatars, lush animating vegetation, mist from the ocean’s undulating waves, tons of ambient animal life, full weather effects, heat shimmer, HDR, atmospheric smoke, lovely water and lava shaders, all drawn out to a far-off, Far Cry-like clip distance and contained by striking skybox paintings. The accumulated effect is exotic, impressive and next-gen in its own way, even if it isn’t flanked on all sides by glossy normal-mapped excess. And you can look forward to smooth performance with high settings on as low a video spec as GeForce 7600 GT.
I must mention Ryo Kunihiko’s excellent work on Aion’s high production value soundtrack. Ranging from grand symphonic pieces recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, to epic choirs, baroque waltzes, tip-toeing toy pianos and haunting violin solos, Aion is guided by sophisticated and memorable melodies. Head to www.secret-oath.com/aion/player.htm (http://www.secret-oath.com/aion/player.htm) to stream several short samples of this impressive multi-genre effort. You’ll likely agree that it goes beyond the usual MMO musical fair. You can count on NCsoft to produce a snazzy limited-run collector’s edition of Aion that includes a complete OST disc.
All the elements are in place for a very complete MMO experience… except hype, a sexy franchise name, and major marketing. I’m sure Aion will find a big audience in Korea, China and Japan, but it’s going to be a tough sell in North America simply due to WoW’s stranglehold and Warhammer and Conan (probably) beating it to market. Maybe Aion’s quality and heart—the blood, sweat and tears that had Studio 5 dropping like flies—will shine through the mist of uncertainty. What NCsoft needs is a truly fantastic localization (translation and voices must be top notch) and a silky-smooth summer beta to get players hooked.
Aquí os dejo el link directo al artículo en su web:
http://www.playmagazine.com/index.php?fuseaction=SiteMain.showGamePage&Game_ID=756
Señor riderstorm, cuando puedas ya sabes...besitos :)
Un saludo
Harsh times recently for project lead Ken Choi and the Aion team: at the end of Phase 1 of the Korean closed beta test, almost the entire core staff fell ill to exhaustion and flu. Many sleepless nights toiling away and responding to the feedback of three thousand lucky participants had the team pushing too hard and they paid the price. This is NCsoft’s internal Studio 5, and they need a holiday. Besides the secret PS3 development group and ArenaNet’s elite Guild Wars 2 team back in the states, there’s no bigger or better-funded studio within NCsoft. Aion is positioned as the next major premium MMO from one of the industry’s biggest operators of massively multiplayer online games. The pressure is enormous, and with competition like Warhammer and Age of Conan right around the corner, it’s not going to get any easier for a new IP like Aion to make inroads with us westerners.
Aion’s subtitle “The Tower of Eternity” refers to the massive vertical structure that binds the two fragmented halves of Atreia, your persistent game world, together like weights on opposite ends of a dumbbell. The god Aion once ruled from this great tower. In centuries past when the world was still whole, Aion was closer to his subjects, the blessed Asmodians and Elyos. This was before the two chosen people went to war and nearly destroyed the world in a reckless, cataclysmic explosion. The Asmodians and Elyos were stripped of their god-like abilities and banished to opposite sides of shattered Atreia. Now only the Balaur, a race of dragonmen, reside near the tower—in a huge limbo known as the Abyss (a.k.a. PvP Central).
The Asmodians and Elyos are the races you get to play, while the AI-controlled Balaur act as a foil to any faction that is becoming too powerful. Elyos is the bright, nature-loving race. They live in the lower globe, which receives 80% of the sunlight, so their lands are filled with verdant forests and sparkling groves. The brooding goth-like Asmodians have nonetheless flourished in their darker lands. Both races blame each other for their fall from grace. You enter the world as one who bears the blessings of Aion, a heroic mutant of sorts among your people. The first part of the newbie game in Aion will involve quests that explain your origins and restore various godly perks, like your wings. Feathery and angelic for the Elyos and bat-like leathery for Asmodians, the wings are handy for crossing Atreia’s huge regions and accessing select aerial content, combat and item collection (like gathering bits from the branches of giant trees, way up there in Aion’s intriguing verticality). You can also complete quests to gain polymorph forms; shape change into creatures like panthers, parrots and drakes, taking advantage of abilities and mobility unique to each beast.
Aion’s game space is about 90% persistent and 10% instanced, so expect a huge array of open world distractions and obsessions. The main campaign quest line is supported by loads of well-directed real-time cut-scenes, lending Aion the kind of solid narrative you’d normally see in a single-player RPG. Content is thick, comfortably familiar and well-considered as you reveal your character’s great potential. Crafters will equip their friends and light up the auction house with opportunities in cooking, alchemy, weapon crafting, dyes, potions, gems, textiles and armor. You can do some interesting things here, like merging the appearance of a favorite item with the stats of another. So if that new sword kicks ass but clashes with your armor, you could choose to keep your old sword’s more compatible look. If you rarely approach the crafting tables in MMOs, be sure to help your friends by collecting materials for them in the wild. From Elysea’s ghost ship graveyard to Mycospora’s giant mushroom forest and the bleak desert tableau of Death Valley, Aion’s many varied lands are ripe for exploration. Capital town hubs like Sanctum, the Elyos’ huge floating sky metropolis, will serve your training, questing, crafting, duelling and socializing needs between adventures across Atreia.
Meanwhile, the Abyss can be considered the central hub of hardcore activity in Aion, where players will take on the most legendary PvE raid bosses with the best loot tables, and partake in massive PvP action between the player factions and the Balaur, as if the Great War never ended (see Abyss Action video below). While Studio 5 has only revealed one Abyss zone thus far—and of the many being planned, it’s reportedly a smaller one, it contained nine siege fortresses and a sprawling boss dungeon. All successful efforts in these hostile inter-dimensional warzones will yield Abyss Points, fuelling stats for the leaderboards and acting as a currency of sorts for alternate routes of progression. It is rumored that one of Aion’s ultimate end game achievements, graduating to a Hero class, may involve a portion of Abyss rewards. Heroes will be vicious top tier avatars, capable of demolishing several enemy players at once (in reasonably-spaced bursts). When a Hero player enters the zone, all opposing players will be alerted with a message. That’s how bad ass you are.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though. First you must create a unique and generously detailed character (see Character Creation video below) and choose his or her role. The early archetypes in Aion will be very familiar to any RPG player. I actually welcome the simplicity of the four basics: Warrior, Scout, Mage and Priest. The Warrior evolves into a whirling dervish Gladiator or damage absorbing Templar, the Scout splices into a backstabbing Assassin or the bow pro Ranger; the Mage can be a blaster as Sorcerer or a pet expert as Spiritmaster, and the Priest will graduate to portable medkit as Cleric, or a battle priest with stat buffs and skull-cracking staff attacks as the Chanter. What class did you just pick? I’ve been a good scout most of my RPG career, but it’s healer time in Aion; a very desirable party member for the many six player dungeon crawls and twenty-four player boss raids.
Back in 2004 as I recovered from a hangover of MMO marathons, I can recall playing Far Cry and thinking how glorious the CryEngine would be for building persistent online worlds. Surprisingly, Aion is the only MMO to have licensed Crytek’s first power suite. So what can this engine produce in 2008?
Consider Aion’s art style: unmistakably Asian high fantasy, from palette choices to character designs, and by and large this dream-like world design is very appealing. At first glance the angles and polygonal complexity may recall the typical Renderware or Unreal 2.5 MMO mod. A closer look reveals a great deal more rendering muscle in Aion as the CryEngine goes to work: expressive, higher-poly player avatars, lush animating vegetation, mist from the ocean’s undulating waves, tons of ambient animal life, full weather effects, heat shimmer, HDR, atmospheric smoke, lovely water and lava shaders, all drawn out to a far-off, Far Cry-like clip distance and contained by striking skybox paintings. The accumulated effect is exotic, impressive and next-gen in its own way, even if it isn’t flanked on all sides by glossy normal-mapped excess. And you can look forward to smooth performance with high settings on as low a video spec as GeForce 7600 GT.
I must mention Ryo Kunihiko’s excellent work on Aion’s high production value soundtrack. Ranging from grand symphonic pieces recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, to epic choirs, baroque waltzes, tip-toeing toy pianos and haunting violin solos, Aion is guided by sophisticated and memorable melodies. Head to www.secret-oath.com/aion/player.htm (http://www.secret-oath.com/aion/player.htm) to stream several short samples of this impressive multi-genre effort. You’ll likely agree that it goes beyond the usual MMO musical fair. You can count on NCsoft to produce a snazzy limited-run collector’s edition of Aion that includes a complete OST disc.
All the elements are in place for a very complete MMO experience… except hype, a sexy franchise name, and major marketing. I’m sure Aion will find a big audience in Korea, China and Japan, but it’s going to be a tough sell in North America simply due to WoW’s stranglehold and Warhammer and Conan (probably) beating it to market. Maybe Aion’s quality and heart—the blood, sweat and tears that had Studio 5 dropping like flies—will shine through the mist of uncertainty. What NCsoft needs is a truly fantastic localization (translation and voices must be top notch) and a silky-smooth summer beta to get players hooked.
Aquí os dejo el link directo al artículo en su web:
http://www.playmagazine.com/index.php?fuseaction=SiteMain.showGamePage&Game_ID=756
Señor riderstorm, cuando puedas ya sabes...besitos :)
Un saludo