Aion: Too Problematic? Or WoW Killer Waiting to Happen?

Aion began as something that would tie me over until Final Fantasy XIV comes out sometime next year, and because Guild Wars 2 wasn’t out yet, and I was completely sick of WoW (even though I only had a 35 lock) Aion was the natural choice. I would soon find out that the game was something I was most definitely going to stick with. It was getting rave reviews from several of my friends and others on the internet were writing very good things about this new game from NCsoft, and so I downloaded the game and bought a product key, soon I was playing the game along with several thousand other players all across North America.

I had never played a game at its inception before, and even though Aion has been in closed beta and alpha testing for over a year it still feels

like a very fresh game with several things that need improvements and some bumps to work out of the folds.

There is something about Aion that I very much enjoy, and I don’t know whether it’s the gorgeous visuals or the simple yet complex game play, but something has kept me holding on despite the obvious flaws in the game here in the beginning.

The mechanics of Aion are much like that of other MMOs out there, you fight monsters, craft, make money, with one difference that sets it apart from most mainstream MMOs. In Aion PvPvE is the main focus, meaning that the character (after reaching level 25) has the chance to go to the “Abyss” where they can face off against player characters of the opposite faction at the same time as fighting the monsters that reside in the abyss, often vying for control of an area as the monsters there offer twice the experience as their counterparts outside the abyss.

I see Aion as a game with enormous potential, and it disheartens me when I see the flaws that are plagued by this game, and yet are handled quite well by other games (some of them Free to Play). Aion is riddled with Bots, and although they are not readily apparent if they are fairly spread out and you are going about your own business, they begin to congregate in areas with quest related monsters and the contest for the monsters becomes unbearable. RMT is also running rampant in a game, and although this problem is present in almost all online games the real problem in this case is the spamming.

The bulk of the problems that Aion faces are remediable and from what I can see NCsoft has been trying their hardest to ensure that the complaints of their customers are heard. As I said before this game has enormous potential, and although there is little content as of yet and there are several problems still to be fixed, I believe that the gods of the gaming world reward those who stick with a good thing. Patience is a virtue, no?