The third week of Aion Closed Beta testing is well underway and I am once again playing, against my better judgment (burnout, y’know), and having fun.  I was asked during the last beta weekend to write up a comparison of WAR and Aion.  Occasionally I do receive requests and I always try to answer them in either their own blog entry or by incorporating them into another.  The request came with a specific list of criteria for comparison and it appears to be comprehensive enough. I’ll edit it only slightly to avoid being redundant in my answers.

Before I begin, let me tell you that I can not give you a definitive answer on some of these because I have not been able to see the whole game.  Know that what I write comes from a certain perspective gained from beta.  I would encourage anyone who has played Aion in the Chinese or Korean versions to comment where I am unable.

Graphic & Animation / Style
Both games use a stylized form of graphics. WAR went for a gritty look and Aion for the more rounded and softer (dare I say Eastern) look. Having to compare the two very quickly, Aion’s graphics are much better – style aside. The animations in Aion are also much, much smoother and show quite early on how they are much more polished and incorporated into the game, such as combat. When choosing which style is better, that has to be left up to the individual’s preference. I don’t mind either.

Texture
Both games have great textures in some places and poor textures in others. In WAR you’ll see muddy textures on occasion and simple textures quite often. In Aion I have seen a great deal of muddy/poor to no texturing at all on some cliffs. Certain walkways and paths also lack decent textures. On the other hand, there are times in WAR and in Aion where the textures are very well done and you can’t help but stare a second longer to appreciate them.

Landscape
I’ll consider this as a general approach towards creating an atmosphere and toss in general appeal of the world around you as you explore and experience content. WAR suffers from forcing the player down very specific paths, almost ushering you to the next location. This is accomplished by using impassable objects, terrain, etc to ensure the player is going in the predetermined direction. Aion does the same thing, at least early on from what I have seen. While both games have a linear path of progression, Aion does have the advantage of flight and better graphics to simulate that lush landscape, forest, lake, and scenery that will naturally immerse the player far easier than WAR.

Frame-per-second
It’s not even close for me. Aion’s performance is nothing short of stellar. I can easily maintain 70+ frames even with nearly 50+ people visible at one time on my screen. There are places in the world where I have maintained 90+ frames. The only time I ever felt my frames actually drop was this third weekend when I logged into Pandaemonium (Asmodian capital city) right as the servers came up. It stuttered for a few seconds while loading all the people rushing in then it returned to being smooth. WAR is a laggy beotch. The performance by comparison is atrocious.

Smoothness in large scale PVP
I have not done the Abyss yet, so I can’t comment on castle sieges. I can say that in the Arena when we had 30+ people fighting together it was smooth as can be. While not the ideal setting to test “large scale”, it’s still a step above WAR’s performance.

Smoothness in Keep / Fortress Siege (assuming AION got some kind of castle siege)
Aion does indeed have a Keep sieging feature. I won’t be able to test it until the next phase. This question will be answered for you then.

CC impact in group PVP
In both games CC is prominent. Aion has DAOC’s level of CC – a lot. It will make or break your group’s ability to succeed. Just like in DAOC, when a group that knows how to maximize their CC comes against a group that doesn’t, the better CC’ers can take twice their numbers. This is what led to the success of the 8 man teams after players decided that zerging wasn’t fun. I hope to see the same thing in Aion. Additionally, there is a different between ‘annoying CC’ and CC that makes sense. WAR has the three difference CC timers and the disables and so on. Aion has roots, sleeps, snares, polymorphs, etc. I’ll comment more when I do sieges, but it feels less annoying already than WAR CC.

What WAR did right compared to AION
This is tough. I don’t know enough about Aion yet, but I do know that WAR is often criticized for getting nothing “right”. Public quests are arguably a good addition to the genre, but as WAR has shown they are over used and act as replacement for real content. I will say that WAR made an effort to ensure that their focus (RvR being accessible, even at level 1), even if a wrong focus, was accomplished. It’s easy to jump right in to RvR regardless. I also like WAR’s guild system; sure it could use improvements to how guilds level and the rewards they receive, but the leveling of guilds was nice. Aion only has 3 guild levels and you buy them.

What AION did right compared to WAR
I think we’re going to see Aion’s PvP play out much better. Their Abyss vs. T4 is going to show up WAR in a big way if anything I’ve heard from friends is true – remember, Aion has been out for 8 months in Korea. Why will it show it up? Because it’s not about gathering points for domination flips to get to a capital city. It’s not about flipping keeps for gear, flipping them for renown, or really about this arcadelike production of PvP…. it’s simply about fighting your enemy. The Balaur (3rd faction, NPC) will add an interesting element to the PvP that will make it just that much more dynamic. You will still earn points, and lose them too, in Aion for fighting so players won’t feel like they’re doing it for nothing. These points are then redeemed for gear and other things. It’s like DAOC’s realm rank system in a way. I think the irony here is that Aion will be closer to DAOC than WAR.

World PVP (random pvp) fun
WAR did not have this, except on ORvR servers. Even there, the random world pvp was nonexistent. People simply did not go into each other’s PvE areas because being in the RvR area was 10000x more rewarding. Guards everywhere and the funneling of players in certain directions that I spoke of earlier only compounded the lack of random world pvp. Aion might have the edge here with rifts which open in one side’s area and lead to the other side. Players can jump through these rifts and enter the enemy’s PvE area and fight them in their own land. They are open for a certain period of time and their appearance is random (although I’ve hard players figured out a system to predict them?). This could lead to great world pvp where you’re never truly 100% safe.

PVE Questing variety and fun
I don’t LIKE questing. I feel that it is overused, simplistic, mind-numbing, and a shortcut. This applies to both games. Both of these games have simple quests where reading them won’t matter because the description just says “Kill 8 of this” or “Get me 10 of those”. Both games have their occasional gems, but overall it’s a system that I wish would just go away. Aion has “missions” which are like an epic storyline for you to do throughout the leveling process (and perhaps beyond?) that will provide decent incentives/rewards, some story, and an underlying purpose for each region you visit. It’s a step up from the mundane, but still falls short of what quests should really be all about – the QUEST, not the chore. Luckily you can avoid questing in Aion altogether and grind if you like, because it’s just as effective to level up if not better later in levels.

Hows the End Game?
No idea. I’ll get back to you on that in a few months. I do know that PvP is the main focus of the game because it is at the center of everything. There are also dungeons and big boss encounters. How it compares to WAR, only time will tell. I do hope to find out if Aion has gear progression though. I haven’t heard anything about a “ward” system or a “you must do this to do this” step. Hopefully it does not exist.

These are two very similar games in theory, yet very different in practice. Hopefully my answers were what you were looking for and give you a sense of how the two games match up. I would be happy to answer additional questions in the comments section if I am able. If not, maybe those more experienced would be willing to lend a hand.

I did what I normally do and canceled my subscription when I want to ensure that I do not get stuck into a recurring cycle.  My WAR subscription will run out on July 17th and given my current game interests, the state of my guild (mass exodus to other games), and the state of the game, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to cancel and be asked to renew instead of just forgetting about it.  Seventeen days should be enough to check out Tomb of the Vulture Lord and see if Mythic will fix the T4 content quick enough – if I like what I see then I’ll stick around.

This time when I canceled my account I was asked to take a survey.  What the heck, sure.

The usual questions were presented and I clicked away.  One of the pages had me chuckling though.

I don’t think I could possibly make a better list of Warhammer Online’s biggest problems and how to fix them if I tried.  There you go Mythic!  You already know what you need to do.

Today feels like a good day for a weekend update.  There are a lot of odds and ends to briefly comment on, announce, update, etc. etc.

[Podcast / Interview] Julie Whitefeather & Frances Kosac of the No Prisoners, No Mercy podcast had me on their show for episode 36 to discuss… well a lot of stuff, really.   They’re working on several episodes at once over there so I’m not sure what was all part episode 36 and what is being reserved for future episodes (I’m only halfway through listening) so you’ll just have to listen and enjoy.  I do know that you’ll hear my thoughts on Land of the Dead from my time on the public test server (this was recorded before LotD launched) and my thoughts on some of WAR in general.  Those two nuns are a lot of fun and you’re sure to enjoy their podcast (and me!) so give it a listen.

[Delayed] Mortal Online has delayed the sale of their pre-orders/collectors/whatever because they can’t get their store working properly.  No one could have seen that coming. OUCH! Sorry, my tongue just went through my cheek there.  Dodging the same problems that Aventurine had when they couldn’t get their store working probably would be a very good thing.  This whole “only 999 copies!” thing and having to pay full price to get into beta is a big put off for me so I won’t be adopting this one early.

[Gaming News] NCsoft delivered an open letter to their community.  In usual form for a producer’s letter, it gave very little information.  When I tried desperately to read into the letter or find something worth talking about I read the line “…an army of creative writers generating an enormous amount of rewrites as we execute to our total commitment of quality of content” and thought that this could at least explain why Aion, being so polished already, would need 3 more months before release.  Makes sense that rewriting the story and Westernizing the content would take a while…. but then I found out from a friend who has been following the game for years that they’ve been saying this same thing ofr the past 2 years.  Maybe they really mean it this time.

[Release] Battlefield Heroes launched this past week.  I’ve been in the beta for months and months and months and months and forever and have enjoyed playing and testing.  It’s not what you would think of when you think of the Battlefield franchise.  It’s cartoony, wonky, honky, and the antithesis of what you would consider the Battlefield games to be.  It works though.  It’s fun, completely free, and offers a decent amount of fun for a game that requires you to put so little into it.  You can earn experience on your character like you would in the recent FPS games to unlock new abilities.  You can do “missions” which are just like achievements and give you a form of currency to spend on buying new weapons.  The sad part about the game is that they’re really looking for you to spend money on their microtransactions.  To get any cool clothes you have to spend money and the weapons are not permanent because you have to continue spending to own them (7 days or a month at a time).  Unfortunately, their microtransaction system has to value to it.  You can’t buy more to save in the long run.  Spending $5 will get you X and spending $20 will get you X*4.   I consider myself to be decent at the game and enjoy completely destroying those who spent money on the game when I’ve spent zilch.

[Beta / Upcoming Game] Aion’s 3rd Beta Weekend will be a bit longer this time.  We get to play from July 2 – July 6 and have access to content from levels 1-20.  The schedule says that this will be open to Asmodians, but I bet they’ll open up the Elyos as well.  I’m torn on whether or not I should play a lot this weekend.  On one hand I want nothing more than to play the heck out of Aion, but at the same time I want to avoid burnout or seeing and experiencing the fun before it’s permanent.  I’m usually the type to play the beta, love it, play at launch and like it but feel like it wasn’t as good as beta – probably because the magic of the first time has worn off.  I’ll wrestle with my decision up until Thursday.  Be sure you pre-order if you haven’t already and give it a shot.  It’s only $5 if you can find a pre-order bonus box at your local Scamstop Gamestop/EB which can be transfered to another game if you don’t like it.

What is the cause for celebration?

You can find and read the entirety of the letter on the Herald.  I’ll assume you’ve read it and just jump right in to what I have to say.

“The Winds of Change are upon us, but the ship and crew remain the same.” – Jeff Hickman

Uhh, no.  Why even say that?  I don’t get it.

Overall, it’s very much the standard producer’s letter.  Jeff Hickman tells the players what we want to hear but also throws in some educational tidbits on how they’ll change city sieges (for better or worse remains unseen) and how RvR in general will improve even if it means removing fortresses.  AoE is more than out of control in WAR and I fear that a few changes won’t be enough.  The situation is out of control for all AoE classes and it has really trivialized almost every combat mechanic in the game.  Crowd control itself is not really an issue in WAR, but how it operates within the limits of “annoying” and “functional” is nothing short of borked.  The immunity timers being consolidated will help.

I participated in giving feedback during Mythic’s reaching out initiative and I focused mostly on the realm war being flawed.  I really do feel that the entire way in which zones flip and push the war in one direction is too arcade, shallow, and detached from the soul of RvR.  Fortresses are absolutely part of this terrible system and only serve as the biggest and most obvious example of ‘why’.  Get rid of them and the system will improve.  Take it further though and look at why the fortresses should be removed, other than performance issues.  We’re pushing zones in one direction trying to “flip them” to earn invisible points to “dominate” a zone all in order to push open the gates of a city.  That sounds really cool and it sold well on paper pre-launch but there is a reason why WAR’s retention rate is low in T4.  Fix all the little issues that make people bitch and moan on the forums first.  Fix CC, AoE, etc., then turn a serious eye to the bigger picture.

Optimism is great, but I want to see results.  You say “We’re still working out the specifics…” but it’s those specifics we want.  Bring results, Jeff, and you’ll get the community’s attention.  We really do want to share in your optimism and see what you see.

P.S. What is this in-game celebration buff (pictured right) all about?  Hopefully it’s not what I think.

Me on my 60% Guild lvl 37 mount in Lost Vale

Despite several attempts at finding a group within my guild to do any content, I wasn’t able to secure a group to do anything at all.  No one does the city dungeons anymore (and I still do not have a single piece of Sentinel gear) and they all operate within their own cliques of which I am not apart.  I don’t really blame them for finding a group that works for them and sticking with it, but it leaves me out in the cold a lot.  I decided to turn to pugs with hopes that I could do something – anything – in Land of the Dead.  Nothing.  No bites for an hour.  Then Order took control.

My one last attempt at finding a group went into alliance chat “Anyone need a 5/5 gw Shammy for anything?” and I got a bite.  Someone wanted to form a group for Lost Vale!  I had never been and this was as good a chance as any.  I didn’t get my hopes up because, afterall, it’s a pug.  I was expecting a couple frustrating boss attempts and people who constantly afk or don’t listen to instructions while talking about their girlfriends or drugs – you know, usual pug stuff.  Furthermore, I was scared since half of us had never done LV at all.  I wasn’t expecting to meet genuine decent people who listen, know how to play their class, and wanted to group with me again in the future.  You can imagine my surprise when I did.

Lost Vale spider boss downed

We cleared the left wing with one accidental wipe and two of my Darkpromise pieces dropped.  All of the pulls went very smooth and the tank, who also led the group, carefully explained all of the fights and the group listened.  The first boss was tank and spank and went down in a matter of seconds thanks to our great DPS.  The next couple of bosses were also tank and spank with little quirks such as mist you have to avoid or other usual mmorpg boss encounter mechanics.  The last boss of the left wing was a spider who would knock back and web you if you (which also silenced); this had to be burned off with a torch you obtain from a quest that you had to complete as you killed each boss up to that point.  During the spider fight lots of little spiders would swarm towards the boss and if they reached her they would enrage her (not a good thing).  It went incredibly smooth and we had a lot of great item drops.

After the left wing we went to the right wing which is a lot harder.  We wiped twice here but recovered my running out and resetting the boss.  These deaths were due to learning the fight but man… we sure learned well from our mistakes and came back to kick the crap out of even more bosses after each wipe.  One boss in particular we had to keep resetting because he had a gnoblar companion that would enrage the more damage you dealt to the boss.  When the gnoblar enraged to 200% he needed to be killed, but the catch is when he dies the boss gets harder.  We figured out that we kill him at certain increments of the main boss’ health and it was cake from there.

I had to handle most of the healing because our other healer only had two greater wards (which meant he died a lot to cleaves and aoe’s), but I enjoyed the responsibility that came with having to constantly heal with everything I had.  Every boss kill was exciting for our group and we were all constantly telling each other “good job” because each of us really was doing a good job.  We’re scheduled to return and complete the instance tonight where I hope to get more Darkpromise gear and have more fun.  I’m hoping that these guys will want to run dungeons together regularly and become a static group – something that is very important in a game like WAR.

Two upgrade, a trip to one of the top-end dungeons in the game, and new friends all thanks to a PUG.  Go figure.

TotVL first PQ

After yesterday’s news this almost feels awkward writing about something I did in game.  Yesterday was the first real day of Land of the Dead.  Feels like I’ve said that three times now… no really, this was the first real day that this place is open for business for both realms and the system of flipping it back and forth is in operation.  When I logged on after doing my morning routine I was shocked to see that we (Destruction) owned the place and had in fact just taken control.  This was early in the morning, perhaps 9am PST, and not many people were even online.  This is when I found out that only two zone flips are necessary to earn the expedition resources to flip the place – Design flaw.  Anyway, I entered LotD and was able to get into the warband participating in the purge (pushing order out).  We stomped them back to their camp and made quick work of them.  I was a healing machine and rightfully earned the very first gold bag on our server for a Land of the Dead purge.  Inside the bag I could take some various crafting mats, or a gold scarab cluster, or a piece of Conqueror gear (my shoulders were inside).  This gave me 4/5 Greater Wards!

After poking around every one of the PQ’s (all very well done) and obtaining all of my glyphs (these are used up when you enter a dungeon – sorta like access quests) I decided to take a break for a few hours because Order was 10 minutes from getting control of the place.  We had owned it for perhaps 1.5-2 hours.  When I logged back in after the break we had just taken control of the place again – what luck!  I was then able to immediately answer the call in my Alliance for a warded Healer to do Tomb of the Vulture Lord which is a dungeon equivalent to Lost Vale; in other words it’s relatively the hardest dungeon in the game.  It took us a while to get access even though we had the glyphs.  Order was really putting up a fight by hiding entire warbands in little corners of the zone and popping out to gank people.  Although terrible for us because we were already well on our way to losing the zone again, it’s a nice mechanic that reminds me of DAOC.

We eventually gained access by completing the PQ to open the door.  It required us to stand on tiles that matched ones lighting up on the wall of pyramid type temple thingy.  Order messed with us a couple times but we eventually were able to enter and begin our own instance (we opted out of purging Order from theirs because we had limited time).  The first obstacle we reached in this dungeon was a trap with swinging pendulum axes.  Three of our guys worked their way through the trap and stood on tiles to disable them.  In the next big room we were able to throw a switch that closed the door and (I believe) reactivated that trap in case Order decided to come in.  Statues filled this big room and a PQ began where we brought the statues to life and had to kill them.  We nearly completed this PQ when the call came out over alliance chat to rush to the fort for defense.  UGH!  Just as we had finally found our rhythm!

The fortress defense lasted an hour and I was able to complete a Sigil which awarded me my 5th GW (5/5 now!) so it wasn’t a total loss.  Order promptly seized control of LotD while we defended the fortress against a huge zerg, but we had played the game how it is supposed to be played.  Land of the Dead isn’t going to shine if players gain access and refuse to defend the mechanics which grant the other team access.  It will only feel like ‘right’ if each realm treasures the zone and wants to come out and defend.  Having to defend your city works in this mechanic’s favor because defending forts will help you two-fold.

Overall I’m still impressed with the new content.  I was able to collect 15 gold scarabs, 10 silver scarabs, some ankh thing, a purple staff with 43 wounds and 3 sockets, a talisman with a neat proc, and complete all of my greater wards.  Not bad for a day’s work.  I’m about to hop on and try my luck at pugging some of the new lairs or dungeon and I hope to report back that I completed them and found some phat loot.

What the …. is going on?

“Today we have important news to share with the community. EA is restructuring its RPG and MMO games development into a new group that includes both Mythic and BioWare. This newly formed team will be led by Ray Muzyka, co-founder and General Manager of BioWare. With this change, Ray becomes Group General Manager of the new  RPG/MMO studio group. BioWare’s other co-founder, Greg Zeschuk will become Group Creative Officer for the new RPG/MMO studio group. Rob Denton will step up as General Manager of Mythic and report to Ray. BioWare’s studios remain unchanged and continue to report to Ray.

Mark Jacobs, current General Manager of Mythic will leave EA on June 23, 2009. We thank Mark for his contributions at Mythic and wish him the very best going forward. Mark played a major part in the success of Mythic with his contribution as General Manager and Lead Designer of WAR.

Mythic retains a strong team led by Rob who co-founded Mythic in 1995. Rob played a critical role in the development of Dark Age of Camelot. In his previous role as COO, he was responsible for all day-to-day management of the studio including all development, operations and support.

Please join us in celebrating the union of these two award-winning studios.” [WAR Herald]

This makes nauseous and nervous and oddly curious all at the same time. Bioware and Mythic? I just don’t see this as a “good” thing right now.  I was really hoping that we were past EA absorbing studios and restructuring like this.  I have never seen anything good come from this and I fear that this is just another step towards having two big publishers doing every game out there.  Ugh.

I want to hope that this means we’re going to see better games, but this feels like a business decision and not one made in the best interest of gaming.  We could see some truly amazing results from a newly redone studio from EA but at the same time we could see all of these studios fail to live up to their past endeavors.  I’m inclined to believe the latter because that is what has happened in the past.

I’m very interested in hearing where you’re headed Mark.  Please let me know.

Dark Crag Destruction would like to forfeit the live event competition please.  We officially give up.  Order on our server is going to win the little race to get exclusive rights to the dungeon or zone or whatever and we would rather let them have their prize now instead of the 23rd (or whenever).  We’re not going to win.  To have it dragged out for several days isn’t going to increase our chances – it only keeps both realms out.   Let them take it, play in it, and then let us try to take it from them.

No?  Okay, I tried.

Today’s patch started the live event to compete for first access to Land of the Dead (or some part of it?  Need clarification on this) but it’s doing so via a long live event.  It builds hype – I get that.  I’m just chompin’ at the bit to get inside already.  In 2 hours I completed all but one objective for the live event that will come in time, I’m sure.  The reward for finishing them all, from what I’ve seen, is simply a title “master of the air” or something to that effect.  Reikland Factory has been brought back and the queues are almost instant.  Open-RvR is alive and doing very well thanks once again to the newness of a patch.

This patch in particular introduced an amazing (relative to the old one) new way of handling the gear grind: Sigils.  These sigils are much easier to obtain because they give us options.   On top of being easier to work towards, the system awarded me 2 greater wards and 1 superior ward(or Sigil, whatever) right when I logged in!  Yep, as I had hoped, Mythic’s way of integrating progress already made was to take the old armory section of the ToK and use it as a starting point for each character.  Luckily I won my Invader boots and had a few pieces of Conqueror gear already unlocked in the armory.

Unfortunately, this patch does not include the class changes.  Convenient!  We all knew Mythic favored Order and would let them stay overpowered to have access first!! *sniveling whine!*  (That one’s for you Mark! )  Nah, it sucks but they’re on the way.  The patch did break a few people’s abilities and introduced a couple bugs and has been giving some people performance issues, but I haven’t found anything wrong with my Shammy.

I made 3/4 a renown rank, completed all but one step in the Live Event, gained 3 sigils/wards, RvR’d and did at least 20 Reikland factories winning easily 15 of them…all within a couple hours.   Most importantly I had fun. Now I’m imagining how much fun I could have with Land of the Dead actually being available….