By Jim Rossignol on March 6th, 2009 at 10:39 am.
NCSoft was hit rather hard by the failure of Tabula Rasa, and they’ll be looking for their next big title to do a little better. Despite being another fantasy MMORPG Aion is actually looking pretty interesting, with its scenario of war between angel and demon analogues, it’s ludicrously spectacular environments, and its aerial combat. It’s also visually splendid, being powered by CryTek’s CryEngine technology. You can see that in action, with some flying manta-rays and floating castles, after the jump. Aion is already making waves in China and Korea, and we’re expecting to see it roll out in Europe and North America towards the end of the year.
06/03/2009 at 10:42 Tworak says:
It certainly looks good. However, Korean MMOs usually mean 10000 quests or 1000000 kills to gain a level which puts me off.
06/03/2009 at 10:46 Ian says:
Pretty.
06/03/2009 at 11:12 Kommissar Nicko says:
It leaves a sour Final Fantasy sort of taste in my mouth and the texture is something like Burning Crusade. Seems like a pretty run-of-the-mill offering; all those shapely chainmail-clad women and whimsical windmills with glistening blue lakes and fantastical fanfare music is what does it.
06/03/2009 at 11:29 Dolphan says:
Oh, thought this was Aionguard for a second. Now THAT looks interesting.
06/03/2009 at 11:32 Tei says:
Sure,.. AION in-game look better than most games pre-artwork.
STOP TEASING US, AND OPEN A SERVER IN EUROPE!!!.
GRRRRrrrrrrr……
06/03/2009 at 11:43 egg says:
A friend of mine who was really into Lineage 2 told me Aion is gonna be more “western-friendly”, in the sense that WoW is not ludicrously time consuming in comparison to L2 and its way of forcing you to regiliously play 4 hours a day if you wanna go somewhere in the game.
I’ve played a bit of Lineage 2 and always thought the game interesting. If Aion is less about grind and more about anything else, I’m in.
06/03/2009 at 11:44 SlappyBag says:
Just call it “WoW in HD” pluz.
06/03/2009 at 11:59 teo says:
CryEngine 1?
06/03/2009 at 12:30 Ben Abraham says:
If it uses the Crytek Engine, I wonder if this will be the game that gets all of China and Korea to upgrade their aging PC’s that all still run WoW and Lineage OK.
Actually, I have no idea what the average PC is like in Asia except for a brief stint in a Vietnamese internet Cafe at the start of last year. Pirate versions of Warcraft III and CS 1.6 FTW! =P
06/03/2009 at 12:30 schizoslayer says:
That doesn’t look like the same engine as Crysis at all. Either it’s ye old CryTek or they’ve managed to completely waste all the engine goodness by filling it full of flat textured art with no advanced shaders whatsoever.
06/03/2009 at 12:43 Xercies says:
@schiz
I’m guessing they have done that because they actually want people to play this game.
06/03/2009 at 13:04 MrDeVil_909 says:
It’s Cryengine 1, still a good enough looking technology for the genre.
06/03/2009 at 13:09 Nny says:
Pretty, shame it’s a mmo…
06/03/2009 at 13:24 Hoernchen says:
Damn it, NCSoft still sounds like “boring asian massive multiplayer online grinding game”.
06/03/2009 at 13:25 MeestaNob! says:
Whilst it is reasonably pretty (especially for an online game), I agree that it seems like a pointless waste of the Crysis engines time to slum it running a sharper WoW clone.
To be honest, I’m surprised Crysis is flexible enough for MMORPG duties.
Hopefully this is an addictive grindfest that appeals to Asia, that way they’ll upgrade their machines and elevate the planets average computer spec considerably, meaning Blizzard can add some god damn detail to Diablo 3 and stop all of us wanting to kill ourselves.
06/03/2009 at 14:33 Dan Harris says:
Looks like a big bag of wank to me.
SWTOR FTW! ZOMG! ROFL. Cough.
06/03/2009 at 15:03 yns88 says:
I guess this isn’t the NCSoft title Tim Cain is working on? I’ll pass, then.
06/03/2009 at 15:47 mandrill says:
meh. another WoW clone. I’ll pass thanks.
GIVE ME SOMETHING DIFFERENT MMO MAKERS!!!
sorry, lost it abit there.
06/03/2009 at 15:55 MrDeVil_909 says:
“Damn it, NCSoft still sounds like “boring asian massive multiplayer online grinding game”.”
Just like Guildwars, right?
“Whilst it is reasonably pretty (especially for an online game), I agree that it seems like a pointless waste of the Crysis engines time to slum it running a sharper WoW clone.”
Not the Crysis engine, the Farcry engine. Cryengine 1, not Cryengine 2.
06/03/2009 at 16:52 Tei says:
AION graphics *are* impresive, If you are not impresed, go google for it. There are really amazing images. [ YMMV, because the characters are anime-ske. ] So don’t judge the image quality of the game for this video, there really much more eyecandy on this game than this.
06/03/2009 at 16:58 MMORPG Center says:
GuildWars, it made by Arena Net, published by NC Soft, and now probably owned by NC Soft, but as whole NC Soft is incapable of doing a decent mmorpg. Check out Lineage 2, even after one year passed, it wasfull of gold sellers and bots, in the newbie towns, and nobody cared. Probably same thing will happen in Aion.
06/03/2009 at 17:22 Jay says:
“meh. another WoW clone. I’ll pass thanks.
GIVE ME SOMETHING DIFFERENT MMO MAKERS!!!”
Dude, I’m really note sure how this is anything like WoW…
06/03/2009 at 18:17 Chis says:
I’ll play like this, though, surely?
http://www.socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=ff11
(Thanks to <a href=”http://hg101.proboards92.com/index.cgi?board=recent&action=display&thread=4648″HG101 for that, any excuse I can get to link to HG101!)
06/03/2009 at 18:18 Chis says:
Gah, sorry, damn html…
HG101 right here
06/03/2009 at 22:41 Zyrusticae says:
@MeestaNob!
Even that can’t rightly be used as an excuse – Look at Starcraft 2! Its visuals are superb, it’s supposed to be selling in Asia, and it started development a year before Diablo 3! I have absolutely no idea what the game looks so horribly dated, especially considering how well Titan Quest runs on anything that’s not more than three years old.
Anyways, getting back on-topic, that video told me absolutely nothing about how this game plays. Sigh. Some fairly nice artwork, but Korean MMOs have always irked me, either for the crap character customization (because apparently they really don’t mind having dozens of dopplegangers running around in the same area), or because of the grind-tastic gameplay. I do wonder if Aion will buck these trends any – likewise with Blade and Soul…
06/03/2009 at 23:00 PHeMoX says:
Yikes… looks like WoW meets Fable meets Guild Wars , reads like c l o n e to me so far. ;)
It does look great though, substantially better than either of the before mentioned games.
06/03/2009 at 23:06 Brian says:
I’ve been checking this one out for some time now. I just hope is not another korean grindfest.
07/03/2009 at 01:09 Jorlin says:
Crysis = CryEngine 2 (in words “two”)
FarCry= CryEngine 1 (in words “one”)
Aion= *drums* CryEngine 1 (in words “one”)
Aion has licensed CryEngine 1; the same engine that fuels FarCry. There have been made a lot of modifications though…
But please, do not mix up the engines here…
07/03/2009 at 01:42 malkav11 says:
Looks gorgeous. I have never met a Korean MMO I liked, though.
And Guild Wars is an American-made game from a studio composed by some of the former Diablo team (many of the others went off to the ill-fated Flagship.). Not Asian. NCSoft just publishes it. Much like City of Heroes and Tabula Rasa were.
08/03/2009 at 09:09 Kanakotka says:
NcSoft would probably do a lot better if they stopped intentionally ruining games with forced deadlining and otherwise bad design decisions. AutoAssault was one of the victims of NcSoft, imagine what it would’ve been as a polished, finished piece.
07/04/2009 at 20:06 Cliven says:
@Zyrusticae
Aion has face “morphing” and you can dye your gear, so the doppelganger effect should be greatly reduced.
To anyone who says “WoW clone”, please show me where WoW characters sprout wings and engage in aerial combat, which is a staple of this game. There are plenty of games that WoW copied, as well; you would be more on target calling WoW an Everquest clone.
Aion looks like a L2 clone on steriods; with the classes being similar and the races looking like L2 Kamael and batwinged dark elves, this looks like it will be the effective replacement to L2 now that L3 is shelved, at least for the forseeable future. Worth noting is that L2 Kamael (winged) appeared while Aion was under development.
Hopefully it will not be useless quests and endless grind like that and other Korean offerings.
Th
02/06/2009 at 22:55 dnb23 says:
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