Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Aion is out tomorrow in Europe and North America, and the pre-order has been topping direct-download charts for weeks. But are you going to be playing? Did you get on the beta? Did you pre-order? Have you signed up for the full game? If you are playing, what’s the appeal? Do those wings really make all the difference? Or is this a case of hype over content? RPS communal-voicebrain: speak!

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Here’s a bit of sad news. The free MMO Dungeon Runners is to close down this New Year. Here’s a bit of personal guilty news. I haven’t played it for so long. Which is a shame, because amongst the seventy three trillion free MMOs currently available online, Dungeons Runners was the one taking the piss. The producer and lead programmer of the NC Soft project, Stephen Nichols, wrote a post on the game’s site explaining that due to not making enough money the game will cease to be. But it’s going to go out having fun.

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We do not have a handful of Aion beta keys to give out, because we sent them all off. You can’t get any now, even by emailing us, because they’re all gone. Any Aion beta-key begging correspondence will now be fed to the bile worms. I’ve edited this post instead of removing it, so you all know what’s going on. If you’ve not received anything by now then you didn’t get a key, sorry!

…in that you can now download the open beta client for this famously winged, Cryengine 1-powered MMORPG, but the servers for said beta don’t open until 6th September. Getting a key to turn that client into anything useful may be a bit of a fight, alas. Unless you’ve already got one from the closed beta or have preorded the game, your best bet is bloody Fileplanet, who are planning on their usual insidious trick of only providing them to paid subscribers. Which does rather mean this is not, in fact, an open beta, but instead a closed one with a pricetag. Growl. We’ll have a word with NCSoft next week and see if we can perhaps sort out a few keys to give away to RPS readers – no promises, but we’ll try.
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The RPS-chat-room is broke by the cry: “Guild Wars 2 has splendid terrain!”. As we all know terrain is the single most important factor in PC Gaming. As such, I continue to be excited by Guild Wars. The first half of the video is slightly animated versions of the always beautiful Guild Wars concept art, so when the actual game footage arrives… well, it’s both a surprise and a joy. Clearly, I’ve taken a grab from the concept art section to avoid ruining the segue for you. The footage itself follows…
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Via IGN we get a massive Aion trailer (clickwards below), with the world, background, and factions explained by the American development team. Loads of game footage, plenty of action, and a general explanation of how a few aspects of how the game will play out. Looking up and seeing the other half of the world is a neat visual flourish. In fact it’s all looking rather impressive, and I’m now starting to see see why our Aion beta key giveaway was bombarded with over five thousand emails: the flying looks quite good.
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Compo now closed, and winners have been notified. Thanks for taking part!

Purdy-lookin’ forthcoming Korean MMO Aion – the one where flying plays a big role – is having a special European beta event on the 5th to 7th of June.The event will allow participants to play through the first twenty levels as an Elyos. To celebrate this, and, presumably to populate them servers, NCSoft are giving away a whole bunch of keys. Want one? Then all you need to do is email us. All gone, sorry!

Aion’s most recent outburst of prettiness is posted ‘neath the click, and it also happens to be the zone which will feature in the event.
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Presumably as part of a major fight back against its own upcoming spiritual sequel Champions Online, NCSoft’s venerable superfolk MMO City of Heroes/Villains (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – still the most fun I’ve ever had in an MMO, even if it’s a rare day that I venture back into it now) has announced a big-ass new expansion, Going Rogue. One that purports to fills in that morally grey gap between hero and villain. I always thought that was ‘politician’ or ‘gym teacher’, but seems as though it’s a little more complicated than that.
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Chinese MMO distributor Shanda have reported that one million people logged on to the Chinese-language version of NCSoft’s Aion in the first four days of play. It’s worth remembering that the Chinese model means that gamers play by the hour, so this could easily go on to become a gigantic success, or just disappear overnight – a distinct possibility when financial type sources (via GI.biz) suggest that many gamers came away from their hours of Aion with some rather negative feedback. Aion is scheduled for release in Europe and North American in the autumn. (At which time I expect we’ll have to pay by the month.)

NCSoft’s MMO-with-wings, Aion, has been showing off its floaty environments with quite spectacular results: lots of floaty things, both animate and inanimate. The flight aspect makes this rather more interesting than your normal MMO world, because there’s a whole lot of vertical detail to deal with. Oddly, NCSoft recently announced “flying transformations” for the new continent of Lineage II, which seems a bit like stealing their own thunder. Surely you keep the best for your big launch? I suppose Aion has been out for ages in Korea already, but still… Anyway, prettiness below. How I envy the environment artist.
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