Is Aion Going Down?

I thought for awhile I was the only one who had problems with Aion, but apparently other players are starting to bitch about it also. A couple of bloggers quitting is hardly a serious concern, but that’s how it always starts (remember Warhammer?). Aion looked to be a very promising game several months ago. The community was excited and it was supposed to be one of the best MMORPG’s to be released in awhile. Perhaps it is still one of the best, but that certainly doesn’t mean it has no problems.

While I personally can’t complain about specific problems, I can complain about the game as a whole. Four, five years ago when I first started my adventures in the World of Warcraft, I didn’t mind grinding, bugs, bots or anything like that. The entire game concept was pretty new to me and extremely fun. Now, whenever I try a new MMO it simply feels like I’ve done and tried everything there is and not many things can really excite or entertain me anymore.

That’s where Aion steps in. It’s just a game, nothing more. It has levels, grinds, money sinks and other features/annoyances which I’m simply tired of. It brings nothing new to the table. Flying was supposed to be something new and unprecedented and it turns out to be more or less crap: it’s too limited and not as much fun as I thought. I remember getting my first flying mount in WoW: now that was really something. Being able to fly through Outlands was something special and quite possibly one of the best WoW additions ever.

Aion is simply not something I see myself playing anymore. I can’t really put a finger on anything specific like Spooner or Werit did, although I completely agree with all their conclusions. Leveling is too slow for one, I did it countless times before in other games and frankly I’m tired of it. The worst thing is one way or the other in Aion you have to grind; I rather not even think what it’s like after level 40. While I personally didn’t have huge issues with making kinah I do admit there’s always a lack of it. While leveling in WoW you could spend a few gold occasionally on a cool new blue item — in Aion, you have to save only to buy skills.

I barely experienced any PvP. Rifts sounded like a great idea on paper, but they are too limited and random to be frequent fun. The endgame is almost all about the Abyss, which really concerns me. I like PvP, I really do, but when I think about doing it day after day makes me dizzy. I played a shitload of battlegrounds in WoW, but could never do it more than 4-5 hours a day. You simply get burned out, and Aion doesn’t really offer any alternatives: there’s not a ton of daily quests or instances to break the routine, and crafting in Aion hardly means taking a break. There’s no point in making an alt when your main character still takes months of playtime to be decent.

I won’t even mention botting, lag, bugs, gold spammers, server crashes and other quirks since most of those come natural with these games.

Overall, the times have changed and a game needs to offer more than a “new” story and a couple of cool features to stay competitive. I sincerely hope Aion won’t go down as Warhammer, but I’m afraid without serious changes soon it will happen.

One Response to “Is Aion Going Down?”

1. ThE_PaiN says:

   November 4, 2009 at 5:56 pm

   Nice article, just followed you on Twitter. Keep it up!