Aion: Tower of Eternity

Aion: Tower of Eternity is a sexy new mmo currently in Closed beta 2 from Nc Soft (you know the super hero game people and L2) its built with the CRYtek engine and its looks sexy to say the least im surprised there isnt more hype about it but ill give the weblink anyways.

Aion english home page: http://www.aiononline.com/us/
(the english one isnt very detailed in the updates area)

Aionsource: www.Aionsource.com
(a surprisingly detailed and up to date english page from Aion fans better than the real english site)

Aion Wiki: http://aionsource.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

here is general info taken off the site for all the fraydi cats who are scared that i want thier accounts ^^

General info

What is AION?

AION: The Tower of Eternity is a fantasy/sci-fi MMORPG chronicling an epic conflict between three factions: the player-controlled Elyos and Asmodians, and a server-controlled NPC faction, the warlike Balaur.

What is the current status of Aion? / Beta status

Aion is currently undergoing the closed beta stage in Korea. So no, you can't download it.
The 1st part of the Korean Closed beta ended in december, and the 2nd (mostly the final part) will begin mid-march (has been postponed, was february before)
There will be a NA/EU beta (closed/open or both) probably during q2 2008. This beta won't be only a stress test (localization problems, hardware/servers test...) but also the occasion to get feedback from western player.

Basic Storyline (Lore)

In AION, players must choose a side between two warring factions: the Elyos or the Asmodians. Once their world was whole; a perfect union joined at the center by The Tower of Eternity. When a great catastrophe shattered The Tower of Eternity, it split the world into two halves - and awoke the Balaur, a warring race exiled within the extra-dimensional Abyss. The Balaur now seek revenge on both of these new worlds, sparking an epic conflict. The conflict between those 3 races is about Aether, a substance needed for flying, and the Abyss is the only region where you can find this material in huge quantities. The part you play, the side you choose and the decisions you make will help determine the ultimate fate of AION.

Key Features

• Interactive gameplay systems
  The actions of each faction on each individual server will eventually trigger consequences, which will then change each server's live environment. No two servers should ever be the same (except maybe at the start).
• PvPvE (Player vs Player vs Environment)
  Aion: The Tower of Eternity features an evolving conflict system, which manages the complex relationships and alliances between realms, races and guilds. The system also controls a third NPC faction, the Balaur, who may act as the enemy - or the ally - of players.
• Free flying and flying combat
  Take to the skies and soar over the landscape, with wings that allow your character to access remote areas, travel to different parts of the world - and to engage enemies in aerial combat!
• Beautiful and detailed graphics
  Created using a modified version of the Crytek engine (as used in Far Cry), AION: The Tower of Eternity is the most graphically beautiful MMORPG yet released. Astounding levels of detail on characters and in environments immerse you in the world of AION.

• More info
• Official site

Is Aion free? P2P?

• No pricing has been officially announced yet, but it has been strongly hinted at that AION will be P2P. The industry standard of $15 USD per month is the predicted monthly fee. The actual box will probably cost $40 for a regular edition and $60 for a "Collector's" edition.
• Every region has the right to change it's subscription type so NcSoft Austin may differ from NcSoft Korea and NcSoft Europe

Factions & leveling:

• Elyos and Asmodians are the playable races. Elyos are 'Angelic' and Asmodians 'Demonic' in appearance. Neither is necessarily good or evil.
• The basic class tree of the Asmodians is the same as the Elyos. There will however be some important differences in skills. This means that fighting a class of the same faction and one of the opposing faction will be quite different experiences.
• AION's current proposed level cap is 50, just like Dark Age of Camelot.

Wings and flying:

• You can fly!
• The quest for becoming a Daeva earns you your wings at level 10. You can only fly for few minutes, with a cooldown period ( probably around 2 or 3 mins ). Some items and skills can increase the flying time.
• Both Elyos and Asmodians get wings.
• You can fly freely or follow a flight path (like WoW's in Gryffons), depending on the area. Using a flight path to get to an area doesn't seem to exhaust your flight skill.
• Wings can be personalized or upgraded through PvP. We are unsure of the specifics.
• Some skills act differently or are available only when you are flying. That makes the flight system more of a strategic element than a transportation mechanic.
• Flying timer and cooldown don't change with character level.

Asmodians' Base Wings


Spoiler:


http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/5...modiansso0.jpg


Elyos' (perhaps upgraded) Wings


Spoiler:


http://www.aionsource.com/forum/imag.../wol_error.gif
This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 1024x564.

http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/4...gsfrontrf5.jpg

• Video of travel/flightpath 1
• Video of travel/flightpath 2
• Video of many of wings
• Thread about wings

Differences between Elyos and Asmodians

• DP skills aren't the same, List of DP skills
• Wings,Amors look different
• They don't speak the same langage, so you won't be able to speak to enemies with the chat.
• You can't group with the opposite faction and you can't do the quest of the opposite faction.
• Different area of leveling (in the begining, you will probably quest in the same area of the opposite faction in higher level)

Classes

Names will be the same for both Elyos and Asmodians.
4 "schools" of classes, names are unofficial, except for Spiritmaster (formerly Elementalist) see this thread for more info.
At the begining, you choose a school, and later you can specialize by picking a class within that school.

School of Warriors

• Gladiator:
  Gladiators are flexible in their choice of weaponry. They're able to wield many kinds of close-combat weapons depending on the situation. Their combat style is relatively easy to learn. This isn't to say that it is an easy class to master. With some flair they can outshine even the fanciest damage-dealing classes.
• Templar
  It's unfortunate that in most MMO games the tank is conceptually attractive but not so fun to actually play. The classes in Aion are classic in some ways, but they all have their quirks that make them stand out from the archetype. With the Templar, players will see different shades of the class as it absorbs more and more damage. It's truly a different sort of tank melee class.

School of Scouts

• Ranger
  Ranger is a utility class with many tricks up its sleeve, such as laying traps and sniping from afar. It's a well-rounded class with both melee and ranged skills as well as an ability to heal itself. Careful assessment of the situation is needed for a ranger to shine, for its many abilities can as easily get in the way for an unskilled player. Can stealth !
• Assassin
  We can more or less sum up the assassin class with the words: watch your back! Big damage within a short span of time - that's what the assassin is all about. However to get that proper use out of an assassin, swift positioning is extremely important. Can stealth too ! but assassin will probably use more skills based on it http://aionsource.com/forum/images/smilies/tongue.gif

School of Mages

• Sorcerer
  A powerful magic class with deadly nuking skills, but also extremely fragile up close. A sorcerer might prefer to be in a party for survivability, but with some skill it could also be a fast solo class.
• Spiritmaster
  A Spiritmaster is not your ordinary summoner. As their previous name suggested, their tool of trade are the elementals that they manipulate at will. Get intimate enough with the elementals and you might very well become one.

School of Priests

• Cleric
  Clerics are, of course, the masters of recovery. They posess many healing skills to aid their kin, but that's not all. With a solid set of skill combinations and a number of melee skills they may surprise you in the right situation.
• Chanter
  As a priest, chanters can also heal to a certain extent, but their specialty is in mysterious chants that boost the morale of nearby players. They're also known for effective melee skill combinations and all-around usefulness. It should be an attractive class for those that like to do it all.

• source, translated from

Class switching? :

• We haven't heard anything about it.

Hero classes ? :

• Yes, in the future. Probably like L2 hero, only few per server.
• Thread #1
• Thread #2

Gender affecting stats/skills ? :

• No.

List of skills/video :

• List of some skills (old link, some of skill may have change)
• Ranger Video
• Wizard Video
• SpiritMaster Video

Combos & Divine Power

Combos

• Certain active attack skills/spells only become available after you successfully land a particular skill/spell. This way you're able to chain 2-3(maybe more) skills in succession which may result in extra damage inflicted.
• For instance, fighters should be able to use the skills Explosive stike(attack skill) -> Stun strike(knocks enemy over) -> chance strike(attacks fallen enemy)
• Those 3 skills have to be chained in that order because Stun strike won't open up untill explosive strike has successfully landed.
• Rangers also get a similar 3 hit combo attack similar to the fighter. Priests have an AOE spell combo that knocks all enemies over followed by an attack spell. But you get the basic idea now.. its just chaining certain skills to inflict lots of damage in a short amount of time and watching the cool flashy animations.

Divine Power

• It is said that Divine Power(DP) is a powerful skill that is able to turn the tides of a pvp battle.
• The DP gauge located under the character's HP and MP bar fills up as you hunt regular monsters and must be at 100% to activate the skill.
• When you release the DP skill(the skill is called DP explosion or something like that), it will do large amounts of damage to multiple monsters around you.
• The skill has a slow casting time so you may be exposed to incoming attacks during this time.
• You should also be careful as the skill will hit any monsters within a certain range and any monsters that get hit will aggro you.
• The DP gauge doesn't decrease if you dont hunt, so you'll be able to conserve it as you move around hunting zones.
• As the DP gauge fills up, the amount of damage you do to monsters also increases.
• DP gauge reset when you disconnect, but you can transfer it to another char.

• Thread about combo/DP
• Thread about combo/DP
• Thread about Skills & combo

Party combinations?:

• Yes, there'll be some party combos
• Thread about party combos

PvP

• PvP in Aion will have a focus on control-oriented and reactive skills. Skills have clear relationships with each other where some are used in combinations and others to counter combinations.
• PvP-specific skills will be available for usage around level 40. The player can, however, still choose not to participate in PvP unless he/she wants to.
• The time required to reach maximum level has been reduced since the last Friends and Family Test. The level progression will be similar and comparable to that of many western-developed games in the genre. After reaching the level cap (currently 50), players will be able to improve their characters on a more horizontal plane by using something called “Stigma”. More on this later.
• For players who don’t enjoy PvP, there will be various PvE activities to take part in such as raids, instanced dungeons and so on – All connected to the great war. An example would be PvE players collecting items for big siege weapons to support their faction.
• The main conflict within Aion: The Tower of Eternity is a great conflict raging between the Elyos, Asmodians and the Balaur. This is also where the content focus will be.
• A feature that is currently on a planning stage is to randomly open teleportation portals in the Elyos and Asmodian lands.

Where?

• You can PVP in the Abyss and there will be some zones outside the Abyss where the Elyos and Asmodians will be able to interact.
• You can only duel your own faction.
• You can raid city (maybe siege...).
• You can PvP into enemies instances... That means if the Elyos guild named "blabla" is doing an instanced dungeon, the Asmodian guild named "grrrrr" can enter the same instance as "blabla" and kill them.
• You can PVP in an arena, although this is currently just for fun, with no ranking systems etc.
• Video
• Thread about pvp outside of the abyss

Abyss


Spoiler:


http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/4...onabyssgy3.jpg


PvE

• There will be two types of raids in Aion. The first type is similar to that of Lineage, with huge amounts of players participating. The second type requires more strategy and class-specific skills (perhaps more comparable to that of “Everquest”).
• A Raid NPC/Monster for the Elyos might be an important NPC for the Asmodians which leads to the possibility of raids influencing the faction war.

Abyss & Castles :

• The Abyss will consist of two distinct parts. The first part is aimed at beginners and is meant to introduce players to the Abyss concept. The second part is connected to the real war and meant for more experienced characters.
• The Abyss will be home to 8 to 10 castles that can be captured by either faction. The advantages will have extreme consequences. Your faction will be able to gather crafting materials easily. Besides that, traders live around the castle and will sell special weapons only to your faction. Finally, the ruling guild will receive taxes from the land. The rest of the faction won't get any money from it. Only when the enemy retakes the castle, another guild will have the chance to benefit from the many advantages of the castle.
• You can lvl in Abyss, killing balaurs and receiving XP, and you can get PVP points to buy PVP equipment.
  Leveling in the abyss seems more effective than leveling in the outside (due to the greater risk of getting killed, the XP reward from mobs will be greater...)
• You can upgrade your castle with force field or recrut some NPCs to guard and defend it.
• Siege weapons can be obtained through PvE (raid boss drop)
• You can either build siege wepons when attacking a castle, or buy it with the Auction House (once a PvE guild/party has placed them there)
• This way, PVE players help the war opposing faction, without doing PVP, but the idea is to bring people doing PVE to start PVP and PVP players to do some PVE http://aionsource.com/forum/images/smilies/tongue.gif
• Abyss thread #1 - translation
• Abyss Thread #2 - translation
• PVE Abyss Video

Items, Armors, Tradeskills

Items & Armor

• The types of items in Aion are divided in to three categories: Normal items, Abyssal items and “Drakonic items” (names are still to be determined).
  Abyssal items are received via PvP and “Drakonic items” will be available through crafting of items acquired from hunting the Balaur.
• There will be some “Soulbound” items, meaning that once equipped, they can not be traded anymore (as made famous by “Everquest”).
• You can costumize armors with dye
• When some sets are full/complete, they will glow around the character.
• item uniqueness : Let's take your situation as an example; at high levels, everyone will be wearing the equipment that provides the most stat benefits. In Aion, there is a system where you can transfer the stat bonuses from one piece of equipment to another. Let's say you have the an awesome sword by the name of Zariche which looks absolutely awesome, but an even better sword looks pretty dull (in your opinion anyway). Through Aion's system you can upgrade to the better sword while keeping the awesome looks of Zariche.

• Video about dyeing
• Armors look different whether it's weared by Elyos or Asmodians

Slots for equipment :

• head, necklace, 2 earings, shoulder, chest, legs, cloak, waist, boots, 2 rings, 2 weapon sets
• Some Pics

Spoiler:


http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/1...ipementve2.jpg


Characteristics & Stigma :

• The developers do not want players to have to worry about character attributes (such as Strength, Dexterity, Constitution…), which is why attributes are automated and controlled by the game.
• One of the things differentiating characters is the “Stigma” system. Stigma is a sort of stone containing the memories of a Daeva. A Stigma stone will, in a nutshell, allow players to, by the use of different slots, create unique characters with skills or equipment from other classes. Examples of the combinations that can be acquired by utilizing this system are Wizards wearing heavy armour or maybe Assassins knowing how to teleport.
  Stigma is available from around level 20. There are limitations which will be revealed at a later point.
• 5 Stats given by armour : Magical defence, Physical defence, Focus, Evasion & Mana.
• Pics - Translation

Tradeskills, professions & crafting :

• About 10 differents.
• Thread #1
• Enchanting items with glow and stats ? we don't know Thread about enchanting
• Tailoring Video
• Armour translation

Armor at lvl20

Random
System requirements:

Minimum for the Korean closed beta:

• CPU: Pentium 4 2.8GHz or AMD Athlon 2800+
• RAM: 512MB
• VGA: GeForce 5700 or Radeon 9600, DirectX 9c or higher
• Hard Drive: 20GB available space
• Windows XP or Vista

Recommended:

• CPU: Pentium 4 3.0GHz or AMD Athlon 64 3000+
• RAM: 1GB
• VGA: GeForce 6600 or Radeon x1550, DirectX 9c or higher
• Hard Drive: 20GB available space
• Windows XP or Vista

• Thread about system requirements

Engine: NCSOFT licensed CryTek's CryENGINE v1 (the engine used in FarCry, NOT Crysis) for Aion.

Will there be an Mac/Linux version? We don't know yet. Probably not.

Will there be expansion packs? There will be big, regular expansions once or twice a year. How they are to be distributed depends on the area.
GamePlay:

• WASD movement is fully supported with auto facing target it seems
• Thread #1
• Thread #2
• Click to move as well probably =)
• Flight is controlled using WASD
• You can jump and climb
• It is possible to alter the result of combat by maneuvering the character. (Forward, back, left, right, jump)

Transportation:

• there are 2 ways of transportation : short and long. Short distance uses a flight path, like describe in the wings part (scroll up) and teleporting is for longer transfers.
• No mounts at release, maybe later...
• Thread #1
• Thread #2

Auction house & Personal shops:

• Yes, both are in game.

Guilds:

• There are 3 level :
  • The first level costs 135.000 Quina, allows 30 members, and a random crest is selected.
  • The second level costs 845.000 Quina, requires 10 members, allows 60 members, and you can select the crest.
  • The third level costs 3.151.000 Quina, requires 20 members & 10.000 GuildPoint, allows ?? members, and you can create your own crest.
• GuildPoint are probably gained by killing players, raid boss etc...
• There are 3 ranks inside the guild : Legion Master, Officers and Members.
• There is also a guild bank, called "Legion bank"
• Translation - Best thread
• Thread #1
• Thread about guild emblems

Player housing/guild housing :

• This is something that’s still in early development but yes. Players will be able to own a house and decorate it. There will be guild housing as well. Having these houses out on the hunting fields might result in a land shortage so we’re working on coming up with solutions for this.
• About Player housing: Not at launch, but definitely as soon as possible. It is likely to be in the first expansion.
• Thread

Potions/foods/drinks :

• There will be health and mana recovery potions with instant effect. They will, however, have a re-use timer to prevent excessive usage. There will also be foods with different effects on your character. Food will basically work as a kind of buff, of which only one can be active at the same time.

Music:

• Thread

UI-Addons:

• A customizable/"Open source" User Interface is still under consideration. The problem is that it could open up opportunities for hackers and malicious tools (exploitation).

Spoiler:


http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/3...nuilootpq0.jpg


In Game voice chat?:

• we don't know yet.
• Thread

Macros ?:

• Thread about macros - translation

Worlds/area:

• The world of Aion resembles a partially hollowed out globe, divided horizontally into two halves. The lower half is the world of the Elyos, the upper half is the world of the Asmodians. So basically the world-map of Aion is not on a horizontal plane, like a traditional fantasy world; instead it's vertical. With this in mind, some parts of both worlds can only be accessed from the air - such as floating castles, and islands in the sky. Because of this, all of the player characters can gain wings.
• The area lying in between the two halves of Atreia is referred to as the Abyss. The Elyos' half is named Elysea while the Asmodian's half is named Asmodae.
• Pandaemonium Video

Is Aion’s world seamless or zoned? :

• The world is zoned and there are several transportation methods available including walking, flight, and teleportation. The loading speed between zones is still in tuning but even at this point it ís very short.

Project about video website and ventrilo/Ts/shoutcast dedicated to aion:

• Thread

Character customizations:

• You'll be able to change the appearance of your hairstyle, hair color, facial, body, voice, as well as two special features.
• The game's voices will be localized for each of the three countries. There will be initially 25 tones which will be used during emotes.
• Elyos Pics
• Asmodians Video
• Asmodians Pics

Spoiler:


http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/2...rcustomtd4.jpg

Weather effects:

• At first, weather was designed to influence spell (raining make fire spell less effective...) but this feature unfortunately had to be scrapped.
  Weather will however affect some NPCs and monster spawns.

Titles ? :

• Your char can get a title having an item in his inventory that gives stats.
• Thread

Gameguard for Aion?:

• nProtect has been used for the Korean beta test, but we are unsure if it will be used in the future.
• Thread

What's gameguard?:

• Background application, to avoid cheating and using illegal software influencing the gameplay.

What about bot, goldfarmers etc?:

• There will be a full GM team dedicated to abusive behavior.
• Thread

Dual-monitor compatible:

• We don't know.

Collector's edition:

• We don't know if there will be a collector's edition.
• Thread

Economy:

• Thread #1
• Thread #2

Types of weapons:

• Sword, 2H Sword, Short-sword, Dagger, Polearms, Maces, Bows, Staves, and Tomes, no axes seen yet...

Grinding/casual/hardcore..:

• Thread #1
• Thread #2
• Thread #3
• Thread #4

Some player's feedback:

• Thread #1
• Thread #2

Quest & leveling:

• Aion is being designed and developed with plenty of quests that are clearly marked.
• There will be short-term goals in the game, such as quests fitting within shorter timeframes and rewards.
• Thread #1
• Thread #2
• Thread #3

About casting bar:

• Thread

Experience loss on death?:

• Probably
• Thread

About art & graphics :

• Thread

What's a shugo?:

• An NPC race, the merchants of Atreia. Thread

Lots of videos :

• Thread

I Hope this helps some

PS: I hope you can multi box it ^^

PSS: posted in so many bits because or character limit

Wall of info crits me for 1 million... I have died.

Sadly I'm far to skeptical about any Korean made MMO. Everyone that I have ever tried has never appealed to me for more than 5 minutes. End level everyone looks the same. Freaking ridiculous armor and weapon models. Just not into the 'anime' series. But I hope this game doesn't suffer where pretty much every other Korean MMO has in the US market.

I'll check it out more when I get home from work. Any boxability info out there?

I'm rather skeptical of this MMO as well. If this is anything like RFO or L2 then I won't be able to touch this game. However it does look like it could have some promise. The main thing that has turned me away from other MMO's like this is the endless level time of L2 and the potion mashing of RFO.

I'm definitely going to keep an eye on this game especially if the big two (AoC & WAR) fail me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 'The IT Monkey',index.php?page=Thread&postID=50048#post500 48

Wall of info crits me for 1 million... I have died.

---

eff that!

Ty for the post, <3 all the info. Can't wait to play this game.



The only thing is, b/c it's such a high quality game, it's gona take a lot from your computer, to try and multibox.