Aion: The Tower of Eternity Reviews, Trailer, Launch Woes
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Eurogamer clocks in with the first full review, slapping a 7/10 on the fantasy MMORPG:
Instanced dungeons offering a more focused PvE challenge are quite rare before the very highest levels. Similarly, PvP is tightly controlled by level, and only available in open-world areas, with the city Coliseums offering the solitary opportunity for a jump-in, casual bout. Outside the Abyss - where raiding parties are able to use Rifts to travel to the opposing faction's side - it's hard to find a scrap when you want one, and hard to avoid one when you don't.
You'll either like the sound of this singular blend of MMO play-styles or you won't. If you do and are prepared to take the quality and sustainability of the high-level content on trust, for now - trust which, to be fair, the game seems to deserve - I'd recommend it. Aion's particular vision is built on a rock-solid if uninspired foundation, a meticulous mastery of the traditional MMORPG form. It might as well have been made by Toyota or Volkswagen. It won't let you down.
If you don't like the sound of the Abyss, however - if you're the sort of player who likes an online world to bend to your whim, rather than bend you to its own - then committing to Aion is a gamble, because there's not much else to be wrung from it but the grind. A streamlined, structured, gorgeous grind, an addictive and even rewarding grind if you're that way inclined, but a grind nonetheless. An ultimately grim and unvarying pursuit. A string of key-presses, in the same endlessly repeating sequence, reaching to the moon and back.
MMORPG.com does the first impressions thing:
A week of game time is far from enough to actually say anything really conclusive about Aion, but I have been left with some thoughts: the gameplay does feel like a standard MMO, but it does also seem very polished. The servers were relatively stable, although they had some very nasty latency issues on the first day, but as the week went on, I noticed the problems lessened and lessened. The world itself seems pretty interesting, and while even the quests are the generic blend, they seemed to be decently well written.
If you're looking for something new and earth shattering, I don't think Aion is going to be the game for you. However, if you're looking for a solid MMO experience that seems to be quite a bit of fun, then Aion might be a good place to focus your attention.
And then WarCry provides a launch trailer, while Kotaku reports about massive waiting queues and ridiculous overcrowding:
I'm almost positive that at one point my server went down completely, and there were a few instances of severe server-wide rubber-banding (running the length of a road and finding yourself snapped back to the beginning), but otherwise things seemed rather smooth considering the huge influx of players.
My main problem was due to the initial rush. With that many people in your starting zone, quest items will be camped, and quest monsters will be slaughtered mercilessly. At first NCsoft had 10 instances of the newbie area available for players to freely switch between, but each one was packed, causing severe quest bottlenecks, especially when the quest required players to click on one item that spawned every two minutes. It was chaotic.
