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Aion has been on the lips of almost every MMO gamer in the last few months, renowned for its beauty and its popularity in Asia. As the western release date approaches, we take a look at this upcoming game to see if it really lives up to all the hype.
Previously known as Aion: Tower of Eternity, NCsoft recently decided to rename it to simply 'Aion' for us here in the west. The game launched in South Korea in November last year, and shortly afterwards it was awarded "Best Korean Game of the Year". In April it hit game store shelves in China and, to date, Aion reportedly has around 3.5 million subscribers, a mere eight months after launch.
Until now, all we've seen of the game in the rest of the world is the odd screenshot, well, the odd hundred, and a brief glimpse of in-game zones through 'tours' released by NCsoft. However, the closed beta testing opened last month, and some lucky players finally got a chance to try out the game first hand. This weekend was the third closed beta session, so I decided to get stuck in and see if Aion is worth all the fuss.
General ScreenshotOne of Aion's big selling points is its graphics, and from the media I'd seen so far I knew what to expect. However, I was still extremely impressed when the game started up. The first stage of the character creator was my first "Wow" moment. There are four classes to choose from, so to give players an idea of what their characters may look like later in the game, a male and female version of each class is presented, lounging on the screen in front of you, in some of the game's best gear I suspect. Clicking one of these characters prompts a brief demonstration of their abilities, accompanied by an unmistakably Asian-sounding shout. The game is currently being localised for English-speaking players and western voices are supposedly being added, although there is a lot of debate in the community about whether this is necessary. However, considering the amount of work developers have put into the next step, the character customisation, it's clear they feel the look, and likely the sound, of a character is important to players in Aion.
General ScreenshotThe four classes in Aion to choose from are the Warrior, Mage, Scout and Priest. Each of these have two subclasses, such as the Scout's Assassin and Ranger, and players must pick which role they wish to play later on in the game. So once the somewhat simple choice of class has been made, the character customisation, the part many MMO players look forward to immensely, is next.
I thought the class selection screen was impressive, but I was blown away by this stage. The face that greets you as you begin to design your character is uncannily realistic. My sister happened to be with me when I saw this page for the first time, and she said it was almost like looking into a mirror, albeit there was someone else's face looking back at us. I knew what she meant immediately.
