Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Aion 1-25 Part 1

Works been busy. I was about to hit 24 last night when I got a call that some equipment went down. So I had to pack up and drive an hour to meet AT&T to try and fix the issue. However since I’m SOOO close to 24 I’m going to start part 1 of my 1-25 Aion review.

Character Creation: Aion offers a huge variety in character customization. There are some 40 faces to pick from for each sex and then you have sliders to adjust nearly every feature on the face and body. The sliders allow you to move eyes, noise, forehead, chin, feet, arms and it allows you to resize all of these features too. Now the first time you create a character it seems a bit overwhelming and feels as though you have endless possibilities.

The problem is that once you log into the game all that pain staking detail you put into your character goes unnoticed. Every view puts your character so far away from the screen that they are the size of a Polly pocket in standard armor. The countless options in the character creation screen are simply put; pointless. You can’t tell one slider adjust from the next once you start playing the game. That doesn’t mean it should be removed, it obviously doesn’t hurt to have it in place. I just don’t think it’s something we should praise too highly.

Starting Area: I’ve leveled three characters to level 10 now, two Rangers and a Cleric. The starting area is typical for most MMO’s. It isn’t too difficult but it still gives you enough of a challenge to be enjoyable. The quests flow smoothly and the help guide is amazing, they have little windows to show you where hotkeys are by default. The story line for you ascension is well done and there are quite a few cut scenes along the way. The only real down side is that once you’ve done it once, you’ve done it all. Each class has the same quests and the same story line. There isn’t much replay ability here.

Crafting: I started crafting early. I wanted to try and get a jump on the majority of the playerbase who would be focusing on leveling rather than trade skills. It has worked for the most part. I’m currently at 200 Alchemy and I’ve been able to make money using that trade skill every day. You have Work Orders that are quests for your profession. I really don’t want to go into to much detail about it, just check my crafting post. http://spritesarefun.blogspot.com/2009/10/crafting-in-aion.html

The major issue is the economy more so than the trade skills. More often than not the materials to make a given item cost more than the product you make from them. The best way I’ve found to make a profit is buy the materials early in the morning. Everyone posts their materials as they go to bed so if you are up late or up early buy the cheap materials. You then have two options. You can either sit on them and relist them in the afternoon or craft an item and sell the item. I do both. I purchase in bulk every morning and turn the majority of those into potions. I sell potions for 2.5 times what it costs me to make them. In the evenings I relist some of those extra materials back onto the market and make 75% more than what I paid for them. The reason I don’t focus on one or the other is I am trying not to flood the market, plus you are limited on how many items/stacks you can sell at a broker.

This concludes Part 1.

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