Hudson wanted a look at the Aion UI — and that’s fair.
I found out that Aion was built on the Crytek engine, and that implies it won’t “run on a toaster”, the famous boast Blizzard made about WoW.
Just before I took this screen shot, it started raining in game. My character looked with disgust at the sky, and since it looked like I wasn’t going to be running her anywhere right then, pulled out a broad leaf to shield her head from the rain and sulked. The game is full of cute little animations like that. Your character has a life when you’re not at the keyboard, and will always be reacting to the environment in some way if you haven’t got anything else going on. Above her head are her health and power bars. Resting works wonders, but there are potions et al to get you back into the fight. Standard stuff.
At upper left is my buff bar; I have on buff going, but I have a couple short term buffs not shown there. At upper right is the quest log. The quest log is tied into the map similar to LotRO’s quest helper. I think you can turn that off, but who does, right?
Not shown (because I’m not in battle) are the combat indicators in the middle of the screen that alert you to combo and reaction opportunities (right out of DAoC and Vanguard), so you can keep your eye on the battle instead of watching the button bar — a nice feature and it comes in very handy.
Middle left is the chat window, which is standard — gets out of the way when you don’t want it. I don’t know if you can read that, but it shows the results of a recent harvest and some people testing out emotes.
Harvesting gives adventure experience, by the way. It would take forever, but you could level to your Ascension without killing a thing. After you Ascend, though, if you come back to mortal lands, you can’t harvest these lesser items — as you no longer have any use for human items.
Across the bottom is the button bar. Portrait on the left (not really seeing the need for this aside from “because WoW has one”). Just to the right are three bars for health, power and “Divine Power”. Once you Ascend, killing stuff builds up DP that you can spend on various powerful abilities. You lose all your DP when you die. You also lose experience, which you must buy back. I don’t know if you can delevel through dying, but I doubt it.
Next to that, along the bottom, are the hot keys. These will be different if you’re not a Scout, but I imagine not too different. Start Combat is the first one, next is Backstab, after that is Counter, which does a devastating hit after a block (and starts a combo later on). Next past that is a special buff that automatically blocks the next attack — use this when you see a monster charge a special attack. Their attack does nothing, you follow up with a Counter and then a combo… flip ’em over, they’re done. Past that is a buff which improves some ability for awhile.
The second to last dial is the flight indicator that shows how much flying time you have left, and lastly, the minimap on the far bottom right.
And I know I could have saved myself the time taken to type this up because it’s nothing not seen before. Aion takes all the other MMOs you play, fits them together in a new way and gives back something new.
It doesn’t go so far as to replace the other games — EverQuest II, in particular, has far more social gameplay — but what it does, it does perfectly.
The UI can be slightly customized to include more bars and some minor placement adjustments. There’s an option to move the UI from the bottom to the top. All it actually does is is move your character’s portrait and the minimap to the top to be a more ‘standard’ look. Regardless, the UI is nothing new. The UI’s of tomorrow will be nothing new. This will be a point of contention for some who like to nitpick, but I would ask, “Why fix what isn’t broken?” It gets the job done.
I thought much the same. It’s extremely pretty. It’s a lovely world to explore, within it’s own boundaries. The quests were neatly put together, and I really did enjoy the flashback sequences. Flying was both pretty and fun too. What it does, it seems to do very well and I couldn’t really fault it.
Been playing the Chinese retail with the English patch for the past month. It is technically about two patches behind the version used in the North American beta, but unless there were drastic changes, ‘lesser’ items are still harvestable after you ascend, as well as the more divine? resources. Various tradeskills depend more on one type or the other.
Didn’t get to try the NA beta, but one of the biggest peeves I have with the UI on the Chinese version is that when you ignore someone, it only blocks their tells. You can still see their chat on the regional chat, so blocking gold spammers essentially does nothing. :/ I’m hoping that’s been fixed or is going to be fixed! There is also no way to automatically track quests (it shows for a few seconds in the tracker but you have to manually checkmark it if you want it to stay). Was that added?
It many not run on a toaster, but it is smooth as silk and a breath of fresh air in the western MMO world of clunky skill animations (WoW is the one exception I can think of-not counting the many very fluid, but kiddy MMOs of course). I’m amazed at how good it looks while keeping animations etc so smooth.
Thanks much Tipa. I think things like this are needed for people on the fence. I appreciate it
How does the the character walk/run compares to Guild Wars? My main gripe with Guild Wars is that you must run/walk on a pre-conceived path, and deviation is impossible (it is like you are running against a wall, can’t go beyond that point), unlike Warcraft, where moving around is so free, and easy. Also, how is the attack and fight? How does is compares to WoW (if you have WoW experience)?
Thanks in advance.
Running around is free, no invisible walls — for running. You can go where you like. Flying is another thing entirely. You can only fly in certain places, you can’t fly over water, etc. But if you stow your wings, you can go anyplace you can see. I had no issues with it — in fact, running around rewards you with lots of little interesting places.
Aion doesn’t have WoW’s global cooldown, so fighting goes a bit faster. It reminded me very much of EQ2’s combat, actually, and that’s a good thing — EQ2’s combat feels fluid and natural, whereas when I played WoW, it always felt like I was waiting for something.
It reminded me very much of EQ2’s combat,
Can I just say…YEA
Because I really liked EQ2 combat compared to WoW or LOTRO (AoC still wins here, but EQ2, then Guild Wars are my next favorites)
Sounding better all the time…even if the game is grindy or boring questing, as long as little extras add to the game, the boring becomes a non-issue.
Cheers
@Tipa, thanks for the insides. I look forward to trying this game. Cheers!
Dang it…I might have to try this out…
Over to Gamestop.com I go
A few more questions. How do you compare it to GW (can you pick “heroes” to accompany you)? On GW, once you have initiated a combat, the character “insist” on following what’s being attacked at all cost, and sometimes it is hard just to hold back, to take other approaches. Is it the same with AION?
Coming from the same company that makes GW, I am suspicious that AION will be like a GW, just with different quests, or better graphics.
No, the game is far more along the lines of WoW or EQ2 than GW. You control only your own character, and your character is under your complete control. Your character will automatically move into melee range if you use a melee attack, though, unlike EQ2, which simply won’t allow the attack if you are out of range.
Thanks Tipa. I consider that behavior a bad one. It should be customizable. I like more the WoW style, where you can enter in combat, but your character will not move to range, unless you move it. That gives total freedom, and account for “I changed my mind” kind of scenarios.
i have a weird question…okay so I did pre-order, got my pre-order voucher, downloaded, updated, installed etc.
but when i try to launch, nothing happens…I was wondering if that’s a technical problem on my side?
I don’t get any error messages at all…just…it says launching aion..and then nothing happens…
ummm obviously they are not beta testing atm, as the date was like 17-19th of july…but i was wondering if the game should still launch even if i cannot connect to a server?
or does it not launch at all if its out of closed beta?
i just wanted to see if i could reserve my name in game..that’s all
thanks!