@ Aion players - the longevity of this game

[novasatori]

I have a question for some of the guys who think this game is a really bad grind, what other MMO's have you played before this? I just want to know because I don't find the grind in this that bad really, so I wonder if that's because of the games I've played in the past.

There is a difference between a long and time consuming grind and a boring grind.

I've play just about every MMO

 

[JACKDRUID]

I have a question for some of the guys who think this game is a really bad grind, what other MMO's have you played before this? I just want to know because I don't find the grind in this that bad really, so I wonder if that's because of the games I've played in the past.

wow
everquest
"looking for god" in chinese
few other lesser known chinese MMOs

this actually has the worst grinding, mostly due to the lack of quests...

problem is, alot of quests require you to gather something THAT REQUIRES 'GATHERING SKILLS' from the previous world. If you havn't leveled that up (which is vERy VERY time consuming), you can't do it.

what you don't understand is, with wow and other MMOs, you get quests for killing/grinding. You get "" BOTH "" exp from grinding as well as questing at the same time.

 

[Reckoner]

I have to agree with you Sunny, I'm sure there are some WoW players out there who would quit before cap if they had to level in the original(I'm talking before all of the leveling buffs that are in now). A lot of my friends continuously roll alts and the only reason they stick with it is because they can fuel their alt with amazing gear while they level. They just want to power level to the end game so they can start doing raids etc.

I have a question for some of the guys who think this game is a really bad grind, what other MMO's have you played before this? I just want to know because I don't find the grind in this that bad really, so I wonder if that's because of the games I've played in the past.

Everquest I & II
Dark Age of Camelot (when it was a grindfest to 50)
World of Warcraft
Star Wars Galaxies
Age of Conan
Lord of the Rings Online


After EQ1 and DAoC I told myself I'd never go through that type of grind again. DAoC had the best PvP of any MMO ever created, which is why I stayed through that horrid grindfest. WoW was a welcome relief, up until I burned out of it. Aion just doesn't have enough to captivate me through another grindfest.

 

[Markbnj]

It's a very casual grind compared to a hardcore grind MMO, but Aion definitely requires some good old fashioned monster killing that will frustrate people who are used to zerging between waypoints as quickly as possible to level. It also has a much less linear quest hub path than most games, which means it's easy for people to run out of quests in a certain town and then not know where to go for more quests.

While both of those are good reasons to stay away if they sound irritating, they serve to encourage players to explore rather than follow waypoints and I've had a lot of fun "grinding" by simply killing monsters as I work my way through an area rather than killing monsters in the same spot over and over. There's also more excitement to this if you do it in the Abyss (25+) because it's an open PvP area.

I think that if the word "grind" occurs to someone when they think about exploring, killing monsters, and getting loot, this is not the game for them. It is definitely not the game for the "wtf i want 2 pwn now" crowd. They're leaving, and good riddance.

 

[Riceninja]

im a member of a top ranked guild on azphel (asmodian).

the leveling grind isnt so bad. its whats waiting for you at the end of leveling that's discouraging - just dredgion, dark poeta for AP and using AP to buy more gear...for what, a few stupid fortress sieges and defenses? the endgame pvp is lacking, aside from the massive zerging during forts (which is a lagfest anyway) there's only dredgion, and for that you'll have to queue up to 30 mins to get in, if at all, since it depends on how many elyos are queueing.

so really you get to dredgion for an hour, 3 times a day if you luck out, and do dark poeta once a day due to the 12 hour lockout. aside from that you can craft (mastery is a fucking bitch) and...craft. dredgion itself isnt skill based either, if you have the right party composition (re: spiritmasters) you'll win.

there really isnt much going on endgame.

 

[SunnyD]

I think that if the word "grind" occurs to someone when they think about exploring, killing monsters, and getting loot, this is not the game for them. It is definitely not the game for the "wtf i want 2 pwn now" crowd. They're leaving, and good riddance.

God it's a glorious day when that happens. Except in the truly good games where 90% of the population leaves and the world is a barren wasteland (Vanguard).

 

[KMFJD]

God it's a glorious day when that happens. Except in the truly good games where 90% of the population leaves and the world is a barren wasteland (Vanguard).

I was going to say that Vanguard sucked, then i realized it was much less grindy and i actually had a lot more fun playing it than Aion....i also didn't have to deal with constant gold spam, bot's competing for spawns. It also had a much bigger map..

 

[gizbug]

Aion was more hype than anything. People flocked to buy the game, thought it was great...then after a few weeks, realized it is similar to WOW (grind fest?) and left.

Don't buy into HYPE.

 

[darkeneddays]

Just canceled last night, meaning I lasted all of 2 weeks. Was having a blast until 25 and then it just went downhill. I started dreading logging in instead of looking forward to it. It began feeling like work. No thanks, I get paid to work, not pay to work.

 

[SunnyD]

I was going to say that Vanguard sucked, then i realized it was much less grindy and i actually had a lot more fun playing it than Aion....i also didn't have to deal with constant gold spam, bot's competing for spawns. It also had a much bigger map..

Hindsight is 20/20 isn't it? Vanguard had issues yes, it was pretty WoW-like, but you hit it right on the nail. Couple that with a few of the "innovations" they put in (defensive targeting fucking rocks)... if it had only a marginally larger population it would be a wonderful game.

 

[Golgatha]

I simply ran out of quests to do... at level 21...
I'm fortunate with nice gears, able to grind to level by killing level 25s...however, its still a very slow grind.

mineral grinding is awful... tons of quests asks you to extract something requiring high extraction skills. In order to up extraction skills, you had to teleport to the previous map and spend tons of hours just to level up that skill.

I don't see myself playing it after the initial month.

This is why you grind gathering while you grind mobs. Now Aether gathering is a different story. If it weren't for the major kinah one can earn with Aether gathering and Alchemy, I'd say wait until you get Wings at level 30 before leveling up Aether gathering. Talk about a freaking grind to get that Aether gathering up. I'm at level 33 with +40 wings, and I have a separate set of gear for farming Aether which adds around another minute on top of that. I also have a healthy stock of Wind Serums now too to supplement the grind. I can hit 7-10 nodes before having to land now when I'm in my flight gear.

I suppose I should take my own advise though, as I'm trying to get my Vitality Extract up to a level with the types of mobs I fight now. I do hate how much kinah it costs to upgrade your skill levels at 199 and 299 too for any trade or ability in the game.


Oh, the rewards of grinding abilities and trade skills are as follows...

http://na.aiononline.com/livestatus/character-legion/search?charID=4152&serverID=13

All decked out in blues baby!! No gold buying here, I play completely legit.

 

[VashHT]

wow
everquest
"looking for god" in chinese
few other lesser known chinese MMOs

this actually has the worst grinding, mostly due to the lack of quests...

problem is, alot of quests require you to gather something THAT REQUIRES 'GATHERING SKILLS' from the previous world. If you havn't leveled that up (which is vERy VERY time consuming), you can't do it.

what you don't understand is, with wow and other MMOs, you get quests for killing/grinding. You get "" BOTH "" exp from grinding as well as questing at the same time.

I'm pretty sure I do understand, considering I have played WoW to 80 with a couple characters, as well as playing many other MMO's around. All I'm saying is if a small ince

The reason I asked is because I used to play Ragnarok Online and then L2 for a while. Neither of these games had ANY quests, so a game like Aion where I've only had to grind through about a half a level total on each of my lvl 30 guys seems insanely tame.

Also, as Golgatha pointed out gathering can be kept up if you actually do it while you level. There are nodes all over the place that spawn really fast, so it's not like it's hard to find them. Also as he pointed out the rewards for crafting in this are very nice, and if you don't craft you can make a buttload off of selling mats.

 

[JACKDRUID]

This is why you grind gathering while you grind mobs. Now Aether gathering is a different story. If it weren't for the major kinah one can earn with Aether gathering and Alchemy, I'd say wait until you get Wings at level 30 before leveling up Aether gathering. Talk about a freaking grind to get that Aether gathering up. I'm at level 33 with +40 wings, and I have a separate set of gear for farming Aether which adds around another minute on top of that. I also have a healthy stock of Wind Serums now too to supplement the grind. I can hit 7-10 nodes before having to land now when I'm in my flight gear.

I suppose I should take my own advise though, as I'm trying to get my Vitality Extract up to a level with the types of mobs I fight now. I do hate how much kinah it costs to upgrade your skill levels at 199 and 299 too for any trade or ability in the game.


Oh, the rewards of grinding abilities and trade skills are as follows...

http://na.aiononline.com/livestatus/character-legion/search?charID=4152&serverID=13

All decked out in blues baby!! No gold buying here, I play completely legit.

wow thats awesome spec, nice job.

Vitality Extract seem odd... a design flaw I suppose...

anything before lv 90 is scarce and very spread out, so its tough to level.

However after you hit lv 90, it became very concentrated and very easy to level to 100.

then you start the same scarce and spread out after 100...

finally hit 22, and got like 7 new spells... and tons of new quests... whats up with the dry times in between 20 and 22?... badly designed... almost made me give up on the game.

 

[VashHT]

wow thats awesome spec, nice job.

Vitality Extract seem odd... a design flaw I suppose...

anything before lv 90 is scarce and very spread out, so its tough to level.

However after you hit lv 90, it became very concentrated and very easy to level to 100.

then you start the same scarce and spread out after 100...

finally hit 22, and got like 7 new spells... and tons of new quests... whats up with the dry times in between 20 and 22?... badly designed... almost made me give up on the game.

I'd agree with you on that, they really underestimated the hatred of straight mob grinding in the NA audience and left some dead spots with respect to quests. Once you get higher though you seem to be almost overflowing with quests, and I think a lot of people just assume that the grind is just going to increase from there on. Hopefully the patch coming out fixes this, the notes claims it raises xp rewards for quests from 20-50. It's already in the kAion and some people have said in nearly doubles the xp for most quests. This would be a pretty amazing change, if it really is that big of a quest buff they really should of waited until it implemented before bringing it here.

 

[KMFJD]

This is why you grind gathering while you grind mobs. Now Aether gathering is a different story. If it weren't for the major kinah one can earn with Aether gathering and Alchemy, I'd say wait until you get Wings at level 30 before leveling up Aether gathering. Talk about a freaking grind to get that Aether gathering up. I'm at level 33 with +40 wings, and I have a separate set of gear for farming Aether which adds around another minute on top of that. I also have a healthy stock of Wind Serums now too to supplement the grind. I can hit 7-10 nodes before having to land now when I'm in my flight gear.

I suppose I should take my own advise though, as I'm trying to get my Vitality Extract up to a level with the types of mobs I fight now. I do hate how much kinah it costs to upgrade your skill levels at 199 and 299 too for any trade or ability in the game.


Oh, the rewards of grinding abilities and trade skills are as follows...

http://na.aiononline.com/livestatus/character-legion/search?charID=4152&serverID=13

All decked out in blues baby!! No gold buying here, I play completely legit.

The captcha system is going to be lovely for aether gathering if they do implement it....

In regards to Vanguard, i still blame the game engine for it's failure, so many people left because of it, and you only get 1 chance with an mmo unfortunatly.

 

[Golgatha]

The captcha system is going to be lovely for aether gathering if they do implement it....

In regards to Vanguard, i still blame the game engine for it's failure, so many people left because of it, and you only get 1 chance with an mmo unfortunatly.

Yeah, it's an interesting way to combat bot gathering of Aether. The only place I know of that you could bot it quickly is in Reshanta, but I can just kill him off as he's an Asmodian bot.

 

[VashHT]

Just out of curiosity what does Blizz do to stop bots in WoW? Do they scan for stuff running in the background or is it just really active GMs?

 

[Scouzer]

I killed my sub today. I only made it to level 23. I don't know, I think I'm done with MMOs for good. In the end if you're bored with one you're bored with them all. They're all the same.

 

[KMFJD]

Just out of curiosity what does Blizz do to stop bots in WoW? Do they scan for stuff running in the background or is it just really active GMs?

Live GM's help....I can understand not catching some people that are botting out in the middle of no where, but there are people parked 24/7 at quest hubs/towns spamming gold selling services...

 

[KMFJD]

Anyone else still playing? Recently read they had banned 26,000 accounts for boting/rmt, has cut down on the bots a little bit, the private store vendors flogging their rmt sites are still there , albiet a lot less then earlier. One thing the latest patch did was disable the ability to right click on someones name in chat and block him....strange that they got rid of that function, it's a huge help in ignoring the spammers, now we have to type GfjhgfIg's name in correctly in order to block...

 

[KIAman]

Anyone else still playing? Recently read they had banned 26,000 accounts for boting/rmt, has cut down on the bots a little bit, the private store vendors flogging their rmt sites are still there , albiet a lot less then earlier. One thing the latest patch did was disable the ability to right click on someones name in chat and block him....strange that they got rid of that function, it's a huge help in ignoring the spammers, now we have to type GfjhgfIg's name in correctly in order to block...

My block list was full couple weeks ago, lame. Why limit that number? Does it really take up that much server space?!?

Anyways, I'm still playing with my static co-worker team and still having fun. We are now almost exclusively rifting rather than leveling up, crap.

http://na.aiononline.com/livestatus/character-legion/search?charID=17095&serverID=5

 

[CurseTheSky]

I have played:

Asheron's Call
Anarchy Online
World of Warcraft
Age of Conan
Everquest II
Vanguard
Star Wars Galaxies
Eve Online
Planetside
World War II Online

More I'm sure I'm forgetting. I find Aion the grindiest out of all those minus Asheron's Call.

Perhaps, but at least Asheron's Call was loads of fun to grind in. The best player base ever + excellent loot system means fun for hours and hours, no matter what you were doing.

 

[xCxStylex]

Yeah I'm still playing, hit 50 about a week ago. http://na.aiononline.com/livestatus/character-legion/search?charID=13021&serverID=5

The end game pve is limited (Dark Poeta is 6man), and world bosses don't take more than 12 competetant players. I've never done Zapiel/Jesuchi, but I'm told you can 6-8 man them. Storm Circle bosses can be 6 manned easily aside from Bollvig.

I play this game for PVP, and while Dredgion is the closest thing to "fair" pvp, there are still issues like being able to solo surkanas and train mobs on the other team.

Not to mention balance issues with fear and fear shriek, but thankfully, we have 2 50 SMs in our guild, one of which is a regular on my Dredg team.



Yeah they did ban 27k accounts recently, 16k and then 11k. The problem is, a good number of those are RMT bots, and all they do is just buy more accounts and start botting again.

Prices on items generally rise when bots are banned, but as they level, prices drop again. Month by month, the ban waves come and go, like a sinusoidal wave, and the price fluctuations follow.

E.G aether gems, platinum coins, +15 crit stones.

Anyone else still playing? Recently read they had banned 26,000 accounts for boting/rmt, has cut down on the bots a little bit, the private store vendors flogging their rmt sites are still there , albiet a lot less then earlier. One thing the latest patch did was disable the ability to right click on someones name in chat and block him....strange that they got rid of that function, it's a huge help in ignoring the spammers, now we have to type GfjhgfIg's name in correctly in order to block...

 

[Golgatha]

Yeah I'm still playing, hit 50 about a week ago. http://na.aiononline.com/livestatus/character-legion/search?charID=13021&serverID=5

The end game pve is limited (Dark Poeta is 6man), and world bosses don't take more than 12 competetant players. I've never done Zapiel/Jesuchi, but I'm told you can 6-8 man them. Storm Circle bosses can be 6 manned easily aside from Bollvig.

I play this game for PVP, and while Dredgion is the closest thing to "fair" pvp, there are still issues like being able to solo surkanas and train mobs on the other team.

Not to mention balance issues with fear and fear shriek, but thankfully, we have 2 50 SMs in our guild, one of which is a regular on my Dredg team.



Yeah they did ban 27k accounts recently, 16k and then 11k. The problem is, a good number of those are RMT bots, and all they do is just buy more accounts and start botting again.

Prices on items generally rise when bots are banned, but as they level, prices drop again. Month by month, the ban waves come and go, like a sinusoidal wave, and the price fluctuations follow.

E.G aether gems, platinum coins, +15 crit stones.

Yeah, as much as I hate the bots for kill stealing quest mobs and generally ruining the atmosphere of towns with the private store signage (which seems like an easy active GM banning fix, but whatever), I do like the cheap Aether Gems and Greater Elemental Stones which I can turn into mass quantities of flight pots (my alchemy is 399) and then vendor/broker for 150%+ profits. Mats for mana and life pots seem to be unaffected though. I suppose ground gathering is harder to bot than air gathering perhaps.

Even with bots though, there seems to be enough active players that broker prices for good gear, high level mats for crafting armor and weapons, and various food, pots, scrolls are still relatively high, as there aren't enough high level players to grind those mats out along with the bots.

Sometimes I feel like a low level player, but then I realize I'm in the top 4% of levels on the server and I feel a bit better. Of course, a lot of the really low level players (say level 10-15) are broker alts or bots, so it's hard to tell how quickly people are gaining levels on the server.

 

[VashHT]

Yeah I'm still playing, hit 50 about a week ago. http://na.aiononline.com/livestatus/character-legion/search?charID=13021&serverID=5

The end game pve is limited (Dark Poeta is 6man), and world bosses don't take more than 12 competetant players. I've never done Zapiel/Jesuchi, but I'm told you can 6-8 man them. Storm Circle bosses can be 6 manned easily aside from Bollvig.

I play this game for PVP, and while Dredgion is the closest thing to "fair" pvp, there are still issues like being able to solo surkanas and train mobs on the other team.

Not to mention balance issues with fear and fear shriek, but thankfully, we have 2 50 SMs in our guild, one of which is a regular on my Dredg team.



Yeah they did ban 27k accounts recently, 16k and then 11k. The problem is, a good number of those are RMT bots, and all they do is just buy more accounts and start botting again.

Prices on items generally rise when bots are banned, but as they level, prices drop again. Month by month, the ban waves come and go, like a sinusoidal wave, and the price fluctuations follow.

E.G aether gems, platinum coins, +15 crit stones.

Could you elaborate more on what kind of end game pvp there is? I love pvp but i tend to enjoy smaller match-ups rather than huge battles like forts in abyss. Are there arenas or any BG type things to in addition to the abyss?