The Sorcerer

The first of AION’s 8 classes I’ll be showing off is the Sorcerer. The sorcerer is your big damage, nuking class of AION. Though some videos have shown some utility.  They control all of the 4 elements. Having destructive spells that come from Earth, Air, Fire and Water, sorry, no heart Mati.

The only problem I can see so far is that the fire spells look like Magic Missile. That might just be me though.

Area effect attacks will most likely be their specialty. Taking down a large mass of enemies with a few wide reaching spells. Though with AION’s habit of giving mobs waaay too much health, we’ll see how that actually works out.

As always, the Sorcerers will have almost no physical defense and will have to either keep their enemies away, or group with someone stronger than they are to do it for them. They do however have some defense spells. The ice spells tend to slow or root their target. They have been shown to have a sleep spell and a spell that turns their enemy into a tree. Hopefully it works like Polymorph in World Of Warcraft, with less wandering.

In addition to all of that. They seem to be able to open portals much like Druids in EQ2 or the Astralist in RF Online. I’ve noticed that RF Online seems to have much more in common with AION than Lineage 2. I’ll make a comparison post soon.

The Sorcerer seems to be appropriately versitile in AION. While only giving up defense. You can always work around not having any defense.

Look Up.

One of the nice things about AION that I haven’t really touched on yet is that at level 10 you ascend and become a Deva. At which point, you gain wings.

These wings have a few uses. They become your own personal gryphon. Allowing you to travel between two designated areas on your own power. No Flying mounts required. They also allow you to fly for a limited amount of time. Allowing you to reach areas otherwise unapproachable. This allows for things like floating cities and dungeons.

Recently the patch notes for the Korean Closed Beta 3 were released. A great many things were confirmed and made more clear. They also added a nice little touch to the wings.

The “Glide” skill has been added.

The Glide skill is activated when flying, causing your wings to spread and glide on the air currents, bringing you slowly back down to earth. Press the [space bar] while in the air to spread your wings and enter Glide mode.

Glide mode is only available after becoming a winged Daeva, and can be used in every region in Aion. (Is exempt from the flight availability region list)

This is just another welcome addition to the game. Sounds like it will mimic the floating in Everquest 2. I always did enjoy being a Fae or one of the magical races who would just glide gently to the ground. Found a video of some people demonstrating the new glide ability.

What that video demonstrates is something that I appreciate. Everyone can fly. I played City of Heroes/Villains for quite a while and the difference between all of the movement abilities (Flight, Teleportation, Super Speed, and Super Jump) was huge. There were massive speed differences and endurance drains associated with each ability. Even in Everquest 2. For a long time the Fae had a very large advantage. In AION everyone seems to be on an even playing field.

Though I heard that there might be upgrades to your wings as you progress farther into the game.

The developers of AION seem to have learned from other games mistakes. Instead of just trying to take aspects from every game and just smash them together they seem to have taken the time to decide which bits would actually work in their world.

After looking up all of this information about the game, I’m glad that the developers haven’t tried to just create World of Warcraft with a mild twist. Unlike some people. *cough* WAR *cough* The wings are an added bonus, but it looks like the game would have been fine without them. I couldn’t be happier. I leave you with a few videos.

The first one is showing off the Gryphon-like flight from point to point.

The second video shows off the free flying and just the beauty of AION. This one is available in High Quality on Youtube.

Already in that Direction

I had been playing MMO’s for a while. World of Warcraft was one that I hadn’t wanted to try for a long time. I have a philosophy that if that many 14 year olds love one thing, there has to be something really wrong with it. Eventually I realized that I couldn’t hate something with absolutely no experience with it, so I tried it out.

I found that there was absolutely nothing wrong with World of Warcraft. In fact I really enjoyed the setting and the different zones. And the ability to catch my own pets. (And yes, I rolled on everything.) Though once I got my gorilla, there was really no more carrot on the end of the stick. Back then there were no other pets to catch. Nothing else in the game interested me, (especially the very… very mundane combat.)

I switched over to EQ2 and Guild Wars and stopped playing WoW all together. I couldn’t see the appeal. It had nothing to keep me interested. I asked my brother what he thought kept people playing WoW. He said:

“You know how you enjoy playing EQ2, because you know all the zones. You know all the gods and the characters, because when you were younger you played EQ1?  That’s how WoW is to a lot of people. They grew up with Warcraft. They know all the places and all the characters.”

It finally made sense. That’s why the original fans started playing WoW and couldn’t stop. They’d grown up with Warcraft in their lives. There weren’t many games back in the day. Your choices were Myst, Doom, and Warcraft. Once they had a bunch of subscribers they could just advertise, “HEY LOOK A CRAZY AMOUNT OF PEOPLE PLAY THIS GAME!!!! WHY DON’T YOU!?!!?!?”

Funny thing is, it worked.

Every other MMO that comes out nowadays is going to be compared to WoW at some point or another. It’s inevitable. None of them are going to be the WoW killer, because whether they realize it or not, those 14 year olds now know the history or Azeroth. They know the major players. Hell they might not know the ones Blizzard created, but they know their PvP rival that they’ve been fighting for the past 3 months.

The words Arathi Basin mean something to them. Stormhold is their hometown. Gnomes Rule! Barrens is the place to go for mind numbing conversation. These are all real places and things in the mind of someone who has played a game long enough. You can’t just let history go. No game is ever going to be the “WoW Killer.”

It also helps that you could run WoW on your grandmothers apple laptop from 1994.

However. People who didn’t invest all of their time into WoW. Or even those who have done every raid there is, at least 50 times. Who didn’t even play WoW. People who played Lineage or Everquest, or City of Heroes, or Tabula Rasa, or Guild Wars. Those people will most certainly be willing to give a new game with a fresh look a try.

So even though AION does not have the support of three solid games that we all grew up with behind it, and there is no way AION is going to run on your grandmother’s Dell. It shows a lot of potential. It might make a bigger dent than you would think.

One can always hope.

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