Product Description

Recurring subscription fee required to play

Everyone must choose a side...

Wield divine power and experience true flight as you fight for the salvation of your people in a vast, beautiful world shattered by cataclysm. Welcome to the visually stunning massively multiplayer online role-playing game Aion: The Tower of Eternity.

Discover a spectacular online world, steeped in lore and history, where two factions, once united, are locked in a bitter war. Take to the skies and engage in strategic combat, where attacks can come from any angle, at any time.

Aion: The Tower of Eternity will capture the imagination of every kind of MMO player, from casual to hardcore.

Prepare to take flight...

• Take to the skies with the most advanced flight models seen in any online game to date. See the stunning world of Atreia in its full glory as you battle to save your people from annihilation.
• Totally customise your character through an incredibly in-depth character creation tool, advanced crafting systems and extensive item customisation.
• Engage in a unique and evolving combat system utilising combos, skill chains, counter-attacks and spectacular aerial combat.
• Introducing PvPvE! Plan and execute raids against rival factions, earn special ranks and rewards through victory, and prepare for unexpected attacks by the Balaur, a brutal non-player race.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #858 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: NCsoft
• Released on: 2009-09-25
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Platforms: Windows XP, Windows Vista

Amazon.co.uk Review
Aion: The Tower of Eternity is a visually stunning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), where players ascend to divinity and fight in a celestial war. Here they will wield divine powers and the capability of true flight, to bring deliverance to your people and restore balance to a world shattered by cataclysm. Choose your side, spread your wings, and claim your rightful place among the immortal legions of Atreia. This is the glory that is Aion.

Develop your skill as a warrior. View larger.

Admire the beauty of an ancient world. View larger.

Delve into ultimate customization. View larger.

Experience the thrill of flight. View larger.

Quest through vivid environments. View larger.

Explore the Stunning World of Aion
Explore one of the most amazingly beautiful and detailed MMORPGs ever as you fight to save a vibrant world ripped asunder by a celestial war. Choose between two divine factions, the Asmodians or the Elyos, and save your people from an ancient evil that threatens to destroy everything in its path. Over 1500 story-driven quests lead you through a wondrous and expansive world like no other.

Experience the Thrill of Flight
Soar to great heights and battle in the open skies of Aion. Flying in Aion is not just a way to travel--it is a strategic and integral part of the game that adds a new dynamic to all aspects of the genre, including combat, quests, exploration, and harvesting.

Engage in Visceral Combat
Engage in a spectacular and evolving combat system utilizing combos, skill chains, counter-attacks and stunning aerial combat. Group with friends or fly solo in the Abyss, where attacks can come from any direction. Experience the thrill of combat like never before.

Unprecedented Customization
Totally customize your character through an incredibly in-depth character creation tool, advanced crafting systems and extensive item customization. Take individuality to a new level with the innovative Stigma system, allowing characters to utilize and combine skills and abilities not normally available to that particular character’s class.

Key Features

• Fight for the radiant, luminous Elyos or the grim, foreboding Asmodians in a massive celestial war raging all around you.
• Soar above the world and fight while airborne--the chains that bind you to the earth are gone.
• Adventure through captivating quests fit for an immortal.
• Hurl enemies down into stony chasms or pullem them mid-air in the Abyss. Tactics and strategy rule the skies in Aion.
• Customize your avatars to be truly unique.
• Reign over a world whose beauty, vibrance, and spirit shines with the brilliance of divinity.
• Join the battle in massed legions, with thousands of avatars to count as friends or to fight against as enemies.
• Experience an exotic atmosphere for adventure with an amazing musical score by Yang Bang Ean (Ryo Kunihiko).
• Behold a new graphical standard among MMORPGs--CryTek powers the heart of Aion.

Battle in a New Breed of Conflict
Battle for control of valuable strongholds and artifacts within the Abyss, a hotly contested battlefield resting between the upper and lower halves of Atreia. Plan and execute raids against rival factions, earn special ranks and rewards through victory, and prepare for unexpected attacks by the Balaur, an ancient race freed from imprisonment within the Abyss.

System Requirements:

	Minimum Specifications:	Recommended Specifications:
OS:	Windows XP/Vista
Processor:	Pentium 4 2.8GHz, AMD Athlon 2800	Pentium Dual Core, AMD Athlon 64 X2
RAM:	1GB RAM	2GB RAM
Video Card:	GeForce 6600, Radeon X1550	GeForce 7600, Radeon X2600
Sound Card:	DirectX 9.0c compatible
DVD-ROM:	Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
Hard Drive Space:	30GB of free space or more
Other:	Internet connection, keyboard and mouse; Fee for online play

 

Product Description
Cutting-edge graphics redefine your expectations of online role-playing and reveal a true fantasy world where divine beings wage a war that will determine the future of the world. Your role in this war is pivotal. The fate of the world rests on your shoulders as you and your allies participate in brutal warfare, devise brilliant strategy, and claim power. For the first time in the MMORPG genre – Aion brings PvP and PvE together. PvPvE manages the complex relationships between races and guilds and also controls the mighty Dragons, a non-player faction and a common enemy to all players. Take combat to the skies – Flying is not just a means of transportation. Flight is an extension of the combat system and can be an integral part of taking on your foes in battle. A supremely powerful graphical engine – brings the world of your fantasies to life like never before. Ryo Kunihiko – one of the world’s leading composers of movie and television soundtracks, is creating incredible music that seamlessly interweaves with on-screen action, setting the perfect atmosphere for your adventures in the world of Aion.

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Customer Reviews

An old school grinder but the genre has moved on
I played the open beta, then headstart and now retail, but I'm not renewing my subs after the first inclusive month. The reason is that I've discovered what a huge grind fest and time sink this game represents. The early levels are great fun but like so many recent MMOs these seem aimed more at creating a good first impression for reviewers and new players, rather than setting a standard for what's to come. Once you hit level 30 (the cap is 50) you hit a huge wall, the levelling curve climbs like a mountain and the game becomes one big grind. All aspects of the game have a huge time and money sink requirement. At higher levels even dying once will set you back many hours of progress. Quest xps form only a tiny part of your progress. Even when this is addressed in a future patch players will still need to grind through vast numbers of mobs to level. You cannot level via PvP, the xp gains from PvP kills are tiny.

All MMOs are about grinding of course, it's a feature of the genre. But in a good MMO you're often not aware you're grinding because you're having fun. A good MMO eats up the hours in a day because you can't get enough of it. Aion eats up the hours, period. It feels like a job. Part of the problem is that there's little variety in gameplay while you're levelling, so you become acutely aware of the grind.

The positives:

* The game is pretty polished and largely free of any show stopping bugs, at least in PVE as I hear that crashes in mass PvP are common.
* All the classes are fun to play and level, though some have an easier time than others (as usual in MMOs, ranged dps seems to have the upper hand).
* The character generator has a lot of scope for making some interesting looking characters (though sadly most players end up making pretty generic looking toons).
* Flight and aerial combat is handled in an interesting way. Unfortunately the classes are not balanced for aerial combat (yet again ranged dps has a significant advantage)
* Mobs are very agressive. Some may see this as a negative, but it does at least give you a sense of achievement if you survive one of the many bad
situations the game will throw at you.

The negatives:

* No originality of content. The design is a patchwork of ideas 'borrowed' from other MMOs and literary mythology. Storylines are generally dull and
derivative and there's a distinct lack of humour (the legendary Tutty being one of the few exceptions).
* Repetitive grindy gameplay. Mob AI is dull and the quests are the usual 'kill 100 beetles' or run all over the map gathering type. We've seen it all
before and Aion doesn't even attempt to innovate.
* There's no incentives for grouping, in fact you will make more progress solo. Content aimed at groups is pretty limited in scope and choice. This is unforgiveable in a MMO.
* There's too few mechanisms and incentives for building a community. In fact some aspects positively disrupt community, for example my legion (guild) has had to split into three because there's a 90 character limit on membership.
* PVP comes in two flavours, ganking and being ganked. Before the endgame there are no opportunities for sandboxed PvP (such as battlegrounds or RvR lakes)
so getting a fair fight is usually impossible. For a game which claims PvP is a focus this is a real let down.
* The game is totally infested with bots and gold spammers. They are already destroying the community and economy and NCsoft aren't clamping down strong
enough. There are many blatant bots with obvious names who have reached high levels and are farming 24/7 yet no action is taken against them despite
repeated reports.
* The crafting system is a total lottery with success based on pure luck rather than skill.
* The game zones are generally quite dull, very linear and formulaic, there's no eyepopping scenery that makes you feel you really want to explore.
* Only two sides makes for rather boring PvP (though since both sides have exactly the same classes at least there's no factional balance issues).
* Customer support is very poor. You can only contact support during normal office hours, which means there is no support during evening primetime. This
just isn't acceptable in a game with a monthly subscription.

Aion is an old school grinder of a MMO. The developers seem to have failed to recognise that the genre has moved on and I'm not sure who they are hoping to
appeal to. Old school MMO players have seen it all before and probably don't want to go through another major grind in a game again (I know I don't). Newer
MMO players who probably only have WoW as a benchmark will run screaming at the very prospect of it.

Enjoyable & Addictive. But.
Although I only played up to level 10, I can tell you now that this game was fantastic, and this review is coming from a die hard WoW fan for a long time. I decided to give Aion a shot, even though by looking at it I would have instantly associated it with Lineage II which did not appeal to me, but because WoW had grown boring over the past few years and I wanted to try something new.

You start off being able to choose Elyos or Asmodian (Alliance or Horde) and then there are 4 classes which at level 10 then change into sub classes such as ranger or assassin (hunter or rogue) I decided to roll a Scout which would then later allow me to become an Assassin.

My first impressions were that Aion is a very pretty game, not beautiful, just pretty. Also it seemed that Aion brought nothing new to the MMO table, as I progressed through the 10 levels, mostly by questing. The quests are all very much the same, kill 10 of this, kill 10 of that. There really is nothing new here which was slightly disappointing but still enjoyable and very addictive.

Although Aion boasts that gear is fully customizable, you can spot any of the 4 different starter classes a mile off because everybody looks the same. Levels 1-10 took me around 8-10 hours to do and I must have only received 30 pieces of armour/weapons from quests and mobs, the majority being useless. I didn't replace my starter chest piece until level 9 and I still had no gloves at level 10! Aion does promise there will be more different gear in the upcoming 1.5 patch, so we shall see.

When reaching level 10 it allows you to choose whether you want to be a Ranger or an Assassin if you are a Scout. I found that when I chose Assassin my damage increased ridiculously, it felt like I'd been dragging myself through the last 10 levels just because the makers didn't want to copy World of Warcraft. Flying at level 10 is interesting, you start off with only being able to fly around for a minute, the controls are slightly irritating at first but you get used to them. Again, this feels like another way of doing something that World of Warcraft does with mounts but in a different and less effective way.

An issue that I picked up on is that all 4 starter classes on Elyos begin in the same area, and obviously all 4 starter classes on Asmodian start in another area. But still, when this game is officially launched it will be absolute mayhem and is likely to be an unpleasant gaming experience.

If your PC struggles to run World of Warcraft on maximum settings then you will be playing Aion on very low settings and will only be able to see a few meters ahead of your player at any one point, which to be honest, sucks. Another downside is that Aion isn't available for Macs but is confirmed to work with Boot Camp! Personally I think the minimum system settings that NC Soft provide were pulled out of a hat because computers with much lower specs will be able to play this, although obviously not take full advantage of the graphics unlike a computer with high end specs.

Although I have just touched the surface of Aion and mostly picked up on seemingly bad points. This game to me seems like a temporary replacement for World of Warcraft, it has all the same traits that make it a fantastic, enjoyable and addictive game but it just seems like certain simple things are missing for the sake of not copying WoW. I will definitely be playing this game to fill my spare time!

Lag, poor customer sevice,what a shame
Having been a wow player for a few years, i was looking for a new game and first impressions with Aion were good,got to level 10 easy and made my way to 20 but it was at this point and the release of new patches that i started having trouble ,latency in to the 10s of thousands which made the game unplayable, rubber banding was another issue and no customer sevice help. when they did reply it was to blame my isp, while another support person told me it was a problem there end,one realm i had latency 368909 while on a new realm that had just been opened i had latency 128 which makes you wonder how many people were playing on the first realm.
We all expect a bit of lag the first month of a new game as there are so many new players, but aion(ncsoft) just kept on packing players in to each of the servers.
If they can sort out the issues then this could be a great game, but having read a few forums i think that ncsoft are just going to wait for people to leave and hopefully that will sort the latency issue out for them, one gaming site had people leaving at 40% after free month.