Aion
This is a online roleplaying multiplayer game (MMORPG) made by a korean game company, and it recently became free to play. So I'll do a review of the game as I played the beta versions of it a long time ago. The game has a Final Fantasy esque art style and story. Through the game you will learn about the world of Aion and its history. The story can drag out a bit, but its not too hard to understand. Also, its not an easy game to play solo. Important quests tend to require groups since there are elite monsters that are not easy to defeat by yourself. Although playing a mmo game solo kind of defeats the real reason why its a mmo game. You can ignore the group quests since there's plenty of solo quests to do.Finding groups or players to party with you always, at least for me, takes some effort. In the chat there's a channel for those looking for groups but its not by the region you are in so you will get many messages from most of the aion of people looking for groups for a certain quest. Also people like to chat in that channel and messages of joined a legion (guilds) so it can also be annoying and spam like. There is a separate window to list yourself or find others who are looking to group that is by the region your are in. However barely anyone uses it so you are better off finding people running around in the game. There are instances in each area which are either solo only or group only. These are great places of loot but they can take awhile to complete. There are in it owns little world within area its in so its not entirely important and you can ignore them.
There are only 4 servers you can choose to play. With so littler servers some will have alot of people in it than others. You can check online status of your friends and servers status and info on the aion website without having to open the game itself. When you choose a server you have to chose a race. There are two races: Elysian and Asmodian. You can read about both in the game. Once you chose one you are stuck with that race in that server. You will have to choose another server if you want to play as a different race or delete all your characters and then you should be able to chose the other race when you make a new character. The 2 different races are important because it is the core of the player-vs-player or pvp of the game.
The game has plenty of quests to do and the beginning area isn't too difficult to finish within a day or so. You will start off as a regular human, and you will learn about your past and eventually become as Daeva which are higher beings than humans and they have wings. Afterwards the beginning area will take you about a few hours to finish in your alt characters or "toons." There's lots of quests to do and you have a 40 quest limit. When you get to a higher level like around 30 you will see yourself reaching your quest limit often. Many quests are mostly killing certain monsters and collecting certain quest loot from monsters. Like many mmos games, quests are what gives you the most experience points. Your inventory is called a Cube which you will have to pa to expand as you level. Money isn't too hard to obtain but some extras would cost millions of money so you will have to do a bit of business. One you can set up a personal shop or sell your stuff at auctions. The auction or broker house is very important as this is where you can get the best equipment. The weapon and armor are from monster drops or coin/token rewards. The coin and tokens are different then the common gold currency in the game. You earn tokens and coins through certain quests or achievements. The aion website will also give out special items if you do certain achievements which you can learn about on the site.
PvP is very important in this game. After you've finished the beginning area and next low level area, the next area is open for the opposite race to come through a rift portal and they can attack you no matter what you're doing. Ever area has a main city that is safe but most of the area are not as safe. On the maps rifts will be indicated that it is open and they change once the limit number of uses have surpassed. Every rift has a level limit depending on what part of the area its in to discourage level gaps. The maps will not show the enemies' rifts so do look for a map online to help you out what areas to look out for. With the addition of the Fast Track server you can level faster and be in pvp free area which is great cause it can get really annoying to do quests when you are constantly being attacked or looking out for other pvp players. There are quests where you have to go to the other race's world but these are able to skip them if you are not up for it. There is a separate world called the Abyss that is just for pvp and guild battling. You will get quests about it when you reach lvl 25. The Abyss has three levels and each level has a number of fortresses that are controlled by whatever race or monster that has conquered it. Even though you can enter the area at lvl 25 you can't really fight in these fortresses since the enemies are at level 40. You will come across players with huge level gaps here too. There are no clear indicators at what lvl these players are in either. Try not to get killed too much as it will lose you experience points and can even go down levels. The Abyss is great for guilds to show how powerful they are because they can attack a fortress and their guild name will be there. The game also allows guild alliances and kisks that you can place and serves as a temporary respawn point.
Aion also has housing and you can get a studio for free at level 20. You can buy houses only at the house auctions but they are really pricey. The housing area also has its own set of quests that you can do. What I don't like about this area is that you need a special item to gather plants, fish, and mine ore. These are kinda useless too since there are unique from the rest of the Aion world so its a waste of money to spend but its for quests. The houses are really nice and they have varies sizes and locations you can choose. Lots of choices and freedom to customize your home. Some offer items and you can have npcs that are like stores in your home too.
Each race has a main city that sits as its own area in the Aion world where you access crafting headquarters, skill teachers, pets, and other character customizations. There's lot of quests to do there too.
Overall this game is fun and beautiful too. I would highly recommend trying it out. Its not too limiting like Lord of the Rings Online where you can only play certain areas for free. Aion you can play it totally free with no worries on limited access to transportation or limited inventory space.
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