The website of EuroGamer has released a new preview of MMORPG Aion: Tower of Eternity to show us a wonderful fantastic world. According to this article we can learn it that Aion is a good combination of two different game styles in the East and the West.
The details are as below:
There's a general rule of thumb in the world of massively multiplayer RPGs: the easier on the eye a game's characters are, the harder work levelling them will be. It's a cultural split between Asia and the West. From the Eastern hemisphere, the likes of the Lineage games and Final Fantasy XI have sported flawless catalogue-model avatars, draped in filigree fantasy couture, but their existence is often far from glamorous, locked in a mindless experience grind of monster after monster that seems to have no end, or purpose.
Meanwhile, Western MMOs built on the EverQuest/World of Warcraft model offer incident-packed questing, spectacular dungeons, relatively fast levelling, deft storytelling and universes rich in detail and lore, peopled by grotesque anthropomorphic cartoons clad in spiked, primary-coloured fetish wear. Can't we have a life of beauty and ease?
NCsoft thinks so, and Aion: Tower of Eternity is the result. Guild Wars was a first stab at breaking down this divide, and very good it was too, although its short levelling curve, heavy instancing and player-versus-player focus took it some way off the beaten MMO track. Aion is different, or rather, it isn't.
This is pared-down, best-of-the-best fantasy MMORPG design from the old school, dressed in Sunday best. A divine war between two opposed races; eight character classes split neatly into four traditional archetypes (warrior, scout, mage and priest); six crafting professions; a level cap of 50; a single, persistent world on each server, with minimal use of instanced areas. It's all by-the-book stuff.
That's not to say that there aren't novelties. All characters get the ability to fly as early as level 10; the Abyss zone introduces a third, AI faction that will interfere in the player-versus-player war; and, most interestingly perhaps, there's the Stigma system, which will allow characters to equip the skills, spells and abilities of other classes.
Aion is a world inverted, and split in two. The landmasses are actually on the insides of two hemispheres, which were once connected by the titular Tower of Eternity. After a holy war to oust the dragon lords who overthrew Aion, the world's god, the Tower of Eternity was shattered, severing the two worlds. The dragon lords were banished to the Abyss that took the tower's place.
The transport system: when your own wings aren't enough, is a giant spirit bird.
(click here for full image)
More previews on next page.
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