I haven't followed Aion in depth, but I've read a little about it. Coupled with this article, I'm having a hard time seeing how this will be anything other then an Eastern WoW ripoff.

From the sound of it, it still focuses upon the Eastern fascination with PvP. Action chains are nothing new, even here in the West, with LotRO and even the lowly Vanguard featuring such things. It seems to me that the desing meeting for Aion was probably very short:

"We need to appeal to Western gamers. Let's minimize the grind associated with Korean titles, offer every bit of advancement as a setup towards PvP, and make the rest like WoW. Instant success!"

I like NCSoft. I've recently gone back to CoH/CoV and so have all of my friends -- many of whom were raised on a steady and singular diet of WoW. Guild Wars is an example of a game done right that doesn't have to kiss the hem of WoW's robes. It's a shame that NCSoft feels that it has to deviate from it's off-the-radar formula to get on the "me too" train with Western fantasy WoW wannabees.

NCSoft does put out good stuff (RIP Auto Assault) for the most part. I wasn't too thrilled with the ultimately shallow and slow CoH/CoV, but for the most part they've put out some decent games.
As far as Aion goes, I'm really not too interested. Sounds like the only thing that's different from most games is that you can fly at a low level. Whoopdeedoo. Been there done that, got the blue and yellow superhero spandex sitting in my MMO closet.

This quote caught my eye though:

Prior to WoW, the most gameplay that people could hope for in an MMOG was perhaps a decent crafting system to distract them from the endless repetition of monster slaying, better known as grinding

*blinks*
And WoW is different how!? It's the penultimate Korean MMO in which you have to grind for every single thing in that game. It might as well be called World of Timesinks online.

Sounds very interesting. I haven't experienced a lot of RPG and MMOG, so I can't be a 100% judge on this, but it sounds like they are trying to improve some things.

I look forward to learning more about Aion.

Isn't NC soft doing champions online as well?
Not found of any MMO really and FF11 is the prefect example of all of them the restrictions and the deleving make a situation of infinite grind, this makes its issues more apparent, I had a epiphany after FF11 MMOs are made to grind so they can make money off the subscription until you either are fully brained washed, kill yourself or hate MMOs..... I took the last option even tho I have played wow,coh/cov/FF11,EQ,GW,ect,ect

What I am getting at the nature of MMOs is to grind fun gameplay is the last thing on their mind, if these games would open up their rules some and be fun to play and feel like I duno a game instead of work alot more people would play try to play them...

Hell let me grind 3 times faster than everyone else for 10$ more a month, do something to make the games more fun than grind already....

TOGSolid:

*blinks*
And WoW is different how!? It's the penultimate Korean MMO in which you have to grind for every single thing in that game. It might as well be called World of Timesinks online.

Compared to a lot of other games WoW does stand as something of a non-grind game. Admittedly the only way to achieve things (particularly at higher level) does involve a considerable amount of grinding, but the grind required for basic progression is pretty minimal.

i haven't seen much of the gameplay yet, but at least this mmo is visually appealing. so many mmos just aren't very good looking or they are made in the chibi anime style. i haven't seen an mmo yet that looks this good to stare at for hours at a time.

I'm really looking forward to playing Aion, I'm hoping to get it by end of next january, WoW always seemed too inaccesible to new players, but with a relatively new game there shouldn't be that problem.

Orange Monkey:
I'm really looking forward to playing Aion, I'm hoping to get it by end of next january, WoW always seemed too inaccesible to new players, but with a relatively new game there shouldn't be that problem.

Your new class should be a Thread Necromancer. Just watch who you talk to. Apparently looking at a gold seller in-game is enough for a permban.