Aion: And so the story begins…

So last time I only really touched on my journey into the world of Aion, I created my hero and set off into the world as a lowly Scout. It was unfair of me to tease you with a picture of Blink sporting her impressive wings because only now will I enlighten you with the tale of how I earned my wings, or depending on how you follow the story, remembered them.

Your journey through Aion will likely start and progress the same as mine, you will choose your starter class and step into the new world. For the Elyos faction it will be a pleasant looking farming area expanding into a forest, a mining area and eventually a tropical jungle. This will be your home for the first 10 levels of your life: your levels as a human. I jumped right into the quests and began making good progress. I gathered herbs and hunted cute monsters, I delivered messages and awoke a great talking tree. Most of the time I found myself thinking ‘Ahh nice’ or ‘I like that’ and somtimes saying aloud ‘Oh, Kirsten come see this funny looking dude’ or ‘Check out my floating cloud bed!’ despite the fact that she had gone out some hours ago. Time slipped away during my first closed beta weekend and as the close of the weekend began to loom over me I was creeping closer to my goal: Level 10, Class Specialisation, Ascension & Wings!

You may think that I might have dropped a spoiler for you there, but early on you will be treated to some haunting flashbacks hinting at your ascension and your true past. It will drive you on out of sheer curiosity if nothing more. I won’t talk any further about the story except to say it was engaging and kept me interested and playing, that is, it served its purpose.

The questing in Aion is nothing new except for the way those quests are managed. You will find two quest types at first: blue quests are your standard and technically optional quests; yellow quests are story driven and move you from area to area with multiple sections in each quest before you get your hands on the reward. I say the blue quests are optional but I would imagine you will run into all sorts of problems just running yellow quests as you’ll very quickly find yourself well below the recommended level and under equipped. I found myself collecting up the next few yellows then going through all the local blues until I hit the recommended level for my next yellow quest. The quest tracker is quick and easy to use with the option to pin a quest to your main interface at the time the quest is taken. All this makes quest management very easy and never overwhelming.

To say an MMOPRG is not overwhelming is high praise indeed and I would love to say that it’s a situaton I avoided throughout my play. Alas this is not the case, when completing the quests that take you to level ten, the following things happen:

• You are taken to a new area, the Elyos main city in my case. It is huge.
• You are given wings.
• You must choose your class specialisation.
• You pick up a huge amount of quests.

In the main city you are sent on a wild goose chase intended to show you around the city but by the time I’d finished the set, I had no clue where anything was. I was too busy flying and thinking about my new class. My advice would be to take your time, don’t just teleport off to the first main questing zone. Get to know your city, you’ll be back there often.

That’s all for now from Dan’s adventures in Aion, next week I will talk about learning to play a Ranger and then end of the closed beta.