NCSoft Unveils Ridiculously Pretty "Aion Visions"

[Arcane Azmadi]

Wow. Just... wow. And I don't mean World of Warcraft.

Aion always struck me as a decent but fairly generic MMO; the one thing that made it stand out (the flying) was a bad joke due to the severe limits on where you could actually DO it and the class and skill systems were frankly dull to anyone who's played Guild Wars. But THIS... look at all this offers! New weapons, bare-handed martial arts, tameable mounts, player-owned housing (possibly even player-built cities), swimming, proper base jumping (rather than the spastic flailing your character will currently do whenever they fall more than 3 feet), giant sieges with massive colossi (seriously, they're totally a rip-off of the 3rd Colossus from Shadow of the Colossus- which is a good thing!) and of course that gorgeous graphical upgrade! Yes, it's important that they work on the fundamental gameplay flaws including limiting grind, making a more intuitive crafting system and fixing class balance- possibly raising the level cap and even including further class promotions would be a nice bonus too. But if Visions can actually live up to the promise of the trailer (unlikely to totally succeed, but should be able to achieve SOME of it at least) then maybe it'll be time for WoW to step down...

 

[Valiance]

...

The snow thing is pretty cool, but not remotely as cool as the T-Rex...

 

[skullpile]

who cares what happened to the time when a game actually had to be good and not just sell on looks come on people

 

[Asehujiko]

Hey look i can slap 15 tons of bloom on my game too!

 

[gmacarthur81]

It's not bloom.

Those are DX10 Godrays and Shader 4.X, though it is probably DX11 since DX10 sucks so hard.

If you activate the DX10 version of Age of Conan, you will see those same effects. And yes it will take a much better PC to run graphics at max. Of course, I am sure you will be able to dumb it down to DX9 and still play it like it is now.

 

[Futurenerd]

Absolutely incredible, but it's too bad this will likely drop the frame rate to about 2 FPS in about 3 seconds.

 

[Syntax Error]

I can has bloom? The stuff you can do with the CryEngine is awe-inspiring. Good for NCSoft not going by the "It must have low system requirements so that more people can play it" mentality.

EDIT:
Siege battles with the dudes from SotC? DO WANT!

 

[akilae]

Good for them, i've tried Aion on a friend account shortly after release and although the characters were fairly well modeled, the scenery was utter crap, especially embarrassing considering they've been using the CryENGINE. So yeah, apparently they have recomputed the shadow maps, HDR'ed the whole thing but, boy, are they ham-fisted with the godrays...

Based on my own experience on MMOs, gameplay mostly consists of sitting in the dark late at night in front of your computer, and I hardly see myself stuck in a dark room with the top half of my display bathed in a bloomy whiteout. Seriously it's like someone's shining a flashlight into your face.

How hard can it be to be subtle about those things?

 

[MorteSphere]

Holy shit, that is pretty. Wonderful article.

 

[Abedeus]

Uhm. Crashing because of the .dll was fixed in 1.5.2. Or 1.5.1, whatever.

I wouldn't mind buying and resubscribing for it, if only I didn't bore myself to death before hitting 29 as a Templar or 27 as a Spiritmaster.

 

[PrototypeC]

Yeah, the light thing didn't blow me away. Well, it did, but then I looked again. No big deal. But then they kept going. They added underwater portions. OK, just a re-skinned aerial battle. OK, now they have... weather effects? Rain that creates floods and rising water?!... OK, getting impressed. SNOW? No way...! OK, stop it, I'm warning YOU CAN RIDE RANDOM MONSTERS? He just knocked that chicken the f**k out, and now he's riding it.

OK, you can also share mounts, fun, but probably some stupid mechanic to do so... what? HE'S RIDING A DEMON TYRANNOSAURUS REX. HE'S KICKING ASS ON A HORNED DINOSAUR.

OK, step back, breathe, it's not that out-there. Beats the hell out of WoW already, but I said that months and months ago... now what did I miss? Giant creatures JUMPING OUT THE SAND. Collosal creatures just... jumping out, and... crashing down, and they're how big? THAT BIG?!
Kind of cool you can actually do finishing moves or whatever that is, grabbing enemies and plowing them into the ground, yeah, pretty cool. OK, you can make homes. And towns, I guess. Boring. I guess that's all they have to show.

(minutes later)

GAIGFOIAHFOIwhoifwehfief it's a Collosus just... so many, and smashing things, and I want it want it this game is the best and I will never deviate you have my soul amen.

 

[PandoraMagic]

all i can say is... I love Aion over WoW

 

[JusticarPhaeton]

Oh man, I wish they would release a trial. This game looks awesome, but I want to try it first if they want me to spend an initial $60 and then another $15 each month.

Pretty much this. I really want to try out that purported mythical, godlike character creation and customisation they have, but in the long run it's a pretty standard MMO. Nonetheless, i do want to give it a shot since it seems to have such a nice open world to run around in, but i don't want to invest that much into it yet.

 

[Pimppeter2]

This would be the game I would buy if I was into MMOs. Suck on that WoW

 

[VanQ]

And I'm assuming you'll need a state of the art computer to play it too.

Not at all, I've never seen a game scale like Aion does. I've played it on my $2500 gaming rig AND on my work computer and my sister's even worse than the work computer but handy for going away laptop. All this "Aion needs an awesome computer to run" talk is a load of BS!

 

[VanQ]

Yeah, the light thing didn't blow me away. Well, it did, but then I looked again. No big deal. But then they kept going. They added underwater portions. OK, just a re-skinned aerial battle. OK, now they have... weather effects? Rain that creates floods and rising water?!... OK, getting impressed. SNOW? No way...! OK, stop it, I'm warning YOU CAN RIDE RANDOM MONSTERS? He just knocked that chicken the f**k out, and now he's riding it.

OK, you can also share mounts, fun, but probably some stupid mechanic to do so... what? HE'S RIDING A DEMON TYRANNOSAURUS REX. HE'S KICKING ASS ON A HORNED DINOSAUR.

OK, step back, breathe, it's not that out-there. Beats the hell out of WoW already, but I said that months and months ago... now what did I miss? Giant creatures JUMPING OUT THE SAND. Collosal creatures just... jumping out, and... crashing down, and they're how big? THAT BIG?!
Kind of cool you can actually do finishing moves or whatever that is, grabbing enemies and plowing them into the ground, yeah, pretty cool. OK, you can make homes. And towns, I guess. Boring. I guess that's all they have to show.

(minutes later)

GAIGFOIAHFOIwhoifwehfief it's a Collosus just... so many, and smashing things, and I want it want it this game is the best and I will never deviate you have my soul amen.

Sir, this post just made my day.

 

[Christemo]

1 word: purdy...

 

[theownerer]

nooooooooooo why cant this game be actualy fun to play? Did no one else have problems with the mobs being bs? Maybe its just that assasins suck but I got to the third questing zone (im in the lvl 20s) and I could barely beat 1 mob my level. If I aggroed 2 of them I had to use every cd and potion I had just to make it out with 5% health. And no I do not suck, I was playing the best I could with everything keybinded and using skills the second it comes back up and I was still getting my ass kicked.

Also those giant sand things are already in there in the second questing place you can see them flying around which makes you wonder why they would be jumping in and out of sand if they can fucking fly.

 

[Tears of Blood]

That's an MMO?

What!?

 

[toapat]

Aion didnt actually dethrone WoW, what most of the players who played it are there for is for a non-WoW carry over between the Lineage 2 which they have all beaten, and for Lineage 3.