Eh… almost.

Yeah, this is taking a lot longer than I thought it would.  I have nothing to really show (I’m not much for showing previews, especially since I don’t get as many hits as it is anyways) and my hands are kinda wearing themselves out.  Another thing is that I’ve been working on this on and off while playing WoW, other RPGs and actually getting out of the house and doing things inside away from the computer.

I’m sure there are probably 1 or 2 people that are wondering what I’m doing with everything.  Here’s the simple gist of it.

- This blog will still remain as my personal blog.  However, it won’t be as upfront as it is right now and there will be some changes.  Namely: it will actually ACT like a personal blog and will spread towards my RL a bit more.

- Mogknight.com (or whatever domain I end up using) will be a full fledge website.  For what?  I’m not revealing anything yet.

- For the reasons of not blowing up the blog server that this is on, I will be hosting things elsewhere.  This is basically me saying that whatever this iste is, I intend on getting a ton of visitors for.  For the sake of the other blogs/sites hosted on the Rianon Network, I will be moving this elsewhere.

- What is this site?  Again, I can’t say at the moment.

- When will it be up?  Whenever it’s done.

for some unforeseen consequences.

I’m pretty sure there are some of you out there that really only played FFXI and not really other MMOs.  FFXI might have been your very first MMO and you are probably interested in playing Aion but you’re not too sure what it is and what to expect.  This guide is for you.

1. What is Aion?

Aion is an MMO that is only for the PC.  It’s a game that has been released in Korea for about a year so far and was barely released this week in US and European soil.  The game pits two playable factions in a never ending war with each other and also with a 3rd NPC faction.  Players can assume the role of 8 different classes, each with their own unique set of abilities and stats.  The game offers PvE and PvP aspects, as well as an integration of the two in various optional venues with PvPvE.  The game was developed by NCsoft who are also known for other games such as Guild Wars, City of Heroes, and the Lineage games.

2. Why play Aion?

For the FFXI-only gamer, Aion is a totally different environment.  Aion is much faster pace in the battle system but still goes at a slow enough pace that it is understandable as to what is going on.  Aion also offers a storyline, while transparent compared to FFXI, still offers some rather nice cutscenes that is usually seen in other games today.  Aion also offers 8 very unique classes, where as FFXI jobs are usually spread out so thin that most of the jobs either end up being too much the same or lacking enough character to compete with other jobs.  Aion also features a motive outside of gearing up the character: PvP.  The PvP in this game is much less like the nightmarish grounds of certain MMOs out there.  While there will be situations where you be forced to do battle against human players, there are situations that let you pretty much avoid any kind of contact at all as long as you know where you’re going.

Aion is a whole new world to explore and being exposed to something different is indeed a refresher.  The graphics are modernized, the setting feels familiar and it is an environment that feels comfortable.

3. Your character(s)

When you make a character, you will need to make the following choices:

1. Race
2. Class
3. Name
4. Appearance
5. Voice

As far as races go, you have a choice between the Elyos or the Asmodians.  The Elyos are the “good” side while the Asmodians are the “bad” side.  I use those terms loosely because they are really neither good or bad, one is more holy while the other more salvage like.  They make no difference stat wise but the opposite faction will be your enemy.  You cannot communicate with the opposite faction, thus you cannot party or group up with them for any reason.  If you intend on playing with your friends, you all must pick the same faction.  You cannot switch factions either, so decide your side.  Note that once you decide to make a character, all the rest of your characters that you can make on that server will be locked to that first character’s faction.  This is to prevent situations where you would help a friend out by farming you for points (more on this PvP aspect later).

As far as classes go, you have a choice from 4 basic level classes that will eventually branch out into 8.   Unlike FFXI, you cannot switch between classes like you can jobs.  Once you choose a class, you are stuck with it.   Once you level a basic class, you will have a choice between two branches of that basic class.  Those basic classes are:

Warrior
Scout
Mage
Priest

After hitting level 10, you can become these classes:

Warrior => Gladiator/Templar
Scout => Assassin/Ranger
Mage => Sorcerer/Spiritmaster
Priest => Cleric/Chanter

Meet the Classes~

Gladiator

Gladiator can be compared to most DD melee classes in FFXI, most accurately WAR.  You are strictly a melee class that can sorta tank when needed but your main focus is to grab a heavy two-handed weapon and swing as hard as you can for massive damage.  Much like Warrior, you do have some defensive options but most of that does not really go into play in PvE, probably more so in PvP.

Templar

Pretty much, this is the tanking class of the game.  It resembles Paladin quite a bit but instead of relying so much on healing for hate and so on, you have a multitude of damaging abilities that will lay a dent on the enemy but also allows you to keep threat.  You have a lot of survivability with this class and it is definitely going to be one of the more sought out classes just to keep a party going.

Assassin

Assassin can be more in tone of a THF but with more of an accurate representation from rogues or assassins in other games.  You can be stealthy and you do a lot of damage by attacking enemies from behind.  You also will be focusing a lot on doing damage with dual wielded weapons.

Ranger

Much like a RNG in FFXI.  It will also cost you quite a bit of money to play this class.  On the flipside, you also have traps that allow you to ensnare or do more damage to your enemies while you run around them in circles, shooting them and killing them.

Sorcerer

BLM… nothing much to say here about them.

Spiritmaster

Spiritmaster (as Lissy puts it) is like a cross between SMN and RDM.  You fight with a summoned pet but you also provide some damage and debuffs yourself.  So, it’s not really a SMN because your pet is fighting and so is you.  It’s not really a RDM because you have a pet… RDM/SMN?  Maybe!

Chanter

According to Aion, Chanter can be described in two words: “commandment and conviction.”  What does this mean to the FFXI folk?  Think… BRD, some RDM, a very small bit of PLD, a DRK… eh… I think that’s about it.  Pretty much Chanters can be summed up as the jack-of-all-trades… except for probably tanking.  It can damage, it can heal, it buffs, it can be impossible to kill in a PvP fight.  Chanter is definitely a support class that is very strong.

Cleric

For the most part… WHM.  It can melee too!

Once you decide on that, name your character, adjust its appearance with the very many choices you can pick from, pick a non-annoying voice and there ya go, you’re set into the world of Aion!

4. Leveling

Unlike what you’re used to in FFXI, leveling in Aion isn’t so much grinding on mobs until you level, though the option is certainly there.  Instead, you take quests where you must do a task to get XP as well as money and maybe even items.  It is totally possible to forgo these quests (there are some mandatory quests in order to progress into different areas) but for the most part… that’s crazy and you don’t wanna do that.

Another thing to note is that battles are generally faster than FFXI and usually involve ability spamming rather than slowly autoattacking something to death.  Your character comes with abilities that either help you or inflict a good chunk of damage.  Feel free to spam them, most of them are free and are only restricted to cooldowns.  Note that there is no real “claim” system in this game except with who gets the spoils in the end.  I haven’t really figured out how it works but you are free to attack whatever you want and people outside of your party can attack whatever you’re attacking.  There are some XP penalties involved but I won’t really get into that.  Usually it’s customary to not attack one’s target unless it seems that they need the help.  Players usually do not attack other people’s target as it does not really benefit them to do so.

The game also includes some tutorial videos on the fly that you can view while playing.  Use those to get familiar with the game.

:3 and that’s it.  If you’re interested, I’m sure a trial version will come out eventually.  Until then, the game does come with a month free of game time so try giving it a go if you are really interested.

Ahh Korean MMOs… you know, a good chunk of Korean MMOs tend to not work so well in America, mainly because of the huge fact that a lot of them don’t really get marketed so well and they tend to end up getting ignored.  Not to mention that most Korean MMOs are grindfests up the wazoo.

Aion changes all that.

Aion is a good example of “Take some from Column A and some from Column B.”  The game offers something very familiar with most English MMO players from games such as WoW, Warhammer and FFXI and offers a bit of Korean flair that does not distract from the main game.  There’s a feeling in Aion that you just don’t get in the other MMOs out there nowadays: a very engrossing battle system mixed with a character that you can call your own and have that as your main focus of an avatar with so many ways to customize it.

In a middle of war between two player controlled factions and an NPC faction, you can pick from one of 8 classes to do battle with other players or the environment.  You can either be the righteous Elyos or the salvage Asmodians.  Creating a character can get you stuck at the creation menu for a good amount of time as there are many ways to customize your character with face and body features.  You also have to pick from 4 “basic” classes: Warrior/Scout/Mage/Priest.  Once you make your character, you go right into a cutscene explaining what’s going on in the world and you go off on your leveling adventure.

Much like most MMOs, you will be doing quests and getting XP for doing them.  There are some interesting quests to keep things moving but nothing too annoying that you might run into in other MMOs (escort quests are far and few).  What makes the package fun is that XP while grouping up is not penalized to the point where it’s pointless.  Grouping is very encouraged because of how fast you can kill mobs and not only that, it’s much more entertaining to have someone (or a group) to interact with.

The battle system in itself is a unique one that borrows from a few games.  The battles are slow paced enough to understand everything that’s going on but fast enough to keep it interesting.  It is like a cross between FFXI and WoW.  What makes this battle system very nice is the fact that your character’s movement actually affects stats, beneficial and also decremental.  Running forward into the mob while attacking will increase your damage but also increases the damage you take.  Running sideways will increase your dodge but reduces the damage you do.  Running backwards will increase your parry and block rate but also reduces the damage you do.  You eventually start dancing around the mob to optimize yourself.  On top of all this, you can equip power shards that act like… well, “Melee Bullets.”  You can equip these shards to add in more damage but you can enable them and disable them as you will, making it nice for those moments where you need a bit of edge.

Aion, for the most part, does feel like a Korean MMO and that, in itself, is much like a novelty.  Right from the random Engrish moments to the crazy Korean /dances and the interesting soundtrack, the game does feel very unique in that sense.  Most English speaking players have not experienced these things before and really, that gives the MMO genre a fresh coat of paint for those that are used to FFXI or WoW’s atmosphere.  You run in and realize that it doesn’t feel American and it doesn’t feel Japanese but it feels… different, not really in a Korean sense but Koreans are always trying to be different anyways.  My point is, Aion does feel like a brand new area.

As for how beautiful Aion is…

The game looks friggen gorgeous.  Yeah, my FPS is kinda low on that one but this is because I set it to maxed out settings.  Even then, if your computer isn’t so great, Aion offers a really nice option for that.  There’s a Fixed FPS option where it will scale your game settings to what it feels will give the best FPS for that moment.  So if you’re around crowded people, it’ll lower the settings a bit.  If you’re in an open area, it goes back into awesome graphics.  This game you can actually run pretty well if your computer isn’t so great.  Even with my pretty sub-par computer, I can run Aion with Max settings without having so harsh of a hit on FPS that it’s still playable.  What’s extremely nice too about Aion is that you can actually hide OTHER PLAYERS from showing up on your screen.  If you’re running into a crowded area, you can pretty much make them all disappear by hitting Shift+F12.  Having a bad computer is no excuse to play this game.

The game’s “gimmick” is that there is aerial combat.  In Aion, your character has wings.  You can fly they aren’t really used for traveling.  Instead, they’re meant to gain a tactical advantage over your opponent.  You have a limit too so you can’t fly constantly.  I haven’t really dealt with flying so much as you don’t get so much of a chance to fly in the early levels.  I’m assuming this will be very important in PvP and later on in the game.

Now, there are probably some fears and questions about the game.  First off: Dying in this game will incur an XP lost penalty and you will be given a res sickness that lasts for a short bit of time.  Fortunately, you cannot lose a level and the amount of XP you lose isn’t so much as long as you just die once in awhile and not all the time.  PvP is pretty much forced but from what I understand, you can avoid it pretty easily as long as you don’t go into the wrong place at the wrong time.  Even then, for those who hate PvP, you might actually like the PvP in Aion as long as you’re not a loner (which… if you are, why are you even playing MMOs?).  A lot of times, level mismatches gets overridden by skill and class balance.  If you know what you’re doing on a regular mob and react well against an opponent, you should not have that huge of a problem against a human.

All in all, Aion is a great new MMO that presents itself to be humble.  People may draw a lot of comparisons between this and other MMO titles but one thing is for certain: the opening launch for this title was very successful, the preorders have set records and even though there might be some huge queue lines, the game is very smooth for launch.  The guys at NCSoft probably didn’t know what they were getting themselves into but even then, they have handled the situation very well.  It is only time until we see how well this game plays out.

I like it.

Yeah that’s about it.

Anyways, there’s probably a lot of things about the game that isn’t so straight up, especially at the lower levels.  Time for time tips! :3

1. Enchantments and Manastones.

Throughout the early levels of Aion, you’ll run into these Manastones that can be socketed into your equipment.  Manastones will give you a bit of a statboost depending on what type it is.  They work much like gems in WoW with the exception that you can fail to socket a manastone and you end up losing all your manastones in your equipment. D:  Uh ohs.

Fret not though, manastones are pretty abundant for the most part, at least the low level ones.  Stack as much as you can in those sockets with manastones.

Enchantments are kinda like…. well you guessed it, WoW enchantments.  They add some stats to your equipment.  To get an enchantment, you need to extract one using an Extractor Kit from the general goods NPC… now they don’t tell you that stuff :3  Use it on an item that you want to destroy and make into an enchantment (has to be a piece of armor or weapon) and then it’ll be converted into an enchant.  Take that enchant to whatever item you want to use it on and boom!

2. Power Shards

Power Shards add a bit of fire power to your weapons.  They’re consumable and are used every time you land a hit.  You can pretty much buy a bunch of these by a huge stack but you will run out of these pretty fast.  Best solution is to save them for clutch moments or if you intend on PvPing for awhile.  raaaah.  You need to equip them first and then activate them by hitting the B button.  pwn sum suckas.

3. Herb and Mana Treatments

These abilities need Odella Powder, which you can get from any General Goods NPC.  These are pretty much your replacement bandaids.  Use it.  You can buy a crap ton of these and reduce your town time quite a bit. :3

4. Death

Dying will happen.  Rezzes can be given out as soon as level 10, any class can rez with an item, Priest based classes can rez at 10.  Regardless of how you rez, you will lose XP.  XP can be regained by talking to a Soul Healer.  Soul Healer will also remove the weakened status.  You cannot level-down in this game.

5. Your Cube (inventory)

You can get a total of 108 slots.  There are a total of 9 cube expansions for 9 slots each.  They can all be bought straight up from the Trade Broker/Warehouse building.  They also cost a lot. D:

6. Warehouse

You can expand your warehouse.  You also have an account warehouse which is storage space that all your characters on that server can access.  No need to transfer via mail yo :3

7. Work Orders and Crafting

Work Orders are quests that will give you the mats straight up, you might have to provide some side mats but you can use this to level up without having to run around all over the place trying to find mats just with the intent on leveling.  Nifty~!

:o and that’s about it for now.  Have funs~

Not having an active MMO to play at the moment really freed up my ability to do other things… like play other games (along with working with projects that I’m not yet ready to reveal… rawr).

Now, there are other MMOs out there that I’ve been wanting to try left and right but I never gotten around to actually playing them.  The thing is, I never intend on playing these things for anything beyond trial period, lets talk a bit about thems! :3

1. Dungeons and Dragons Online

Recently, DDO has gone into a free-to-play structure where you can choose to buy upgrades with real money if you so desire.  Usually a model that is common along Korean MMORPGs, this pretty much give people a chance to play the game before making any sort of payments or even give people that want to play very casually a simple free game.

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much out of this game and really, after rolling a character, made me wonder why people bought this in the first place.  A lot of the game just felt like endless auto attacking until the creature is dead.  You also have abilities with your specific class… you’ll never use them :D.  With how everything is, I think I’d rather pull out the pen and paper and play D&D in real life.  I will say that the community does seem a lot more mature than most other MMOs *coughcoughWoWcoughcough* and it would be interesting to see how this business model will keep DDO afloat.  A good chunk of people seem to enjoy it… I’m not one of them though.

2. Dungeon Fighter Online

If I had to describe DFO, it would be a game that is a cross of Streets of Rage, Ragnarok Online, and a random 2D Tales of Game on steroids.  The game itself is pretty successful in Korea with a tournament scene going on with the game’s PvP system.  The game is just as I described it… a Streets of Rage MMO in a Fantasy based setting with various abilities that you can use to create some pretty impressive combos.  It’s free to play and is in beta (I think?) at the moment.  The only real gripe that I have is that there is a limitation as to how much you can play one character per day in that game.  You can only enter so many dungeon rooms per day (168… or some odd number like that) and once you hit that limit, that’s it!  You can’t advance any more and you can’t level up any more until the reset.  Other than that, the game is pretty fun and I enjoy the novelty of being able to use my own fighting stick for it.  Overall, I see myself playing this from time to time.

3. Immaterial and Missing Power

Okay, now for something that isn’t an MMO.  IaMP is actually a Touhou game that was released quite a bit ago.  What’s “Touhou” you might be asking?  Wikipedia will answer that for me.  IaMP is actually not like your usual Touhou game.  Where as a usual Touhou game is a shooter game that involves a lot of bullets filling up your screen while you’re screaming bloody murder, IaMP is a fighting game that involves bullets more so than attacking with melee hits.  There’s actually quite a bit of circles out there that play IaMP competitively via netplay.  I have barely touched it and I can say that this game is pretty deep.  The thing is the game is so unique that nothing can really help you prepare for it, in fact a lot of habits you might have in other games will end up hurting you when you play this game.  What is also pretty unique about this game is that in the game’s story mode, you’re not playing a “fair” fight against the opponent.  Rather, you play an upgraded version of them which pretty much reminds you of all the other Touhou games… bullets all over the place, bullets all up in your face.  Allow me to demonstrate something I recorded:

It actually gets crazier because there’s a Lunatic difficulty level (two steps above this) where it’s just… well… the patterns are a lot more complex and harder to get around.

4. Aion Open Beta

Well, I intend on playing final release when it comes out (I have it preordered with the collector’s edition too).  Aion really struck me as being new with a bunch of things being old.  The battle system is almost like a very slow paced WoW… which in turn, reminds me of a faster paced FFXI.  It’s almost like that “inbetweener” that I’ve always been longing for.  I didn’t like FFXI because of how slow and static it was and I didn’t like WoW for how fast and chaotic it was.  Aion seemed like a good medium, a medium I can enjoy and still play it at a rate that is casual enough that it won’t eat up all of my time.  I have yet to do any PvP in the game but from what I understand, the PvP will happen in Aion.  You can play Aion with strictly PvE material but PvP will happen.  Though, it won’t be as bad as WoW PvP where you’ll be killed in a few Global Cooldowns.  If you enjoy some PvP and some PvE, Aion is a winner.  If you hate PvP beyond all hell… don’t get this game. D:

About a year ago, Smash Bros Brawl was the game that I would end up sitting down and play with others.  The problem is that I have the tenancy to do some really assholish things in these types of games where anything can really happen given the nature of how the game is made.

Here’s an example of something I abused the living shit out of just because of how stupidly hilarious it is:

More website developments in a bit.

This site is sure in need of an overhaul. *pulls out the Photoshop*

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted on this blog.  A lot of it had to do with me having next to nothing to talk about.  After a bad moment of me going through my internal conflicts and realizing that there’s more to life than trying to improve an in-game avatar, I’m picking myself back up and heading on forward as hard and as fast as I can.

So… Where am I right now?  Currently, I’m still chilling in California with the intent on moving out fairly soon.  I’m sitting on an A.S. degree and pretty much still wondering around in the career department.  I still wonder what I want to do with my life and I especially wonder what I want to do “right now.”  It’s probably best to think about what I want to do right now.  Right now, I’m not so much interested in trying to get a B.S. Degree because I frankly do not know what I want to commit myself to.  I do like messing around with Photoshop but I honestly don’t think I have an artful eye (not to mention colorblindness).  I’d like to go into the movie editing stuff but I lack the content to work with (As in, I’d like to edit the material, I just don’t like making the material).  I also would like to go into web design but I tend to bash my head against the keyboard when nothing comes out of my fingertips.

Frankly, the problem I see with my choices as that they’re all stuff that I would just bring to “hobby” level and not so much “career” level.  Maybe it’ll be something I’ll end up figuring out in a few weeks or in a few months… hopefully not in a few years.

As far as my gaming life goes: I’m gonna be switching to Aion after playing the Open Beta for a bit.  I’m most likely not gonna play Aion hardcore as I did WoW and FFXI, mainly because it doesn’t seem like Aion can really be played hardcore like anyways and frankly, I’m kinda done with MMO endgame commitments anyways.  Now is not really the time for me to mess around with them anyways.

Anyways, if you are interested in playing Aion with the Mogster and Lissy, we’ll probably mention what server we’re gonna be on once final release is out.  You know where to reach us. “:3