Village Gamer

Vancouver – No, that’s not 72 hours of straight playing. The long-awaited North American closed beta of NCSoft’s Aion began this past Thursday at noon Pacific time, and that’s when our resident PC game player, A.K.A. Cavechild, logged into the game – if he hadn’t been in need of sleep and food, he probably would have logged a straight 72 hours.

The Aion build used for this testing is version 1.0, the most up-to-date version available. Players are limited to level 20 and certain map regions – but with so much to do and explore even within in this limited area, players can remain very occupied for this test period.

When I interrupted Cavechild’s play to ask him about Aion, the first question I put to him was to name one thing he did not like about the game. There are only two things thus far that he doesn’t like in the game: the fact that this is not the full release, and the apparent inability to turn off announcements from player stores – the well-known WTB and WTS scenarios.  (For those unfamiliar with these acronyms – WTB is Want To Buy and WTS is Want To Sell).

According to the Lore of Aion, the shell world of Atreia was once connected by the Tower of Eternity but a great cataclysm caused by the Balaur shattered the tower, separating the two worlds of Atreia. One side of Atreia is now inhabited by the Asmodian faction while the other is populated by the Elyos. Players will be able to explore these worlds as well as regions made up of voids and floating islands. As with many worlds, the two factions have an intense hatred of each other, and there is constant warring in The Abyss, the area between the two shattered regions. While the races battle each other, they must also contend with the greatest evil of all, the Balaur, previously only known to the factions through their Lore. It would seem that the factions may have to work together against the Balaur in order for what’s left of their world to survive.
Read the rest of this entry »