Aion 4.0 - due 26 June

First off - I need to clarify. The subject refers to the North American servers only. I have no idea when this will launch on the EU servers - but at best they are usually several months behind.

I could also add that the EU servers are so badly managed that hordes of European players are now playing on the NA servers - so there's that.

Anyways - moving on - the next expansion for Aion: Dark Betrayal is going live on the 26th of this month. The expansion will be introducing:

• New zones: Katalam and Danaria
• New instances and dungeons
• A new Balaur boss to take on
• New Skills
• Level cap increase to 65
• 2 New classes

Dark Betrayal site

The two new classes are:

The Gunslinger

The Gunslinger is a new class introduced after cutting edge research allowed researchers to compress aether into cartridge shells which led to the development of powerful new weapons - pistols and aethercannnons.

Based on the video the Gunslinger appears to be a leather-armored character, and as such they are focused on achieving a high-level of mobility and relatively high damage output.

The Gunslinger uses dual-wielded pistols for rapid-hitting and high-mobility attacks, and can switch to a heavy cannon for low-mobility, but slow, massive damage and aoe attacks.

The Songweaver

The Bards of Atreia lost their voice after Lady Siel sacrificed herself, and many disappeared, but those that continued their craft found that weaving the power of aether into their music produced startling results, and calling themselves Songweavers, once again they stepped forward into battle, weakening their enemies while providing their allies with strength.

The Songweaver is a cloth-armored character, and appears to be a mixture of cleric, chanter and traditional casters (spiritmaster/sorcerer) - and provides buffs to their allies while debuffing their enemies.

Their combat effectiveness is a bit of a mystery at the moment, and I question the wisdom of adding yet another buffing/support class (since the chanter already fulfills that role quite ably), but I'm definitely going to take one for a spin.

Here's a preview vid of the classes in action:

http://youtu.be/KuSdmXv-Crk

Stop teasing me! I will definately have to give this a go again.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowfox

First off - I need to clarify. The subject refers to the North American servers only. I have no idea when this will launch on the EU servers - but at best they are usually several months behind.

I could also add that the EU servers are so badly managed that hordes of European players are now playing on the NA servers - so there's that.

---

Thats a sad comment really, whats the pings like to the US servers?

But teasing people is fun :p

Here are the character designs for the two new classes

http://i.imgur.com/xH0Jgze.jpg

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lothy

Thats a sad comment really, whats the pings like to the US servers?

---

Lothy - my ping generally falls into the ranges of 400 - 600ms. So it's not great, but it's not unplayable. You'll be at a massive disadvantage in PvP though.

Sounds interesting enough, but not that much to move me back to MMO. Any idea what the play time from 0 - 65 is like now?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Roomys_ZA

Sounds interesting enough, but not that much to move me back to MMO. Any idea what the play time from 0 - 65 is like now?

---

They have a fast-track server, which is an integrated environment that gives a nice boost to XP (I think it's double XP or near there), but that only gets you to level 50, I think, and it's still a pretty decent slog. I've got a character on level 26, and I think that was a good 15 - 20 hours of playtime.

If memory serves me correctly - just getting from 50 - 55 can take a good while if you play casually like I do; in my case it took a good couple of months. Beyond that, I've got no idea what the pace is like, I can only assume it takes even longer. Naturally, some of the guys currently on level 60 will make it there in a week. How, I have no idea.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowfox

But teasing people is fun :p

Here are the character designs for the two new classes

http://i.imgur.com/xH0Jgze.jpg





Lothy - my ping generally falls into the ranges of 400 - 600ms. So it's not great, but it's not unplayable. You'll be at a massive disadvantage in PvP though.

---

Fok those pings are high...

And those pics lol, got to love anime style mmos

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lothy

Fok those pings are high...

And those pics lol, got to love anime style mmos

---

They are high, but still better than I got when I started playing it and I was stuck with a 3G dongle (700 - 1k ms was the norm)

Aion remains, visually speaking, one of the prettiest MMOs I've ever played. Opinions will vary, of course, but in terms of appearance and visuals I'd rate it higher than Tera. And compared to Tera Aion offers a hell of a lot more in terms of character customisation - the only bonus that Tera has is the option of playing different races.

Sigh...I played this game for a Long time...and really enjoyed it. My biggest issue however is the latency. With the rifts and Pvp we are at such a disadvantage that it just frustrates me!
Dunno if I could go through all that again. I had a maxed assassin and mage in Aion 2, and tried again in aion 3, but pings were like 380+ most of the time Even when pings where like 280 - 300, I still had very noticeable lag...:( When I started playing this game I had average of like 500+ ping...was very frustrating. :(

Pity,was a cool, and the dungeons where a lot of fun.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shadowfox

They have a fast-track server, which is an integrated environment that gives a nice boost to XP (I think it's double XP or near there), but that only gets you to level 50, I think, and it's still a pretty decent slog. I've got a character on level 26, and I think that was a good 15 - 20 hours of playtime.

If memory serves me correctly - just getting from 50 - 55 can take a good while if you play casually like I do; in my case it took a good couple of months. Beyond that, I've got no idea what the pace is like, I can only assume it takes even longer. Naturally, some of the guys currently on level 60 will make it there in a week. How, I have no idea.

---

Aion was a grindfest game! Which was ok, cause I enjoyed it mostly...until you run into rifts and pvp that is...latecy kills you. The last few levels took a long hard grind, but there were ways and places to do it. I have a 55 mage and a 55 assassin, tried again in aion 3, but pings were still horrible... :( Other thing that annoyed me was the constant shuffling of servers, now I have aMage on one, assasin on another and all lowbies on a different server :( Mains are now on a german server I think..... and Ich spreuken German very badly :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Banelight

Sigh...I played this game for a Long time...and really enjoyed it. My biggest issue however is the latency. With the rifts and Pvp we are at such a disadvantage that it just frustrates me!
Dunno if I could go through all that again. I had a maxed assassin and mage in Aion 2, and tried again in aion 3, but pings were like 380+ most of the time Even when pings where like 280 - 300, I still had very noticeable lag...:( When I started playing this game I had average of like 500+ ping...was very frustrating. :(

Pity,was a cool, and the dungeons where a lot of fun.

---

Yeah ... you never actually realise how much differenc ping makes until you play a class like an assassin - I actually never played one because I struggled to time my chains. It got better after I got a landline (400ms ave drop), but I never used my assassin for PvP. Always relied on my casters for when I ventured into PvP zones (sorc, sm and cleric) and managed reasonably well.

yeah because the Sin relies so much on speed that latency kills you, its just as bad with Mage cause of root etc...mages are super squishy. Only if you could land a cc did you stand a chance

Assassins were such an awsome class to play, loved their chains and moves :D

Shadow convinced me, I will be loading this aswel . . .