Sol Kyoshiro

Well look at it like this. The game has been out a year in Korea and they've had 3 major patches that have added content, fixes, skills and armor sets.

And to Temko, your points show you didn't really get into the game.

There is Ton of content past 22, I don't know what race you are but for except if your Asmo at 22 you go to Morheim where's there's ton of quests. After 20 there's new quest to get in Altgard and Pandamonium. If you can't figure out where to quest check out your Campaign quest and see the areas they take you, there's almost always a new quest hub near those places.

The game consist of far far more than a rotation of 3-5 skills. For example if your a Templar by lvl 20 you have 8 basic skills with one skill having 2 branches with one being a 3 chain. That essential makes 1 move 6 moves in one with the way skill chains work. Aion has Stigma paths which are a far more customizable version of trees. Not to mention that you have find Stigmas which means that people will Stigmas at different times depending on how hard they work to get the stigma they want. Then you have the way you slot yourself. If you a Templar and you decide to go Crit then some moves are going to be more used than others because of the increased crit chances some moves naturally have.

As I already mentioned Flight should never be unrestricted, to point out at your example Champions Online. I can run away from ANY fight with any worries, I almost never died in CO beta because of flight and Teleportation. Is that the new defintion of fun? No challenge because I can run away easily?

Name any "unique" feature of a game you like I can point out one before it that had it all the way up to UO. Everyone pretends to reinvent but none ever do. What you hope for those is for a game to have a mix of features that you love and none of the things you don't.

No Content? PVP ranks that grant you armor/abilites. Caste Siegies that net armor/weapons. Over 15 instances (which for a game that is not meant to be instance heavy is alot), and 30 world bosses. But really what are you looking for? Its a PVP game buddy your meant to want to kill people all the time.

Oh and the thing about Assassins' dominating. No. An assassin has a low chance of killing an equally geared tank. And there dominating currently. 5 months ago it was Spiritmasters/Sorcerors before they got nerfed. And before them it was Rangers before their jumpshot got nerfed. Someone will ALWAYS dominate at the moment. Point out any game and someone can point out the dominate class.

I'm just going to respond to everyone in one giant reply.

The game can be solo'd though to be honest why are you even playing a Massive MULTIPLAYER game to play by yourself. Why should a game make it easy for you to be anti social? But in the end there is no way to please everyone. To those that love WoW its solo friendly to the others its boring. To those that love FFXI it has great group content to those that don't its a grindfest that forces you to group. No company can win this because if you can solo then why group? And if you can group then why solo?

The game is ridiculously PvE friendly. There's tons of quest and they added a ton more in patch 1.5. But also, is there really any different between a quest that has you killing 20 mobs and just killing the mob itself? Especially when Aion increases the per mob xp so that it makes up for not having a quest bonus. But in the end its a PvP and that does not make it bad thing.

You all need to actually experience the flight so you can understand it. The reason why the limited flying is very simple. So you can't skip combat. If you can fly through the PVE areas then wheres the sense of danger of having to go through zones?? Its the whole reason why wow doesn't let you get your flying mount till extremely close to end game and then takes it away in Northrend till 74 or so. They don't want you doing it in PVP or else you can just simply fly away from pvp indefintiely just like in WoW.

The timer makes you THINK. When do you want to use your wings in combat? Where do you run to before you run out of time? And by the time you get to the abyss and get better wings you can fly for almost 5 minutes which is a pretty long time if you think about it. Wings are not an excuse to skip content and eazy mode your way out of combat.

To all you still crying about Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault..lets be real. AA had an enormously low sub rate not even enough to pay for development. TR tried but couldn't keep people in it. You can't run a game in the negative for that long. But both of those were american deve'd games. Name a NCsoft game that has failed that was made from there oversea studies.. I mean look at L1 and L2 there STILL some of the most played MMO's in the world.

I'd also like to point out that you can't judge a game fully by its betas. WoW in beta was pretty bad..yet look at it now. The game is Korean and part of that is the understanding that your beginning levels, 1-30 are a giant tutorial of learning your character and building up a legion. If your friends haven't gotten to 35+ they haven't seen the game. Hell you can't even get access to the OMG stigmas till almost 40. The castle sieges are hella rough to do before 40 as well.

I played EQ for 4 years, L2 for 4, WoW for 3 and every mmo in between for at least 6-12 months (MMO's is my fav genre). And Aion is a game I'm lookin forward to putting 4 into as well.

I've tried out Runes of Magic and it is definitely not on par with Wow in graphics.The difference in detail in gear/weapons and landscapes is obvious at first glance.

Wow is certainly not a bastion of graphically prowess but at max settings it beats any and all F2P games out there. I challenge anyone to produce a F2P game at max settings and I know I can bring a Wow screenshot that beats it.

But its as other's have said. F2P games are far more desperate for subscriptions than P2P. Its just a number's game. 200,000 subs at $15 a pop is more money than a f2p of 1,000,000 players.

Remember that that average model for a F2P is the 89/10/1 rule. 89% will spend nothing, 10% spend $5 and 1% $30+ a month. Because of that there cash flow is unpredictable and low for most F2P.

Do you really think DDO would have gone F2P if they had a good number of subs? Hell no.

P2P is the porterhouse steak and F2P is the fast food taco. Both are needed in the world and have their own place but don't confuse the two. I have played just about every MMO I can get my hands on over the past 10+ years and the games that I end up playing over a month are always P2P. They tend to have the content and production values that I enjoy.

Its a misconception that their will be lag just because its a UK/US game. I have a number of UK friends and we've played alot of games together. There latency was usual only 10-30 more than mine. Hell there's been times where they've had better latency than me.

Usually the reason companies do seperate servers has more to do with language barriers and time zone issues. My UK friends went to a different wow server because they could never make our raid times.

Seriously though this is a good thing. Some of the best gamers I know are from Uk.

You guys are looking at this the wrong way. Microsoft won E3 because of this.

Almost every game they showed was PLAYABLE.

They played, Fallout, Gears, Lips, at the movies. They showed the new xbl in action. They showed gameplay of Banjo. The whole bit. And then at the end...FF13.

Now some say, "who cares there stealing a sony masterpiece." Lets be real. FF started with nintendo then jumped to Sony. And now there sharing main branch with microsoft. This says a few things.

1) The white engine is easily portable to Xbox which shots down sony's claims that only THEY can do FF
2) That Square sees the xbox as a profitable platform. Is this because of how much money it cost to make games now? Or because they don't make enough sales from just sony.

Yea FF13 will be on xbox only in Us and Eu...but wait those are THE xbox markets. So its still a win. Sony for the first time ever is having to rely totally on 1st party and 2nd party titles because ms has been snatching up the third parties.

This generation of games is Zelda/Mario vs Gears/Halo and GoW/Resistance.

And that is an ugly fight.

Horde K K?

Man its funny listening to people who truly don't understand how the industry works. Its not an issue of Gabe is lazy. Half-life redefined FPS and Half-life 2 changed it once agian. They've NEVER made a game that wasn't acclaimed and Episode 1 is the only game that hasn't gotten GOTY year. So you can't dismiss his words because Gabe and Valve is a corner stone.

Secondly Sony ever since the PS2 has been trying hard to compare themselves to consoles. When you turn on your PS2 it doesn't say Sony Console entertainment now does it? No it says computer. So they have purposely tried to through themselves in the realm of PC development.

You can't say, "So what if the PS3 is hard to learn! stop being lazy" Do you think those months of just learning to make for the PS3 is free? No its not. It cost money for them just to attempt to make a game on the PS3. IF your a first or second party dev it doesn't matter because Sony is there giving you money. Look at Epic and UT3, they worked with Sony to make UT3 and they still had push it back and have Sony devs join there team.

Not every studio has the funds or time to make the PS3 there life. And especially when doing so doesn't even guarentee a return in revenue. How do you think Factor 5 feels right now? Lair will not be a money maker for them even though they put all that time into it.

So why should Gabe and Valve, who have consistently put out a good product, care about the PS3? Its not they they haven't dealt with Sony because they put Half-Life on the PS2. Its not that they don't like consoles because they made Half-Life on the Dreamcast (even thought they canned it because of the DC's death cry) and they put Half-life 2 on the xbox.

It sounds to me like Gabe got together with his team and looked at the time it would take to master a whole new weird architecture. They looked at how long it would take them to deliver a game of the quality they like and looked at target sales numbers. At the end they were probably weren't happy.

I mean why else would Devil May Cry, Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, UT3, The Darkness and numerous other titles abandon there exclusive ties?

Graphics AREN'T everything. And a game that is easier to develop means more time can be taken on things that matter, like gameplay. Because right now the PS3 is gathering a slew of pretty, but soulless games. Is this the legacy of the PS3?

There are few dev's more qualified to talk than Gabe. Hell I don't think theres any other studio who can say all there games were critically acclaimed AND sold well. I trust him when he says the PS3 is a waste of time right now. The true question is, will Sony improve there tools to make the development process less costly? Or will they bury there heads in the sand.

You my friend are a savior! I've been looking for that song FOREVER. And couldn't even find the commercial again let alone the song... I had given up hope until I say that picture!