the net raiders

All three of which I didn’t get enough of this weekend. The real-life is becoming a hindrance on my second-life. Making it hard to get any quality gaming in as of late.

That being said, the latest phase of the AION beta has come and gone. This time, boasting both Elyos and Asmodian territories of up to level 35. Did I partake in any of this goodness? Hardly, which virtually negates anything I am about to tell you…. It seems a bit cruel and twisted that NCSoft would decide to do the beta in a series of weekends. When ironically for the working stiff, weekends pose the biggest threat to gaming. Monday to Thursday are the best days. Because Friday to Sunday are designated to forget what I had to do the week before.

Anyways, by the time I actually sat down to start playing AION, I still had router issues from a previous post I have made here. Needless to say, “Channel 6” on your router is a magnet for interference. Mainly because all other routers, and cell phones start on channel 6. After hitting up a better signal, I was able to get AION going in the responsible hour I had left before the work week started again.

In this time I can tell you one thing I noticed right away, leveling is a lot faster. Seems that (NCSoft) took the comments made by the players to heart and took the hardcore grinding elements out, allowing me to score a half level with very little effort before it was time to log off. This isn’t Ragnorok by any stretch of the imagination, and thank god.

I should also mention that once my connection issues were resolved, AION was running A LOT smoother than in previous beta weekends. How much better? Well enough for myself to notice that I wasn’t rubber banding back to previous locations. Also the casting was improved and the navigation system that alters your stats based on the direction you are walking was a bit crisper too (I need to find the exact name for that mechanic).

The game is still as sharp as ever. I still get impressed every time I boot up the game and see the character selection screen. It’s just a damn good looking game with a really familiar mechanic. I’ll be sure to post later once I start getting into the PvP aspect of it. As we are all interested to see how PvPvE is going to play out.