Anjasaurus

Autumn feelings

It’s the first of August, once again. You can feel the summer is almost over, and for once I’m not sad. I’ve had a really nice summer with great weather, and I’m looking forward to this autumn and winter. I’m not happy it’s over, I’m more content.

And this autumn also brings lots of gaming! I know I haven’t been very frequent in updating, but it’s mainly because I’ve been busy gaming. Pokémon captured me more than I thought, so I look forward to picking up my copy of Diamond again and trying to finish it. And of course I need to work on my badges and Pokédex in SoulSilver. But I shouldn’t forget what convinced me to buy a Wii, Donkey Kong and Kirby! Donkey Kong will be an amazing trip down memory lane and the Kirby game looks simple but innovative, the reason why I love Nintendo games so much.

Autumn, bring it on!

Anno 1404

My sister has been talking about this new game she loves, Anno 1404. I didn’t think much about it until I saw her playing when we were both home for Christmas. It looked a bit live Civ, but less strict and more fun.

I got to try it on her laptop, and I was hooked. It is so addictive! It’s not very innovative or anything, it’s just simple and fun. You build your own “empire” starting on a small island building resources and expanding as you need new resources and more space. There are two areas, the Occident and the Orient. The Occident is like Europe or North America, and this is where you start. Later you can expand into the Orient, and this is needed to develop your empire.

It was really cheap on CDON (Swedish web music/film/game shop) so I ordered and it arrived this Friday (8/1). I’ve been playing over 10 hours since then. Simply addictive!

Another day in Aion

I’ve run into my first Aion block today, which is mainly about my legion (guild) and my own play style. They are around-the-clock players who spend a lot of time grinding and leveling, and I’m not.

Maybe this legion isn’t for me. I really enjoy going around looking at the scenery or collecting flowers and ignoring the mobs, and I don’t look forward to reaching lvl 50 that much. Sounds too much like the end to me, I like leveling and finding new areas.

I realised maybe Aion won’t be that game that sticks, like Guild Wars did, but I need to give it a chance at least. The questing is enjoyable, even more I’ve found if you really take the time to read the quest logs (they are insanely long sometimes though, I hardly ever bother..), and the scenery is nice. You can find the odd nice group for the group quests even, so maybe joining a legion isn’t that important yet :)

I’m still running around Eltnen, the level 20-40 area, which is mostly a desert. It has it’s beautiful spots though, and I tried to capture some of them:
Ania, my Chanter Night in Eiron Desert Beautiful desert landscape Beautiful desert landscape

I’ve just found the PvPvE area, so now I’m slowly getting to know the Abyss and how frustrating it can be to be low lvl in PvP areas ;) I hope to have the chance to play there some more on off-peak times to get to know the area better.

Impressions of Aion, three weeks after release

Aion was officially released on 25 September in Europe, with the headstart for the preorderers starting at the 22nd already. So, depending on if you preordered or not, we have now been able to play Aion for a full three or four weeks.

I must say, Aion has not made a great first impression. Not because it’s a bad game, not at all, but the queues and lag makes the gaming experience less than optimal. For the first two weeks it was more or less impossible for a casual gamer to play, since the queues ran up to 2 hours as early as 18:00. This has now been solved by adding new servers, and the queues definitely seem to be gone. Instead, last week, we were given sick lagspikes of 30-60 seconds. It came to the point where you would kill a monster, go into town and by the time you reached your warehouse (storage/bank), then you would start taking damage. Luckily, this lag wasn’t around for too long, and the problems seems to have disappeared now.

Reading all this, you would probably assume I don’t like Aion. But I do. My evenings are usually quite busy, but since I’m studying, I have odd times off when I can play. This means I could play off peak time, and avoid some queues. I also want to give Aion the chance it deserves, and not discard it because of server problems at release, a lot of good games had that.

I’ve only reached level 21 so far, with most of my legion (guild) being in the 30s-40s, so no group play for me yet. I’m sure they would join and help me with the earlier group quests if I just asked, but I am mainly a solo player who loves group/legion chat. The path to lvl 21 has been quite enjoyable so far, in a stereotypical MMO way. Aion really feels like a stereotypical MMO, but really there’s nothing wrong with that. Not for me, I’ve never played one seriously. Crafting is quite unexciting, the usual “buy mats and grind” type, it’s the kind of items you can make that might make it stand out a bit. You can actually make useful stuff, as long as you spend money and time on keeping up with your level. Leveling is killing monbs and questing, so far. Not until level 25 can I join what is so typical for Aion, the Abyss with PvP and PvPvE questing, hunting and fighting. This is my next goal, and I need to reach it before I can fully evaluate Aion. :)