Diving into Aion Classic

I just can't help myself.

I've been unable to focus lately. I hop from game to game, and don't really find the will or motivation to continue on with any of them. My partner and I played a game of Civilization 6 the other night, and it was the first time I started a game and actually finished it in what feels an eternity.

I call it Gamer Listlessness, and I feel it happens more often than not these days. Probably because in my subconscious I'm too busy focusing on other things... like money, parenting, studying, fiction writing, more money related things, fretting over not getting a job I was so excited for, money, and adulting in general. (I just realised that 'adulting' doesn't have a squiggly red line beneath it. It's officially a real word!)

So, with Gamer Listlessness, I'll often stare at my game library for a while, umm and ahh over things, and finally just give up and refresh the internet instead. Today though, I saw an MMO I haven't played in years - Aion - and investigated to see if it was worth playing in 2021.

The answer was a resounding, "No."

However! Aion CLASSIC was spoken of quite highly, and NA servers were released but a mere two weeks ago, and so, I rose an eyebrow, thought to myself, "HMMMMMM!" and pressed the download button.

I'm the type of person who prefers to play subscription-based MMO's. I'm not sure what it is, but I feel there's more "quality" in it if it's a game you sub to.

For example, Star Wars: the Old Republic was a fantastic MMO! And then they went to the free-to-play model, and now it sucks and makes me weep for what could have been. Yes, you can still sub to it, in fact, it's nigh upon unplayable if you don't! But it's still free-to-play and completely shyte these days.

World of Warcraft has always been subscription-only, and we might whinge and complain about it and cheer on the good ol' days, but the fact is, all the things they've added to it over the years truly have improved it, it's still fun, it's still worth it, and it's still sub-only.

Aion Classic is both free to play and sub-based, which makes my upper lip curl and my nostrils flare, but it has the brilliance of having the standard 30-day subscription AND a mere 3 day subscription if you so desire. I approve of that. More games should do that. Quite often I sub for the month and then sigh at myself because I only played for a few days so what a waste.

Yes, I subscribed for three days. It's probably all I'm going to play it for, though of course I hope it truly grabs me.

I love the character creator in this game, though admittedly is not as good as some more modern ones. Like Black Desert Online.

Aion was the first game I played, back in the day, with such an in-depth character creator and it spoiled me forevermore for customisation in games. The amount of hairstyles, face details, body and face shaping, everything! is fantastic. I wish more games took a leaf from Korea and put more detail in character models.

In Aion there are two playable factions of Daeva, the dark Asmodians and the light Elyos. Previously I played as an Asmodian, so naturally I chose that one again since in the back of my mind I already know the starting areas and where things are. 🤷‍♀ I like the familiar.

The game is pretty much exactly how I remember it, except... things seem to be respawing faster than I remember. I will kill something, go to harvest a bush - you usually get three harvesting chances per node - and before I can get to the third chance, the enemy has respawned.

Madness.

And already there are more people in my faction's city than there are on the entirety of the WoW Classic server my partner and I joined a month or so ago. Cool. Might actually be able to play the auction house game. 💰🤑

Assuming I stay interested for a while, at any rate.

Though dated, the game is still as beautiful as I remember. And if nothing else, it was nice to reminisce about the good ol' days and to take a breather after applying for yet another five jobs today. 😩

In the good ol' days I made it to about level 30ish and have never reached the endgame. Be nice to change that but with my current on-and-off-again mood, who knows! 🤷‍♀