It’s been a very long, very stressful week, and as a result, I haven’t been playing as much as hoped. I logged in last night, decided to try to do quests in Reshanta, died several times, and then just decided to grind in the desert area of Morheim. I died a couple more times, and logged off to read and drink vodka.
The Kentari Village can be deathly if you’re not careful, as mobs pull in chains – you think you only have one, but all of a sudden two or three of his friends come pounding up, and you are dead. You can’t even fly off the cliff areas and get away, since they do some kind of stun and a death-grip type of thing, and when there are several of them doing that to you, you don’t go anywhere. So then I got all emo and meh and logged off, because I’m really mature about things like that. :)
The Abyss has been frustrating as a usually-solo player, but still fun. Asmodae on our server don’t seem to work together very well in comparison with the much more hardcore Elyos, who sweep around in large groups slaughtering everything. Yes, again I picked the wrong side – in Warcraft I played Alliance. and in Aion I pciked Asmodae because I thought they were going to be the more hardcore side. Elyos (at least on our server) rule the Abyss, they’re more hardcore, and there are less of them.
In Aion, Elyos are the Horde. D’oh!
PvP is a lot of fun. Although there are lots of nasty little killstealers trying to take other’s mobs, I haven’t yet felt as though I’ve been griefed in PvP, which was one of my reservations about Aion prior to playing. Even though there are some ungodly high-level players out there, it all feels like friendly competition. There’s no corpse-camping, which I suppose helps. But I personally haven’t experienced anything that I would call griefing. I saw an article recently about this subject: Confessions of a Ganker, where they describe what they perceive to be the differences between ganking and griefing. Overall, I would agree with them. The only game that I’ve really gotten upset over being ganked in was EVE, and that was mainly concerned with the massive cost of losing a ship (since I wasn’t trading and mining and making money) to a much-stronger opponent. That, I admit, wasn’t fun. I probably also would not be well-suited to Darkfall, where you can not only get ganked, but everything you have on you can be taken, including a mount. Everything would feel like griefing, because the cost of dying would be so high. But Aion? I don’t like the frustration of being killed as soon as I stick my nose out in Reshanta, but it never feels personal. And I probably won’t have a problem with killing lower-level players in the Abyss.
This weekend I hope to get our own group together for some Abyss questing and PvP. I’m really, really looking forward to it. Am I still having fun in Aion? Hell yeah!