Any MMO without player vs. player would be a different experience all together, Aion doesn't break with this tradition but does have a unique twist on its take of players vs. player combat. Later on in the game (around level 25 onwards) you'll head to some of the more larger places within Atreia, the main player vs. player component within Aion works around the control of fortresses that become available to take at what seems to be random intervals. It's common place for large player guilds to form alliances and try to take these fortresses out of enemy hands, while the two player factions battle it out over these areas, a third race, the Balaur who ultimately started the war in Atreia also fight for control over them as a non-playable faction, it keeps the combat lively even if the races aren't balanced at any given time since trying to raise an army of guilds to invade the Abyss isn't an easy task to accomplish. Capturing these fortresses revolves around sieges, these involve destroying and repairing gates mostly and then disabling the Aetheric field that hinders flight within the fortress, deactivating this will allow you to take to the skies and fight for control over the fortress. While the whole scenario could make great use of tactics, the sheer amount of players that are sometimes involved make any sort of strategy needless, it usually ends up being more about the amount of numbers each race can gather over using tactics to out think the other faction. Large amounts of players in the same area are usually a recipe for disaster latency wise, NCsoft's servers seem to be able to take the strain of having so many players battling it out with subtle hints of lag here and there, the game itself however suffers with frequent drops of frame-rate when the action gets heavy even on a top end gaming PC, turning the graphics down certainly helps matters but isn't practical everytime you want to participate in large battles, unless you don't mind playing the rest of the game under lower graphics settings.
Combat is one of the things you'll be doing most in Aion but it isn't the only thing you can do, when you aren't slaying monsters or doing quests you can work through one of the six available crafting skills. The crafting skills allow you to take up one of the following professions; cook, weaponsmith, armoursmith, tailor, alchemist and handicrafter, we'll presume you know what five of those are and are left wondering what a 'handicrafter' is. The handicrafter profession is a jack of all trades crafter, with it you can craft jewellery, wooden weapons; such as bows and siege weapons and a load of other stuff as well. Each has its own advantages over the other and can become a viable method of gaining currency which in Aion is called 'Kinah', it isn't easy to do however and each crafting profession has an element of luck involved which can either waste your materials or increase the stats on successful completion of an item, the crafting does have to be done within your factions capital city and only after a lot of crafting will you start to see any return on your hard work which is a little disconcerting.
The planet, or it's two halves which you'll be spending your time on are extremely well presented graphically, the Elyos area is a vibrant and bright place to be with forests, everglades, mountains, lakes and rivers, while the Asmodians side is a dark and dull place with baron landscapes where nothing but the strong survive. The areas can become a little "been there, seen that" after some extended play and some of the areas can be a little too baron but overall the scenery and equally the monsters, characters and animals you'll come across are all impressive. The music and sounds of Aion are rarely something you'll enjoy however, the music itself offers some nice background music to accompany your questing and combat but it doesn't seem to differentiate all that much, it's inconsistent and lacking in certain areas, you'll never find a piece that makes you stop and think "wow, that's a great piece of music", something which should invigorate you to play more. The sound effects for the most part are well represented, the crafting side of things unfortunately are a disaster waiting to happen, if you attempt to grind your chosen crafting profession to completion, you'll fall asleep that same night with the never-ending sounds of hammers hitting metal, sizzling frying pans, and, well, you should get the idea by now. The near ending of your aerial flight also comes attached with its own buzzer which goes off to alert you of your demise should you not land in time, it's very annoying and as with all the annoying sound effects they are something which can't be individually turned off, you either have them all off or not at all.
There's no doubting that Aion is a good game, it'll no doubt be a popular one too, but it suffers from some minor annoying aspects which don't become apparent until later in the game, the combat system is a highlight worth pointing out with its ease of use and is an aspect of the game you'll very much come to enjoy. If you're looking for a new MMO experience to spend your time in then it's certainly worth giving Aion a try, it might not cater to everyone, but it has its own little niche and some players will find many aspects of the game enjoyable.
