My First Time: Playing Aion

I forget when it was, maybe 3 or even 4 years ago when I first heard about Aion. Just based off the trailer I knew I really wanted to try out this game but sadly it was subscription based so those hopes were instantly crushed away. Then not even 2 weeks ago, I heard that Aion was now free-2-play and I started that long.. very long download.The game is about 45gigs in total so I had many hours to wait for the game to download and install and surprisingly I didn't research Aion like I would for basically any other game. Instead I decided to go into this game completely blind and just enjoy the game as I slowly went through it. So after many hours and the game completed its install I fired up the game and since I  hadn't really done any research for the game, just went with my gut for character creation.

Instead of there being multiple races to choose from like many games, Aion only has a choice between 2 races; The Asmonians and the Elyos. Basically it's a general good versus evil type of thing, Asmodea being evil and Elysea being good. I went with Asmodea since I generally go with the evil races when possible. Next was picking a class, which isn't as complicated as some games. You have your 4 basic choices, Warrior, Mage, Scout, Priest, each branching off between 2 sub classes at level 9. Now when I pick a class, at least for my first one, I generally stay away from the warrior and anything like an assassin if there is one, so I had the choice between mage and priest. I eventually settled with the mage and started up my character, hoping I picked a character that could solo decently. Being that it was my first time playing the game, I was very unsure of how to tackle the game, either just do all the quests I can and progress doing that, or just grind my way through the levels and follow just the campaign quests. Well since I suck when it comes to grinding I just went with the safe option and completed ever single quest I could, which really so far seems to be working out decently.

 

My level 27 Sorcerer 

So about halfway through the week and that's how far I got, level 27 doing every single quest that I could and never grinding. By this point I had also saved up about 2.5mil of money and I decided to blow it all on some items at the auction house. Funny thing is, I never ended up playing this character after buying the new gear so I don't know how much help it actually was. Instead I started a new character, feeling a little more comfortable in the Aion world, I made myself a priest, which I then advanced into a Cleric. With the cleric I did the same thing, no grinding and all quests, which I still feel works out pretty well but I could be wrong about it seeming faster.I got the cleric to level 26 and nearly caught up in quests as my sorcerer. I decided to also stop at this point and start buying equipment for my Cleric but I also got interested in the auction house and the potential to play the market for a bit. 

My level 26 Cleric

And that's where I'm at now; Playing with the market while still slowly working on each and every quest that pops up. I've definitely taken a nice liking to this game, especially with it being free. The community seems quite large, although I think I'm on one of the smaller servers even. I definitely like how the quests take you to each place of the world and they don't get too overwhelming so you always feel like you're progressing and a good pace, leveling equally with the quests. I'm highly enjoying the game compared to my time with Warcraft, although I think playing on a private server didn't give me the same experience I would have on the official ones but in comparison, I'm enjoy Aion much more than warcraft and if you're interested, to check it out.