{"id":586,"date":"2009-08-15T20:23:46","date_gmt":"2009-08-16T03:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/?p=586"},"modified":"2013-12-14T12:59:21","modified_gmt":"2013-12-14T17:59:21","slug":"bi-annual-alternate-reality-welcome-to-aion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/bi-annual-alternate-reality-welcome-to-aion\/","title":{"rendered":"Bi-annual alternate reality&#8230; welcome to Aion!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Looking back it has been a year since <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/?p=151\">Vanguard<\/a>&#8230; and about 6 months since <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lotro.com\/\">LOTRO<\/a> (which I seemed to have forgotten to post any pictures for). Before Vanguard I think it was WoW for a couple weeks. I don&#8217;t know why&#8230; but I can&#8217;t seem to escape <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Massively_multiplayer_online_role-playing_game\">MMORPGs<\/a>. Time to get back on the treadmill&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/images\/computers\/Aion\/Aion0001_3.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/images\/computers\/Aion\/Aion0001_256.jpg\" alt=\"Aion_1\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Every 6 months or so I read about a new one&#8230; and get the urge to try it out. This time it was <a href=\"http:\/\/\">Aion<\/a>. What usually happens is I sign up for the new game&#8230; play it every waking moment for about 2 weeks&#8230; the decide &#8220;I&#8217;m done&#8221;, and walk away. I spent so much time in <a href=\"http:\/\/ac.turbine.com\/\">my first MMORPG<\/a> that I think I&#8217;ve burned my brain out of the genre&#8230; the addiction doesn&#8217;t stick (to the chagrin of the companies charging the monthly fee)&#8230; making it easy to see when the real &#8216;grind&#8217; begins so you can get out while you&#8217;re ahead \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/images\/computers\/Aion\/Aion0003_3.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/images\/computers\/Aion\/Aion0003_256.jpg\" alt=\"Aion_2\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Aion is still in beta in North America (it has been out in Asia since November 2008)&#8230; and this weekend they opened up &#8220;beta 6&#8243;&#8230; the last beta to shake the bugs out before launch in September. So I rolled a Sorcerer and pushed through what content I could on Friday night and Saturday. Not enough time to do a detailed review&#8230; but initial impressions are that it&#8217;s &#8220;WoW-like&#8221; in how easy it is to get started in the world (Vanguard didn&#8217;t do much hand holding) but with some nicer graphics and early access to flight. PvP <em>can<\/em> be a big part of the game in later levels, but it&#8217;s not something I made it far enough to see.<\/p>\n<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/images\/computers\/Aion\/Aion0002_3.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/images\/computers\/Aion\/Aion0002_256.jpg\" alt=\"Aion_3\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll be traveling for business the next month, but should be back before Aion opens up &#8220;for real&#8221;. I&#8217;m looking forward to trying some other classes and seeing other parts of this new world&#8230; in fact I wish I could play tomorrow as well&#8230; but I have to get ready for my flight.<\/p>\n<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/images\/computers\/Aion\/Aion0004_3.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/images\/computers\/Aion\/Aion0004_245.jpg\" alt=\"Aion_4\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p>(Actually&#8230; maybe I can sneak in an hour or two before heading to the airport \ud83d\ude42 )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Looking back it has been a year since Vanguard&#8230; and about 6 months since LOTRO (which I seemed to have forgotten to post any pictures for). Before Vanguard I think it was WoW for a couple weeks. I don&#8217;t know <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/bi-annual-alternate-reality-welcome-to-aion\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Bi-annual alternate reality&#8230; welcome to Aion!<\/span><span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ptY4v-9s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1071,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586\/revisions\/1071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}