Return To Aion

Yesterday Ben informed us that Aion has now become free to play.   With no subscription fee required I no longer had an excuse to limp about groaning about how much I miss playing Aion & how it had the best soundtrack ever, blah blah.   There was my metal encased Collectors' Edition sitting in the CD rack right next to my bed.   I dusted it off, installed the game, & commenced with the 4 hours of patch.

My characters were still intact, although sporting some extra letters in their names due to previous server merges.   No problem; each character that had been moved had a Name Change thingy in their ingame inventory which was very easy to use.   However, because I had forgotten how everything went, I decided to roll a level 1.   Besides, the fun in this game is the sightseeing.   I wanted to revisit everything.

I had always used the same face on my Asmodae characters.   This time I thought maybe I should try something different.   There are a ton of looks to choose from in the character creation screen - seriously.   And once you've picked one of them there are a bunch of Advanced controls with which you can tweak specific facial features.   The Advanced controls aren't as extensive as other games I've played & generally speaking no matter what you do every toon's nose is going to look the same unless you go for waaay big or waaay small, but they're ok.   I picked a face I thought I could live with, tweaked it as much as I could, & started her up.

After a level or so I realized I couldn't stand looking at her.   The hair color was perfect but sheesh... she looked like she was 8 years old.    I can't run around killing things looking like an 8-year-old.   Or rather, I just don't want to project myself into an 8-year-old.   I don't think I even wanted to feel like I was 8 years old when I was 8 years old.

But anyway, I deleted her (omg, there are multiple steps to deleting a character & even after you have gone through those you still have to wait 5 minutes) & rerolled.   I just used my favorite face.   Either I've lost my touch or the Advanced controls aren't what they used to be because I couldn't quite get her to look as bitchy as my old characters (see above.).   However, she looked at least 12, maybe even 15, so I felt a lot better.

I also made her hair just a little greener.   Just because.

The Asmodae starting area isn't as pretty as the Elyos side, & hopefully we'll get to run around a little on another server before we are all sucked away by Guild Wars 2.   The BGM also wasn't as great as I remembered... & now I'm starting to think that it was on the Elyos side.   I'll have to go take a look.

Now that I'm looking at pictures of my old & new Asmodians (sort of) side by side, I feel kind of bummed. My new Asmodian doesn't look anywhere near as good as the old one.   Oh well.

Ben was already level 6 by the time I got rolling, & I followed my own advice to my friend Sam about getting started --- I spent the first 3 levels just gathering weeds.   There's some nostalgia right there.

Fique got in a little while later & leveled up to 5 in no time (obviously not doing as much sightseeing as I was).   I already had a Cleric, Chanty, & Sorceror, so for my Review Session character I rolled a Mage with plans to eventually choose Spiritmaster.   I wasn't really enjoying Mage until I got my first chain spell, which seemed to be basically a 2nd, fast cast nuke.   The frost chain spell I got at 8 (it might have been earlier, but I only visited the trainer at 8) is awesome: knockback & snare/stun (causes the target to stagger).   Wonderful for a class that needs to drop its target before said target can make contact.

Ino ended up having Elyos toons on the server we are playing Asmodae on.   Of course.   Fucking Ino.   I even called it when he said he already had some toons on our server.   So maybe we will reroll Elyos somewhere else & play with him there.   But anyway, for now I need to get back to my Asmodae.   She's gonna get her wings soon.