It's fairly clear from my previews that I enjoyed Aion, lets not beat around the bush. The game is aesthetically pleasing, so players from older games like WoW or EverQuest will be taken aback by its beauty, and I found plenty of things to do to keep me busy and to keep my character progressing. The world is somewhat linear, the zones don't flow into each other, they're actually completely separate, and travelling between them means teleportation, but this is done well and doesn't break immersion at all. The profession system is simple and rewards players with worthwhile items from early on. Last week, NCsoft declared that a shiny brand new build of the game would be launching worldwide simultaneously with the western launch of the game, so I was curious to see if there were any glaring differences from my time in the beta.

I know it's terribly boring of me, and possibly a bit sad, but I took great pains to create the exact same character. After giving each class a brief spin on the beta, I'd picked out a Warrior as my favourite so, once the class selection was done with, I began the tremendously long and picky process of character customisation. It's a credit to NCSoft and the customisation feature to see how hard it was to actually make a character that looked the same as my previous one. Even with a screenshot to guide me, it took an age to get anywhere close, by my standards anyway. Some time later, I entered Atreia and set off in the now-familiar Poeta, the Elyos starter zone. Armed with my knowledge from the beta, I was able to get through this zone a lot quicker and I reached fresh challenges in no time.