I’m reviewing anime now with my blogging time. I’ve been off of Aion for over a year now, so this little blog seems outdated at best. Sorry to all those looking for more information: I don’t know anything about the game anymore.

While I do play WoW at present, I can’t bring myself to blog about the material there too much – it’s all changing too quickly, and I don’t have the interest in maintaining that kind of long-standing game material anymore. Just look for my comments on other WoW bloggers if you want to know how I feel about the game ^_^

Best of luck to those of you tackling the challenges in Aion. And, if you have any interest in anime, feel free to come join me at The Theladas Review!

I guess I’m better at disappearing than I ever planned to be. I’m still alive and well, but I haven’t launched the Aion client in about a month now. Honestly, I just haven’t felt drawn to spend what little free time I get with Aion instead of with friends. Friends are far more understanding of time commitments than Aion seems to be. Friends don’t have horribly low frame-rates… usually; Aion still gives me crap at the low-end of the graphics settings. And, at the end of the day, I just don’t know how to go about playing a game of monster killing for hours on end by myself – it gets far too boring far too quickly, and the rewards for it are so far away.

So, for the time being, I’m staying away from Aion. If they fix the graphics to not fail on mid-range machines, I might go back. If they change the gameplay to be more quest-oriented than grind oriented, I might go back. If the social structure of Aion becomes less of a battle to avoid bots and assholes, and more of a cooperative, reinforcing environment, I might go back. But with all three of these grievances hanging over the game simultaneously, I really can’t bring myself to play a character past level 20 or so, and I’m not motivated to play those 20-odd levels over again when the plot and pathing are identical every time.

As for insights and guides and such, I don’t want to make any promises, but I will still try to put more of them up here. Chances are that I’ll repurpose this blog in the near future and step away from the Aion-centric angle I set out with, though; guides that are up-and-coming will likely have a very different focus. I understand and appreciate the benefits of blogs centered about a single game, but I don’t know that I can do the community justice at the moment; I’m not enthralled with Aion, and there’s no other single game that really catches my eye at the moment. Rather, I think I’d have more to offer if I were to take a freelance, generic gaming blog approach. The question is: is there an audience that’s as curious about all sorts of games on the market as I am?

Build a Crafting Guide!

That’s what the majority of votes asked for. Turns out that no one cares about how to balance stats against one another to build a character, so hey – I’ll drop the topic. Less work for me; hurrah. I’ll indeed likely have to come back to work on the Chanter-specific guide, and I’ll talk more about them as soon as I get farther in the game and can thus have a better grasp of the class’s full dynamics.

There were also a handful of votes for “something else.” I’m not sure what these mean, as there’s no comments or E-mail that I’ve got to explain them. So, for cuiosity’s sake, I’ll make some guesses:

Combat Mechanics: There’s a fair set of nuances here, some of which I’ve covered with my statistics guide. There is more to talk about here, though, such as the order-of-operations (and thus knowing what has priority), the simultaneity confound, its effects and potential benefits, and other intricate elements of the combat engine. It’s a fun topic for experimentation and evaluation, but then I don’t know if I can codify a substantive guide out of it.

Grinding Optimization: This has been done. Given the level and ranking of enemies you can handle and your level, you can simply look up the set of enemy types that you can handle at aionwh.com – simply go to the tools section, and go to the Grind Optimizer (no direct links because the site runs on ajax – yay for simple directions!). So, if you’re wondering if you’re actually fighting the right type of stuff, you can use this little tool as a sanity check for your efficiency.

Gathering Guide: The question of “What stuff is where?” is already solved by aionarmory.com’s Gatherables section – every resource type that’s been encountered has its possible locations tagged on the appropriate maps. The mechanics governing these gathering attempts are synonymous with the mechanics governing crafting, so they’ll be covered in my crafting guide. Is there something I’m missing here, some other solution needed for understanding how to go about gathering materials? If so, let me know.

PvP Guidelines: I don’t think I’ll ever be as good at explaining good PvP guidelines compared to other players. I’m proficient in duels, and I have a fair grasp of scaled PvP combat by and large, but I’m no stellar player. I’m afraid that if you’re looking for more information on how to take down human-controlled adversaries, you’ll need to keep searching for a good, comprehensive approach. Be careful about the approach you execute, though: you will lose some fights, and if you go out into the world expecting to win everything you will be disappointed. I guarantee it.

However, I should note that it’s okay to lose. After all, your loss is someone else’s win, which at least makes that person feel better. If you don’t get depressed and angry about losing the fight, then there’s only gain to be had. Otherwise, it’s a zero-sum game: one side goes up, and the other side goes down equally. If it’s a zero-sum game, then on average you don’t gain anything. If there’s no gain, then why are you spending your time on it? I encourage you to take advantage of your losses as well as your wins, so that there’s always a positive takeaway.

Also, win or lose, don’t be an asshole. The last thing this game needs is more assholes.

Other: I’m really not sure if there’s other stuff out there that’s substantial enough to warrant a full guide. Other classes, perhaps, but I’m no expert on anything outside of what I’ve played (Gladiator and Chanter). Other than that, I’m a little lost. But, just because I’m lost doesn’t mean I can’t help, per se. If there’s something I’m missing, do feel free to tack it on here – I’ll find a way to make it fit, independent of my severe lack of free time lately.

So, there are some other possibilites. For now, however, I’ll be conserving my focus to building a comprehensive crafting guide. Some topics I know I’ll cover:

1. Basics of crafting: What crafts are there, what do they provide, and how a player can acquire and improve any craft.
2. Crafting algorithm architecture: How do the two bars work, and how can a player minimize his chance of failure.
3. High-Quality production: What is a high-quality product, what factors influence creating them, and what to do to turn a profit with high-quality materials.
4. Powerleveling approaches: Is the process of leveling crafting best done in tandem with leveling, or afterwards, and what arguments support either side.
5. Meta-crafting: How a player can make the most of the craft-leveling process, and how to handle the unavoidable downtime.
6. Advanced topics: To be extended for high-level crafting quests; Expert Craft requisites, limitations, and benefits; Other problems/questions posed.

The Advanced section will be empty in the first pass of this guide, as I can’t really speak to Expert crafting just yet, but I’ll add to it as soon as I can in the near future. If there’s something you think is missing, let me know now – I’ll work it in as best I can before actually posting the guide.

Gunsmith of Williamsburg: a comprehensive documentary of gunsmithing, if my guide takes too long.

So, there ya have it. The results say that people want to learn about crafting, and so I shall deliver. Yay for a free, long weekend ahead! Games, storytelling, and guide-writing are all on the horizon – such a welcome break from network graph transformations and sleep plasticity experiments.

In the Meanwhile: Check out The Gunsmith of Williamsburg for a comprehensive look at just what hand-tooling your own equipment can require. Sure, the movie’s about crafting a rifle, rather than a plate hauberk or wooden stave, but I think there’s a lot of overlap. It’s a shame how little we appreciate the enormous acceleration of crafting in current video games. That said, the actual process behind making this stuff is super cool, in my opinion – check it out!