Aion is a new massive multiplayer online RPG for the PC, which was developed by NCsoft's Aion Team Development Dept. In fact, the game was originally called Eternity when it first came out in Korea and China. Aion combines PvE and PvP in a concept the developers call "PvPvE" in a fantasy setting.

The story of Aion takes place in the world of Atreia, which was split into two by an ancient cataclysm. Each half of the shattered world is inhabited by two races the Elyos and the Asmodians. The world that was once connected by the Tower of Eternity is now a battleground for the feuding factions.

Over the years, fragments of the destroyed tower began to float mysteriously in the air, which triggered an investigation. The investigation revealed unstable portals to a place called the Abyss, where the Elyos and Asmodians fight for control of Atreia in spectacular aerial combat.

There is a terrifying race within the abyss called the Baluur, which are the ancient enemy to all of Atreia. Since the Balaur have been discovered within the Abyss, the survival of both races is now uncertain.
Gameplay

Like all MMO's the game starts out with you selecting your race and class. You may only select to play one side on any given server, which means that it is important to choose the side carefully as once you create an Elyos; you will not be able to create an Asmodian on the same server.

You will then be allowed to select from the following classes: Warrior, Mage, Scout and Priest. At level nine you "ascend," which is the point where point you get your wings and select your subclass. Each of the class can select from two different subclasses.

Warrior's can choose either Templar or Gladiator. The Templar is a tank and a Gladiator is melee dps who prefer to use pole arms.

Scout's can either choose to be an Assassin or Ranger. An Assassin is melee dps and the Ranger is range dps.

Mage's can either choose to be a Sorcerer or Spirit Master. A Sorcerer is your typical caster DPS and a Spirit Master are kind of like a Warlock from World of Warcraft.

Priest's can be either a Cleric or Chanter. Clerics are the healers of games and Chanters buff others players to make them better in battle.

The character creation is very in-depth; you can manipulate almost every part of your character's body. In fact, there are multiple sliders, which can control attributes such as body shape, height, weight, age, tattoos, hair color, and even highlights. The words "in-depth" do not do proper justice to the character creation screen of this game.

The game plays like a typical MMO RPG's at its core, the idea is to gain new abilities to make your character progressively stronger. You complete normal quests and campaign quests, which help drive the story along and give you better than average rewards. Think campaign quests as your way to alter the story of Aion. Although, you do not actually alter the story, it is the story of your characters development from a role-play point of view.

The game has a decent challenge while leveling up, which is a nice change of pace from playing World of Warcraft. Another big part of the game play is the ability fly, which lets you have epic battles in the sky and travel around the world much quicker.

The graphics of Aion are top notch and easily considered eye candy. The world of Aion is stunning, breathtaking and beautifully colored. The character animations are very well done from casting your abilities to flying, the developers executed them well.

The sound effects are also well done from the ambient sounds of the world around you to the sounds your abilities and spells make. Many people say their favorite part of this game is the fantastic music that you hear throughout the world by composer Ryo Kunihiko. You end up wanting to spend hours listening to this wonderful music.
Game accessibility

Aion is not as easy for a disabled gamer to play as World of Warcraft. However, Aion can be played with only a mouse and the default Microsoft on-screen keyboard. Additionally, more sophisticated on-screen keyboards can add the ability for character movement, camera operation, and jumping ability.

There are some very impressive accessibility features in Aion that even World of Warcraft does not possess. For example, under the skills category of the user interface, tabs called "emotes" and "actions" hold buttons that can be pulled out into the action bar area to do every critical function the game possesses.

Movements such as resting after battles, toggling combat, attacking and chatting, and many other key functions are all preset as a button that may be moved onto the hot bar for easy access. Other games offer this type of accessibility but only in the form of macros, Aion has taken accessibility one-step further by adding these presets, a trend AbleGamers hope to see more of in other titles.

In addition, macros are explained thoroughly in text and seemed to offer limitless capabilities. Adding macros to cast specific spells or use specific abilities under controlled variables is completely possible with a relatively unrestricted macro scripting language. With a little rudimentary programming you can create a very disabled friendly play style.

For those with issues concerning mouse sensitivity, Aion uses the same mouse speed as your mouse does on the desktop. Therefore, there should be no problems with moving the mouse. However, the camera speed only has five settings, and so far, no one has found a way to edit the configuration file to increase the speed of the camera.

Another interesting feature has to do with "chain spells." Chain spells or abilities are a predetermined order of abilities that stack up one after the other. Those with decreased reaction time may ordinarily have problems pressing the correct order of buttons. Fortunately, Aion places the next button that you should press, directly into the middle right of the of your screen, where the action is, and the time to press the next button in the chain is fairly long time. This allows for easy interaction with the interface for many disabled gamers.

Even more impressively, those same chain reactions are highlighted by glowing arrows that are circled around the next button you are supposed to press, which means no color combinations and a very friendly environment to the cognitively impaired.

The movement controls are the same as most typical MMO RPGs. You can either hold both mouse buttons down, left click to move, or use the keyboard. By default, the click to move option is turned off, be sure to look for this in the interface area of the options screen.

Another unique feature is the automation of your character's combat. Once you have clicked on your enemy, your character will do much of the movement for you by running your character in range of whatever ability you have selected to use. For example, when casting a fireball, if your enemy is out of range, clicking the fireball will make your character run in range of the enemy and then cast.

Even the looting can be fully automated. After killing your enemy, one of the default buttons on your hot bar is marked "pick up," pressing this button will cause your character to run over to the body of your fallen enemy and loot all of the items from its contents. The interface makes selling an easy too. Within the sell window is a button to sell all the "junk" in your bags.

Most of the windows in the user interface are movable. Items like your character's profile, loot window, quest text, and many others can be moved around the screen simply by dragging and dropping.

One unfortunate area is that the hot bar cannot be moved or reshaped. However, you can resize the entire interface to suit your individual needs.

Other then the sluggish camera movement, lack of hot bar movement, and inability to design mods, motor impaired disabled gamers cannot ask for much more in the way of accessibility.

Deaf gamers are in for a real treat. Not only is there close captioning and subtitles, but the entire game is full of text input. For example, many of the quests have videos demonstrating the area where you need to complete a quest. Every single one of these videos is subtitled.

None of the ambient sounds are crucial to the gameplay. It may be arguable that the sounds add a certain feel to the majestic nature of Aion. Nevertheless, you will not be missing anything as a deaf gamer in Aion.

For the colorblind, this game may be downright frustrating. We give credit to the developers for making symbols around the colored buttons that need to be pressed in order to activate chain reactions. However, that is just about the only colorblind friendly option in the game, and given the statistics for colorblindness, disappointing. I hope Aion will take a stab at this well sooner than WoW did.

Another negative, the default size of the chat window will be extremely hard to read for the visually impaired. Although, the font size and type can be changed in the options area, we would like to have seen more definition in the colors out of the box.

The mini map is downright difficult for the non-colorblind to understand, let alone our colorblind readers. The areas that you must travel are often green and red. On top of that, monsters are colored as red dots and your group members are a light green/blue-ish color. This will be very difficult to distinguish your group members from the enemies, meaning you may often run into the enemy trying to find your group members.

In addition, the colored arrows above the NPCs are done in a light blue faded color and a bright yellow. Those with yellow blindness will have difficulty seeing the difference between the blue and yellow arrows, which signify more important quest.

Overall, Aion is rather disabled gamer friendly. Motion impaired gamers will be mostly well off and Deaf gamers should have no problems. Unfortunately, with the lack of colorblind options, the game is not perfect, as far as accessibility goes. Hopefully, the developers will add options to improve the accessibility of those few areas that are lacking, over time.
GameGuard

At the time of publication of this review, GameGuard has been removed from Aion. However, the developers stated they GameGuard might be reintroduced in the future.

As we all know, GameGuard is a very restrictive program that blocks almost all assistive technology. It is with our most sincere desires that we tell you, we hope that Aion will not reinstate GameGuard.

If that happens, assistive technology such as voice recognition technology, on-screen keyboards and multiple switch setups could be completely blocked as they were in the beta.



Additional reporting by Mark Barlet and Chris Caseboldt