So, I played Aion for a few hours this weekend. I didn't want to go overboard with it since I wanna play during the Retail. I decided to play a Spirit Master, which is capable of casting spells and summoning elementals to aid in combat. The elements include Air, Water, Fire, and Earth. I played until level 13 and decided to end it there. I had a lot of fun, and got to play with the character editor quite a bit which is what I was looking forward to the most. I danced, cheered, and emoted with people in towns and flew around in the skies.
There really is a lot of potential with this game, and from what I've heard it gets even more fun at level 25 when you get into the Abyss, which is a major PvP zone. Lore provides information that recently the world was split into two, with half of the world looking up to the other, one side for the Elyos and the other for the Asmodian, and a series of islands in the middle of it all which is brimming with energy that both races need to survive, known as the Abyss. There is another race/species being tossed into the PvP, which NCSoft has coined as being "PvPvE" which is "Player vs Player vs Environment."
There are several more beta phases coming before release, this one was just a preview of the "Elyos" race. The next is assumed to be an "Asmodian" preview, and then hopefully a preview that we can PvP in and test the higher level stuff. All in all, I'm excited to see what this MMO will bring. Here are some screenshots that I collected over my time playing.. supposedly we're not supposed to show these, but I don't see the harm in it. Since the game has been out for almost a year over in Korea/China.
Also I just want to mention something that I found pretty neat.. it's not much. But when your character stands around for a while, he/she will start to interact with the environment. If it's sunny, they'll look around and up at the sky and smile. If it's nighttime, they'll stretch and yawn sleepily. If it's raining they'll conjure a leaf umbrella. If they're in water they'll scoop it up and pour it back out. It was a lot of fun just going to different spots and seeing what my character would do.. 