A look at the new MMO releases looking to make it BIG…

AION: TOWER OF ERENITY
DETAILS
GENRE Fantasy
DEVELOPER NCsoft
PUBLISHER NCsoft
WEB eu.aiononline.com

Aion: Tower Of Erenity

In our experience, the best MMOs are those that represent something new and different. Something that’s never been done before, or something that’s outside of the boxes represented by other games of their time or genre. Aion: Tower of Eternity is shaping up nicely to become one of these MMOs. Although sci-fidominates the big name MMO releases of the next year and beyond, fantasy has owned this market ever since its inception – and any other genre will have a hard time shrugging off the legacies of RuneScape, Lineage and World Of Warcraft. As a fantasy game, Aion is perhaps better placed to pick up the continuous, consistent market share needed to make it to TPCG’s Big Five list. But Aion isn’t a fantasy game of the sort epitomised by Lord Of The Rings Online, WoW and Warhammer Online. It eschews elves, orcs and pastoral landscapes for lofty faeries and angelic character models. Set around the eponymous Tower Of Eternity, players evolve to a level where they are granted wings and can take to the skies. There is one player race in the game – the Daevi – divided into two factions, Elyos and Asmodean. Both factions struggle against mysterious NPCs the Balaur, as well as each other. Aion is a stunningly beautiful game boasting jaw-dropping concept art as well as gorgeously rendered environments and characters. It’s more than this that makes it attractive though. It might be a fantasy game, but Aion hasn’t missed the next-gen killer feature that other developers hope to make use of in sci-fiMMOs: flight-based combat. But in Aion that’s married to the kind of deft, original high fantasy that has always been the driving force behind the MMO market. Whether it will appeal to a broader spectrum of gamers though remains to be seen.

We Say: Original and elegant, Aion: Tower Of Eternity has the potential to knock any weakening candidates out of the Big Five and stake a place of its own on our list of the world’s top MMOs. But will it draw in other gamers?

Star Trek Online
DETAILS
GENRE Sci-fi
DEVELOPER Cryptic
PUBLISHER Atari
WEB startrekonline.com

Star Trek Online

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