Worst MMO Ever? - Aion 

"The combat is lag free". Of course it is, there's no one else around.

"For being released in 2008 it's perfectly servicable" This...This is NOT the Aion that was released in 2008. This is some other game wearing a shirt it stole off the corpse of the original Aion which it brutally murdered in a back alley.

The old Aion from 2009 was one of the best MMORPGs ever and they managed to turn it into one of the worst. That's a real achievement.

I played Aion back when NCSoft still published it in the west and it was still subscription-based. It was an incredible game back then. Amazing world pvp, great dungeons and raids, fun quests, the flying was really fun, no cash shop and it was more visually coherent... It really hurts to see me what the game has become. But hey, what can you expect once Gameforge takes over.

It's just sad how they ripped out all the good parts of it. - It HAD english voiceacting. - It HAD no auto-combat grind macro. - It HAD a better starting story (a bit like FF14 with being a freshman in a small village that finds out during the tutorial questline that he's a chosen one with wings). - It HAD varied locales with interesting open world PvP (you could temporarily and limited invade the other faction's regions that were usually inaccessible and there was a pure PvP region with the abyss.) - It HAD less stupid stacking grinding power mechanics. It just seems like all the good things were optimized away with patches, expansions and, of course, gameforge.

This game used to be a subscription fee MMORPG published by ncsoft. I pre-ordered it and bought a computer for it back in the day, it used to be called the Tower of Eternity. It was actually an incredible game for its time. I'm so sad to see how far this game has fallen.

For some reason I feel compelled to leave a comment. Aion was such an incredible game, my best MMO experience, never played PvP remotely deep and well designed as it was. Lived in it for years until the pay to win took over, and I'm still nostalgic for it. Hurts to see what they turned this game into.

"Ah a piece of the relic" wow incredible storytelling this is probably the best cutscene ever made and perfectly explains the plot while not giving me an epileptic fit. How can anyone not like this, it's a masterpiece. I mean I can't believe that dude actually got a piece of 'THE RELIC' that's huge.

To all the Daevas out there who played the game in its golden age, may the Aethereal Lords bless you and Atreia be always in your heart....

"Games that sell immersion breaking Mounts tell you they dont care about their lore!" Or you are Final Fantasy and spend the last 30 years to make sure your lore is so crazy, that no mount you could ever come up with is immersion breaking xD

I remember playing this with my wife many years back. It was fully voiced ... IN GERMAN!! We still quote some of the lines because we had so much fun with it. RIP Aion.

I have some very fond memories of this game from back in the day in the NCsoft era. This was my first mmo, I grew fond of the genre and the dark aesthetic of the Asmodians. Sadly that was one of the first things that was taken out after 4.0. I'm grateful for those moments I had with my Legion but those days are over now and everyone moved on onto other games. I'm glad that I got into GW2 and then Destiny after this, I got to enjoy other aspects I liked about Aion in other places.

I used to play the original Aion: Tower of Eternity. This looks like a completely different game. It was completely localized in English and had high production values with a somewhat good story. It was a combination of WoW and Lineage 2. It was a fun MMO. It almost no original concept, but it worked well, the combat was cool, exploration was neat and it was actually pretty hard. The character creator was great back then and we had a lot of fun in the game playing as a holy trinity.

I am honestly destroyed to see what this game turned into. This was my childhood. I met a lot of my friends here. The most painful thing is, Josh you would have love the old Aion I remember. The lore was deep, the characters were authentic to the game’s world. The leveling and gearing was hard, but rewarding. The combat was still boring to begin with, but built up nicely through leveling. Oh. And there was english voice-acting. I don't know... maybe the shop needed space so the voice-files were sacrificed. Who knows... They butchered the world, literally and made it into a shop-game. There are no words how evil this is.

I can't believe the original Aion by NCsoft turned into... this. This is a crime

Aion used to be, without a doubt, one of the best MMORPGs ever made. The graphics were outstanding for its time. Story and lore were epic. Maps, towns, cities were so awesome. A lot of PvPvE chaos everywhere made gameplay really fun. The raids were top-notch and way ahead of its time. In Korea, the classic version of Aion is still running strong, and always in the top 3 of the most-played MMORPGs. Still so popular after 14 years of release is a true testament to the legacy of Aion. Honestly, if I had a wish to experience a MMORPG for the first time again, it would be the old Aion.

For the first few minutes of the video I thought I was in some kind of weird fugue state, because years ago I played a Korean MMO called Aion with two factions called Asmodians and Eilyos, but literally nothing else about this game Josh played sounded familiar. Turns out, no, I didn't have some kind of mental break, they just ripped all the guts and heart out of the game I remember and turned it into... whatever the hell this is supposed to be. It's really sad, honestly. I might have quit Aion when I got to level 25 or so and hit the point where my only choices for advancement were pvp or grinding mobs for months, but up until that point I actually quite liked it.

Aion I have a history with, and...what the hell? I never remembered it being like this, this is 100% completely different from my experience when this was owned by NCSoft and was voiced in English at character creation and gameplay, the class selection is different, the character creation is different, everything about the game is different from the Aion I remember playing before this...what the hell? This is a far cry from what I remember the game being like. Even the opening is different.

As a veteran Aion player, I can say the game was infinitely better. You didn't have the weird Gameforge shop front, you were rewarded monthly for subbing (before ot went Free to Play), you had a massive PVP gimmick in certain areas and a giant area specifically for PVP, you could craft items and armour, you could gather things for said craft, and the voice acting was also in English! Of course, this was when the game was under the NCSoft banner. It's fallen so far from grace that even the classic server they added last year couldn't draw the crowd back.

Imagine my absolute horror when I Came back to play this game after few years. When I was like 12 or so, I absolutely loved this game. The fun, pvp, pve, crafting, gathering. It was beautiful. The story that played at the beginning was awesome, explaining why the dark and the light ones fight and how the entire planet got ripped apart. Chefs kiss😚👌. I have a lot of really good memories from this game. And when I came back.. It was really sad.. Because I remember this game to be so good I was excited to play it as a adult but I was really heartbroken after few minutes..

As someone who has been a top rank Aion player, Aion is probably the most fun I had doing PvP in an MMO. Sadly devs have turned turning the game from bad to worst into an art form. Died laughing at the intro cinematic, great vid, fuck this game.

Damn, I was thinking he wouldn't give it a fair chance. But now, 4 minutes in I can see how far has this game fallen.

Soon, MMOs will be three flashing bars of colored light with coin sounds.

I remember having a great time in the NCSoft release of Aion back in the day. This, this looks unrecognizable. And I didn't see you touch on what I felt was the one thing Aion did that other MMOs should do. There was a UI that allowed you to configure skill chains. The first 3 buttons would be replaced with any skill you configured in a chain. It was great because if there is one thing I loathe from the older MMOs is the skill button overload. Here's 3 whole bars, 12 buttons each, of skills you have by max level. And that's not all the skills you have. Aion's chain UI drastically reduced the need for ALL THE BUTTONZ!!!! without also requiring players to delve into the wonderful world of writing macros. I wonder if they ripped that out when it changed hands? Also, no gliding? I recall there was gliding all over the place in Aion.

When I saw Aion pop up I thought “I remember playing this game”. I still have the disks and the metal case they came in. I remember when I first got my wings, and being scared the first time I had to quest in the rift, risking my newfound wings in pvp. This game I saw here is nothing like what I remember. The story of the world spine being shattered, each side blaming the other, brother against brother and those who live on the side in shadow slowly changing into demons while the ‘white-wings” got all sunshine. There was actually a storyline when it was a monthly subscription. One I still remember. I’m glad I moved on when I did and missed this games fall from grace. Thank you for this information, keep up the good work!

Jesus, even when it went F2P it wasn't as bad as this. This is like a completely different game.

Based on the comments, it seems like it would be a good idea to do a followup video looking at archive footage of the pre-Gameforge version so you can compare. About the literal paperwork... Sounds about right for Southeast Asian cosmology.

Amazaed this was still going. I was amazed when it was realeased, because it looked amazing, and "MMO may you fly = Cool" was the perfect selling point back in the day

This game used to be so good, absolutely heartbreaking to see what it has become. Doesnt even look like the same game anymore

I still remember the first time I played Aion and the feeling of being blown away by the graphics, music, and rifting still lingers in my mind cant believe it was more than 10 years ago....

"And then we get some loot!... Some boots. thats we cant wear :/" 16:35

I remember the fun playing this game long time ago. The environment is awesome, very huge maps, the skills, the battle, controls, items, and more. And what makes this game great at that time was when you get nervous every time you meet a character from another race and you'll get surprised as you get ambushed. Also, clashing is very fun. You'll find an area on a map where a race dominates it and you'll need to fight them and earn abyss points. Those were the great days of MMO. I played it last year and got sad on how empty all of the server was.

DAMN, so different from how it used to be. I remember rescuing Munin in the opening Asmodian area. God damn those first few hours leading up to getting your wings was, frankly, incredible. The writing was fairly tight, and yes it had shit quest design, but most games back then did. Sad to see that they've gutted it to this degree. The starting zones were some of the best content the game had.

Aion was my favorite MMO. This is one where when people say it used to be good, it's actually true. When it released in 2009 it was one of the best MMOs ever. In Korea today, Aion Classic is the #1 most played MMO, and the original Aion before it was ruined was the #1 MMO for years. There used to be a joke in Korea that everyone knew someone who played Aion, because it had 5 million players in Korea when the total national population was 50 million. It's a shame what NCsoft did to the game over the years, and how they squandered the Classic release. There will never be a MMO with PvP like Aion. There was only a short period of time where you could have experienced that, and if you did, count yourself lucky.

The fact that I got an advert during that intro cutscene and it didn’t change how much I understood about what was going on tells me a lot about this game.

The opening cinematic told me everything I needed for the plot: Were you expecting me to explain?

I bought this game hardcover from target in 2009 I was 10 years old and my first moments in this game and continuing to play it proved to be the most magical experience I've had with any video game - even to this day I still daydream about what this game was and what it could have been. I am now 22, and it's so heartbreaking seeing how far my boy has fallen and how none of their plans ever came to fruition :( RIP Aion - you will never be forgotten.

aion actually used to be decent after they softened the xp grind and when it was still a subscription game, but once they went f2p it became p2w crap like most other eastern f2p games. i can barely recognize the game shown in this video. it's almost like they just took the name and made a completely different game with barely any similarities. also did they remove the character customization in favour of random? or did josh just miss it? it was hillarious how weird you could make you character, tiny body with long arms and giant head.

Gameforge is literally the EA of MMOs

It is revolting to see good games being destroyed by greedy companies.

Seeing AION being in this state just makes me want to cry ;w; what have they done to youuuu

Believe it or not this game was actually hard and unforgiving at one point... Grinding in the open world used to have you one mistake away from death by player or monster alike, it was a tense game.

I just found your channel and i was SO happy to see this video. I played Aion for many years, up until fairly recently actually. I was drawn to it because of the great character creation options, class options, the huge maps and the lore…all of which the game eventually managed to fuck up. The lore actually used to be pretty cool - on the Elyos (Angel) side you’re supposedly a revered general with amnesia, and you had to work your way back to your former glory by talking to people who knew you in your former life. On the Asmodian (demon) side, you were a petty thief who somehow gets elevated to daeva and everyone doubts your abilities. It was fun - but then they kept adding new lore that was completely boring, and then they NUKED THE GAME (like they literally deleted entire gorgeous maps & also some of the best plot quests and instances!!) and changed the plot entirely so that you now have this childhood friend(?) who follows you everywhere and then dies in battle, which is played out like it’s supposed to be sad but there’s no way to really build any sort of emotional connection to the character. The game just starts and is like “this is Cheska, your best friend & point person for all your quests!” There were obviously tons of other problems - they advertise heavily that the game is “Truly Free” when it’s absolutely pay to win; eventually you can get a house in the game that has its own address on an actual, physical open map, but you have to pay RENT on it & there is almost no way to buy furniture; some quests require you to team up with others but there are no players anymore; and some classes are ridiculously OP while you can’t get anywhere with others (the newer Vandal class was so overpowered it was hilarious). There’s nostalgia there for me but the game just continues to shoot itself in the foot. Thank you for making this video though!

I can remember enjoying the Old Aion from 2009 quite a bit when it came out. You got wings and could fly around and that was legit quite cool.

I played this when it was still in beta in Korea and subscription-based, and I must say back then it was a phenomenally good MMO. Beautiful graphics, the combat system was fast, good-looking and well thought-out, mass-PvP action between both player factions and the NPC faction "Balaur" and challenging PvE dungeons. But then Gameforge happened and NCsoft also discovered microtransactions, so the overall development changed to make it a game filled with spend-money-to-win events, overpowered cash shop gear, the dungeons and overall game difficulty was drastially reduced to attract the super-casual players and thus it lost a lot of appeal to me, tons of lore-providing quests and dungeons were removed. EDIT 1 : WTF how did they screw up the game intro that badly? Back when I played it it was a completely different intro that explained the overall world and the origin of the Asmodeans, the Elyos, it was epic and actually made sense. EDIT 2 : WTF^2 they actually put in an auto-bot into this game? EDIT 3 : Seeing all these flashy daily-reward-upgrade-systems-garbage is making me sad now... EDIT 4 : HOLY FCK, and i thought the cash shop back then was insulting. This is a travesty... I'm at 9 minutes in the video and i'm getting depressed by how they destroyed this once awesome game.

Yeah I played this when it first released and quit when they put the cash shop in the game. A couple things, from a historical standpoint: 1. When I played it was fully in English. In particular I remember they got Dante Basco to do the 'youth' voice. Not sure what's up with the mix of korean and english in this "international" version though. 2. The game was originally b2p and didn't go f2p/cash shop until 2012. So the foundation of the game and at least the original upgrade systems, potions, etc. weren't designed with exploiting players in mind. The leveling/progression also USED to only give one skill at a time, so that whole skill bloat thing seems to be new. The game's aesthetic was very high fantasy up until the cash shop. Also no mounts pre-cash shop. It's pretty sad to see what they've turned it all into now. 3. The best parts of the game weren't covered in this video. First, flying, which was a really cool addition compared to the competitor MMOs at the time. Second (and while it's gonna be hard to get a grasp of this with only 100 people playing), the PvP WAS really great. Especially the rifts/portals you could take into the other factions zones, setup a return obelisk, then see how long you could play hide-and-go-gank before the other faction was able to send you back home. 4. Gunner was added just before the cash shop, and I think aethertech came after, so I can't speak much to either. Assassin, sorcerer, and gladiator were pretty fun and flashy though. 5. Soundtrack was actually really fantastic. 6. EDIT: Oh yeah, that awful opening is new too. So tl;dr, this is less of a story of a game intentionally designed to be bad, but rather a genuinely good game (for its time) that was ruined after being pumped full of cash shop steroids. RIP, Aion.

My fondest memory of this game is using a dash skill the assassin had and hitting a rock that flung me to the skybox ceiling.

Had a nostalgia jones a few months ago, redownloaded "Aion Classic" because that was the way the game USED to be when it came out. I have never seen these systems in Aion that are in your video. That being said... "Aion Classic" was so bizzarely monetized that I never made it to the first village. Sad what has happened.

Man, i would love to see Josh talking about Nostale, which is another game that Gameforge host and had a big place in my heart before going to the void that is P2W.

Never played any MMO for very long back then, but Aion was definitely one of my favourites. Stopped playing for a while and tried to get back into it. It was like I was playing a different game. I distinctly remember the "elite" mobs suddenly being very easy to kill solo. That alone made me almost stop playing immediately. I loved the idea of the elite mobs, even if I sucked at finding others to play with, so I mostly just avoided them.

I actually really liked Aion and found it quite unique and... well... The gameplay didn't appeal to me enough and I don't even remember the story, but I really liked the game otherwise! Was kinda sad to leave it. But I guess it didn't have anything that really kept me attached. It was so beautiful though. And flying is fun. Edit: But maybe it's changed drastically, I mean... It's 14 years ago. Geez I'm old. Edit 2: Geez... I don't recognize this at all... It's hideous and ridiculous. The Aion I started playing was serene, stylish and beautiful, at least in its first impression.

The character creation is not randomized you basically skipped it entirely. And sadly one of the few good things left about Aion is it's character customisation, one of the best ones out there.

AION was so epic back when it was a Pay-to-Play game, I remember the HUGE hype around this game since it really was beautiful and promising as some sort of next-gen Lineage-like MMO with flying features. Truely an awesome MMO at its beginning that slowly went downhill over the course of the years.

This used to be one of the best MMOs. Best combat ever.

Josh, you're telling me that you didn't understand that intro? It's about a dragon with a huge rooster (you know what I am talking about) who wants to conquer the world.

"Aion is what would happen if you took Tera and changed the name to Aion" - Best description ever.

Aion’s last hurrah was in the mid 2010s, when 4.0 was released. As someone who played since 3.8, I was right there with friends who ranted and raved that Katalam and Danaria were getting replaced by Levinshor and the Elyos version. I remember staying up all night just to kill Hyperion and many other endgame bosses for gear and the sieges were phenominal, when it was equally balanced. Back then, being promoted to 1 star general or commander on your server was a big thing- meaning if yoy showed up to sieges you better be skilled at commanding. Everyone says it started to go downhill when gunner was released, but in my opinion, Aion starting to become a bit “whimsical” on its own terms is never a bad thing for an mmo. Things got bad once Echoes of Eternity released. 60-75 leveling was a slog, nothing really stimulating story or gameplay wise, the grudge of destroying the before-named-areas, plumes, the introduction of that weird currency (Luna) that you only got by playing the very useless shop minigames….I quit. And when I came back to play Aion classic 2 months ago, it was a blast to the past- but only temporarily. Classic has some of the same problems that retail Aion has, and as a self-proclaimed critic, I hope that they choose to fix these problems instead of capitalizing. Then again, half of NC’s games (except Gw 1&2 and Lineage 1&2 ) are failing. Edit after watching: 100% agreed with everything said in the last 31 mins. Though it triggered me that Josh didnt try jumping around while in combat- it’s a childish way of sprucing up the boring gameplay. But yeah it’s fallen so far that I didnt eben recognize a lot of the areas…sad. Emotional rant over :)

I still own the Collector's Edition AION, including Avia figure. She's still there, standing amongst my FFXIV figures. Yeah man, once upon a time, AION was good.

to be fair that mount at the 27 minute mark is absolute fire

I could excuse not remembering that Cheska (the girl in the red skirt with the tail that wakes the player up after the context-less opening dream) when a quest said she was an old friend, since playing an unremarkable game for 8 hours is bound to see unimpressive details leave your mind...But I cannot and will not let the Garlic Jr. dissing stand! This makes me so mad that I'm gonna...I'm gonna...I'm gonna watch Josh's Command and Conquer video again.

So glad you finally cover Aion, this was my #1 game back then!! The game used to be soooo damn good, I was so addicted to it, even after it got worse and worse, I still loved it The day they lost me was after they've cut half of the main city and shops, no way to enter the other side anymore, it felt like 80% of the content just vanished Now my account got officially deleted/banned due to inactivity and even after they said "log-in to reactive it" I simply can't, says the account doesn't exist anymore... so RIP Aion, you were a good game, but you became the worse

that "friend" Cheska person you met, saying "I have never met this person" - they are the same person you said "Talk to an npc who i'll never see again". - I found that funny

Lol I recognize the music at 17:20 as one of the built-in loops in Garageband that I overused when I was in school learning that kind of stuff

I used to play Aion a lot with some of my friends in high school and it was really fun, now I'm not sure if that was because we made it fun by playing together or if it was genuinely better back then but regardless we enjoyed it. I wanted my character wanted to be a support type, so I focused on collecting all manner of items and turning them into other useful things then distributing them to my friends. I loved crafting and collecting, it was my jam. I got all the gathering/aether tapping/crafting skills up to max for my level which forced me to grind levels for my character because doing all those skills didn't give any character exp. Eventually I got bored with the level grinding interrupting what I found genuinely fun. So I stop playing for a few years and I go back to find they either removed what my character did, or put it behind a paywall. If I recall correctly they did remove it in a patch of the game for some reason. I didn't stick around for more than 10 minutes after I found that out.

I was so confused when I saw the title of this video because Aion used to be amazingly popular and considered a high-standard game. I remember sucking up all lore and assets I could find on it because it seemed so cool but I couldn't afford a pay2play MMO yet. But seeing what it has become now explains how it ended up on this series...😔

I played this game back when asmodians actually looked demonic.

17:34 to 17:37 that little sound is also being used on a grindfest game called With Your Destiny

Where's that Pandemonium review you teased at 16:46, Josh? :( I loved that game!

For any old aion players wanting to go back casually for nostalgia's sake: play on an unofficial server. There's so much removed (entire regions even) that the official server is useless even for a short nostalgia trip. Idk how any of the unofficial ones are endgame or pvp wise but yeah at least the regions and quests are still there lol.

Watching this hurt so much. I played this game way back and made a lot of friends there I still have contact to everyday. It was such a good mmo with really cool pvp memories. How far it has fallen. It's barely recognizable :(

Aion back when it released was just amazing. I miss it so much... Now it's just a disgusting monster that's just a shell of its former self.

Aion is a perfect example of a great game destroyed by the developer not knowing what to do with it after it became popular. When Aion first came out it was a hard as balls fun experience, that got worse with every new major expansion. So in other words it went the way of the WoW.

Fun thing is this game has a flying mechanic, and since josh never really mentions that you can fly in some very specif zones i can quess that the feature has been killed and ignored. such a shame what happend to this game :(. Great video 👍

This is like a weird fever dream and absolutely not the game I recall playing upon the release over a decade ago. Wow. The pvp was pretty rad when you only had 30-60 seconds of flight or whatever in the dual zone area. It added a pretty fun lair of dodging, hiding, escaping enemies if you were crafty with the cooldown.

Not even 7 minutes into the video and... Just wow what a shock it is. Ever since they added the painter class I have been playing on a third party server of an old AION version and holy s*** this is NOTHING like the old AION. What you see in the video is literally nothing like it used to be, just starting a game in an old version feels like an entirely different game. They butchered the first 3 REGIONS of the game you go through into whatever this is. That instance you get led to was indeed the first instance you go through, but in late region #2 called Altgard, not what is essentially the tutorial region - Ishalgen. That moment when you chose your subclass and got a trillion skills? That's the result of the region butchering. In old AION you got max 5 skills when you chose a subclass. But because you no longer go through Ishalgen > Altgard > Morheim > Beluslan you get all of it condensed here. And speaking of region butchering, the story also suffers. Obviously the world exposition is heavier in the begining since you need to be introduced to the world but even then, in Ishalgen you were a lowly raider, the bosses told you to run around and cause trouble for spriggs, steal their grain, kill the population a bit get that quest with the witch and the kid then rob some graves, stop the pirates and then disrupt Odella production for the Mau, kid runs of again so you go after her at which point you discover an abyss portal the Mau are trying to open and stop that. That is Ishalgen's campaign quest essentially. You get set up with the raider background before you hit level 9 at which point it is discovered you are capable of ascension to Daeva, which isn't any special too there's lots of Daeva around! But then you also learn about the vision of the future with Hellion and so on but it's not something that is touched on again for a long time. Nobody treats you as special, you are just another Daeva in the ranks. You go through ascension, get to Altgard where you go through flight tutorial and then get sent around the region, fight the lepharists, fight the Mau, generally just help around the place and then in Impetusium colleseum (level 18 at this point) you get to the first instance. That's around the end of region 2. Obviously it's visible I just started at the begining over and over if I know all that but this is cutting several hours of gameplay, in regions that had a lot of color too! Beluslan is very washed out graphically but Altgard had tons of cool regions, the Altgard fortress had more vibrancy then the entire Beluslan field and it was just a circle city in an ice region with lakes and round tall water elephant things with a portal above it. Going out of bounds really showed of those regions, normally people wouldn't even notice the green-pink palm shrubs around the entrence warrior statues to Impetusium. The part about the combat being... That. Aion did have a problem with it's combat system engagement on certain classes. Playing as Assassin had way more engaging abilities and going against monsters with higher levels than you as that class felt much more rewarding than Aethertechs. I don't want to imagine what going to this AION feels like for old players man, it's like trying to go for a nostalgia trip of legend of zelda ocarina of time but then booting it up and finding out the cartridge changed to a raid shadow legends when you weren't looking.

A lot of my friends from Guild Wars, especially top Korean pvpers left for Aion. It was a really strong MMO for years. I never left Guild Wars until it died completely.

I used to play this game when it was glorious, from 2.X to 4.0. It really went down from 4.0 to 4.8. Right after reading the patch note for the 5.0 version I uninstalled the game. This game had so much going on, amazing combat, great pvp, good story, nice graphics, everything went down the hill and thinking about it make me so nostalgic. I'm glad I was able to be a part of this adventure, I learned a lot thanks to this game and I don't regret for a second the years I spent there

BTW, regarding in-game paperwork: the first thing you have to do after creating your character in Eve Online is to decide what kind of insurance you want to buy for your ship.

That scene when you dove off the edge and flew through all the angels and demons fighting each other was so cool! I want to play a game like that! Flying angels and demons battling in a cosmic void with floating islands.

I expected your sister at the beginning to say at the beginning ‘You’re finally awake!’

"They would put a literal pile of shit mount..." Gameforge employee: write that down, WRITE THAT DOWN. Man's spitting gold here.

It was one of the best games ever made. It had lots of maps, great story, great sieges, pvp, pve, crafting, gathering. It was beautiful. The devs considered a good idea to remove all the features excepting pvp and pve and almost all the maps, quests and story. Now you will get to max level in a few hours. The pvp is shitty, the sieges are a joke. No more abyss... it's all gone...

This was the video that introduced me to this channel. I used to play Aion back when it first came out, and I really enjoyed it at the time. I got curious about if it was worth giving a shot these days, and it showing up in a "Worst MMO ever" series wasn't a great start. It feels pretty sad seeing how it went over the years.

Bruh I played Aion ages ago and I straight up 100% do not recognize anything that's in front of me now.

Aion was one of the most amazing games I've ever played, it was leagues ahead of anything we ever seen even nowadays, but unfortunately it got left to rot by NCsoft since they moved priority to other projects, but it had the most amazing combat and possibilities that rewarded player skill and being able to manage 6, different hotbars. Its a shame what happened to it.

"Games that sell car mounts...don't actually care." -cries in my Regalia and on my Fenris.-

Okay, wild guess on the intro cinematic based on my viewer's understanding of anime and manhua. Let's see if i got close: "Shiny Kingdom exists, gets attacked by dragons. Heroes step in to kill the dragons and their boss, cultists recover relic fragments to resurrect the boss and now the gods inform you that, as the reincarnation of one of the heroes of old, you are going to have to be the one to stop him before he ends all creation as we know it."

I still remember when Aion wasn't even released yet ,my colleague was crazy ,he was buying all the magazines to read about the latest games ,it was exciting even tho we didn't even have some good PC's to play such game ,after it was released I heard about it everywhere and people were hyped ,my colleague got his expensive PC and of course played it till he got his pair of wings but after that the game kinda faded away like it wasn't even there to begin with .It was nothing compared with the competition from what I can remember .

Ah, the Guild Wars "/aion" emote that gives you temporary wings, I remember that! Game was full of RMT trade spam on launch and no GMs around to ban them, and bots farming needed quest items so players couldn't get a look in. Quit after about a month, not really thought about it since, will be good to see what you've got to say about the state of it now.

I remember my dad downloading a private server version of this game when I was a kid where unlimited flight was enabled and I was absolutely entranced by the giant flying whale thing in one of the big earlier towns, like I would sit there for hours watching it and flying up to it, still no idea what significance the creature had to the game but I really love when games have mystical extra details like that. I remember nothing else about the game though 😅

Because of the gfx I remember hearing games like Aion were going to quickly put games I was playing out of business. Nope.

also weird, that starting instance is in a differant place. haramel was originaly in ishalgen near the wreaked arena which i cant curently remember the name of.

This video really hurt something in me, like an old love from high school you find again years later and you sadden to see what's become of them, bitter.. I played this game from 2011 till 2018 , a good 7 years I put in this game, it was pretty much all I had.. so many good memories, mostly bad in the end... I held to it as long as I could, till the end of 5.8, it was already awful way before that, but you dont wanna give up on something you think you still love. This game was it. There wasn't and I don't think there will ever be a better open world pvp mmo , better designed, so dynamic, this I will always believe. It could have been one of the best mmos even today, but they killed it.. I tried classic and it was the last thing I needed to finally move on.. I'll always hold aion dearly in my heart, cause there I met my husband and a handful of good friends.. you dont miss the game, you miss how you felt when you played it

Damn I remember the og days when you needed a group even for basic quests later on. This makes me really sad cause I was thinking about making a nostalgia trip into Aion. Completely different game now. Thanks for playing it so I wouldn’t need to Josh hehe.

Ah, Aion... I played this game since day 1 and have fond memories of clearing Steel Rake 7 times in a row and getting zero drops; and I don't mean zero class-specific drops, I mean actual zero drops. I also remember the time-restricted flight (and the fun it was to gather crystals for crafting), the swarms of Asmos dropping from the sky as I was trying to finish my quest, the running out of the dungeon mid-run to give quest items to NPCs (cheese anyone), the wiping just before the dungeon boss due to the fun idea that a PvP fight should decide who gets the drops, the raising of 6 characters to lvl 30 so I could get the cool costume... I could go on forever. BUT still it was a great game and I regret not a single hour I spent on it. Aion was a good game. Whatever I see on this video is not Aion however. This is a completely different "game" with the name slapped on and stolen assets.

I played this in beta and bought a new computer to play it on launch. It was very ambitious and fun to play although very grindy. Like many others are saying, its literally making me sad seeing what they did to it. Its really a shame.

The days of partying up with friends and guild mates, traversing the terrain, and entering rifts to do some large scale PvP or to even just sneak around and assassinate other people. Waiting underneath a lava waterfall to find a group for Kromedes Trial. All out war during sieges. Having the ability to sit out front the auction house, open up your personal store, AFK, and come back a few hours later to see that someone had bought all your enchantment stones and now you could afford some Greater Running Scrolls for PvP. Ahhhh those were the days. It’s heartbreaking to see this game fall to where it is now. This game will forever be my first MMO love.

This game was amazing years ago. It died slowly and drastically every patch more... They managed to destroy it so much that is heartbreaking

i've just recently found your videos and binging it. some of these MMO i've played. AION online tho, this "somehow" produced a "sweatshop-like" job back in my home country. They would hire people (mostly students) and pay them per day --- they will have to gather some floating balls or something. I know, because my friends were trying to get me on that bullshiit.

What I got out of the intro: There is a evil dragon you dreamed of?