Aion 7.2 Update Thoughts

I have quite the history when it comes to Aion.
I played the MMO a little when it was pay to play but was too poor to afford to continue to play it. I played it a lot when it went free to play, but after a while moved on to other MMOs like we all do. Then, finally, I got to play it as part of the MMOByte channel.
And that’s where we are now. At the end of 2019, fresh off the release of Gameforge’s 7.2 update that introduced a ton of new stuff to the game.
The painter class in specific was of particular interest to me because it’s a class I’ve been interested in for a while now ever since it was revealed months ago.
To my surprise, Gameforge reached out to me shortly after and asked if I’d be interested in them sponsoring a look at the new class. Naturally I said hell yeah ’cause.. well, I get to play the new class and have some fun leveling it and testing it out.
And that’s what this video’s about. Well, that and the general state of the game in 2019 – Gameforge’s EU servers, anyway, not the North American version of the game from NCSoft.

So if you don’t already know what Aion is, lemme give you a quick rundown. Aion is a free to play tab-target MMORPG. If you’re looking for something heavy on action then this is definitely not gonna do it for you.
However, in terms of tab-target combat, Aion has been and likely will be for the forseeable future at the top of its game, offering us an extensive combo skill system, tons of classes and a lot of personal customization.
If you’re looking for a tab-target MMO then you won’t really get much better than this.
A lot has changed over the last several updates – enough so that it makes the game feel like an entirely new journey to progress through.

In specific, the 7.0 update added the brand new Dumaha region, various new mission types and rewards for completing missions, dungeons, raids, obviously the brand new Painter class, tons of new quests, story and a heck of a lot more.
Then the 7.2 update that just launched a few weeks ago introduced Red Katalam – a new way for players to do battle with one another in large-scale garrison sieges that take place cross-server.
The battle in specific can hold up to 2,000 players, is only available at certain times of the day, offers a brand new type of PvP equipment and provides both PvP and PvE activities for those of you only interested in one form or the other.
Then there’s the brand new Orbis Training Arena that allows you to take part in secret fights.

The thing I really want to touch on though is the new class, the Painter. After seeing the trailer for it I was ecstatic. This looked like a bright, vibrant new class to try out and I was right.
It was about as fun as it looked like it would be. You have a lotta attacks that allow you to splooge everywhere, coating everything in your own gooey death-filled goodness.
A new hairstyle was introduced for the class – which is probably the most detailed hair in-game. Naturally I had to opt for it because that’s the kinda guy I am. I see something higher quality than everything else.. that’s what I go for.
Then I proceeded to make my character, using Aion’s character creator which to date is still one of the best in the MMO scene. Nothing beats trying and failing to kill an enemy that’s about 6 inches high slicing up your ankles.

Speaking of PvP, we actually got to participate in some open-world battles. Unfortunately I only recorded one or two of them but we repeatedly got ganked by players when they thought we were alone.
Little did they know that Mrs Stix and I are always within a few seconds of one another, and this time we were accompanied by a friend of ours, Kaprii.
She played healer so Mrs Stix and I could both try out the new class. And man is the Painter powerful.
We have unbelievably hard-hitting AoEs that left me a little speechless. I’ve never seen enemies die as fast as they did while playing this class, and putting two of us together allowed us to group together 2 separate groups of 5 to 10 enemies at a time.
Of course we did need a healer for this because we’re beyond squishy. We do wear cloth after all. At least I think we wear cloth. You wouldn’t think it looking at our gear, though. Like seriously.
Just take a moment here and look at some of the gear we’ve equipped thus far. This is high-tier armor crafted with protection in mind. Ain’t no pesky monsters gonna scar up this lady right here, no sir.
Jokes aside, very powerful class. I wasn’t sure whether we’d be close-range, mid-range or long-range but from what I can tell, the majority of my skills with the exception of a few AoEs were all long-range.
Meaning that we play more like a mage class unless we want to AoE, which takes the form of close to mid-range combat.

Another thing I noticed which wasn’t a thing the last time I played was that all of the instances are now co-operatively doable in a group.
Meaning that every instance – or at least the vast majority of instances we had to run while continuing to progress through the story were doable with all 3 of us.
This did admittedly make them easier and faster, but instanced content should always be done as a group. This is a welcome change that is long overdue.

If you haven’t played Aion in a little while then you’ll notice that the leveling experience has been much more streamlined, making achieving max level significantly more tolerable.
I remember having to grind for months to hit level 55, then you’d be required to grind for another year to get decent gear.
Currently, max level is achievable in probably a week or two if you play it for a few hours each day, or if you’d rather no-life it and hit it without break, you can probably max out in around a day, a day and a half.
But what’s the purpose of that? Part of enjoying the game is the journey, after all. And the journey I had with Mrs Stix and Kaprii was a lotta fun.
I’m glad changes have been made to make the game more accessible. I thoroughly enjoy the new Painter class and by the time I do the next Aion video I’ll be at max level, showcasing endgame content for everyone.

Again, if you’re interested in playing Aion, I urge you to play on Gameforge’s servers because they’re just more populated. You don’t really have any latency issues – I play from North America and my ping is good enough that I don’t suffer any input delay.