It was pretty uneventful, but not for lack of trying.  On Friday night I logged on to find none of my guild buddies on.  I went ahead and proceeded to solo as many quests as I could and work on leveling my gathering skills.  Eventually a guild mate did show up and we knocked out a couple of group quests before I called it a night at just shy of level 16.  One thing I noticed on my server (Yustiel for the interested ) was that general chat was chock FULL of people bashing World of Warcraft while extolling the virtues of Aion.  I wanted to write about it, but Gordon of We Fly Spitfires beat me to the punch.

Now, different people like different things.  Thats great.  Thats what makes the world go ’round.  However, I couldn’t help but laugh at one character in particular who was laying into WoW left, right, and center, explaining to all of us how Aion does things SO much better.  I just don’t see how people could miss the fact that Aion is a blatant WoW clone.  What does Aion do that WoW doesn’t?  The flying?  I can fly in WoW.  The combat while flying?  Maybe that is cool, but it is still just combat.  Does the PvP-centric nature of Aion, give it a leg up on WoW?  Maybe, but who has had enough time to really tell how it will ultimately pan out for Aion?  Lets face it:  Aion is solid and fun, but innovative it ain’t.

The best part about this guy’s ranting and raving was that after a while he says “I lost 4 years of my life to WoW, I am not going back.”  4 years!!  Assuming that he is telling the truth, that’s a lot of time and money thrown at a game that he hates so much.  Plus, I wonder what he sees in Aion that assures him that he isn’t about to waste another X years of his life in this game.

Last thing I wanna say about Aion:  Man it is pretty, but does anyone else feel like the world is incredibly small?  I look at the world map and see how large the “zone” I am in is and then I see how fast I can run across it and it worries me.  Maybe the Elyos areas just suck, but they feel tiny to me.  Then again, maybe a small world is good for PvP.  I get the feeling that Aion is going to lose me because of lack of PvE stuff to do.  As exciting as PvP can be, I just don’t know if it is enough to hold me.