Friday, October 21, 2011

Aion 2.7 - Part 1 - The Arena of Chaos

Aion 2.7 went live on 10/19,  2 days ago,  and of course I've been playing!   Two new instances have been
introduced in the Empyrean Crucible:  the Arena of Chaos and the Arena of Discipline.  Both earn Crucible Insignias and both reward players with a new form of currency,  the Courage Insignia.  The Crucible Insigs and the Courage Insigs can be used together to buy a new line of PVP armor and weaponrs that's also been introduced in the 2.7 upgrade.  An alternative to getting PVP gear was long overdue and I'm glad they finally
did something about it. 
The Arena of Chaos is a free for all PVP instance - it's Aion's version of a virtual pillow fight! After getting the quest for an arena ticket from Perbano in Kaisanel Academy,  you request a group in either of the 2 instances.  You start out  in one of 3 places: a haunted house,  a field,  a lava pit kinda place,  or a roman style arena.  Once ported into the instance,  you're locked within a ring of light,  unable to move until the game begins,  which is 1.5 minutes after you're ported in.  You can see some of your opponents and are able to click on them to know what class they are.  The 1:30 gives you time to buff up and plan your strategy.  The object of the game is to get as many kills as possible without getting killed.  When the game starts,  thats it - total madness - players attacking one another,  instance mobs aggroing on players,  players dying,  and players being rezzed back into the game to try again.  If you get alot of kills you rank up,  and the game notifies you of that.  The player in first place is marked with a winner's ribbon over their head.  Each round is about 2.5 minutes.  The game alerts when 10 seconds are left and when that time is up,  the players are auto ported to the next round,  which is always one of the 4 environments I mentioned earlier.    Sometimes there are things to collect or treasure boxes to break which give you power up items to help you in the game.  One such item is a kind of explosion fluid,  which is used to deal damage to enemies in the instance.  There's others too,  but I've only run it 3x so far,  so I don't know all there is to know about the collectibles yet.   In the Roman arena setting there's cannons that players can take control of to shoot other players with,  but I haven't tried that yet.  Killing mobs and collecting things gives points,  so if I'm tired of fighting other players and I'm in an area where no one else is,  I can do that instead.  The one thing I like alot is that it doesn't take too much time to run,  only a few minutes,  and  in addition to the cruc and courage insigs,  I  get AP,  which is nice.  It isn't as
much as I'd get running c dredge,  but its still something. 
All in all,  I give it a + rating because its fun,  new, pays well and doesn't take much time.  In my next post
I'll discuss the other instance,  the Arena of Discipline.  Until  then,  have fun in Aion - I know I will!

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