Occasionally, an MMO comes along that threatens to dethrone the reigning champ of online gaming, World of Warcraft. Aion is one of those games.

A new MMORPG by NCSoft, makers of Guild Wars, City of Heroes/Villains, and, er, LoveBeat, Aion released to much fanfare earlier this fall. Is there room for Aion in the swollen MMORPG market? Will it make room for itself by knocking WoW right off its pedestal? Does every MMORPG need to be compared to WoW? Allow us to clue you in before you start snatching up the entire Jinx! Aion t-shirt collection.



The world of Atreia has been almost literally torn apart by the Epic Cataclysm. From space, the planet looks like the discarded remains of a Galactus-sized devoured apple. Figuratively, it's already there. The two playable races have split off into rival factions, despite having a terrible enemy in common. The Elyos live in Elysea, the lower half of Atreia, where they are beautiful and bathed in light. The pale Asmodians inhabit the upper half of Atreia in darkness. I expected their positions on the planet to be reversed (the heavenly Elysium on the top, the hellish Asmodae on the bottom) and that was one thing that kept gnawing at me whenever the game made mention of it. Maybe I'm just too used to Western theological conventions, but it was one small design choice that mentally took me out of the game, briefly-especially considering how Western the light with wings/dark and hairy with claws and wings dichotomy is.



Further complicating the conflict, Aion has a third unplayable race, the Balaur. As opposed to the Elyos and Asmodians, the Balaur are pure evil. A blight upon Atreia, the Balaur were originally created by the god Aion to rule the planet's people. After they became power-obsessed, created the Empyrean Lords to protect AionAtreia from them. The Balaur were sealed in the Abyss, the unstable area between Elysea and Asmodae. As you can imagine, Atreia did not find eternal peace, and the Balaur are back with a vengeance.