[It has been a while since I wrote my last blog post and I never really expect anyone to read it but hell, I love this site and I want to share this with you guys. :)] 
 
MMO games have been growing over the past years, World of Warcraft (WoW) being the most popular one in the western world and by that giving a new standard in gaming. Many other games followed trying to compete or better WoW without much success. Personally I was introduced to MMO(rpg) gaming by Blizzard when WoW came out and since then I played that, Lord of the Rings Online and now Aion: Tower of Eternity. I regret to say that I never played Everquest (II), Final Fantasy Online or any of those older titles who made MMO's to what they are today. 
 
I gave up on WoW a while back because I finally got real fed up with Blizzard and their constant nerfing of the game. But also the whole community changed in the game, people are mostly arrogant and you are either a noob or 'pro'/'imba'. Also younger people flooding the game, whining on the forums and thus changing the game. The game went from awesome, competitive and giving you the feeling you made a difference to repetitive, boring, easy and dull. Giving different modes to an instance 10/25 man and normal/heroic was the biggest mistake yet made. Gear looks the same in every version of an instance making you feel like yet another person on the server who has it. By making the game to easy I mean removing atunements, giving away free epics (so to speak) by making then drop everywhere, you don't really have to work to get your purples and that makes the whole process of getting your character from nothing to superior, to epic really easy and thus dull. Especially the new "gearscore" add-on shows what way this game is going... It is not what it used to be nor should be. 
 
It is one thing that Blizzard is trying to make the game more accessible to different players but making everything a walk-through is not the way to go, then again I don't think Blizzard cares anymore. Anyway, this game was fun but no more! Time for another game to take over and I have been trying to look for other MMO's that are already out or coming soon. 
 
3 Games came up and 1 of them I am playing right now is Aion, a second is Star Wars:  the Old Republic (in development by BioWare)and the last one is called Copernicus (in development by 38 Studios). Of course Copernicus has little to no info about the game but for some reason I'm really interested by the concept of it and the whole team behind it (Rich Gallup!!). 
 
Aion: Tower of Eternity is a MMORPG that came out last year and has been getting little to no attention on most gaming sites for whatever reason. It is a game developed by NCSoft and is trying to compete with World of Warcraft and believe me it is going the right way. I am level 25 at the moment and I just entered the Abyss (read the lore for info on it) and I am blown away by the games art, play style, lore and community. People in Aion are actually nice, helpful and awesome; kind of like in Vanilla/TBC WoW.  
  
I'm blown away by the features the game has out of the box and the way the interface looks. Also impressive are the upcoming features, by reading the 1.9 patch notes, seeing the 2.0 and 3.0 'visions' video. The game is going to evolve so much and in the right way, not nerfing to much, not changing to much but just making it look/feel better. Bettering interface options and game play but keeping the effort you have to put in things... I'm very optimistic for Aions future and its awesome community. I will write a review on the site as soon as I am level 50 (max level at the moment) and feel like I played enough to have the proper materials/info to write a review. 
 
As for Copernicus, we'll have to wait for info on the game, but also pretty excited about that! And for SWtOR, I'm hoping for a beta invite, but the game looks very very promising as well!
 
For all the WoW players on Giant Bomb... Have you played since Vanilla? Are you annoyed with the game, bored but still playing because of friends and/or that last bit of loot? But feel like you are up for something new? Aion is definitely worth a try. But I advice you to STOP your WoW account for a while (1 to 3 months) and play some other games so you have a fresh mind when you play a new MMO, because it is so easy to judge something to fast because you are so stuck in another World (of Warcraft).... 
 
Hope you enjoyed the read! 
 
Peace, 
Ozi