I've mainly played my mage for about an hour and a half so far today. Nothing new to report about the quests, since I went through them all on the cleric on days 1 and 2. Things obviously go faster having been through them before, and my mage just hit level 8 before a lag spike followed by a familiar notice: "This server will be shut down in 60 seconds. Please log off."

I'm impressed with the mage so far. It's enjoyable being a "clothie" and still capable of soloing. My mage has enough firepower, combined with movement-impairing effects, that he is able to single-handedly take on mobs one or even two levels higher than him. Pretty good since I wouldn't have taken on that challenge with my priest at level 8.

The mage has a damage shield that has a 1 minute cooldown and lasts for 4 minutes. It's fairly mana expensive, but it's great for when the higher level mobs make it to within melee range. One drawback to having a mage is there is basically no melee capability, so don't even think about going toe-to-toe with ...well, anything. However, the pushback that casters sometimes experience in MMORPGs is not present in Aion, therefore you can safely cast on a mob that is beating on you without an increased casting time. Kind of nice, but I still wouldn't plan on being able to absorb much abuse. Hopefully you just have another second left in your final cast before the target is dead. Otherwise, you'll probably be the one dying.

My plan for this mage is to specialize as a spiritmaster so I can try out the pets. I've seen them wandering around and they look pretty interesting. Hopefully I'll be level 10 tomorrow and be able to get into that aspect of this caster.

It's 9:15pm PDT and I'm going to call it a day. The bad news is we just had a server crash and it was at a very inopportune time. The good news is we got in probably 4 hours of solid gameplay to give a good idea of what it's like from levels 10-15. Here are some random thoughts:

** Flying isn't as much fun as I thought it would be ...yet. You can only fly for one minute at a time, which is ok, but there are very few areas that I've been able to fly in. I was under the impression that the whole game was about flying and to find out that there are maybe two zones that I have access to at these levels is a bit of a let down. However, I'm expecting that to expand as I move on in level tomorrow.

** Leveling isn't bad. Yeah you have the drop-rate quests and the kill 10 bears quests, but none of them have been too dull and boring yet. It's basically what you would expect from an MMORPG and the trials you have to go through to get to the fun stuff. No big deal.

** Character movement, at least in my opinion, is a bit clunky. There is a delay between actions and a sort of unusual mousing setup that I have yet to fully get used to. As things move on, maybe I won't find it so annoying, but I'm big on being able to activate an ability as soon as it's available, so to have to push the button 3 more times to get it to go is kind of annoying.

** My cleric is surprisingly able to hold his own against same-level mobs. I wouldn't go above my level without help, but same-level he seems to be able to beat up pretty nicely. That being said, for healing being such a "less-than-fun" job to play, there are definitely a lot of clerics running around. Looking for group was full of clerics looking to group for quest lines. While to me that signaled an abundance of clerics running around, as I write this, I realize that maybe that has more to do with the fact that they can't really solo those quest lines than there being a ton of them running around.

** The graphics continue to impress, as expected. The overall feel of the in-game environment is very nice to look at. Maybe that helps to make the kill 10 frogs quests a bit easier to handle.

** Server/lag issues continue to dominate gameplay. While the server was MUCH better this evening, giving us a solid 4 or so hours of time to play, the server dropping out on us suddenly later in the evening was sort of a surprise, but probably to be expected judging from our experience earlier in the day. Hopefully this continues to improve as the beta week continues.

I'll probably hop on my mage for a couple hours in the morning and get a feel for that kind of gameplay, as well as how the servers act on a normal work day.

Welcome to day 2 of the 7 day open beta event. This morning, the lag issues were slightly better, but still pretty bad. Suffering through the lag (and several deaths), I was able to get my priest to level 10. Basically, once you hit level 9, you're given an "Ascension" quest. You run a few errands, watch a video, fight an easy boss (provided you don't get defeated by the optional "lag" boss), and you get transported to your faction's hub city where there is a quick ceremony and you choose your specialization. My priest became a cleric, got new spells and abilities, and did a few quests around the major city. He now has wings, as well.

FINALLY, it was announced that the servers were shutting down around 12:15pm PDT for an hour, at the most, while they supposedly fix some lag issues. Well, it's now almost 3:30pm PDT and there are no servers back up yet.

Yup, this is the life of a beta tester. Enjoy!

More to come....... (if the servers ever come back up)

So not much to add since the last update. The servers have been EXTREMELY laggy to the point that it's not worth it to even log on. I like the looks of the game so far, but there are definitely some server issues to deal with before launch.

Next update tomorrow.

Everything was set! Beta testing begins at 9am PDT. Can you guess whether we were able to log on at 9am? Of course we couldn't. That's par for the course, though.

So, shortly before 10am, after several different kinds of errors, I was finally able to get into the character creation screen and begin my very first Aion beta character. I chose a male priest, and they are not lying when they say you have a LOT of character customization options! My priest looks kinda like a Latin Don Juan and in the starting area there was a tall, skinny black guy with a big fro. You can make pretty much whatever you want.

I teamed up with Dustin's warrior and we began questing. The beginning quests are kind of boring, as would be expected. There was a huge server load with everybody logging in at once, so you'll be happy to know that the beginning areas are instanced so you can actually get quest mobs and items. If your buddy is on another channel, switching is easy. We teamed up and blew through levels 1-5. 6 and 7 were a bit longer, and my priest is currently sitting at level 8. During that time, we really didn't run into any bugs except for a couple of quest item nodes that didn't work.

Then I decided it was time to create a mage. I customized another character and began the intro quests again. After awhile, I noticed that I wasn't getting any drops from killing mobs. Then I'd try to loot quest nodes, and nothing from those either. After about 12 different tries, combined with complaining in general chat, I knew that something was majorly screwed up. That was about 3pm PDT and I'm taking a break from leveling until I can loot things.

Stay tuned.

So the Aion: The Tower of Eternity Beta starts tomorrow. If you pre-order, you get access to that 7 day beta plus a 2-day head start, so you start playing for real on 9/20 instead of 9/22. Dustin and I got the Collector's Edition since you get a 20% xp boost plus 40 extra seconds of flying time ...which seems to be pretty important since your first jump into flight only gives you 1 minute of flying time.

So, as I mentioned, I recently returned to playing WoW and, as I may not have noted, things have changed a lot in 7 months. Unfortunately, some of the less enjoyable things have not changed.

You probably didn't read my Final Fantasy XI review, but in it, I slammed several players for being elitists due to the fact that they felt that, because FFXI was full of fail, people who played better-designed games were not as good as them.

Fast forward to yesterday. A friend asked me if I would tank 25-man Vault of Archavon. Now, I am an experienced Burning Crusade raider, but I have only been drug (kicking and screaming) into one or two Naxxramas raids (10- and 25-man) and one 10-man Vault of Archavon since the release of Wrath of the Lich King. This was all back in December or January, so it's not like I'm a raider by any stretch of the imagination. Also, taking a look at some of the gear my fellow tanks are wearing, I am in no condition to be considered a main tank since I lack the strategy knowledge and the gear.

Anyways, so he reminds me that I have over 30k health (unbuffed) and that Vault of Archavon is quick, so let's go. I agreed, and here we are all gathered outside the instance.

-Begin Conversation-

A death knight (who will remain unnamed to prevent the unnecessary stroking of his large ego in comparison to his anatomical inadequacies): "I'm tanking right?"

The raid leader (my friend): "Oh I thought you were DPS?"

Death knight: "I could DPS but I'm a better tank than any tank on this server."

Now, this perks my ears. Most amazing tanks are not found in PUG raids. I looked and he had a large amount of health, so I could tell he was pretty geared up. Fine, I can off-tank. I wasn't thrilled to be there in the first place. I couldn't help commenting, though.

Me: "And modest as well."

Death knight: "Yup!"

Raid leader (to me): "Are you ok with him tanking?"

Death knight: "Why? Who's going to tank? The pally with the Red Sword of Courage and 63 (or however many it was) points in prot?!" (He is referring to my gear and spec.)

Another raid member (to death knight): "Way to be the biggest d bag on the server!"

Crappy healer who couldn't help but chime in: "And spell power enchant too! LOLOLOL"

-End Conversation-

So, what will I grant them? Yes, my spec was jacked up. Things have changed and I knew when I had to redo my spec that I had messed it up, but also didn't care. It's not like I was raiding (at least I thought I wouldn't be) and it is easy enough to change the spec when the time came (though it costs money which my toons are a little short on atm). Also, it turns out that talents changed and pallies no longer need spell power. Fine, I've been gone for over half a year. I fixed it all less than an hour later and found tanking to be MUCH easier -- not that I'd had much trouble during my couple weeks back to tanking anyway.

That d bag being correct isn't what bothered me. When you LOL at somebody in front of over 20 other people in raid chat, that's kind of a low blow -- especially if you're right. How should it be handled? Well, for example, I tanked an instance the other day with a mage who did about 5% of the group damage. 5%!! Did I LOL at him in party chat? No. Did I emote at him and make him feel like a jackass? No. I sent him a tell at the end of the run and politely suggested that he check out maxdps.com where he can get help with increasing his DPS output. He thanked me for the information and also said he was happy I didn't just make fun of him or kick him from group like normally happens when he goes into an instance.

What can we take away from these two examples?

1.) There are lots of d bags wandering around WoW (and lots of other games, as well). They are probably highly unsuccessful irl, so they make up for it by being (arguably) good at WoW. Egging them on (as that healer did -- who I had played with earlier in the week when he tried to ninja some loot) only fuels the fire and probably ruins the raid for everyone.

2.) If somebody sucks, it's not necessarily because they are incapable of playing well. Before you thrash a stranger for being the crappiest player you've encountered all year, why not send them a tell to see what's going on?

3.) People who genuinely do suck or have incorrect gear, spec, etc. need help, not ridicule. (Maybe they've been away for months?) Talk to them, let them know what's going on, and be ready to provide a resource for them to use since they likely aren't posting on forums all day long.

How did this all end, you ask? Well, having not really wanted to raid in the first place, and seeing that they had the "best tank on the server" with them, I chose to drop group and do some research on what my spec and enchants should be. The raid went on using a feral druid as an off-tank. They were unsuccessful in defeating a single boss in (the incredibly small and fast) Vault of Archavon.

I blame the "best tank on the server" and his healing companion.

Aion Online comes out soon. Dustin and I are going to give it a shot I think. It should be your standard MMORPG except you can fight while flying. Yeah, sounds weird to me, too. Regardless, it's worth a try since there's nothing else good on the horizon until 2010.

Speaking of which, I wonder what this holiday season is going to look like. If they're trying to increase video game sales and help revive the economy, they're going to have to do better than what it's shaping up to be. Final Fantasy was delayed until Spring 2010 as was Jumpgate Evolution. The new PS3 Slim is nice and cheap, except everybody already has a PS3 so gg!

Oh yeah, I plugged in my Xbox and downloaded a trial of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader. The answer is: I don't know unless I pay for the full version, but I did make it to the $1 million question. Sweet!

Last, and the item I wanted to delay mentioning as long as possible... I'm back to playing World of Warcraft again. (Oh wait, I put that in the title...) With nothing else out there, yeah, it was bound to happen. So, it was my longest of three WoW breaks at seven months, but it's back to tanking and healing again. Come say hi to Prarram or Farram on Draenor Alliance side if you want. I'll be there at least until Aion comes out.

News story this morning proves my point that there are absolutely no good games out...

US Video Game Sales Down 29% in July

So you should definitely vote, but not a great list of choices. I voted for The Apprentice from Force Unleashed. That was a pretty cool game, although it was pretty easy if I remember right. Hoping that the new Star Wars MMO based on Knights of the Old Republic turns out to be a great game. I guess if all it has to compete with is Star Wars Galaxies, then it's a shoe in! What a sucky MMO that turned out to be!! I played for one week I think. GL with KOTOR!!