One of the things that is essential to me as an MMO gamer is having elements such as crafting to enhance the downtime that we all experience when we’re not questing, doing instances or pvp’ing.    It could be argued that crafting should have the potential to be a stand-alone and critical part of any MMO.  However, many developers seem to take the approach that  crafting is just an extra add-on, and not vital to the game in any way. 

Want an example?  Take a look at Warhammer.  Crafting in WAR was clearly an afterthought—something that was banged into the game in order to be able to say “Look!  We have crafting!”  Never mind that the items were mostly useless and did nothing to enhance a character or the game itself.  The crafting feature was just plain silly, and so boring that it did nothing to encourage me to want to engage in it.

Age of Conan’s crafting was better, and it’s clear that the developers wanted the system to be viable and important to the game and its economy.  It’s a lot more fun to engage in—especially since the most recent patch—and does provide a diversion on those nights where I don’t feel like questing or grouping.  However, there are problems with it, such as the limited choices of professions, logistical issues like not having a crafting merchant anywhere near a trader (except in guild cities), and the lack of being able to having crafting as a stand-alone part of the game (crafting was tied to adventure level, making it impossible to have characters who do nothing BUT craft).  Although the crafting in AoC was far from a failure, it could have been so much better in so many ways.

During my beta weekend in Aion, one of the things that I was determined to try out was the crafting system.  I did not have high hopes, as the last two games I’ve played (AoC and WAR) both had disappointments for me in crafting, and I expected Aion to be no different.  I was, however, pleasantly surprised.

Harvesting in Aion is traditional.  You obtain crafting materials from harvestable nodes as well as from mob drops.  The nodes are scattered fairly plentifully about the zones, and they seem to have fairly quick respawns.  Each node grants you three “attempts” to harvest.  It is possible to fail and gain nothing.  It is also possible to “crit” while harvesting and find a “rare” green item.  One thing that I found sort of fun was harvesting aether—which you can only find in nodes that are, you guessed it, up in the air.  Yes, you have to fly to harvest aether!  How long the novelty of this will last, I don’t know, but it made me giggle and added a fun sense of danger when I had to try to hurry and finish my harvesting before I ran out of flight time and plummeted to my death.  Not that that ever happened. *shifty eyes*

The mob drops seem fairly random as far as the types of materials you get.  I did notice that the mobs had to be a certain level in order to drop a particular level material.  For example, only a level 13 or higher mob would drop level 13 materials.  I can see the mob dropped materials becoming a bottleneck for crafting, however, as the only way to get them is through grinding or buying them on the broker.  As expected, the prices were stupidly expensive.  I do wonder if this will deter the crafting element to some extent.

In Aion, there are six professions: cooking, handicrafting (jewelry), armorsmithing (chain/plate armor), weaponsmithing, alchemy and sewing (leather/cloth armor).  You can “dabble” in every crafting profession up to a certain level, and choose two to become a “master” at.  I won’t bother going into the pluses and minuses of each profession, as I haven’t tried them all yet; however, I am confident all will have their proponents and opponents.

I chose to try out armorsmithing and cooking first.  The crafting trainers are located in your home city, and there is a trainer for each profession.  You must buy your initial training and subsequent recipes, as well as a certain amount of materials in order to craft—making crafting a tidy little moneysink.  The trainers offer workorders, which allow you to advance your crafting skill quite nicely while providing you something remotely entertaining to do while you level up.

One thing that I enjoyed about crafting was that it wasn’t simply “click one button” and poof! Finished item!  Most items require you to make other items first—for example, to craft a pair of chainmail gloves, I might have to craft steel wire first.  Steel wire requires me to craft steel ingots from the raw iron that I gathered.  So each item required a multi-step process, making it engaging and interesting—far from easy-mode. 

That’s not to say that it is so difficult or hard to understand that it’s no fun to do.  The processes themselves are straight-forward and easy to understand.  But it does require some thought and planning to make sure you don’t run out of a crucial material, etc.

It is possible to fail on your crafting attempt, meaning that you lose the components and the coin you’ve invested.  Your probability of failure corresponds with your crafting skill and the level of the item you are attempting to craft.  For example, if my crafting level is 25, it is extremely unlikely that I would fail in crafting a level 10 item.  However, if I’m attempting to craft a level 25 item, I might just have to endure a failure or two.

It is also possible to “crit” on your crafting and end up with a superior item.  As far as I can tell, these crits are random.  I saw the figure of 20-30% chance thrown around on some forums, but I can’t attest to that.  It’s a nice surprise when it happens, and the items that are produced can bring a nice profit on the broker.

In my first beta weekend, I can honestly say I spent half of my time doing nothing but harvesting and crafting—and having a good time doing it.  I never got tired of looking for nodes to harvest.  I never wearied of learning new recipes, doing work orders or the excited feeling I got when I got a superior item or a rare material from a node.

One thing that also bodes well for crafting in this game is that player-crafted items seem to be of some real worth—better than commonly dropped items in game.  Things such as potions and manastones, which are player-crafted, are of real value to everyone—everyone needs health potions and mana regen potions!

If a game can hold my attention with its “fluff,” such as crafting, it is a good sign for the long-term playability for me.  Playing the broker, crafting, harvesting—all of those things add a lot to my gaming experience, and when they are available to me, it gives me something to do on those nights that my gaming partner isn’t around, or the nights when I don’t feel like fighting something.

All in all, crafting is looking pretty good in Aion—at least from my perspective!