Before you start reading into this review, if you're looking for a general summarization of the game covering the aspects of music, graphics, etc... please look here:
http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=36262948&f=106 this review summarizes the experience of actually playing the game and what you can look forward to.
Character creation is very in depth, you can change nearly any aspect of your characters appearance creating some very attractive or evil looking characters. Aion's character creation system is by far the best I seen in any game personally, it allows you to customize everything and even has several preset builds to begin with for those who don't want to spend their time playing with the chest size of their character. After character creation is done you load into the starting zone, this zone is to me like a tutorial area, you're not your specialized class yet and have very limited moves, but this is typical at starting levels of MMOs. The time it takes to get from level one to ten varies greatly from class to class and play style. An amusing aspect to Aion is in many situations grinding for experience and doing quests come out to be roughly the same speed, this balance obviously changes if you have a higher level providing you with items and are a DPS Class (Example: A new sorcerer with a tome with the best magic boost mana stones and +10 Enchanted will clearly grind faster then questing). The entire process for 1-10 should take an experienced MMO Player roughly 2-3 hours max unless you're taking in all aspects of the game (Gathering flowers and running back and forth to town a lot will slow you down a lot).
So you're level 10 you picked your class and a ported to the capital city, You do a few quests running here and there and go down to your first zone, like the tutorial area, and the majority of the game the quests are go talk to this guy, go gather these, or go kill these. This somewhat repetitive quest system is what you'll find throughout the majority of the game. The overall feel of the fights in Aion is not nearly as bland and boring as combat systems such as WoW (I played wow since Vanilla Beta and am not against the game), each spell cast and weapon has stunning animation along with for the most part, t
here is no "press 2 2 2 3 1 2 2 2 3 1" over and over and over, class rotations vary greatly on the situation for the classes I've tried along with they require a bit of timing for some classes. Grinding through the levels around level 16 you'll start experiencing your first group content, its a outdoor camp of elites that require a party to kill, the quests there are a bit more amusing, and at times downright boring, like the one to gather 50 Krall Marks requiring you to hunt there for hour(s) assuming you don't have higher level help. Around level 20 your path can be split between two difference zones both zones will have quests around your level but neither will have enough quests alone to level you completely to 25 without grinding.
You finally made it to 25, this is the make or break point for some players, if you didn't stick the game out to this point then you have no idea what the majority of the game is about. At 25 you can enter your first instance, it has an 18 hour lockout period and is decently short and gives great experience for the time. The new area you can go into at 25 is called the Abyss it is the major pvp area of the game, split into three parts. The whole zone doesn't have a ton of quests but every creature you kill here will give you Abyss Points, along with you'll run into several members of the opposing faction and possibly some enjoyable pvp. The best time I had in the game thus far was an epic battle overtaking an Asmodian controlled fortress we was all lower level and it was roughly a 300vs180 battle. Some players prefer to grind in the abyss to stock up on AP (Abyss points) and get some pvp action in. For wow players, AP is like Honor, you gain it mostly through PvP and its mostly a currency for PvP Items, it also determines your rank.
The ingame currency "Kinah" is shockingly amusing, I personally never had any issues getting money, often giving my lowbies very good items, donating huge amounts to my legion, and still having a nice sum left over. Other people can't even afford transportation costs, I am baffled how there is such a great distance between some peoples ability to profit in the game.
For those hard core pvpers I often feel that there is no class thats a for sure I'm dead, it depends greatly on skill and being prepared. So if you're wanting a skill based pvp system you should check out Aion, the one downside is Arial combat is a bit off for some classes slightly.
If you got any questions about Aion feel free to contact me on MSN: seroko@gmail.com or want to talk ingame you can message me on Seroko at Israphel Elyios.
OKLOL. stopped reading
Clearly you play a sorc or something.