Feel the Wind Beneath Your Wings with the Aerakyn Player Race!

I think the biggest burn is not knowing there was essentially TWO Aerakyn races.

What's so wrong with just having one with all the functionality for 2000SC? *scratches head*

That's what I was looking forward too, even coming back after 7 months. But I won't be picking up the race right now. Might get the expansion though (just that).

Corrections Snarks are MORE Feral dragon by looks an Attitude then the peds that claim they were ****** by there mnom was a human and there dad was a dragon.


Sarnaks.. Just put Flying Wings o there back and they look more Badass then the Droags lol

Also Croutch a snarnak with the hover wings and have a Growth cloak and look down at someone whos as big as your foot Who would you be more Scaired of? the Human fakes or a Sarnak who Litterly looks like hes or shes going to eat you LOL

Um yeah.. how about instead of making new fluff races.. improve the skins of the old races.. maybe skeletal improvements? Character models could use some love.
This demon ppl thing just makes me not want to try out the new race... no wonder they are not advertising it with the new expansion. Total fluff garbage.. I used to love SOE and EQ.. but it just feels cheapened these last few years.. like money is all you care about.
This free to play is getting out of hand.. everything should be earned in game and I rather take a monthly subscription and the occasional $50 expac cost than continue down this route.
Sorry SOE team, I shant be buying this race or the new expac because of it..

Not to mention, F2P is killing MMO's, they are so not as popular as they were years ago due to the fact. If you can't afford a monthly subscription, please spend your time looking for a job.

EDIT: Sorry for the Wall of Text.
TL;DR - MMO's went FTP because subscriptions weren't paying the bills.


To be fair, you're reversing cause and effect. MMO's weren't making enough money via subscriptions to keep updating their games, so they either went on life support (no new updates or patches), or they started looking at other ways of funding the game. SOE tried raising the price to $20/month for Station Access - basically what is now All Access with perks like extra character slots - but apparently couldn't generate enough revenue.

Personally I thought it was a great deal as I played EQ 2 and SWG (just the space game and some ground time in an RP guild). Later I also played CWA (there was a ridiculous FTP system - I had enough crates that needed SC to open I could have filled two Indian Jones sized warehouses), and dabbled a bit in Dragon's Prophet (awesome char creation: four boob sliders and two booty sliders along with sliders for just about every other body feature). I even gave Everquest and Wizardry Online a try. Unfortunately, not enough people played different games like I did, so for whatever reason Station Access got shut down (though those of us who were members still get to keep the extra character slots)

So they had to look at other business models. Free to Play had already proven itself on games like the 'villes and other titles, So MMO's picked them up. SOE kept both subscription servers and FTP servers going for a while, until it was clear that the FTP was bringing in more money and was a stable enough source of income to plan with. Very smart move on their part letting them 'test the waters' before jumping in.

They also tried Station Exchange (not to be confused with Station Access) a couple servers where you could sell items, plat, and characters for real money on their auction site. I played on them for a while. I don't think anyone was quitting their day job but it wasn't hard to make enough money to cover your subscription fee. Ultimately though, they weren't profitable enough to keep around and got merged into the other servers.

They even tried different FTP models, with the gold/silver/bronze levels for a while having subscription and FTP side by side, sort of. They still had Station Access at this point (it may have been called All Access now) which gave you gold access on all the games in their stable, but it was at the $20 price point, which apparently drives the demand down enough that not enough people are willing to shell out the extra $5.

So in SOE's case, they started out subscription, when that stopped working they tried several other business models, and when it was clear that FTP servers were the best choice going forward they merged the servers (eight free extra character slots, Yay!!) and made all the servers FTP / All Access, which is where we are now..


There is no FTP model that will make everyone happy, since everyone wants everything for free. I don't know if the EQ 2 system is the best, but I've certainly seen a lot worse (That one where you have to unlock the ability to wear battle lingerie comes to mind).

Now, with all that said, I think the combination of their latest moves is shooting themselves in both feet with an eight gauge shotgun. The Aerakyn that aren't really Aerakyn (IMHO they should have just said "This is the race, it's 4000 or 4500 SC to buy, and everything works as advertised"), no preorder bonus on the expacs, no preorder bonus items with the expacs, absolutely no compelling reason to buy the CE since you can get the standard edition and upgrade later for the same cost (or potentially less, if they ever have some kind of sale) after you see what Silver Surfer actually does - and for $50 he should **** all the existing heroics with you following along picking up the shinies (kind of like a Skellymancer in Diablo 2), and hitting the veterans (the ones who have been supporting the game from the start) by making the prestige house 1/account AND making it available to everyone else immediately via SC, which kind of kills the whole _veteran_ reward concept.

Well, I am one of the fools who forked over the money for the new race. I am utterly disappointed by the customization options. They are short and stocky and there is no way in hell to make them look anything like the elegant Aerakyn Merc. I would think that would have been the starting point if nothing else. And there isn't even racial armor for them.

Thank you for the review. Hopefully we'll get more from all sides so we can make a decent decision on how much of our hard earned dollars we want to part with this cycle.

Just out of curiosity, do Aerakyn work so that you can equip a mount and get its stats but use the wings they come with as the appearance mount? Just wondering because if they can, then it should be possible for Fae/Arasai as well. If that worked, I'd pay to have that (without the sparklies please) since I have like 4 fairy toons.

In case of the Aerakyn, the wings are an actual mount in your character window. Mine is still low level, but I tired it out with a Highland Stalker mount and then put the wings in the appearance slot. After dismounting and remounting I saw only the wings instead of the Highland Stalker.

I purchased the Noble Aerakyn yesterday also a little disappointed at the available customization
Would like it if we could change horn color, or the part of the wings where its always like an orange tone color (the bottom part)

And also very disappointed in that the females when they die, appear to have same position as the males, face down, no other race have females facing like that when they are dead
Other thing is mine is a mage and uses a wand or focus weapon, so eventhough she has the thing to make it look like she has no weapons, during fight, the wand weapon shows and i dont think the wing attack works with focus wands ... anyways so yeah if that is going to stay like that and i cant see the wing attacks i think i need a refund
The good thing is they can have all kinds of long hair, and alot of colors to chose from for the hair which i like.

They are face down so the wings don't clip into the ground. I will take a look at wand/focus weapon stances.

Thank you Ttobey, yeah i thought the wings might be in the way, but still dont like facing down much lol sorry

Don't die.

My god.. SOE has turned into a bunch of hungry hungry hippos...

I posted this in the classes forum, but since it is related to this race, I'll post it here as well. I made an aerakyn beastlord last night, and it didnt start out with its own warder. I had to /claim the CE warboar warder to have a pet. Is this intended? I was a bit disappointed, i had expected them to come with a drake or some kind of dragon-like warder. More accurately, i was hoping, lol

As I've seen ttobey in this thread, and I've vented in forums; I hope the Devs know we don't 'blame' them for some of the direction things take, and we know they have no input to pricing. Thanks for reading through the forums and at least looking at some of the things players think are issues.

I would like to be able to change the bottom color of the wings as well, nothing crazy say 6 / 8 color options would be nice and I would really like to be able to hide or 'Fold' up the wings, I have Enoxus and I love the graphic on my back, but with the aerakyn it doesn't show =/

I bought noble, and although I don't think it's quite worth all that money, it's fun as heck! Especially if you start in Timorous Deep. Make sure you equip your mount, and you'll get the speed buff and gliding ability at level 1. I've been having a lot fun running up to the top of hills and gliding where I want to go. Plus the wings look pretty awesome.

Oh. heads up...they dont seem to have a sitting animation... noticed it as I camped off mine last night.

I really enjoy how the race looks and I guess I can still agree that the customizations felt a bit lacking compared to others, but overall I am satisfied with my purchase. Flying animations are awesome and I just think they look great overall, but Im not sure that Im in love with the wing attack animations. There seem to only be 2 different ones that it cycles through and theyre both kinda meh imo. Might just go back to using an actual weapon lol.

One of the really cool things though is the ability to change between 5? wing types at any given time as far as I could tell.