I give it a solid 7 so far (been playing since the head start); there's a lot of untapped potential, so I assume content/gameplay-wise things will only get better with time.

Yes it is on the grindy side, but I don't mind it personally; since I play casually and am taking my sweet-a** time (I'm only lv28), I can only assume that some people who just want to reach cap level ASAP find Aion to be like a second job.

The abilities are cool, the crafting is pretty sweet (non-epic craftable armor/weapons that are useful for leveling? check), the graphics are beautiful even on a non top-edge system.

However I can't forget there are some major issues like the client stability and bot problems - they make me lower my personal mark. Mass PvP is unplayable due to the crysystem.dll crash issue; that's a pretty big one given that PvP is supposed to be at the center of the game. Also, tons of botters and gold sellers everywhere; NCsoft has started taking action against them, but there's still a lot of work to do.