Aion 2.0 Wonder Girls Costumes & Hair Styles Unveiled

NCsoft has cooperated with Wonder Girls, who used to appear as playable characters in FreeStyle BasketBall. Coincide with the launch of their newest EP, 2 Different Tears on May 16th, they appeared in Aion 2.0 Korean Test Server. Player can join 3 Wonder Girls quests as well as try Wonder Girls' dresses and hair styles(page5) on.

Click the image to visite Wonder Girls' Aion Official Special Site.



In an interview with NCsoft for Aion, new member Hye Lim said that honestly they didn't know what game it was at first but after watching it, the game seems pretty cool and you can even dance in the game! The dancing in the game seems similar to their new 2 Different Tears dance as well.

Confirmed: Aion 1.9 will Hit NA/EU in June

For a while now, they've been shoring up the XP gap in Aion, helping to push players over the hump of the long grind. While there's an upcoming double-experience weekend starting this Friday, the Aion team has informed the community that these golden days of glory may be short-lived, with these special weekends becoming a rarer occurence in the future.

This seemingly-depressing announcement is actually because Aion is switching from "shoring up" to "fixing" XP issues. On June 2nd, aion patch 1.9 will hit Aion's servers, and with it a host of solutions to the XP gap. The Aion community team has laid out three ways the XP will flow like rivers of honey. Wait, that would be slow and sticky. Let's go with Jell-O. In any case, 1.9 will add more quests, increased XP for quests and a new "Energy of Salvation" system that awards experience bonuses the longer you play.

So while double-experience weekends might become a scarce event in Aion, it's hopefully for the best overall.

NCwest today sent a letter to Aion players which released detailed release schedule of Aion 1.9 update. Aion producer - Chris "Kinslon" Hager announced in the letter that the 1.9 update will be available on the North American and European public test servers on Tuesday May 25, 2010. A week later, the 1.9 update will hit North American and European Live servers on Wednesday June 2, 2010. This schedule corresponds with NCSoft KR's Q1 2010 report call last week.

Chris also mentioned that the NA/EU plan for Aion 2.0, which was recently released on the KR PTS Server, is already under work.

Full Letter from Aion's Producer:

Greetings Aion Players!

Spring is in the air, the sun is out and the days are getting longer, and that means it's time for update news! After much anticipation, I am happy to announce the 1.9 update will be available on the North American and European public test servers on Tuesday May 25, 2010. A week later, the 1.9 update will hit North American and European Live servers on Wednesday June 2, 2010. As you might have read in the 1.9 patch notes or the 1.9 Q&A with Kinslon, the 1.9 update includes a number of great game improvements based on player feedback from around the world. We listened to your concerns about where the game play experience was less than stellar, collected data to support this, and requested those changes to the game for the 1.9 update and we continue to provide this feedback for future updates too. Along with a reduction in costs, better experience for quests and increased loot drops, we also threw in a collection of exciting systems and updates such as arms fusion, daily quests, rental weapon/armor system and a new look for group UI feature that are all aimed at improving the player's experience.
Just as 1.9 is a culmination of your feedback, we are constantly monitoring the community to see what the most relevant issues are. Back in October and November one of the hot topics were server queues and at that point we promised that character transfers would be available to help combat the queues. Again in the first part of this year, we promised these in the first half of 2010. I'm happy to report that the character transfer service will be live in the middle of June and we will be offering them to all of our players for free for a limited time. As we get closer to the live date of the character transfer service we'll be releasing more information so that you can prepare yourself and coordinate with your legion and other online friends.

One of the more recent concerns that we've heard is related to server populations, both in North America and Europe. Some of the specific concerns you've told us about deal with difficulty finding groups in game, having resources to contribute to the overall server economy, and being able to gather strong enough forces to enjoy the end game content, particularly the Abyss PvP zone and Fortress Sieges. We heard your concern about this and did a comprehensive examination of all of our servers across North America and Europe. After reviewing all of the game, character, and server data we found that certain level ranges or classes had healthy numbers, but across ALL level ranges and professions most of our servers didn't have ideal populations. After a score of meetings, it was decided that the best thing to do is to merge some of our servers so that we have fewer, fuller servers with characters (and players) that are balanced better in population across all levels and classes. The primary goal of merging the servers is to create an environment that gives you the best possible experience in Aion.
I don't relish the idea of mergers. (It takes a lot of work to make them happen!) However, once it is complete you should notice improvements in each of the new server economies, an abundance of players to group and run instances with, a number of great Legions to join or people to form new ones with, and a more tightly knit community. When all is said and done, Aion will be a better game because of the server merge. We're in the planning stages, and will have more information on the timing and execution in the coming weeks.

Finally, as you might have read in the 2.0 patch notes, 2.0 was recently released on the KR PTS Server. Even though we have several other large initiatives underway, we are already working on bringing 2.0 to the North American and European to our shores. It is an immense undertaking that adds a lot of new content to the game, but we are working steadily towards a fall target release date and are on track. To get a preview of what is coming to Aion with 2.0 check out the initial patch notes.

As you can see, we have quite a busy couple of months ahead of us; all aimed at servicing your needs and making Aion a better place to play. I am excited at the prospect of what our players can expect in the near future, and can't wait for the results to speak for themself.

Thanks,

-Chris "Kinslon" Hager

Aion 2.0 bosses viewable on Korean test server

MMOSite brings word of a few new boss sightings on Aion's Korean test servers. These bosses, part of the recently released 2.0 update, include Kaisinel's Agent Vielle and Marchutan's Agent Mastarius, as well as the nasty final boss from the Debris instance at the core of the Abyss which requires a 12-man group and plenty of coordination.

Additionally, a new rock-themed world boss has been sighted, as well as the Red Tear dragon, the latter of which reportedly reflects player damage and must be killed in under one hour.

Drop by MMOSite for the full article as well as a selection of screenshots from the test server.

Wings Over Atreia: The Xeno experience in Aion

You'll have to forgive me for being somewhat surprised as I sit down to write this week's column. I guess given the general grindiness of Aion's high levels plus the weekly quota of "you sucks" that I get in ye olde inbox for daring to write about the game have conspired to make me a little bit gun shy when it comes to actually having fun in the world of Atreia. Oh, and let's not forget about NCsoft's refusal to answer tough questions (or any questions, for that matter) that your intrepid journalist has about Aion.

All that negativity aside, there must something to the whole yin/yang concept, as an otherwise detestable week yielded what has been one of the most enjoyable in-game experiences to date. It was such a blast, in fact, that I'm compelled to recount at least a little bit of my group's harrowing run through the gauntlet colloquially known as the Aion Xeno quest.

What is the Aion Xeno quest, you're probably wondering? Well if you're a middle-aged (i.e. over 40) Elyos you probably already know, but if not, the short version is that it's a lengthy quest chain that culminates in a fairly spiffy gold weapon. As you would expect, the tasks required to obtain it are numerous and arduous, but when coupled with a good group and a bit of luck, a fun time can be had by all.

Fly past the cut to find out how.

The first step in the process is to head to the library in Sanctum. There you'll find an affable NPC by the name of Xenophon who will give you a series of quests beginning with A Disturbing Report. The majority of these quests are "go here/kill 10 of these" type tasks, and advancing the chain to the good parts will probably take you and your group the better part of a couple of hours. Grouping here is a necessity, not only because many mobs you'll encounter are big nasties, but also to maintain your sanity during the tedious trek to and from the objectives.

Honestly, I'd never have made it through the Xeno quest with a pickup group; not only is a skilled (and familiar) group essential but, assuming you're all friends, Ventrilo shenanigans usually livens up the considerable grind. My particular party strung the quest line out over a couple of nights, but taken back to back, the whole ordeal can easily last upwards of six or seven hours depending on group competence and random PvP roadblocks.

For our purposes we'll skip ahead to the fun stuff, namely the quest called [Spy/Group] A Suspicious Box which, as you might have guessed, is a spy quest that sends you rifting into the heart of Asmodian territory. One of the great annoyances of Aion rifting is the fact that you're constantly waiting for the portals to spawn. There's nothing more infuriating than gathering a good group and making plans to invade Asmodae, then having to cool your heels for a couple of hours because the silly rift hasn't popped. Knowing this, we plopped an alt down in front of the Xeno rift (right outside the Lepharist Poison Research Center in Heiron) and periodically checked to see if it was up.

Once we managed to get through, we found ourselves unceremoniously dumped amidst the snow-swept hills of Belusian. If you're like me and have virtually no experience with the Asmo side of the game beyond the occasional rifting excursion into Morheim, you'll be in for a treat here, as the landscape around the Xeno rift is quite beautiful, and starkly different from anything on the Elyos half of the world. Unfortunately we didn't have a ton of time to admire the view as we were quickly set upon by the hordes of elite Lepharist mobs that surrounded the rift. After cutting a swath of destruction away from the portal and finding a safe spot to catch our breath, we decided to call it a night and continue with our quest the following evening.

The next night, things got hairy in a hurry. Upon logging in at our presumed safe spot, we found ourselves face-to-face with a couple of Asmodian players, one of whom was a level 50 Chanter in gold gear, which, for the uninitiated, means that my group of low-40s couldn't even dent his health bar, much less kill him. We managed to send his Sorcerer pal back to the rez pad, but several of us fell to the Chanter before he tired of chasing those of us left alive around the elite areas of Belusian. After skulking about and rezzing one another (presumably because our antagonist found better things to do), we continued on to talk to an NPC known as Lethe, who directed us to acquire five Entry Permits which drop off of the elite Scholar mobs found scattered throughout the area.

Waiting for us, like some perfectly scripted scene out of a particularly kick-ass Western film, was a line of Asmodian players blocking the entrance to the dungeon.

XP was pretty good here as we mowed down mob after mob, and, probably due to the fact that the area is rather dangerous courtesy of the high concentration of elites, we managed to get everyone their drops without any further Asmodian player interference. The respite was short-lived, however, as after turning our permits over to Lethe, our radar lit up with big red dots.

The battle was quickly joined as a group of Asmo players descended upon us in a furious cacophony of blades and spells. Several of the attackers were higher level and well-geared, and just as the tide of the battle seemed to be turning against us, another group of Elyos (no doubt intending to run their own Xeno instance) arrived and lent their assistance.

The resulting battle was a ton of fun, and if more of Aion's PvP resembled these types of breathless, running skirmishes where something is actually at stake (in this case, the huge inconvenience of losing our kisk and having to re-enter the Xeno rift), I daresay the game wouldn't have as much trouble retaining players. Working together and improvising with a second group was an exhilirating experience that showcased Aion's PvPvE potential, and is indescribably more fun than zerging at a fortress siege or hammering on a single fort general for forty-five straight minutes.

We fought the Asmos in, around, and over the stone courtyards and bridges that dot the landscape near the Xeno instance, finally driving them off as their Cleric fell to our focus fire. We hurried to dispatch the quest boss as originally directed by Lethe, and once he succumbed to our combined onslaught, we headed across the rickety wooden bridge and up to the entrance to the Xeno instance proper. Waiting for us, like some perfectly scripted scene out of a particularly kick-ass Western film, was a line of Asmodian players blocking the entrance to the dungeon. It's moments like these that I rue NCsoft's decision to encrypt cross-faction chat, as I can only imagine how awesome it would have been to engage in a bit of mano-a-mano smack talk. As it was, we charged, they died (actually a couple of them force-logged), and we hurtled ahead into the darkness of our private (and well-earned) dungeon.

I wish I could tell you the rest of the Xeno instance was that much fun, but in reality it went like all dungeons go with a particularly effective group: cautious pulls, practiced PvE strategy, and an ultimately successful run that netted everyone a ton of XP and the golden class-specific weapon of their choice. Ultimately, it was a great night in a game that has sorely lacked them in recent weeks, at least for me personally. If there were some way to bottle this particular experience and pour it liberally over the rest of the game, Aion might get around to being fun all the time rather than in spurts.

Until next week, keep the blue side up.