"Aion: Assault on Balaurea brings players an evolution of the game story and terrain as it expands the world far beyond the traditional territories of Asmodae and Elysea. In this new chapter of Aion, characters will be able to launch a massive counter assault against the invading Balaur on their homeland while experiencing new and updated instances and zones, an increased level cap, fresh weapons and items, new skills and added flight mechanics. But characters will not be alone as they explore the new areas, as Aion introduces functional pets equipped with in-game benefits. "

The Divine Fortress was conquered by the Elyos on Suthran (a French server) on Saturday April 24, 2010. After two hours of fierce battle, the Elyos army defeated the Balaur, and Suthran completed this achievement, becoming the first server in the West to do so. Arathaur, our French community manager, sat down with the main raid leaders to learn more about the strategy they used and their reactions when Ereshkigal's Claw was slain. Those interviewed here (and their respective Legions) are Forga (Origine), Falkynn (Origine), Ansea (Origine), Madacik (Millenium), Lolaa (Option), Nagora (BabyBoyZ), and Selket (Midgard).

Read the entire interview.

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 this letter from Aion's Producer!

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.

Source

NCSoft is bringing the Aion servers down at 3:30 a.m. PDT, May 12, 2010 for maintenance. The maintenance is estimated to take no longer than 3 hours.

Thank you for your patience!

We’re happy to announce that we’ve added a new member to the Aion community team. Please give a warm welcome to our new North American community coordinator, Katherine “Trine” Field.

Katherine brings a breadth of experience to our team. She has worked with community and with QA, as well as developed in-game events. She is an avid Aion player, having played over 1,200 hours in Aion since launch, and has spent time with both Asmodian and Elyos characters. She has played nearly every class in the game, crafted through expert levels, and enjoys rifting and siege warfare. Some of her all time favorite games outside of Aion are Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, and GTA4.

Source

The last week passed accompanied with a fair bit of anticipation for Aion’s new public test server (PTS). The day has now come for that server to spread its wings and descend to mortal realms. As you are reading this, the PTS has been online for a short while. Your friends are probably connecting already!

What are you waiting for? Log in and create your character in preparation for future patch testing right away!

Someone recently discovered an exploit in the Veteran Rewards system. Some players were able to procure an unintended amount of Recovery Crystals as part of the seven-month reward. To rectify this, our good friend Morati has donated his seemingly endless Secret Remedy supply. The Recovery Crystals previously available in Veteran Rewards program for months 7, 8, 10, and 11 have been replaced with Morati’s Secret Remedy.

The new reward has the same restoration values and shares the same cool-down timer as the Recovery Crystals. The only difference between the two items is that this new reward isn’t tradable.

The changes will be retroactive to preserve the value of the Recovery Crystals that players earned legitimately.

Source

Game patches have a long way to travel from conception to actual implementation on live services. One of the stages - Quality Assurance - involves thorough testing of new content, but it’s not always enough to cover the nearly infinite amount of scenarios that are prone to occur when legions of players eventually bite into a patch on the live servers.

As a way to reduce the likelihood of imbalance and bugs reaching live servers unnoticed and unresolved, we have for some time been working to launch two Public Test Servers (PTS), one for our North American Aion players and one for European Aion players. The two servers will after much preparation open their gates for the first time on the 29th of April.

In order to test new content, the Public Test Servers will implement patches a little bit earlier than the regular Aion servers. They will be devoted to testing these patches for bugs and errors and are as such not suitable for "main characters" to be created on since characters may at any time be wiped or changed to accommodate testing needs.

There will not be any pre-made characters available to you, but the servers will be configured to boost game progress with a few stimulating settings, including a very substantial increase to experience gain, Abyss Point gain, crafting/gathering and item drop rates. You will be able to create both Elyos and Asmodian characters in the happy spirit of testing, but rest assured that no Public Test Server characters will ever count towards your account character slot limit.

Details on how to access the Public Test Server for NA and EU respectively will follow very soon.

Until then...

Fly high, Daevas!