Spotlight On: Aion: Tower of Eternity
We recently had a chance to see the updated content that will appear in Aion: Tower of Eternity at launch. The new updates are part of the "1.5 update," which has already gone live in the original Asian version of the game (NCSoft plans to keep the Western version of game more or less up-to-date...
We recently had a chance to see the updated content that will appear in Aion: Tower of Eternity at launch. The new updates are part of the "1.5 update," which has already gone live in the original Asian version of the game (NCSoft plans to keep the Western version of game more or less up-to-date with the Asian game within two months' worth of updates), and the US team already has an established pipeline to take content from Asia and translate it into English while also localizing the content for Western audiences by adding many more quests and story-driven details. The US team suggests that about 75% of the content remains the same, but a great deal of content is still added by the localization to make the new stuff more-relatable; for instance, many new "Western-looking" character faces that resemble well-known Western actors have been added. Also, humor is a big part of Aion's lore (both in the original version and the Western version), but not all jokes translate from culture to culture.
The pre-release version of Aion just got a bunch of new pre-release content with the 1.5 update.
Otherwise, Aion's prerelease preparation continues to chug along with more than a million players in the beta and more than 3 million hours logged worldwide; the game is, again, already up and running in Asia and planned for launch in North America and Europe soon, with approximately 6 servers per territory to make sure each area gets good performance. The 1.5 update adds 14 new zones to explore, many of which focus on player-versus-environment ("PvE") gameplay, including new hunting grounds and new raid bosses to challenge. Interestingly, players in Asia have actually requested additional PvE and raid content--uncharacteristic for an audience that typically seems to crave heavy-duty player-versus-player ("PvP") content, though some of Aion's higher-end PVE content has a competitive bent to it, since raid bosses carry the best loot and rewards, so in many cases, teams of players will compete to see who can get to the boss and the loot quickest.
Aion's Western development team described the ongoing reception of the game to Western players as being positive. The game has several features that might appeal most strongly to really hardcore players, such as a positional combat system that grants minor offensive and defensive bonuses to characters who are moving while fighting, and a "stigma" system that lets you customize your character's role by embedding stigma stone items into your weapons and armor--the recent 1.5 update actually added three new additional slots and new ways for stigmas to branch out so that players can create even more-customized characters.
But the team is also looking to build in other features for players of all skill levels. For instance, Aion will have various chat channels for different languages, as well as a handy auto-join group feature that will let you search for and remotely (and automatically) join open groups. In addition, even though Aion's characters start out as tall, shapely humanoids, it offers a full body customization that some players have really taken to, even going so far as to create entire legions (the game's version of guilds) that look similar--for instance, there are no dwarf characters in the game by default, but some players have gone so far as to create dwarf guilds that recruit only characters that look like dwarves.
You can fly into action in Aion later this year.
We then jumped into the game itself to see some of the new zones that have been added, including an Abyss PvPvE zone full of new "Balaur" monsters (the fiends that inhabit the Abyss that separates the two halves of Aion's world), as well as a higher-level version of the game's early training ground, overrun by the Balaur, who have started to emerge into the other parts of the world as part of the 1.5 update's storyline. Like with Aion's other zones, the new zones are colorful and detailed, as are the monsters and characters.
Aion's beta events have come to a close and the game is gearing up for its launch in September.
The pre-release version of Aion just got a bunch of new pre-release content with the 1.5 update.
Otherwise, Aion's prerelease preparation continues to chug along with more than a million players in the beta and more than 3 million hours logged worldwide; the game is, again, already up and running in Asia and planned for launch in North America and Europe soon, with approximately 6 servers per territory to make sure each area gets good performance. The 1.5 update adds 14 new zones to explore, many of which focus on player-versus-environment ("PvE") gameplay, including new hunting grounds and new raid bosses to challenge. Interestingly, players in Asia have actually requested additional PvE and raid content--uncharacteristic for an audience that typically seems to crave heavy-duty player-versus-player ("PvP") content, though some of Aion's higher-end PVE content has a competitive bent to it, since raid bosses carry the best loot and rewards, so in many cases, teams of players will compete to see who can get to the boss and the loot quickest.
Aion's Western development team described the ongoing reception of the game to Western players as being positive. The game has several features that might appeal most strongly to really hardcore players, such as a positional combat system that grants minor offensive and defensive bonuses to characters who are moving while fighting, and a "stigma" system that lets you customize your character's role by embedding stigma stone items into your weapons and armor--the recent 1.5 update actually added three new additional slots and new ways for stigmas to branch out so that players can create even more-customized characters.
But the team is also looking to build in other features for players of all skill levels. For instance, Aion will have various chat channels for different languages, as well as a handy auto-join group feature that will let you search for and remotely (and automatically) join open groups. In addition, even though Aion's characters start out as tall, shapely humanoids, it offers a full body customization that some players have really taken to, even going so far as to create entire legions (the game's version of guilds) that look similar--for instance, there are no dwarf characters in the game by default, but some players have gone so far as to create dwarf guilds that recruit only characters that look like dwarves.
You can fly into action in Aion later this year.
We then jumped into the game itself to see some of the new zones that have been added, including an Abyss PvPvE zone full of new "Balaur" monsters (the fiends that inhabit the Abyss that separates the two halves of Aion's world), as well as a higher-level version of the game's early training ground, overrun by the Balaur, who have started to emerge into the other parts of the world as part of the 1.5 update's storyline. Like with Aion's other zones, the new zones are colorful and detailed, as are the monsters and characters.
Aion's beta events have come to a close and the game is gearing up for its launch in September.
Aion Quick Links
Summary | Reviews | News | Previews & Features | Images | Videos | Downloads | Answers | Forum | Check Prices
- GameSpot ScoreN/ANo Rating
Content you might like…
-
Aion: Tower of Eternity Q&A - Battles, Flight, and Balancing Aion for Western Audiences
Community manager Lani Blazier discusses flying, fighting, and how Aion: Tower of Eternity will cross borders as both a competitive Asian-style massively multiplayer game and a more Western-style quest-based game.
- Apr 20, 2009
Users who looked at this article also looked at these content items.
Images
Games you may like…
-
Guild Wars 2
(PC) -
Risen
(PC) -
Torchlight
(PC) -
Tropico 3
(PC) -
Divinity II Ego Draconis
(PC)
Users who looked at content for this game also looked at these games.
See More Similar Games
40 Comments