The first expansion for Aion, Assault on Balaura, has launched on all servers. Balaurea will give players new zones, quests, pets, weapons, items, skills and more. The best part is that the expansion is free for all Aion players.

• New Instances: Aion hosts eight new instances each filled with fantastic challenges and enticing rewards. These new instances experienced at both lower and higher levels offer a range of challenges for all varieties of players ranging from solo adventures to full-on Legion raids.
• Pets: Pets are no longer only decorative. Aion redefines how MMORPGs approach pets, creating an entire new subsystem for players to explore as they acquire functional pets capable of storing goods, assisting with crafting or acting as guardians by alerting their masters to nearby enemies. Pets are acquired through in-game purchases, quest rewards, item drops, NCsoft Store, and special promotional events.
• New Zones: Players will explore the vast lands of Balaurea, the home of the Balaur, ruled by the Dragon Lord Tiamat. The Asmodians and Elyos have established fortresses in the two new zones: Gelkmaros and Inggison, each area featuring completely new environments, powerful monsters and unique flight mechanics for players to enjoy.
• Increased Level Cap: Five additional levels can be achieved. With an increased level cap of 55, characters will discover new weapons, earn new items and learn new skills as they explore the dangerous lands of Balaurea.
• Enhanced Flight Mechanics: Brand new flight options in the form of Windstreams allow characters to traverse the vast new zones of Gelkmaros and Inggison with increased speed and unlimited flight time. Windstreams have varying strengths and effects, adding a further layer of depth and strategy to Aion’s highly-acclaimed flight mechanics.

Find out more about Assault on Balaurea at the Aion site.

Here are some videos of bosses in the 12man raid introduced.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6QRQLEHykE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdKRNt_1Hh8

Highly acclaimed flight mechanic.....you mean the one in which melee can't be involved in still to this day.  Highly acclaimed is a bit of an overstatement.

Hope it goes well for them!

Originally posted by gauge2k3

Highly acclaimed flight mechanic.....you mean the one in which melee can't be involved in still to this day.  Highly acclaimed is a bit of an overstatement.

Seems more like a melee combat mechanic that is flight related. The flight mechanic in general in Aion is relatively good.

Can't wait for the servers to come back up.

For those of you who had problems with their flying PvP, it's being taken out in 2.0

New "ground abyss"

Originally posted by xjum52

For those of you who had problems with their flying PvP, it's being taken out in 2.0

New "ground abyss"

Misinformation. It's not being taken out. There's just a high-level ground PVP area. The melee problems while flying still exist.

For a vast  number of early players  anything ( and I mean anything at all ) they do now is too little too late , and that includes yours truly . They blatantly ignored all warnings during and after beta  concerning the lack of content and  the grind- factor , not to mention botting and goldselling. Only when they realized folks were leaving in droves did they address those issues - or at least attempted to - but by then their credibility had dropped to below freezing . 

Concerning this expansion : it's mediocre at best . Pets isn't something completely "revolutionary " . Even a big number of F2P titles have elaborate pet-systems . The more I watch how Aion is being handled the more I think this title isn't worthy of a subscription . 

It is  a complete failure in western hemisphere in terms of retention of early players . That variable is always indicative of the long term success rate of any MMO . If and when folks start to quit  en masse after a few weeks ,chances of you reversing that trend are extremely slim. And Aion only had the fancy looks going for it from day one ( unlike Tabula Rasa which had far more going for it ) .

Originally posted by Synthetick

Misinformation. It's not being taken out. There's just a high-level ground PVP area. The melee problems while flying still exist.

 Slander. The flying exists but is no longer used. You will never be "while flying" again.

Originally posted by rikwes

It is  a complete failure in western hemisphere

 It's better and more popular than any other MMO released since 2004.

ITT: WAR/AoC

Originally posted by rikwes

For a vast  number of early players  anything ( and I mean anything at all ) they do now is too little too late , and that includes yours truly . They blatantly ignored all warnings during and after beta  concerning the lack of content and  the grind- factor , not to mention botting and goldselling. Only when they realized folks were leaving in droves did they address those issues - or at least attempted to - but by then their credibility had dropped to below freezing . 

 

Concerning this expansion : it's mediocre at best . Pets isn't something completely "revolutionary " . Even a big number of F2P titles have elaborate pet-systems . The more I watch how Aion is being handled the more I think this title isn't worthy of a subscription . 

 

It is  a complete failure in western hemisphere in terms of retention of early players . That variable is always indicative of the long term success rate of any MMO . If and when folks start to quit  en masse after a few weeks ,chances of you reversing that trend are extremely slim. And Aion only had the fancy looks going for it from day one ( unlike Tabula Rasa which had far more going for it ) .

 

Still has more subs in the west than everything but WoW so not sure where your going with this. This expansion is giving the western players exactly what they want. Personally it makes me very happy.

Originally posted by Frostbite05

Originally posted by rikwes

For a vast  number of early players  anything ( and I mean anything at all ) they do now is too little too late , and that includes yours truly . They blatantly ignored all warnings during and after beta  concerning the lack of content and  the grind- factor , not to mention botting and goldselling. Only when they realized folks were leaving in droves did they address those issues - or at least attempted to - but by then their credibility had dropped to below freezing . 

 

Concerning this expansion : it's mediocre at best . Pets isn't something completely "revolutionary " . Even a big number of F2P titles have elaborate pet-systems . The more I watch how Aion is being handled the more I think this title isn't worthy of a subscription . 

 

It is  a complete failure in western hemisphere in terms of retention of early players . That variable is always indicative of the long term success rate of any MMO . If and when folks start to quit  en masse after a few weeks ,chances of you reversing that trend are extremely slim. And Aion only had the fancy looks going for it from day one ( unlike Tabula Rasa which had far more going for it ) .

 

Still has more subs in the west than everything but WoW so not sure where your going with this. This expansion is giving the western players exactly what they want. Personally it makes me very happy.

 

No it doesn't . The press has asked for subscriber numbers numerous times but NCsoft has steadfastly refused to supply them . So you are merely speculating how many subscribers they have ( or worse : you believe the PR-babble Ncsoft is feeding you ) . I have witnessed firsthand how the population declined very rapidly after just a few weeks ( to the point server mergers were in order ) never to rebound . Entire guilds folded due to members' mass exodus 

It does not have more subs in the west than everything but WoW, they took far too long to release any updates at all, they suck at communicating any REAL information with their community, and it's definitely NOT a BETTER game than Age of Conan or LOTRO.  It's level curve is ridiculous, and only a very small portion of players ever made it to 50 in the first place, so raising the level cap doesn't make much sense. Especially since I doubt they're really telling the truth about speeding up the progression rate with this update, they've said that like 3 times now and it's never made a bit of difference. That in itself is probably what discouraged people from keeping up with the game.

I hope this update is successful and that it brings players back to the game, I hope that they start building up their subscription rate again and somehow miraculously rebound, and I hope this update is what everyone wants, but until I see extended reviews of this expansion and hear from friends how it's adressed the concerns of western players I won't be playing again.

rikwes condemns Aion for the same kinds of things that every other game is guilty of. That's not a reason to satisfied with Aion, but it is a reason to not single it out. I've played the game on and off since beta, and I don't remember things quite the way rikwes describes them. I remember Aion reacting very strongly and swiftly to players. For instance they were combatting botting and gold selling even before the game was released in NA. Then when it got bad, they dropped the ban-hammer big time and that effectively minimized the problem. The last two updates addressed the grind-factor. rikwes has selective memory.

No it doesn't . The press has asked for subscriber numbers numerous times but NCsoft has steadfastly refused to supply them . So you are merely speculating how many subscribers they have ( or worse : you believe the PR-babble Ncsoft is feeding you ) . I have witnessed firsthand how the population declined very rapidly after just a few weeks ( to the point server mergers were in order ) never to rebound . Entire guilds folded due to members' mass exodus 

 

 The average AoC/WAR server has 250-350 players logged in at any time. Aion servers have 4,000-5,000 logged on at any time. There are also more Aion servers than AoC/WAR. It's blatent going from one game to the other which is more popular. My Quad Core @ 4.00GHZ struggles at the broker in Aion.

Originally posted by xjum52

 

 The average AoC/WAR server has 250-350 players logged in at any time. Aion servers have 4,000-5,000 logged on at any time. There are also more Aion servers than AoC/WAR.

This. I've been trying to explain to most of my real-life peers the population status right now, and they always bring up the fail comparisons of WAR and AOC. It's not even in the same ballpark.

Originally posted by xjum52

No it doesn't . The press has asked for subscriber numbers numerous times but NCsoft has steadfastly refused to supply them . So you are merely speculating how many subscribers they have ( or worse : you believe the PR-babble Ncsoft is feeding you ) . I have witnessed firsthand how the population declined very rapidly after just a few weeks ( to the point server mergers were in order ) never to rebound . Entire guilds folded due to members' mass exodus 

 

 The average AoC/WAR server has 250-350 players logged in at any time. Aion servers have 4,000-5,000 logged on at any time. There are also more Aion servers than AoC/WAR.

 

That's not true, AOC and WAR has no way of accurately counting the amount of people on a server at any given time, the search function caps very low in both games. I can tell you though in Age of Conan they have several thousand people on actively on most of their servers at peak hours, I know this because of how many huge/active guilds I associate with on there when I play.

Aion does not have 4-5k on at any time :P theres like 1 server where they may have 2-3k at any given time, teh rest are ghost towns. Also the imbalance between Asmo and Elyos is pretty insane, so if you are playing Elyos you have a very 1 sided window to look through.

You search level 1-10, 11-20, 21-30 for each individual class and talley up the results. It was very easy in AoC as you only find maybe 4 or 5 for each result. In Aion, however, it caps out if you search for level 50 Clerics, and you have to search class by zone by level.

"Ghost town" servers were merged together. All servers are over flowing with activity at the moment.

Do a search on any server then if you think they dont have 4-5K.

Most servers have over 1500 level 50's alone on at primetime, with a ton more between 30-49.

Anyone comparing WAR/AoC's population to Aion is a bit misinformed.

Not to say that the game is perfect, or even good. It has way too many issues that I doubt NCFail in the West is going to be able to fix.

Originally posted by Valentina

Originally posted by xjum52

No it doesn't . The press has asked for subscriber numbers numerous times but NCsoft has steadfastly refused to supply them . So you are merely speculating how many subscribers they have ( or worse : you believe the PR-babble Ncsoft is feeding you ) . I have witnessed firsthand how the population declined very rapidly after just a few weeks ( to the point server mergers were in order ) never to rebound . Entire guilds folded due to members' mass exodus 

 

 The average AoC/WAR server has 250-350 players logged in at any time. Aion servers have 4,000-5,000 logged on at any time. There are also more Aion servers than AoC/WAR.

 

Aion does not have 4-5k on at any time :P theres like 1 server where they may have 2-3k at any given time, teh rest are ghost towns. Also the imbalance between Asmo and Elyos is pretty insane, so if you are playing Elyos you have a very 1 sided window to look through.

I play both factions, and both servers have pretty decent populations at all hours. All of the servers have a healthy population, balance issues are still there, but that's not population lacking in numbers, that's population being swayed one side on any given server. I have yet to run into anything remotely close to a ghost town since I resubscribed, the population was almost shocking at how high it can get, or seem.