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Aion Interviews: Update 1.9 Info
After speaking with Lead Producer Chris Hager, MMORPG.com's Joe Iuliani writes this overview of the massive 1.9 update recently announced by NCsoft for Aion.
By Joe Iuliani on March 04, 2010
Aion was one of the bigger releases of 2009 and as with any big release there comes the myriad of complaints. Well folks, your complaints have been heard as the game closes in on its six month anniversary.
Aion is planning a major update; Update 1.9 which I have been informed boasts 26 pages of patch notes. Both the English and Korean translations of the patch notes will be released simultaneously. The developers’ theory is that this allows players to be informed directly through Aion themselves rather than allowing one set of notes to be released then having pages translated through an online service that could lead to some incorrect data.
Leading up to the release, I was fortunate enough to talk with Chris Hager, the Lead Producer for Aion. Chris was generous to spend a little time highlighting some of the major points of the 1.9 update:
Basic Update Overview
- Enhance the player’s experience
- Fix a number of existing issues.
- Listened to what the player’s have talked about and have tried to respond appropriately.
- Change up to the game’s routine
- Make things easier for the players
Specific 1.9 Highlights
While there is no way to cover all the points of the upcoming patch in as great a detail as the patch notes themselves, here are a few of the high points to pique your interest:
15 New Skills
Minor Tweaks to existing skills
Reduced Costs for the following
- Soul Binding
- Flights
- In addition to lower costs, there will be additional flight paths added to the game. Minimizing a player’s time running from place to place and increasing play time as opposed to travel time.
- Soul Healing
- The reduced costs for soul healing well benefit all players, especially the high level players where those Soul Healing prices can really mount up. By reducing this costs players may be able to explore and experiment a little more without the concern of spending their hard earn Kinah on Soul Healing.
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Increased experience
- Boosts to quest experience
- Assists with levelling
Increased “Rewards”
Better rewards from missions
- Rewards will be more “appropriate” from questing. The complexity of the quests will determine a more “appropriate” reward.
Daily Quests
Additional Daily Quests
Variety of quests from “easier” solo quest to “difficult” group quests Increased rewards
- Consumables
- Time based armor sets
Instance Changes
- Increased drop rates from all mobs.
- While not at liberty to state a specific percentage change in the loot drops, Chris Hager assures that “Players will notice the change”.
Changes to Dredgion
This high level PvPvE instance will be seeing some changes.
- Reduced time to complete
- Increases to some of the monster’s difficulty
- Increased challenges to the objectives.
Brand new looking for group system
- Much easier for the user
- User Interface Element
- Post Open Slots for groups
- Looking for group slots
- Search for instances by keywords
- View types of players in existing groups
- Post for specific character class
Set your LFG parameters and an icon to the bottom right will let players know if the parameters have been met. There are high hopes that his improved system will make it much easier to both find a group or a player, without all the scrolling through text that exists now.
;)
Two Handed Weapon Merging System
- Merges two two-handed weapons (say that five times fast)
- Helps to stay competitive with dual wielding classes
- Helps balance the offset number of mana stone slots a two-handed wielder may face against a dual wielder.
- Stat Merger
- Combining statistics from both two handed weapons.
Author’s note: I’m sure this system will be the point of much controversy amongst the dual wielders. I’m hoping the full notes shed a little more light on the subject. Balance is never easy to achieve in any game, I look forward to seeing how it plays out.
Weapon Rental Shop
This is will allow a player to rent a weapon at a fraction of the purchase price. These rentals will be come in either a twenty four or forty eight hour time period. Utilizing the weapon rental shop will save both casual and hard core players a significant amount of Kinah. This method will also be ideal for players looking to take advantage of something such as a double experience weekend, without the regret of buyer’s remorse.
In closing, Chris stated that these changes are “all aimed to make the game more fun from time logged on to the time logged off.”
These highlights were certainly enough to spur me on to read the full patch notes. While not every patch can make every player happy, this one seems to have enough for everybody. Read the notes once they are released and let your fellow readers know what you think.
62 pages of patch notes, now I understand why they've skipped from 1.5 to 1.9 in their patch numbering.
Weapon rental system and the new LFG system sound awesome.
Since I doubt quests will be rewarded retroactively (especially rewards), I will be waiting until the patch is released for me to resubscribe, especially as I plan to start over on a new server with a bunch of friends I found that are playing.
Edit - As corrected, there are 26 pages instead of 62. Still sounds like an impressive patch. 62 was pretty insane though, made me think it counted all the different versions for each language :P
Hoping they have better security as my account was hacked cos i did not use it for 1 month, paid till may too. Hope they fixed all the problems like Speed hacks from sin's, Exploitation of stopping animation, Siege crashes, Bots, hackers, gold sellers, bust quests, bust items, impossible odds for fenris, impossible odds for expert alchemy, more content, more instances (boring at lvl50 when all to do is grind for fenris only to fail crafting).
The game is so beautiful and the pvp is awesome (besides the speed hacks and opossing side closing aion down before you can kill them).
Hoping to come back, but after 6 days of my account being hacked i still hear nothing from them, not even a (we are looking into it)
When i called Brighton office for NCsoft the secretery just fobbed me off saying that i sold my account on E-Bay and slammed the phone down on me :S
Good luck in the future and i hope these patches fixes alot of the onnoying parts of the game.
26 pages of patch notes. 62 was a typo, sorry!
Weapon rental shops sound very interesting. Changes in general look very nice :)
Aion looks to be improving very nicely!
WTB better group exp or a group exp bonus.
and Scenarios ala warhammer for PVP leveling.
Some great improvements. Will be nice to do instances and actually know we will get a blue drop. The item rental shop sounds awesome, especially for those of us who like to play more then one toon and dread the thought of equiping all of them at higher levels.
Keep in mind the Western game has always received things that Korea has not received in order to cater to our culture of gamers. So some of these changes are not included in these patch notes (I believe there is more to the XP changes for us, because NCsoft has been touting a general improvement and re-adjustment of the leveling curve. But that could also be a part of 2.0 which is coming relatively soon after 1.9)
Don't bother taking weaponsmithing as a craft anymore.
if the leveling curve is drastically reduced and they finally add more viable quests past level 35 this game would be win.
The new LFG elements they are adding sound very welcomed.
What the hell are you smoking? The only western only changes that aion has gotten is the 30 minute anti-afk timer and seige time changes.
The leveling curve is fine, there just need to be more content available at all levels. The game should a journey, not a destination (top level).
Au contraire, people will need 2h to destroy in order to enchant their main wepon :P
[quote] Don't bother taking weaponsmithing as a craft anymore. [/quote] edit: hmmm doesnt this work like this here?
Are you silly? Imagine having a vault of your hand crafted weapons that you can put on your merchant for rental... ? Why do you thinkt here are car lease and rental companies? this isnt because its not profitable, its because you can squeeze more cash out of something in the long run like this. And may i remind you that swords cant break like cars do? atleast not in this game ... :P
edit: hmm just thought up that this might actually create somewhat of a comunity among crafters, atm there is barefly one atleast on my server, im a 400+ armor crafter but i cant recall having any communication with fellow crafters... :o
It's true that the leveling curve is fine, but it's also true that Aion IS a journey if you diversify your game time. There is enough content and things to do while leveling that it does feel like one, at least for your main character. The journey is more enjoyable than the destination right now.
There needs to be more content for people to level alts though, and more endgame content as well, which is coming in v2.0. Hopefully it doesn't take half a year to get to us..
Really good stuff in there, I still play Aion and enjoy the game and these are all welcome changes/improvements. 40 minute Dred is awesome from the current hour, more time to do other stuff at night.
I particularly like the fact that they are introducing a new healing bonus for healers to stack. I always found very awckward for healers not to be able to increase their healing capabilities.
All in all great changes here, and I think the game is going in the right direction.
Cant wait too see more of what 2.0 is bringing after this one
Au contraire, people will need 2h to destroy in order to enchant their main wepon :P
well unless they increased the chances of coming off with a decent item then forget it i gave up on wasting money trying to make a decent weapon
The leveling curve is fine, there just need to be more content available at all levels. The game should a journey, not a destination (top level).
oh its a journey alright a very long and boring one imo
Definitly some positive improvements ahead! At least poeple see now that they are being heard. Thats an improtant thing.
Cannot wait should be ready for me and my return from Holiday woot !
Has this patch been released yet I'm alittle confused, I want to go back to Aion with a new experiance and not how it was around launch, so is this been released yet or still waiting?
yes 1.9 has already been released