MMORPG.com's Bill Murphy recently had the opportunity to sit down with NCSoft Associate Producer, Sean Neil to talk about the 'westernization' efforts being brought into Aion with the arrival of the Assault on Balaurea 2.1 patch. In fact, Bill calls 'the Aion of today is pretty much a brand new game compared to the Aion of launch.' Check out Bill's chat with Sean. Be sure to add your comments!

First Sean figured it was a good idea to go back in time and give a recap on just where Aion was when it launched in the west last year to give us an idea on just how much progress has been made to make the game ideal for its western audience. When the game launched in the US it was already in iteration 1.5 from NCsoft East. The benefits were that the game was stable and ready for launch in the US because it had already been launched months prior in Korea. The down side was that it wasn’t completely appropriate for the US audience in terms of how the systems worked. It felt, in Sean’s own words, “too grindy” for the Western mentality.

Read more of our exclusive Aion: Assault on Balaurea and 2.1 Interview.