Can I have your attention please: We interrupt your regularly scheduled Wayback Wednesday to bring you this special announcement: All Daevas are ordered to report to the Abyss and bring the war back to Aion. Aion has gone completely free to play. Introducing Aion 3.0: The Ascension.
Normally I would focus on games that have been out longer than 2009 but this week I decided to take a shorter journey down memory lane. Earlier in the day MMORPG's very own William "Wild Bill" Murphy interviewed Adam Christensen, Aion Producer for NCSoft West, and Sean Orlikowski, the Daeva of all Trades, about Aion's conversion to truly free to play. Never being one to miss riding someone else's coattails.... erm I mean, never being one to miss a golden opportunity I took it upon myself to call an audible and demonstrate some of the new features that we could find in Aion 3.0.
One of the things that I was most excited to obtain were the new mounts. Mounts can now either be purchased from a mount vendor in the player housing area or they can be obtained through boss drops in instances. Mounts are not cheap. I bought the slower whale, it is really a blue surf rider but we call were calling it the whale, for a staggering 11m kinah. The faster surf rider is 58m kinah. Have fun farming for that one! One of the funnier moments of the evening was find out the surf riders emote. I was having an earlier conversation with the chat room on how the emotes that the characters in Aion perform while you are semi afk help add to the emersion factor of the game. Well while talking to the chat room I was semi afk standing on my surf rider and he blew me down with a geyser of water. I couldn't believe it. My mount had trolled me, and we caught it on video.
You can also obtain your very own place to live in this latest version update to Aion. At level 21 you can obtain through a series of quests your very own townhouse. In this townhouse you will have a Shugo butler who will be the Alfred to your Batman. He will also send you on more quests to find a starter set of decoration for your new digs.
For those of you that are at max level don't fret. They NCSoft Team didn't forget about you. They raised the level cap to 60 and introduced a whole new set of campaign quests. Daevas should report to their respective faction's Balaurean stronghold. From there you will receive either the "Assault on Tiamaranta" campaign for Elyos or "The Grand Assault" for Asmodians. Both factions will find themselves directed to Sarpan, the new solo instance. This along with the other new instances are where you will spend a good portion of your time gaining experience and moving up in levels. When you obtain level 56 it is suggested that you move on to Raksang. Raksang is a prison that contains some of Tiamat's most leathal enemies and is the farm spot for your new level 57 eternal accessories.
Along with a new business model, new housing, new mounts, new instances, new gear, new bosses, there is also a new server, Kahrun. If you did not want to pick up from where you previously left off and would like a fresh start, want to finally level a character of the opposing faction, or give Aion a try for the first time Kahrun is your perfect opportunity. Aion: Ascension 3.0 breathes new life into a fun game.
