Today promises to be a busy day. Official Patch Notes of the Closed Beta to Open Beta changes have been posted. For those that downloaded the big OB client/patch 21.4MB patch from 1.5.0.1 to 1.5.0.2 and a small 1.5.0.2 to 1.5.0.3 have been made available through NCSoft Launcher. Penny Arcade Expo is about to begin in Seattle (everyone and their mothers are going to be there making big announcements). Aion blogging community has also been very active and everyone is super excited with the approaching OB (two more days people, two … more … days!). We have also released our Patch Notes page with the CB to OB full patch notes being the first to appear there. It is enhanced with our quest database links so you can find exactly how to enter Dark Poeta and other new instances. First thing’s first.
Brian Knox, Aion producer has released his letter to the community. He addresses the upcoming open beta and all the changes it is bringing. The two important things he mentioned is the fact that servers will be balanced by race so you can be faced with a “This race cannot be created” message.
Here’s what Brian has to say about that:
Please remember this is an Open Beta Test, and while our goal is to provide you with a flawless Aion experience, there are behind-the-scenes infrastructure tests happening to prepare for launch. One very important area that will affect everyone is that we will be balancing races as folks rush to log into the servers. As a result, you may get a “This race cannot be created” message because that server is starting to become unbalanced. It’s important to us that we try and keep a balance of the races during the Open Beta of Aion. If you come across this message, please feel free to try another server or wait until the server balance has tipped back.
Also, he gave the official link to the patch notes which we mirrored and enhanced with our quests database entries here. The patch notes are absolutely humongous. Biggest Wall of Text ever. Nevertheless, they are an interesting read (if you have the attention span). The short list is this:
1. New Areas: Theobomos (Elysea) and Brusthonin (Asmodae)
2. New Instances!
3. Over 40 new default faces have been added to character creation.
4. Increased PvPvE rewards
5. UI changes (click-to-move has been disabled by default)
6. New items!
7. New skills + increased balance
8. Tons of new quests.
9. Advanced Stigma Stone System
10. Chat Channels
a. Class
b. Region
c. Looking For Group
d. Languages
Penny Arcade Expo (brought to you by Penny Arcade – world’s biggest webcomic) is beginning today and all your favorite Aion staff will be there along with everyone in the industry. NCSoft’s booth will be right in the middle of it all, considering the OB will be released in two days – can’t blame them really. Lani Blazier posted on Twitter that there will be an Aion panel in the Wolfman Theatre (602-604) and they’ll have a special giveaway if you come early. We’ll keep you updated with all Aion related news (and mmorpg news on our www.mmorpg-life.com site) around the clock.
Finally, Swizza, your lovely Aion blogger released day 4 of his “21 Days of Atreia” series of blogs and will be handing out an Aion open beta key. Be sure to follow him on Twitter to find out when he posts the details.
Aion Tavern Blog has also posted a couple of great posts I encourage you to read: Aion Release Survival Guide and How to Get Players to Join Your Guild and Stay. Enjoy!
