Aion’s release is right around the corner, and our anticipation is running high! The beards and hairstyles of the character creator are groomed and lined up, jostling against each other in eagerness to be picked for your characters in this coming weekend’s Preselection and Head Start Programs.

Preselection is a benefit available to anyone who preordered Aion. If you are not sure whether or not you are eligible, simply log in to your NCsoft Master Account to verify that your game account is listed and your account type is not designated as “Beta”.

Starting 12:00 p.m. PDT (more) on September 18, 2009, eligible players will be able to start their game clients and log in to create a total of two characters ahead of everyone else. You can name and create these two characters through the standard character creator and be ready to play with these characters right when the game Head Start Program begins (but not beforehand). Preselection will end 9:00 a.m. PDT on September 20, 2009 (more).

Don’t miss this great opportunity to claim your character’s name before anyone else does. It isn’t too late to preorder, even if you have been holding out.

GamerZines has a proud history of putting together content-packed and interesting Aion-articles. Gamerzines has taken this a step further by dedicating one of its magazines to exploring Aion. This downloadable PCGZine issue includes hands-on insights and insider tips from one of our own: Associate Producer Lani “Liv” Blazier.

We are closing to the end of open beta and are with that putting a busy week of testing, bug hunting and insistent server improvements behind us. We have come a long way since day one and very happy to see all the positive things you have to say about Aion, but we are still at a point where can do a lot to improve connectivity performance and make the game a better and smoother experience for everyone.

The frosting on this beta’s cake will manifest itself through a dazzling new patch starting distribution on Saturday 9/12/2009 at 5 p.m. CDT/11 p.m. BST (more). We want to make up for the lost playtime not only by a long list of improvements, but also by adding an additional 6 hours to the end of open beta. Open beta will end on Monday 9/14/2009 at 2 a.m. CDT/8 a.m. BST (more)

It will take us a while to implement all the tasty updates, but if Aion is with us, Atreia will once again thrive with players and life two mere hours later. For European players who prefer to leave night watch to our owl friends in the animal kingdom, this is an excellent chance to leave your launcher on over night to make sure Aion gets patched up and ready for Sunday! The patch checks in at around 630 MB, and you might want to consider doing this sooner rather than later.

Aion 1.5.0.5 Patch Notes

We hope you are looking forward to experiencing all these improvements as much as we do, and wish you will enjoy the 6 hour extension of open beta. Keep posting the same good feedback in our beta forums as you have done so far, and follow us closely on Twitter (@aion_ayase, @aion_xaen, @aion_amboss, @aion_liv). Our mission to communicate everything Aion and to keep you updated continues.

Fly safely.

Get a firsthand look at the NCsoft office in Seoul, Korea, in the third official Aion video podcast found exclusively at incgamers.com, Gamereactor.net, Gamona.de, EveryEye.it, Hardgame2.com and PowerUnlimited.nl! Join Associate Producer Lani Blazier, Lead Designer YongChan Jee, Lead Artist Hyung Jun Kim, and other members of the development team in your inside peek at Aion. The team talks candidly about how the design makes the game appeal to players across the globe, the future of Aion, and more.

Many of you have been curious to learn what the names of the Aion servers will be at launch. We’ve listed the server names below along with their associated time zones. The servers are aligned to those time zones (e.g. affecting fortresses) so that players on the East Coast as well as those on the West Coast can have blocks of game time to play during each server’s prime time. Daylight saving will apply at launch.

Before the start of preselection (which begins September 18, 2009), we will also give our fans from the Oceanic region the chance to take part in an online community poll where you can indicate what server you’d pick unofficially if you want to play with your friends and neighbors. We hope to show instant results in the poll so that you can see which server provides you the best chance to meet them.

We are going to post a similar community poll for roleplayers. We have decided not to officially tag servers as roleplaying servers and enforce specific rules on them. However, we do believe that roleplayers are an essential part of our community, and we support their initiative to claim their own unofficial roleplaying server. Aion gives you the ability to create your own chat channel, and we are already seeing a lot of roleplaying groups out there who are defining their own rules and building up their own communities. Take your time to organize your group before the poll goes live, and then pick the server that would give you the best chance to find players with the same roleplaying interests.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Atreia on one of these servers at launch!

The Aion Team extends a huge thank you for the overwhelming response we have received throughout the beginning of our ongoing open beta testing. We’ve had a few hiccups along the way, but have managed to resolve many of them with your persistent help, reports, and sincere desire for the game to run as it should.

The main topic of discussion over the past few days has been lag, in particular on the North American servers. We believe we have resolved the issue, but we will aggressively work to continue to improve and prevent similar issues. Over the next couple of days, we will do more in-depth troubleshooting to flush out the issue. It is very important to us that the game plays as intended for everyone, and we won’t rest before we reach that goal.

The second issue we are addressing is the authentication server, which from a player point of view, is the login process. We are investigating the issues with its behavior during today and this evening to search for errors in our setups and to try a few different ideas we have that will allow us to understand the player reports and improve its behavior. We will let you know ahead of time if this will impact service in anyway.

The next issue is GameGuard. We are aware that a couple of new errors have popped up since our closed beta tests. We are working on a patch that will address a couple of them. Feedback is essential as we troubleshoot these errors, as the data you give us helps us narrow problem factors down and reach solutions quicker. To give you additional information and suggested fixes that might help your GameGuard-related situation before you need to call upon a customer services representative, we have added a GameGuard information page on www.aiononline.com.

The beta forums have been a quieter than normal, in part due to irregularities with our forum authentication script. Certain upgrades that needed to be made for open beta apparently weren’t completed in time, preventing both new and old accounts from logging in. The fix is now implemented. If you were able to log in prior to this update, but notice that you are suddenly unable to, make sure to update your Aion account password following these instructions. Your password update may take as long as 30 minutes before it is effective.

The final noteworthy topic relates to beta keys. Many of you have wondered why we have been so restrictive in distributing them. We know many of you have guildmates or friends who would love to give the game a try before making a further commitment. To ensure that we had time to set our servers up properly and get rid of initial connectivity issues, we throttled the key giveaways and so that we could ramp the distribution up slowly but securely. We are now at a stage where we are confident enough to open this final beta phase up to a much broader audience by giving away North American open beta keys to everyone! FilePlanet is hosting this giveaway, and you will not need to be a paying subscriber in order to get your hands on one of the keys. FilePlanet also have a number of European keys to give away, so get them while they last! Many more European websites in different languages will also be offering European keys.

Again, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your continued help in the open beta test. With your help, we will flush out any remaining issues before the upcoming release of Aion!

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter (@aion_ayase, @aion_xaen, @aion_amboss, @aion_liv) – no registration is required!

Aion’s open beta has been underway since last Sunday. While we had a few initial issues to defeat (minibosses!), the game is being honed to the point we want it to be– the point where it plays just as sharp and smooth as an Asmodian Daeva’s blade.

We are getting ready to extend invitations to even more players so that more people who have not yet preordered Aion can enjoy the rich world of Atreia in all its open beta glory.

Visit one of our following partners to have a chance of getting a beta serial code (a beta key). This new batch of beta serial codes is scheduled for distribution on Wednesday, September 9, 2009

UK/Europe

www.eurogamer.net
www.fileplanet.com
www.boomtown.net
www.rockpapershotgun.com

Germany
www.pcgames.de
www.gamestar.de
www.buffed.de
www.gamona.de
www.onlinewelten.com

France
www.jeuxonline.info
www.mondespersistants.com
www.universvirtuels.fr

Scandinavia
www.gamereactor.net

Italy
www.multiplayer.it
www.gamesource.it
www.aionitalia.it

Spain
www.hardgame2.com

Belgium
www.9lives.be

Netherlands
www.games.fok.nl

Austria
www.gamers.at

Hello!

Welcome to the Open Beta Test for Aion in both Europe and North America.

Below you will find a list of the major changes and additions to Aion since you last participated in our Closed Beta Test. We have done our best to provide a comprehensive list of changes. The Open Beta brings the game content up to the 1.5 patch that is available in Korea; the same updates that were made to the Korean live servers are being implemented here, as well. While there may be some differences when comparing the official NA/EU notes to fan site translations of Korea’s official notes, the game content is the same.

Not only does Open Beta bring a number of game improvements and additions, you’ll also notice that we had a major terminology overhaul to complete our effort of Westernizing the game. Many skills and items have changed since the Closed Beta Test and should be a welcome surprise as you explore the world.

While we feel the Open Beta version will provide a complete experience, we wanted to note that this is not our final update before launch. Our launch version is in internal testing, and it will continue to flesh out the 1.5 update with the help of your feedback and experiences in Open Beta.

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.

Another hot topic has been our Web site and whether we will be bringing over some of the services that Korea has provided to their community. The short answer is yes! Just like the PowerWiki, we will be bringing some of these services to our own site. We hope to begin rolling them out in the coming weeks.

Overall, we are very excited for Open Beta – it is a culmination of a lot of effort and the feedback of our community. For example, one of the most requested features during Closed Beta testing was a suggestion to use the left mouse button to change the camera. We also added more content both in the persistent game world and in instanced dungeons. You’ll see this change and many others were added in this game update, including:

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

Find a full list of patch notes here.

With this update there is a lot of great content and a very fun world to explore, and we hope that during Open Beta you will experience the magic that is Aion.

Open Beta starts 9 a.m. PDT (5 p.m. BST, 6 p.m. CEST) on Sunday, September 6th.

Brian Knox
Producer, Aion

Aion players can now determine the fate of Atreia with the aid of new gaming gear from SteelSeries. The SteelSeries Zboard™ Limited Edition Aion™ Keyset and SteelSeries QcK Limited Edition Aion™ Asmodian Mousepad have been co-designed with NCSoft to provide the ultimate MMO gaming experience through customized functionality and original in-game artwork. The Limited Edition Aion Keyset offers the full breadth of in-game commands and complete customization of each key, while the Limited Edition Aion Asmodian Mousepad provides a precise, consistent glide for mouse movements. SteelSeries’ new Aion gear gives players the tools they need to battle and quest with superior control regardless of their faction or class. Check them out here.

NCsoft and DC Comics have joined forces to present “Aiva’s Story,” a limited edition comic book that spins the tale of the Asmodian Aiva and her quest for vengeance. If you’re wondering how to collect this one-of-a-kind comic, make your way to the NCsoft booth this weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo, where limited copies of the comic will be available. You can also receive the comic when purchasing the game at GameStop stores in the United States, as well as Electronic Boutiques in Canada. See the ethereal world of Aion in a whole new way in Aiva’s Story!