Aion Associate Producer Interview

11 Aug 2009 at 10:30:11 by Bill Vaughan

With momentum gathering for Aion's imminent European release, IncGamers' Bill Vaughan caught up with Lani Blazier, the associate producer on the title, to find out how this game is gearing up for its release, what makes it different to other MMOs and what features it'll, well, feature.

Keeping our eyes peeled for the next update, Blazier also tells us how the latest version of the game is doing in Korea, currently, the strongest market for the game.

Bill has also been following the game in the closed beta, and you can read all of her diary entries, starting with the first one, right here.


Aion's been out for eight months in South Korea now, and we hear it's doing extremely well. Do you expect the same reception in the West?

We're excited about the momentum we're seeing for Aion as we approach the launch in North America and Europe. As we recently announced, the Aion Limited Collector's Edition has sold out, and Aion is among the top pre-ordered games today from retailers. We've had incredible response from our closed beta tests-the players have logged literally millions of hours playing in the betas. All of this inspires us as a team to work even harder to make the best possible MMO experience. It's on us to make sure Aion delivers the best MMO experience possible for Western gamers. To make that happen, we're fully localising the game with a team of published fantasy writers and shipping Aion with the most up-to-date version of the game.


Aion is PvPvE. Can you explain that to us? How does it differ from PvP?

PvPvE isn't different than PvP, it includes PvP. PvPvE stands for "player vs. player vs. environment." What we've done in Aion is taken both styles of gameplay, PvP and PvE, and blended them together. Player can change their game style from PvP to PvE at any time, and there are game challenges and rewards for each game style. The Baluar, the fearsome NPC antagonist faction of both the Asmodians and Elyos in Aion, can also interject themselves to add a PvE twist to the PvP when the game server interprets particular real-time events.


All Aion characters are human. Are there any plans to introduce other races?

Currently, the two playable factions-the Asmodians and the Elyos-are indeed human. Aion does have a nonhuman race, our advanced AI faction, the Balaur. We have no plans to introduce a new race at this time, but we never say never, and we are always adding new content to the game.


There are four primary classes-the Mage, Priest, Scout, and Warrior-each with two subclasses. What if I picked a Warrior, and at level 10, chose to make him a tank and went with the Templar. Could I later change him to a Gladiator, a damage-dealing Warrior, if I wanted a change from tanking or to level quicker?

At level 10, your character completes an ascension quest, and you decide on a subclass that suits you best for that character. If you select the Templar as your subclass, you are committing to all Templar-specific spells/skills/Stigma stones, and so on. The two subclasses of Warrior do have some crossover-they both come from the Warrior class. However, a Templar doesn't have the ability to switch over to the other subclass.

How often will we see new content, such as expansions, for Aion?

We are always adding new content to the game. To give you an example of how dedicated the team is to keeping things new and exciting, Aion has only been out (in Korea) for eight months, and we've already seen three major updates.

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