From the looks of the video, Inggison sure looks like a place that fairies would call home. Lush fauna and flora, brightly colored terrain, and sweeping hills populated with exotic wildlife make for an inviting zone for players to romp around in. However, Aion: Assault on Balaurea is not all about flowers and frolicking, the video ends with a fearsome invitation, “The World of the Dragons Awaits You.” Just beyond that giant purple mushroom ridge lies a darker side to Aion’s newest zone. It seems unfair that some of Inggison’s landscape is so full of life, while others are barren – populated by wandering behemoths who seem to have risen from the very bowels of the earth itself. If that wasn’t enough, the aforementioned Dragons patrol the skies, keeping track of the realm’s inhabitants – and intruders.

A new Elyos foothold in Balaurea, Inggison looks like a unique addition to NCSoft’s beautifully stylized Aion. The video tour has been posted with this preview, so you don’t have to listen to me ramble on any more – see for yourself!

Altgard Kitter

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NCsoft released screenshots and trailers for pets that will be released with the upcoming Aion expansion, Assault on Balaurea.  Included in the pets are daggies and kitters.  I’m not sure why it’s necessary to change it from dog and cat to such obvious naming conventions, but hey, whatever!   Aion: Assault on Balaurea is releasing on September 10, 2010 and available from retail outlets for a limited time.  The pets will be a bonus to anyone who buys the expansion.

The brief trailers of the pets are after the jump.  The trailers show off five different pets, plus the Speckled Ailu in EVERY SINGLE one.  I guess they really want people to know about their pandas.

Continued…

Earlier this weekend, Lance Stites, Executive Vice President of Game Operations and Production at NCSoft, filled in for Chris Hager by writing up July’s Community Address. It is always a good idea to touch base with your players after a server merge, since the transition can leave some with a bad taste in their mouth. In some cases a sign of a failing game, server merges are often misunderstood. Stites emphasizes that providing a “vibrant social experience” is the key factor in the decision behind these merges, and he is excited about Aion’s future with it’s first expansion, Assault on Balaurea. However, bots and other RMT affiliates continue to wreak havoc in-game, and Stites assures us that the dev team is working diligently to eradicate these false accounts.

Server merges come with their fair share of issues, the most prominent being imbalance. The team at Aion opened up inter-faction transfers during this process to allow players that freedom, but unknowingly exacerbated the imbalance issue that called for the merge in the first place. Since then, player transfers have been closed temporarily to stifle further disproportionate behavior. Stites explains, “if you’re playing on a predominantly Elyos server, Asmodian creation will be the only race available for new characters.”

Continued…

Customers’ mixed feelings towards Aion have the guys at NCSoft between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, they could charge for the upcoming Aion: Assault on Balaurea and risk giving the impression that they are nickel-and-diming the playerbase. On the other hand, they could release the expansion for free and forego any revenue in favor of customer goodwill.

Kris Graft at Gamasutra.com has recently explored the topic with Aion’s lead producer Chris Hager. Hager explains, “I think what it came down to was that we felt it offered good player value, to give it to players for free, and we just wanted to make sure that if in the future we ever do charge for anything, we make sure it’s a good amount of content. We don’t want to nickel and dime players.”

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Attention all past and present Daevas.  This weekend NCsoft will be hosting a “Double The Fun” weekend in Aion Online, that will allow past Aion players (and current ones) to log into their accounts and start earning DOUBLE the experience points.  Thats right, all Aion accounts will be activated for this weekend and this weekend ONLY.  Once the event is over, non-subscribers will go back to not subscribing, and current players will go on with their happy lives.  If you would like to reactivate your account after the weekend event is over, then of course you will get the treat of keeping your bonus experience and findings.

This event will Start: Friday, July 30, 2010 at 8 a.m. PDT ,11 a.m. EDT, and Saturday July 31, 2010 at 1 a.m. AEST.        

This event will End: Monday, August 2, 2010 at 3 p.m. PDT ,6 p.m. EDT, and Tuesday August 3, 2010 at 8 a.m. AEST.

Be sure to get in on the action before you miss your chance to power level your way to the top!

NCSoft has announced the release date for the upcoming free expansion Aion: Assault on Balaurea; September 7th, 2010. The expansion will be released digitally on that date, but it will also be possible to purchase boxed copies of the full game in North America, and from September 10th in Europe as well. There will apparently be “exclusive in-game pets” for those that choose to do so.

The older “preview” trailer above shows off a number of the new features coming in the wake of this expansion, but as some of you probably know, the biggest new addition to Aion will be flight mechanics. NCSoft claims that flight will offer “much more than just a way to gracefully explore the landscape - it is a strategic and integral part of combat, quests, and exploration.” I’m sure current players will appreciate the increased level cap too… and maybe the relentlessly cute pets, although I felt myself heading towards a sugar overdose just watching them.

For more information on Aion or the upcoming expansion, visit the official site.

Are you a fan of NCsoft games? Headed to Comic-Con 2010? Well you’re in for a treat.

NCsoft has released information giving fans and Comic-Con goers a taste of what they can expect from their booth (#5305). You can meet the developers, community and design teams for Aion, City of Heroes (CoH) and Guild Wars 2 and ask them any questions you may have. For you CoH fanatics, the booth will also have Alienware computers setup to play CoH: Going Rogue.

For a full list of NCsoft booth events you can visit their website for details.

On July 14, Aion will merge over 30 servers from North America and Europe into a streamlined 13 servers. This week the community team released some details about the merger and its effect on the players’ mailboxes.

Essentially, affected Aion players have nothing to fear! The final word is that mail and Account Warehouse items will not be lost at any stage of the merger. Mail and attachments will be transferred over to the new combined server, as will Account Warehouses.

The Aion community team does recommend that concerned players read their mail and store any attached items before the merger for maximum protection from item loss.

Aion launched in Europe and North America in late 2009.

Aion 1.9 Patch is now live! After much anticipation and a lot of maintenance,  Aion’s 1.9 Patch has been released and is now operational for North American and European servers. Due to the massive amount of players that are streaming in to play Aion with its latest updates, the team at Aion expects the servers to be somewhat slow which was a common problem at the games launch and with subsequent updates.

The team at Aiononline.com have provided a PowerWiki entry to help players familiarize themselves with the new patch.

The official news release about the update mentions, “We’ve determined that clicking the ‘Force Launch’ button may cause your update progress to be lost. It can in some cases be the reason for your client update starting over from the beginning.” With an 8.5 GB download to get through, make sure to be careful and heed their warning. The team asks that you please be patient with downloading the patch and logging in.

Added to this, Aiononline.com has whipped up a funny trailer for the game called Goin’ Legit. The trailer has a few good laughs and deals with mobsters shaking down a goofy-faced kid to help with their power-leveling racket.

For the official announcement from Aiononline.com about their 1.9 Patch going live, click here.

Internet security company Symantec revealed this week that it had discovered a server containing the “credentials” – username, password and other information – of 44 million stolen game accounts. The credentials themselves were gathered by some sort of traditional malware botnet, but the new and terrifying twist on the story is that they were being validated by a distributed network of computers infected by a Trojan virus. What this means is that unsuspecting internet users were helping the hackers validate the account details of these 44 million accounts with their own computers, due to the presence of a Trojan in their system.

The theft appears to be targeted mainly at Chinese gaming company Wayi Entertainment, but around 2 million of the accounts were registered with PlayNC, a service that includes Lineage 2, City of Heroes and Guild Wars, among others. Around quarter of a million were also spread between Aion and World of Warcraft.

As always, make sure you keep antivirus protection and general internet security in mind on any computer that is online.