aion-tower-of-eternity posts

Last fall, NCsoft was praising the US and European launch of its Korean-developed fantasy MMO Aion. The publisher said the game sold a total of close to 1 million copies in both regions. However it looks like the game has failed to keep a number of its players after the launch last September.

This week NCsoft announced that the Aion development team took a look at the game's player count and concluded, "most of our servers didn't have ideal populations." The decision has been made to merge (i. e. shut down) a number of Aion's servers to increase the population of the remaining servers. There's no word yet on how many servers will be affected or when it will happen but details are promised "in the coming weeks." In the meantime a major new patch for the game will be released on June 2 while a large content patch (2.0) is planned for release in the US sometime this fall.

[Via Massively]

NCsoft's next major MMO title is Aion and today the publisher announced that the open beta test of the fantasy title in its native Korea has been a huge success. The test launched on Tuesday and so far over 170,000 players have played the game which NCsoft says is the most popular such beta launch in Korean game history.

While Aion will officially launch in Korea before the end of the year, NCsoft plans to launch the game internationally, including the US, at some point in 2009. It should be the publisher's next major game since the launch of Tabula Raza over a year ago. You can check out a recent hands-on preview of Aion right here at Big Download.

NCSoft has been credited with creating some of the most addictive MMOs available, but on Wednesday, August 12, 2008, they earned quite a different accolade: they became the first developer to ever explain their game, Aion: Tower of Eternity, with an analogy that made me ravenously hungry for fruit.

NCsoft will be spanning the globe this summer to show off their ever expanding MMO lineup. As we mentioned last week, they will be at the San Diego Comic Con (July 23-27, booth #5209) with stations up and running so that attendees can play the superhero themed City of Heroes, Richard Garriott's sci-fic epic Tabula Rasa and mech-mashing Exteel. Fanzine artist Dave Hamann will also be on hand to draw City of Heroes' character sketches for players.

A few days later, July 29 - 31 in Brighton, England, NCsoft Europe will be showing the media its highly anticipated fantasy, wing-sprouting MMO, Aion: The Tower of Eternity. This will be the first time western journalists will have seen Aion since the summer of 2007, and things have changed. Three weeks later (August 20 - 24) Aion will be on display again at the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany (Hall 3, Booth B20).

The last stop on the NCsoft bus ride will be at the Penny Arcade Expo (booth #642) in Seattle, August 29 - 31. PAX has become a pretty significant gaming con, and for NCsoft to show up with many of the their games (Aion, Exteel, Dungeon Runners, CoX, Guild Wars, and Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa) says a lot. What's more, Guild Wars' fans will be treated to a special player tournament while Exteel and Dungeon Runners' teams will get play sessions in the special LAN area. There will also be speaking sessions in the auditorium for fans to learn more about their many MMOs.