Greetings Daevas,

First off, I want to share that I am very excited to serve you—all of the Aion players—as Aion producer for NCsoft West. Having worked on Aion for the better part of two years, I’ve seen it grow from PAX 2007 and the first demo area in Poeta to prelaunch mayhem and now post-launch live operations. As a fellow Aion player myself, I have a vested interest in making it the best game possible, and helping you feel as excited about it as I am. Aion has huge potential, and we have only tapped the surface. We are working on a lot of exciting things set to release in both the near-term and long-term timeframe.

As the producer, one of my focus areas is to communicate frequently and honestly with you. Global coordination of a game as large as Aion takes a lot of planning. We know that at times you may feel like you’re wringing water out of a rock in regard to getting information from us, but we want to be cautious with telling you the correct information to not mislead the community. We are in constant communication with our development and production staff, and we really want to share with you more information on a regular basis, but due to scheduled release timing, localization efforts and Western development schedules, we aren’t always able to share what we’d really like to.

I know you have all been waiting with bated breath for information on the next game update. While I can’t give you a lot of details, I can tell you a couple of things that we are addressing in upcoming game updates. We’ve listened to your feedback and have been working diligently with the Korean development team, and we are proud to say that over the next few updates (the first of which will be coming in Q2 this year) we will address some of your major concerns: a desire for more content at lower levels, increased rewards for quests, and improved drop rates. Even though we aren’t always talking publicly about the next update, we are always listening and integrating feedback into the next update. As part of that, we’re trying to coordinate and deliver on what we say even before we say something. Our goal with update communications is to not only be transparent with you, but also give you a reason to trust us when we talk about updates so that you know we will deliver on what we share with you.

If you’ve been reading the news lately, you know that MMOs are under attack by RMTers (“gold sellers”) and hackers—not just Aion, but several other MMOs as well. Even Google has been the target of recent attacks. To combat this, NCsoft has been communicating with several other MMO companies about ways we can fight back as an industry. At NCsoft, you already know that we regularly review our account security processes and implement changes on an ongoing basis to ensure your Aion accounts, in addition to your other NCsoft game accounts are secure. These complex systems take time, require rigorous procedures, and need a very steady hand to balance additions and not disrupt the security measures currently in place. We sincerely appreciate the patience you have shown as we take time to make sure we are setting up and implementing the appropriate systems to best protect you.

This year in Aion, you will notice that we are implementing a lot of the suggestions you’ve sent us about the game services we offer. We’re also planning on providing you more services and increased interaction with our team. We recently introduced exciting paid services (name change, Legion name change, character customization, and gender change), and we will be adding more services throughout the year aimed at improving your experience. (Yes, server transfers are coming!)
We also recognize that our in-game events have been disappointing to you, and we aim to fix that. Along with the introduction of double XP weekends (as experienced during the Christmas holiday), we started offering scheduled server-wide events players could enjoy on a more regular basis. In the future, look for us to add new events like reduced Kinah soul-healing weekends. (Yes, that’s what you think it is—cheap soul healing for everyone!)

To go hand-in-hand with the additional server-wide events, our community team is hard at work planning and prepping both in-game and out-of-game events for you. The first event of this nature we ran recently in game, and it featured two Shugos who were in love but constantly separated. Many adventurers of Atreia aided in reuniting this couple, and the overall response from this event was extremely positive. It is this level of service that we will hold ourselves to going forward. Events like this will let you talk to and play with our community staff, and they help foster and grow our relationship with you as the year goes on.

To close, I want to reiterate that Aion has phenomenal potential, as I’ve personally seen glimpses of it myself. And as the producer of Aion, I will lead our hard-working, effective, creative production and community teams to increase the level of our service in and out of the game, taking Aion to a new level with you by our side.

Chris “Kinslon” Hager