In a recent press conference, NCSoft announced their Aion future plans – Aion 1.9 will hit live servers in March and Aion 2.0 will be available in May. In order to help players find groups or party members, a new “Looking for Group” feature will be added. The UI will also receive and overhaul, so now the skill bar can be moved anywhere on the screen. New skills will be added, as well as new stats – healing increase stat, magic critical hit defense stat, physical critical hit defense stat, etc.
To help players level up faster, “Energy of Salvation” will be added, as well as new daily quests, allowing players to undertake new quests every day, and new medals will be available as quest rewards. A two-handed weapon combining system will be implemented, and max socketing for items will be raised to 15+. A new name boutique will also be available, where players can purchase name brands.
It’s expected that three changes will take place after the patch 1.9 is implemented:
Firstly, it will be easier for players to level up. The existing Energy of Repose can boost players’ EXP gain in monster grinding. Through the added Energy of Salvation, players will obtain more bonus EXP. Furthermore, the cost of soul healing will be greatly decreased and more soul healing places will be added in different areas.
Secondly, the battle system in Aion will be changed. Currently, players will fall to the ground for one to two seconds if they are attacked by monsters and fall into stunned state. But in the future version, two skills that can be used to remove the debuff state will be added for each class at lvl 40 and lvl 48 respectively.
Thirdly, the updates will facilitate players’ operations. In Aion 1.9, if players press on a wrong key and thus sell any item mistakenly, they can use the buy-back function to buy their sold items back. Moreover, the movable quickbar will make players’ operations easier.
The grind totally sucks at the moment!