Exclusive: Aion's Chris hager talks 2.0, part III

But you can actually use geysers to get to new areas. I know on the one map that you can use a geyser, pop up, and glide into a great crater where they are monsters, so this is great for explorers.

There are two types of windstreams: one where you have to fly in it until the end, and a more gentle one that allows you to hop in and out of the stream. It's going to give the players a lot more freedom of movement, freedom of travel, and it's just a new way to travel. It keeps you immersed in the game, which is what I really like about it.

You mentioned Fall 2010 as a target date for 2.0 in your recent community letter. Do you foresee the update going on the test servers a good while prior to live, or will most of the testing and tweaking be ported over from Korea? (Speaking mainly in regard to all the new 50-55 skills being added, and how they will affect game balance, and also the relatively short one week time frame between 1.9 test and 1.9 live).

2.0 will have a longer PTS soak time because of all of the content in it. It's more content for us to check, and it's more content for the players to play through.

When we get a client, it's already been through the rigors of the Korean servers, but we always like to check our added files and our localization files. Now, 1.9 is a fast turn-around time because we wanted to get the content to the players quickly.

However, 2.0 will have a longer PTS soak time because of all of the content in it. It's more content for us to check, and it's more content for the players to play through. While 1.9 was more system changes, 2.0 is content changes, and I anticipate that we'll be keeping it on the public test servers longer.

The localization testing is almost as important as the functionality testing that Korean testing does. If there's a misplaced tag in the text it could create an issue as bad as keeping a campaign quest from being completed or crashing the system. Plus, when you take it from Korean to English, and then English to other languages, it compounds the problem. So that's why it's fast, but we still want to check.

Any final thoughts?

To go along with the 2.0 update, we're actually naming it "Assault on Balaurea". This next update will have both Elyos and Asmodian forces finding Balaurea, the land of the Balaur. Balaur is actually on the outside of the planet, and the players are now taking the fight to the homeland on the outside, and that's where the players will be doing the 50-55 content.

Players will be tracking down exploring parties that never came back, and exploring Balaurea, and the lore really solidifies the entire 2.0 experience. And there will be additional areas opened in Balaurea in the future. I've been looking forward to it. I've been on the Korean PTS for a while now, and I'm excited as a player because it offers solo level instances at 18 and 37 — we have tweaks to skills at the lower ends. Plus, I'm a sucker for running through instances, enjoying the really great story, and getting great loot from the bosses at the end. So that's the stuff that excites me about 2.0, and I hope it excites our players as well.

Thanks for your time.