TGS 09: Aion to go live september 25th

The hit MMORPG, labelled a “World of Warcraft-killer”, by the Korean MMO community, is scheduled to open up all retail servers the 25th of september after extensive beta-testing both in open and closed formats, and a lot of improvements over NCsoft’s previous, Korean/Chinese version. Servers have gone live since september the 22nd for all pre-ordering customers whilst final tweaks and server stability issues were being implemented in their German servershack.

Aion marks the first AAA-MMO release of significance since World of Warcraft. Where other MMO’s have failed to entice or even steal away from Blizzard’s immensely popular online RPG, Aion has a viable chance of success. Of course, this is no more than speculation, but at this moment, odds are very real that Aion will continue to expand and creep up to it’s name as a WoW-killer. The game’s main arrowheads countering World of Warcraft are;

- A technically superior graphics engine
- Unique gameplay elements such as combo-based skills and combat in flight
- Extensive character customization options (from breast size to nose length to how you want your armor to appear)
- Revamped PvP mechanics with a third NPC PvP faction mixed in (dubbed PvPvE)

Skepticism surrounding the WoW-killer label is of course, widespread, and probably even rooted in truth. The same skeptics, however, agree that Aion is the best MMO as of yet to challenge WoW. More information about Aion, is at NCSoft’s official Aion website.