| Aion Tower Exclusive Brian Knox interview at PAX 09 Exclusive Brian Knox interview at PAX 09 Sep 18, 2009 at 3:23 PM - -  0 Comments What was the original concept of Aion? We set out to make Aion a global product that would appeal to the entire world. We wanted something that would appeal to the North, the West, the East, and the South, and have the core concept of the game be able to resonate with gamers around the world. There are a lot of MMOs out there like World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer Online, what separates Aion from the rest of the other MMOs? We've kinda taken the approach of polish and refinement, and making sure we get the best features from everything and add our own flavor, our own twist to it. So you'll see some cool additions, like flight in Aion, that add it as a strategic element. So you'll start seeing flight time and flight speed, both are stats which you can boost as a player. We also kinda put the massive back in mmo. We created a lot persistence zones for the players to form together as a community and create this dynamic experience. We really wanted to focus on this unique world, the quest, the stories, and the creatures that inhabit it. PvPvE is a new featured that was added to Aion, could you explain some of the details about it? Yes, this was originally designed so that we can give players another choice, something like the best of everything. It's important that we don't have players feel that they have to run on a certain track, whether that is PvE or PvP. But kinda seamlessly jumping between the two. PvPvE kinda gives you the best of both, it gives you a kind of balance, but also lets the player play in a dynamic atmosphere. So if you kill a raid boss one time, it might be completely different the next time, because the other faction decides to attack you. In the Abyss your pretty much open, so you are going to be fighting against the Balaur, which is a faction, as well as the opposing player faction. So there are fortresses you can capture whether it is from the Balaur, or from the players. This is one of the question I picked out from the forums. Will players be able to customize their wings in Aion? Yes, almost every class has a different types of buffs or de-buffs for flight. So the spirit master can grab somebody out of the sky and throw them to the ground. There are other people that can restrain people in mid-air. You can also upgrade your wings. We are giving an exclusive one away in the collectors edition as well. But you can purchase some from vendors, you can get some from quests and drops. So it is an equip-able item slot. Will there be bonus content online, or will it all be in Aion when it is released? Right now there is just some pre-order items and some collectors edition items, but nothing for sale online. Many people say the graphics look anime based. In your opinion is Aion's graphic's anime based and why do you say that? Was it originally planned at the beginning or formed as development continued? Well, we wanted to make sure that what ever we created was good. So we wanted to create great art and we think we got that. So we put a lot of emphasis on the character creation where you can make anything you want. So with our 1.5 update you can have faces from anime faces to more traditional western faces, like rugged, orcs, and elven faces as well. So you really get to do what ever you want. And within the game world, it's not your traditional fantasy. So you're going to see a lot of things that are sort of twisted and different. I think a lot of the art from the designers is inspired from Miazaki, Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle, you can see a lot of that influence there. But yes, it was definitely planned. Now let’s talk about the engine for Aion. Will players need a giant new gaming computer to be able to run Aion? I've been kinda telling people that if you have bought a gaming machine within the last 5 years, you're going to be okay running Aion. Our minimum specs are pretty reasonable, a 3 GHz processor, a 5 series GeForce, 512Mb-1Gb of RAM. So it's not too hardcore, it is a newer game, so it does require some of the newer hardware than some of the other mmo's. But it is also built on the Crytech engine, which is from the first FarCry. So there have been a lot of revisions and stability that went into that engine. But it really makes it scale well, we've had hundreds to thousands of players on the screen at one time, and it has been performing really well. Aion has a crafting system, why should players craft? Is there any real benefit? There are a lot of consumable benefits which I think have been taken for granted in most crafting. We have a critical system where you get chances to get better items than what you would normally make. Also, gear kinda fills in spots in the leveling, to where you will be able to equip something that you weren't able to normally equip beforehand, and there are lots of really good components. Crafting is a really intricate part to the economy in Aion. Is the world in Aion completely explorable at your own risk, or do you have to level up to get access to the newer location, do you have to wait for areas to be unlocked over time? Once you are past level 10, you will be able to explore at your own risk for the most part. There are some areas, such as the Abyss, that you will enter in at level 25, so I would say that it is a variety. Will players in North America be able to connect to anyone around the world, or only be able to connect with certain regions? North America and the Oceanic region will be together, and then Europe will be together. So it will be separated out. But we are simultaneously launching North America and Europe. What do you think about the turnout here at PAX? It's really impressing, we just did the panel and we had to turn people away. Hundreds of people in there, and the success of Aion over the past year has been, people keep surprising you about how excited they are for the product. After Aion is released, will you just keep doing updates or will you be working on huge expansion packs? Well, we will continue to provide content, we aren't talking about any sort of expansion right now, we are still trying to get the game launched. But we are launching with three major updates in this region already that have gone out in just the past couple of weeks. We are just going to continue to provide content to the users, and I would expect most of that to be free, but there is a chance of some content expansions as well. Different versions of Aion are being released, what are the benefits of each of these versions? Pre-order will have some benefits, some unique items, access to our head start program. Which will allow you to get in the game about 2 days earlier. Then the Collectors edition will have some exclusive items, a cool figurine, the soundtrack, and some other cool stuff. Aion has some pretty good music, who did the music and how much music is in Aion in terms of hours? The music was composed by Yang Ban Ean, who is composer who as done a lot of anime, he has done The Twelve Kingdoms. So he's got a pretty good track record, we recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra. And like I said, the soundtrack is included in the collectors edition. It's really cool and unique music that fits the world of Aion. Will the music that the player will hear dependent on region or will it just play out as you go along? It kinda fades in and goes and the play through the game. In a tavern scene at certain hours of a day, they will start to sing the song to you, and in combat you will hear different music, in different zones you will hear different music to fit the mood. |
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