Aion double XP weekends start soon

By Robert Purchese Published 16 December, 2009

Temporary solution to harsh grind.

To ease the grind, winged MMO Aion is hosting numerous double-experience weekends during the Christmas period.

Each weekend for the next three weeks, levels one to 35 will earn twice as much experience for fighting, gathering and crafting. NCsoft is even lowering the price of Soul Healing and boosting the experience bonus granted the Energy of Repose, whatever that is.

Bonus experience weekends will be held once or twice a month in the new year, too, and benefit characters of all levels.

These ideas are not so much Christmas treats as they are interim solutions to general smoothing of character progression in Aion.

"We've heard your feedback that the experience curve can be steep in certain levels of Aion, and over the last couple of weeks we've been evaluating how we want to address this issue to provide for smoother character progression," wrote NCsoft on the US Aion website.

"While we're committed to providing a permanent solution, our long-term plans require development time. As part of that process, we are implementing a temporary enhancement so that you can feel immediate benefits that we're excited to be rolling out this weekend.

"While the above is an interim solution, we will be addressing the character progression experience curve with a sizeable patch next year," the developer added.

Aion was finally launched in the West this autumn and promptly captured strong support for alluring production values and, let's face it, the wings. No idea what we're talking about? You'd better read our Aion review.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (10) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • davisorle #1 2 years ago

    When they update the graphic engine as we saw on the last 9 minute trailer that they released, by that time most of the basic issues might be solved so I might have reasons to reconsider my opinions on this game. For now Im really not interested unfortunately.. And Im really in need of an MMO. I even considered renewing my WoW sub after so long. Yes that badly i want an MMO. Mass Effect at least will make me forget about it soon I guess.

  • Nightbite #2 2 years ago

    I wonder if using the Lodas Amulet at the same time gives you 4x the experience?

  • stevetuck #3 2 years ago

    Asian MMO... lots of grinding... what did they expect?

  • Distributor #4 2 years ago

    Bring on Old Republic.

  • Macross #5 2 years ago

    I just started playing this and its not a bad game to be fair. Yeah theres a few rough edges and some odd bare spots in variety, but the character customisation is awesome and im actually having alot of fun so far.

    That said im still a noob and the game may still crawl up the trouserleg of tedium and chow down on the member of despair before I get to level 50.

  • Dexter2015 #6 2 years ago

    Take World of Warcraft over this crap any day!

  • Atnor #7 2 years ago

    Wow, they must really be hard up to resort to this band-aid.

    I think it says a lot about their Korean based development structure that their cycle to fix this seems so slow. Responsiveness and quickness doesnt seem to be their forte.

    Oh well, they had their chance with my money, I can't garner up enough effort to think about resubbing. I'm happy with Fallen Earth atm, and by the time they appear to be ready to have things kinda sorted out, SW:TOR will be here...

  • Kerome #8 2 years ago

    In game development terms this is actually being pretty responsive. They've taken the feedback from the first three months, presumably done some user research on it, formulated a plan and are starting to do some PR to let people know what's coming. In terms of catering for western audiences that's pretty much a first for an asian product, and I think it says something about the extent of NCSoft West's involvement in the product.

    Releasing the updated levelling experience with a new content patch definitely gives them the best chance of recapturing some market share post launch, but there's a difference between talking the talk and walking the walk... Should be interesting to see what happens.

  • Kerome #9 2 years ago

    In terms of whether it stacks with Lodas, I would think that it would... back when I had a subscription I checked whether Lodas stacked with rested, and it did, so it's a fairly safe assumption.

  • edylc #10 2 years ago

    This is great! I love the idea of double XP weekend and also the lower soul healing costs. This is a nice holiday treats for Aion players out there, especially for me. Good thing because It'll lessen the aion gold grinding complaints. I'm really excited about this. Thanks NSoft!