Aion servers have been brought down for about 3 hours to apply the latest patch. Some of the major poinst are:
Holiday Event (The Solorius Festival), restored timer for deleted characters, searching items in the Auction House is no longer case sensitive

Find out more …

NCsoft has released a statement to the community about character progression with some interesting solutions:

1. Implementing double experience weekends over the next three weeks for levels 1-35
2. Soul Healing will be less expensive for characters of all levels
3. Increasing the experience bonus that Energy of Repose bestows for levels 20-44

Greetings, Daevas!

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. 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.

To aid you in your travels we will be implementing double experience weekends over the next three weeks. These bonus weekends will affect characters levels 1-35. This includes crafting and gathering experience as well. After the upcoming three weekends, we plan on hosting bonus experience weekends once or twice a month. We want to make it easier for you to experience what Aion has to offer for your characters after level 35.

We are also adding a few permanent benefits with this week’s patch. Soul Healing will be less expensive for characters of all levels, and we’re increasing the experience bonus that Energy of Repose bestows for levels 20-44.

While the above is an interim solution, we will be addressing the character progression experience curve with a sizeable patch next year. We look forward to hearing your comments, and we hope you have fun during these bonus weekends. Make sure to tell your friends -the more the merrier!

The Aion Community Team has announced that the Aion servers will be down from 3:30 a.m. PST, December 17, 2009 (more) for an update. Downtime is estimated to take no longer than 3 hours.

This weeks the maintenance will coincide with the release the latest patch, which will include the Solorius Festival, the first double experience weekend, and a few additional gameplay changes.