Just in time for Valentine’s day, NCSoft made available paid account services. Things you’ll be able to do for a small fee:

• Character Name Change ($9.99/€6.99/£5.99)
• Legion Name Change ($19.99/€13.99/£11.99)
• Gender Change ($14.99/€9.99/£8.99)
• Character Customization ($9.99/€6.99/£5.99)

Also, there’s a special offer for Valentine’s day where you can purchase the True Love Valentine Pack and Chocolate Valentine Pack until February 28, 2010. Both of these include special dyes, emotes and an appropriate head piece. Just a nice little way to show your appreciation to that special someone in-game.

The interesting thing about the Account Services is that there’s an archive of changes made (appropriately named the Shadow Court Archives), so you can keep in touch with friends/legions that have changed their names or appearance.

The official news post is here, while the NCStore page is located here.

Andrew “Tamat” Beegle, Aion’s NA community manager, confirmed the release of so-called patch 2.0 in the first half of this year. Considering that, due to localization, we get patches ~2 months after Korea and that there are only 4 more months left to hit the “first half of this year” deadline, it is safe to assume that we’ll be seeing the patch notes very soon. The statement goes like this:

Hello everyone,

I have a quick update for you! We are diligently working with our Korean counterparts on an Aion update featuring relevant content scheduled to release on the Western servers the first half of the year. We will share the details of the update once the update is finalized. From what we’ve seen so far, you’re going to be very excited.

We have not announced timing for the update as we want ensure it delivers the same level of polish as Aion did at launch.

Stay tuned!

News spotted at AionSource.

Aion servers will be down at 3:30 a.m. PST, February 10th, 2010 (more) for maintenance. The maintenance will take no longer than 3 hours.

During the maintenance we will be applying a few server-side updates to the game during this downtime. The most notable change will be made to siege timers, following your feedback. All fortresses will now be vulnerable for 60 minutes rather than the previous 30 minutes. The only exception is the Divine Fortress’ timer which will remain at 110 minutes.

It is being reported by Incgamers.com that over 17% of Korean internet cafe players spend their time playing Aion. This makes it the most played game in Korea, considering that internet cafes / game rooms are a predominant place for playing games. The source of this information is the Google translation of this Korean web site (it’s a Starcraft 2 fansite). Interestingly enough – Starcraft – yes, the RTS from 1998 – is placed 3rd and World of Warcraft is number 5 on the list with 5.31% share.

One thing you should know about South Korean players according to the Washington Post:

An estimated 2.4 percent of the population from 9 to 39 are believed to be suffering from game addiction, according to a government-funded survey. Another 10.2 percent were found to be “borderline cases” at risk of addiction — defined as an obsession with playing electronic games to the point of sleep deprivation, disruption of daily life and a loosening grip on reality.

DISCLAIMER: The news you are about to read are pure speculation and have not been confirmed by any respectable or official source. The patch version numbers are being used as a way to differentiate them from the current version of the game and to put them in a certain timeline. There is no confirmation of what the actual numbering of these patches will be, nor whether the patches will ever see the light of day! We just thought we share the news from the old rumor mill.

There have been some rumors circling recently about “AION 2.0″ and it coming out in February, 2010. There is no official announcement by NCsoft so far. If this update does hit the Korean servers this month, due to localization, we’ll probably wait to see it for a few more weeks/months. According to mmosite.com this big update will offer:

“Aion 2.0.”

(just a title to differentiate it from the current version)

1. New Level Cap – 55;
2. New Talent System: From lvl50, players can get one point per level;
3. New weapons and corresponding skills, each class will have about 3 new skills;
4. New Guild Skill for Guild Leader only;
5. New Maps for Elyos and Asmodians;
6. New Abyss map on the ground;
7. New lvl 60 Manastone;
8. New Instance: Alatr in the Water(Translated from Chinese)
9. New 24 people Guild Raid

We have also dug up some interesting details on Aion Source concerning the so called “Aion 1.8″ Patch notes. The source for this info are Korean test server patch notes, translated by one of the members of the Aion Source community. Comparing these with the ones above we can see similarities, but in all honesty the notes below seem more likely to be real than the ones above. Remains to be seen who was right (if anyone).

Aion Patch Notes 1.8

1. AP Gain System Change
Until now, if a rank 9 killed a 1 star he/she would gain more AP than a rank 5 killing 1 star, but now if the rank difference is more than 5, you gain less AP.
This will prevent mass suicidal kill attempts on you (if you are high rank) just to get your kill.

2. Ground Abyss
Well that’s about it. There’s gonna be a ground Abyss.

3. Dredgion’s Appearance
Dredgion will appear much more frequently during sieges and will take forts much more often. Also Seed of Detection II will be added which will allow Hide II to be seen.

4. Alliance Dredgion
They say there will be a dredgion with multiple teams going in. With 3 teams on each side, but not like forming an alliance then going in like in sieges.

5. Defensive Godstones
Theres gonna be defensive godstones. Its gonna be something like 10% proc rate heal 890 hp, 2% proc remove all CC from yourself.
These trigger not upon hitting with your weapon, but on receiving attacks.

6. Divine Abyss Points, Divine Medals
These new things can only be gained through PvP. They say these can be gained only from other PCs. For the points you’ll need to just PvP. And theres gonna be quest to earn Divine Medals through a certain amount of kills. Really focusing on PvP.

7. Manastones and ASPD Items change
This is for balancing, but there’s gonna be a different way of being able to slot manastones.
Manastones for spear, manastones for daggers, manastones for greatswords… are gonna have different levels of manastones available for them. Also, items with ASPD will have a lower accuracy. Probably because everyone looks forward to ASPD items.

8. Tezo’s Instance
Like I said earlier there’s gonna be ground abyss, which means there will be forts, which also means there will be Abyss Instances. This is not a new map, but sort of like Fire Temple/Draupnir Cave type. Mobs in this instance will also be placed randomly each time you enter, its gonna be challenging/annoying.

9. Item Level Upgrade
Note: I dont quite get this part, and so does this guy… but here I go
No level cap raise, but there’s gonna be sort of an item upgrading system. At level 50, you can upgrade your item. (note by Aion Life: this looks like the feature Lord of the Rings Online has, where you can level your legendary weapon)