The long waited Aion 2.5 Update – Empyrean Calling is finally scheduled for North American and European Live servers on May 25th. To celebrate the launch of the new update Aion team prepares several events from May 11th through June 14th:

May 11 – June 8: Increased XP Event
May 11 – May 17: ‘Behind Enemy Lines Rifting Event’
May 18 – May 25: Increased Drop Rates Event
May 18 – June 1: ‘For War and Glory AP Event’
May 25 – June 8: ‘Gateway Getaway Event’
May 25 – May 31: ‘Behind Enemy Lines Rifting Event’
June 1 – June 14: ‘Atreian Artisan Expo’

The “Behind Enemy Lines Rifting Event” is a recurring event we are currently hosting in Aion. During this rifting event, we’ll remove the defensive buffs in Heiron and Beluslan. The defensive buffs will remain in place in Eltnen and Morheim.

Our “For War and Glory AP Event” is a popular event that is focused primarily on abyss points. This event specifically, letting you get more AP and keep more. AP loss from PvP encounters in the Abyss and Silentera Canyon will be reduced by 50%, all other areas of the game will deliver the normal amount of AP loss. Additionally we will be increasing the amount of AP gain from monsters in the Abyss and Silentera canyon, giving you more AP per kill.

During this “Gateway Getaway Event”, we will introduce special entrance gates that allow your characters to enter instances despite fort ownership. You can enter a selection of the Upper Abyss fort instances and Divine’s Abyssal Splinter from the home territories of Primum and Teminon, and access Silentera Canyon from inside your home base in the Illusion and Gelkmaros fortresses.

The “Atreian Artisan Expo” is a popular event returning to the world of Aion. The Artisan Masters of Atreia have arranged for a two weeks devoted to accelerated skill-up in crafting, essencetapping and aethertapping!

Official news:

The Aion 2.5 update, Empyrean Calling, will be available for download for the player test server (PTS) today, May 5, 2011 at 12:00 p.m. PDT.  We are also excited to announce that Empyrean Calling will be going Live on our NA and EU servers on May 25, 2011! We will be holding several mini-events on our Live servers to celebrate the approaching 2.5 update.

If you already have the PTS game client, your launcher can incrementally download the 2.5 client. If you do not already have the PTS client, you can also download the full Aion PTS 2.5 client as an FTP download. Visit our Aion 2.5 PTS FAQ for details on downloading the full 2.5 PTS client.

Our team is pleased to present our Aion 2.5, Empyrean Calling Highlight Video with a sneak peek of the Aion 3.0 update! You can learn more about the details of this exciting new update in our 2.5 Patch Notes!  On May 12, 2011, you will be able to log in to the PTS and experience Aion 2.5 Empyrean Calling yourself!