Aion: The Tower of Eternity Interview
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We've heard a lot about "westernizing" or "culturalizing" Aion for North American and European audiences. Can you please explain the full breadth of this term? Are we talking about language translation, story rewrites, and lowered experience curves here?
Westernizing Aion is about making the game culturally relevant to our market. This includes going above and beyond basic translation and delving into the story behind the text and making sure that it is presented in a way our players will understand. For us it isn't so much about changing things with Aion but shining the spotlight on the area that is most appealing to our audience. Aion is a huge game with a ton choices and features for users all over the world to enjoy; making sure we point those parts out is a huge part of the culturalization.
As for actual changes to the game, we try to take an addition approach, rather than a subtraction approach. For example, we provided more character creation options for the Western audience, but at the same time we were able to provide those same options to the Eastern market. We had a much larger focus on PvE and ensured we had enough content for our users to enjoy. Everyone always brings up the lowered experience curve but the fact is Aion was built with a western curve in mind. An average user will spend about 300 hours to get to the max level, in fact in the 2 weeks since we have launched we have a good amount of players already in their 40s and we expect a few to hit 50 in the next day or so.
