Game patches have a long way to travel f Aion conception to actual implementation on live services. One of the stages - Quality Assurance - involves thorough testing of new content, but it's not always enough to cover the nearly infinite amount of scenarios that are prone to occur when legions of players eventually bite into the patch on the live servers.
As a way to reduce the likelihood of imbalance and bugs reaching live servers unnoticed and unresolved, we have for some time been working to launch two Public Test Servers (PTS), one for our North American Aion players and one for European Aion players. The two servers will after much preparation open their gates for the first time on the 29th of April.
In order to test new content, the Public Test Servers will implement patches a little bit earlier than our regular Aion servers. They will be devoted to testing these patches for bugs and errors and are as such not suitable for "main characters" to be created on since characters may at any time be wiped or changed to accommodate testing needs.
There will not be any pre-made characters available to you as you log on for the first time, but the servers will be configured to boost game progress with a few stimulating settings, including a very substantial increase to experience gain, Abyss Point gain, crafting/gathering and item drop rates. You will be able to create both Elyos and Asmodian characters in the happy spirit of testing, but rest assured that no Public Test Server characters will ever count towards your account character slot limit.
Details on how to access the Public Test Server for EU and NA respectively will follow shortly.
