AION:

The Tower of Eternity is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in Korea and China with localized versions in development for other regions of the world. Aion was (up until May 20, 2009) known as "Aion: The Tower of Eternity" but it will be released in North America under the one-word title of Aion. The game developer is NCsoft's Aion Team Development Dept, a major Korean game developer. Aion combines PvP and PvE (a concept the developers call PvPvE) in a fantasy game environment. A feature of the game is flight, which is mainly used as a means for combat. Other games in this genre typically offer flight only as a means of travel, while combat stays on the ground.

Development
Following the announcement of the game in May 2006 with a preview at E3 2006.[6] NCsoft developed it over the following year at their software design studio in South Korea. Closed beta testing in Korea began in late 2007,[7] followed by an open beta test in November 2008. A version of the game localized for China began its closed beta testing in December 2008, and began open beta testing on April 8, 2009, ending on April 18, 2009.

The game is also being localized for western markets including North America, Europe, and Australia. NCSoft has held two closed beta testing event weekends in June, 2009 open to players in North America and Europe. Each had a limited focus. The first, held June 5-7th, 2009, focused on the Elyos from level 1 through 20. The second initially had a focus of level 1 to 10 for the Asmodians, but at the last minute it was decided to allow it to be open to level 10 for both factions. There were four more closed betas spanned over weekends, allowing both races to level 30. The six closed beta weekends were all played on the 1.0 game version. An open beta was scheduled for September 6–13, 2009, allowing players to play the 1.5.0.3 version of the game initially, the game was updated on September 12th, 2009 to version 1.5.0.5 while the beta was extended until September 14th at 2A.M. CDT.

The character creation system allows for a great deal of character customization. Players will be able to radically adjust height / weight & scale of various body parts (for example, creating a 4 ft. character with a giant head). Different hair styles, skin colors, facial textures and voices can also be chosen. Further detailing can be found in the selection of eye shape and color, nose shape, ear size and shape and tattoos for the character's face and body. Players have even been able to use the character creation system to reproduce the appearances of a wide variety of celebrities and fictional characters including Barack Obama, Cloud Strife, Wolverine, and Michael Jackson.

The game will allow a player to dye their equipment to change its color and to change the graphics of one weapon or armor to that of another that they have in their inventory. (Via an NPC) This allows a player to display equipment graphics of items which they find visually appealing, while benefiting from the actual stats of different weapons or armors. Players can only change the graphics of an equipment to that of another equipment of the same type. For example, cloth armor cannot be changed to have the appearance of leather, chain, or plate armor. Similarly, a sword can only be changed to have the appearance of another sword, and not any other type of weapon, such as a staff or polearm.

This adds another layer of customization (as it allow players to control the look of their avatar without sacrificing the better stats of an item that they find visually unappealing[11]) and strategy to the game. One can, for example, display the skin of a level 28 armor set, while you're actually level 40, and benefiting from the stats of your mismatched level 40 items. This can throw your opponents off, especially coupled with the fact that you cannot discern the level of other players in PvP, making for more engaging gameplay

Aion uses the software nProtect GameGuard from INCA Internet to protect against hacks, cheats and bots, which is criticized for integrating itself deep in the player's system with its own device driver that is very difficult to remove. This driver seems to employ rootkit-like techniques to hide the game's process and to watch the computer's memory for suspicious software.[18] Furthermore there is an unpatched security vulnerability in the driver which can be used for a local privilege escalation.