After we managed to get Amboss away from the stage when he had finished one of his many assignments a small group consisting out of him, Rockjaw, the Aion-models who seemed to take a break, and us started towards the business center. When we arrived in the NCSoft compartment we met the community team leader and French community coordinator Atreid, too! He and Amboss led us to a small room which would be paradise for all Aion fans.

Settled, computer booted and whithout much chitchat the two showed us the world of Aion on a huge flat screen. An area covered in ashes and dust, visible mirage and even more ashes from a recent volcanic eruption falling from the sky like eerie snow. The whole region seems to be nothing more than dust, lava and mountains and the only living creature is a lonely level 50 Asmodian. And we can not mention it too often: Aion looks stunning on instant! Even if nothing really happens the mentioned characteristics of the area do not only have a graphical appearance: They force our Asmodian avatar to pass his hand of his forehead to get rid of sweat or to use his hand as a fan to get a little  cooling. Those little actions will change from location to location.

Soon a few menus are opened and instantly we get another bunch of interesting information. The character got 27 inventory slots which seem to be enough. All were filled with vast numbers of items like different types of potions, so called enchantment stones, and other equipment.
The character got slightly more than 55.000 hitpoints which were marked green in the equipment screen. This seems to indicate an enhancement due to equipment.

Now they are showing us the enchantment system. Atreid selects an enchantment stone and merges it with the weapon to boost the weapons damage. According to him each item can be enchanted to a level of 10. The effect of enchanting will differ from item to item while the level of enchanting will increase the given bonus.

The weapon is drawn and as the character moves into a fighting stance we notive a feature which did not get too much attention to this date: The transformation of armor.
Our Asmodian wears a red abyss armor which looks quite simple and even does not cover some body parts at all for example the left shoulder. When the character moves into his fighting stance the appearnce of the armor changes and non visible parts become visible. The shoulder is now covered and some lighting effects spring into action.

The weapon behaves similar when it is drawn: It begins to glow. This was criticized by many fans but Atreid told us that these effects will only be active in combat in the finalized game. While carrying a weapon on the back it remains huge but ordinary. In combat the effects blend with skill effects and do not stick out anymore. Both the transformation and the lighting effects are only used for abyss items so far.

Next is the stigma system which is according to Atreid to allow individualization of characters and will not cause balancing issues. We were told that all stigma stones are bound to specific classes and most are not functional in the beginning. First you need to get the required level and a stigma stone allowing you to use stigma stones with specific skills. Some stigma stones will have the same effect but will be restricted to special professions. This means you could find a stone giving five percent more hitpoints but it is only for the ranger profession. But somewhere it might exist a stone giving the same benefits to your profession.

The divine power which is represented as a DP bar below health and mana is intended to create some surprises. The bar fills while you deal damage and you lose points when you die. It is possible to fill the bar up to three times which means it starts again to fill in a different color when you filled it the first and second time. When you filled it three times the character will be surrounded by a glowing aura.
To use these power ressource you need to learn specific skills which use divine power to fuel their effects. They have different kinds of impact and got some really nice graphical effects.

Atreid demonstrates one mighty divine power skill of the gladiator: The character strechtes up and glowing swords appear in a surrounding circle. Their tips rise until they point outwards and suddenly dash away in all directions dealing a huge damage amount. But damage dealing is not the only thing divine power skills are capable of. The gladiator can cast a spell which gives him back 30 percent of his health back again and again for a certain time.
In addition to this it is possible to transfer divine power to other players which allows a group to fuse their divine power on one player. This means a single character will be able to gain a vast amount of divine power in a short time - surely a tactical element in PvE and especially in PvP.

Atreid switches to the title menu and what we see is an empty list. Titles are not easy to get and you have to work hard to achieve one. Hed did not tell more about this but we were told that these titles will not only be something to be proud of but will bring you special advantages and chances. Some titles will allow you to talk to NPCs which would refuse to talk to you until you got this specific title. It will give you access to new quests.

In the end we traveled to lair populated by crab-like creatures. But not for combat but to give the grinning Atreid the chance to announce that it is possible to set up a private store at  virtually every location. It is quite simple: You choose the respective option in the menu, drag some items into the store slots, define a prize, and write a short notice which will be visible above your head. The shop is set up and looks like this (the picture is not from the presentation):

The shop was there right in the crab cave and Atreid had to leave. But because Amboss was still there we did not dare to move over to the computer. But we had something different in mind for Amboss anyway...

What in particular you will get to now at some point in the upcoming week. We finished this task, too, and decided to eternalize this informative meeting: