The game has been doing so well in Asia that it got MMORPG of the Year in Korea. NCSoft must have gotten the idea that localizing the game for North America and Europe would be a good idea and decided to start the port to other languages. On the Aion beta forums, I saw subforums for French and German, so it seems they’re going for more than just English at this point. With the game itself doing so well, it seems like the only thing that NCSoft had to change were the strings used to display text, and the voices of the characters. One thing I never really got used to from watching anime for so many years is the constant over-exaggeration that the voice actors make. The same holds true in the beta version I tested. Since the game has the original Asian voices, the characters have that overdone “karateeeeeeeeCHOP!” to their voice which I don’t think will fly in North America.

NCSoft started doing closed beta weekends in North America starting mid-June. Some people were able to get beta codes for specific weekends, but if you preorder the game you get into all the closed betas. I got the beta code for Aion from preordering the collector’s edition from my local Gamestop. I had to tell the (new) guy behind the counter that yes, you should have beta keys in the drawer behind you, and despite his reluctance to listen to someone that didn’t actually work there, he checked and was actually surprised I knew more about his store’s inventory than he did. I missed Closed Beta Event #2 by only a few hours and had to settle on waiting two weeks for CBE#3 July 2-6 to try the game for the first time. A note about this beta is that unlike some previous betas, this is actually a test of the 1.0.2 Aion client which was released in Korea a year ago. What’s really being tested are the translations, and although I couldn’t find anything official on the subject, I’m betting that NCSoft is testing the reaction to the North American and European markets.