These days Gameforge has many reasons to celebrate: exactly four years ago today, the popular fantasy MMO AION was launched in Europe, quickly developing a loyal fan base. The latter has enjoyed a constant growth period since the free to play switchover in February 2012 and since Gameforge became the game’s publisher: around 4.5 million accounts have been created since the switch from subscription-based to free-to-play – now almost 5 million players are enjoying the fantasy world of Atreia.
One of the reasons for its great success is the recently published 4.0 update. It includes the two new character classes as well as the newly released language versions, which have made the game playable in a total of seven languages.
AION – the proof is in the numbers
Update 4.0 brought over 350,000 new users to the world of AION Free-to-Play in the first month. And it’s no surprise: the biggest expansion to date introduced new classes into the game for the first time, making it especially interesting for new players. Around 48,000 Artists, who develop into Bards once they reach level 10, entered the game world in the first four weeks. The Engineer (who develops into a Gunner) was shown to be even more popular: around 82,000 shooters are already roaming Atreia’s vast landscapes.
More words than the Harry Potter saga: AION and its language versions
Whilst localizing the game into the individual languages, Gameforge focussed on fully adapting all content to the corresponding native languages – which was no easy task by any means. To compare: all seven books from the Harry Potter series have a total of 1,090,739 words – AION already has 4,063,554 words.
Aside from fully localised audio, adapted websites and forums, individual country support as well as community management, there are also dedicated servers in the corresponding native languages.
No end in sight: AION continues to grow
Even after the successful release of a total of seven localised versions, AION Free-to-Play continues to grow. The next big update is due to be released at the beginning of next year with version 4.5. Aside from additional content and detail enhancements, this will include the long-awaited third new character class – the Aethertech.
*UNEDITED PRESS RELEASE*