If you had a blast taking pictures last New Year’s Eve, then maybe you’ll be up for round two of festive photo-taking this time in Atreia. Aion has announced a new screenshot contest to coincide with a special event for many Korean Daevas, the Lunar New Year.

“Help us ring in this New Year with style by sending us a screenshot of the place in Aion where you would throw your New Year’s celebration,” announced NCSoft in its official blog.

The Lunar Year contest is set to end by February 2, so you’ll have two weeks to capture the perfect screenie in Atreia and possibly win the Razer mouse prizes. The contest’s official rules and conditions are easy enough to follow, revealing the general criteria by which the Aion judges will base their choice: Presentation, creativity, framing, and uniqueness.

So basically no boring and predictable shots of you posing at some non-descript location. Given the vivid locations available as background in Aion, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to think of a concept for the shot and then stretch out those wings to find a suitably striking location. And don’t be afraid to have dozens or even hundred of takes–not like the Screenshot folder has a limit to it.

Once you’ve picked the best one, send it to aion_community@ncsoft.com with the required info like name, age, location and a disclaimer that should you win, you won’t be against revealing your screenie-taking secrets.

Forget about those heat-preserving wool scarves, snow boots and blizzard mitts. The Aion Solorius winter festival is more about fun that function, and nothing warms up the funny bone more than silly hats and stolen socks.

Like the year before, Daevas will have to grapple with the misadventures of the missing Shugo Santa, a red-nosed “reindeer,” and thieves out to ruin the festival by dashing off with the goodie-filled socks.

The Solorius quests will be available on both capital cities from festively dressed NPCs, and will reward dedicated Daevas a Solorius Cap and Hat Box. You can get them easily so long as you stop snickering long enough to get the simple and repeatable quests done.

The Solorius Cap is nothing too fancy, but the Hat Box contains funny-sounding and equally funny-looking headgear like the Solorius Deer Hat, Solorius Tam, Solorius Cloche Hat and Solorius Tuque.

Meanwhile, the Sock quests continues the long tradition of pranksters stealing just anything valuable to Daevan culture and society. This time around, it’s the valuable gift-giving socks that were nicked and it’s up to you to retrieve them. As a reward, you get to keep ‘em for storing seasonal gifts or just random knickknacks.

Finally, the Find Shugo quests will unlock the wondrous Winter Bear candy that turns you into–wait for it–a buffed up Winter Bear for a full hour. If that isn’t enough for you, then go bonkers over the Festive Scroll and Token of Gratitude rewards. We all know being all teal is all the rage these days, something about blending well with the snowscape.

Machinima creators can get massive cred among the community and thousands of YouTube hits for their in-game video creations. Now they can also win some pretty sick gadgets by submitting topnotch machinima for Aion.

Winners of the When Worlds Collide machinima contest stand to get digital camcorders, portable hard drives and special editing software — a pretty decent caboodle for budding videographers.

The real-world prizes should attract Christopher Nolan-esque machinima, or at least decent enough to run as a recruitment ad for NCSoft. One thing going for Aion is its crisp visuals and penchant for dramatic costumes, and machinima creators would do well to dress their protagonists in spiffy attire.

Choosing the right storyline though should pose more of a dilemma. Aion isn’t exactly brimming with political intrigues and drama outside the faction wars and campaign against the Balaur. Maybe that’s why NCSoft is pointing to the Harvest Revel in-game event as a possible source of inspiration.

I’d think twice though — it’s hard to bake drama out of bumbling Sugarcrooks.

Expect a horde of new animal friends in Aion!

NCSoft confirmed that each Daeva will be given 100 pet slots under the new pet system, which goes live with the Aion 2.0: Assault on Balaurea update scheduled this fall. These totally adorable pets ranging from show dogs to backpack-toting pandas can be classified into five function types:

• Companion – Adventure with their owner throughout Atreia
• Signal – Alert their owner to the presence of enemy players
• Pack – Expand their owner’s inventory
• Fortune – Produce items for their owner after being well-fed
• Purebred – Provide their owner with multiple functions at once

The developer added that despite their large menagerie, each player can only summon one pet at a time. Pets also provide their perks even while kept inside your inventory, presumably for when your cuddly kitten proves too much of a distraction during a fight.

Each pet can even be named freely; pet names are not restricted to be unique from all other pets, allowing for duplicates in the game world.

Filling up those 100 pet slots could be a time-consuming challenge, but could be worth it if only to watch each pet’s unique emote animations.

Aion players are used to getting scant details on expansion release dates, but the NCSoft team seems to have adopted a more transparent policy as it announced a June 2 live server release for Aion 1.9 on Western servers. Aion 2.0, meanwhile, is scheduled for fall release, revealed producer Chris “Kinslon” Hager in his May community address:

I am happy to announce the 1.9 update will be available on the North American and European public test servers on Tuesday May 25, 2010. A week later, the 1.9 update will hit North American and European live servers on Wednesday June 2, 2010…

Even though we have several other large initiatives underway, we are already working on bringing 2.0 to the North American and European shores. It is an immense undertaking that adds a lot of new content to the game, but we are working steadily towards a fall target release date and are on track.

The Aion 1.9  content update will bump up the xp gains and loot drops from monsters, and introduce new features such as rental weapons, daily quests, arms fusion and an improved user interface.

The 1.9 update was released two months ago in Korea, with Western players eagerly awaiting its port. NCSoft even launched two new public test servers to test the 1.9 update, but Daevas never knew when the testing will start exactly. The announcement of both test and live server implementation will surely drum up interest for the 1.9 update, which has been steadily losing steam over the past weeks.

Revealing the fall release date for Aion 2.0 will also quell concerns that the long–and shaky–wait for 1.9 will be repeated. Stakes are higher for the 2.0 update due to its heftier content package. It will take players to the lost continent of Balaurea, and open up new dungeons and fortresses, according to the initial Aion 2.0 patch notes.

Kinslon also mentioned in his address that server merges are being planned to improve grouping and lessen queuing times:

I don’t relish the idea of mergers. (It takes a lot of work to make them happen!) However, once it is complete you should notice improvements in each of the new server economies, an abundance of players to group and run instances with, a number of great Legions to join or people to form new ones with, and a more tightly knit community.

While some fans see this as a sign of wavering subscriptions for the game, it’s also a gutsy move for NCSoft to consolidate its community. And coupled with continued transparency in their communications as seen in this latest producer letter, there’s a big chance the game can bounce regain its tremendous buzz back at launch.

NCSoft has scheduled yet another Double XP Weekend* for Aion, and fan reaction has noticeably dimmed from “Oh yeah!” to “meh”.

Recall last December when fans celebrated the first Double XP Weekend as a great solution to the grueling leveling grind since it doubled the progression gained from killing monsters, crafting and gathering. But with more and more Daevas reaching max level, the bonus xp has lost its appeal.

Instead of a Double XP Weekend, some Aion gamers proposed three alternatives:

Double Abyss Point weekend. This is one of the more popular choices should NCSoft branch out its bonus weekend set-up. Faster Abyss Point gains result in three-fold benefits: faster rank climbs, larger contributions to Legions, and quicker accumulation of Abyss gear.

1 Kinah Soul Heal weekend. The game implemented the first reduced soul healing weekend last month and became a hit among Daevas who no longer had to shell out thousands of Kinah.

“Double” drop rate weekend. This one’s self-explanatory but a more accurate name for this would be higher drop rate weekend. More loot = happy people. And if naysayers predict this will just lead to a “welfare epics situation” (like in World of Warcraft) well I’d say they quit being a snobby Grinch. No one’s asking for free DP loot–just a couple of hours of sanity from mob grinding.

It would be great to have a bi-monthly rotation covering these perks, but then again it’s just the greedy me talking. How about you guys, would you warm up to a set calendar schedule for different “bonus” weekends?

*Aion’s Double XP Weekend starts 8pm Apr 23 (Fri) and ends 8am Apr 26 (Mon), both on server time.

Losing to the cult of Farmville must hurt. A lot.

Hardcore Daevas barely contained their outrage when NCSoft lost to Zynga, makers of browser-based hits like Farmville, in the Escapist’s 2010 March Mayhem. Zynga garnered 55% of the votes via Facebook and Twitter, so Aion players blamed NCSoft for being too slow in gathering support.

To be fair, it could also mean a small number of Aion players visit the NCSoft website for announcements. Because aside from the occasional community news and the recent Patch 1.9 Korean PTR notes, there’s been little reported on actual game developments.

Number one on my wish list are translated versions of the diagrams in the Patch 1.9 Korean PTR notes. Seeing those stills in English-readable text will make my Patch 1.9 wait more bearable. Anyone else pumped up by the UI changes?

Aion gamers have spent the past few days trying to help Jefnyerk find the love of his life. Those successful enough to aid the sad Shugo had been gifted with lovely red and pink dyes. The event ran a couple of servers at a time until Monday (Feb 22), so if you had spent some time logged in, then you’ll have had your shot at being a Daeva cupid for the weekend. Something tells us though that the adventures of Jefnyerk and Dianyerk are far from over–let’s wait and see next Valentine’s!