It’s been a month since Age of Conan launched its Rise of the Godslayer expansion, but developers are already hard at work on their next major project: Upgrading the Dreamworld engine, which serves as a pillar for the game’s gorgeous graphics.

More details surfaced this week when AoC Game Director Craig Morrison described the main objectives of the engine upgrade.

In his June letter to players (prepare your reading glasses–it’s a long one), Mr. Morrison said:

In general our Dreamworld technology integrations provide two or three things for us:

• Improved performance (whether that is rendering, network latency, server CPU or memory usage or something else)
• New tech features (which might tie to performance or might be purely new additions, like deferred lighting or other new rendering features)
• Improved tools for the developers in the back-end (that in turn facilitate better and more efficient content production)

The game director broke down the graphical benefits into two categories: immediate visual and long-term back-end.

For the immediate visual category, players may see a “visual improvement” from deferred lighting options that will improve the look of indoor areas. Aside from deferred lighting, the Funcom development team can offer other rendering features once a new engine is in place.

For the long-term back end category, developers can “create better content more efficiently” with the engine, although Mr. Morrison stopped short of claiming faster updates. It’s only logical though that if the engine makes it easier to craft content, then patches may roll out faster or will come packed with more offerings.

Given the “complex code integration” attached to the engine upgrade, Mr. Morrison predicted it will take longer than usual to test it before going live. Just not too long we hope because a glossier, smoother-running Hyboria should let us slaughter more foes in brutal, ultra-def style.

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.