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.

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?