Aion has been a relatively fair mistress in terms of the Black Cloud Marketplace thus far: Prices are high but it is entirely possible to play the game without ever having to dip into your wallet.
The fairness of the Black Cloud Marketplace may change soon enough, as the ‘Prestige Pack’ made its way into the BCM yesterday and was quickly taken down. This on its own isn’t alarming, nor is what was found in the pack: AP boosts, Tea of Repose, 30 ‘Prestige Boxes’ packed with medals, and a chunk of instance cooldown reset scrolls.
All of this seems harmless. Standard cash shop mumbo jumbo and all that jazz — until you consider that late game instance timers were significantly increased with this week’s server maintenance. This is slapped on top of significant increase in new 4.0 instance timers seen in the game’s transition from Korea to North America.
Prestige Packs were taken off the Black Cloud Marketplace soon after being put up, but that does not mean we won’t be seeing them implemented soon. With instance cooldowns so long, NCSoft knows players are going to be desperate to get their hands on reset scrolls on the cheap.
As a long-time player and supporter of Aion, this turn of events is alarming. At one time we on the North American server could at least feel safe in that NCWest wouldn’t treat the game like GameForge does in Europe. Unfortunately we may not be so lucky for much longer.
There is a rather lengthy thread on this topic on the official forums. Check it out for more discussion on these packs and what they may mean for you as a player.
