How to Install Aion

I wrote this guide because while downloading and installing Aion: The Eternal Tower, I ran into a few snags. So for anyone who comes after me and has the same questions this will act like the magic pill.

Who is this guide for:

This guide is mainly for prelaunch (Beta) and anyone who has purchased the game through the official NCSoft Store. For those of you who were lucky enough to have the option of purchasing your game through NCSoft’s official sponsor such as Amazon and Gamestop, you will receive a copy of the game on 2 DVDs when it’s officially released.

Side Notes: As a Canadian, and for those of you who don’t know where that is, well I don’t blame you check the map; it is only the second largest country in the world, and no we don’t live in igloos (that was a joke, if you don’t get it just ask the Americans ). Back to topic as a Canadian we cannot pre-order Aion: The Eternal Tower through Amazon, I did not check Gamestop but I assume it to be the same. Apparently Amazon.com doesn’t ship to Canada, and Amazon.ca doesn’t carried the product, so I had to order the game through the official NCSoft Store and saved my self $10 U.S.

The Guide:

First purchase Aion (shocked?), if you haven’t done so yet NCSoft is having a pre-order promotion: if you pre-order Aion now from any of these location Amazon, Gamestop, or NCSoft your automatically invited to all the beta events (for more information click here).
Once the game is purchased sign up for an NCSoft account if you haven’t yet and login. You’re now give an option to use an activation or serial code, so apply the code (under “Use a Serial Code”) and create an in-game account. Once all that is done you’re given a link to download the client.
Double click the aion client to start download/install (quick note: the client itself acts as an installer, it actually downloads and installs the whole game for you. So if you uninstall the game you have to download the whole thing again!)
Here is the trick there are actually two parts to download first part is about 5000MB around 5GB and the second part is 7GB. You might think the whole game is 12 GB but it actually is only about 8 GB large I have no idea why.
Once the first patch finishs downloading you must run the NCSoft Launch then click on the little arrow on the Aion tab, and run both Check For Updates and Repair (Consistency Check) that should start downloading your 2nd part.
Now that you have installed the game before you can run and play the game, you need to make sure that you have DirectX 9.0c (June 08) or above, the game will not run without it. You can either download the latest DirectX at Microsoft updates website or Click Here.
Finally Click Play and Enjoy!!

How to Backup your Game

I found this out when I realized the game is more than 5GB and it would take forever to download. A few friends of mine all have pre-ordered the game, and we figured why download the game more than once that’s a lot of bandwidth wasted. So we decided that one of us will download the game and we’ll just copy and install it.

Here is How:

First copy the entire NCSoft Folder. It should have two folders in it Launcher and Aion. If you have other NCSoft games like Lineage 2 or Guildwars, I would imagine they would be in it too leave them alone. Now the game is pretty big you can either do what I did which is to use a 30GB IPod video to upload the files or use a burnable dual-layer DVD which can hold about 8GB of data. Now your game is backup.
To reinstall the game in the future all you have to do is copy and paste the entire NCSoft Folder to any where you like on your computer by default it’s (C:\Program Files\ NCSoft\) but you can put it anywhere you like.
Once the entire folder has been copied to your computer go to the folder NCSoft->Launcher and run the launcher.
Now the launcher does not recognize the game as installed; here is what you do.
1. Click on the little arrow on the aion tab
2. Click properties and a new window is going to popup called Aion Properties.
3. Under Install Locations click browse.
4. Find the Aion.bin which should be under (yourpath\NCSoft\Aion\bin32\AION.bin) *youpath is where you put your ncsoft folder!
5. Click Open then click OK under aion properties window.
6. Finally under the little arrow again click Repair (Consistency Check) it should take about 10-15min depending on your computer speed. Now you can either run the game or check for any new updates!!