A Letter from Aion's Producer on the Aion Website has a May Community Address to players of NCsoft's fantasy-themed MMORPG. The post has word to expect the version 1.9 patch to go up on their public test servers on May 25 and to go live for all players a week after that. They offer the version 1.9 patch notes as well as a version 1.9 Q&A with Kinslon, and word the new version will reduce the game's grind, saying: "Along with a reduction in costs, better experience for quests and increased loot drops, we also threw in a collection of exciting systems and updates such as arms fusion, daily quests, rental weapon/armor system and a new look for group UI feature that are all aimed at improving the player’s experience." They also announce that their promised character transfer service will launch in the middle of June, and will pave the way for server merges, saying: "After a score of meetings, it was decided that the best thing to do is to merge some of our servers so that we have fewer, fuller servers with characters (and players) that are balanced better in population across all levels and classes. The primary goal of merging the servers is to create an environment that gives you the best possible experience in Aion." Finally, they also point the way to the version 2.0 initial patch notes for the update to follow. Thanks Ant via Massively via Slashdot.