Shanda's (Nasdaq:SNDA) licensed western fantasy MMORPG AION will begin charging RMB 0.48 per hour when it releases its commercial operation version 1.0, "Yao Sai Pan Long," on April 16.

The new version will raise game levels from 30 to 45; allow each account to create five characters instead of three; and add new tasks, maps, skills, virtual tools and dungeons to the game. Under the pay-for-time model, users can purchase 100 Shanda vouchers for RMB 1, and each voucher allows AION gamers to play for 75 seconds. The9's (Nasdaq:NCTY) licensed MMORPG World of Warcraft charges RMB 0.45 per hour.

AION developer NCSoft announced that the game had recorded 200,000 peak concurrent users on April 10, the third day of open beta testing in China, reports ChinaByte.com quoting Yonhap News Agency. AION began open beta testing on April 8 and had opened a total of five server farms with 80 server groups by April 9.

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