Join ZAM as we toured in Jade Dynasty's newest expansion, 'Ascension,' and see how this MMO keeps its community playing together!

With Christmas just around the bend and school dwindling down for the holiday break, a lot of MMORPG development teams have been hard at work, making sure that all of these holiday gamers have (at least!) a few new things to look forward to for their end of the year gaming sessions.

With so much new stuff in the industry every day, it can really give someone a headache to figure it all out, so developers Perfect World Entertainment invited ZAM to sit down with project manager Andrew Brown to see why Jade Dynasty's 'Ascension' expansion, launched just a few short weeks ago, is one of the most unique takes on the concept of the MMO content update. Read on and we'll tell you about our fun little in-game tour and how developers PWE have managed to keep their communities playing together, even in the face of a new expansion.

First, for those of you not familiar with Jade Dynasty, it's an MMORPG developed by Perfect World Entertainment's Beijing team and it draws much of its inspiration from its country's ancient legends. In the world of Jade Dynasty, there are five human factions for players to choose from, the Jadeon (Mages), the Skysong (Healers), the Vim (Warriors), the Lupin (Assassins), and the Modo (Hybrid Shapeshifters).

As players enter the world of Jade Dynasty, at level 15 they get the opportunity to 'choose' to follow one of these factions, as they all promise everlasting life to those who follow their teachings. Well, in a strange twist of events, it seems as though all of the factions were right and if players get to level 150 under any faction, they'll finally gain the right to 'Ascend,' or be reborn immortal, which is where this expansion takes its name from.

In gaming terms, ascending and being reborn as an immortal literally means being reborn; players will find themselves restarting the game at level 15, and they'll have to go through it all again in their 'ascended' forms. But fear not! Not only do Ascended players get more powerful starting stats that scale as they level up, but by Ascending, you also gain access to a plethora of new zones, new quests, new equipment and tons of new skills. Finally, Ascended players will also be delighted to see that they'll be able to choose a brand new class for their Ascended form if they so wish.

Of course, with this Ascension also come problems for the original five factions. You see, the Gods didn't really think that humans would be able to 'ascend,' and, right up until this new expansion, they were right. Unfortunately, now that humans have access to immortality, the Gods have become jealous, so they've sent down a new playable race - the Demigods - to stop the humans from Ascending. Currently, there are only two 'factions' within the Demigod race, and that's the Arden (an Archer class) and the Balo (another Warrior type class).

In some ways, these two demigod factions appear to be designed to fight the humans, much like the Horde and the Alliance in World of Warcraft. Andrew Brown even promised that there would be at least four new Demigod factions and one more human faction for future development, thus setting up a potential "six versus six," demigod versus humans kind of conflict in Jade Dynasty. Oddly enough, however, Brown notes that Demigod players will be able to play with their human counterparts, but it does demand certain changes in your character's story. While they didn't explain how this occurs, it can probably be assumed that since there are only two Demigod factions, they'll need to team up with the humans to tackle some of the more difficult dungeons. Since there are some new factions on the way to increase the number of classes available to the Demigod side, perhaps we'll see a more permanent divide between humans and Demigods in the future.

In our tour, we got to check out the Arden class in all of its glory. Since these Arden are the first  real 'archer' class to be offered within Jade Dynasty, it was really neat to see how many cool abilities the PWE team managed to stuff into one class. First, since the Arden are considered to be Demigods, they have a few animal-like features, like their bushy fox tails and pointy ears that set them apart from everyone else. In terms of abilities, the Arden get access to a number of summonable 'battle pets' that cannot be controlled directly, but these pets automatically attack whatever targets you're attacking, and they deal some pretty hefty damage.

Since all classes in Jade Dynasty have access to various regular controllable pets that give other bonuses, only the Arden can run around with two pets. Finally, in addition to your standard Archer style shooting abilities, the Arden also get access to unique little "turret-like" summons that will auto attack anyone nearby. So if you think about it, that's an additional battle pet summon and the ability to summon a turret - the Arden are the masters of this summoning business!

To move on from the new Demigod classes, we also asked Andrew Brown about why they ignored the classic "increase the level cap, introduce the expansion zones" formula that typifies most MMORPG expansions. You see, with this new 'Ascension' expansion, PWE has introduced new zones, but a lot of the focus appears to be allowing players to start over and re-experience the world of Jade Dynasty as they re-level their ascended characters from 15 back to level 150. Here Brown pointed out that while whole system of being reborn in an Ascended form does fit quite well with the storyline, they really just wanted veteran players to go back into the original world of Jade Dynasty, so that new players who are just starting the game will also have the opportunity to play with some of these newly Ascended players.

But this doesn't mean that there will be no new expansion areas for players to explore! There will be three 'Ascension only' zones available at the higher levels for Ascended players to check out, and these zones offer access to some of the best weapons and armour in game. Brown also stated that all of these new expansion zones are at least double the size of any of the original zones. There are also a ton of new pets, new instances and even a new achievement system that grants titles and achievement points! Later, these achievement points can also be used by players to purchase in-game items in future expansions.

In the end, Jade Dynasty's Ascension expansion is sure to capture the attention of any MMO seeker who's looking for a great free to play MMORPG but doesn't want to be forced to play by themselves until they finally gain access to the upper echelons of the game. With newly ascended players running around at every level, and two new factions available for all players to check out, there's a lot to experience for this year's batch of holiday gamers.