Who knew heaven had hitmen? Angels Online's newest expansion adds the Assassin class to the Swordsman, Priest and Archer classes fighting Heaven's war against the Evil Lyceum. AO's development journal describes the new Assassins as notorious, mysterious and quick, with an enigmatic fighting style. The Assassins were added with the Floating Island expansion two months ago, and have been slowly gaining popularity to become one of the most respected classes.
But how does the Assassin Class play? In short, Assassins give up defensive abilities for explosively fast and powerful attacks. Most classes in Angels Online can train one battle skill and five assistant skills, but Assassins can train three battle skills and three assistant skills, which puts the emphasis on attacking. The different battle skills translate into battle stances the Assassin can take, the most important being the devastating Shadow Blade battle skill. Additionally, the Avatar attack skill summons assistants who help the player and the Assault battle skill grants various additional buffs.
The Assassin's emphasis on damage dealing causes him to sacrifice defensive ability, evidenced by his lower amount of health points in comparison to other classes. Assassins also posses more agility than the other classes, which lets them rattle off attacks much faster. Because of this speed, an assassin's weapon stats will not be viewable to an opponent in PvP, which also fits with the Assassin's mysteriousness. The assassin is also granted a stealth skill, which lets them hide in any environment, completely invisible to others.
As you can probably glean, the Assassins are shaping up to be the tricky, quick and sneaky ninja types for Angels Online. So if an offensive, enigmatic character is appealing to you, sneak your way over to the Angels Online homepage and try it out.
The third expansion for Angels Online is live today. As the name suggests, "House Party" introduces a house system to the game.
You can build a house and furniture by collecting materials, or buy your house directly from the Item Mall. In addition, the level cap has been raised to 130 and new jungle and desert maps have been added.
More information can be found after the jump.
Joyce Zhou over at IGG has completed the second entry to her ongoing Developer Journal series that she's writing 
exclusively for Allakhazam. In this installment, Joyce talks about the struggles that the team had during development on The Lost Atlantis. Aside from the initial challenges, he writes about the design process that was eventually adopted and of course, the end result.
We have introduced some details about how we designed the scenery for Blue Sea in the last development journal. In fact, after we decided the game direction and the overall graphics style for the new expansion, we began to design the new scenes while also recruiting new staff. Today, we are continuing with the introduction about how we’ve designed the Shining Coast.
Generally speaking, developing a game includes creating a game proposal, preparation for the preliminary stage of design, large scale designs, tests and element combination, and public tests. It is a complicated project to develop a game and it requires a detailed plan before the formal designs are ever conceived. That’s why we needed a proposal which set up the game type and style, game graphics, development process, and technical support. The game proposal sets the general principles of the whole game. At the very beginning, we decided that the Lost Atlantis should be cute and full of oceanic elements because Angels Online has always prided itself on its cute graphics, game scenery, modern robots and classical buildings.
IGG has announced that the world of Angels Online will soon be filled with in-game events to celebrate the Christmas season.
One of the events, "Christmas Wishes," began yesterday, while the rest all start throughout the week. You can find all the information reagrding the holiday extravaganza here, including in-depth lists outlining all of the rewards you can obtain by participating in the events. You can also read the press release after the jump.
The first ever quadruple experience event is being held in Angels Online tomorrow to celebrate the holiday weekend.
Players will be able to obtain double skill experience during the event, which runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. To get the quadruple bonus, all you need to do is use a "Double Skill Exp Card."
In addition, many items are on sale in the Item Mall both today and tomorrow. You can find the entire list here. While people in the U.S. battle their fellow shoppers today as part of Black Friday, you can enjoy the Angels Online sales from the comfort of your computer chair.
In the Lost Atlantis expansion for Angels Online, players can explore the Colorful Coral Reefs. All you have to do is learn the diving skill from the NPC Surfer Veifu at Pugi Island and you're ready to go on your underwater 
adventure.
IGG has supplied us with some new screenshots and an overview of this area. Be prepared to see a lot of fish and plants, and well as Mermaid Alice, who may give you a music box if you obtain enough materials.
Because of its favorable geographical position, a warm ocean current passes through here each summer bringing a sense of vitality everywhere. Underwater materials are in abundance here. Locals from Puqi Island always fish here because the best fish gather here each year. That is one of the most important sources of income for them.
Keep reading below for IGG's full description, or you can read more about the ocean scenes here.
Joyce Zhou over at IGG has completed the second entry to her ongoing Developer Journal series that she's writing 
exclusively for Allakhazam. In this installment, Joyce talks about the struggles that the team had during development on The Lost Atlantis. Aside from the initial challenges, he writes about the design process that was eventually adopted and of course, the end result.
At the very beginning of most MMORPGs, players take on the role of an adventurer and fight against evil forces. They have to earn a certain amount of experience before they can seek their fortune with Mages or other comrades. As a result, players slowly begin to lose their passion for the unchanging scenes in game.
Before we began to design Lost Atlantis, we collected many suggestions and good ideas from the players’ forum. We found that most players are sick of all of the repetitive scenes and monsters that currently existed within the game. We decided that we should find something new if we wanted to attract our players.
At first, we came up with several great ideas, but none were uniquely fabulous. Most of the scenes in Eden pay a lot of attention to describing evil monsters. Even the light and dark tones formed a sharp contrast, in much the same way as many other MMORPGs.
After hundreds of tests, we were still uninspired. One day, a colleague pointed out that underwater scenes were very rare in current MMORPGs. And so a brand-new design plan came into being the focus for the Lost Atlantis expansion.
Recently we interviewed Eric Lin over at IGG about their game Angels Online. We'll they've decided to write a Developer Journal for Allakhazam about the new expansion, "The Lost Atlantis". In the first installment of the series Eric discusses the inspiration for the direction that was taken during development on the expansion.
Chapter I: Inspiration of the Lost Atlantis
Angels, Not Exclusive to Heaven!
In the Lost Atlantis, all maps are in the deep sea, which is quite different from the original Angels Online maps in the first expansion, Eden. The inspiration came from the story of the Lost City of Atlantis and I have read it dozens of times. We set the background as follows:
Long ago, there was a mystical kingdom called Atlantis, which was located to the west of the beautiful city of Eden. Generations of Angels lived and worked there in peace. However, this peace was soon overwhelmed by the ferocity of war. After the war, Atlantis was torn from the land and sunk beneath the waves. Even after this tragedy the people of Eden sought peace.