In the early years of the game, from 2009 onwards, there were larger and more organized development teams. When we started, in 2015, those days were long gone.
The few people with extensive knowledge about the different Aion-Emu¹ forks know this already. Aion server emulators are barely functional: Many systems have been left unfinished, some have design problems, and incomplete or incorrect template data is the rule, not the exception. What seems to work at first breaks down when you introduce trivial variables such as players playing the game or running the server for more than a few hours.

We wanted to change this and create an emulator this wonderful game deserves.
The base for our project was Aion-Lightning's server for Aion version 4.7.5, which was considered the best emulator at the time. Unfortunately, while it was less buggy than emulators from other groups, it turned out to be in a similarly terrible state.
Once we opened the server to our community, many more core issues came to light, all of which led to our decision to prioritize bug fixes and optimizations over features or version updates. So we just updated once, to version 4.8 (again with the help of Aion-Lightning's work), and stuck to our plan.

The following is a very incomplete list of some notable things we have worked on:

• PvPvE map with increased AP rates and boss spawns
• Solo instance "Eternal Challenge" with a boss using the same skills and tactics like you, based on a deep learning AI
• Customizations to drop lists, QoL improvements, player commands and various PvP and PvE rewards you can read more about here

• Fixed geo² related issues like wrong or missing obstacles, incorrect bound calculations, terrain checks, doors, shields, environmental effects, etc.
• Fixed map kicks and other unintended positioning from various skills, some even client-induced (now worked around by the server)
• Implemented missing instances and reworked some
• Fixed hundreds of quests
• Added thousands of missing drops and spawns
• Fixed drop rate calculations and improved the global drop system (removed npc_drop.dat support)
• Fixed duplicate or unintentionally invisible spawns, temporary spawns and added support for temporary spawns in instances and events
• Fixed the event engine and added new features like automatic buffs or config overrides
• Removed, merged or reworked many chat commands, implemented descriptions, common error handling and a permission aware .help command
• Implemented true invisibility against anti hide hacks
• Fixed many stat and skill related issues with players and NPCs
• Implemented more AI handler events and controls like queueing of skills
• Fixed countless core bugs of various severities, like wrong chance calculations, login problems or even client crashes
• Fixed memory leaks, concurrency related issues and more, so the server no longer needs to be restarted every few hours (runs nicely for months now)
• Development related:
  • Simplified configuration and added support for more data types, including lists and maps
  • Logging improvements: Added support for Discord webhooks and revised all error logging (no missing stack traces anymore or meaningless messages)
  • Optimized startup time and implemented class file caching for even faster startup if handlers haven't been modified since the last start
  • Continuous optimizations for a more light-weight and more efficient server (removal of unnecessary code or dependencies, refactoring, etc.)
  • Regular Java and dependency updates for the latest improvements and new language features

Fast-forward to today and there are still many unfinished tasks, bugs and ideas for improvements. Too many to even try listing them. A project of this size will never be finished by a few people developing it in their spare time.
Which is fine, because we enjoy working on it.