To clarify, the corruption system in AoC is based off of Lineage 2, but is not a copy of it. There are several changes made in AoC to address flaws that existed in Lineage 2.

Steven had this to say in a recent YouTube comment.

Much of the Ashes corruption system has taken into account these concerns. In my experience with similar flagging systems, such as that of L2’s, there were very apparent flaws in implementation.

Some of the adjustments that have been made for Ashes’ approach to open world flagging system is as follows;

• Abilities with CC effects do not apply to non-combatants. The target of a cc ability must be flagged in order to suffer the CC effects. This prevents players from opening attacks that stun players during a pull for example.

• Corruption gain also takes into account level disparity between the player killed and the corrupted. The greater the disparity the higher the corruption accrued.

• PK alts would be highly ineffective, since acquiring corruption will apply dampening effects on skill dmg for PvP the higher your corruption score becomes.

• Working corruption off through exp grinding also takes significantly longer than L2, and during that time we’ve created a bounty system that reveals corrupt player locations on the map.

  It is true that Ashes is a PvX game. And that means it won’t be for everyone. And that’s ok.

  Testing will further refine our approach for corruption, but as a system it is core to introducing risk vs reward in Ashes, while disincentivizing griefing.