"I [also] have no idea ..." of the actual purpose of these robots.
An iron movie can be a pretext but still the game is not (or tell me) a movie-adv-broadcaster.
"they ran out of ideas ...", I already made some comparisons with Aion ... in Aion world there are lights (Elysium), darks (Asmodian) ... and Balaurs, some mobs that fight both lights & darks, of course Shaiya is not trying to copy that.
last news: the US server had added several updates, version is now 227, and in the ... incoming changes, tests, mistakes, ?... the Character folder contains 2 new sub-folders: Tyross & Vueltas.
Tyross contains a robot - with robot specific build (left & right hand have separate definition, a shoulder equipment exist, ...)
the Vueltas folder (and its files) is classic and matches the current char-class definition, a single set is defined.
if you want to let your players look like little robots ...
Edit: only converted .3DC files are present in attached archive.
all others files (.ANI, .DDS (.mlt in case) shall be downloaded from US server.
remainder: the URL is readable in plain from the updater.exe and the server does not filter IP, so download according to yours needs from:
[pre]http :// shaiya.patch.aeriagames.com / Shaiya / patch / psNNNN.patch[/pre]
(the last packs:


and so on ...)
these .patch are actually .zip, so rename, open with SDFT, extract and enjoy.