Aion 2 Is Free to Play as of Today — What Launch Week Changes for Aion Players
NC's Aion 2 dropped its Founder's Pack paywall and opened to everyone on October 5, capping a week that saw 171,530 concurrent Steam players and a Steam top-sellers sweep — here's what it means for people still playing the original Aion, official or private.
Aion 2 Is Free to Play as of Today
The paid head start is over. Aion 2 — NC's sequel to the 2008 flight-combat MMO, built on Unreal Engine 5 on a world the studio describes as 36 times the size of the original — went free-to-play for everyone on Monday, October 5, 2026, on Steam and on NC's PURPLE launcher, in North America, South America, Europe and Asia, as confirmed across multiple pre-launch guides (Aion2Hub, allthings.how). Founder's Pack buyers had been playing since September 30.
That makes this the week's biggest story in the MMO space, and for anyone who came up on the original Aion — the official live servers, the long-running classic experience, or the private realms that preserve older version bands — it is the one worth actually understanding rather than skimming.
Here is what launched, what the numbers say, and what it changes for you.
The head start was not small
The five-day Advance Access window for Founder's Pack owners began September 30 and ran through October 4. Founder's Packs were sold in three tiers — Standard at $24.99, Deluxe at $49.99 and Ultimate at $99.99 — on both Steam and PURPLE (Aion2Hub, expcarry).
It performed. According to SteamDB-tracked charts reported by Inven Global, Aion 2 recorded a peak of roughly 170,000 concurrent Steam players during that paid window, and gamehaunt puts the exact figure at 171,530 — while the game was also topping Steam's Top Sellers chart in a dozen countries ahead of the free launch. Those are Steam-only, simultaneous-player figures; they exclude the PURPLE launcher entirely, and NC does not publish official player counts of its own. Read them as a floor, not a total.
The scale surprised people because the earlier global playtest had not been a runaway. MMOHuts reported the playtest closing at a 73,761 player peak with Steam user reviews sitting at 69 percent positive — up from a much rougher first-day snapshot below 50 percent. So the paid window roughly doubled the test peak, which is the number worth carrying into this week.
The reviews are the part to watch
Ahead of launch, Insider Gaming framed it bluntly: top of the sales charts, reviews not encouraging. That framing matches the playtest data above, and it lines up with what the game's own launch-week coverage is now tracking — the first official patch notes, queue and server-status updates, and a known-issues list (Aion2Classes).
Free-to-play also means the review base resets to everybody, not just the people who paid to get in five days early. If you want to know whether the launch is landing, Steam's recent-review percentage in the coming week will tell you more than any of the pre-launch coverage.
Monetization is still the open question
This is not a new argument. Aion 2 launched in Korea and Taiwan on November 19, 2025, and MMO Chronicles notes it earned roughly $70 million in its first six weeks while drawing serious monetization backlash, with peak concurrents around 180,000 on Korean servers and 160,000 on Taiwanese ones in the opening week. The Escapist reported the same $70 million figure amid pay-to-win complaints. Player discussion around the global Founder's Packs has already run hot, including on Steam's own forums where buyers have complained that pack rewards are locked to a single server or character rather than being account-wide (Steam Community).
None of that is a reason to skip the game. It is a reason to go in with your eyes open — and it is exactly the kind of thing that sends a certain kind of MMO player looking at what else is out there.
Queues, servers, and the October 14 transfers
NC has been public that capacity is the risk. The company expanded its partnership with Microsoft around Azure infrastructure specifically for launch readiness, regional traffic swings and post-launch incident response, according to AionStrategies and Chosun. NC's own notices say players may enter a general or priority queue when a server fills, and extra EU capacity was added before launch (The Click).
The practical bit: server transfers open on October 14, 2026, and NC has said they will initially be free, moving characters between servers within the same faction (AionStrategies, and NC's own server transfer notice). NC's notice also recommends new players create their character on a recommended server rather than queueing for a full one, since you will be able to move later. If you are starting this week, that is the single most useful piece of launch advice available: pick a low-queue server now, transfer in nine days if you need to.
What it means if you are still on the original Aion
The original Aion's official footprint has been shrinking for a while. mmorpgs.info notes that regular live Aion was shut down in Russia in January 2026, and the remaining official option in the West has been Aion Classic EU, operated by Gameforge — whose forum has been carrying known-issues threads through the 5.0 update cycle (Gameforge forum).
That is the backdrop a new, free, visually spectacular Aion sequel drops into. It cuts both ways:
- It pulls people away. A large chunk of the old Aion population is curious, and curiosity is free now. Expect quieter weeks on older official servers and on some private realms.
- It also brings people back. Aion 2's monetization argument and its queue-and-server churn are precisely the two things that historically push players toward the private-server scene, where the versions they actually want — 4.x and 5.x era clients, classic progression, no shop pressure — still exist.
If you are in that second group, or you just want to know what the alternatives look like while Aion 2 settles, our Aion server section is where the private realms are listed, and it is the fastest way to see what is actually running rather than what a store page promises.
The bottom line
Aion 2's global launch is the week's headline: a major studio putting a full MMO sequel out free-to-play across four regions, with a 171,530-player paid head start behind it, a queue system to manage it, free faction-restricted transfers opening October 14, and a monetization debate that followed the game all the way from Korea. If you were waiting for the paywall to drop, it dropped today. If you were going to judge it by its reviews, wait a week — the free-to-play review base is the only one that counts.
And if you would rather fly in a version of Atreia that does not have a cash shop attached, that road did not close this week. It got busier.
Cover wallpaper via Alpha Coders.