Aion 2 Passes 400K Steam Users, Opens New EU Servers

Aion 2 has made it through its first full day out in the wild, and the opening numbers look good for NCsoft.

About 24 hours after the game launched worldwide on Steam and Purple, the publisher is pointing to chart placements and concurrency milestones. Behind the scenes, it has also been adding servers to keep up with demand. The first day of any major MMORPG is always the real test, and that is when the queues, the crashes and the "server full" messages show up. By most accounts, Aion 2 has handled it well.

That is not a huge surprise. The pre-order head start already went smoothly, and the full launch seems to have picked up that momentum rather than stalling.

Climbing the Steam Charts

NCsoft has been eager to share its early wins. According to the publisher, Aion 2 reached the top of several Steam charts, including top sellers, trending free games and popular new releases. That is a notable mix for a free-to-play title. Showing up among top sellers suggests plenty of players are spending money on day one, even though the game itself costs nothing to download.

The bigger headline is concurrency. Aion 2 passed 300,000 concurrent users on Steam and then went past 400,000. NCsoft marked each milestone by handing out free bundles of in-game items to players. Rewarding the community when it hits a population target is a familiar MMO launch tactic. It gives players something for showing up, and it gives the publisher a good reason to keep posting the numbers.

Those figures only cover Steam. Aion 2 is also available through Purple, NCsoft's own PC launcher and storefront, and players there are not counted in Steam's public data. The real total across both platforms is very likely higher, although NCsoft has not shared a combined figure.

More Servers, Mostly in Europe

Demand from both platforms has pushed NCsoft to open new servers several times since launch. Most of these additions have been in the EU region, which suggests European players turned up in particularly large numbers, or at least in larger numbers than the original server list was built for.

For anyone still deciding where to roll a character, this matters. Fresh servers are often the best place to avoid long queues and overcrowded starting zones, and they put everyone on a level footing from the start. If you're just starting out, our starter tips for new players are a good place to begin before you pick a home.

Reviews Tell a More Complicated Story

The player numbers are strong, but Steam reviews are less clear-cut. Aion 2 currently has a "mixed" user rating on Valve's store.

On the positive side, players praise the gameplay as fun and the visuals as beautiful, which is no small thing for a game that will live or die on whether people want to spend hundreds of hours in its world. The negative reviews focus on a few recurring complaints. Some players call the combat too simple. Others accuse the game of predatory monetization, a charge that tends to follow free-to-play MMORPGs from Korean publishers. A smaller but vocal group has criticized the auto-movement option, which can walk your character straight to quest objectives. To some players, that feature takes away the sense of exploring the world for yourself.

The game's subreddit is noticeably more upbeat. Players there are showing off their customized characters and sharing advice with newcomers, which is usually a sign of an engaged community rather than an angry one. Even so, there are complaint threads. The criticisms posted there include trading restrictions, settings that don't carry over between characters (so every alt needs to be set up again from scratch), and the fact that dyeing gear is monetized.

None of these issues seems to be keeping people away so far. But they are the kind of friction that can build up over weeks and months once the launch excitement fades.

Where It Goes From Here

Taken together, the picture is clear enough. Aion 2 has had a large launch, with hundreds of thousands of players on Steam alone, additional servers coming online and strong chart placements. At the same time, a significant part of the player base is unhappy about monetization and some design choices.

The Bigger Picture

This looks like a solid start for NCsoft, and it builds on the strong head start numbers we reported last week. Repeatedly adding servers, mainly in Europe, suggests the West was more interested than the original infrastructure planning expected. That is a good problem to have.

Still, launch-day concurrency has never guaranteed a long life for an MMORPG. The "mixed" reviews deserve attention, because the complaints are not about bugs or server stability, which can be patched. They are about monetization and core design, which are much harder to change without upsetting the business model behind the game.

It is worth watching whether NCsoft responds to the specific complaints, such as dyeing costs, trading limits and per-character settings, in the coming weeks. Those are relatively small fixes that could win back some goodwill. The more important test is retention. If the population holds up once the free bundles stop and the new servers settle down, Aion 2 could become one of the more notable MMO launches of recent years. If it drops sharply, the 400K figure may end up remembered as a launch peak rather than a lasting player base.