Aion 2's Advanced Access opened on September 30 and immediately became the biggest launch NCSOFT has had on Steam. The doors were supposed to open at 13:00 UTC; an extended maintenance pushed the start to 14:00 UTC. Three hours later SteamDB counted 171,530 concurrent players, and that figure leaves out everyone playing through NC's own PURPLE launcher. On October 1 more than 100,000 people were still online.
The cost of that crowd was queues of 2,000 to 3,500 on the European servers, a run of new servers, one emergency maintenance and three separate gifts. Here is what happened in the first 48 hours, what you are owed, and what changes before the free-to-play launch on October 5.
A record first day
Aion 2 took the number one spot on Steam's Global Top Sellers chart on launch day and was the best-selling game in at least twelve countries, including the United States, France, Germany, Spain and Brazil. The Advanced Access peak of 171,530 is roughly three times what Throne and Liberty managed in its own early access, and the daily peak held near 148,000 on day three.
The market noticed. NCSOFT's share price jumped more than 12 percent in early trading on October 1, the morning after the game topped Steam's revenue chart.
Keep in mind what the number measures. Advanced Access is only open to Founder's Pack owners, so every one of those 171,530 players paid at least $24.99 to be there. The free launch on October 5 is the first time the global service opens to everyone; the Launch Scale Test in September peaked at about 73,000 with no purchase required.
The queues, and the servers NC added
Europe has the most servers and took the hardest hit. Players reported queue positions between 2,000 and 3,500 in the first evening, and several servers showed a "character creation restricted" notice while NC held new characters back to protect the people already inside.
NC's answer was to keep opening pairs. Yustiel and Marchutan came first, then Ariel and Azphel, then Fregion and Ereshkigal, each one an Elyos server paired with an Asmodian server for the Abyss. The community team's line on Steam was blunt: "We're actively increasing server caps and adding additional servers to get everyone in quickly."
If you rolled on a crowded server to play with friends and ended up split, there is a fix coming. Server transfers open on October 14, free at first, and only within the same faction. Advanced Access servers can only transfer among themselves, not to the launch servers that open on October 5. All instanced content, dungeons included, is already cross-server.
The October 1 maintenance
The first maintenance ran on October 1 from 06:00 to 07:30 UTC. The notes were short: a bottleneck caused by too few interaction objects in certain quests was fixed, the interaction radius for quest objects was widened slightly, and characters below level 10 can no longer use appearance changes. The last one is an anti-bot measure.
The maintenance also delivered the compensation. Three things are landing in in-game mail or through the coupon menu:
- 10 Resurrection Stones for everyone, for the one-hour delay at the start of Advanced Access.
- 1 Appearance Change Voucher for everyone affected by the launch-day queues.
- The coupon code TAKEFLIGHTAION2, NC's thank-you for the Steam number one, which gives 4 Odyle Energy, 5
Resurrection Spiritstone (Bound) and 10 
Battle Enhance Scroll (Bound), all bound. Redeem it under Settings, Miscellaneous, Account, Enter Coupon. It works once per account and expires on October 13 at 23:00 PDT, which is October 14 at 06:00 UTC.
Reviews went the other way
The Steam reviews did not follow the player count. The score opened at Mostly Positive in the first hours, then slid as the queues bit: Insider Gaming's reading on launch night had 61 percent of reviews negative, and the page sits at Mixed as of October 2. The complaints are almost entirely about access, not the game itself: paying for early entry and then waiting in a queue, disconnects, and the one-hour delay. Whether that recovers once the free launch spreads the load across the new Launch Servers is the question for next week.
Twitch Drops, four events, and the free pets
Twitch Drops run in two waves. The Advanced Access wave runs from September 30 to October 4 and ends with a White Headset helm skin after eight hours of watch time; the launch wave runs from October 5 to October 16 with a separate track that ends with the Adorable Young Elim shoulder skin after ten hours. The first wave closes the night before the second opens, so claim it before October 4 if you want it.
NC also posted four community events for the launch period:
- Daeva Makeover, a character creation showcase, September 30 to October 19.
- Guides for Glory, written guides for any content, October 5 to November 2, with a permanent "Tutor of Atreia" Discord title for the winners.
- Transcendence Dungeon Leaderboard, ranked per server and per class, from September 30 on Advanced Access servers and from October 5 elsewhere, until November 2.
- Beauty of Atreia, a weekly screenshot contest, October 5 to November 9.
And the launch gift that costs nothing: every account created by December 2 that logs in before the December 1 maintenance (23:30 PT, 09:30 CEST on December 2) receives the 
Pagati pet plus one pet of choice from 
Papis, 
Silver Blade Rotan, 
Konutin Worker and 
Black Smoke Murute. The rewards arrive by in-game mail and that mail expires on December 9, so open it before then.
What happens on October 5
Advanced Access ends on October 5 at 05:00 UTC. An eight-hour launch maintenance follows, and the free-to-play global launch opens at 13:00 UTC. Your Advanced Access character carries over; nothing is wiped. NC has said a second wave of Launch Servers opens with the free launch, which is why Advanced Access transfers stay inside the Advanced Access pool. The Aion 2 timers page shows the launch window and the daily reset in your local time.
Takeaways
- 171,530 concurrent Steam players at the peak; over 100,000 still online on October 1.
- EU queues of 2,000 to 3,500; three new server pairs opened in the first day.
- Redeem TAKEFLIGHTAION2 before October 14 at 06:00 UTC; the 10 Resurrection Stones and the voucher arrive by mail.
- Free same-faction server transfers open on October 14.
- Free launch on October 5 at 13:00 UTC after an eight-hour maintenance.
- Create an account and log in before December 2 for Pagati and a second pet.
Start with the Aion 2 hub for classes, items and the dungeons the leaderboard is built on.
Sources
- NCSOFT, Launch Rewards notice
- NCSOFT, Global Twitch Drops
- NCSOFT on Steam, Information on server transfer
- AION 2 on X, October 1 maintenance notice
- Inven Global, 170,000 peak concurrent Steam players
- Inven Global, day 3 of Advanced Access
- Insider Gaming, reviews during Advanced Access
- MeinMMO, Advanced Access server status ticker
- BigGo Finance, NCSOFT shares up 12 percent
