Will AION 2 Be Pay-to-Win? Our Prediction for AION 2

AION 2 finally got revealed, but its developer and publisher have people worried that the game will be more pay-to-win than it should be.

NCSoft, the developer and publisher of this game, is fairly infamous for their aggressive monetization in their games. In AION 2’s case, it’s also a free-to-play sequel to a game that was originally running on a subscription model. After AION went free-to-play, it got monetized a lot more aggressively.

So, what does this mean for AION 2? Read on, we’ll give you our prediction for AION 2’s monetization.

Our Prediction for AION 2 | Pay-To-Win or Not?

Now, AION 2 is still some ways off and we still don’t really know how its monetization is going to pan out. Without the game being publicly available, it’s hard to tell what its monetization will end up like…

However, it’s worth noting that AION 2 is a game developed and published by NCSoft, as we mentioned before. They are the same developer and publisher as games like Lineage II M, which is a notoriously P2W game. In that game, F2P players can just not compete at all against players who’ve spent thousands of USD in the game. Mostly when it comes to gear, which is particularly important in PvP.

Some of their other releases, such as Throne & Liberty and the original AION in its current state, also have some notable P2W elements. Or rather, as some players call them, “pay-for-convenience” elements. It’s possible to get everything as a F2P, sure, but doing so takes a much larger amount of time than just paying. Sometimes just getting a specific gear setup can take months if you’re purely F2P, for example.

It’s also worth noting that NCSoft themselves confirmed that there will be P2W elements in AION 2. They also said it won’t be as egregious as Lineage II M and Lineage W, though this still alarmed most players. NCSoft don’t usually address P2W elements directly, so them confirming that they will be in the game made alarm bells go off for many!

The Playerbase Might Dictate the Monetization

On the other hand, NCSoft seems to reserve their most egregious monetization practices for when their games have smaller playerbases. It’s why a smaller game like Lineage 2 M seems to be much more aggressively monetized than Throne & Liberty, despite both having P2W elements.

When looking at it that way, AION 2 seems to have garnered a lot of interest with its initial reveal. That likely means that it will have a large playerbase at launch. As such, NCSoft could potentially decide to be fairer to F2P players. It would ensure that people keep playing for longer.

Of course, though, that would also mean that they will start ramping up the aggressiveness of their monetization if the playerbase starts to dwindle. In such a situation, it would be a matter of “when” the game will be P2W, rather than “if.”

In Conclusion

Ultimately, we have yet to see details of what AION 2’s monetization is going to really be like. But, NCSoft’s past monetization practices paint a fairly clear picture. Besides we have their confirmation that there will be some pay-to-win elements. We fully expect that AION 2 will have a notable amount of pay-to-win elements.

It’s likely that the launch window for the game will be fairer to F2P players, of course, as we mentioned before. However, even in that case, it’s easy to predict that the monetization will become increasingly aggressive over time nonetheless. It’s simply how NCSoft seems to handle their games.

So, in short, yes. Our prediction is to expect that AION 2 will be pay-to-win in some way, as even the developers have already confirmed it. All we can do is hope that the game is still relatively fun for F2P players, at least the ones who don’t wish to engage with the hardest content!

That aside, do you also want to know what classes the game will have at launch? Well, check out our article detailing the 8 launch-day classes you can pick from.