Is AION 2 pay to win?
Not in the direct sense: the published business model lists no gear and no stats for sale, and NC says its shop cosmetics carry no combat advantage. Money can still turn into power by a longer road, because Quna bought with real money can buy Kina from other players, and Kina buys whatever players sell on the Market. How strong that road is depends on details not announced yet.
What is sold, section by section
Here is the whole business model in order, with the shop split in two, and what each part means for power:
| Section | How it works | Can money buy power here? |
|---|---|---|
| Free to play | No purchase needed to play. | None |
| Currencies | Kina is earned by playing and runs the Market. Quna is the premium currency: shop items, the paid pass, and Kina through the exchange. | Quna is the bridge between money and Kina |
| The Market | Players buy and sell items for Kina at prices they set. A membership is required to trade. | Indirect: you can only buy what other players list |
| Kina and Quna exchange | Between players only. One lists Kina, another pays for it in Quna; the game lists and buys nothing. | Indirect: this is how money becomes Kina |
| Membership | $14.99 a month. Opens the Market and the exchange, extra benefits, and a special shop that takes Kina. | Access, not stats |
| Shop: cosmetics | Outfits, wings, pets, weapon skins, accessories. No gameplay or combat advantage. | None |
| Shop: consumables | Potions, resurrection stones and similar. Help in a fight, do not affect gear progression or long-term power, also earnable in play. | Short-term only |
| Daeva Passes | Sold per character. Free standard track; premium track bought with Quna. Rewards include upgrade materials. | Possible: the paid track's rewards are not announced yet |
| Founder's Packs | Cosmetics, starter consumables, five days of Early Access. | A head start; the cosmetics add no stats |
The road from a card payment to Kina
No step in this chain is sold as power, but together they connect money to the Market:
- Buy Quna. It is the premium currency, bought with real money.
- Spend Quna on Kina that another player listed. The exchange needs a membership.
- Spend that Kina on the Market. Buying there also needs a membership, and you can only buy what players have put up for sale.
“Players convert between currencies through player-driven exchanges. One player lists Kina for sale, another spends Quna to buy it. All exchanges happen between players; the game makes no listings or purchases.”
Because NC does not sell Kina itself, every Kina a paying player buys was earned in play by somebody else, at a price players set. In effect, paying buys other players’ time. What that Kina can then buy depends on which items are tradeable, and that list is not out yet. In the Korean version the exchange works differently: players trade crafted Kina boxes of 400,000, 2,000,000 or 10,000,000 Kina for Quna. How the two currencies work in play is on Kina and Quna.
The trade ban narrows the road
After the Launch Scale Test, NC removed the most direct way to hand items or Kina to someone else:
“As an anti-bot measure, direct player-to-player trades are disabled. The Market remains our central hub for trading between players.”
With face-to-face trades gone, the Market and the exchange are the player-to-player routes left, and NC runs both. The membership still advertises a personal trade benefit; why that no longer applies is explained on the membership page.
The paid random items label
AION 2 is rated PEGI 16 with three descriptors: Strong Violence, In-game purchases and Paid random items. PEGI uses the last one when a game sells items whose contents are random, such as loot boxes. So something sold in the game has random contents. Which item it is, and whether it can hold anything that affects power, has not been announced.
What test players claimed about the global build
The claim after the Launch Scale Test: the global build removes the fastest paid routes seen in Korea and Taiwan.
“No buying BiS gear day one … On Global, that’s blocked. You have to craft base-tier gear and upgrade it yourself by playing the game.”
“Buying wings on the AH to break down into 90k enhancement stones was the easiest way to swipe for raw power. Global made crafted wings untradeable, shutting that down entirely.”
“Divinity Boards, which whales bought out instantly for huge stat advantages, are completely missing from the Global build.”
“You can’t even use the AH or trade until you build up a trust level by running dungeons and levelling up normally.”
None of these points is confirmed, so treat them as one player’s reading of a test build. The test also could not show the economy at work: for both days NC switched off every purchase, the Market, the Quna exchange and player trading, and capped characters at level 37. Not everyone is convinced:
“It’s ncsoft they’ll bring it in about 3 months into launch lol”
A fair verdict
- Known
- The published business model lists no gear or stats for sale, and NC sells no Kina of its own. NC says shop cosmetics and the Founder’s Pack cosmetics give no stats, and that consumables, though sold, are also earnable and do not affect long-term power. Real money can become Kina through other players, and that Kina buys on the Market, both steps behind a $14.99 membership.
- Not known
- Which items can be traded on the Market, what the paid random items are, and what the premium pass track holds. Any of the three could move the answer.
On what is known so far, AION 2 is closer to paying for speed than paying for power: nothing on sale buys strength directly, but you can buy other players’ Kina and spend it on what they sell. Whether that decides PvP depends on what the Market allows, and each server’s own Market opens with Early Access on 30 September. If you only want to play, all of this is optional; what a free account can and cannot do is on is AION 2 free to play, and what the early packs contain is on Founder’s Packs compared.