Is AION 2 pay to win?
Not in the direct sense: NC’s published business model lists no gear and no stats for sale, and 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 NC has not published yet.
NC’s business model, section by section
Before launch, NC put out a Team Update that sets out the whole model one section at a time. Here it is in order, with the shop split in two, and what each part means for power:
| Section | What NC says | 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 | $15 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: NC has not said which rewards sit on the paid track |
| 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 by NC 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 NC’s English notices have not published that list. The Korean version runs its exchange differently: there, 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.”
(From Steam announcement: Launch Scale Test Comes to a Close: What's Next?)
With face-to-face trades gone, the Market and the exchange are the player-to-player routes NC describes, and NC runs both. The membership still advertises a personal trade benefit; why that no longer applies is explained on the membership page.
The PEGI label that does not fit the notice
Steam shows AION 2’s PEGI 16 rating 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. Nothing in the Team Update describes a random paid item, so something sold in the game works that way without appearing in NC’s English summary. Which item it is, and whether it can hold anything that affects power, has not been made public.
What test players claimed about the global build
After the Launch Scale Test, a post on r/MMORPG argued that the global build removes the fastest paid routes seen in Korea and Taiwan. Its main claims:
“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.”
(From r/MMORPG thread: Looks like Aion 2 Global actually gutted the P2W mechanics)
None of these points appears in any NC notice, 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. The top reply in the same thread expected the opposite:
“It’s ncsoft they’ll bring it in about 3 months into launch lol”
(From r/MMORPG thread: Looks like Aion 2 Global actually gutted the P2W mechanics)
A fair verdict
- Known
- NC’s business model lists no gear or stats for sale, and NC lists no Kina of its own. Shop cosmetics and the Founder’s Pack cosmetics give no stats. Consumables are for sale but also earnable, and NC says they 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 $15 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 NC has published, AION 2 is closer to paying for speed than paying for power: nothing NC has listed 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.