AION 2 server status, queues and maintenance

To see whether AION 2 is up, check NC’s notice board first and its X account second: every maintenance window and hotfix for the global version has been announced on that board. When a server is full, members with a clean record wait in a priority queue ahead of everyone else.

Where NC posts outages and maintenance

The AION 2 notice board: The main channel. During the Launch Scale Test it carried the maintenance notice with its start time in PDT, the hotfix, and the extra servers as they opened.
@Aion2Official on X: Short posts. The Early Access pre-download hour was announced here and in a YouTube Short, not on the notice board.
Steam news for AION 2: The bigger announcements are copied here, which is handy if you already live in the Steam client.
The official Discord: NC’s own community server, which its announcements point players to for feedback.

Times are given in Pacific time, sometimes with Central European time alongside. The release date page has a conversion table and a clock in your own zone.

Queues: who gets in first

NC changed its queue rules after the Launch Scale Test:

“When a server is at capacity, members in good standing join the priority queue instead of the general queue, and both queues move as space opens. Priority queue access is a privilege, not a guarantee. Players with disciplinary action taken against their account, or accounts suspected of violating the Terms of Service, may have this privilege revoked.”
(From Steam announcement: Launch Scale Test Comes to a Close: What's Next?)

NC’s notice does not spell out who counts as a member. The only membership the global version sells is the Special Quai Membership, the $15 monthly subscription, so that is the likely reading. Every Founder’s Pack includes 30 days of it, but those days only start when you press Activate, and they apply to one server. The general queue keeps moving as well. What the membership costs and what else it unlocks is on the membership page.

How long maintenance has lasted

The Launch Scale Test is the only precedent. At 12 PM PDT on the first day, the moment that day’s session ended, NC took the game servers down for approximately 24 hours, and a hotfix followed before the second session. It cost little playtime, since it fell between the two sessions, but anyone still creating a character met it:

“While I was creating my character, a message poped-up "Servers are being closed for maintenance for 24 hours". By the time I logged back in, the playtest was already over lol”
(A player on r/Aion2 thread: Was fun to play (Launch Scale Test))

NC also warns that maintenance during Early Access comes out of the five days rather than extending them, which is spelled out on the Early Access page.

If the game will not connect

Check the notice board If there is a maintenance notice, nothing on your side will fix it.
Check you are playing the right app Steam playtesters must uninstall AION 2 Playtest and install AION 2 itself; the test app is not the game.
Check your country The global version refuses play from 18 countries and territories, Korea and Taiwan among them. The list is on the servers page.
Note any block code If the game closes with a Block Code pop-up, NC’s support site has a Block Code page listing the fix for each code.
Then contact support with three details NC’s FAQ for repeated disconnects asks for your current country, when the problem started and your internet provider, so have them ready before you open a ticket at help.plaync.com.

A crash on start-up can also be a hardware question; the system requirements list the minimum and recommended PCs.