Apparently 171,530 players was AION 2 warming up.
One day after opening its doors as a free-to-play MMORPG, AION 2 has reached an all-time Steam peak of 397,905 concurrent players, according to SteamDB's AION 2 player charts. That is more than double the peak recorded during Advanced Access and more than five times the number that turned up for September's temporary Global Launch Scale Test.
For an MMO launch, those are not subtle numbers.
From 73,761 to Almost 400,000 Players
The progression over the past few weeks tells the story rather neatly. During the September Launch Scale Test, AION 2 reached 73,761 concurrent Steam players. We covered that first major milestone in our report on AION 2's Global Launch Scale Test, when tens of thousands of players arrived despite the servers only being open temporarily.
When five-day Advanced Access began on September 30, requiring a Founder's Pack, that record jumped to 171,530. At the time, the obvious question was what would happen on October 5, when the paywall disappeared and the much larger free-to-play audience could finally enter Atreia.
We have our answer.
The October 5 Global launch pushed the Steam peak to 397,905 simultaneous players. That is roughly 2.3 times the Advanced Access record and more than five times the Scale Test peak. It is the kind of increase that neatly illustrates just how much larger the audience becomes when an MMO removes the entrance fee and tells everybody the doors are open.
Those Extra Launch Servers Suddenly Make Sense
The number also explains why NC prepared such an enormous second wave of servers. Ahead of the free-to-play launch, the company confirmed another 44 Launch Servers across 22 Elyos and Asmodian pairs, joining the Advanced Access worlds already running since September 30.
When we looked at the full AION 2 Global launch server list, that expansion looked ambitious. With almost 400,000 Steam players alone attempting to enter the game, it now looks rather more sensible.
MMO server capacity is one of those things that always appears excessive right up until several hundred thousand people press the login button at roughly the same time.
Steam Is Still Only Part of the AION 2 Population
There is an important qualification here. SteamDB measures Steam.
AION 2 is also available through NC's PURPLE launcher, and those players are not included in the 397,905 figure. NC has not published a combined peak concurrency figure for the Global service, so there is no responsible way to simply invent another number and bolt it onto the Steam total.
What we can say is already remarkable enough: almost 400,000 people were playing AION 2 simultaneously through Steam alone.
SteamDB also lists AION 2 among the platform's biggest current titles, while the free-to-play release has pushed the game far beyond anything we saw during testing or paid Advanced Access.
A Huge Launch Is Not the Same as Long-Term Success
This is the point where everybody should resist writing AION 2's ten-year anniversary article immediately.
Launch concurrency tells us that interest is enormous. It does not tell us how many of those players will still be around in November, how the economy will settle, whether the endgame progression keeps people engaged, or how the wider audience ultimately responds to monetization and long-term content updates.
MMOs are particularly fond of spectacular opening weekends followed by considerably more complicated second acts.
But that question belongs to later.
For now, the numbers are difficult to argue with. AION 2 went from 73,761 players during its Global test, to 171,530 behind a paid Advanced Access requirement, to 397,905 after becoming free-to-play.
October 5 was supposed to show us what happened when NC finally opened the gates.
Apparently quite a lot of people were standing outside.
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