AION 2 Adds 12 New Advanced Access Servers as Launch Demand Surges

AION 2's Advanced Access apparently needed considerably more Atreia than NC originally prepared.

Following the September 30 opening, NC rapidly added 12 additional Advanced Access servers across Europe and North America as players poured into the game. Europe received four new Elyos and Asmodian server pairs, while NA East and NA West each received another pair.

The expansion arrived only hours after Advanced Access began, giving us another indication of just how much demand surrounded the paid five-day head start. We already reported that AION 2 reached 171,530 concurrent Steam players, without even counting players using NC's PURPLE launcher.

Apparently all those Daevas needed somewhere to live.

Europe Received Eight Additional Servers

Europe saw by far the largest expansion. NC gradually opened four additional faction pairs:

• Yustiel for Elyos and Marchutan for Asmodians
• Ariel for Elyos and Azphel for Asmodians
• Fregion for Elyos and Ereshkigal for Asmodians
• Meslamtaeda for Elyos and Beritra for Asmodians

The servers did not all appear at once. NC added them progressively throughout September 30 as existing worlds filled and demand continued to rise.

That is quite a change from only a few days earlier, when we were still discussing AION 2's original Advanced Access server pairings. The initial European lineup contained Siel/Israphel, Nezekan/Zikel, Vaizel/Triniel and Kaisinel/Lumiel.

Advanced Access therefore effectively doubled Europe's original server capacity in terms of faction worlds.

North America Expanded Too

Europe was not alone.

NA East received Vaizel for Elyos and Triniel for Asmodians, while NA West added Nezekan and Zikel.

That brings the total expansion to twelve individual servers across the three regions.

NC explicitly encouraged players encountering crowded worlds to join the newly opened servers instead of waiting for a particular server simply because friends or guildmates had already settled there.

Normally that would be slightly frightening advice in an MMO. Nobody wants to spend several evenings leveling a character only to discover that the rest of the guild lives somewhere else.

Fortunately, AION 2 has two systems that make the decision less painful.

Dungeons Are Already Cross-Server

All instanced content, including dungeons, supports cross-server play. That means friends within the same region do not necessarily need identical home servers simply to run PvE content together.

This was already an important part of the game's Global server structure, but it becomes considerably more useful when players are being actively encouraged to spread across newly opened worlds.

Home servers still matter, of course. Legions, faction identity, the economy and PvP matchmaking give individual servers their own communities. As we explained in our server matchup guide, Elyos and Asmodian worlds are paired for activities such as the Abyss and Spacetime Rifts.

But for ordinary dungeon runs, choosing a quieter server does not mean voluntarily moving to a deserted island.

Free Transfers Give Players Another Safety Net

There is now an even better reason not to panic about choosing one of the newer servers.

NC has confirmed that free AION 2 server transfers begin October 14. Advanced Access characters will be able to move between other Advanced Access servers within the same faction, although they cannot transfer onto the fresh October 5 Launch Servers.

That means a player who moved onto Yustiel, Marchutan or one of the other new worlds to escape a queue will eventually have options once populations begin settling down.

It also explains why NC has been so willing to tell players to spread out now rather than spend hours waiting for one specific world.

And Free-to-Play Has Not Even Started Yet

The remarkable part is that all of this happened before the real launch.

Advanced Access began September 30 and still requires a Founder's Pack. AION 2 does not become completely free-to-play until October 5, when another wave of Launch Servers opens for players who chose not to pay for early entry.

NC has therefore expanded capacity repeatedly while there is still a price attached to entering Atreia.

Whether October 5 produces another enormous population jump remains to be seen. But Advanced Access has already demonstrated one thing fairly convincingly.

AION 2 did not arrive quietly.

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AION 2 Global Server Regions Confirmed: Europe, NA, SA and Japan, but No Oceania

AION 2's global launch is getting very close, which means we have reached the traditional MMO stage where choosing the right server suddenly becomes almost as important as choosing a class. NC has now confirmed the regional structure players can expect when the game launches globally on October 5. AION 2 will have servers in North America, South America, Europe and Japan, covering most of the major global markets. One region is conspicuously absent, however: there will be no dedicated Oceania server at launch.

The four confirmed regions are listed in NC's official AION 2 pre-release FAQ on Steam, which names North America, South America, Europe and Japan as the locations supported by the global service. Korea and Taiwan continue to operate separately from this new global version, meaning players should not think of the October release as one enormous worldwide server network. There are several distinct AION 2 ecosystems, and the version launching next month is its own service.

AION 2 Global Has Four Confirmed Server Regions

The confirmed global server regions are:

• North America
• South America
• Europe
• Japan

NC has not yet published a final list of individual world names, and players should be careful with supposed complete server lists currently circulating online. The regional structure is official. Every individual server name, population prediction and unofficial recommendation chart is a different matter until NC publishes the launch list itself.

For most players, the obvious choice will be the geographically closest region. European players will naturally gravitate toward Europe, while North and South American players finally have clearly separated regional options. Japan acts as the global service's main East Asian location.

Latency matters in every MMO, but it could be particularly noticeable in AION 2. The game puts considerably more emphasis on action combat, aerial movement and PvP than traditional tab-target MMORPGs, and the recent AION 2 PvP showcase demonstrated how important positioning and movement can become. A slightly delayed auction-house click is irritating. A delayed reaction while another player is attempting to remove you from the sky with a sword is rather more educational.

There Will Be No Oceania Server at Launch

The awkward part of NC's regional plan concerns Australia, New Zealand and the wider Oceania community. After being asked directly about support for Australian players, NC confirmed to Massively Overpowered that no Oceania server is planned for the global launch.

That leaves players in Australia and New Zealand without a truly local option on the global service. Japan is geographically the closest of the four announced global regions, although real-world latency depends on routing rather than simply measuring the distance between two points on a map.

NC has not announced whether an Oceania server could be added later. The current statement applies specifically to launch, so it would be equally wrong to claim that Oceania is permanently ruled out or that a dedicated server is definitely coming later. For now, there simply isn't one.

NC Points Oceania Players Toward Taiwan

Interestingly, NC's response also highlighted that the Taiwanese version of AION 2 supports English, effectively presenting it as another possible route for players in the Oceania region.

There is an important catch. Taiwan is not another server inside the October global service. It is a separate existing version of AION 2 with its own service, progression and update environment. NC has announced no character transfers between Taiwan and the global version, so choosing Taiwan should not be treated like selecting a different region from a dropdown and changing your mind later.

We also already know that the global version will follow its own modified Season 1 progression rather than simply copying the current Korea and Taiwan builds. That makes the decision about more than latency. Players may also care about where their friends are playing, which content schedule they want to follow and which community they intend to stay with long term.

The Global Version Supports Eight Languages

Server region and language are not the same thing. NC's global FAQ confirms support for English, French, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Japanese and Korean. A European player choosing the European region therefore does not need a separate English-language server simply to play in English.

That should help consolidate communities compared with older MMO launches where every language received several separate realms and everybody spent launch night trying to remember whether their guild had chosen Server 12, Server 17 or the one named after an obscure dragon mentioned once in a quest from 2009.

Choose Your Region Before the Real Launch Begins

Players will get an early opportunity to test AION 2's network performance during the Launch Scale Test beginning September 17. Since progression from the test is wiped afterward, it is an ideal time to experiment with regional latency before committing a permanent character to a launch server.

After that, the real servers arrive quickly. Founder's Pack owners enter through Advanced Access on September 30, followed by the full free-to-play global launch on October 5.

For most players, the server decision should be straightforward: choose the nearest region and make sure your friends do the same. For Australia and New Zealand, unfortunately, it is more complicated. Japan is part of the global service, while Taiwan offers English support through a separate version of AION 2.

North America, South America, Europe and Japan are ready for global launch. Oceania will have to make a choice.

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