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Aion Europe going F2P on February 28th

by Jef Reahard on Feb 23rd 2012 12:30PM

Fantasy, Aion, Business Models, MMO Industry, News Items, Free-to-Play

We told you earlier this week about Aion's incoming North American free-to-play transition (not to mention a little ditty called Ascension/3.0), but today we've got word that Gameforge AG has released the official date for Aion's European payment plan switcheroo as well.

The change-over will occur simultaneously on February 28th for the English-, German-, and French-language versions of Aion's EU client, and you can download said client right now at the game's official website.

Gameforge also says that the Ascension patch will hit Europe "in the spring," but there are no more specifics. We'll bring you more definitive info from the world of Atreia as soon as we have it.

[Source: Gameforge press release]

More coverage: Official EU site

Tags: aion, aion-eu, aion-europe, aion-f2p, aion-free-to-play, atreia, business-models, daeva, f2p, f2p-conversion, fantasy, free-to-play, gameforge, gameforge-ag, ncsoft, payment-models

Reader Comments (22)

is this game fun? heard its very grindy and new guys get ganked

@Lashley93 I've never heard anything exciting about this game.

@Lashley93
Not too sure about grinding part, but ganking is something you need to live with in this game.

@cotheer

Ewww... That's not good, usually when F2P hits a P2P game, the community takes it out on the new players who try it.. Sad really.

@cotheer

I just feel the need to point out that, unless the "rifting event" is running, a player doesn't have to worry about being ganked from 1->50.

51-55 pretty much requires the player do group instances to get XP, so ganking is less of an issue there (and they should be in a good legion at that point, too).

Since its now f2p why don't you try and see for yourself?

Finally!!! Will we also get patch 3.0?

Aion: The Grinder of Eternity

This was my first and last Asian MMO. "Westernized" doesn't mean squat, hell I even see people say TERA feels grindy...

The game didnt fail in NA/Euro because it was a bad game, it failed because it was the typical Asian grindfest.

@Ratham People will say a mmo is grindy since that word is subjective. If leveling to level 10 within an hr is grindy then there's no hope for you.

@Ratham Ya reaching level 22 in Tera taking 8hrs is just sooo grindy for a first time player. You can reach max level with ease in TERA. People are just pampered with WoW because it's been on so long and the early levels don't mean squat. So if taking less than 2 weeks to reach level 58 in TERA is considered a grind then people need to quit MMOing because they ruined the genre.

Is Aion f2p model going to follow GW's, or is there a need to buy neccessary items like armor and weapons?

If it's like GW's, I wouldn't mind trying it.

I think its a bit too late going f2p.
There is not much time before Tera, TSW and GW2 get released, so I think many will think "why should I invest time in this if I only 'can' play it for a short time"?

@Wurm Why would you be able to play it only for a short time?

Aion had like 0 quests once you dinged 25 or so (at launch, no clue how it is now) and it got worse the higher you got.

You could either grind, or do some repeatable to kill 10 mobs that would give you less exp for the reward than you got for killing the 10 mobs.

@Ratham err.. that was supposed to be a reply*

@Ratham

That was fixed a LONG time ago... way back in 1.9, in fact.

We're at 2.5 now, so yeah.

@Zyrusticae

I said 2.5? I meant to say 2.7.

Honestly, though, again, saying it's "grindy" is not terribly helpful when you really just don't like the gameplay enough to repeat it over and over again.

@Ratham

They fixed that a while ago I played a few months ago to see the changes and got my main to around 45 or so and they buffed XP and added a lot more quests.

@(Unverified) Yes they fix the grind in Aion. They took feedback from the players but by the time it was implemented, some of the NA population left. This F2P will fix that and show the improvements to the game to the returning and new players.

@Ratham Sorry, but you just a fail troll.
First of all, Aion always had quests till max lvl and saying it doesn't it just fail trolling. 2nd thing they "fixed" grindly problem like 1,5 years ago and atm you simple lvl so fast that I just had to left half of quests for my lvl coz new awaited me.

So if try game for yourself or stop being retarded by repeating old false info.

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 20 Comments

Aion Europe going F2P on February 28th

Reader Comments (22)

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 12:37PM Lashley93 said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 12:42PM drunkingamebar said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 12:48PM cotheer said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 1:08PM drunkingamebar said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 2:21PM Zyrusticae said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 12:40PM silver001 said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 12:46PM Khai mann said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 1:00PM Ratham said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 1:28PM nhat said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 2:28PM Alex Oglitchkin said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 1:07PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 1:27PM Wurm said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 2:12PM Braiks said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 2:03PM Ratham said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 2:03PM Ratham said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 2:12PM Zyrusticae said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 2:13PM Zyrusticae said

Posted: Feb 23rd 2012 7:40PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Feb 24th 2012 8:39AM nhat said

Posted: Feb 26th 2012 5:16PM Lorell said

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