It's a very bad sign for an MMO when one of the hungriest regions for this genre, South Korea, lambasts your title. Aion 2—the follow-up to the beloved 2009 MMO—recently released in South Korea and Taiwan, and the feedback has been... poor to say the least (nice spot, PC Gamer).
Fundamentally, Aion 2 is a free-to-play game that's pay-to-win and arguably pay-to-play as certain core features are locked behind the game's subscription service. There are two tiers of monthly subscription services, with the cheaper option granting access to player trading and the auction house. Not even the most aggressively monetised 'free-to-play' would paywall such core features, until now. You can also simply buy items that make your character more powerful with in-game currency, hence the pay-to-win accusations.
The launch has been so disastrous for developer NCSoft that the company's stock price has crashed over 15 per cent in a couple of days. Predictably, this has caused panic among the studio's executives and leadership.
According to Korea JoonGang Daily, the developers released an emergency broadcast 15 hours after the game's release, promising that changes were on the way....
