Home

 › 

Articles

 › 

AION Europe Eschews Monthly Fees

Trails of Cold Steel III key art

Tagged

AION Europe Eschews Monthly Fees

Published: by Cheat Code Central Staff | Leave a comment

None

As of today, AION—NCSoft’s visually stunning MMO, originally designed to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western MMO players—has gone free-to-play in Europe, where it is distributed by Gameforge. With the change-over comes a currency system and micro-transaction shop, as well as a new AION Free-To-Play website, which is presently under construction (displaying a splash image when it works, though a “no data received” error seems to appear just as often).



What’s most interesting is that, despite this changeover in Europe, the game remains on a monthly fee system in North America. There is, presumably, a reason behind the decision to stratify these two territories in such a way, causing me to wonder if NCSoft perhaps fears that North American players will be less receptive to a free-to-play model than their European counterparts. It wouldn’t, however, be the company’s first free-to-play transition, with City of Heroes and Lineage II both having made the switch last year to F2P models.

Additionally, the AION 3.0 patch will be rolling out, in Europe, this Spring. No word yet on when it will hit North America.

By Shelby Reiches

The image featured at the top of this post is ©The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III key art.

To top