AION 2 just punched above every expectation in its paid head start, smashing Steam charts with a 171K concurrent peak on day one and grabbing the global #1 top seller spot before the free-to-play doors even swing open on October 5. NCsoft opened extra realms twice already and pushed server transfers to October 14 to stop the queue bleed, while player counts held above 100K on Steam alone the next day.

SteamDB tracked the 171,530 all-time high right after launch delays pushed the start from 13:00 UTC to 14:00, and the game still climbed to #8 or #9 most played and #3-#4 top seller by October 2 despite only counting Steam traffic. PURPLE launcher numbers sit on top of that. Early reviews started rough with launch queues and full servers tanking sentiment to around 61% negative in the first hours, but they recovered to Mostly Positive territory above 70-76% as servers stabilized and more players logged serious hours.

Founder's Packs from $24.99 drove the revenue spike that beat out bigger AAA titles on pure paid access, with the game topping sales in a dozen countries and racking over 1.3 million wishlists pre-launch. NCsoft's stock jumped 12% on the back of it. The real test hits when F2P floods in this weekend and next week — these paid numbers already say the hype is real and the servers are the only thing standing in the way of bigger chaos.