NCSoft’s AION2 has hit the ground running, though perhaps not in the way they intended, as service on day one was marred by significant issues with paid item purchases.

The gates to AION2 opened at 00:00 on the 19th, and as one might expect with such a launch, the servers were immediately swamped. We saw the usual chaos: server instability and queues that stretched on for miles. However, it was the peculiar failure of the monetization system that really caught the players' attention.

Throughout that first day, the community was flooded with reports from users who had paid for items but received absolutely nothing in return. Specifically, the 'Triniel’s Quna Supply Box' and the 'AION2 Starter' pack were being processed as paid, yet the system spat out a 'Delivery Failed' error. Honestly, seeing a 'delivery failed' notice for digital data in an online game is a rare, almost farcical sight that you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else on the planet.

Once this became a hot topic, NCSoft stepped in with an official notice. They stated that "measures have been taken to address the payment anomalies, and items can now be received normally upon purchase," adding, "for those who paid successfully but did not receive their goods, a re-delivery process has been completed."

To make matters worse, the launch was a technical minefield: connection errors, queue bugs, character creation failures, infinite login loops, sudden crashes, broken tutorials, and even failures to receive device registration texts. It’s a bit of a disaster for a game that has spent so long in development. Seeing such a staggering volume of technical glitches is doing no favours for the players' dwindling faith in the title.