Look, let's be honest, AION2 is launching on October 5, but the early play kicked off on the 30th. It pulled in a peak of over 170,000 Concurrent Players on day one, and the early user reviews are sitting at 'Mostly Positive'.

To jump into this early play ahead of the full launch, you need to grab one of the Founder's Packs—available in Standard, Deluxe, or Ultimate tiers—which grant access. Right as early play went live, it rocketed straight to the number one spot on the global top sellers chart on Steam, shoving aside the heavy hitters.

Interest in AION2 has been massive, smashing past 1.3 million wishlists even before launch. Then, despite requiring a paid pack just to get in, the early play phase proved its mettle by hitting a peak of 171,530 Concurrent Players.

As of 4 PM, user reviews for AION2 on Steam are 'Mostly Positive' (with 2,007 reviews and 71% of them giving it the thumbs up). The players leaving positive notes are praising the Unreal Engine 5-powered visuals, the ridiculously detailed character customisation, the solid optimisation that keeps frame rates stable even when crowds go wild, and features like flight, various dungeons, and mounts.

On the flip side, people are having a cheeky moan about the launch-day queue times and character creation locks on certain servers. Beyond that, players have pointed out that Founder's Pack items are not account-wide, and that mandatory memberships for the marketplace alongside two battle passes lean it heavily into a P2W model.

NC has rolled out global launch and top-seller celebration rewards via a notice, and announced that server transfers will open up starting October 14.

Meanwhile, over on the global top sellers list, Gears of War: E-Day bagged the number six spot just a day before its early play. Plus, Dynasty Warriors 2 with Xtreme Legends Remastered—a bundle that dropped on October 1—claimed eighth place with a 'Very Positive' user rating.