Last week we covered the first quarter financials from NCsoft, which reiterated the latest official word of Aion 2’s existence and specifically promised more details in a May 29th livestream. And if you’re one of the MMO gamers eagerly anticipating the Aion sequel, you might now want to feast your eyeballs on the full transcript of the call, as published by Korean website This Is Game.
Some of the highlights from the Q&A include another confirmation that there will be some pay-to-win elements but that NCsoft will mostly shift away from such items. NCsoft CEO Byeong-Moo Park also hinted as a focus on more PvE raid content, though the game will not fully remove its RvR core. Finally, Aion 2 got a projected release in Korea and Taiwan in November, followed by a global launch sometime in the middle of next year – all of which is consistent with what NCsoft has been telling investors for the last several quarters.
The Q&A also featured some rough projections that Aion 2 is expected to make only around a third or a fourth the amount of revenue in Korea than games like Lineage 2M and Lineage W, but Park still expresses higher confidence in Aion 2’s fortunes than in Throne and Liberty. NCsoft has previously said that T&L still surpassed its own internal sales projections, though who knows how low that bar was.
Worth noting here is that Aion 2 was originally being developed for mobile as well as PC, but NCsoft is now implying it is a PC game; bear in mind that mobile gaming has lost NCsoft money over the last couple of years while PC games have surged, so that could make sense, though Park didn’t expressly confirm it in the Q&A.
MMORPG fans are still grasping at straws here overall, but this Q&A has some reasons to at least keep eyes on Aion 2’s arrival above and beyond the creaky old game getting a sequel. As referenced earlier, more details are likely to come during the May 29th broadcast.
