{"id":76283,"date":"2026-04-22T15:02:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T19:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=76283"},"modified":"2026-04-22T15:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T19:37:10","slug":"a-surprising-17-years-later-sequel-is-coming-west-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=76283","title":{"rendered":"A Surprising 17-Years-Later Sequel Is Coming West This Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\">A sequel to the 2008 MMORPG <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/games\/aion\/\">Aion<\/a> will release globally later this year, 17 years after the original.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/games\/aion-2\/\">Aion 2<\/a> will see a global release via <a href=\"https:\/\/store.steampowered.com\/app\/3393110\/AION_2\/\">Steam<\/a>, developer NCSoft announced, with servers for North America, South America, Japan, and Europe. The news comes after Aion 2&#8217;s launch in South Korea and Taiwan last November to less-than-stellar reviews, with the game&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/games\/mmo\/ncsoft-launches-mmo-with-terrible-monetisation-puts-out-emergency-broadcast-15-hours-later-promising-to-fix-it-while-its-wax-wings-melt-we-were-complacent-and-unthoughtful\/\">microtransactions<\/a> being a major point of criticism. While the game is technically free-to-play, it does feature optional subscriptions and pay-to-win mechanics. NCSoft apologized for the game&#8217;s monetization shortly after launch and vowed to make changes.<\/p>\n<p><video data-embed-type=\"video\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TbxjRh7_bR4\" data-width=\"100%\" data-height=\"100%\" data-embed-url=\"\/\/cdn.embedly.com\/widgets\/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FTbxjRh7_bR4%3Fwmode%3Dopaque%26feature%3Doembed&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;display_name=YouTube&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DTbxjRh7_bR4&amp;image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FTbxjRh7_bR4%2Fhqdefault.jpg&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;schema=youtube\"><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">What changes NCSoft may make to Aion 2 for its global release are still unclear, though the developer stated in its announcement that more news would be coming in May and it looked forward to answering questions from the game&#8217;s community.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The original Aion proved popular, having received numerous expansions over the year. It&#8217;s still playable today in multiple different formats, including a &#8220;classic&#8221; server that recreates the game as it was when it first launched.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Aion 2 takes place 200 years after the original Aion in a world that is 36 times larger and built on Unreal Engine 5, according to the game&#8217;s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A sequel to the 2008 MMORPG Aion will release globally later this year, 17 years after the original. Aion 2 will see a global release via Steam, developer NCSoft announced, with servers for North America, South America, Japan, and Europe. The news comes after Aion 2&#8217;s launch in South Korea and Taiwan last November to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":76285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-external","brand-gamespot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76283"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76283"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76286,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76283\/revisions\/76286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/76285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}