Aion 2 Launch Scale Test: What Happened on September 17–18, 2026

The Launch Scale Test ran on September 17–18, 2026, with pre-download opening on September 16. It was capped at level 37, it only opened PvE content for roughly twelve hours, and every character was wiped when it ended. Just over 73,000 people took part.

That's the test in one paragraph. The part that actually matters for the release date is what it wasn't: it was a server and infrastructure stress test, not a beta, and nothing you did in it carries into September 30 or October 5.

What was actually playable

The level ceiling was 37. Not a soft wall you grind through — the cap. What sat behind it was PvE only, and the whole window ran for about twelve hours across the two days. There was no faction war and no sieges in it.

That scope is worth internalising before you read anyone's impressions of the test. A twelve-hour, level-37, PvE-only slice tells you almost nothing about what Aion 2 plays like at level cap, and it tells you nothing at all about PvP. Anyone who tells you they "know how the game feels" from that weekend is overreading a stress test.

Getting in was free

Anyone could sign up through Steam. No invite code, no Founder's Pack, no purchase. Pre-download opened on September 16, the day before the test started, and the stated purpose was server and infrastructure stability — which is exactly what a two-day window with a hard level cap is good for.

One trap in it, though. On Steam the test ran as a separate app entry — a Playtest app, not the retail client. Steam players have to uninstall that and download Aion 2 separately before September 30; it does not update into the full game. PURPLE users have no extra step.

The published schedule was precise: pre-download opened September 16, Day 1 ran six hours on the 17th, Day 2 ran six hours on the 18th, deliberately offset so the load came from different time zones rather than the same evening twice.

How many people showed up

More than 73,000. Treat that as a measure of interest and of how much load the servers were put under, not as a launch-day population forecast. A capped test with no progression at stake draws a different crowd than a live server does.

The wipe, and why it matters

Everything was deleted afterward. The character you levelled to 37 on September 17 does not exist on October 5.

Here is the part people misread: the wipe gets accepted for the test but then quietly dropped from their mental model of September 30. There is no indication the Founder's-Pack window behaves differently. What you're buying is five days on a fresh server alongside everyone else who paid — not a continuation of the test, not a preserved character, not an earlier slice of the same world you'll be standing in on the 5th.

Where the numbers come from

A correction, because this is easy to get wrong: the level cap and the wipe are official. NCSoft's August 26 notice sets the cap at 37, states that progression carries from Day 1 to Day 2, that all progression is wiped at the end of Day 2, and that nothing transfers to advance access or to launch. The length is official too — NCSoft lists it as six hours a day, twelve hours in total.

What is not official is the attendance figure. NCSoft published no test results, so 73,000 comes from people who took part, not from a company statement. NCSoft also published the cap without publishing a content list — which zones, dungeons and classes are actually reachable at level 37 was never spelled out, and that's the one question the test didn't answer in advance.

What you can and can't read from it

You can read that the servers were put under real load before launch, and that the client survived a public install at scale.
You can't read anything about PvP balance, endgame pacing, or the in-game economy. None of that was switched on.
You can't read whether the September 30 and October 5 servers are the same servers. NCSoft described an Early Access / Launch server split, but what happens to a character created between September 30 and October 4 when the 5th arrives has not been laid out.

The release date this all points at is unchanged: October 5, 2026 for everyone, September 30 for Founder's Pack holders, both on PC through Steam and NCSoft's PURPLE launcher. The test was a dress rehearsal for the servers. It was not a head start, and it was not a preview.