Aion Goes Free-To-Play Feburary 2012 in Europe
Today I bring good news to MMO fans across the pond. It seems Aion will be going free-to-play February 2012 for those in Europe. NCSofts hopes this move will provide Aion a much needed stim shot to keep the MMO’s population from shrinking. In order to provide a free-to-play game NCSoft partnered with Gameforge, a well-known entity in the free-to-play world. With this partnership they won’t have to dive head first into a new unexplored to NCsoft payment model, hopefully this will mean the game will remain balanced and will see a nice increase in population. I’m just hoping the same happens to Aion in the Americas.
If your curious here’s the official wording provided from NCSoft
“There’s good news: from February 2012, Aion will be switching to a free-to-play model – the monthly subscriptions will then be history!
For the switch-over, NCsoft has teamed up with the German publisher Gameforge. The Gameforge Aion-Team consists of 38 employees and they will soon be responsible for the running of the game across the whole of Europe. Together with NCsoft they will continuously further develop and create new content for Aion in order to offer you a unique gaming experience – and all for free.
Why are we switching to free-to-play?
In the last few months the lands in Atreia have become more and more deserted. We want to reinvigorate the world of Aion and attract new adventurers to the towns to take to the skies as Daevas.”
Source: Aionfreetoplay.com