Eurogamer is reporting that NCSoft has announced that Aion will be going free to play beginning in February 2012. NCWest will maintain publishing rights in North America and has partnered with Gameforge to publish Aion in Europe.

According to a post on the Gameforge site, "the lands of Atria have become more and more deserted." The move to F2P is an effort to boost sagging EU markets for Aion.

Check out the new EU Aion site for more information. The NA site has yet to be updated with information about the F2P move.

Thanks to Piasek for the tip.

Im on board if i can play on NCSoft Servers as european.

1. Not pay to win (I can ignore the cash shop)

2. Full access to all content

3. Fresh servers (with one UK based no less)

Yes please.

Oh snap. I do hope this will go F2P for NA too! 

I gotta say I liked aion when it launched, but just not enough to justify a 15 fee.

For free I will definitely be checking it out on a regular basis.

This is good and bad. Possibly as a reaction to TOR's launch and WoW's dominance has led to the depletion. I hope WoW follows suit with a f2p to max level option as well to compete. Aion has nice graphics. the economic situation around the world, particuarly Europe cannot be ignored as a factor either.

well if it wasnt a pvp oriented game i would love to play it but thats to late now that SWTOR is comming out

Originally posted by Boudewijns

well if it wasnt a pvp oriented game i would love to play it but thats to late now that SWTOR is comming out

By Feb a lot of folks will be done with SWTOR imo.

All of these developers could have saved themselves a lot of time if they just released these games as either Buy to play or Free to play. 

For some reason these developers think that mmorpgs are a gold mine. Due to the success of WoW they think they will get millions of players to subscribe when the reality of the situation is; mmos are a niche and WoW was a fluke.

I'll bet anything that in five years no mmo will have a subscription. These games will release with a box fee and then gain more money through DLC/Expansions. 

F2P for Aion in NA would be great! Kudos to EU for getting it.

I have a love/hate relationship with Aion.  I have an Aion poster framed on my wall, the CE figure and two copies of the game on my shelf, and the comic bagged and boarded but have a bitter feelings towards NcSoft East and how they've handled the game in the west.  Aion could have been a fantastic game but has fallen far short and spurned its western players too often, but f2p it would be nice to visit from time to time.

definitely gonna try

Originally posted by Z3R01

All of these developers could have saved themselves a lot of time if they just released these games as either Buy to play or Free to play. 

Well, seeing as EU box sales alone covered development costs for the whole global game (sellling just under 500,000 copies here, and the dev costs up to launch being reportedly $18,000,000) the subs they have seen come out of the EU and the rest of the world have been more then enough to warrant them (from a business stand point) the time.

In fact the revenue the sub model has generated for NCSoft the last few years is stunning.

It very much makes financial sense for a AAA game to sell the box and go sub based for at least a year, then switch to F2P after that for a mini relaunch. SWTOR will follow exactly the same model IMO.

Originally posted by vesavius

1. Not pay to win (I can ignore the cash shop)

2. Full access to all content

It would need to be something like this. I don't mind them having unique / exclusive looking items for a cash shop, but I won't even try it, if there is no good outskirts at end game as f2p. No, I will never subscribe to these games. That's what many publishers don't get. 

Look at TF2. Study that. You can make a balance and make a shop with stuff people want (if you have a good product) and still not  scare the majority of the customers away.

I wont touch anything even relatively affliated with gamesforge, if i can play NA servers I may try it.

I guess they are making alot of money from Lineage 2 going FTP and I I hope they use the same  FTP model they are using with Lineage 2. Its the best of any FTP game.

Nope. EU players that will not opt-in for gamesforge, will not access content on either services then. It means, if you a EU player, or you play with gamesforge, or you don't play this.

Kapow!! Aion going F2P? Defo gonna be re installing this

I have to agree that L2 has so far the best f2p model I've ever seen. Let's hope it will be the same with Aion.

A little more info regarding news.

Aion NA will stay p2p. Aion EU by Gameforge will go f2p to bring more European players to the game.