AION 2 Launch Scale Test Ends: Direct Trades Disabled, a Priority Queue, and the Road to September 30

As of September 19, 2026, the Launch Scale Test is finished. NC posted "Launch Scale Test Comes to a Close: What's Next?" to its EN-US announcements board at 6:00 PM PDT on September 18 — the published end of Day 2, which had opened on time at 12:00 PM PDT with a "Launch Scale Test: Day 2" notice restating the rules unchanged. The closing notice thanks players for their feedback and says nothing about how the servers held up: no concurrency, no queue times, no server counts. As with Day 1, the only capacity signal on the record is that NC added servers mid-session.

The housekeeping step is the one NC has repeated since August 26, now with the test actually behind it: Steam players must uninstall the Playtest app (the separate Steam entry, 4972320) and download AION 2 itself for Advance Access on September 30. The test client does not update into the retail one. PURPLE players have no further steps — the launcher already carries the right client. Everything reached during the test is wiped, as published; nothing transfers to Early Access or launch.

The first new policy statement is one sentence: "As an anti-bot measure, direct player-to-player trades are disabled. The Market remains our central hub for trading between players." It sits under the "After the Test" heading, not under the test rules, and it is phrased in the present tense about the game going forward — not as a test restriction. During the test, player trading was one of several disabled systems alongside the Marketplace and the Quna exchange; this is the first time NC has said the direct-trade switch stays off.

NC does not give a duration, does not say whether the restriction applies to Early Access only or to the live service indefinitely, and does not describe any exception (guild trades, mail, party loot rules). Read literally, item and Kina transfers between two players go through Market listings or not at all.

One consequence follows from NC's own earlier notices, and it is ours to point out rather than NC's. The July 8 Business Model notice states twice that an active Membership is required to trade on the Market and the Kina↔Quna Exchange. With direct trades off, a player without Membership has no published route to hand an item or Kina to another player. NC has not addressed that combination anywhere on the board, and it may well have an answer — a free tier of the Market, or a trade allowance we have not seen — but as of this writing nothing says so. Founder's Pack buyers are covered for the first 30 days by the Membership NC bundled into every tier; free-to-play players on October 5 are the ones the question lands on.

The second statement is a queue policy NC describes as "updated", though no earlier version was published on the EN-US board. In full, the notice says:

• When a server is at capacity, "members in good standing" join a priority queue instead of the general queue.
• Both queues move as space opens — the general queue is not frozen while the priority queue drains.
• Priority queue access is "a privilege, not a guarantee".
• Players with disciplinary action taken against their account, or accounts suspected of violating the Terms of Service, may have the privilege revoked.

The phrase doing the work is "members in good standing", and the notice does not define it. If "members" means Membership subscribers — the $15-a-month tier, which every Founder's Pack now includes for 30 days — then the policy is a paid queue skip of the kind other MMOs have sold, and Early Access on September 30, when every player on the servers is a Founder's Pack holder with Membership, would put everyone in the priority queue at once. If it means any account in good standing, the priority queue is simply the normal queue for players without a disciplinary mark, and the "general queue" is where flagged accounts wait. The revocation clause reads naturally under either. We are recording the ambiguity rather than resolving it, and will update this page if NC clarifies.

Two details are unambiguous. Both queues advance as space opens, so a general-queue position is not a dead end. And priority access is revocable on suspicion of a Terms of Service violation, not only on a completed disciplinary action — which is a lower bar than the ban notices NC posts on the Korean board.

The notice closes with the timeline NC has held since gamescom: Early Access for Founder's Pack holders from September 30 to October 4, and the free-to-play launch on October 5. Neither moved. The notice's three calls to action are a Steam wishlist, a Founder's Pack for Early Access, and the Discord. Between now and the 30th, the only other dated item on the board is the September 23 arrival of Apple Pay and Cash App Pay as payment methods.

What the closing notice does not say:

• What "members" means. The notice does not say whether the priority queue is for Membership subscribers, or for any account in good standing. The revocation sentence that follows is about conduct, which fits the second reading, but the word choice fits the first. We are not picking one.
• How long the direct-trade restriction lasts. NC gives no duration and does not call it a launch-window measure.
• Any results from the test: concurrency, queue lengths, server counts or stability figures. NC has published none.
• Whether the closing notice's wording is final. NC's business-model notices have carried a "may change" caveat; this one carries none, but it also does not claim to be the last word.

If you are installing the retail client ahead of the 30th, our download guide covers the Steam and PURPLE paths, and the release date guide carries the full timeline.