Is AION 2 pay-to-win? What NC actually sells, and what’s just opinion
Membership, Daeva Pass rewards and the Quna-to-Kina exchange, checked against NC's own notices, plus the Shroud debate on X.
“Is AION 2 pay-to-win?” has been the big question among new players since launch, and the argument got louder after Jake Lucky posted a clip on October 10 with the caption “This dude Shroud is getting out of hand with p2w in Aion 2 LOL.” That post passed 2 million views on X. So here’s what NC actually sells, straight from its own product notices, followed by where the opinions come in.
The facts: what costs money
AION 2’s global version is free to play. Real money buys Quna, the premium currency. Kina is the currency you earn by playing. From there, there are three things worth knowing.
1. Special Quai Membership: $14.99 for 30 days
According to NC’s membership notice, this is what an active membership unlocks:
Without the Special Quai Membership, which costs $14.99 for 30 days, you can’t list or buy items on the Market. It also unlocks the Kina ↔ Quna exchange, Remote Storage and remote access to the Wind Breeze Merchants. With membership, Odyle Energy can be injected twice instead of once when opening reward cubes from Expedition, Transcendence and Sanctuary, the Odyle Energy cap is higher, and the Shugo Festa Key cap rises from 12 to 21.
Benefits only apply to characters on the server where you bought it. NC has also edited the notice since launch: Personal Trade and the World Exchange were removed from the benefit list, and the price went from $15.00 to $14.99.
2. Daeva Passes: free track, paid Premium track
NC’s Daeva Pass notice lists two passes, each bought once per character:
In the Daeva Pass, a free track sits alongside a paid Premium track. On Dawn Legion and Ishalgen Mercenary, Premium costs 1,500 Quna, unlocks 100 levels and runs until December 15 at 11 PM PST (4 AM Brasília). Buying it gives 5 Resurrection Spiritstones right away. On Planet’s Call, Premium costs 1,000 Quna, unlocks 50 levels and can be bought until October 28 at 12 AM PDT, and it comes with 20 Battle Enhance Scrolls. Each extra level costs 50 Quna, so you can pay to skip the weekly EXP limit.
This is where it gets important. The reward tables aren’t just cosmetics. On the Dawn Legion pass, Enhance Stones show up again and again (2,000 per tier on the free track, 5,000 on Premium), along with Manastones, Soul Crystals, Amplify Stone Fragments and bound Kina (10,000 vs. 100,000 per tier). All of that is upgrade material, and Premium hands out a lot more of it.
3. Quna to Kina, between players
Membership opens the Kina ↔ Quna exchange, where one player sells Kina and another pays for it with Quna. And Kina is what you spend on the Market. In plain terms: you can put in real money, get Quna, buy Kina from other players, and use that Kina to buy gear or materials, as long as you’re a member.
The opinions: why people disagree
Everything above comes from NC’s notices. Whether it counts as “pay-to-win” depends on what you mean by the term. That’s the real fight on X.
The most common argument is that it is P2W. Spanish creator Choco Feru laid it out: euros buy Quna, Quna buys Kina, Kina buys gear and upgrades, and the Premium pass does the same thing. Creator Moxsy also called it P2W and compared it to a “free-to-try” model. The other side says paying speeds up progression without raising the ceiling, since materials can also be earned by playing. NC has not used either label in the notices we checked. On the Shroud clip: Jake Lucky’s post is a joke caption on a video. It is not a review and, on its own, says nothing about how much Shroud spent. Treat it as a sign of the debate, not as evidence.
Our take
Based on NC’s own reward tables, money in AION 2 buys more upgrade materials and access to a player market where Kina can be bought with Quna. That’s a real power shortcut, not just cosmetics. Whether that’s “winning” depends on how much the gap matters in the content you care about, especially PvP. If you’re playing free, you can level, do PvE and take part in fights. Your biggest limit is the Market, which needs membership.
Should you spend?
If you want to try it, play free for a week before paying for anything: the free pass tracks already give Enhance Stones and Kina. If you plan to stay and trade, membership ($14.99) is the purchase that changes the most, and it is worth buying on the server you will actually play on. Want Planet’s Call Premium? Sales end October 28 at 12 AM PDT. And don’t buy Kina from outside sellers: NC has banned thousands of accounts for RMT between October 10 and 12.
Official sources: Special Quai Membership notice, Daeva Pass notice, Account Restrictions notice.
Worth reading next: AION 2 is live worldwide: what to know before you start. Everything else on AION 2 lives in our AION 2 hub.