AION 2 had no Chinese name. It now has one, 永恒之塔2, and still no China launch date

AION 2 is an MMORPG from the Korean developer NCSOFT. An MMORPG is an online role-playing game where thousands of players move through one shared world at the same time, and AION 2 follows the original AION. Two things about its Chinese version were settled on July 30: who runs it, and what it is called. NCSOFT and Shengqu Games held a signing ceremony in Shanghai that afternoon, and Shengqu opened the Chinese official site the same day under the local service name 永恒之塔2, meaning Eternal Tower 2 [1].

Even the announcement date comes in two versions. The date stamped on the press release page is July 30, 2026, while the opening sentence of the release says the companies disclosed the cooperation on the 31st [1]. The ceremony itself was the afternoon of the 30th. As of September 3, 2026, no China launch date has been given.

The same partner, seventeen years on

NCSOFT chief executive Kim Taek-jin and Shengqu Games chief executive Peng Cheng attended the ceremony. The two companies have kept a close partnership for 17 years, starting from AION’s China service in 2009, the release states [1]. Publishing here means distributing and operating a game in a market on the developer’s behalf. The company that ran AION in China takes the sequel as well.

The wording is more careful than the news framing suggests. Shengqu will “pursue” AION 2’s China publishing; nothing in the release says service is confirmed [1]. Operating a game commercially in China requires a publishing licence issued by the authorities, known as a banhao, and the word does not appear in the release at all.

The two executives were quoted at length. Kim said AION 2 realises what the original set out to depict at a higher level of completion. Peng Cheng called it not a simple sequel to an IP but an innovative new title combining NCSOFT’s long-accumulated MMO development philosophy and know-how with current technology [1].

ChinaJoy opened in the same city the next day, July 31. The release says NCSOFT ran a large demo space inside Shengqu Games’ booth and showed the trailer on an oversized screen [1]. That is a publisher’s booth rather than an NCSOFT booth, and what went up on the screen was video rather than playable code. The show has since closed.

The site has a spec table and a commented-out button

The Chinese official site Shengqu opened is titled AION2 永恒之塔2官方网站 [2]. Its game introduction, world, class, dungeon and wallpaper sections are filled in, and the download page carries a PC requirements table.

Minimum: 64-bit Windows 10 or 11, a Ryzen 5 2600X or Core i5-10500F or better, 8GB of memory, a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB or Radeon RX 470 4GB or better, DirectX 12, and 100GB of storage. Recommended: a Ryzen 7 3700X or Core i7-11700 or better, 16GB of memory, a GeForce RTX 2070 8GB or Radeon RX 5700 XT 8GB or better, and the same 100GB on an SSD [2].

What is absent reads more clearly. The game download section of that page carries no client link as of September 3, 2026. A reservation button does exist on the front page, but the page source keeps it wrapped in an HTML comment, so it never renders [2]. No pre-registration opening date has been announced. The only thing on the Chinese site a visitor can actually click through is account signup.

October 5 belongs to everyone except China

The Korean service is already running. Listed directly under the same press release are a July 1 chapter update and a July 23 character server transfer [1].

The global version has its date too. NCSOFT’s global AION 2 site states official service on October 5, 2026. Pre-registration has been open since June 6, 2026 and runs until further notice, and a Launch Scale Test comes first, in two windows. Pre-download starts September 16 at 22:00, with the test running September 17 22:00 to September 18 04:00 and September 19 04:00 to 10:00. The site says there are no entry conditions, and a Steam version launches alongside [3]. The site does not state which time zone those hours belong to.

For anyone waiting in China, there is nothing to do in the meantime beyond bookmarking the site and watching for the reservation button to come out of its comment. Three questions stay open: whether the licence has been granted, when pre-registration and launch happen, and how the two companies split revenue. None of the three is in this release.

Sources

[1] NCSOFT. 엔씨, 셩취게임즈와〈아이온2〉중국 출시 전략적 협력 발표. NCSOFT press release, July 30, 2026.

[2] Shengqu Games. AION2 永恒之塔2 official site. Shengqu Games, checked September 3, 2026.

[3] NCSOFT. AION2 global official site. NCSOFT, checked September 3, 2026.