AION 2: Which Faction to Choose — Elyos or Asmodians

AION 2 asks you to pick a side before you have played a single fight, and the search results for that decision are full of numbers nobody has confirmed. This page separates what NCSOFT has actually published from what is still open, and explains the one widely copied statistic that belongs to a different region entirely.

Last verified September 30, 2026. Every confirmed and not-announced item below comes from NCSOFT’s own store page, press releases and global teaser site. Two things in this page are not from NCSOFT — the War for Atreia creator event and the regional visual descriptions of each faction’s start — and both are labelled with their source and date where they appear.

Which faction should you choose in AION 2?

Pick on presentation and people, not power. For the global build NCSOFT has announced no faction-exclusive skills, stat differences or bonuses, and both factions can play all eight classes and both genders. What changes is the look of your wings and armour, the story you follow, the continent you start on, and the side you fight for in the Abyss.

That is a shorter answer than most faction articles give you, and it is the honest one. The Steam store page sells the choice as flavour, not as a build decision: pick a faction, ascend as a Daeva, and the world opens up. There is no published racial trait table, no faction-locked class, and no official page that ranks the two sides against each other.

Default answer, in this order: who you are playing with, then which look you want, then which story. Answer those three in that sequence and the faction question resolves itself. The only reason to reorder them is if you are playing solo with no group to coordinate with.

1. Who are you playing with? This overrides everything else

Match your group’s faction, because a faction pick is the one decision you cannot reverse. NCSOFT has announced no faction change, race change or allegiance swap for the global build, and no item in the cash shop or the Founder’s Packs performs one — so a group that splits sides may not be able to run content together at all.

The order matters because the cost of being wrong is not symmetrical. Faction is attached to the character itself, its world and its social graph, while the class is a separate decision you can revisit with another character. The character creation guide covers how many characters you can hold if you would rather live on both sides for a while, and the races and factions page has the full list of what has and has not been announced about changing sides.

2. Which look do you actually want to see for hundreds of hours?

This is a real, permanent difference, and it is allowed to decide the pick on its own. NCSOFT leans on presentation harder than on any mechanical split: the regional build’s own descriptions call one people elegant and sacred and the other rough, wild and ambitious. Your people set the baseline of your armour and your wings, at no published cost.

If the visual identity is what you are choosing on, the wings guide is the page that matters most. Wings are the feature you look at in every session, and the Korea and Taiwan client data already lists faction variants of some of them.

3. Which starting story and world appeals to you?

Each side has its own campaign, opening region and first hours in Atreia — none of it confirmed for the global client. In the Korea and Taiwan build — regional reference, not a global map — the Elyos open in Poeta and the Asmodians in Ishalgen, with Verteron and Altgard as their main zones. A trailer that grabs you is a legitimate tiebreaker.

If you are still choosing a class, treat that as a separate decision — the classes overview covers the eight global launch classes and their roles, and none of them is locked to one faction. The lowest-regret version of all three answers is to settle the faction with your friends and then spend the planning energy on the class. Read that as a prioritisation, not a promise: no class change service has been announced for the global build either, so revisiting a class means another character rather than a respec.

Can you change faction in AION 2?

No faction change has been announced for the global build, so treat the pick as permanent for that character. NCSOFT has published no race change, no faction change and no allegiance swap, and nothing in the global cash shop or the Founder’s Packs performs one. The only route to both peoples is to make a second character.

Ranked by how hard each decision is to undo, the order looks like this. The table is the practical version of the argument above: the further down the list a decision sits, the less it should drive your faction pick.

If you are genuinely torn, the cheapest way to satisfy both sides is two characters inside your slot allowance, not a bet on a change service that has never been announced. Decide the world and the faction together, in that order, because both are open questions that your group will answer as one.

When do you choose your faction in AION 2?

At character creation, which makes it the first irreversible decision in the game. The earliest moment anyone can create a character is Advance Access on September 30, 2026, if they own a Founder’s Pack; everyone else picks a faction at the free global launch on October 5, 2026. NCSOFT has announced no character pre-creation window before either date.

Both dates and the platform lock are set out on the advance access guide, and the region-by-region clock is on the release date and launch time page. NCSOFT has not published the exact hour the servers unlock on September 30, so plan the decision rather than the minute. Pack owners get five days to make it; everyone else gets one. Either way, agreeing on one faction in a voice channel is cheaper than discovering on day one that your group is split across two sides.

What is confirmed — and what is not?

Almost nothing mechanical separates the two factions, and the list of unknowns is longer than the list of differences. The table below splits what NCSOFT has published for the global build from what nobody has confirmed, including several items that competing pages state as settled fact.

The last row is the important one. Zone names and faction descriptions that circulate as AION 2 facts come from the Korea and Taiwan service, which has been live since November 19, 2025. That service is a separate build; the global versus KR/TW comparison covers what is and is not safe to carry across.

The Korea and Taiwan reference point

Useful context, not a global promise. These are the faction descriptions, homelands and opening zones used in the Korea/Taiwan build. Treat them as an accurate picture of how the two sides are framed in the series, and as unconfirmed for the global client.

The same build allows cross-faction PvE grouping. That is a KR/TW observation and must not be read as a confirmed global feature; NCSOFT has published nothing on the subject for the October 5 release.

What do Elyos and Asmodians share?

• Every class and both genders. All eight global launch classes are open to both factions, and the classes overview lists them by role — nothing about your build is decided by your side.
• Every announced progression system. NCSOFT has published no faction-locked track for skills, Stigma, Daevanion boards or Arcana cards, so the growth systems in the systems hub treat both sides the same.
• The same launch, platforms and economy. Both factions share the October 5 free-to-play opening on Steam and PURPLE, the Kina and Quna currencies, and the subscription-gated Market — none of that splits by side.
• The same endgame zone, on opposite armies. Both factions enter the Abyss, which is exactly why the choice matters there: shared access, opposed objectives. The Abyss guide covers the zone itself.
• The same unknowns. Transfer policy, world allocation and cross-faction grouping are unannounced for both sides alike.

If your real question is what Elyos and Asmodians are — whether a separate race picker sits underneath — that definition lives on the races and factions page. This page is the advisory half: which side to pick.

What actually differs between the two sides?

What separates Elyos from Asmodians is presentation, story and community rather than power, and the confirmed part is narrower than the part people describe. NCSOFT has confirmed the framing and the shared systems. The regional descriptions below are the closest thing to a picture of each side, and they are labelled as regional.

Wings and armour: the clearest difference

Wings are the feature you look at most, and they are the one place where faction differences are documented rather than imagined. The Korea and Taiwan client data lists faction variants of some wings — Elyos and Asmodian versions — alongside purely cosmetic pairs, and none of that has been announced for the global build.

As of 2026-09-30, mmoexp.com reports Elyos wing designs as feathered in white or golden tones and Asmodian designs as darker and spiked, with armour and skill effects following the same light-versus-shadow line. That is one site’s read of pre-release art, not an NCSOFT statement, so treat it as the shape of the difference rather than a rule.

The wings guide has the rest of the picture: what is confirmed globally, what the regional client data shows, and why a wing tier list you find before launch is describing the Korean and Taiwanese build. Flight itself is not a faction feature — NCSOFT frames it as a combat system that both sides share.

Starting zones and the feel of each half

Each side opens in a different part of Atreia, and the zone names we have are regional rather than global. The Elyos start in Poeta and run through Verteron in the Korea and Taiwan build; the Asmodians start in Ishalgen with Altgard as their main zone. The reference table above lists both homelands: Elysea and Asmodae.

As of 2026-09-30, mmoexp.com reports the Elyos beginning in brighter, sunlit regions of Elysea and the Asmodians in the harsher, colder territories of Asmodae, with a campaign tone of light and duty on one side and hard-won strength on the other. Nothing NCSOFT has published says the global client keeps those names or that split, so read this as a description of the regional framing rather than a map of the global world.

Field bosses and the opening route

Each faction’s early route runs through its own territory, which is why the first levels are not a mirror image. As of 2026-09-30, mmoexp.com reports that field bosses are tied to the region of the faction you picked, so players chasing a specific title or reward meet different encounters depending on their side.

What that means in practice is narrower than it sounds. NCSOFT has named four dungeons so far and has published nothing about world-boss rosters, their levels or their rewards, so the dungeon list is the only place on this site tracking what has actually been announced. The faction framing tells you the two levelling routes will not be identical; it does not give you a boss schedule.

Where does the Abyss faction war fit in the endgame?

The Abyss is the point of the faction split. NCSOFT’s store copy states that “the Abyss ensures that PvE and faction war are never far apart”, and the Steam description frames the entire game as a faction war across a world 36 times larger than the original game. Your faction choice decides which army you belong to inside that zone.

The Abyss is not only a player-versus-player arena. The official teaser site places player content inside it too: Draupnir is described as “An unknown Abyss that has swallowed the Draupnir Caves”, with a boss who “has surpassed the natural order of the Elyos, Asmodians, and Balaur”. The dungeon list covers the four dungeons NCSOFT has named so far.

What the global Abyss actually rewards — currencies, ranking systems, gear tracks, matchmaking rules — has not been announced. Anyone publishing an Abyss reward table before launch is writing fiction.

What is the commonly miscited number?

There is one statistic repeated in almost every faction article, and it does not describe the global build: the claim that AION 2 runs twenty servers, ten for Elyos and ten for Asmodians. That sentence comes from NCSOFT’s server and character-name reservation announcement dated October 16, 2025 — the Korea and Taiwan reservation event.

The original notice is a regional sign-up page. It tells Korean and Taiwanese players how to reserve a character name on a faction-locked world before that service opened. It says nothing about how many worlds the global build will run, what they will be called, or whether global worlds will be faction-locked at all.

The miscitation is understandable and still wrong. A number that appears in a first-party press release looks like a fact, and aggregator pages copied it without carrying the region and date across. The practical consequence is that players now expect a twenty-world global launch that nobody has announced.

For what is actually known about global worlds — regions, selection criteria, and why final names are still unpublished — use the server list and regions guide.

Which side should you pick? Advice by player type

Default answer: follow your group, then pick the look you prefer, then the story — in that order. NCSOFT has announced no power difference to rank, so the table below maps what players actually search for onto what is known, and names the side each reason points to.

Two practical notes. First, if you are still deciding on a class, the tier list page explains why no verified ranking exists before launch and how to choose by role instead. Second, if you plan to play several classes, the faction decision interacts with how many characters you can hold — the character creation guide covers slots and appearance change tickets, and it is worth reading before the October 5 global launch rather than after.

What do live faction events mean for your choice?

One dated, faction-versus-faction signal exists before launch, and it comes from competitor reporting, not an NCSOFT page. As of 2026-09-30, timesaver.gg describes a “War for Atreia” creator event that turns the faction choice into a live competition when early access opens. We could not find it on an official NC channel, so the details are reported, not confirmed.

The reported captains, one per side per region, are NA — Stoopzz (Elyos) against Sonii (Asmodian), EU — Baggins (Elyos) against Wakayashi (Asmodian), and LatAm — Rakin (Elyos) against Tixinha (Asmodian). Viewers are said to earn bounties for hitting campaign milestones and for recruiting other players into their creator’s faction, with those bounties feeding a global Faction War score and regional Top Legion rankings, and Twitch Drops said to be active across multiple event rounds.

Day-one population signal: the creator rosters are the closest thing to a predictor

The reason to care is population, not lore: a larger creator community pulls more players to one side in week one. That is timesaver.gg’s reasoning as of 2026-09-30, and it matches how faction-war MMO populations behave. It is not a measurement — no population data exists for either side — but it is why the reported rosters are worth a glance.

Faction community before you even log in

A side with an organised community on your world has a head start on day one, whatever the balance turns out to be. The legion guide covers recruitment once you are in, and the Discord and communities page covers where those groups form. The practical version: pick the side your server’s community is already organised around.

Which faction will be more populated at launch?

Nobody can answer this before the servers are live, and any page that tells you which side will be bigger is guessing. NCSOFT has published no population numbers, no world list, no server count and no faction allocation, so the balance is a launch-week observation rather than a pre-launch fact.

Until it is observable, proxies beat charts. These are the signals worth watching in your first week, and what each one actually tells you.

The server population guide explains why proxies beat official charts on this game, and the server list and regions guide covers the world half of the decision. The only pre-launch signal anyone points to is the reported creator split above, and that is a competitor’s reading of a roster list rather than a population forecast.

One asymmetry is worth carrying into launch week, and the section below develops it: faction war needs an opposing faction online, so a world where one side has collapsed offers nobody a war. That is the practical reason to follow a healthy group rather than chase the louder Discord.

How does your faction choice affect your server and community life?

Your faction decides who you can stand next to, so coordinate it with your server before launch day. A character lives on one world and fights for one side, and with no transfer or faction change announced, the pair of decisions is effectively permanent — agree on both with your group, not just one.

In practice the coordination has three layers. First, your group must land on the same world and the same faction: cross-faction grouping is unconfirmed for the global build, so a split group may not be able to run content together at all. The server list and regions guide covers the world half of that decision. Second, organised play follows the same split — Legion recruitment, Abyss warbands and faction Discords all sort by side, so the community you join is decided the moment you pick; the Legion guide explains the guild structure waiting on the other side of that choice. Third, a lopsided world hurts the majority too: the Abyss needs an opposing faction online, and a world where one side has collapsed offers nobody a war.

Sources and verification

• Steam store page, AppID 3393110 — description: “Choose your faction, ascend as a Daeva, and fight a faction war across a world 36 times larger than the original.” (faction choice, Daeva, world scale)
• Steam store page, AppID 3393110 — “the Abyss ensures that PvE and faction war are never far apart” (Abyss as the faction war)
• Official global teaser site, aion2.ncsoft.jp/en — “Tale of Two Worlds — Experience the tale of the Elyos and Asmodians.” (faction narrative framing)
• Official global teaser site — Draupnir entry: “Transcendent Bakarma has surpassed the natural order of the Elyos, Asmodians, and Balaur.” (Balaur as a third power)
• NCSOFT newsroom, server and character-name reservation announcement, October 16, 2025 — “Ten servers will be available for Elyos and ten for Asmodians” (Korea/Taiwan reservation event; not a global figure, quoted here only to identify the miscitation)
• Korea/Taiwan live build (live since November 19, 2025) — faction homelands, zone names and race descriptions. Labelled KR/TW throughout this page and never presented as global.

Two claims in this page are not from an official source, and both are labelled in the body with the reporting date: the War for Atreia creator event — announced, roster and captain details as reported by timesaver.gg on 2026-09-30 — and the visual descriptions of each faction’s starting region, wings and field bosses as reported by mmoexp.com on 2026-09-30. Neither site cites NCSOFT for those details, so they are recorded here as reported and should be re-checked against an official channel before anyone plans a server around them.

Evidence level: Official, with labelled KR/TW reference points. The confirmed column comes from NCSOFT’s own store page, press releases and teaser site. The zone names, race descriptions and cross-faction grouping come from the Korea/Taiwan build and are marked as such wherever they appear. Every item in the not-announced column is absent from official global material at the time of writing — no global stat, skill or reward figure is quoted anywhere on this page.