AION 2 Elyos or Asmodians — How to Choose Your Faction

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.

Elyos or Asmodians — which should you pick 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.

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.

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.

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. Your faction choice is what decides which army you belong to there.

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 faction should you pick? Advice by player type

Because there is no announced power difference, the decision is about what you want to look at and who you want to play with. The table below maps the four common reasons players search for this comparison onto what is actually known, without pretending to rank the sides.

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.

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.

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.