Anyway if we compare the classic and the live server i think the p2w of classic are far from reaching the p2w to the live server. (it's my personal opinion)
This comparsion makes no sense at all. Gameforge hat nearly 9 years to reach that p2w level we have on retail nowadays.
If you like to compare, then compare the p2w at original AION start 2009 and the p2w at AION classic start 2020, that makes sense. Or wait for the p2w at AION classic europe start.....
I don't remember any p2w back in 2009. Things got started in 2012 when Aion went f2p in NA and EU but I wouldn't say it was p2w either. In EU people were arguing about how bad GP is for this game and in NA they started selling stuff only available to those who paid directly. Back then you could easily farm kinah to buy one GP every month, and I wish that was the only problem with Aion today. Things got more visible near the end of 4.x, which was almost half of Aion lifetime.
Since someone was asking me about this a few weeks ago and I barely login anymore to check it out, I'll detail it here. I know people complain how bad the game was back then, because for many it was the first time experiencing p2w games or NC games for that matter. So many were vocal everywhere on social media, advertising not to play here. Nobody is denying that the game went downhill and it wasn't p2w, because it was. Back in NA, the land of the 'truly free', where you didn't get restrictions like trading and other essential things, it was better, right? Not really. Players back then, little did they knew that GF did manage to do it better here, at least better than NA where I've played for quite some years. Players were always comparing the p2w times with the good old days under NC West when the game was with subscription. I was really enjoying pvp but back then in NA they started selling things exclusively through shop, things that you couldn't trade, which was affecting the pvp players. At first they introduced wings with very good stats and the best titles. Those wings and best titles were available in EU as well but under veteran rewards, which everyone had access more or less, if you had kinah to buy GPs. Later they started with omegas and temperings, being exclusive to shop because the advertised drop in open world was rarer than godstones drop. Those could be traded but on broker were very expensive, a few times over the EU prices. Those were on top of the optional monthly subscription, which gave benefits to the pvp players, with extra entries and other things. On EU players were protesting about the removable of 100% apes from luna and I wish that was my problem in NA. On EU players had constant hero trials with good rewards, bringing all those scarce and needed apes and serums. The events were better, when those shugo instances were giving lots of apes/serums, luna and more. I was playing on most populated server in NA and it was hard to farm freely, and since NA introduced paid transfers some players were gearing up alts on dead servers very easily and got them to their main server, also transfering some important things. It was more and more imbalanced for the pvp players. It was a lot easier to level up on EU in 5.x when the xp was hard, with those xp events and ap every other week, and lodas and stars and other things from hero trials. There was even more p2w but kinah was very easy to make, items were all around from either VR or elite rewards. EU kept some of the pvp stats from those newly added items, removed the one shot pet skill thing that was happening in NA, lowered the maximum enchantment. This made pvp more manageable in EU. Crafting was a lot easier with those craft events we had on EU.
From my experience EU was a much better experience than NA up till the end of 5.x times. Even the swarms of bots and tons of spam messages alone could make you quit NA back then, not just the other things. Then Aion was getting f2p in KR, NA shop got revamped and both EU and NA were starting to sell mostly the same things in the shop, with the exceptions of many skins in NA but EU being more expensive in general. NA also started to do better on events and some of the features. Right now NA is giving you a better experience, although in both regions the game is collapsing.
Now I understand Rinnie's point of view. Less p2w was better than p2w that we have now. It's still p2w but experienced pvp players like him in the past, with a lot of free time, will not have a problem catching up to p2w players if the p2w is moderate as it was years ago. For the average players to casual players by time, it might be difficult. If you're a p2w player, you don't have to worry about crafting scrolls, which cost a lot of kinah to master the profession and a lot of kinah to farm and to buy them constantly. Every bit of p2w help in any direction helps a lot with spending less times on things that are time consuming. The others with moderate time playing, they have to split the time to farm kinah for leveling their professions, to spend time gathering aether and other resources, to spend time crafting and selling, so less time for pvp and gearing up. This directly impact the possibility of getting AP and ranks for some players, if that is what they want. Every little bit helps, even better pots from the shop since 1 damage can make the difference between life and death sometimes.
I think the limit of when p2w is bad is when they will do it like in the past, putting wings and best titles and maybe best mounts and other things in the shop, as I remember that mounts were quite relevant. Let's not forget that Aion 6.0 started with a lot of hype in KR, players coming back to the new Aion. They had optional subscription model with some modest shop at the start. Aion classic has subscription and a shop, which is a controversial topic already. Once they start adding events and event items in the shop, as they always do these days on main servers, it's basically like taking the exact same path as Aion 6.0 and forward. From my point of view, NC just can't restrains themselves to not go that path again and again with every game they have and probably see this classic as a temporary source of income, because they have plenty of other new games coming out anyway.
As for when it comes, this just doesn't depend on the publishers. If you watch RU for example, they say when they get files for patches from NC, and it can be a month, two months or even more for just a patch. Then there is the localization, testing, bug fixing, adding new stuff members for a new game, a new website for a new project and so on. It will take more time for NC to build complete oversea version for something I might consider a new game because it has quite some changes. Sometimes RU is not that far ahead of EU, and NC West, having only one language as well as RU, had patch releases after EU for quite many times. If anything, I think Galeas posted a way too optimistic timeline and it will take more. We will see. I guess I will be wishing you happy new year since I don't bother much with this Aion anymore and forums.