The most played MMOs on Steam right now: AION 2 leads by a mile

AION 2 is the most played MMO on Steam right now, and it isn’t close. At our last hourly sample (October 21, 2026, 02:07 EDT), 129,912 people were playing it, more than 2.6 times the next game on the list. Its highest sample since we started tracking on October 20 was 220,623, which is higher than the peaks of the other 14 tracked games added together.

The headline finding: AION 2 is in a league of its own

Our MMO population tracker reads Steam’s public concurrent-player counts every hour. We started sampling on October 20, 2026. The most recent sample used in this article was taken on October 21, 2026, at 02:07 EDT. Every number below comes from those samples, and nothing is estimated or extrapolated.

Three comparisons from that data show how far ahead AION 2 is:

• It’s 2.66 times bigger than the runner-up. AION 2 had 129,912 players at the last sample. Warframe, in second, had 48,870.
• It’s nearly half of everyone we counted. All 15 tracked games had 276,267 players combined at the last sample. AION 2 alone accounted for about 47% of that.
• Its peak beats everyone else’s peaks combined. Add up the highest sample of every other game on the list and you get 202,181. AION 2’s highest single sample was 220,623. Those other peaks didn’t even happen at the same time, so the real gap is bigger than that.

For context, Final Fantasy XIV is the most-discussed subscription MMORPG on Steam. Its highest sample in the same window was 18,877. AION 2 cleared that number by more than 11 times.

How we measured: what these numbers are and aren’t

Population claims in MMOs get thrown around carelessly. Here’s exactly what you’re looking at, so you can judge it yourself.

What we count. Steam publishes a live concurrent-player count for every game on the platform. Our tracker records that figure once an hour for each game on our list. “Playing at sample time” is the count at the most recent sample. “Highest sample since Oct 20” is the biggest hourly reading we’ve logged since tracking started.

What we don’t count. Players who launch through anything other than Steam: standalone launchers, publisher platforms, consoles or phones. For some games that’s a rounding error. For others, Steam is a small slice of the real audience. We cover those games further down.

Why the window matters. As of this writing, our samples cover roughly a day and a half. That’s enough to show who leads right now. It isn’t enough to show long-term trends, and you should treat “highest sample” as “highest so far.”

Why hourly matters. A game can spike and fall between two samples. Our highest sample is a floor for each game’s true peak, not the exact peak.

Why the clock matters. 02:07 EDT is a very different moment depending on where players live:

North American servers were asleep or going to bed. Europe was waking up. East Asia was in the middle of the afternoon. Keep that in mind when you see a Western-heavy game sitting far below its peak. We break that down in the second table.

The full ranking: most played MMOs on Steam today

Here is the full list, sorted by players at the last sample. Four entries are tagged “online RPG.” They’re persistent online games that many players group with MMOs, but they’re built around smaller instanced sessions or survival servers rather than a classic MMORPG world. We include them because players compare against them constantly.

If you rank by highest sample instead, the order shifts. Final Fantasy XIV moves up to fourth ahead of Black Desert and MapleStory, and Dune: Awakening jumps to eighth. That’s the time-zone effect showing up in the data.

Peak vs. right now: which games held their crowd overnight

The most useful thing in our data is the ratio between each game’s last sample and its highest sample. A game sitting near 100% at 2 AM Eastern has an audience that’s awake at that hour, mostly in Europe and Asia. A game that has fallen far below its peak leans heavily on North American evenings.

Read this table as a rough map of where each Steam audience lives.

The overnight holders. MapleStory, Where Winds Meet and Black Desert all kept more than 80% of their peak at 2 AM Eastern. That fits games with large Asian or globally spread player bases. Warframe holding 85% is a reminder of how international its audience is after more than a decade of updates and console and PC cross-play.

The Western-evening games. Dune: Awakening, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2, ESO and FFXIV’s Steam version all dropped to between 45% and 58% of their peaks. Their Steam players are concentrated in time zones that were asleep. Dune’s fall to 45% is the steepest on the list.

AION 2 at 59%. Here’s the part that should worry every other publisher. AION 2 was sitting at 59% of its peak, a Western-evening-style dip, and still had 129,912 players. Even its overnight trough is more than double anyone else’s count.

Why AION 2 is surging

We can’t see inside NCSoft’s books, so this section sticks to what the data shows and what’s on the public record about the game.

Launch-window energy

New MMOs draw crowds that established games can’t match, especially in their first weeks. The best Steam example is Lost Ark, which passed 1.3 million concurrent players after its Western launch in February 2022. Today, our tracker has it at 4,809 at its highest sample. That isn’t a knock on Lost Ark. It’s the normal shape of an MMO launch: a huge spike, a steep drop, then a long tail of committed players.

AION 2 is a brand-new NCSoft MMORPG built on Unreal Engine 5, and it carries one of the best-known names in Korean MMOs. That combination pulls in curious newcomers, lapsed fans of the 2009 Western release of the original Aion, and players who have been waiting on a big-budget fantasy MMO with flight and open-world PvP. Our data covers only a short slice of time, so we can’t yet tell you how fast AION 2’s numbers will settle. History says they will settle. The question is where.

A game that already had a head start

AION 2 didn’t arrive on Steam as an untested game. It first launched in South Korea and Taiwan in November 2025 through NCSoft’s own platform. The game had that time to get its systems tuned and its first content updates out before the Steam audience counted here showed up.

That also means our numbers undercount AION 2’s total population. Players on NCSoft’s own launcher and on other platforms don’t appear in Steam’s figures. The Steam audience alone is already the largest in the MMO space by a wide margin.

Region and time zones

The 02:07 EDT sample lands in the middle of the afternoon in Korea and Taiwan, and in the morning in Europe. It’s the middle of the night on the US East Coast. An AION 2 count of 129,912 at that hour, against a highest sample of 220,623, suggests a very large share of the Steam audience plays during Western evening hours. Players across the Americas and Europe are driving a big part of the peak.

Business model

AION 2 is free to download, with monetization through its in-game shop. Free-to-play removes the biggest barrier for curious players, which is a big reason launch-week crowds get this large. Of the top seven games in our ranking, only Final Fantasy XIV requires a subscription to play past its free trial.

NCSoft’s past monetization, especially in its Lineage titles, is the thing veteran players argue about most whenever AION 2 comes up. Whatever you think of it, the Steam audience clearly decided the game was worth downloading. Whether players stay is the real test, and that’s what the hourly tracker will show over the coming weeks.

The rest of the top MMOs on Steam, game by game

Below is a quick read on each title in the tracker. Numbers are from the same samples: the last sample on October 21, 2026, at 02:07 EDT, and the highest sample since October 20.

Black Desert: the strongest classic MMORPG after AION 2

Black Desert had 13,880 players at the last sample and a highest sample of 16,922. Among traditional MMORPGs, that puts Pearl Abyss’s game second behind AION 2 at the time of the sample. It held 82% of its peak overnight, so its Steam audience is spread well beyond North America.

Black Desert remains the action-combat MMO people point to when they want fast, combo-heavy fighting and a deep life-skill economy. It’s buy to play, with an in-game shop on top. It also runs its own launcher and console versions, so Steam is only part of its audience.

MapleStory: the quiet overnight champion

Nexon’s 2D side-scroller had 11,181 players at the last sample and peaked at 12,959. It kept 86% of its peak, the highest retention in the table. MapleStory has been running in North America since 2005, and it still draws a steady, loyal crowd on Steam.

It’s free-to-play. Its many classes and heavy progression systems keep players logging in daily, which shows up as a flat, stable line instead of big spikes.

Final Fantasy XIV Online: under-counted, still top six

FFXIV’s Steam version had 10,999 players at the last sample and a highest sample of 18,877. On peak alone it ranks fourth overall. Treat those numbers as a small fraction of the game’s real population, because most FFXIV players never touch Steam. More on that below.

FFXIV is a subscription game with a generous free trial. Its Steam audience fell to 58% of peak at 2 AM Eastern, which fits a Steam player base that leans toward North America and Europe.

Where Winds Meet: the newer wuxia contender

Multiple public trackers showed NetEase’s open-world wuxia game with roughly 9,493 to 14,622 concurrent players around October 20 to 21, and 24-hour peaks of about 17,755 to 21,039. It launched globally in November 2025 as a free-to-play game. It held 83% of its peak overnight, which is no surprise for a game rooted in Chinese martial-arts fiction with a big audience in Asia.

Where Winds Meet straddles the line between a single-player action RPG and an MMO. We count it here because its online world is a central part of the experience.

Albion Online: the sandbox that keeps showing up

Sandbox Interactive’s player-driven sandbox had 4,775 players at the last sample and a highest sample of 7,908. Albion has been free-to-play since 2019, with an optional premium subscription that speeds up progress.

Steam is only one way in. Albion runs cross-platform on PC, Mac, Linux and mobile with a single shared world per server region, so a large share of its players are on phones and its own launcher.

The Elder Scrolls Online: a Western-evening audience

ESO had 4,598 players at the last sample and peaked at 7,885. It fell to 58% of its peak overnight. ZeniMax Online’s MMO is buy to play, with an optional ESO Plus membership, and it has a huge console audience on PlayStation and Xbox alongside its own PC launcher.

The scrolls name pulls in single-player Elder Scrolls fans who often play solo, so you’ll see a lot of story-focused players here. Steam counts capture only a slice of them.

Lost Ark: the cautionary launch curve

Lost Ark had 3,361 players at the last sample and a highest sample of 4,809. Smilegate developed the game, and Amazon Games published it in the West. It’s free-to-play. Steam is effectively its main PC storefront in the West, so these numbers reflect that audience more completely than most entries on this list.

That’s why Lost Ark is the best reality check for AION 2. A launch above 1.3 million concurrent players in 2022 settled into the low thousands on Steam today. Big launch numbers are a promise, not a guarantee.

EVE Online: small number, one massive universe

EVE had 2,915 players at the last sample and peaked at 4,335. CCP’s space sandbox runs everyone on a single main server, Tranquility, which makes its player count feel bigger in practice than it looks on paper.

EVE is free to start as an Alpha clone, with an optional Omega subscription for full access. Plenty of veterans use CCP’s own launcher, so the Steam figure undercounts the population.

Guild Wars 2: mostly off Steam

Guild Wars 2 had 2,134 players at the last sample and a highest sample of 3,757. Those numbers look small, but ArenaNet’s MMO only arrived on Steam in August 2022. Long-time players who started on the standalone client had no reason to switch.

GW2’s core game is free, and you buy the expansions. It’s one of the best MMOs for casual group play, and its Steam numbers say very little about how many people actually log in.

Star Wars: The Old Republic: still story-first

SWTOR had 2,011 players at the last sample and a highest sample of 3,920. At 51% of peak overnight, it’s one of the most North America-dependent audiences on the list. The game launched in December 2011, and Broadsword has run it since 2023.

It’s free-to-play with an optional subscription, and it’s available through Steam and EA’s own app. The class stories are still the main draw, and they’re best played during the hours when its Steam numbers peak.

The online RPGs on the list

These four games show up in every “most played MMO” argument even though none of them is a traditional MMORPG. Here’s how they compare.

Warframe: the real runner-up

With 48,870 players at the last sample and a peak of 57,176, Digital Extremes’ free-to-play looter shooter is the second most played game in our tracker. Warframe has been running since 2013, and its 85% overnight retention points to an audience that plays across every time zone.

It’s mission-based and squad-sized rather than a shared open world. Still, if you’re asking where the most people are playing a persistent online RPG on Steam besides AION 2, Warframe is the answer.

Destiny 2: third place, with a big evening swing

Bungie’s shooter had 20,730 players at the last sample and a highest sample of 32,837. Its base game is free-to-play, with paid expansions. Holding 63% of its peak at 2 AM Eastern is respectable for an audience this concentrated in the Americas and Europe.

Once Human: a survival hybrid with staying power

Once Human had 10,220 players at the last sample and peaked at 13,441. Starry Studio’s free-to-play survival game launched in July 2024 and kept 76% of its peak overnight. It sits much closer to Black Desert and FFXIV’s Steam numbers than most people would expect.

Dune: Awakening: the biggest overnight drop

Multiple public trackers showed Funcom’s survival MMO with a 24-hour peak of roughly 14,500 to 14,736 players around October 20 to 21. Its 45% retention is the lowest in the tracker, which suggests a Steam audience heavily concentrated in Western evening hours. Dune launched in June 2025 and is buy to play, which also sets it apart from the free-to-play games around it.

Traditional MMORPGs only: the ranking without shooters and survival games

Strip out the four online RPGs and you get a cleaner answer to “what is the most played MMORPG on Steam right now?” Same samples, same numbers.

Here the gap is almost absurd. At the last sample, AION 2 had more Steam players than the other ten traditional MMORPGs combined. Those ten add up to 64,158. AION 2 had about double that.

The giants Steam can’t see: WoW, FFXIV and Old School RuneScape

If you only read Steam charts, you’d think World of Warcraft doesn’t exist. That’s the biggest blind spot in any Steam-based population list, ours included. Some of the most played MMOs in the world either aren’t on Steam at all or keep most of their players elsewhere.

World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft is the most important MMO missing from every Steam chart. Blizzard sells and runs it only through Battle.net, so Steam has zero visibility into its population. Blizzard also stopped publishing subscriber numbers years ago. Any figure you see for WoW’s current player count is a third-party estimate, not a measurement. Those estimates usually place it at or near the top of the genre, but treat them as educated guesses.

The honest version of our headline is this: AION 2 is the most played MMO on Steam right now by a mile. Whether it beats World of Warcraft across all platforms is something no public data can settle, because Blizzard doesn’t publish the number.

Final Fantasy XIV

FFXIV is on Steam, but Steam is the minority route in. Square Enix has its own Windows and Mac launcher, plus PlayStation and Xbox versions, and long-time players overwhelmingly use those. Steam-registered FFXIV accounts are also locked to Steam, so many players buy the game directly from Square Enix to keep their options open.

That means FFXIV’s 18,877 highest sample is a small window into a much larger game. If you want a feel for its real size, check a busy hub city during the evening on your home data center. You’ll see far more players than the Steam count implies.

Old School RuneScape

OSRS doesn’t appear in our tracked table, and its Steam numbers would mislead you if it did. Most players launch through the Jagex Launcher, and the mobile version has been huge since it arrived in 2018. Jagex shows a live total player count on its own login and world-select screens, and that’s a far better guide to its real size than Steam.

If you’re coming back to Old School to grind skills, our “money osrs” guide is the place to plan your gold before you commit to an expensive training method.

What this means for the rest of the list

Every traditional MMORPG below AION 2 in our table is under-counted to some degree. Lost Ark is the exception, because Steam really is its main home in the West. Guild Wars 2, ESO, EVE and Albion are all bigger than their Steam numbers suggest, in some cases much bigger. Steam rankings are excellent for comparing launch momentum and day-to-day swings. They’re poor at measuring the total size of older games that predate their Steam releases.

How to read MMO population numbers without getting fooled

You’ll see three kinds of MMO population claims online. They aren’t equal.

1. Official statements. Numbers from the publisher, such as total registered accounts, peak concurrents announced at launch or subscriber milestones. These are real but selective. Publishers announce good numbers and go quiet on bad ones.
2. Platform counts. Steam concurrent players, like the data in this article. These are measured, public and updated live, but they only see one platform.
3. Third-party estimates. Sites that model populations from search interest, social data, Steam counts and other signals. Some are thoughtful. All of them are estimates, and some present guesses with false precision.

When someone tells you an MMO is dead or thriving, ask which of these three they’re using. A claim like “X has 2 million daily players” with no source or method is worth very little. A claim like “X peaked at 18,877 on Steam since October 20” is narrow, but you can check it.

What to watch on the Steam chart next

Our data window is short, so the most interesting questions are still open.

• AION 2’s settling point. Lost Ark shows how fast launch crowds can fade. If AION 2 is still well above Warframe after a few weeks of hourly samples, that’s a much bigger story than any single day’s peak.
• FFXIV vs. Black Desert. Black Desert led at the last sample, but FFXIV had the higher peak. Which one ranks ahead depends on the hour you check. Over a full week, peak-to-peak comparisons will settle it.
• Dune: Awakening’s swings. Its gap between peak and overnight low is the widest in the tracker. Watch whether that gap narrows, which would point to a steadier, more global audience, or whether the peaks themselves start to slide.
• Where Winds Meet and Once Human. Both sit closer to the established MMORPGs than you might expect. Either one could pass FFXIV’s Steam numbers during Asian prime time.

Picking a game based on this list

Population data is useful when you’re choosing an MMO, but only up to a point. Here’s how to use it.

If you want packed zones and fast group-finding, AION 2 is the obvious pick right now. With over 100,000 people on Steam even at its overnight low, you won’t struggle to find groups, PvP or a busy economy. Expect launch-window queues and a fast-moving meta.

If you want a stable, settled game, look at the games that held their numbers overnight. Warframe, MapleStory and Black Desert all kept 82% or more of their peak at 2 AM Eastern, which points to consistent audiences across time zones.

If you play in North American evenings, the Steam-low games aren’t as quiet as they look. SWTOR, Guild Wars 2, ESO and Dune all dropped hard overnight because their players were asleep. During your prime time, their worlds are at their busiest.

If you’re choosing a subscription MMO, ignore Steam counts for World of Warcraft (it isn’t there) and heavily discount them for FFXIV. Both are much bigger than any Steam chart can show.

Our hourly MMO player-count tracker

Every number in this article comes from EQHammer’s own MMO player-count tracker. The full table updates every hour with fresh Steam concurrent counts for every game we follow. The highest-sample column keeps growing as the tracking window gets longer.

If you’re reading this a few days or weeks after October 21, 2026, check the tracker for the current ranking. AION 2’s lead is huge today, and the tracker will show you whether it holds.

FAQ

What is the most played MMO right now?

On Steam, it’s AION 2. At our last sample on October 21, 2026, at 02:07 EDT, it had 129,912 concurrent players, and its highest sample since October 20 was 220,623. Warframe was second with 48,870. Across all platforms, nobody can say for certain, because World of Warcraft isn’t on Steam and Blizzard doesn’t publish player numbers.

Is AION 2 more popular than World of Warcraft?

On Steam, there’s no comparison to make, because WoW isn’t sold there. Blizzard doesn’t release WoW population figures, so any head-to-head claim relies on third-party estimates. What the data does prove is that AION 2 has by far the largest Steam audience of any MMO right now.

Why are Final Fantasy XIV’s Steam numbers so low?

Most FFXIV players don’t use Steam. They play through Square Enix’s own launcher or on PlayStation and Xbox. The Steam version’s highest sample of 18,877 reflects only that slice of the game’s audience.

Is Old School RuneScape on Steam?

Yes, but most of its players launch through the Jagex Launcher or play on mobile, so its Steam count shows only part of the audience. Jagex’s own in-game world list shows the live total, and that’s the better guide to how many people are playing.

How often is the player-count data updated?

Our tracker samples Steam’s public concurrent-player counts every hour. This article uses samples from October 20, 2026, through the last sample on October 21, 2026, at 02:07 EDT. The live table on our tracker always shows the newest numbers.

Are Warframe and Destiny 2 really MMOs?

Not in the traditional sense. Both are persistent online games built around instanced missions and small squads rather than a large shared world. We tag them “online RPG” in our tracker and include them because players compare MMOs against them constantly. Remove them and AION 2 still leads by a huge margin, with Black Desert second among classic MMORPGs at the last sample.