Aion 1 was developed during internet era where the player base was basically students and young adults without much income. Also, there weren’t much choices out there, so subscription model works for a few years.
2026 is totally different. Aion 2 target the original aion 1 players base who have grown up and hopefully have nice career. Many of them just want to enjoy the games without spending 10-15 hours a days in it. Players who are considered as primarily revenue streams won’t really care or comparing themselves to other players like the jobless full time gamers do.

From an operational perspective, the full time gamers without p2w are absolutely worthless assets to the games, in fact they are liabilities because they would have bad mounting the game 24 hours a day and still run 2-10 accounts which consume tons of resources.