NCsoft has announced that the open beta test for its latest MMO, Aion: Tower of Eternity, is going rather well in Korea.

The beta has already seen an impressive high of 170,000 concurrent players; that's not even a total, that's just the number of players online simultaneously.

11,000 people were logged into the game two minutes after the beta started on Tuesday, and 40,000 within an hour. NCsoft has opened 25 beta servers to meet the demand, and Aion has gone straight to the top of Korea's PC café charts.

Seems as though the huge community of home fans of NCsoft's Lineage games - Lineage and Lineage II boast over 800,000 players each - is really getting behind Aion. But NCsoft is hoping that it will also succeed where Lineage failed, and cross over to the West.

"The response we're seeing in Korea is incredibly exciting," said NCsoft West boss David Reid. "Our Aion community in North America and Europe is also rapidly growing. We've got aggressive plans for the western launch in 2009."

Aion combines the looks and factional warfare focus of an Asian MMO with the rich questing and easy levelling we enjoy in the West. It's due out in North America and Europe on PC next year, like the man said. Read more in our Aion preview.