ACE Online — AirRivals in Europe, Space Cowboy Online in Korea — is still flown on private servers built from the older episode releases. Some rebuild the original grind toward high upgrade levels on your gear; others hand out boosted EXP and free Air Cash so the Nation War between BCU and ANI fills up on day one. This list ranks ACE Online servers by verified player votes and shows each one's rates, PvP or PvE type, average rating, review count and links to its own site and Discord. Browsing, voting and playing cost nothing.
Welcome to SkyForge ACE, an ACE Online Episode 4.6 server. Fly the B, I, M or A-Gear, join BCU or ANI and fight for your nation in real 360-degree aerial combat. Fully English client, automatic patching and active updates. Free to play, no pay to win. See you in the air, pilot!
Nobody here picks a winner; the ranking does. Servers are ordered by the votes players cast during the current month, and each one is tested against VPN, proxy, bot and device-fingerprint signals so stuffed counts are thrown out. Totals go back to zero on the first, which stops a dead shard sitting on last year's numbers. Treat the top of the list as a shortlist, then judge each project on what matters in ACE: whether the Nation War actually runs, and whether the shop sells power.
Yes — one game, several publishers and names. MasangSoft's original ran in Korea as Space Cowboy Online, Europe knew it as AirRivals, and other regions published it as ACE Online, with further local names elsewhere. Private servers are built from those same files and advertise under any of the names, so search both terms when you are hunting for a shard. The flight model, the four gear types and the BCU-versus-ANI conflict are identical underneath the branding.
It depends how you like to fight. The B-Gear is the bomber: slow, able to cloak and capable of deleting a target in a single strike, which makes it the classic ambush threat. The I-Gear is the interceptor, fastest and most evasive, built for close dogfights. The A-Gear and M-Gear are the heavier frames that hold a position and support a fleet rather than chase kills. Private servers often retune all four, so read the listing and ask before you commit.
Episode choice sets the feel, rate sets the pace. Earlier episodes give you the older map set and the gear balance long-time players remember, while later ones such as Episode 4 add the content and systems that came after. Rates then decide the grind: x1 keeps the original climb toward high upgrade levels, mid rates shorten it, and high-rate servers hand out levels and equipment so you can reach a Nation War the same evening you install.
Register on the server's own website first — accounts are created there, never on this list. Its download page hands you the client or a patch for an existing ACE Online install, often with a launcher that keeps files current; no downloads are stored here. Install, log in, choose BCU or ANI and pick a starting gear. If the launcher stalls behind a firewall, the project's Discord usually has a mirror pinned and the connection details the client needs.
Yes — accounts, the client and flying all cost nothing, and this list is free to browse and vote on. The shop is where servers differ. ACE Online's original economy ran on Air Cash, and private projects treat it very differently: some give it away through quests, events or vote rewards, others sell the upgrade materials that decide who wins a dogfight. Read the shop policy in the listing description and the player reviews before you commit your evenings.
It is, as long as the files come from the project itself. Take the client only from the server's official website or the pinned link in its Discord; ACE Online installers reuploaded to random file hosts are the usual source of bundled malware. Use a password you have never used on an official account with Gameforge, Suba Games or another publisher, scan the archive before running it, and be wary of any launcher that demands you switch your antivirus off completely.
No publisher has authorised them, so an ACE Online shard runs outside the game's licence. The rights sit with MasangSoft and the companies that have published the game in each region, and when action is taken it is aimed at whoever hosts the server and distributes the files, not at the people flying on it. Players are almost never pursued. What copyright law allows varies from country to country, so treat this as context rather than advice.
Open the vote-analytics page on the listing first — votes per day, voter countries and blocked attempts beat any 'online now' counter on a server's front page. ACE has a second tell: a shard can hold players and still have dead wars if one nation is stacked. Ask in the Discord which side is short, look for scheduled war times and Mothership events, and check whether recent screenshots show real fleet fights or four pilots in an empty map.
One vote per server every 24 hours, added to that server's total for the current month. The screening runs before the vote lands: VPN and proxy exits, bot patterns and repeated device fingerprints are rejected, and the rejections stay visible on the server's public analytics page. On the first of the month every total returns to zero, so the order reflects who is playing now. Plenty of ACE owners also reward voters in-game through a vote-return link.