by ByteStixAstellia Royal is Coming.. RIP Astellia Online.
I can’t believe this is real. That this is actually happening. Astellia Online, which has been buy-to-play for over a year now is going to be receiving a slight overhaul in the way of Astellia Royal. And.. wow, I’m actually completely shaken that the developers behind the game care so little about their community – rather, that they’re so focused on the short-term increase in revenue they’ll receive converting the game to a free-to-play title.
Initially, Astellia Royal was scheduled to release in South Korea exclusively, and would offer an overhauled system such as content appropriate for a free (as opposed to bought) title, open-world PvP, tweaked content, a reduced leveling speed with players requiring additional effort to attain max level, dungeon ticket refills take significantly longer, gear breaks after failing an enhancement attempt now, which leads me to actually believe that there will be premium cash shop items that prevent your gear from breaking, furthering the pay to win aspects of the game, there will be no censorship, the servers will be located within South Korea as opposed to North America, so players playing within the North American regions will have significantly increased lag (from 20-30 ping to 200-300,) the removal of level requirements on gear and so much more.
It is unconfirmed whether or not Astellia Online will shut down after Astellia Royal launches, or if they’ll simply merge the games into one another, but regardless of which route they take.. this is condemning Astellia Online, the buy-to-play MMORPG to death. There is no way that players care enough to continue to play the paid version of the game when a large influx of new players will be hitting the much healthier South Korean servers.
This is a disgusting, disrespectful thing to do from the developers and I cannot support this in any form, especially after they took so much money from players that bought into the Founder’s Packs – and even the base game itself.
RIP Astellia Online and RIP player wallets. This is why you shouldn’t support buy-to-play MMOs.
