Astellia Online is an MMO that never really took off. Partly due to the fact that it just didn’t really do anything to capture the attention of the MMO playerbase, and partly due to the fact that at the end of the day, it was another cheap, copy>paste Korean MMO grinder.

So you can imagine players’ surprise to learn that Bless Unleashed, which is a largely reviled MMO with almost no anticipation managed to launch to almost 50 times the active playerbase of Astellia. Even Astellia Royal, which was a free alternative to the premium Astellia Online title only ever averaged less than 1,000 concurrent players, whereas Bless Unleashed had at its peak 76,000. Even PSO2 New Genesis had over 50,000 via Steam alone.

With this knowledge, the developers behind Astellia have confirmed that as of October 18th, the entire Astellia service, pertaining to Astellia Online, Astellia Royal and even their Astellia website will be shutting down.
There will be nothing left of the Astellia IP anywhere online. While it’s unfortunate to see the closure of an MMO, this game has been dead for months now, with less than 10 people logging in to play it each day, so it was only natural this would happen.

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.

This game had a lot of potential. It launched to its share of fanfare, for sure, but interested players quickly dispersed as the dev team behind it opted to launch the game as a buy-to-play MMO as opposed to a free-to-play MMO and made a lot of bold promises.
While Astellia was completely free-to-play in each region it launched in, it was also riddled with pay-to-win, something that the Western release of the game was supposed to do away with with their alteration of the business model.
Additionally, promises were made to unlock each and every classes gender restrictions, as South Korea has an unreal obsession with gender locking.
Fast forward to the end of September 2020, Mrs Stix and I decided we were going to go ahead and stream Astellia for all of our viewers to get a gauge of how the game was doing in 2020, and the lack of updates, the broken promises, the poor optimization after an entire year of being online.. were all incredibly disappointing.
Well, disappointing would be a nice way of putting it. For a paid product like this, this is a terrible state for the game to be in.

We powered through for the stream and didn’t see anyone – not a single other player in 4 hours of playing.
There were a few people in the chat that we saw, and – I know, we were in the level 1 through 20 zone, so players are unlikely to be running around unless they’re new to the game themselves, but this gave a very poor sense of activity.
Not only was the chat mostly dead for the server, but nobody was around doing anything. Even in games like TERA and Blade & Soul – heck, even RIFT had players around low level areas, and they’re.. all very low population MMOs now.

The game was still incredibly unoptimized – I had substantial FPS drops wherever I went, but I guess this is one of the many limitations of Unreal Engine 3, right?
The combat was probably slower than I recall, and utilizes a hybrid tab-target and action combat system kind of like Guild Wars 2 and Revelation Online, but not nearly as action–definitely more tab-target, even with the action mode enabled.
Which doesn’t bother me as I’m a huge fan of tab-target MMOs anyway, WoW and Final Fantasy XIV being my two favorite MMOs of all time.

Astellia had some interesting mechanics: The Astel system that provided an almost party-like group of minions that would aid you in battle, removing the need to really play with other people.
A world that actually had things to do: Side-quests, minerals to harvest, the main scenario. It looked great, but was very limited by its engine.
And overall.. could have been a really, really good MMORPG. It’s a shame to see the state the game is in, and my guess is if they don’t go free-to-play soon, with their lack of updates, there won’t be anyone left to even play the game.
Going free would bring a surplus of new players into the game, but would also likely result in a lot of pay-to-win, so who knows.

So I’ve had an amazing morning so far. I slept in ’til like.. 11am, I woke up to the most decadent pancakes I could ever ask for.. yup. Great morning. Well, until I thought about the state that Astellia is in right now.

I’ve done a couple videos on Astellia over the last year. Naturally – it was a new MMORPG and people were excited for it, myself included. And you know what? At the end of the day, it launched with a buy-to-play business model and surprised a lot of people.
It didn’t go pay-to-win, and unlike Bless, also didn’t take the free-to-play route after losing a large percentage of their population.

But even so, the game has been in a state of constant decline ever since releasing, and the publisher, Barunson did everything they could to delay this stagnation for as long as possible.
Now if you weren’t already aware, Astellia Online in South Korea, its country of origin, shut down earlier this year on January 16th.
This closure was due to Nexon being Nexon, as they had published the game within South Korea and Nexon is notorious for shutting games down at the flip of a coin.
Barunson is the original developer of the game and they’re the very same team responsible for publishing the game over here in North America and Europe – yes, they self-published their own game over in the West.
Unlike the Korean version of the game though there has been quite a significant deviation from the original iteration – with the removal of gender-locks being one of the most important changes.
Although if I recall, they never ended up removing gender locks from every class, right? It’s been so long since I played this that I really don’t remember.
After the subsequent closure of the game, Barunson went on to release a press statement reaffirming their stance on keeping the Western version of the game running and updated with content independant of what occurs within Korea.
Furthermore, Barunson went on to state that they would love to bring aboard the displaced Korean players as these players would bring with them a “wealth of Astellia knowledge” and “experience,” along with “increasing overall player activity,” and “reducing dungeon queue times,” which were already bad enough as-is.

That all happened during approximately January 2020. Fast forward to March 2020. Barunson made a public announcement regarding the games European servers – specifically regarding Aquarius and Canceria.
As of March 17th, the two servers would be merged into one. We all know the reason behind server merges: Populations dwindle, activity declines, less players are out participating in content, less players are queueing up for content and overall participation on the server stagnates.
In an attempt to combat this, Barunson opted to merge the European servers together – at the expense of its players.
Since there’s a limit on the amount of characters you can have on any given server, unless of course you purchase additional character slots, if you have more than 3 characters per server, you’d begin losing anything after your 5th.
Since all characters would be merged onto a single server, your lowest level characters would begin being deleted first.

The game went a few months without any real updates other than their Steam launch, which brought in thousands of new players, but the game never really drew all that much attention via Steam.
There was a small readjustment made back at the end of April to aid in creating a little more flexibility with regards to classes, and that was it in terms of additions or alterations.
Now here comes some interesting information: Barunson revealed just a couple weeks ago that they are no longer going to be in charge of managing the game.
Instead, Studio 8, the development studio behind Astellia and a brand new, currently undisclosed partner will be directly managing operations.
But let’s delve a little deeper into this. Barunson E&A is a South Korean developer. They were in charge of Astellia’s development back in South Korea. Nexon was the South Korean publisher, not developer.
Barunson E&A have several divisions under them, with Studio 8 being the team that directly developed Astellia. Barunson E&A Corp. is the North American publisher, and is a subsidiary of the Barunson E&A parent company, much like Studio 8.
So while Barunson E&A will no longer be in charge of managing the game through the Barunson E&A name, Studio 8, who was and always has been the developer behind the game will continue to manage it.
Who this new unnamed “partner” is is what is most concerning honestly, and could potentially lead the game down a completely new direction of pay-to-win, microtransactions or worse.. they could be working together with a partner in an attempt to go free-to-play – something I know a lot of people would hate to see happen.

These changes aren’t looking very good, even though they’re stating that this will make it easier “for the developers to communicate with the players.” Cutting out more of the North American team that has delivered us a game free of pay-to-win – that continues to push for content we want is not what the game needs.
Honestly, this all seems like a terrible direction to take the game and I can see, especially with the merges going on and future merges no doubt going to take place, that this will be a point in the games life that it won’t be capable of recovering from.
While Astellia isn’t necessarily dead yet, it is in a place where barely anyone actively plays, and it seems like there’s really only one route left to take the game: Free-to-play.
I mentioned this earlier, and I hope, I truly hope that this isn’t where they take the game but.. I feel as though they’re going to relaunch as a free title, like the South Korean iteration of the game originally was, with the South Korean devs and this new “partner.”
While I can’t confirm it, I have a bad feeling this is where the game’s headed and that’s a shame.

RIP Astellia. And what remains of its community.

But hey – there’s always Blue Protocol coming!

So the second Closed Beta for Astellia is over and I thought now would be as good a time as any to go over what I learned and experienced over the course of the game.
I played for roughly 18 hours spread over 3 characters.
The first characrer I leveled was an Archer, and I leveled normally via quests to around level 18? 20? Somewhere around there.
The second time I wanted to try a melee character. I don’t normally play melee characters so I figured it’d be a good opportunity to.
However, after reaching like.. level 6? 7? I was told that you can level your characters to max level via an NPC in the first town.
So, I went ahead and opted to make a Mage, since that was what I really wanted to play and try out endgame and see how that was.
The only way my wife and I got in-game and had all the beta keys to give out to all of you was because the team behind Astellia sponsored us with all of them, so here’s a big thank you to them.
I’m also going to be giving away several copies of the game completely free for those of you that are interested in attempting to win one without spending anything! Just follow this link to participate!

Astellia is a traditional tab-target MMORPG that is attempting to return the genre back to its roots. It’s set in a large, open world separated by small portals.
This is how both Final Fantasy XIV and Blade & Soul handle their large worlds without issue.
Honestly, the game world itself is absolutely beautiful. I’ve heard people comparing it to both TERA and Blade & Soul and you wouldn’t be incorrect in assuming it resembles them. They’re both very fantasy-themed and so is Astellia.
The game does run on Unreal Engine 3, just like the upcoming Ascent: Infinite Realm does but man it’s gorgeous.
The environments, the characters.

Oh, don’t worry. Character creation doesn’t disappoint. This is a Korean MMO after all and if there’s anything Korean MMOs do well.. it’s the character creation.
I have yet to come across a Korean MMO that doesn’t have outstanding creation tools – or, heck, even customization in the form of outfits.
I daresay that Astellia has potentially more customization options than almost any other MMO out presently.
It gives you significant control over how you want your character to look. My Wife MrsStix managed to make a very attractive character and I.. well I believe my character looks better, but I’ll let you guys decide that.
But yes, control over your facial structure, but also control over a large part of your body- which I’m well aware you guys are fans of.

Being able to customize your very own bodacious beauty or byte-sized loli are both highly possible.

I know, character customization is important, but.. combat is where a lot of you draw the line. If combat sucks you’ll probably end up quitting. I know those feels, trust me.
As mentioned initially, Astellia is tab-target, meaning there’s no action to it at all. But then again, WoW and Final Fantasy XIV are both tab-target and they’re two of the largest MMOs of all time, right?
Thankfully, although tab-target the combat itself is pretty fun – if a little.. hectic at times. Not because it’s bad, but purely because I had so many damn skills on my Mage.
I insta-50’d her so I would be able to see what end-game was like but let me tell you, maxing out a character is never a good idea.
I spent a solid hour trying to figure out which skills I should be using at what point and in the end I ended up YOLO’ing it ’cause why not?
I couldn’t imagine going into PvP blind like this though.

Okay, so this is actually one of the most unique aspects of the game. See, while you can party with other players to tackle open-world or dungeon content, there’s also less of an incentive to due to Astel’s.
Astel’s are little NPC companions. They’re obtained via a variety of methods in-game and function primarily as combat-partners.
They’re restricted to the holy trinity of tank/healer/DPS and offer quite a few beneficial little enhancements to gameplay.
I’ve had Astel’s that heal me – which, honestly wasn’t much of a necessity considering I play with my wife who has always and likely will always main healer.
I’ve also had Astel’s tank for me, or try to at least (haha) and then the most common Astel: The DPS which.. yup, you guessed it, attacks every single thing in sight. They’re bloodthirsty little things I swear.
My wife got this cool looking wraith Astel and decided she’d go get a drink real quick. I turned over to look at her screen and all I saw was this.. menacing embodiment of death wreaking havoc on the poor souls around us.
By the time she got back he’d disappeared and she didn’t believe me. She claimed he was innocent and adorable. Little did she know…

There are currently 5 classes in Astellia. The Warrior, the Assassin, the Mage, the Scholar and the Archer. Classes are currently gender locked with Warrior and Assassin both being male and Mage, Scholar and Archer all being female.
The team behind Astellia have promised to remove the gender locking of the classes though so keep that in mind before getting the pitchforks.
My wife played Scholar and I played Mage at level 50 and I admit, both were very fun. Skills were impactful and flashy and ultimately I had no complaints.

Playing through Astellia was fun. I regret insta-50’ing my character as I know I would’ve learned much more had I chosen to play through the game like a normal person but with the limited beta.. I wanted to test as much as I could.
Combat reminded me a lot of ArcheAge and graphically.. we’re looking at an updated TERA. And you should take that as a compliment, as TERA is still to this day a very aesthetically appealing game.
Astellia is a very traditional MMO – It’s tab-target, has dungeons to run, is story-heavy, you know. What made MMOs of the past popular. I enjoyed my time in it like I do every new MMO.
I know it won’t appeal to everyone – no game ever does. So, enjoy playing the game if it looks and sounds like something you’d enjoy. I will be when it officially launches and you can expect an updated look at the game then.