Astellia Online is an MMORPG being developed by Barunson Entertainment & Arts (Studio 8 is the subsidiary design studio for Astellia). In Korea, they signed a publishing contract with Nexon (which is why I really haven’t bothered mentioning this title).
Studio 8 itself is comprised of former designers/developers from other MMO’s like Lineage II, Guild Wars 2, Blade & Soul, Aion, Bless, ArcheAge, and Lineage Eternal (when the previous development team was completely replaced, some of them moved to this studio). Basically, there’s a lot of former NCSoft developers associated with Astellia.
The game itself has been in development since 2013 which means it is one of those MMO’s that was near the tail end of the Korean venture capital investment in PC MMO’s (before that money shifted to mobile). As a result, the game engine (like Bless Online and Ascent: Infinite Realm which were also Korean MMO’s that received funding towards that same tail end investment spree) is Unreal Engine 3.
Astellia Online YouTube Channel
Character customization is fairly decent but the world environment and game play itself is not going to be much different than other Korean MMO’s from that era. Where it probably separates itself from the rest are its card system and summons (known as Astell’s which are creatures that can be collected and summoned). The game has 4-player instanced dungeons, larger 16-20 player raids, 1v1 and 4v4 PvP arenas, and a larger battlefield type of PvP known as Avalon (a conflict zone where small to large scale PvP can happen). What they won’t have are the usual larger scale (60v60 or 120v120 type) sieges.
The developer also mentioned they won’t have a deep economy (so nothing of the level like ArcheAge for example) but will have a crafting system along with player trading.
A North American (presuming that also includes Europe) release is also being planned (for the 2nd half of 2018). The Korean version is already being planned for a free-2-play model while Barunson had hinted last year that they were looking to a buy-2-play business model for the NA version.
The game aesthetically is something I would play but I always have my reservations when it comes to Nexon when it comes to their monetization systems (and they will likely end up being the publisher in the west even though the majority of their titles t.end to be F2P)
