Classical MMO Astellia and hardcore MMO Astaria were both set to release on Steam today, except one did not. Baruson E&A and Studio8’s Astellia, which was originally released in September of last year, has successfully made its way to Steam and is currently purchasable for any fan that has been eagerly waiting. However, fans of developer PlayAstaria’s anticipated MMO will not be as happy, as Astaria has been hit with more delays and will not be releasing for its scheduled Steam Early Access launch.
Astellia is currently available, but does appear to be having some technical difficulties with the servers. This is to be expected of the launch of any MMO, but the early reviews are a reflection of people having issues accessing the game. For Astaria, Steam still shows the release date as today, but posts in the game’s Discord server indicate that it will be delayed for anywhere from two weeks to multiple months. Unfortunately, this delay is one of many in the development timeline for the game.
While the two names may be similar, Astellia and Astaria are shaping up to be completely different games in many ways. Astellia is a “classical MMO,” taking old school concepts and mechanics and applying new capabilities to them. It touts a lot of different ways to enjoy the game and customize your experience whether you want to play solo or in a group, competitively or cooperatively. Astaria, on the other hand, is taking a more hardcore approach with robust environments and systems more focussed on party combat and territory capture. Astaria will not be a game to venture into planning to set off alone and being the hero of your own story.
To give an glimpse of the road that development for Astaria has followed, the news section of PlayAstaria.com has a post from May 6, 2019, titled, “Final Delay,” while another on June 28, 2019 is titled, “Steam Early Access Delay - Once More, Please Don’t Murder Us.” Although it isn’t available yet on Steam, Astaria still has a playable Public Test Server and a non-Steam client that are both downloadable through Discord.
Source: astellia-mmo, playastaria, massivelyop
