ASTA (and ELOA) Discontinued In The West Due To Low Player Count -- UPDATED
ASTA's time in the West is coming to an end on October 4th. The announcement -- made today by publisher Webzen -- apologized to current players and attributed the decision to recent player numbers beings insufficient to warrant continuing the service.
In the post, the company also outlined what it will be doing to make the transition easier on current players -- including offering compensation in the form of item packages for the "most supportive players" that can be used in other titles and Wcoin refunds for purchases made within the last month. To prevent the need for additional refunds, Webzen has closed ASTA's in-game shop, making any purchases impossible after today's maintenance period.
As a bit of a last hurrah for players, Webzen is offering 100% buffs on everything from XP to Gold drop rates during these final hours of the game. So those wanting to see how far they can get before everything comes to a close will want to get in there and get rolling.
Full details on the shutdown -- including a FAQ -- are available in a post on the ASTA site.
UPDATE: ELOA will also be closing in October. The game's shuttering is set a bit later than ASTA's and rather than players receiving refunds for purchases over the last month, Webzen will be refund the game's currency in the form of bonus Wcoins usable in their other titles. Like ASTA, ELOA players will receive buffs allowing them to level quickly and get in as much of the game as possible before it's gone forever.
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made it to #4 Rogue in Arena in the EU server in the first week with only one day of work
played till level 39, couldnt even reach 40, thats how tedious the game is
the crafting system is too expensive and all the gear you can craft, you can buy from the AH or just find in dungeons, as long as you are in a guild and do guild activities, you can earn about 200g per day and you only buy new gear about every 10 levels, so you will have plenty of money for AH gear if you play every day for about 4-5 hours
the game is really repetitive and boring - you start with quests to kill 5 mobs and collect 5 item, till you reach having to kill 20 mobs and collect 20 items, which becomes a real pain in the ass
no wonder the game is closing, because its not bad, but its not good either, and its also not the only F2P MMO out there... maybe if it was the only one, it wouldnt close and in fact it would flourish... but this isnt the case
just play Vanilla World of Warcraft people, thats the only good and completely F2P MMORPG out there and will be for probably another 20 years... dont mess with all the asian freemium crap like Blade&Soul or all the shit out there or buying $300 founder packs for shitty games like Twin Saga or Revelation Online
just play Vanilla WoW and you will all be taught of the standard of a solid MMORPG and will not want to play the rest of the crap ever again
They consist of a few ultra-Whales who charge thousands upon thousands and then use that power to recruit heavily & dominate the server.
It's all fine until those ultra-Whales get bored & charge back the money they spent - getting permanently banned but in the process leaving the company bankrupt & draining it's funds.
They did the same with BDO, Archeage, and many many other smaller mmorpgs.
I don't think that Webzen still has any clue on how market their games in NA.
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The game touts itself by being heavy on PvP but with these problems, they were pretty much done. At a certain point, the game features open world PvP. I saw a lot of people leave (myself included) because the game didn't really mention it had this and they didn't want to deal with getting ganked. It also meant if you picked the faction that was low on people, you were in for a frustrating time. I didn't stick around too long so if they did something else to cause people to leave, I don't know about it. Hopefully this provided some insight as to why the game was doomed early on and they've learned from the experience.