Estiah is a browser MMO that I spent most of my winter break playing. Unfortunately, my gaming pc was on the fritz, so only the slimmest of pickings were available to me. To put things in perspective, the last time I played one of these games was Utopia some eight or nine years ago. The genre is as addictive as ever.I was surprised to find information and publicity about Estiah quite scarce. It was created in 2008 by a couple of jaded ex-World of Warcraft players, though it bears little resemblance to WoW. Anyway, the game’s story is a pretty blunt. “You’re in fantasyland, go level up and clear dungeons”, would surmise it quite well; no high marks there, but then again that’s the story and setting of most MMOs these days, so it’s not really a detriment. The story mainly exists to explain why your character must use decks of playing cards (‘charms’) instead of actually using equipment.
Estiah, at its core, is basically a card game with a pervasive element of progression. It’s certainly an interesting fusion of two genres, and what I immediately liked about the game was its unique method of handling character development. You level up through boosting four standard attributes by working various daily jobs or mastering skills. Your attributes determine which types of charms you can use in your deck, and skills are rewarded mainly through battling with charms, but also from non-combat activities. These attributes do not directly affect gameplay at all, only what charms you are able to equip. Two special attributes also exist that determine your health points and the maximum number of cards allowed in your deck (‘spirit’). You get action points every couple of hours, which are the currency for boosting skills in arenas, PvP, or dungeons. There exist three tiers of class specialization so to provide incentive towards reaching the later levels.
Unfortunately, this progression element adds questionable elements to the game as well. What I particularly dislike is the extreme amount of metagaming needed to keep a competitive edge. A player should not need to be playing the system from level one, but that is unfortunately the case in Estiah. This problem is caused from having skills that reward health and spirit exist (at the least, exist that early), which corrupt the whole system by giving unfair advantages to those who exploit the game mechanics. This forces a standard for everyone to keep up that just isn’t fun. Another problem is that it’s necessary to study all the encounters beforehand due to the limited actions awarded per day. This kind of research would not be as significant a pre-requisite if there was a smaller penalty on action points lost for failing encounters. Also, one last concern is that the long leveling time and high degree of specializing mean you might be stuck with something you don’t enjoy. In a free game requiring a significant amount of dedication, that kind of commitment is not too appealing.
So I guess what killed Estiah for me was the massive amount of time I would have had to dedicate to a game that just didn’t seem worth it. However, if you’re the kind of player who thrives on min/maxing and is looking for an extra activity on the side, you may consider giving Estiah a go. I wouldn’t recommend it otherwise. It’s an all or nothing sort of game.
