North American release is planned for Astellia, could be buy to play

A few days ago we told you about the upcoming closed beta for Astellia, this new Korean MMORPG from Barunson and Nexon. Now we learned that a North American release is planned for Astellia, according to an interview by MMORPG.com. It's all pointing to a late 2018 North American release, a market that the developer says “is very important market for us”, after stabilizing the Korean release.

As for the business model, while the Korean version is free to play, Barunson is considering going for a pay to play model, which we're guessing would be something close to Black Desert Online – you'll have to buy the game and then all the future content is free. Nexon is mostly a free to play publisher (Cliff Bleszinski's shooter Lawbreakers is probably the main exception) and judging by the overall style and quality of Astellia (runs on Unreal Engine 3, as development began late 2013, for example), it should be free to play, but that's just our take on the current state of the MMORPG market.

The interview goes on to talk about the Astell, the creatures that you can collect and summon, which will all be obtainable in-game, or the PvP, which includes 1v1, 4v4 and Realm versus Realm.

It's a nice, short read and it's good to see that a North American release is planned for Astellia, a game which we initially doubted we would ever see in the west, but let's hope it won't be pay to play.