Estiah.com - free browser MMORPG

Well, somewhat. All of our sites went down two weeks ago due to an unrecoverable hardware failure. The hosting service provider told us there was nothing they could do so we had to rebuild our server from ground.

Estiah is a very old website, like fifteen years old, like dinosaur fossils old in computing terms. We run into a lot of issues when trying to bring it up on new hardware, and it took us a lot of time to fix every issue we found. And we are not even sure we fixed every one of them since there are just so much things to do in the game!

Then we run into an even worse issue: the daily backups of our database have some data corruption, probably due to changes in database versions. Fixing source code we wrote eons ago is hard, fixing data corruption on old database is even harder. We did our best but there are still some artifacts we could not fix. Fortunately, only some texts are badly displayed, we were able to restore game data.

The last bad news is we lost player avatars and guild banners, so you have to upload them again. Sorry.

So, most of the game features should be back and up running again. If you happen to notice bugs, you can always write to us (you can find our contact information on the registration page). We are still working on the rest of websites such as Estiah2 and forums but don't get your hopes up, we have no idea when we are able to make them work again, if we are able at all.

Lastly, thank you again for having played and still playing Estiah. Please enjoy while it lasts, we can make no promises if it will resurrect again like a phoenix the next time it goes dark, but we'll try our best to revive it for sure.

By the way, new players now start with 200 phoenix feathers and existing players received them retrospectively too.

As some of you may already know, Estiah is only a hobby project for two of us. Now, as fun as it has been, it is time to move on. For years, we had tremendous support from our player community, and it's not without emotion we have to say that we are no longer actively maintaining this game.

Is this a farewell post? Definitely not. For we will still be checking in from time to time, fixing whatever needs to be fixed. However, you will probably never know what Nikkum and Saar's party is up to, nor discover what lies beyond Meropis. Still, sometimes things are better left unsaid, for the best ending of any story is left up to readers' unrestrained imagination.

We'd like to use this opportunity to address some common questions you may have, as for others you can still try our forum, we will answer them when we pass by.

Will there be new features in Estiah?
Nope. Unless some critical bugs are discovered, we won't release new versions of both games.

When will the games be shut down?
Probably after all of our players got bored and quit. Probably not even after that.

Can I still buy Phoenix Feathers?
For legal reasons, we have to halt the sale.

Can I get them for free? :D
Maybe. If we can figure out how to hand them out easily.

Will there be Estiah3?
We doubt it. Even Estiah2 is a completely different game, so if we are to make anything else, it won't be using the Estiah brand.

That's all, thank you for playing!

That's it, we have finally let the bunnies out of the bag and Estiah2 is live after years of hard works. How many years was that? We stopped counting after we missed the initial 2010 winter promise. Well, we hadn't promised anything, not exactly, we only posted a teaser :)

The road to this day was long but the amazing part is, despite all the time we took, we actually never went into a hiatus. There were sunny days and then rainy ones, but not a single day has passed without us thinking “What should we do next for Estiah2?”, “What changes should we make to improve the game?”, “What's the game they want to play?”. And then, we are finally here, www.estiah2.com up and running. Since bunnies are cold-blooded killers, they don't get emotional. But then we saw all the Estiah1 veterans still sticking with us after almost eight years, we had to shed a tear or two. Because personally, we don't think there is any game we've been playing for eight years, although we are huge fans of video games ourselves (yeah, we suck, we need more resolve).

So first thing first, we'd like to take this opportunity to thank the following players who have helped us tremendously during the beta testing, improved the game in every way imaginable. Without them, we wouldn't have done this: (Not in any particular order)

Gabbin - A few Estiah2 dungeons are actually his work, and it's fairly safe to say he tested the game more than any of us. And he's done so much for Estiah1 too!
Sparky - How many characters did you make during the beta?
Sheira - Improved the game in every way he could think of. And when we are too busy to implement his suggestions, he took things into his own hands to make game add-ons.
QQChampion - Relentless tester, his straight-to-the-point remarks helped us notice how many stupid game choices we've made. And one of the dungeons is also his work!
Misha - He played so much and leveled so fast that, at one point we said to each other: “OK, we have to rework all the game values because someone finished the game in a few days.”

Then there were players we didn't know from the old days, but who worked with incredible motivation nevertheless:

Dolmick, Zomby, Ravenpaw, Catwraith, Zhern, Ivan (and many others!) - They have translated the whole game into Chinese in merely two weeks and their texts flow with quality and passion. We really don't know how to thank them enough.

Hugliston, Lyan and Sombra - Our french translation team! They are not as many in number but they are equally motivated as their counterpart. We are sure that given enough time, we'll see the game fully translated into French too.

This is supposed to be a game announcement post but somehow turned into a “thank-you” one. Anyway, all of them deserved our heartfelt gratitude and there were many we could not possibly list them all. So, thank you very much to all who helped us during all these years. And finally, a big thanks to our bunnies as well, for they have worked hard, for they have been sacrificed for no particular reason, for they have delicious meat.

There's no point in making games that ourselves don't want to play. Estiah2 as it stands today is something we love and we are proud to show to the world. And we sincerely hope players veteran or new will like it too. So, to all of you we have only one last thing to say: enjoy the game :)

Whew. After years in making, we finally think Estiah 2 is (more or less) ready. Usual forum dwellers have been testing the closed beta since January, and now everyone can have a look at our newest game.

Since it's basically a completely new game, even Estiah veterans will have a lot to learn. As for newcomers, well, it's time to try something even newer :)

Head to the open beta now if you are interested and let us know what you think about the game on our forum boards. Your feedback is very welcome and we'll certainly perform the last tweaks to your liking before the actual release scheduled for in one month.

Nope, we didn't forget about Estiah; we are working on it everyday, or rather, on what is coming next. Usual dwellers on our forum boards know that we are near Estiah2 beta relaunch, and we have to do some preparation work this week to better host the new game.

That's why we have to perform a server migration later today (2014-01-22), around 16h (Paris time GMT+1). Don't be worried if Estiah.com becomes unavailable for a few hours, it will be right back, soon.

We are sorry about the inconvenience, and thank you for playing as always!