Estiah

[Cren]

Estiah... I stumbled upon this game a few days back and now I'm totally in it.

It is an broswer based MMORPG set in a sword and sorcery world. What makes Estiah different from other games of the genre are:

• Charms & Gears- Estiah is based upon a TCG concept. In the cursed lands of Estiah; weapon, armour and spells have vanished long ago due to divine intervention, what remains is the essence of various weapon and equipment as well as spells that have been captured inside gems called 'Charms'. Using these so called charms, the characters of Estiah are able to materialise the essence contained inside that charm for a brief amount of time and use that object or spell. Players can arrange their collected charms in specific sets called 'Gear'.
  
  
• Attributes & Levelling up- Like any rpg, Estiah too has basic attributes like Dexterity, Power, Intelligence, Constitution and HP. Apart from these there is also another (important) attribute called Spirit which determines the max. amount of charms you can have in your gear.
  
  The best part is that levelling up doesn't increase your attributes, rather a certain amount of attribute points needs to be gained in order to gain a level. You can gain attribute points by working, learning from academies, consuming certain food and potions as well as through the age old PvE and PvP. This provides a great opportunity to grow up your own way, you can even rise up quite high even without fighting a single NPC or PC!
  
  
• Magic, Melee and the Rune system- Every charm in Estiah belongs to a particular rune (or multiple in many cases), which basically translates to category- for example the charm 'Yeti's Horn' belongs to both 'Spear' and 'Frost' runes.
  
  Unlike traditional RPGs, your attributes don't determine the amount of damage you can do but the charms you can use. Every charm has a certain level requirement as well as you need to have a minimum amount of a primary and secondary attribute depending on the rune.
  
  Also in Estiah, magic doesn't correspond to Int. and melee to Pow., all the 12 attack runes (Sword, Frost, Summon, Axe, Lightning, etc.) require two of Dex., Pow., Int. and Con. as its primary and secondary attribute. For example- 'Fire' rune uses Pow. as primary attribute and Int. as secondary whereas 'Twin Blades' use Dex. as primary and Int. as secondary.
  
  
• Classes- Estiah has 25 classes to choose from. You start as an adventurer, your attributes determine what class you can choose and specialise throughout the game. 
  At lvl. 20 you are first offered to change your T1 class to either Fighter (Pow.), Scout (Dex.), Novice (Int.) and Recruit (Con.) depending on your primary stat. At lvl. 30, you again get to choose whether you want to specialise in melee or magic, and therefore choose your secondary stat bringing 2 new classes to each T1 class for a total of 8 new classes.
  
  At lvl. 40 the real fun begins since you can now choose what rune you want to specialise in depending on your T2 class. You can now choose one from 3 classes (because you can always change your primary stat to secondary and vice versa). For example if one wants to be a 'Deathknight' (T3)(Dex., Pow, Sword) he can choose any of the two paths- the Fighter (Pow.)-> Mercenary (Pow., Melee)->DK or the Scout (Dex.)->Rogue (Dex., Melee)-> DK. That means you can't screw up as long as you have chosen a T1 class corresponding to the primary or secondary stat of the T3 you want to be.
  
   
• Strategies and beyond..- The large number of charms available gives rise to different strategies. Some goes all out melee or all out magic or just a spirit turtle or armor tank. Experimenting with different charms and combos is the key to win.

[Foxglove]

I stumbled upon this too a while ago, but it sounded like the game was winding down. I remember reading that they're working on Estiah 2 rather than further development of Estiah itself.

[Cren]

Its true that they are working on Estiah 2 but they still add high level charms and secret dungeons.