Astral Tale is a mess.
MMO publishers have always been a topic of interest for me, because there’s a huge swath of them (mostly out of China and Korea) that you just have to sit back and wonder why they bothered getting into the business. They care enough to pick up and publish or develop MMOs but not enough that it feels like they’re doing this out anything other than obligation. Like they owed a neighbor a favor and are just half-assing it.
I booted up Astral World because I don’t know. It was on the new Steam MMO release list and I recognize the company name behind it. I’ve played Eden Eternal on and off since X-Legend took it over last year.
But lo and behold I get into the game and the first thing I see is that the menus are in Chinese. Despite the launcher being in English. And the error messages? Also in Chinese. The game keeps closing itself and I don’t know why.
It took five times relaunching the game in order to get it to finally display in English, which I’m sure most people would have dipped out by that point. I finally get myself logged in because the account I used for Eden Eternal also works here, and get into the game.
Now if you play Astral Tale long enough to think “I want to buy some stuff,” you might head over to the cash shop and click the button to top up your account only to see the following message:
Well it turns out Astral Tale has a bit of a fraud problem. At least that’s what I’m assuming, because X-Legend has a special set of hoops you need to jump through in order to be eligible to top up your account. You must hit level 20 with a character, contact customer service, request your account be reviewed for purchase eligibility. Then wait a week and hope they don’t deny you.
I can’t imagine most people wanting to do this for what is at best a low-tier free to play MMO. And for a game that is already kneecapping itself looking like a relaunch of a title from the mid-aughts, the last thing X-Legends should be doing is making their services less user friendly than your average gold farmer.
But what do I know?
MMO Fallout 