For those who wished there was an MMO version of Shandalar

[freyajack]

I'm an ex-competitive MTG player who used to love playing the PC version of Shandalar. I'm not sure how many people have played it, but you ran around playing Magic against a bunch of AI opponents, winning cards and building up your deck as you go. It was awesome. Anyway, I was always amazed that no one ever made an MMO with a similar card collecting aspect to it. Think WoW but instead of repetitively hitting keys to fight, you fought using cards.

Well, it turns out there is such a game, albeit a browser-based game with no graphics to speak of. And I'm here to spread the gospel. It's called Estiah, and I started playing it a few months ago and I still love it. If you are interested, here are some of my impressions:

1) It is action point based, so this is a “play a little bit each day” game.
2) Very solid sense of RPG-style progression: attributes, skills, levels, ever-growing card pool, the whole nine yards.
3) PvP and PvE combat is decided by cards selected at random from a deck you specify. Strategy lies in picking your deck since you can’t affect things once the battle is initiated.
4) Solid player interaction in the form of raids, group PvP battles, and guild battles.
5) This is a surprisingly deep game. Give it a chance beyond the first few levels that serve as a tutorial.
6) It is well and truly free. They take donations, but you can’t pay money to get an advantage over other players.

Anyway, I highly recommend it. It is deeper than your typical browser-based game, and anyone who loves MTG or WoW (or both) should feel right at home. If you want to go to the main website, it is estiah.com. If you are feeling generous, you can pick me (Freyajack) as your mentor and I’ll help you figure things out as you get started – http://www.estiah.com/user/register/index/id/64857

Incidentally, if people know of other games like this, please let me know.

[Huggybaby]

Yeah, more than a few people here know about Shandalar.

Thanks for the heads up, I haven't heard of this game. Nice that its really free too!