STAY AWAY from CastelaMS!
I won't even get into the circumstances for how the last season of Castela ended. Something related to GMs creating accounts and doing endgame raids on them with progression teams. Could be wrong idk, not an expert. This is the latest in a LONG series of relaunches that are billed as "not seasonal."
Castela overall has amazing design decisions and an excellent vision for endgame progression. The convenience and grind are perfectly balanced in my opinion. Playing is fun.
I played this rerelease DESPITE knowing the shady circumstances of the last launch/close. I chose to have faith in their developers. That was a mistake.
The server has always had mild P2W. Donation points for convenience, auto ACP, Hyper Tele Rocks and things of that nature. Most of it you could buy with Vote NX or through other in game currencies. I did not want to play on a fully Pay 2 Win server.
Today (about 2 weeks into launch) the devs announced they would be allowing Donation NX items to be sold in game and on their auction house for mesos. After an hour long discussion in their general chat with player feedback overwhelmingly being negative they decided to push the change. You have people earning 300m meso, buying raid spots, and securing endgame items directly from donation points now. Donation points > Donation Cosmetics > Mesos.
I wouldn't, and many other would not have played if we had known the extent of what is essentially legalized RMT. It's a shame man. I know everyone says its Cashgrabstela and I tried really hard to have faith they wouldn't do a shortsighted rug pull on their players by turning the economy into a purely pay 2 win one. I was wrong. You have their devs in gen chat pretending like it isn't p2w now which is just so so disingenuous.
You've been warned, stay away. Unless you like a giga p2w in which case the server will be up your alley.