NEStalgia v1.70 Should Be Out This Weekend Probably

The Dragon Warrior-inspired buy-to-play indie MMORPG NEStalgia has been comfortably living out a niche existence as one of the few MMORPGs to provide a true MMO take on classic turn-based RPGs. It's so niche, in fact, that I regularly forget about the BYOND-powered game, despite it being in my Steam library. Despite that, it has a dedicated fan base and that fan base has been waiting on the latest update for quite some time now.

In a new blog post, the lead developer explains that the core issue that has delayed v1.7.0 over the last few weeks is the process of merging all official servers into a single official server cluster. The issue of "merging [save] files and/or dealing with excess characters that can't be merged" is said to have been a complex one that took a great deal of time to solve. The developer then goes on to describe that, while it has taken time, the new update will include more bug fixes than anticipated. Furthermore, they then state that the solution that they arrived on was to allow players to handle moving around save files on their own when mergers occur.

The long-awaited first major expansion, Key of the Exiles, is also mentioned in the post. The new update, which will include customizable player boats, a raised level cap, and more has essentially been put on hold until v1.70 is released. The developer states that the update has taken all of their energy and that even writing a blog post about the update has proved to be difficult. They did offer the title screen, shown above, in lieu of proper news about the expansion.

Should everything go according to plan, v1.70 should launch by the end of the weekend. Should that happen, a Steam promotion will be run next week and a universal web client will be launched into beta. However, the developer warns that they have planned for this to happen for several weeks now and that you should not get your hopes up just yet.