A free to play sandbox MMORPG, ArcheAge is set in a fantasy realm of warring factions. In the game players are able to settle down and create a life for themselves, running a farm, focusing on crafting, becoming a daring explorer, a trader heading to foreign shores or even a pirate looking to prey on the vulnerable!
The game boast strong PVP gameplay with its naval battles, guild castle sieges and so much more, but with everything that raises ArcheAge up on a pedestal of how sandbox MMORPGs should be, there are some major elements that bring it crashing back down…
The Good
• Fluid Open World – It is possible to travel around the open world without facing any loading screens in a completely open world, with the exception of some instanced dungeons
• The Tradepack Feature – You are able to transport Tradepacks from one NPC to another to make some money, the more you transport and the further you take them then the more money you receive, so players can transport more of them across the continent by caravans or even over the ocean taking even more by ship!
• Piracy Combat – Where there’s players making a living transporting Tradepacks, there’s players making a living attacking ships and caravans and stealing those Tradepacks for themselves, making transporting Tradepacks a dangerous adventure
• Skill Based System – ArcheAge has no traditional class system, instead it has 10 skillsets that players can level up independently to make their own hybrid classes, such as mixing the untraditional Sorcery with Shadowplay to make a stealthing mage assassin type character
• Mounted Fighting – Players are able to fight when riding their mounts, using the mounts own abilities or their own characters, firing spells or making attacks, there’s a wide variety of mounts to choose from with their own skills, from Snowlions to Dairy Cows!
• Prison System – Players can commit a variety of crimes including stealing players crops, attacking allied faction members, and more; doing so leaves clues to your capture and if caught you are put in front of five players who pass judgement and sentence you to serve time in prison; an instanced location where you have to stay for a set amount of time based on your crimes, but you can always break rocks and reduce the time!
The Bad
• Regrading – Items and gear have 12 levels, or “Grades” and players can use scrolls to try and upgrade their gear, the higher the grade the higher the chance of failing or even destroying your item. However, by purchasing real cash “Regrade Charms” players reduce the chance of failure and destroying their gear, essentially making top level regrading a cash focused system or taking the chance of losing your items…
• Labor Points – ArcheAge has a stamina/energy system where players use up Labor points for performing most tasks in the game such as crafting or even opening loot bags, these points replenish over a long period of time, and they don’t replenish when offline. This means players are constantly forced to stop doing the types of things they want to (eg. crafting) or stay AFK to earn points… unless they buy Labor Potions from the cash store!
• The Cost of Endgame Gear – A lot of materials that are needed for high tier crafting are only available through the cash shop
• Limited Building Plots – The game has lots of open land, but so much of it can’t be built upon and so grabbing land is difficult, grabbing land in anywhere but the worst locations is now even more difficult, having larger plots in desirable locations is practically impossible
• Skill vs Gear – When it comes to PVP the game is skewed at late game towards gear over skill, your combined items giving a gear score that will almost always have dominance over any player skill and the top level players being the ones with the best earn (or more likely bought) gear
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