Archeage

[Sudy]

Link.

Anyone tried it? What do you think? What server are you on?

[Alefroth]

I'm playing, and when I can get in, I'm having a good time. I completed and delivered my first trade pack last night, which is a big part of the game. I'm not a patron, but have a friend who is that lets me grow on his farm. It would have been difficult for me to make the trade pack on my own as f2p.

The class variety is great and combat feels good so far. They have assigned a name to each of the 120 combinations of 3 skillsets you can choose. There are supposedly a lot of cross skillset combos available, but haven't seen many yet.

The world looks really nice and invites exploration.

Trion is apparently fixing some of the issues leading to the long queues. It's possible to earn labor points (which are basically activity points and patrons earn them even while logged off) as f2p sitting at the character screen, and rarely get disconnected, so of course people are going to do that.

I'd say it's worth a look if you're at all interested.

edit: I'm on Naima, the unofficial RP server, name is Juriel.

[Sudy]

Hey Ale, you still playing? Sorry I didn't reply, we didn't really get into the game till a couple weeks after my post.

And silly me, we joined Naima, but the other faction.

[Baroquen]

So I tried this (am trying this) out at the moment. Seems a little generic, and the botting (or gold farming... whatever it is, it ain't normal players) is so blantant. Also sounds like crafting/farming isn't much of an option unless you pay? And even then, the hackers claim the land before real players can?

Sounds too flawed to sink my MMO time into playing.

[Sudy]

Hey Baroquen.

Some of your concerns may certainly be valid. Botting is definitely prevalent; I assume the developers are hard at work dealing with it. There are already a lot of (sometimes annoying) mechanisms in place. My answer is generally to avoid public chat channels unless I need something (to avoid the spam, anyway).

Hacking I'm less sure of. There are certainly many accusations floating around. Again I assume this ia growing pain; it hasn't affected me personally.

You can't own land unless you're a paid subscriber, true. Though as Alefroth mentioned, a guild or friend can give you permission to farm on their land. You can also raise crops in hidden or hard to reach public areas, though there's obviously a great deal of risk involved.

I admit I don't usually bother trying to get by as F2P in MMOs beyond a personal trial period. Since there's no client cost, I was happy to give them $15 to try it out for a month. You can also pay for a patron subscription with in-game currency, though it could be time consuming to generate enough resources through F2P means when first starting out.

But while not for everyone due to the late-game PvP content, there is a ton of interesting sandbox stuff to be done in this game if you're looking for a break from theme park MMOs. Mrs. Nym and I actually don't care much for PvP at all; it's the deep crafting and class options that have hooked me.

We've decided to try running with a fairly large, established guild on the East side of the server Calleil. (It's a slightly younger server than Naima.) If anyone's interested in an invite, let me know. They just ask you get to level 20 before joining.

[Baroquen]

Hey there Sudy Nym.

Glad to hear you (and Mrs. Nym) are enjoying it. And thanks for the clarification on those issues. Since it's F2P, I'll probably continue to dabble with it and see if it grabs me. Right now, it hasn't - but part of that is probably because I'm currently paying for some other MMOs. If I wasn't feeling somewhat obligated to pay and get my money's worth for those games, I might be more inclined to dig deeper here (or another round of Rift, or GW2, or TERA, or Aion...).

My biggest current question, I guess - is crafting viable without farming/planting/growing your own resources? Thus far, random resources seem like it's not enough to really get going in a crafting vocation (but granted - I'm not far along).

Boats were interesting.

Not interested in PvP - so that endgame talk isn't any particular draw for me. (Though I hardly ever get to endgames so it doesn't matter much. )

Thanks again for the info!

[rittchard]

Arise dead thread!

Another MMORPG trying to resurrect or reinvent itself, this one releasing a new server that's buy-to-play instead of F2P/P2W.

https://gamigo-corporate.prezly.com/arc ... asy-mmorpg

I had to dig through some old posts but apparently I initially liked the game's environment and class system in beta but got distracted at release due to technical difficulties and probably some other random game release.

[Daehawk]

I had a lot of fun with Archeage when it came out. I think it was due to having a friend that played it with me though. I was looking at all the old FREE MMOs I used to play and thought Id go back to AA but then I read that it was basically empty and no one played so skipped out on them.

[Alefroth]

Ha... this game only got 5 replies.

[rittchard]

So I spent the last two weeks or so messing around in Archeage Unchained. It's been frustrating at times, from queues to bugs to lack of info on how to do things and lots of odd choices that have carried over from the past.

All that said, there are some things that I really like about the game and I can't help wondering how it might have turned out if we had had the chance to play the game as a larger guild group or even with just a few friends. It has many of the better elements of games like DAOC, Shadowbane as well as solo/quest/PvE content and crafting. I think the most important thing is it feels like there is a real world at play, not quite the sandbox that SB was but certainly far beyond DAOC or WoW. There's a nice exploration factor, particularly since you have many travel options including the glider that you can get relatively quickly. There was one time I was having trouble getting around to a quest spot, then suddenly I remembered I could just glide straight across the ocean to get there. Very cool.

The core game has changed somewhat from what I remember. They now pretty much rush you through levels 1-30 in a linear questing fashion. You can pretty much ignore everything but the main questline and in a matter of hours get to level 30 with your 3 chosen skillsets to manipulate as you like. You'll be able to upgrade all the gear you receive (if you can figure out how to do it lol) and start off on the next phase of the game.

This is where it gets interesting. As a clueless solo player, it can be tough. The next zone you are seeded to is one in conflict, and goes into different stages of PvP over cycles. So if you are really unlucky and can only play an hour a day during which the zone is at war, you are kind of screwed. You will likely get ganked by jerks if you are trying to solo quest. But as irritating as that can be, it's also what gives the game an added edge. I've had to sneak around and run from people when I overstayed my welcome, or retreat back to a safe zone and do lower level content. The nice thing is that while it's not the most efficient way to level, you still can grind, and even killing things 5 or 6 levels below still gets you decent xp if you are patient. Between that and getting ganked, obviously it becomes your choice if you want to take risks. Obviously it would be far more fun to have a group/guild to play with, and do the questing in these zones together so you can protect each other as well. I was finally able to join a guild but it seems fairly dead so far. So I'm just kind of plodding along. Without help it's going to be a long journey, but it's actually more rewarding in some ways.

There was no way I'd be able to compete with the hardcore players to get land and a house, etc. so I'm just making my way slowly. I don't know how long I will last but I have to say overall it's been worth the effort. I've barely scratched the surface of crafting and PvP, so it seems like there is a lot more game out there if I'm patient enough to experience it.

Oh yeah, just FYI in case you get the urge, I'm playing on the Denestrious server on the West (Nuian) racial side. I believe the minimum entry fee is $26 to play this version of the game. No monthly fees.