Arche Age

[Falconeer]

The line to get a quest item on the Kyprosa EU server, at 2am 

[Nebu]

House plot reserved, 3 skill lines opened...even have 2 mounts (+ a glider). Not bad for a morning's work. So far it has been surprisingly smooth...took about 30 minutes to get logged in, but once I was there I have only been disconned once, and have been able to log in almost immediately (~30 in queue, which takes less than a minute).

Is it fun?  I could use an MMO fix after the fail that was Wildstar.

[Venkman]

The line to get a quest item on the Kyprosa EU server, at 2am 

Jeezus. 1998 called... 

[Ginaz]

Just got back form 2 weeks vacation.  Patched the game and everything and I'm greeted with: "1273 players are ahead of you in the que. You can enter in approximately 59 mins."

I'll be on Kyrios, east side, with a fairly large guild if anyone is playing there.  Hopefully the area I was planning putting my houses down on isn't full when I get there.  Gotta do that land rush, yo.

[WayAbvPar]

House plot reserved, 3 skill lines opened...even have 2 mounts (+ a glider). Not bad for a morning's work. So far it has been surprisingly smooth...took about 30 minutes to get logged in, but once I was there I have only been disconned once, and have been able to log in almost immediately (~30 in queue, which takes less than a minute).

Is it fun?  I could use an MMO fix after the fail that was Wildstar.

I think it is really fun so far. I have strange tastes though, I fear.

[Falconeer]

The land rush has been insane on my server. People who knew what they were doing took all the best places in less than an hour, using all the tricks out of the "place your house diagonally" shit book. After that, other people started to get nervous and then desperate with all sorts of whiny messages on the General Chat. The gist was "But I paid to have early access... I HAVE THE RIGHT TO PLACE A HOUSE!".

Fortunately, I can testify that there is still a lot of empty land in the higher level areas that no one consider commercially viable (for the trade runs) but considering the game has been out for less than 10 hours, it is hard to say how long that will last. There's a distinct possibility that by the time non-preorder people will get into the game next Tuesday, every single patch of buildable land will be already claimed. At least on the most populated server. And the screaming will be crazy. Yes, it's 1998 all over again. Me, I got a small scarecrow plot in the starting area and a house plot in a weird PvP region, so I am satisfied. But if you ask me what were they drinking or inhaling at XL Games when they allowed players to have more than one plot, I wouldn't be able to answer.

Another thing I am really worried about are the queues. At peak time tonight after a crash I had to wait 1 hour and 5 minutes. And this is BEFORE launch.  Can't even imagine how ugly it'll be on Tuesday.

[disKret]

I'm still wondering how they want attract people to buy patron status knowing that there is no land to claim.

[Ginaz]

I'm still wondering how they want attract people to buy patron status knowing that there is no land to claim.

Tell me about it.  I logged in about 8pm tonight and I haven't found anywhere to place my houses.  I even went to a pvp zone.  Nothing.

[tmp]

Another thing I am really worried about are the queues. At peak time tonight after a crash I had to wait 1 hour and 5 minutes. And this is BEFORE launch.  Can't even imagine how ugly it'll be on Tuesday.

Don't worry, if your estimation of land availability is right, these queues will shorten fast

[Falconeer]

The situation is so messed up that I am pretty sure they will open new servers by Tuesday, and lots of people including myself will consider moving to the new ones to greet their non-patron/non-earlyaccess friends and to try get their plot of lands. I mean, I have land, but what are my friends gonna do? New servers (and new rush) it is!

[Ginaz]

The situation is so messed up that I am pretty sure they will open new servers by Tuesday, and lots of people including myself will consider moving to the new ones to greet their non-patron/non-earlyaccess friends and to try get their plot of lands. I mean, I have land, but what are my friends gonna do? New servers (and new rush) it is!

The people that bought the founders packs with all the goodies probably won't move because at least some of the rewards are a one time shot.  If you picked the wrong server or don't like your character but you've already open the rewards, tough luck.

[disKret]

There will be also a problem with mergers - how they want to compansate if someone own the land but his server will be joined with the one without space.

[Falconeer]

That's why they don't want mergers to ever happen, and why they have opened so few servers to begin with. I understand they are in a tough spot, as more servers will certainly mean mergers at some point and that day will be madness. But not enough servers or available land right now is equally insane.

[Threash]

In a few weeks there will be plenty of room for houses.

[Venkman]

Ha you guys sound like you just moved to the recently opened Trammel  

What's the decay like on housing?

[Falconeer]

I think it disappears if you don't pay taxes, which is once every ten days or so.

[Nija]

This is a really poorly designed game for modern times, as far as land use and population capacity and things like. Expect yet another round of a large numbers of servers opened at launch followed by contractions as people abandon the game.

Only that contractions are going to be really, really painful in this game. You absolutely won't have the same plots of land on the new server.

[Falconeer]

Trion has purposedly held back the continent of Auroria, already available in South Korea, because it will have more housing space and they want to be sure that by then everyone will have a chance to participate in the new land rush. As I said, the worst design decision is the one about multiple ownership. It doesn't make any kind of sense. Outside of that, I am not sure what they could have done to improve the availability other than creating some instanced zones so everyone could place a house even if not in the shared persistent space. But that seems to go against their original design which, for good or bad, was specifically inspired by Ultima Online and its scarcity of resources. They wanted to create inequality and have people dreaming about "one day!" having a house. Also, they want players to create families where the houses and farms are shared and members of the family (which is different from the Guild) can use it together. That's nice but doesn't change the fact that non-Asian players are much more entitled than that and will have lots of issues accomodating this scarcity.

To address Nija's comment, I'd say it's terribly designed for the average Western market's tastes.

To clarify: not defending them. Just sharing what I learned researching a bit about this stuff.

[palmer_eldritch]

Our guild - and a couple of opportunists who jumped on our boat - makes an early trade run to the enemy continent. This is for an important quest.

[Falconeer]

About boats, looks like you can pimp them up.

[Morfiend]

My friend and his guild have been having a great time playing at pirates on the sea. Enough that Ill download it when its released. I sure as hell am not preordering though.

[Falconeer]

Turns out on many servers where people were complaining all land was gone after two hours, there's actually still a lot of space in the neutral (PvP) zones, it's all a matter of wanting to go out there and look for it. Personally, I placed my house on a PvP zone kind of intentionally, even though I didn't know exactly what it meant. And what it means is quite cute: no one can really destory your house or steal your stuff, but whenever you are hanging out there, or working on your garden, or worse hauling trade packs moving at 1 mph to build the damn structure, you are open game. And yes, they can steal your pack (which is worth a lot) if they catch you on your way from the crafting station to your house. So, if you really have to build on a PvP zone, make sure to do it as close to the crafting stations as possible.

Since I'm here, time for a little list of pros and cons.

The Good:

- There's a lot of PvP. Not until you reach level 30, but after that pretty much everything and everyone is killable whether it is for fun or for very good reasons. There are four castles (there will be, Trion is holding it off for a few weeks in order to give everyone and every guild enough time to prepare for this new land rush).

- Housing is really cool. If you can get a spot, it gives you all those SWG/UO feelings you've been missing for the past ten years. Not original and probably not as developed as any of those two old games, but it's finally back so I am going to nitpick it.

- Gardening and (proper) farming is nothing more than a 3D version of Farmville but it is somewhat engaging especially because it is an organic part of the whole crafting element of the game and the much advertised player-driven economy. You don't grow turmeric or bananas just to get an achievement badge, you do it because your guild needs you to do it in order to build a clipper or some cannons to go battle out in the sea. It's cool.

- Trade-runs. It is hard to explain why I liked having to haul at walking speed a package that took me a real day to craft, and can be stolen to me, over an ocean where players and jellyfish can kill me and would be rewarded if they do. The whole mechanic of these trade runs is incredibly fascinating. You craft some goods and then you physically have to move them from one region to another, except when you do it you can't use teleport or speedbuffs and you can only walk. While you do it you are very vulnerable so in an EvE-like manner it makes sense to have other players escorting and defending you. Trade runs earn you money and other tokens needed to build better stuff, and the money reward changes based on a rudimentary supply-demand system. Also a positive, the Auction House is shared by more than one server, allowing for a much more dynamic economy.

- Crafting is a pivotal part of the game. The best equip comes from crafting, and there are so many different kinds of crafting and ingredient. While, as pointed out in the past, it seems to be very grindy, it fosters lots of player interaction and interdependency and that's cool in a sandbox.

- The justice system. It might not be much to be thrown in jail for 20 minutes, but while it is nice that in a sandbox you can go around and steal other players' crafting materials planted on unprotected land, it is also cool that you can report the thieves and have them undergo a public trial. The trial is broadcasted on a server-wide chat channel and usually hilarity ensues.

- The sea. The sea is a game in the game, with no justice system, lots of people who want to kill you, and its own raid bosses. And the next big patch (months away) will also introduce a 5v5 naval arena battle.

- Class customization. I am sure that out of 120 possible classes, with additional customization within itself, only a small portion will be considered useful, but there's definitely room for experimentation, and a wild number of options and teorycrafting. It's the old Rift system on lots of steroid.


The Maybe:

- Combat is your usual tab-target thing we've been playing since 1999. This is the "2010 version" as I call it, between WoW and Rift. I have a hard time swallowing it, but it is decently done.

- The graphics are good but nothing special by 2014 standards. Development started five years ago and it shows, but there's a lot pretty things to look at, especially when you are gliding down a mountain. It looks much better than Wildstar if you ask me.



The Bad:

- The Marketplace. No matter how you put it, I hate that players with money can buy ANY kind of time shortcut in a game like this. Trying to have a player-driven economy where lots of things are limited to prevent insane catassing to victory and favour a more sustainable server-wide growth doesn't work well with "labor potions" or "crafting material chests" purchsaeable with real money.

- The PvE. Quests and mobs seem like a lame excuse for all the other aspects of the game. Between a very long tutorial and an easy way to get XP and coins. Not sure how much "content" is there for groups and high level characters, but PvE in this game is certainly not the focus. And that's quite miselading since it starts out as a generic WoW clone.

- Multiple land ownership. In a game with limited space it is INSANE that anyone can own more than one house. I don't care about how much taxes they have to pay. It's just stupid.

- Exploration: I might be missing something here but with the game doesn't have an achievement system and doesn't really seem to have any secret stuff hidden anywhere. So while exploring can be nice since the world is pretty, it doesn't seem to have room for surprises.

- Stunlocks. CC is too big in this game, a common mistake from the past decade of MMORPG PvP. For a game where open and wild PvP is so omnipresent, knowing that if you get jumped you are dead is no fun.

- The queues. I understand that Trion does not ever want to deal with server mergers considering the permanent land and housing thing. But as of now there 1 to 2 hours long wait on the most populated servers, and this is BEFORE the actual launch. Unbearable.



A closing comment worth repeating: you won't go far in ArcheAge as a solo player. The PvE content is pretty much all soloable and getting to max level takes nothing, but that's another misleading aspect: from level 30 to 50 you will encounter lots of people that want to kill you and you can't do anything about it unless you have friends. Unless all you plan on doing is crafting and trading, you won't go anywhere without a guild.


EDIT: Class customization.

[Threash]

Trade-runs. It is hard to explain why I liked having to haul at walking speed a package that took me a real day to craft, and can be stolen to me, over an ocean where players and jellyfish can kill me and would be rewarded if they do. The whole mechanic of these trade runs is incredibly fascinating. You craft some goods and then you physically have to move them from one region to another, except when you do it you can't use teleport or speedbuffs and you can only walk. While you do it you are very vulnerable so in an EvE-like manner it makes sense to have other players escorting and defending you. Trade runs earn you money and other tokens needed to build better stuff, and the money reward changes based on a rudimentary supply-demand system. Also a positive, the Auction House is shared by more than one server, allowing for a much more dynamic economy.

Ok, could you explain why you can't just craft the trade goods at the place where they need to go to begin with?

[Falconeer]

Yes.

In a "trade run" what you are moving around is a crafted good called a "Specialty Good". They can only be crafted in the regions they are a specialty of (and at one specific crafting station). Like, if you are crafting Canadian Bacon, you can only craft that in Canada. This is the middle ages, after all. So you craft your Canadian Bacon, or more seriously your Tigerspine Grape Jam, in Tigerspine, and carry it in some other area of the game where that is in demand. These goods are not needed by players, the demand is artificial and issued by NPCs, but if a player steals your pack they can deliver it in your place and get 80% of its value (20% goes to the original owner, as consolation).

The player economy does not only revolve around these NPC-demanded packs, but this is the mechanic that forces (for the "build token" rewards) players to move around the map at walking speed (or sailing), creating targets for emergent open PvP gameplay. At least these were the intentions. How healthy this kind of gameplay will be in a developed server is another story that I cannot predict.

[Lantyssa]

So I could craft my goods, purposefully get hijacked outside the crafting area, and go on to make my next one without having to walk the entire land route and thus let the robber suffer the risk of being jumped most of the way there?

And I still make 20%?  Awesome!

[Falconeer]

Theoretically yes, except 20% is not much and the main reason to do trade runs is for the "Gilda Stars", not the gold. And you don't get them if someone else delivers in your place.

[HaemishM]

I didn't explore them fully, but from my limited time in closed beta, there seemed to be lots of coins/currency types that I had no fucking idea what to do with.

[tmp]

No matter how you put it, I hate that players with money can buy ANY kind of time shortcut in a game like this. Trying to have a player-driven economy where lots of things are limited to prevent insane catassing to victory and favour a more sustainable server-wide growth doesn't work well with "labor potions" or "crafting material chests" purchsaeable with real money.

Well, duh. Again, the limits aren't there to prevent or favour anything, except to generate a steady stream of cash shop customers.

[Falconeer]

"Well he took off with the clipper design and messaged me saying scamming is allowed in this game."

This is SO 1998  

[Fabricated]

Goon Squad is already up and running, so I imagine there'll be some great stories soon enough.

[Falconeer]

Game is going "live" for everyone including f2players in 45 minutes. They are also opening a brand new server, so if you were on the fence due to the lack of land to place a house, this is the chance to "enjoy" a new land rush.

[Hutch]

The line to get a quest item on the Kyprosa EU server, at 2am 

Jeezus. 1998 called... 

Wow. Yeah. I remember conga lines like that from Asheron's Call. Is this game for real?

[Pendan]

Launch was delayed for an hour. 5 minutes before new time I could launch Glyph and get into Rift. Now 15 minutes later I can't log into Glyph.

[disKret]

Finally they have activated the option that after DC you have some time to go back without waiting in queue.

[Bzalthek]

I installed cause I wanted to see what all the fuss is about.  Have to admit, after 5 hours I'm almost tired of sitting in queue.  Good thing I have papers to grade.