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My Archage review after 1 week.
Published on my website
http://dalewj.com/my-archage-review/ but this is the feelings of a 50 year old player who mostly plays sandboxes.... Ya your going to rip it apart.. note I don't care.. but other 50 year old players might want to read this first.
I know there are 2 parts of the game. I only played the beginning theme park part and didnt even finish it. So this review will not cover the other parts of pvp and raiding and such. I also did not join a guild cause I was never turned on enough to decide to accept one of those offers. like every other game being In a guild does make a change to gameplay.. But why join one if your not gonna stay more then a few days. third note: I was playing arachage (and other games) cause my main game went to shit on an update and I needed to do something. I never went in thinking I would be a long term player unless the game was better then I expected and found it was.List of things good and bad. Themepark: First part is truly a themepark. no way about it. you dont play by the rules you wont skill and be able to move along. Not a day or so, but a good 2-3 weeks of themepark. There should be a method to skip ahead of the themepark. Maybe there is and I never found it.
Money: Everything is very very expensive to do. Crafting costs enormous amounts for a noob. rasiing animals expensive. The gotcha is everything also costs time. If growing the items to make a very low user craft takes 24+ hours and then the craft costs a weeks worth of money ingame then its too expensive. I see guilds having 1 person who crafts and everyone else pays and finds the stuff for them. Cant imagine having everyone craft.. maybe thats the reason for the high cost of entrance.
Korean-English: I was more disappointed in this then I thought I would be. The words are all changed.. fine. No sounds were. the voices are Korean, the quests have the voices turned off because they didnt start or have time to finish them all. I understand there are enormous amounts of quests (One reason I dont like the game) and voice work on that would take a half year alone. But hey u bought the game and simply deleted the voices.
Storyboards in quests: Impossible to read, the font is too large for the area you put it in. You automatically go to the end of the storyboard so its a pain in a half to read them. So what happens. I stopped reading them after an hour. really didnt care what the story was and that never helps keep people. fix the graphics and fonts an make the storyline readable or dont bother having one.
Stupid Stupid quests. ID say the further u get in the game the stupider the quests feel. I had one quest where I got the quest (ignoring the storyboard) and the mission holder to get the XP from (Was over 3500 XP btw) was the same npc. I didnt even have to move get xp and money. Wow
so many cross the road quests to tell someone something when the npcs see each other, they could have said it them selves. Those quests quickly made the game boring and feel like im not gaining any real experience, just fake stuff. Now did this means that the Korean version had real quests in place of these or is it just a failure of the game as a whole?
Killing quests: now the killing quests (except for some exceptions) all were go to a field, kill X amount of mobs, and return. The mobs are always at or just a bit ahead of you in HP so pretty much I lined up the weapons in order from range to melee and every battle I clicked on the mob and typed 1..2..3..4..5..6..7..8 Wow that was exciting. I won nearly everyone. Only reason to die is being jumped by more then one (Once a day). Or an occasional higher mob being in the middle of the field and you didnt see it (Again once a day). I died basically 3-4 times a day overall and death wasnt much of a loss, you lost less then 100 Xp server time and the cost was 30 minutes in labor points to keep it that way.
Economy: I did not participate in the economy much because most of what I got I sold back to merchants or threw away. The auctions are empty at the noob level unless you your in an area where they can sell you something at 10 times its value. I quickly decided not to use the auction. Merchants.. some are very hard to find and they are very expensive. The weapons/armor merchants are very rare and hard to find. Transportation is ok by horse, you can jump places but the costs of the rocks in auction is way to high, might as well get XP for your horse for that cost.
single mob quests: Ever 20 or so quests you get a quest to kill a single mob. 1 guy someplace with 10 people needing to kill him. HE spawns once every 5 minutes and these people spend upwards of an hour waiting for a chance to kill him. Not in line, its a free for all every time the mob appears. VERY VERY annoying. I understand the game is overloaded at the moment but this dynamic is killing the experience and should have been looked at.
Spammers. OMG they have to take control of the problem. You cant even use the main channel.
Age of players: Sure they are kids, no duh. Cant really complain that chat was a 16 year olds wet dream these days can we.
Final thoughts: It is a very Korean game in feel and sadly I got more of a facebook game feel of it then I expected. I think probably the trio folk bought something that will be a niche market in 6 months. its no WoW for sure. there isnt enough ability to get out of the themepark like wow. and group quests just arent there by level 31. Everything really is just you and 1..2..3..4..5..6..7. And that bored me and I left.
HomePage/Gaming Blog - http://dalewj.com . MMORPGer - Current game: http://AfterWorld.ru .
Author of Diaries of Afterworld- http://www.jconsult.com/afterworld and the Outside Sci-Fi series- http://www.jconsult.com/outside
Comments
Honestly I was amazed at how bad questing in this game is. I thought Rift had bland and generic questing but Archeage makes Rift look like the best thing since the invention of bread.
Crafting does take a shitlong of time. PRetty much everything in this game takes ages and it is VERY VERY grindy. I found PvP interesting but man are trade runs boring. My guildies have been doing trade runs all freaking day in the SAFE ZONES! That's like the most boring thing I have ever experienced in a game. No idea why people don't do more PvP trade runs, although I find those boring too.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
This review is basically pointless then...
Everyone on this site knows the game starts off slow, basically treats the player like they have never stepped foot in an MMO before.
Also there isn't "Raiding" like you think.
You basically did not even play Archeage, and that's fine, we all know the early game is just a tutorial and not that exciting. But it is necessary because you will never feel overwhelmed. Everything is introduced at the right time and makes you feel confident upon hitting 30 and venturing into the PvP zones.
This shouldn't be called a review, mostly a first impression, and that is it.
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
Yea, I stopped reading after that sentence. I figure if OP's not gonna play the whole game why should I read the whole "review"?
In order to see how he felt about the first 30 levels maybe? Seeing as we all have to go through that part of the game it makes sense to me to read as many different reviews as possible, even if they only cover that first part. The points made about LP and crafting hold true regardless of level, so are relevant.
Regardless of whether you agree with the review or not I think it's unfair to dismiss someones review, or first impressions, so lightly.
Edit: Like it or not it's a fairly accurate description of the early gameplay, crafting, economy and general atmosphere of the chat channels.
If the game designers/developers aren't going to put in the effort to grab your attention as soon as possible with the gameplay and introduce you to the "fun" stuff then why should I or anyone continue to play the game? You can't expect players to play tens of hours of a game they are not enjoying for the promise or hope that it's supposedly going to get better 50 hours in or however long it takes.
The "review" is entirely valid. If you want to consider it a first impressions then so-be-it. What you call it is more or less irrelevant imo, you take it for what it is to you and that's it.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
As a 50 year old player you should be looking for a multi-gaming guild with a community of folks with similar interests and the above situation would never happen ....your entire experience would have been surpassed by 1.5 hour initial run that would have set you up with a mount, a 8*8 garden and a 24*24 farm house . You would never have to do single thing again in the game that resembled a theme park experience I'm sorry to say your entire review is just a poor summary of exactly what not to do in AA.
Pretty much.
I'm fine with this in that, if the game isn't good enough to want you to get to the 'end game', its not worth a purchase imo.
Haha... wow.
So I'm almost done downloading ArcheAge, but it really pains me to see these types of "reviews". People call anything a review these days.
Anyways, when I look for a game I figure out what features it has and if those features are what I'm looking for. After that I play the game until I experience the features I enjoy. Lastly, if I don't team up or join a guild that also factors into my thoughts on the game...simply because old school MMORPGs were all about grouping/guilds/and the like to experience the best of the game. Deciding not to do that automatically removes a large portion of content. For a review, I'd look at all pieces and make sure they deliver on what they say they do.
People got mad that you can't experience ESO until level 10 and really level 15....and now I guess Veteran level. People also got mad that you can't play Wildstar until you're at "Endgame".
Kind of like grading at test and after you get like 10% of the way through and don't like some of the answers, you say "I'm done" and put the paper aside. Yeah... Maybe for an opinion, but not for a review.
His review is fine for the portion of the game it covers.
Also we shouldn't have to wade through 1/2 or more of a game just to get to the good part. Games should grab you at the start and keep you entertained throughout. Unfortunately AA does not do this.
A guy who mostly plays sandboxes reviewing the themepark aspects of a mostly sandbox game...
Why didn't you get to the sandbox part and review that?
You certainly have the right to your opinion based on the length of time you played the game and for that it may be valid.
But you claim to be a 50 year old and yet write like someone fresh out of an American high school in a red state. This does not lend credence.
I don't understand the reviews that say "themepark until 30".
If you're not doing trade runs and non-instanced farming by level 11 you're doing it wrong in my book. I practically never quest at all after 20.
I have never been one to follow the rules. Even in Pong I did things that the book said not too. That's how I play. I try not to play old to begin with, just turn old later.
HomePage/Gaming Blog - http://dalewj.com . MMORPGer - Current game: http://AfterWorld.ru .
Author of Diaries of Afterworld- http://www.jconsult.com/afterworld and the Outside Sci-Fi series- http://www.jconsult.com/outside
I gave all the warnings at the top just so if you dint like them you could stop reading and go elsewhere. Yes it is a review cause I put over 60 hours into the game. Anything I do for 60 hours is a review. Sure I didn't make it to the sandbox, cause I got bored with all the stupid shit and I got annoyed enough to leave.
the point being archage lost me right off the bat. they should learn from that.
HomePage/Gaming Blog - http://dalewj.com . MMORPGer - Current game: http://AfterWorld.ru .
Author of Diaries of Afterworld- http://www.jconsult.com/afterworld and the Outside Sci-Fi series- http://www.jconsult.com/outside
i agree i think its a cop out when people post you need to get to a certain lvl to judge a game. I got to lvl 20 and knew the game wasn't for me. I do love the cat race though.
Just let the game fail on it's own...again.
JK, keep making these kind of threads, we will punish crappy games and crappy business models.
Gardening and running trade packs for the rest of the games life.......Bwahhahaaha! I've been helping plant and pick my friends small farm and I'll tell you what, nothing (besides running trade packs) is more BORING. I agree with everything the OP said. I am still playing though, with the fading hope that Lvl. 30 is all it is cracked up to be. If not, you will read about it.
The code of the pessimistic loner: "We unpopular loners are realists, who follow the three non- popular principles: Not having any (Hope), Not making any (Gaps in your heart); And not giving into (Sweet talk)".
I heard movie critics now only have to watch the first 20mins to give a review. True story.
I get where your coming from OP, but now we are in a generation of different mmo gamers.
We mostly have nostalgia running in our heads and the game era which I came from like - AC, SB, SWG and OU are far and few now.
AA to me is fun in doses, but I don't see myself with a long term commitment since it's a hybrid of what a sandbox mmo should be and me personally not digging the Korean theme.
I have my fingers crossed for 'The Repopulation' and hope this is the type of game you and I are looking for.
I can guarantee that if the reviewer is bored to tears during the first 20 minutes the final review will be profoundly negative, no matter how well the rest of it goes. If the first three episodes of a show's first season are crap, the ratings will plummet. If the first three chapters of a book don't grab the audience, it'll never be a bestseller. Such is the power of an underwhelming first impression. I don't see why ArcheAge should get a pass where other games in the genre get crucified for boring, paint-by-numbers tutorials (Wildstar comes immediately to mind).
If a movie critic stops watching the film after the first 20 minutes, then its because the film is really bad, true story!
When it comes to games, any game, MMO or SPRPG, if you have to play for 60+ hours before the game even begins to start being fun, then there is something seriously wrong with it, it should be fun from the start, sure have a tutorial, but don't make it too boring, and then making the game a grind till it gets to XX level and the players can then start having fun, well, don't be too surprised if many give up before hitting that 'level' because all they see is boring followed by yet more boring gameplay, short answer, if a game isn't fun to play then who in their right minds is going to stick around to find out if at some yet to be determined point the game starts being fun, supposedly. Of course we've also heard the age old, 'but your playing it wrong', with equally vague suggestions on what they should be doing instead. If this is truly the case then why is it not a part of the games tutorial?
The Ops review is valid, in as much as they were able to experience the game, if anything then surely it would be a message that the early game player experience is something that needs to be addressed. It has been proven repeatedly that players don't stick around if they are not having fun, and claims that a game is more fun at XX level are usually met with the response, 'so what', players would rather have cake today, than some vague promise of cake next week maybe
I was hoping for something similar to Vanilla WoW but what it seems to be is farming and gathering stuff and going to market ( bit of world pvp as you do so ) and then go back and farm and gather some stuff some more and repeat . I think the biggest problem with it is people from your own faction can attack you .
The land grab made it very difficult for people coming late into the game to get on . It was stupid not to limit the amount of land one person could get per server .Its just led to gold farmers snapping up as much as they could . In many ways this is the type of game I have been waiting for but in other ways it misses the mark so much that I just find it an annoying experience .
The community was a bit of a shock as well I thought WoW was bad until I saw Archeage . The amount of racism in general chat is appalling . Also a friend of mine recent had trouble paying for the upkeep of her land and when she tried to contact customer support she found there was a 4 day wait by which time she would lose it ( and have no hope of getting it back again ) .
It may settle down in six months or so I will take a second look again then perhaps by then Blizzard and XL games will get their act together and the community will improve .
It may be a decent game eventually but I think its one best avoided for the time being .