As others have said, it's F2P, so you have nothing to lose but time if you decide to try it out. But I'll give you some information based on my experience with the game over the last month and a half that I've been playing.
- AA is a Sandpark game. The quests are typical themepark style quests, and will take you from level 1 to level 50 if you wish. But you can also level up entirely via crafting, gathering, farming, etc. if you want to.
- If you like crafting, gathering, farming, commerce, etc., the game can be very fun. Since reaching level 50 I've been focusing almost entirely on farming and husbandry. I have 2 16x16 farms that I use for raising livestock and growing trees and crops. I milk my cows and collect eggs from my hens and sell the products on the Auction House. I grow barley, then grind it into ground grains and sell some of the grains to other players for their trade runs, and keep some of the grains to feed my livestock. To me it's fun and relaxing and I've been able to make good money with it.
- If you plan on doing the above mentioned tasks, or most any tasks in general, you'll need to get patron status. You don't have to pay with real money if you don't want to. You can use in-game gold to buy Apex and use the credits from the Apex to pay for patron status. But you absolutely will NEED patron status or you simply wont have enough Labor Points to do much of anything.
- The class system is very similar to Rift's class system, if you're familiar with that. But it allows for even more freedom. You can mix and match any combination of skillsets that you want, with a total of 120 possible classes. Granted, there are a small number of classes that tend to outperform others in PVP, but the freedom is still there for you to build a character the way that you want, which to me is a nice change of pace from most MMO's.
- Combat feels very fluid and fun to me. I'll never get bored of doing a leaping charge at an enemy then knocking it to the ground with a triple slash. And then stunning it with a shield slam and following up with a bull rush, knocking it to the ground again. WoW is the only other MMO that I feel has better combat, but it isn't by a large margin. AA is a very close 2nd.
- There will be plenty of gold seller spam, get used to it. Being a F2P game, it's fertile ground for gold seller spam since a character can use the chat channels once they reach level 15. Luckily you can simply right-click and report their names in chat.
- There is absolutely zero, and I will re-emphasize ZERO chat moderation in the game. You will see every vulgar, racist, sexist, offensive comment that you ever imagined. The chat is so bad sometimes that it makes WoW's infamous "Barrens Chat" look like a discussion among academic scholars. Character names are the same. There's a person on my server named "Analorgasm". And no, that name will never be changed, it's going to stay that way.
- If you can look past the rough edges and the rotten parts, there's a really fun game at its core. I've been a big WoW fan since 2005, and since starting AA I've barely played WoW at all, even after buying the WoD expansion, because I've been so immersed with AA.
As others have said, it's F2P, so you have nothing to lose but time if you decide to try it out.
And a significant amount of money if you're the type of person who gets sucked into that kind of thing.
Personal responsibility aside, a lot of FTP game developers are banking on the hopes that you suck at budgeting and don't notice how much you're spending...or that you don't have to worry about those things. Their entire business model hinges on it.
So telling people you have nothing to lose but time is bullshit.
Apart from the economic model, Archeage is a step in the right direction for the MMO genre. Player-driven stories, some sandbox elements, GvG that is more than just a BG, no instanced content and so on. Korean MMOs generally have better ideas than Western ones, but always have a shit economic model
The big problem is how it is handled by Trion. You can still have fun in the game if you're with friends. I stopped playing because I have exams in one month, but for the time I played, I had some good experiences. With a subscription, you can do pretty much everything normally, with some exceptions.
As others have said, it's F2P, so you have nothing to lose but time if you decide to try it out.
And a significant amount of money if you're the type of person who gets sucked into that kind of thing.
Personal responsibility aside, a lot of FTP game developers are banking on the hopes that you suck at budgeting and don't notice how much you're spending...or that you don't have to worry about those things. Their entire business model hinges on it.
So telling people you have nothing to lose but time is bullshit.
I said that he has nothing to lose but time if he "decides to try it out", which is a fact. There's no box cost or subscription fee required to download the game and start playing. It's not up to me to decide who may or may not decide to dump a load of money into the game once they start playing. I've only paid for patron status and that's all I intend on paying for.
Yeah, it's pretty good, though you should understand that you need to sub if you want to play at anything other than the most casual, very few hours a week level.
It's also a sinking ship, if you want a game receiving support from both the playerbase and developers working together to grow and improve moving forward, look elsewhere.
Originally posted by Zarf42 It's not worth starting to play. It will cost a lot of time and too much money to catch up or be competitive.
can do it for zero money spent and a good guild that does a lot of GHA runs for armor and hasla for weapons.
You can get competitive gear without any crafting - no it won't be tthe best but it won't suck either.
These 2 activities get pretty stale fast. GHA is a lackluster dungeon with a ton of bugs and the Hasla grind for weapons was probably the most boring activity I have ever engaged in my video game career.
As a PvE player, I enjoy AA in smallish doses. So I'll respond from that perspective to the OP.
The housing is meh if you compare it to other games, but its use in AA is a lot less "fluffy" and has strategic importance. Farming and gathering get old if you're doing "Farmville" but can make a huge difference if you have things you want to build/craft or want to make money playing the AH. The story questline is very forgettable but provides an essential currency, as do the various dailies. This is how most folks get their houses, ships, costumes, decor items and special mounts.
Guilds are important and alliances or wars can change your game experience very quickly. One day you can be allied with a powerful faction and the next be a big target in the middle of a war, all without having done anything more than log in. Because AA is an open-world PvP game, you should expect trash talk and griefing. Fortunately, it is easy enough to avoid that. I have done very little PvP in AA, but all of it was fun. My favorite parts of the game involve sailing the high seas, so watching out for pirates and betrayers is essential.
If you want to participate in PvE in AA, you will need to subscribe or buy enough in-game APEX to become a patron. Patron status allows you to pay taxes, which is how you are able to build a house, farm, etc. It also provides a much larger labor pool, which you can use to make tax certificates as well as crafting.
For a new player, I recommend reading up in advance on the AA forums, reddit, wiki and various other sites. Which server you choose is important, as each has its own political climate and challenges. You only get 2 characters free and it takes time to delete them if you change your mind. Hope this is helpful.
Is it getting the chance to show off its good gameplay due to mis management by Trion? not at all.
Mismanagement by Trion ? really? how is what they are doing any different to either of the other 2 localisations, wouldn't it instead be much more accurate to say, that any mismanagement going on is entirely on the part of XLGames...
Is it getting the chance to show off its good gameplay due to mis management by Trion? not at all.
Mismanagement by Trion ? really? how is what they are doing any different to either of the other 2 localisations, wouldn't it instead be much more accurate to say, that any mismanagement going on is entirely on the part of XLGames...
Trion has control over the cash shop and their servers. The cash shop is completely p2w and their servers are not stable and have had many problems, or did you not see what happened at release. XLGames is very much to blame for a lot of the problems with the game, but I wouldn't say more than Trion.
The game is a travesty and should not be played by anyone that respects this genre.
Archeage has the building blocks to be a very good game. Unfortunately that potential was badly mismanaged by both the developer and publisher:
It has a very interesting class system, but some of the skillsets are so much better than others that it seems 90% of the population is one of 5 or 6 classes.
It has open world PVP and factions... but it doesn't get used in any meaningful way and you mostly see just quick tiny skirmishes over hunting grounds or trade packs... most of the PVP you'll see is same faction griefing
It has a very robust crafting system... but it's grindy as all hell.
Those are the good points
The bad ones are that quests suck and the stories are asinine, dungeon instances are few and pretty basic.
I lost interest in it pretty quickly... a lot faster than I lose interest in most other MMOs.
But hey, it's free to try so see for yourself.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Simple. If you want a fun game to play with friends and have a sense of community, then this is the game for you. If you want the EPIC game and Legendary "wow killer" type of game, I will suggest to look elsewhere. Most people who dislike AA are people who are, as always, expecting too much. This happens in every mmo, thus the HYPING trend.
A game with fantastic gameplay options. I waited for such a game since 10 years. It resembles the golden age of true oldscool MMORPG's like SWG which is still my favorite. No other game allows so many playstyles. Even just fishing feeels like a "elite" activity allow you to take part in "end game" (if such fits in a sandbox that Archeage is) .
The games problems has most to do with how its maintained and monetized. I would prefer a monthly subscription with no free to play option for example plus a box price for the client.
But Trions EU / USA version is total trash... RNG boxes and exploits rule this mmo.
I would not recommend it to anyone after waiting for this mmo a very long time. What could have been an mmo worth years of playing is destroyed by a company's greed.
But Trions EU / USA version is total trash... RNG boxes and exploits rule this mmo.
I would not recommend it to anyone after waiting for this mmo a very long time. What could have been an mmo worth years of playing is destroyed by a company's greed.
Are you saying the Korean and Russian versions are free of RNG boxes and exploits?
That's not the story others have been saying, in general these issues have plagued all 3 releases and it mostly all stems back to XLGames more than anything else.
BTW, I played during the Founder period and quite enjoyed the game, wasn't until it got plagued by the F2P model along with the hacking and botting that it wasn't worth playing to me.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
OP, as others have said, give it a whirl and make up your own mind. My only word of warning is to not get too emotionally invested in the game like I tend to do ( a bad failing of mine). Play it a few months to see if the shininess starts to wear off. I had all intentions of playing AA for years and so did my spouse. After a few months and all the problems already mentioned in this thread, the shininess started to wear off as it has for many folks. I'm still holding on since I'm attached to my virtual properties, feeding my livestock and getting into crafting as much as I can before running into the labor wall. I'm in a holding pattern to see if things start improving but I'm not so sure. I had a few reservations when I first started playing the game but didn't listen to my gut instinct. I really should have.
AA has tons of potential and I've very much enjoyed my time in the world. Unfortunately, I've realized with what I want to do, it can't be played (for me) as a main game. As another poster pointed out, AA is great in small doses....at least for me. Alas I've returned to WoW for the 3rd time and must say I'm having a blast. It's nice to gather until my fingers are numb or just fish without looking at my labor pool. I absolutely love crafting and sometimes that's all I want to do. When I want to relax, I play WoW. Want to progress in slow increments, I log into AA, do my stuff and log off.
Originally posted by Zarf42 It's not worth starting to play. It will cost a lot of time and too much money to catch up or be competitive.
can do it for zero money spent and a good guild that does a lot of GHA runs for armor and hasla for weapons.
You can get competitive gear without any crafting - no it won't be tthe best but it won't suck either.
These 2 activities get pretty stale fast. GHA is a lackluster dungeon with a ton of bugs and the Hasla grind for weapons was probably the most boring activity I have ever engaged in my video game career.
100% Agreed. I really did get bored to death. I was only able to grind 50 tokens before I couldn't take it anymore :P. Not my type of play, I suppose.
But Trions EU / USA version is total trash... RNG boxes and exploits rule this mmo.
I would not recommend it to anyone after waiting for this mmo a very long time. What could have been an mmo worth years of playing is destroyed by a company's greed.
But Trions EU / USA version is total trash... RNG boxes and exploits rule this mmo.
I would not recommend it to anyone after waiting for this mmo a very long time. What could have been an mmo worth years of playing is destroyed by a company's greed.
figure it out for yourself
Before you edited your post, i wasn't sure if i should pass you a Tinfoil hat, or a medal...
But Trions EU / USA version is total trash... RNG boxes and exploits rule this mmo.
I would not recommend it to anyone after waiting for this mmo a very long time. What could have been an mmo worth years of playing is destroyed by a company's greed.
figure it out for yourself
Before you edited your post, i wasn't sure if i should pass you a Tinfoil hat, or a medal...
honestly there needs to be a consumer protection vehicle in place for this industry - it's past due.
Comments
As others have said, it's F2P, so you have nothing to lose but time if you decide to try it out. But I'll give you some information based on my experience with the game over the last month and a half that I've been playing.
- AA is a Sandpark game. The quests are typical themepark style quests, and will take you from level 1 to level 50 if you wish. But you can also level up entirely via crafting, gathering, farming, etc. if you want to.
- If you like crafting, gathering, farming, commerce, etc., the game can be very fun. Since reaching level 50 I've been focusing almost entirely on farming and husbandry. I have 2 16x16 farms that I use for raising livestock and growing trees and crops. I milk my cows and collect eggs from my hens and sell the products on the Auction House. I grow barley, then grind it into ground grains and sell some of the grains to other players for their trade runs, and keep some of the grains to feed my livestock. To me it's fun and relaxing and I've been able to make good money with it.
- If you plan on doing the above mentioned tasks, or most any tasks in general, you'll need to get patron status. You don't have to pay with real money if you don't want to. You can use in-game gold to buy Apex and use the credits from the Apex to pay for patron status. But you absolutely will NEED patron status or you simply wont have enough Labor Points to do much of anything.
- The class system is very similar to Rift's class system, if you're familiar with that. But it allows for even more freedom. You can mix and match any combination of skillsets that you want, with a total of 120 possible classes. Granted, there are a small number of classes that tend to outperform others in PVP, but the freedom is still there for you to build a character the way that you want, which to me is a nice change of pace from most MMO's.
- Combat feels very fluid and fun to me. I'll never get bored of doing a leaping charge at an enemy then knocking it to the ground with a triple slash. And then stunning it with a shield slam and following up with a bull rush, knocking it to the ground again. WoW is the only other MMO that I feel has better combat, but it isn't by a large margin. AA is a very close 2nd.
- There will be plenty of gold seller spam, get used to it. Being a F2P game, it's fertile ground for gold seller spam since a character can use the chat channels once they reach level 15. Luckily you can simply right-click and report their names in chat.
- There is absolutely zero, and I will re-emphasize ZERO chat moderation in the game. You will see every vulgar, racist, sexist, offensive comment that you ever imagined. The chat is so bad sometimes that it makes WoW's infamous "Barrens Chat" look like a discussion among academic scholars. Character names are the same. There's a person on my server named "Analorgasm". And no, that name will never be changed, it's going to stay that way.
- If you can look past the rough edges and the rotten parts, there's a really fun game at its core. I've been a big WoW fan since 2005, and since starting AA I've barely played WoW at all, even after buying the WoD expansion, because I've been so immersed with AA.
And a significant amount of money if you're the type of person who gets sucked into that kind of thing.
Personal responsibility aside, a lot of FTP game developers are banking on the hopes that you suck at budgeting and don't notice how much you're spending...or that you don't have to worry about those things. Their entire business model hinges on it.
So telling people you have nothing to lose but time is bullshit.
Apart from the economic model, Archeage is a step in the right direction for the MMO genre. Player-driven stories, some sandbox elements, GvG that is more than just a BG, no instanced content and so on. Korean MMOs generally have better ideas than Western ones, but always have a shit economic model
The big problem is how it is handled by Trion. You can still have fun in the game if you're with friends. I stopped playing because I have exams in one month, but for the time I played, I had some good experiences. With a subscription, you can do pretty much everything normally, with some exceptions.
I said that he has nothing to lose but time if he "decides to try it out", which is a fact. There's no box cost or subscription fee required to download the game and start playing. It's not up to me to decide who may or may not decide to dump a load of money into the game once they start playing. I've only paid for patron status and that's all I intend on paying for.
Yeah, it's pretty good, though you should understand that you need to sub if you want to play at anything other than the most casual, very few hours a week level.
It's also a sinking ship, if you want a game receiving support from both the playerbase and developers working together to grow and improve moving forward, look elsewhere.
At Massively, it tied with Wildstar for biggest disappointment of the year. I think that's all that needs to be said.
These 2 activities get pretty stale fast. GHA is a lackluster dungeon with a ton of bugs and the Hasla grind for weapons was probably the most boring activity I have ever engaged in my video game career.
I think it's worth trying. It is free to play anyway. You can play it for a couple of weeks without having to spend a dime and see if you like it.
My gaming blog
Its it a good game? no doubt
Is it getting the chance to show off its good gameplay due to mis management by Trion? not at all.
Unless you have at least a few grants disposable every month and feel it's no biggy at the same time, I'd advise against playing it.
Or if you're good at ignoring the world around you and just enjoy whatever you do at your own pace.
As a PvE player, I enjoy AA in smallish doses. So I'll respond from that perspective to the OP.
The housing is meh if you compare it to other games, but its use in AA is a lot less "fluffy" and has strategic importance. Farming and gathering get old if you're doing "Farmville" but can make a huge difference if you have things you want to build/craft or want to make money playing the AH. The story questline is very forgettable but provides an essential currency, as do the various dailies. This is how most folks get their houses, ships, costumes, decor items and special mounts.
Guilds are important and alliances or wars can change your game experience very quickly. One day you can be allied with a powerful faction and the next be a big target in the middle of a war, all without having done anything more than log in. Because AA is an open-world PvP game, you should expect trash talk and griefing. Fortunately, it is easy enough to avoid that. I have done very little PvP in AA, but all of it was fun. My favorite parts of the game involve sailing the high seas, so watching out for pirates and betrayers is essential.
If you want to participate in PvE in AA, you will need to subscribe or buy enough in-game APEX to become a patron. Patron status allows you to pay taxes, which is how you are able to build a house, farm, etc. It also provides a much larger labor pool, which you can use to make tax certificates as well as crafting.
For a new player, I recommend reading up in advance on the AA forums, reddit, wiki and various other sites. Which server you choose is important, as each has its own political climate and challenges. You only get 2 characters free and it takes time to delete them if you change your mind. Hope this is helpful.
Mismanagement by Trion ? really? how is what they are doing any different to either of the other 2 localisations, wouldn't it instead be much more accurate to say, that any mismanagement going on is entirely on the part of XLGames...
Trion has control over the cash shop and their servers. The cash shop is completely p2w and their servers are not stable and have had many problems, or did you not see what happened at release. XLGames is very much to blame for a lot of the problems with the game, but I wouldn't say more than Trion.
The game is a travesty and should not be played by anyone that respects this genre.
Archeage has the building blocks to be a very good game. Unfortunately that potential was badly mismanaged by both the developer and publisher:
It has a very interesting class system, but some of the skillsets are so much better than others that it seems 90% of the population is one of 5 or 6 classes.
It has open world PVP and factions... but it doesn't get used in any meaningful way and you mostly see just quick tiny skirmishes over hunting grounds or trade packs... most of the PVP you'll see is same faction griefing
It has a very robust crafting system... but it's grindy as all hell.
Those are the good points
The bad ones are that quests suck and the stories are asinine, dungeon instances are few and pretty basic.
I lost interest in it pretty quickly... a lot faster than I lose interest in most other MMOs.
But hey, it's free to try so see for yourself.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Simple. If you want a fun game to play with friends and have a sense of community, then this is the game for you. If you want the EPIC game and Legendary "wow killer" type of game, I will suggest to look elsewhere. Most people who dislike AA are people who are, as always, expecting too much. This happens in every mmo, thus the HYPING trend.
It's F2P, try it.
A game with fantastic gameplay options. I waited for such a game since 10 years. It resembles the golden age of true oldscool MMORPG's like SWG which is still my favorite. No other game allows so many playstyles. Even just fishing feeels like a "elite" activity allow you to take part in "end game" (if such fits in a sandbox that Archeage is) .
The games problems has most to do with how its maintained and monetized. I would prefer a monthly subscription with no free to play option for example plus a box price for the client.
Quote for truth.
Played Korean version
Played Russian vesion
But Trions EU / USA version is total trash...
RNG boxes and exploits rule this mmo.
I would not recommend it to anyone after waiting for this mmo a very long time.
What could have been an mmo worth years of playing is destroyed by a company's greed.
Are you saying the Korean and Russian versions are free of RNG boxes and exploits?
That's not the story others have been saying, in general these issues have plagued all 3 releases and it mostly all stems back to XLGames more than anything else.
BTW, I played during the Founder period and quite enjoyed the game, wasn't until it got plagued by the F2P model along with the hacking and botting that it wasn't worth playing to me.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
OP, as others have said, give it a whirl and make up your own mind. My only word of warning is to not get too emotionally invested in the game like I tend to do ( a bad failing of mine). Play it a few months to see if the shininess starts to wear off. I had all intentions of playing AA for years and so did my spouse. After a few months and all the problems already mentioned in this thread, the shininess started to wear off as it has for many folks. I'm still holding on since I'm attached to my virtual properties, feeding my livestock and getting into crafting as much as I can before running into the labor wall. I'm in a holding pattern to see if things start improving but I'm not so sure. I had a few reservations when I first started playing the game but didn't listen to my gut instinct. I really should have.
AA has tons of potential and I've very much enjoyed my time in the world. Unfortunately, I've realized with what I want to do, it can't be played (for me) as a main game. As another poster pointed out, AA is great in small doses....at least for me. Alas I've returned to WoW for the 3rd time and must say I'm having a blast. It's nice to gather until my fingers are numb or just fish without looking at my labor pool. I absolutely love crafting and sometimes that's all I want to do. When I want to relax, I play WoW. Want to progress in slow increments, I log into AA, do my stuff and log off.
100% Agreed. I really did get bored to death. I was only able to grind 50 tokens before I couldn't take it anymore :P. Not my type of play, I suppose.
Before you edited your post, i wasn't sure if i should pass you a Tinfoil hat, or a medal...
honestly there needs to be a consumer protection vehicle in place for this industry - it's past due.