ArcheAge

by Aethyna Dec 11, 2014 | 2 Votes | 1 Played | 1 Reviews

Your vote

5.5 rate

Genres:

RPG , MMO

Graphics:

Labels:

Sandbox Game , Download , Fantasy Setting , Mounts , Player vs Player (PvP)

Platforms:

Publishers:

Trion Worlds , XL Games Enter a world where you can raise your own city from the ground up, invade other cities and gain power and levels in any way that you want. With your own islands and ships at your command the whole game is free for you to explore and use as you wish. Play Now Similar Games Played Post a Review

People Also Played

Summary Plotline Gameplay Community Graphics/Sound Conclusion

Summary

Touted as the brilliant fantasy version of EVE Online, ArcheAge is one of the most talked about MMORPG (or more accurately, sandbox-MMORPG) of the year! This game offers a refreshing new take on MMORPGs by having a load of interesting new and unique features, including a profession (or ‘proficiency’) system that contains 21 different but interconnected vocations, flexible skills and combat system, labor points system (to deter ‘farmers’) and a one-of-its-kind justice system. There is also a huge range of fun activities such as sailing, gliding, composing music and home building and decorating. The most astounding fact is that the game is only less than 2 years old and it’s growing at a very rapid pace! Come and experience a whole new genre of MMORPG that ArcheAge seems to be leading in! Seriously, you will not regret it!

Plotline

One of the most interesting parts of this game is that characters from different race will experience a different sort of storyline, making each new-character play through a brand new experience!

Basically though, the lore of the game goes like this – there were once 12 adventurers who went to search for the birthplace of magic in Auroria. After extreme hardship, quite a lot of bloodshed, newly-forged camaraderie, they finally arrived at the Garden. It is here all the members in this team of 12 obtained immense magical power and were elevated to godlike status.

These new gods returned to their empires and peace reigned for around 500 years… that is until conflict between the new gods arose! Due to reasons only known to him, Gene Evernight, one of the new gods, adopted his new image as Kyrios, the God of Destruction and started killing the other new gods… with the God of the Wind, Tahyang Kahlzit being the first on the list of casualties. Other new gods attempted to stop Kyrios on his rampage that is breaking the once-beautiful world of Auroria apart. Aranzeb, one of the two elves on the expedition sacrificed his life to buy Goddess Nui more time as she used her power to open a portal for the inhabitants of Auroria to escape to a new world. Despite Nui’s best efforts, the portal drained all of her power and she died as the portal collapse on itself. Needless to say, very few of Auroria’s inhabitants survived the ordeal.

Hundreds of years since the destruction of Auroria and the mass migration of Aurorians to the new continents of Nuian and Haranyan, an insidious threat arose. One of the new goddess, Dahuta, who has hidden herself while other gods waged war on Kyrios, awakened from her slumber. She has caused the emergence of the sinister Dahuta cult. It is up to you to find out what she is up to and to put a stop to her nefarious plans!

The story in this game slowly unravels through various flashbacks that were not your own and that you will be seeing the story from your race’s perspective and new god/goddess. These snippets of ‘memory’ (story) can be hard to make sense of if you do not have any knowledge of the lore in ArcheAge beforehand though.

Gameplay

There are 2 factions in ArcheAge, each faction having 2 races – Nuians and Elves are in one faction while Firran and Harani are in the other. Each race has their respective special racial skills that are not much of a help in combat situations but are more useful for questing or for leveling vocations. For instance, Firran has lower fall damage and can climb trees and ladders faster while Harani has lower cooldown on the Recall ability and requires less time for logging trees and gathering herbs. Players are allowed to create 2 characters (they can be from opposing factions, it doesn’t really matter) with 2 additional slots available only to real-money spenders.

Its skills system is pretty unique as well. You will start off by choosing 1 skill set, namely battlerage (warrior), sorcery (mage), archery (archer), vitalism (healer), occultism (warlock/ necromancer) and shadowplay (assassin/ rogue). However, as you level in-game, you will have the option of taking up 2 more skill sets that usually complement your main skill set. The list of skill sets that you can choose as your second or third skill set will be expanded in-game, meaning that instead of having only the 6 aforementioned skill sets to choose from, there will be some new skill sets added to the list as well. Furthermore, do note that unlike World of Warcraft’s dual talent specialization, you will be able to use all 3 skill sets at the same time in ArcheAge. This allows for plenty of skill customisation, making each character in-game pretty much unique.

As opposed to popular belief that each class can only use a specific type of weapons (like sorcerers can only use staffs and wands/ sceptres), in ArcheAge, each player is allowed to use whatever weapons they like! For example, archers can use bows, dual-wielded one-handed swords (even two-handed swords), dual-wielded daggers and shields. Even sorcerers in ArcheAge can use bows and swords, or cudgels if you fancy using them. However, whether the stats on the weapon is suitable for your character or not… well, that’s whole new issue.

Combat in ArcheAge is not as straightforward as it seems – it is instead extremely flexible, allowing it to fit seamlessly to your play style. In this game, you could just take the lazy route and stand on the same spot while attacking away, but you would be taking heavy damage, or you could kite your target and avoid the brunt of the damage. It’s all up to you! Moreover, using certain skills during combat may also trigger a combo reaction whereby another skill that complements the skill that you have just used will light up. This means that whenever you use these two skills together, you will deal extra damage.

Explorers can rejoice as ArcheAge offers a huge and beautiful world for them to explore! There are plenty of travel stones, which are strategically placed in the newbie area, for you to speed up your character until you get your very first mount. Mounts are also unique in ArcheAge. In this game, by covering vast distances using your mount, you are able to level it up. Every level up will increase its stats, and more importantly its health. This is because whenever you decide to rush through a group of enemies with your mount, these enemies will be able to attack and perhaps kill your mount (depending on its health pool and armour), sending you tumbling down to the ground. Due to this, you are able to ‘equip’ your mount with mount gear to increase its evasion and defense ratings.

Another great part that you can see as you traverse the world is that ArcheAge is a very interactive world. If you see a chair in your travels, chances are you can let your character sit on it. Saw a tall tree that you’re itching to climb? Just go ahead and climb it! You could even rustle the bushes just so you could see the fireflies dancing on the bushes. It’s truly amazing!

Furthermore, you will probably encounter plenty of player-owned houses, mansions or estates as you go on your adventures! This is the ‘sandbox’ part of the game. By purchasing a small plot of land (and regularly pay fees to maintain your ownership), you are free to do whatever you want with it. You could build a plantation whereby you can plant a variety of crops, fruit trees or simply normal trees that you could later chop down for logs. Beside your bountiful plantation, you could build your house! There are plenty of items, such as furniture and decorative items that you can buy or earn to furnish your brand new home. ArcheAge really takes home-building to another level for its players.

Not to mention, if you’re a profession-obsessed kind of person, ArcheAge provides a plethora of vocations that you don’t even need to choose from! In other words, you will automatically be able to learn every vocation there is under the roof of ArcheAge and there are A LOT! The amount of vocations offered is at a staggering number of 21! This includes the usual vocations, like alchemy, leatherwork, tailoring, gathering, fishing, mining and cooking, and also some really unique ones, such as husbandry and farming, whereby you rear and butcher your own livestock or plant and harvest crops in public plots of land or on your own private land. There are even masonry (to make gunpowder, bricks and Hereafter Stones, which allows you to teleport using a worldgate), printing (craft books that describe the various storylines in ArcheAge and useable scrolls), machining (yes, you can build your own cool steampunk-themed vehicles), construction (house-building), larceny (which decreases the chance of leaving evidence when committing crimes) and commerce (you can craft, transport and sell trade packs for money). The vocations in ArcheAge are wonderfully elaborate and are not meant to be ‘rapidly leveled through’ within a couple of days. If you like, you could even choose to level only the vocations you like to do. The amount of freedom given by this game is simply astounding!

In order to deter ‘farmers’ that exist like a plague in other MMORPGs, damaging the economy of the affected server, all of these vocations are subjected to the labor system. Every vocational activity, including mining, crafting, gathering, building, farming and others, will require different amount of labor points to perform. These labor points will, then, be regenerated at a rate of 5 points for every 5 minutes you spent in-game and will not regenerate when you are logged out from the game. Each player is allowed to accumulate their labor points up to a maximum of 2000, but this labor-point limit will be extended when you level up your profession, especially when you will need to consume more points to perform higher-level vocational activities.

In addition to the PvE and PvP aspects of the game, there are also tiny little things that made ArcheAge one of the top MMORPG of the year! You are able to do many fun things in ArcheAge like gliding across the land on your glider, swimming and underwater exploring, and sailing on sailboats. There is even a justice system whereby players who have violated game rules like killing ‘green’ NPCs or stealing other people’s crops. These ‘criminals’ will be judged for their ‘crimes’ via a randomly appointed judge and jury (from the pool of players who has never committed any severe offence before). If the ‘criminal’ is deemed guilty, his or her character will be sent to prison for a certain period of time. Even if these convicted players managed to stage a jailbreak, they will be given a crippling debuff that will definitely hamper their ability to progress in the game (at least until the prison duration is up).

Furthermore, instead of a load of junk loot after killing monsters, ArcheAge streamlined the loot system by having coinpurses. When opened (you will need a tiny bit of labor points to open), these coinpurses contain additional XP and some coins. The loot system will still contain dropped gear of various grades (uncommon, rare, etc) though – ArcheAge only remove the inventory-space-hogging junk loot and replaced it with something far better, easier and space-saving (since same coinpurses can be stacked together).

Not to forget, one of its best features is the ability to compose music in-game. Although this feature is not exactly unique (hint: The Lord of the Rings Online), it’s great to see the game incorporating a popular feature into its game. ArcheAge offers up to 4 different types of musical instruments, namely drum, lute, flute, banjo, shamisen, saxophone, horn, piano and many more! Some of these instruments, when played do have a particular function, in addition to producing beautiful pieces of music of course - that is to restore health and mana points (lute and flute) or to provide battle buffs (drum).

There is even a vocation, called ‘Artistry’, whereby you can compose your own epic musical scores in ArcheAge. Higher artistry level will mean that you can write and play more notes (up to a maximum of 1000 notes) and will make fewer mistakes as you play. There are even some rather playfully quaint players in ArcheAge, who will play the Rains of Castamere theme during a castle siege or the famous theme song from Pirates of the Caribbean when pirates came over to raid your place. It’s all done in the name of fun and it’s interesting to see how creative can the ArcheAge community be with all the tools that they have been given in regard to composing and playing music in the game.

Community

The community in ArcheAge is seriously massive due to its popularity and each server is, needless to say, highly populated. The loyal community of ArcheAge even went as far as to create useful sites like ArcheAge Guidex where all available and active guilds in ArcheAge are indexed and then categorised by name, guild tag, server, faction, size and focus (PvE, PvP or both). With such a loyal fan base, the only direction this game can go is upward!

Graphics/Sound

ArcheAge has some pretty awesome scores that may even be deemed Hollywood-worthy. The scenery is also unbelievably beautiful, with its white-tipped mountain ranges and vast expanse of lush greenies. The animations, in particular the rivers in the game, are very well-animated as well! You can practically ‘see’ the waters lapping gently against the shore. One of the more tricky part is perhaps getting the shadows right, especially for moving objects (like when your character is running in the evening) and ArcheAge has definitely hit the jackpot in this aspect.

Conclusion

ArcheAge is indeed one of the most innovative and outstanding sandbox-MMORPG! The game offers a lot of freedom and variety to its players, which include its 21 vocations, skills and combat system, justice system and also fun activities, like sailing, gliding, composing music or home building and decorating. It has astonishing graphics and sound as well as a huge world to explore! Although it has not yet been ranked among the MMORPG greats, ArcheAge is a still very new game (it is only less than 2 years old!) and, from what can be seen in the game, ArcheAge is definitely on its way to the top. Its uniqueness is what will reel players in! If you have not tried this game before and you are a fan of MMO, you owe it to yourself to at least give this special game a go. Sign up today!

The Daru Debut in Archeage's Summer Update, Live Now

by Aethyna Jun 23, 2023

Summer brings the dawn of the Daru, flag feuding, and unites players across the globe

The Daru Debut in Archeage's Summer Update, Live Now

by Aethyna Jun 9, 2023

Explore the world of ArcheAge in the boots of a Daru, fight 10v10 battles and so much more

ArcheAge’s Summer Update welcomes never before seen transformation system, the Daru

Worst customer service ever in an MMO

I loved to play this game. It used to be the best game I ever played. I spent over 2k hours in the game and spent hundreds of dollars as well. I even purchased the founders back while it was in beta. ...Full Review All reviews