ArcheAge

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ArcheAge

Postby Kethron » Mon Feb 18, 2013 9:44 am

ArcheAge is a "sandbox" game that will be getting published in North America by NCSoft. I found a link to a review from a player in the Korean beta (he's obviously NOT Korean) that's level 50 (the max level), and he gives an interesting run-down of the game. It's definitely more SWG than WoW, as he mentions.

http://www.aionsource.com/topic/135076-review-archeage/
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Re: ArcheAge

Postby RemyCC » Mon Feb 18, 2013 5:10 pm

I've read about this. Looks interesting.
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Re: ArcheAge

Postby Kethron » Mon Feb 18, 2013 8:24 pm

RemyCC wrote:I've read about this. Looks interesting.


They had me interested at "PvP ship battles."
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Re: ArcheAge

Postby Kethron » Thu Feb 28, 2013 3:40 pm

One of the "things" in ArcheAge is the farm feature. Much like Farmville (you know you've played it, shut up), if you don't harvest a fully grown crop within a certain amount of time, you lose that crop. Such is the case in ArcheAge. However, the developers are (at least in Korea) implementing an offline monitoring system via your web browser and/or mobile application to let you know your farm's status.
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Re: ArcheAge

Postby Kethron » Wed Jul 16, 2014 10:12 am

ArcheAge has been in it's North American Alpha test for most of this year, and will be starting its first closed Beta weekend tomorrow for "founders" and those selected with invites. I'm in via the lowest founder package, so I'll be sure to give my thoughts on the game after I've logged a few hours.
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Re: ArcheAge

Postby Kethron » Fri Jul 18, 2014 9:05 am

I didn't get to play much last night, but . . .

Character Creation - Good, solid. You can choose from a list of preset styles for each major facial component, and then also go "advanced" and use sliders for more details. You can also save the particular head you customize, and then "blend" it with others. Useful I suppose if you wanted to create a "child" character between two others and have them look similar.

World Interactivity - Even very early on, where the game is still holding your hand a bit, you can see that there are a great many objects in the world you can interact with. You can sit on chairs and tree stumps, lay on beds in the inn, turn off/on lamps and fireplaces, pick up random items that you can use (such as some fireworks I found), climb trees (at least for one quest), and so forth.

Questing - Questing is probably the most "meh" part of the game. It's solid, and it serves its purpose, but that's it. There does seem to be an abundance of quests to pick up, some of which you come across as you explore (option, side quests). Others appear to be specific to your character race and/or faction. The quests are something to do and a way to get experience, items, and money, but that's it.

Combat - The combat is fun, but nothing groundbreaking. It seems to be a mix of the combat styles of most modern MMO's. You've got a hotbar that you put abilities on, and you can use most of these abilities while on the move (at least you can with the Archer class).

Skills - You start out with a few basic combat skills from the class you initially pick at character creation. When you get new skill points, you can pick and choose which abilities you want from that class set, so long as you have enough points for the given skill and meet the level requirement. At level 5, you can choose a secondary skill set from a different class. I know you can mix and match at least 3 skill sets, which gives you a lot of potential combinations.

That's it from my play experience . . . so far. I'm not going to wax on about all of AA's features, which are vast. I'm just going to talk about what I personally experience. 8-)
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Re: ArcheAge

Postby Harka » Fri Jul 18, 2014 3:50 pm

From the trailer i was not impressed with its artistic style and rendering.

What are your thoughts on it in game?
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Re: ArcheAge

Postby Kethron » Mon Jul 21, 2014 9:26 am

Harka wrote:From the trailer i was not impressed with its artistic style and rendering.

What are your thoughts on it in game?


I'll say that ArcheAge isn't looking to blow anyone away with it's graphics - it's looking to impress with its feature set, which is great and vast. That said, I've seen plenty of screenshots from people with higher end machines than I have that make the game look quite pretty. I'm able to run the game at 1680 x 1050 in "Normal" graphics mode with decent FPS on my low(er) end machine. At those settings, the game still looks pretty good, so the engine seems to scale well. Also, Anti-Aliasing is disabled for this part of the closed beta test, so things are a bit more jagged than they normally would be.

Aesthetics aside, the game is a great deal of fun. I'm a bit overwhelmed with the amount of stuff to do, and I'm just scratching the surface. I'm still in the "introductory" period of the game, where it holds your hand a bit and introduces you to most of the main features. It's the "let me teach you how to play" portion of the game.

I'm posting a link below to my current collection of AA closed beta screenshots. These were taken from my machine, so this isn't the best the game can look by a long shot.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-3IEIYamfnaVWNoRWYxcXd2TmM&usp=sharing
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Re: ArcheAge

Postby Kethron » Mon Jul 21, 2014 9:33 am

A little on what you're looking at:

In the languages.jpg picture - Yes, apparently you can speak and learn different languages, i.e. EverQuest.

In skills. jpg - You can have 3 skill sets at any given time, and spend skill points on any one of the sets. I only had 2 sets at the time I took the screenshot - Battlerage and Defense. Being able to mix and match skill sets allows you to kind of customize the class to your play style preference.

In horsebasket.jpg - Yes, you have to essentially "raise" your mount to adulthood before you can ride it. Once your mount is fully grown, it levels up with you, and can actually start fighting with you at level 10.

In boat1.jpg - You get your own boat - a rowboat - as part of one of the introductory quests. You get to keep it with you, and deploy it anywhere near water. Ship trade and piracy is supposedly a major component of the game.
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Re: ArcheAge

Postby Kethron » Mon Jul 21, 2014 1:24 pm

It should be noted that, at launch, AA will be a "Free to Play" game, much in the same ways that SWTOR, Rift, and a host of others are F2P. The entire game will be available to free players and will have a marketplace where you can buy option items and boosts, but subscribers (or Patrons, as they refer to them) will have the following bonuses:

• Bonus online Labor Point regeneration (10 per 5 minutes)
• Offline Labor Point regeneration (5 per 5 minutes)
• Increased maximum Labor Points cap (5000 maximum)
• 10% bonus to all Experience gained through combat or labor usage
• 10% discount on Marketplace purchases (available after launch)
• 5 Loyalty Tokens per day for use in the Loyalty Store (awarded on first login of the day)
• Ability to claim land by placing farms and houses
• Ability to pay in-game taxes on owned property
• Ability to post auctions on the Auction House by default

By default, free players can't claim and own land. Land owners can give them permission to access the land, farm it, etc., however.

Labor points are used for all non-combat jobs such as mining, blacksmithing, woodworking, fishing, etc. Labor points seem to regenerate in game at a reasonable clip, but I can see how having them regenerate offline would be a big advantage to paying customers. It's certainly not pay to win, but it can definitely be looked at as "pay to have an advantage."

Even if you're not a fan of the art style, this is definitely a game worthy trying once it launches, especially for free, and even without the subscriber bonuses.
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