Archeage

[Morreion]

ArcheAge enters Closed Beta

ArcheAge launching with patch 1.2, Trion 'eager to maintain sandbox nature' (Massively)

Initially released in Korea, [the 1.0] update has been the source of no small amount of concern from our ArcheAge community since we announced the game was coming to North America and Europe. Upon seeing the behavior of the patch's changes in the wild, the game's developer, XLGAMES, agreed that ArcheAge's balance and feel had shifted in an unintentional direction. Behind the scenes, we've been carefully following public feedback over the past few months, and had a chance to exhaustively test out the update on our own internal servers. While there are a number of gameplay improvements, we agree with their conclusion.

Both Trion Worlds and XLGAMES are eager to maintain the game's sandbox nature.

Trion details ArcheAge's patron status, APEX system (Massively)

Trion has also announced APEX, an in-game item that grants credits when consumed and that can be sold on the game's auction house or traded between players. Much like EVE Online's PLEX, APEX will allow "industrious" ArcheAge players to pay for Patron status via their gameplay rather than real money. There's more to Trion's announcement, too, including possible F2P house ownership...

ArcheAge bans 16k spam accounts in alpha (Massively)

Ahh, spammers. They are the mosquitos of the MMO world if mosquitos could email and send global chat messages. Trion is no stranger to spam-squashing and as Community Manager Evan "Scapes" Berman demonstrated in a recent post, the studio is bringing out the big guns against ArcheAge's spammers who have been plaguing the alpha test.

According to the post, over 16,000 spammer and gold farmer accounts have been removed from alpha already, and Patch 1.2 (arriving next week) will have even more tools to fight the "general asshats."

Leaderboard: Will you be trying ArcheAge? (Massively)

78% said yes (over 1500 votes).

ArcheAge's closed beta begins on July 17th (Massively)

The time has finally come: ArcheAge fans who've been been anxiously awaiting a beta date now can mark their calendars and start canceling other plans. Next weekend the closed beta doors will swing open at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday the 17th and remain so until they close at the same hour on Monday the 21st. Founders and invited testers will have a chance to dive in and experience ArcheAge's sandbox world, including -- but not limited to -- pirating, farming, questing, crafting, fishing, PvPing, or even just in gliding from the mountaintops.

Just as there are many ways to play once you get into the game, there are many ways to get there. Although the Founders Packs (with their hefty price tags) are the guaranteed way to get entrance into the beta tests, Hartsman emphasized that they are not the only way. Throughout the beta process, partnered sites will host giveaways, and those who signed up for beta on the official site also have a chance to receive an invite. If players don't get an invite this time around, they might get one later.

...Interestingly, there has been some debate over how much of a sandbox ArcheAge really is. Hartsman addressed this by saying, "To me, sandbox is less about the individual gameplay features and more about the amount of freedom you have with what's available to you."

One concern voiced by many players involves PvP, especially the toxicity of the PvP community on the alpha forums.

ArcheAge begins beta with one million sign-ups [Updated] (Massively)

"We're also happy to announce today that over one million of you have already joined our community of ArcheAge supporters, even before the first beta event began!" Trion Worlds posted today. In fact, the beta launched to far more players than Trion anticipated, prompting the studio to open up two new servers to handle the demand.

To bring the Korean MMO overseas, Trion has translated two million words, set up technical infrastructure, and localized quests. The closed beta event will feature the version 1.2 patch for both North America and Europe.

ArcheAge's second beta event starts July 30th (Massively)

The good news from the packed beta event last weekend is that the hardware performed great on Trion's side and that the devs have made changes to improve the game: "You also helped us to identify and fix challenges with some of the custom integration for our version! During the event, we were also adapting our own anti-spam and anti-bot software in real time. With your input, we're reviewing a number of systems with XLGAMES, including use of labor while you're hunting and looting, labor regeneration rates for online and offline players, and the availability of Archeum. We're also looking into the feasibility of XLGAMES adding an ability queue and mouse inverting."

The Basics to ArcheAge's Crafting System (Ten Ton Hammer)

Labor Points

Non-premium players gain 1 point every 5 minutes (a maximum of 288 points restored in a 24hr period) they’re logged in. Premium players gain 5 points every 5 minutes (up to 1440 points will be restored in a 24hr period), even if they’re logged in or not. If you own a house, you can sleep, which will increase the rate of recovery.

Your LP is vital and can be sold to others as a resource, used yourself, or if you run out you can ask for assistance on your craft and someone can spend their crafting points on you.

The amount of LP spent on a task depends on on what the task is, if it’s picking a plant or building a large castle.

Specializing will reduce the labor cost for the tasks, but enable you to build / use bigger things, which will have a higher cost.

It is official: ArcheAge IS P2W and NOT F2P (Updated). (Reddit)

LuciousVictis - They confirmed that they will sell labor potion in their store, no one can deny that this is pure and simple, pay to win. You aquire something that no one can aquire in game, no matter how hard they can work for it. At the end of the day, your labor regen will cap at 2160 while they will be making way more, giving anyone a clear advantage on crafting, the best gear in the game and then having a clear advantage on the econnomy and pvp. Now in a game like this, yes skills matters but econnomy and pvp advantages are a great deal to a lot of people.

Not only that but XL Games have at this very moment many P2W items in their store, items that trion claim wont make it to our stores but have you ever watched one of their livestream? You can find them on youtube, watch how they avoid so many important question about the store and the future of this game, the changes and all. They make a lot of political promesses and play with words like no others, they repeated the same thing in every single streams, no lie, go watch.

Now they admitted that they will sell gears, they strongly dictate on what you can and cannot do by holding labor points. This is a sandbox kind of game, crafting is the whole point of this game, econnomy and pvp, thats the only decent things in this game and they are ruining it. Just look at the alpha price and tell me they wont try to milk that ingame store with p2w item

[Morreion]

Archeage releases September 16th

Getting Started Guide Updated (Archeageis)

This article will try and break down the introduction to the game in to bite size chunks to help you get started. Please keep in mind that there is a lot more depth to ArcheAge than what is written below, this is just a taste of what to expect as a brand new player progressing through the first few levels. We will have more articles and guides up in the near future for more in-depth content.

All Work And No Play Makes ArcheAge A Dull Game. Maybe. (Inventory Full)

The core activity of MMORPGs, at least in my understanding of the genre, is killing things to see what they drop then putting the best things you find on your character. Serial Killer Barbies; it's what the genre is. My characters live in the world and understand it but as a player looking in from outside, when it comes to actual gameplay, that's my motivation - kill some wildlife, dress a doll. In ArcheAge, that's right out: mobs don't drop coin, gear or crafting components. I'm not quite sure if that means they don't drop anything other than quest items but it doesn't leave much other than maybe consumables.

ArcheAge's second closed beta event is live right now (Massively)

You may also be pleased to note that all of your CBE1 progress will carry over, including your crop timers and taxes. Trion says that CBE2 is expected to be "three times the size of the first."

The Daily Grind: What do you think of ArcheAge's beta community? (Massively)

I've seen a lot of forum rhetoric decrying ArcheAge's "bad community" of late. I used quotes there because I'm not entirely convinced that it is a bad community or, if it is, how much of it is bad. I'm not even sure what "bad" means, but I'm fairly certain it's subjective.

So I'm going to ask Massively readers with ArcheAge beta experience. Do you feel like ArcheAge's community is bad? Why or why not? If it is bad, what do you think should be done about it, if anything?

Many commenters say, 'yes, the community is bad'

Hey look, it's another ArcheAge closed beta event (Massively)

ArcheAge's fourth closed beta event starts Friday, August 22nd and runs through Wednesday, August 27th. Trion expects the event to be "twice as large" as CBE3, and the company notes that you're not automagically eligible for this shindig even if you participated last time. Trion is making keys available through its usual partner suspects, while ArcheAge alpha and founder account invites do carry over.

Leaderboard: What's your post-release plan for ArcheAge? (Massively)

The majority (26%) said Trading/Crafting/Farming.

PAX Prime 2014: ArcheAge is launching on September 16th (Massively)

That date, as we learned tonight at PAX Prime, is Tuesday, September 16th. Other dates to bear in mind are September 12th (the Founder head-start) and September 4th through September 8th (the open beta).

PAX Prime 2014: ArcheAge is a go for launch! (Massively)

ArcheAge won't be budging on its commitment to an open PvP world; it's simply how the game is constructed. Players who want to avoid getting ganked will need to keep an eye on war zones that move throughout the world and accept the inherent risk that comes with attempting trade in those regions.

The team hopes that there will be enough space on the servers for all subscribers to grab an open world housing plot if desired. Coming some time after launch will be castles, which are larger structures that guilds can build, maintain, and defend together. Trion said that server transfers won't be in for release but are being worked on for the future.

[Loendal]

I'm downloading the Open Beta right now

[Loendal]

Ok, so I've been through the open beta and I kind of enjoyed it. Though it has a distinct Facebook-game feel to it (The 5 labor points for 5 minutes of doing nothing thing). I also have been trying to get into the game since it went live; and have been very irritated. I really don't have the time or patience to sit through a queue that has 4700 people ahead of me, that's just ridiculous. I'm hoping that it will simmer down a little bit after the launch-buzz has passed. I really see no point in trying to go to another server just to start over again from scratch just because the queue line was too long on my main's server. When I did get in once, I recreated my Ferran Archer and immediately upon exiting the opening cinematic I had to put no less than 10 people on the block list for gold spamming the nation line with website offers and similar nonsense. This was before I even got moving to start my quests and get back to where I was in Beta.

When moving to the next stage in the newbie zone, I arrived at my quest NPC without graphics loading for any of them in the area. You can still click on them and get your quests, but you are clicking on blank air. That's annoying as well. It happened in Beta, and I put it down to the fact that it was in Beta and perhaps they were underestimating stress levels on their servers. Now that it's live, this shouldn't be happening anymore.

I'm also trying to figure out why in the hell it takes around 5 minutes just to load up! I'm aware that my machine is still XP, and that may be part of it, but come on. This thing is racing to catch up with the huge load times that Horizons used to have when on my wife's PC in Scotland, which was way out of date and battered to boot.

I'm not impressed so far. The game is pretty to look at, and seems to have a rich background history but all that goes out the window when you look around and see names like xXKittyKatXx and Imgunakillyou. I know I'm probably expecting too much with regards to names and actual interest in the back-story, but it's like people don't even try anymore. The gameplay feels very grindy, but I suppose that's to be expected with a Korean import. Already there's been arguments across the Nation lines about why it's wrong to do this or to play that way; you know the kind of pointless stupid arguments that I'm talking about. Like for example, in APB, people bitch about using Percussion grenades instead of the timed ones because "percs are for noobs". That kind of arguing.

I can only hope they find a way to get rid of this queue issue and lessen the load problems so I can actually get in there and enjoy the game; I really want this to be good and worth the waiting, but so far, I'm not holding onto much hope for it.

[Morreion]

Jaema and I are on Tahyang, the unofficial RP server- yeah, the queues are horrid now. Will write up some thoughts when I get to play more

[Morreion]

Archeage Launches- here's Massively's first impressions

Massively's ArcheAge launch diary: Day one

I'm standing on a sun-baked rock along Nuia's northern coast. The waves lap at my feet, little bubbles are visible just off shore. Wispy strips of white cirrus float overhead, framing a baby blue sky that meets the ocean somewhere beyond a hazy horizon I can't quite see.

I've been standing here a while because there goes the sun, melting into the water and leaking red-orange streaks across the purplish waves as I watch. Up the cliff face behind me, a gaggle of green-named newbs mosh about in the newb area doing what MMO newbs do.

A couple of them make their way down the cliff face to join me. One of them jostles my character and apologizes. He didn't realize there was collision detection and he's very sorry and wow, this game is pretty, isn't it?

...I've had some account problems that weren't deal-breakers but were certainly annoying and certainly did cost me some play time. The last three times I tried to log in, I was treated to one of those we've-sent-a-security-code-because-you're-logging-in-from-a-new-location popups, only I wasn't logging in from a new location. I was logging in from the same location at which I'd been playing the game 30 seconds earlier before it black-screened to my desktop. Speaking of crashes, I experienced that one consistently while trying to log into my Harani alt. I could make it through the opening cutscene, but it took several tries before I could actually load in. Frankly neither of these problems would've been a big deal were it not for the resulting queues, which jumped around from 20 minutes to an hour and a half in my case.

And I know it sounds like I'm being a little hard on a launch-day MMO. It's because I'm fairly invested in ArcheAge already and have been for a number of years. I want this game to be good, simply because so much of what it offers is otherwise unavailable in the post-2004 MMO space.

Massively's ArcheAge launch diary: Day two - Classes, skills, combat

ArcheAge is a class- and a skill-based MMORPG that offers quite a bit of character build flexibility. During character creation, you'll need to select your first class from a list that includes Battlerage, Sorcery, Archery, Vitalism, Occultism, and Shadowplay. Don't stress here because you can pretty much experience all of these throughout the life of a single character via respecs.

...In terms of how the combat "feels," that's a pretty subjective thing. I like the weight of ArcheAge's melee combat. It's got a certain oomfph that's missing from a lot of MMORPGs, so much so that I'm foregoing my usual caster focus to draw swords and charge/triple slash with abandon via the Battlerage tree. The animations are gorgeous, too; this is definitely one of those tab/target games where you'll want to look away from your hotbars long enough to see your avatar kicking ass.

Ranged combat seems pretty standard and pretty fun. I'm dabbling in Sorcery on my alt, and of course I dig the mobility and the kiting prowess of the Warpriest's Archery tree so far.

Massively's ArcheAge launch diary: Day three - PvE, quests, and story

PvE also is what it is, and level 1-to-29 ArcheAge features a lot of it. It's absolutely the game's main focus for over half of the current progression curve, and at my current smell-the-roses speed, it's probably going to be a month or even six weeks before I hit 30. I find the kill-10-rats stuff tolerable primarily because there are other things to do when it gets old, and those other things reward the same XP. I'm talking mostly about crafting and trading here, which will get its own dedicated diary entry in the next day or two, so hold that thought.

Regarding quest-based PvE, though, ArcheAge creator Jake Song has long said that the game was intended to bridge the gap between first-gen MMO sandboxes and second-gen quest-driven themeparks. He sought to design a title that married both playstyles and gave plenty of options to a diverse playerbase. Thus far I think he and his team at XLGAMES have mostly succeeded, even though the early game features more World of Warcraft influences than I would prefer.

Ultimately I put up with that because of the non-combat stuff I mentioned above and because of the world itself. It is in fact a world as opposed to a series of lobbies and load screens. It's completely open, it's monstrously huge, and its varying topography dazzles. You will be competing with other players for mobs -- or joining them, if you're not completely anti-social! -- and you will be traveling more than you do in most themeparks, though there are fast travel options. And I love those virtual world aspects, though they're part of what makes ArcheAge a niche MMO in 2014.

...Massively's MJ secured a prime spot of land in a newbie safe zone and put down a house and multiple farms well into the second day of head start. She did this without the benefit of a guild. This was on the Tahyang server, too, which is heavily populated and almost always features a queue in prime time.

Depending on how big AA's playerbase ends up being, though, not everyone will get to have the choicest plots in the safest areas. Welcome to some of AA's sandboxy mechanics.

Massively's ArcheAge launch diary: Day four - Trade runs, sea beasts, and pirates

In a nutshell, ArcheAge trading involves crafting regional specialty items, transporting them to other regions, and selling them to NPCs. I'm saying region here instead of zone because the game is an open world, so while there are divisions on the map, you transition between them smoothly whether you're crossing a road, a mountain range, or an ocean.

...If you've never been on a boat in ArcheAge before, know this: It's a treat. I've mentioned how lifelike the game's water comes across, and it's even more ridiculous as you sail out to sea and realize just how vast the game's open world really is. We passed uncharted islands, birds circling fishing spots, brewing storms, and a couple of cranky ocean critters, one of which died on the back of our boat after he decided that a cargo full of cats and elephant cookies was too good to pass up.

The fur really started flying as we neared our destination. Our captain sighted sails to port, and before long an enemy ship was bearing down on us, spearing our hull with some sort of grappling device and spewing player pirates who attempted to board us using gliders. Some deft maneuvering by el capitan forced them to engage us in the water as we swam for our objective and our ride set about protecting himself.

We were outgunned, since our party featured a couple of 20-somethings, a 16, and me at level 12! The level 30ish pirates eventually got us, but not before we completed our quest objective. And our captain even circled back to pick us up at the spawn point on a nearby beach and ferried us all the way back to our homeland where we successfully turned in our quest.

To be blunt, experiences like this are why I play MMORPGs, though it's worth noting that I haven't had many of these experiences over the past 10 years because few modern MMORPGs allow them. ArcheAge does, and it's simultaneously optional yet deep enough to serve as primary gameplay fodder for everyone from non-combat trader types to pirating PvPers to entrepreneurial ship captains with an eye for fun and profit.

Massively's ArcheAge launch diary: Day five - Random knowledge

Much has been made of the game's flexible class and skill point system that allows players to combine three skill trees into one class that (hopefully) rules them all. Did you know, though, that you have only 23 total skill points to spend all the way to level 50? I didn't know that until very recently, and it definitely would have affected the way I was scarfing up Archery skills last weekend.

There are 11 possible actives in Archery and 7 possible passives, so taking all of them means I'd have a grand total of five additional skill points to spend on the 36 possible skills in my other two trees (Battlerage and Vitalism, in the case of my Warpriest).

...ArcheAge mounts are pretty damn nifty, from the quick and cute raise-your-baby acquisition quests to the full grown mounts that essentially act as additional avatars complete with their own skills, gear, and progression.

Most of them are gorgeously rendered and animated, too, even that goofy Leomorph thing that looks like some sort of overly caffeinated Cookie Monster. Each race gets its own unique mount via a newb quest around level 7, but you can also buy the other races' mounts for cheap, not to mention acquire a sweet donkey via the trading quest lines.

Some mounts carry two players, so feel free to hit your H key and hop a ride on your friend's Snow Lion if you don't feel like driving to the next quest objective yourself. In fact, feel free to hop on anyone's mount in this fashion, but also be prepared that he or she can kick you off by pressing R.

Massively's ArcheAge launch diary: Day six - P2W and the early verdict

In my humble opinion

And this is the key, for me at least. Aside from Ultima Online and maybe Mabinogi, there is no living MMORPG that lets me do the things I can do in ArcheAge. Sure I can roleplay in any game, but roleplaying as a farmer or a ship's mate in some themepark is a poor substitute for actual game mechanics that let you raise livestock or carry out your captain's orders. In other words, I'd be playing tabletop if I wanted to pretend. MMOs are for doing.

Similarly, I don't need to be the hero with a thousand faces, or even uber, for that matter. I just need a fantasy world that is in fact a world and not another pointless skinner box progression grind.

ArcheAge is that former fantasy world. It's also currently the only one in existence with triple-A production values. Those facts make its pay-to-win aspects irrelevant on a personal level. I simply don't care if it's pay-to-win or not because I don't care about winning in a virtual world context. You can't win an MMORPG. You can exist in it and enjoy yourself (or not), which is precisely the point of a virtual world and which is also precisely what MMOs have lost in their pursuit of the gaming majority.

The good

Vast open world
AAA visuals, animations, production
Meaningful non-combat gameplay
Large class and skill selection, customization options
Player-driven economy, trading, crafting
PvP-focused and PvP-optional
Group-focused yet soloable in a pinch

The bad

Standard tab/target combat
Standard themepark questing
Limited emotes, no custom emotes
Busy UI
Launch stability issues

The ugly

Those leomorphs

[Loendal]

Sept 19, 2014 11:35:38 GMT -5 Morreion said:

Jaema and I are on Tahyang, the unofficial RP server- yeah, the queues are horrid now. Will write up some thoughts when I get to play more

I was wondering when and if an unofficial RP server would show up; looks like I'll have to bring Balfamor over there.

[dortmunder]

The game is a pure 100% grindfest so far.

I've yet to experience any PvP, mainly because I've been avoiding it. Pretty sure I would just be getting bent over by 50's the whole time

There's no land to speak of, and lots of empty space between the lots that are taken. Meanwhile, you're often flying over vast swathes of empty land with nothing but grass there.

I'd really like to say I like this game, because it has a lot of stuff I find interesting. But the more I play the more I feel like I'm missing out on most of it. The leveling feels excrutiatingly slow, I think I did about 75-100 quests today and a bunch of crafting(at least one whole level just from that), and I only gained 3-4 levels over the whole day

[Morreion]

Trion clarifies ArcheAge's head-start housing situation (Massively)

Housing will open at the beginning of the head start period, so early players will naturally secure the best properties. There is no limit to the number of houses an account can own, although accounts are taxed "exponentially" after they acquire three and up.

Also of note:

The game plans to launch with the eight ten original beta servers.
The "patron" subscription is indeed $15; 1250 credits cost 1 APEX or $10. For scale, consider that a character slot costs 1000 credits.
Trion vowed to continue its efforts to deal with chat spammers and botters.
Everyone, even F2P players, can access the auction hall.

As to the controversial labor point system, Trion says all characters will begin with zero points.

ArcheAge endeavors to quell queues, bugs (Massively)

Following ArcheAge's official launch earlier this week, Trion has continued its work on bugs and queues and other issues affecting the game. Last night, the team said that it planned to increase the total capacity of the North American servers and EU server Kyprosa by 10%. Players have complained of long wait times to log into Kyprosa specifically; one Patron claimed to have waited nine hours in the queue. Other players have taken to calling the game "QueueAge."

Trion's Hartsman on more ArcheAge servers, communication (Massively)

Trion CEO Scott Hartsman has posted an ArcheAge launch update letter on the game's official forum. The long and short of it is more servers, expanded customer service, and more aggressive AFK sweeps.

Hartsman also mentions that he's "personally tweeted more during this launch than [he thinks he has] since Twitter existed," and he says that Trion's communication will be "redoubled," most notably on the game's forums.

ArcheAge battles queues with new servers, character creation blocks (Massively)

In a post on the official ArcheAge site last night, Trion Worlds confirmed that it had opened two new servers and shut down character creation on others to alleviate some of the queue congestion plauging players since the game's head start last weekend.

ArcheAge opens still more servers, promises compensation [Updated] (Massively)

Trion's Scott Hartsman has delivered a "progress report" following another shaky weekend for ArcheAge's servers. He writes that patron queueing changes and three new North American servers (Ezi and Lucius Saturday and Calleil yesterday) have helped alleviate some though far from all of the login issues and queue times. To Europeans, he issues an apology, saying the new hardware for that region is still in customs and should arrive Tuesday. Daily restarts will also "flush out AFKs clogging the server," and he claims that around 10,000 botters and fraudsters have been recently banned.

Massively interviews Trion's Scott Hartsman on ArcheAge's rocky launch (Massively)

Massively: Prior to the head start, Trion seemed to be aware of the huge interest in ArcheAge, citing a million signups for beta and knowing of the launch problems faced when the game launched in other countries. And yet Trion has seemed largely unprepared for the deluge of players for the head start and even for the F2P launch. Why? Were there really far more people trying to play than expected?

Scott Hartsman: Yes. There's a lot of science that goes into forecasting how many people are going to show up for a new game, when they're going to show up, and how long they'll stick around. Beyond that, external factors such as what else is going on in online games can also have a huge impact.

We base our projections off of what we've seen in our own games, where we have perfect visibility into the data, as well as others'. We then scale up our capacity to match expectations, and purchase a reasonable buffer of overflow room for extra. As people saw during alpha and beta, our forecasts held up 100% correctly through the beginning of head start.

Massively: And what about guilds whose players are now stuck on different servers because of character creation blocks on the worst-off servers?

Scott Hartsman: We do expect these blocks to be temporary, and you bet everyone is working extremely hard to make sure that it's as short of a time as possible.

The Think Tank: Surveiling ArcheAge's launch (Massively)

Eliot_Lefebvre: My time in ArcheAge was unexpectedly brief; I really wanted to like it, but I found while playing it that I just felt meh. Even beyond the usual problems of character wipes, it felt like an ersatz version of RIFT with more PvP and open-world housing. That's not bad, but it's a far cry from what the hype would paint the game as. Maybe it changes a lot at higher levels, maybe I just wasn't playing my character right, maybe lots of things. It seems to have inherited a lot of problems with its design and F2P models that other games have already figured out workarounds for, making these problems the game doesn't need to have.

jefreahard: Loving the game itself, as it's deeper than I expected even after following it for several years. Like, fishing! It's not just a minigame but an early game to late game way of life that, when combined with trading and transporting goods, effectively lets you be a virtual fisherman to the exclusion of all else (or not, since it's just one of your options). The only negative things I have to say at this point have to do with the cash shop (incompatible with sandbox mechanics and really too bad all around) and the queues that some people are experiencing. Once the usual launch drama is over, I'll pretty easily be able to say that AA is my favorite MMO experience since Star Wars Galaxies.

Great game, BAD publisher and start (Gamespot)

The alpha was quite good, the closed betas were also going fine (they are alpha and betas, so for testing purposes) and by the open beta it seemed like they mostly know what they are doing.

When head start happened there were crashes, lag, bugs, and the thing that ruined the whole appeal of the game - queue. As head start progressed so did the queue. After 3-4pm you had to wait at least 30 minutes, if you only logged later at rush hours it was at least 2 hours. Many, and me among them, could hardly play the game during head start.

At the end of the head start they released more servers (making the head start completely pointless), and then more on release (further mocking the founder community). As of today, after release, the queues stand on 2-4 hours, depending on server, during rush hours. On earlier times that used to be free of queue you still need to wait for 1 hour.

Another horrible aspect - the publisher - Trion, has been ignoring the community all this time. Barely any announcements, no forum discussions - nothing.

This, my fellow gamers, is an example of a very good MMO that will disappear very quickly, unless something will be done. The game in the current state is unplayable (unless you consider a 2-4 hour wait in the evening when you can actually play decent).

When the publisher will get a grip, or players will leave the game to the point where there are no queues, or tolerable ones, I will change my score. This is a 8.5-9/10 game that is dropped to 2-3 simply because of horrible management. If you want to play follow the state and join when you can play, you won't be disappointed.

Archeage First Impressions: There’s a Lot to Like (Gaming Conversations)

Combat skill progression occurs by unlocking skills within a larger skill group as you level your character. You are awarded skill points that you spend on unlocking appropriate level skills. While not technically “trees” (you don’t have to go down a certain “branch” of skills to unlock others), these groups of skills to require a certain level to be attained prior to unlocking with skill points, and they get progressively more powerful as your character levels. You start the game with one “group” of skills that you can start to unlock and slot, which is provided based on the class you chose when you created your character. You can further specialize your skills by choosing two other “groups” of skills (similar to souls, in RIFT) as your character levels up. The 3rd grouping of skills is unlocked at level ten. Confused? Click on my video above, it’s easier when you can actually see it. I like this progression system, and think it could lead to a lot of combat skill customization depending on your preferences. For example, as a rogue-type, I could have chosen a ranged group of skills for my 2nd group, or a dual-blade group of skills. This choice allows you to play the same class as either a ranger or thief, depending on your combat (or RP!) preference.

[Regolyth]

That leviathan video was pretty cool.