ArcheAge is the perfect example of why short-term profits at the expense of long-term profitability and customer satisfaction is a recipe for disaster.
Massively Multiplayer.
On paper, the Archeage should work; with each player being limited by a daily labour pool and resources having meaningful endgame uses, there should be a healthy supply and demand, ensuring that crafters, gathers and warriors each have their place in the ecosystem, back in 2016-2017, when I played daily, this was the case.
After just 15 days of patron (paid), I had earned enough gold to purchase three months of patron access with APEX tokens, and within those three months, I acquired enough Apex tokens to play comfortably for over two years.
While I left the game shortly after, I could do all this by converting iron ore to iron ingots semi-AFK a few times a week.
Unfortunately, in 2024, while this would still be possible, a decrease in demand for goods and a 15x hike in the price of APEX, countered only by a meagre 2x increase in the value of ingots, ensures that maintaining patron access is well beyond the reach of most players, and being able to acquire the tens of thousands of gold required to be competitive at endgame PvP is impossible for all but the most dedicated of players who are willing to sink in over 70 hours of gold making each week, time that could be better spent at even the most mediocre minimum wage job.
While many games have attempted factions (most famously World of Warcraft), ArcheAge has taken it a step further by making faction life meaningful; from Hero (ruler) elections to the formation of a player-run judicial system, the developers handed players the ability to shape the world to their liking.
Unfortunately, many players have not taken these systems seriously, resulting in an apathetic judiciary and leaders who are little more than petty dictators on many servers.
For those who grow tired of choosing a side in the ongoing war between the major factions, killing enough of your faction allows players to become a pirate, the semi-autonomous third faction, who live to plunder the wealth of others and generally act toxic while it a nice feature in theory and roleplayers could have a great time with this, the fact most players wish to kill on sight ensures that pirates are little more than another toxic element.
While many MMORPGs are unafraid of dressing female characters in skimpy armour, ArcheAge takes this further by dressing female characters in bizarrely modified versions of male armour, which in many cases involved removing only the breast and butt area of the armour to reveal the character’s skimpy underwear.
This is evident from the start of the game, where the “human” default models wear almost identical armour, except for the female model having the hip area removed from her heavy armour to reveal her skimpy panties.
While I understand some female gamers like sexy clothes, and one of my gamer pals loved to dress her character in the skimpiest clothes she could find, many other girl gamers do not. They deserve to play the games they like without being forced to dress in what is essentially stripper attire if they wish to play as a female character.
While some may dismiss this as a non-issue, I feel strongly that making content purely to titillate is wrong, and while there is a time and place for nudity in games, making every female character eye candy is offensive, and for those who are prone to acting on their lust, dangerous.
For as long as ArcheAge has existed as a free-to-play title, many in the ArcheAge community have been pleading for the developers to roll back some of the pay-to-win changes that had given the game such a poor reputation in the MMORPG community and have driven away many of Archeage’s founding players.
When ArcheAge Unchained was announced, it seemed for a while that the publishers were listening; a buy-to-own version of ArcheAge with a promise of all future content updates being made available for free and assurances that the cash shop would be stripped of all non-cosmetic items ensuring that players would be judged by skill and not the size of their wallet.
Unfortunately, this was not to be the case. Within hours of launch, players were rightfully upset to find that while some of the most egregious pay-to-win items were not present at the launch, pay-for-conscience items were still in abundance, and the (paid) Archepass system, which was floated as an optional way to earn some cosmetic items quickly appeared to become the focus on ongoing development.
The next blow to the community came with the launch of the Gardens of the Gods DLC, originally promised for free to all owners of ArcheAge Unchained; players were furious to find out they would be expected to purchase the DLC if they wished to continue playing ArcheAge Unchained in any meaningful capacity, this betrayal of trust was followed by yet another radical business model change which required owners of ArcheAge unchained to pay a monthly subscription if they wished to continue playing, further alienating the MMORPG community and cementing ArcheAge’s status as a predatory title that lacked clear direction in the eyes of many.
While ArcheAge has its faults, a lack of “things to do” is not one of them; with player housing, sailing, fishing, trade runs, world bosses, and farming/animal husbandry, ArcheAge is one of the most content-rich sandbox mmorpg on the market, and with a better business model, could have easily saw off competition from titles such as Black Desert (Online) and potentially even Lost Ark.
While ArcheAge is free-to-play, it has earned the reputation of having one of the worst pay-to-win monetization models in the genre, with top-tier players often spending thousands and occasionally tens of thousands of dollars to remain competitive.
While it’s possible to play as a free player or only to purchase minimum shop items, to be truly competitive at endgame, players must either spend 12+ hours a day grinding or open their wallets wide and buy their way to the top.
There is a longstanding rumour that one player has spent more than $1000 per day to ensure he is at the top of the leaderboard, and while we cannot verify these claims, the fact the rumour has persisted for over four years without being challenged by the developers is concerning.
ArcheAge has a single-player story roughly on par with what is found elsewhere in the genre. While it pales compared to a true single-player RPG experience, fans of MMORPG narratives will be pleased by the story content.
Each race has its own main story quest line up until around level 30, where a single unified narrative takes over; however, in a genre that frequently pushes for uniformity over individualism, it is nice to see that each race has its introductory questline.
Archeage is a massively multiplayer online role playing game video game developed by XLGAMES and published by Kakao Games Europe B.V, it was released on 26 March 2015 and it is Free-2-Play.
Archeage is available exclusively on PC.
ArcheAge remains in active development; however, with ArcheAge 2 slated to release on PC and console in 2024, I cannot see the developers wasting further time on a title struggling to attract more than a handful of active players for much of the date.
As of April 2024, around 5,000 people play Archeage on a fairly regular basis.
Archeage is barely active, and while a few players continue to log in regularly, finding an active server is difficult and may require playing on a server with very high latency.
ArcheAge offers the following matchmaking options:
The ArcheAge in-game store sells:
The following peripherals are officially supported:
ArcheAge is rated PEGI 18+ and contains:
ArcheAge’s best days are long behind it, and while there are far worse games to play in 2024, with so many other higher-quality MMORPGs on the market, I cannot recommend ArcheAge at this time.
