Can you believe ArcheAge is almost two years old already? September marks the second anniversary, which is quite a feat. It’s not easy for an MMORPG to maintain longevity, given how many exist. Perhaps the key to success here is the openness of this particular game’s experience. As a sandbox game where you decide what you do and when, ArcheAge has always allowed you to determine your own path. As such, it’s only continued to expand and offer more experiences and encounters for folks to enjoy. These ten elements, in particular, are what make this MMO so meaningful.
Characters Can Look as Unique as You Do
Know what’s incredible about MMORPGs? They offer a degree of cosmetic customization options you don’t often find in games. You’re able to make characters who look exactly like you or, more often, the person you’d like to be. ArcheAge is one of those games that excels in that regard. If you don’t purchase extra slots, you can have two characters, though you can eventually get up to six characters across all servers. You decide if you want to be part of the Nuian Alliance, home to the humanesque Nuians and Elves, or Haranya Alliance, with it’s human-like Harani and cat-like Firran. While each race has its own unique features, they have nine preset faces which can be blended to make unique appearances, with varying hairstyles and colors, skin colors, eye colors, makeup, scars, marks, and other paints. It’s easy to spend a half hour or more preparing a character before you even begin playing the game!
Travel Over Land and Sea
ArcheAge has a huge world to explore. There are three starting continents, Nuia, Haranya, and Auroria. It’s a massive place filled with regions, instances, islands, and dungeons. It’s a world that rivals the size of ones found in World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV, giving you an amazing large place to explore, either alone or with friends. But preferably with other people, since MMORPGs are really about connecting and exploring with other players.
Taking to the seas is equally important and eventful. You can participate in naval battles. It’s possible to set up overseas trade routes. You can even adopt something of a pirate lifestyle, participating in raids. You aren’t landlocked, and instead can explore every region and area of the map.
Castle Sieges
In ArcheAge’s massive world, 90% of the map allows you to participate in PvP. Both the land and sea have areas where players can fight one another, attempting to prove their faction is superior. All major PVP fights offer vehicles to use, full raids to experience, and major bosses to defeat. Special guild battles can even allow people capture and take territory in wars.
When fighting enemies, you can earn Honor Points as a reward, which let you acquire blueprints, weapons, experience, mounts, or titles. Though going against people who are part of your own faction affects your karma, increasing your crime points in-game.
There’s a Functional Justice System
Remember how I just mentioned ArcheAge keeping track of your karma? It does more than that. The game “watches” what you’re doing. If you kill people indiscriminately, ruin their stuff, destroy crops, and are a general nuisance, you can gain Infamy and Crime Points. (Law-abiding people can report crimes like murder and theft if they come across evidence like footprints or blood.) Hit 50 CP, and you get sent to jail the next time you’re killed in PvP, where you’ll be put on trial.
You can either go ahead and take the guilty plea and serve your sentence, or be tried by five peers. People who aren’t infamous and over level 30 can act as jurors and be summoned to jury duty, and an actual trial will be held. They see the evidence, determine a sentence, and carry it out.
Trading Is as Important as Battling
There’s actually an economic system in ArcheAge. People create products. This can happen through farming, purchasing, gathering, or creating. You accrue items and can then set up trade routes to make your fortune. Instead of focusing on battling for honor and glory, you can lead a more ordinary life, dealing in products like jam, wine, baskets, dye, blocks, and other goods. It’s about being a provider and profiting off of that.
Craft Whatever You Want or Need
You can make almost anything in ArcheAge. It’s filled with various workstations that allow you to make things that you or others can enjoy. There are 15 different sorts of disciplines, ranging to expected things like alchemy, carpentry, cooking, farming, fishing, masonry, metalwork, and weaponry, as well as more unorthodox practices like handicrafting, machining, and printing.
The scope is incredible as well. You expect personal items, like equipment, and things to directly aid in battle, like healing items. You don’t expect to be able to build castles, homes, and ships. Yet, you can. You can create all of these things.
Quests Work Differently Here
In most MMORPGs, you’re stuck with a quest when you take it. You either pull through and do what’s expected or have to deal with that mark upon your quest log. ArcheAge isn’t so restrictive. When it comes to quests, you can call it early or go above and beyond. If you don’t feel like going all the way through a chain, you can turn it in early. Your rewards won’t be as plentiful, but at least it’s done. Likewise, you can fulfill extra, optional objectives to get even more bonuses than you normally would.
Classes Are What You Make of Them
You expect traditional classes in MMORPGs . You start up, decide whether to use a melee or magic character, determine if you’re offensive, defensive, or supportive, and wind up with a class like a warrior, rogue, archer, or mage. ArcheAge doesn’t do that. Instead, it has ten skillsets, and you choose three to make your own class. The skillsets include archery, auramancy, battlerage, defense, occultism, shadowplay, songcraft, sorcery, vitalism, and witchcraft. You could combine the battlerage, defense, and vitalism sets to be a paladin or the shadowplay, vitalism, and witchcraft sets to be an assassin. It’s up to you to experiment and see which of the 120 possible classes works best for you.
Create and Run Nations
ArcheAge’ s Ascension update has just been released, and it adds a huge, gamechanging elements. You can now create your own nations and factions, which are separate and distinct from the ones you join when you begin playing the game. It’s possible to go with ones run by NPCs, other players, or even that you decide to make. You can start taking your own territories, defending and expanding your nation, and turning it into a major region and hotspot within the game. It’s quite an exciting prospect!
You Can Play However You Want
ArcheAge is a complete and utter sandbox. You can do what you want. You can lead a peaceful MMORPG life, working on a farm, making things, trading, and enjoying the gorgeous landscapes. You can become part of a community, acting as an active member of a faction either you join or create. You can become a formidable fighter, participating in small and large scale battles. You can even be noble or notorious, letting your actions speak louder than your words. With ArcheAge, you can be and do whatever you want, and that’s a rather admirable thing.