ArcheAge

 PC
User Score
3.7

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 775 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 203 out of 775
  2. Mixed: 80 out of 775
  3. Negative: 492 out of 775

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  1. Cyllie
    Jan 4, 2019
    8
    Most of the "Pay-to-Win" aspects of the game have been eliminated--there is a monthly subscription that adds a substantial boost to crafting potential.

    Archeage is what it advertises itself to be.
  2. Uberwolfe
    Sep 18, 2014
    7
    ArcheAge is truly an impressive game in its scope. It is possible to make the game what you will. In fact, it is entirely possible to just stop questing at around level 30 and live and prosper as a crafter.. spend the rest of your days tending your crops and livestock with the occasional foray into the wilds to gather materials. Or, do away with the chivalrous main quest.. join up with aArcheAge is truly an impressive game in its scope. It is possible to make the game what you will. In fact, it is entirely possible to just stop questing at around level 30 and live and prosper as a crafter.. spend the rest of your days tending your crops and livestock with the occasional foray into the wilds to gather materials. Or, do away with the chivalrous main quest.. join up with a pirate gang and turn against the world – including your own faction. How about buy a big boat and work as a ferryman, shipping players across the open seas for gold? All this is possible.

    It's this flexibility that gives ArcheAge a significant edge over the current offering of AAA MMOs. Of course, there are quest hubs and a main story but it quickly becomes apparent that the world is a big place brimming with opportunities. What lies on that distant shore you can spot on the horizon? What kind of adventures await over the hazy blue mountains to the northeast? There is absolutely nothing stopping you from gathering a few supplies and adventuring off to find out.

    On that topic, the feeling of an open, expansive world is accentuated by the fact the world is entirely seamless. You can travel by foot/hoof/paw/boat or glider from one end of the world to the other without being presented with a single loading screen. This harks back to the MMOs of old, and it is truly appreciated that this seemingly lost art has returned here. Forget the heavy instancing in games like Elder Scrolls Online or SWTOR.

    The gliders are truly a brilliant spark, too. Having a finite flight-time combats the issues that are usually caused by flying mounts. The need to find a lofty take-off point and then carefully manage your flight path makes flying a considered act and not just a mindless WASD manoeuvre..

    But sadly, all these amazing features don’t diminish a few glaring negatives. The core of the game, arguably the most important feature, combat, is archaic. Fighting is an old-school tab-target cooldown affair. Pretty much think WoW with the ability to stack combos based on different skill effects. It is mostly static and lacks the dynamic, visceral nature of other recent MMOs such as WildStar or Tera. Add to that a generous helping of lag and combat is basically a ho-hum interference between the start, and the end of your quest. To be fair though, most skills have satisfying effects and feedback, but the very nature of the combat in ArcheAge has seen better days.

    The bland combat isn’t helped by the constant mob tagging. I have waited for up to 30 mins to kill a single quest boss with 20 other players standing around all desperately trying to get a kill. With some classes having a 2-3 second cast time on basic attacks, it can be virtually impossible to kill certain mobs until the other players move on. Some players are willing to group up, but most inexplicably are not. The lack of smart tagging seems to be yet another rustic theme from MMOs of old. But then, if the combat isn’t your thing – then that’s fine. As mentioned already, a non-combat (or at least very minimal) existence is entirely viable.

    ArcheAge allows you to build houses and farms in a host of pre-defined locations. There are entire districts reserved for housing, but also many hidden locations well off the beaten path. Each plot restricts houses to be of a certain size – which I feel is unfortunate. If I pay the tax on a piece of land, I believe I should be able to build whatever I please on it. House designs are bought either from the instanced Mirage Island which is like an island-based shopping mall or from other players on the auction houses. You pay a healthy tax on your property, and if you miss your payments, you lose your plot and all things placed on it will be mailed back to you. Of course, you are welcome to try and grow a farm anywhere in the world, but anything you grow outside of your reserved space is pretty much free-for-all – so hide it well!

    Graphically ArcheAge suffers from inconsistency. There are certain views that are drop-dead goregeous as the CryEngine is capable of. But then there are locations that have had the arm completely rolled over and are almost totally devoid of anything. Character models, gear and mounts are generally very high quality though, and the rich character creator enables a great many options for customization (facial features only).

    Add to all this a proper player-run economy, justice system for naughty players. A healthy selection of classes that can be combined and you do have a compelling and feature-filled MMO. Give it some time for expansion and polish and ArcheAge could truly grow into something amazing.

    Pros: Seamless world, non-linear gameplay options, Housing, Graphics (mostly), Gliders, Variety

    Cons: Lag, DX11 issues, Dated combat, Forgettable characters, Lack of housing space, Tagging

    Note: Review based on premium version    … Expand
  3. Maholix
    Nov 12, 2014
    7
    As a far as the game goes, Archeage is fairly polished for a korean ported MMO. The cash shop is important, but does not notably push players into using it like others might. Controls are not clunky and it has a smooth camera too. Game offers many things to do and rewards players for grouping up to achieve goals, be that building a house or questing. Is fairly scenic too. As long as youAs a far as the game goes, Archeage is fairly polished for a korean ported MMO. The cash shop is important, but does not notably push players into using it like others might. Controls are not clunky and it has a smooth camera too. Game offers many things to do and rewards players for grouping up to achieve goals, be that building a house or questing. Is fairly scenic too. As long as you have a few friends to game with, it can be pretty fun. It's even fully accessible to free players as paid players can share their property.

    However, it does have it's issues. It can feel too small for it's player base at times. Land is limited, even crowded. This lack of land is not just about the house space. I've talked to a number of people in and out of game and lots of them feel that the sea is a bit smaller than they'd prefer. Archeage gives the impression that large scale sea battles would be possible, but really, 4 or 5 ships traveling about are quite easily noticed.

    PVP is more of a gank fest, with skill combos designed to take down a player's health while they are stunned.. rather than strategic use of attacks. Groups of people often camp towns in attempt to pick off lower lvl players, since there is no penalty for doing so. So far, even the events are a bit light.

    It's major vice however, has to be it's poor management. While the game is smallish compared to some others, it has potential and could have easily overcome this.A good team would have added just the right touch. Trion was not the right team.

    The game has been affected by an early history of cheaters. These reports of botting and poor responses from Trion are completely factual. The economy has been hit hard and fast, with inflation having risen greatly in a matter of months. Many players are already talking about "trade runs" not being an effective way to make gold soon.

    To their credit, I can say that trion has now made an attempt to fight back. Server ques are less common, a report feature has been added, and public channel chat is no longer allowed until lvl 15. I personally have seen GM's booting bots and there are rumors they are seeking permission from XLgames (the game's owner) to ditch the current firewall for a better one.

    However, while these developments are praise worthy, I feel it may be too late. Technical issues have plagued archage since release. The game works well once you can get online, but odd lag spikes and client side crashes are common.

    Updates often take far longer than they should, and more than once a large number of people have been unable to login, giving a lucky few who could log in a large edge. Responses from trion have not really improved either.

    This has led many people to feel cheated. People are spending money on this game and not seeing much of an improvement or even apology. In light of this, I have to lower my rating.. archeage might be a good game to play if I could host it privately.. but I should never have to feel that way with an MMO I am paying for.    … Expand
  4. mantoothbear
    Nov 1, 2014
    7
    Game is not Pay2Win and if you think Pay2Win is i am a free player and to cheap to pay for a subscription, they need to make money somehow they don't go to work just so you can have a free to play game and servers running on there own money so stop crying about it, There is nothing wrong with the economy most things on AH are very cheap unless its a high level crafting item that peopleGame is not Pay2Win and if you think Pay2Win is i am a free player and to cheap to pay for a subscription, they need to make money somehow they don't go to work just so you can have a free to play game and servers running on there own money so stop crying about it, There is nothing wrong with the economy most things on AH are very cheap unless its a high level crafting item that people spent time leveling and making so they cost the right amount for the time put into the item, just another case of people being to cheap, the same goes for houses, its like players want everything for free and MMOs should just give things to people just because but if your to cheap to play for a subscription, to lazy try to get gear (which is VERY easy to get) then just don't play and stop crying about how they game is Pay2Win there is nothing in the cash shop that gives you an edge over the other players that you cant by on AH for a 10g, Every MMO on launch has Queue's, PvP is part of the game if don't like PvP why are you playing a game that has Open world PvP with both factions, land is not hard to get and is being sold constantly, However there is a real botting Problem, slight lag issues such as lag spikes, disconnection and off scheduled maintenance they don't, almost Zero in game support (GMs), but like i said before the amount of Free2Play players crying about how the game is Pay2Win really need stop, Subscribing doesn't give you a i win card, Cash shop is pretty much just full of useless crap… Expand
  5. Mudgee
    Nov 23, 2014
    7
    Never been huge on the MMO scene. This however, seems to buck the trend with quantity and quality. Unfortunately, I can never get myself back into it. For games like this, you do need online MMO friends. For a casual, single-player, this cannot be done. Great game with little re-playability for me. Even as a $150AUD paying founding member.
  6. isg1983
    Oct 28, 2021
    7
    Easy to quest around. Trade runs are so fun, you can even be a pirate. You can build a farm. A fun experience for a while for sure
  7. emr88
    Oct 9, 2014
    7
    Started playing a week ago; never experienced any queues. (I'm not a patron). First of all the game engine; or whatever it is; is not so bright. That splash screen (the poem loading screen) usually stucks and sucks. You have to restart your computer again and again to work it out ; and meanwhile it tries to load; your entire PC gets slower and slower; you even cannot access primaryStarted playing a week ago; never experienced any queues. (I'm not a patron). First of all the game engine; or whatever it is; is not so bright. That splash screen (the poem loading screen) usually stucks and sucks. You have to restart your computer again and again to work it out ; and meanwhile it tries to load; your entire PC gets slower and slower; you even cannot access primary features like "my computer; explorer etc. When you disconnect; the game closes itself and you need to reopen." Besides that graphics are awesome; PVP and trade thing is super cool, the entire world is great. Better than the Elder Scrolls Online anyway; and its free.… Expand
  8. Ganino
    Jan 4, 2015
    7
    I stole a **** of carrots went to court and got thrown in jail 10/10 would play again!

    I really enjoy this game in short it's a fusion of the best elements of World of Warcraft and EVE Online. I would always recommend pay monthly though and just look at the free play as a trial because you get so much more out of it then. Really i don't see paying monthly as a problem all the other big    I stole a **** of carrots went to court and got thrown in jail 10/10 would play again!

    I really enjoy this game in short it's a fusion of the best elements of World of Warcraft and EVE Online. I would always recommend pay monthly though and just look at the free play as a trial because you get so much more out of it then. Really i don't see paying monthly as a problem all the other big MMOs does it.    … Expand
  9. solmark
    Sep 17, 2014
    7
    A great looking game packed with great stuff but ruined by a truly awful launch. Tremendous potential but the worst launch of a game I've witness in many many years.
  10. Jessicat
    Sep 17, 2014
    7
    The game I gave a 7/10. Combat is fun, PvP is good, and the crafting is a blast.

    Trion, I give a 0/10. I am a $150 founder and haven't received any of my items. On top of that they screwed over my patron status. The original founder packs were nothing compared to the new starter packs, the server issues, having to wait 6+ hours in queue, and even with a head start I still couldn't    The game I gave a 7/10. Combat is fun, PvP is good, and the crafting is a blast.

    Trion, I give a 0/10. I am a $150 founder and haven't received any of my items. On top of that they screwed over my patron status.

    The original founder packs were nothing compared to the new starter packs, the server issues, having to wait 6+ hours in queue, and even with a head start I still couldn't get any land before everyone took all the land to sell for lots of gold. Besides all those issues the game is P2W in some ways. Lot of stuff you can earn in game for gold or other in-game currencies you can just buy in the cash shop.    … Expand
  11. Phaetul
    Sep 18, 2014
    7
    This isn't a solo game. You NEED a guild, a good guild.
    The majority of the horrible ratings are from f2p'ers that don't know what this game is about and most that I've read sound like they have been trying to solo it. Not one of them offers a description of said P2W'ness either.
    You have to be a Patron to be able to own land. I attempted to log in as soon as the servers went live for    This isn't a solo game. You NEED a guild, a good guild.
    The majority of the horrible ratings are from f2p'ers that don't know what this game is about and most that I've read sound like they have been trying to solo it. Not one of them offers a description of said P2W'ness either.
    You have to be a Patron to be able to own land. I attempted to log in as soon as the servers went live for headstart but was unable to (Due to the massive influx of players) until 15m after launch and that was just to log into the queue of 1.5 hours. So I ended the day with 8 hours played and 59 gildas with no place to put down a house. Granted I had one of the larger starter houses the "Thatched Farmhouse" but all places except some of the far flung PVP areas were claimed. I did get to place an 8x8 farm which is the smallest you can own.
    So paying for Patron status did me no good in that respect.
    Labor is an resource that you get for being in game (Which lets you build/craft/plant open drop items). If you are a Patron you get double the amount of the f2p and you get it offline at the same rate as the f2p get it while on. You can also purchase a potion that gives you 1000 labor. After you take one you can't use another for 12 hours. Not really a big deal since f2p can buy them on the AH for 4-8g.
    You can use public farms to grow just about anything.
    Gold isn't an issue for f2p because they can still do trade runs that they can gather materials for easily and make anywhere from 2-9 gold per run. Only issue is that you don't get the money for 22 hours or so regardless of whether you are a Patron or f2p.

    The major problem this game has is space.

    Things I would have liked to seen changed:
    *Non-instanced housing is great and cool but I would love to see instanced housing as well. Nobody can give me a good reason (At least in my opinion) why everyone can't own a house. It is the major selling point of the game and the only way to get it now is from players that bought up a ton of land in the first 2 hours or be in a good guild. If I had land I wouldn't be selling it. Also if there were Instanced housing they wouldn't have a problem having more than the few servers that they have now. They don't want merges on their hands. If they merged servers people would lose land claims and would rage the way it is now but there should never be a server with a queue of 3900 people. This just turns away prospective paying customers. It just doesn't make much sense to me.

    Also my guild and I practiced running the 59 Gilda story quest run several times prior to launch and we could have 59 Gilda's in less than 2.5 hrs. Apparently everyone else in the head start did this as well. Due to the horrible idea of having items and quest givers react to every player that turns in a quest (they also have a cool-down between talking to the quest giver or interacting with an object on some quests)
    One example that really bottle necked us was Flora on the West continent. A big block of stone with a chick in it kind of like when Han Solo was sealed in Carbonite. You had to interact with her to progress the quest. When you do this she is inaccessible to anyone else and has like a 2 sec cool down. That doesn't sound so bad but there were about 80 people on and around her trying to do the same thing and for every one that got it down 3 more would show up. This by itself took me 3 hours to luck out finally.
    So the Gilda run that took less than 2.5 hrs before now ended up taking over 6 hours.
    No game should ever have that same kind of mechanism.

    TL;DR version:
    Limited space is the main reason that I have only rated this game a 7. If these issues weren't here I'd rate it a solid 9.
    This isn't a P2W game anyone that says it is has no idea what they are talking about ask for specifics and see the above long version.    … Expand
  12. jakejohnson
    Sep 20, 2014
    7
    A distinction needs to be made in these reviews between unhappiness with que times, and unhappiness with game itself.
    The overwhelming majority of negative reviews are complaining about the que times, and understandably so. However, the game itself is phenomenal once you get in. It has an old school feel to it where you really feel like you have accomplished something when you finish a    A distinction needs to be made in these reviews between unhappiness with que times, and unhappiness with game itself.
    The overwhelming majority of negative reviews are complaining about the que times, and understandably so. However, the game itself is phenomenal once you get in. It has an old school feel to it where you really feel like you have accomplished something when you finish a job. The open world farming and trade runs where anything can happen bring a much needed breath of excitement and spontaneity to what has become a very stagnant MMO scene.
    Standard tab-targetting combat, the customizable builds bring enough depth to keep it interesting though. Think TBC era WoW with the 3 talent trees, except each tree is an entirely different class.
    There's a lot in this game, and everything is very deep. There's a strong sense of risk/reward in a lot of what you do. For example, you can craft trade goods in most any zone, but they cannot be sold in that same zone, you must travel to a different zone to sell. The farther you travel the more you can sell your goods for. But you also increase your chance of getting robbed by other players during the journey. It takes knowledge of trade routes, timing, market knowledge, etc to decide what kind of trades you want to make. Help from friends never hurts either.
    You can raise your own mounts, and different mounts server different purposes, eg a donkey for carrying trade goods.
    These little details really bring the game world to life and make you feel like the world is much bigger than you as the player, and there is always something to learn and do better at.
    If you're tired of the tame string of recent MMOs that have come out and want something with a bit of a ever present sense of danger in the air, AA might be the one you've been waiting for.    … Expand
  13. Axilley
    Jul 22, 2021
    7
    good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good not bad mmo rpg rly
  14. Tomicsavo
    Jul 7, 2020
    7
    The three of us started playing with this game and we really enjoyed it. After a while, we realized that this was not only a pay to win game but also a pay to play game, which is a bit sad, but this game is a good "little trial" version of the unchained version.
  15. BeatHour
    Mar 31, 2015
    6
    ArcheAge started as a very attractive concept, but its developers and publisher were too blind to capitalize on that potential. It starts out as a decent open class system questing MMO, which goes on for about 40 levels (or ~200 hours). Suddenly, the game becomes about literally farming. Raise animals, raise plants, ship their products across the map to get money and experience. There isArcheAge started as a very attractive concept, but its developers and publisher were too blind to capitalize on that potential. It starts out as a decent open class system questing MMO, which goes on for about 40 levels (or ~200 hours). Suddenly, the game becomes about literally farming. Raise animals, raise plants, ship their products across the map to get money and experience. There is no end-game, aside from a handful of grindy dungeons for which parties are rare and the rewards are inconsistent.

    Pirating in ArcheAge is clearly the best part of the experience, allowing for separate dynamic rolls like boarding party, captain, cannoneer, radar operator, small craft operator, harpoon operator, etc. Most of these rolls can be filled by a player of any level, which is a great way to get your more casual friends involved. Pirating when it goes well is a brilliant experience, but groups for doing so are usually cloistered, elitist, and the game's massive gear depravity/dependence virtually nullifies the importance of every roll except boarding party, captain, and harpooner.

    Furthermore, trading has become significantly less frequent as the current (1.7) patch's focusing is aimed toward indefinite PvE farming. This was a huge waste of potential, where the game's most promising feature could have been expanded instead.

    Otherwise, the game is chore-ish at best, requiring hours to just complete money making tasks, which are not fun in the slightest. Its something to do with friends or while listening to an audio book. Its like the MMO equivalent of Cookie Clicker, but it is not an idle game and it is not about min-maxing industry. The game's focus is on repeating similarly menial tasks ad infinitum until you don't want to get out of bed in the morning and face another few hours of grind.

    Abuse of cosmetic item drop boxes for cash is rampant. Player purchase a box for real life dollars and each box has an extremly low drop rate, with best reported drops around 1 in 8 chance, dropping to such abysmal rates as 1 in 100. Most free to play games selling cosmetic items actually let you buy cosmetic items, not simply have a random chance of getting them. In this way, the publisher exploits the addictive nature of the MMO.

    I would recommend this game for leveling up with a friend, its as good as any other MMO for that. Its something to do. But most other MMOs, even free ones, have some kind of meat past that point. ArcheAge offers practically no endgame despite being in development for years and having been released in US beta for about two years. This is not acceptable for a released MMO title which is making good revenue. The developers seem to have given up and reverted to a cell phone game style pay to pay model.    … Expand
  16. garlor
    Oct 20, 2014
    6
    if you like PvP and/or crafting is a decent game, it's full of exploits and hacks though, and all land to place a house ( there is no point being a crafter without house/farm/aquafarm ) is taken, so it's not an easy sell unless you enjoy the freedom of attacking others in many places, not all, just many, but that is way more than in most games

    it's also a game that has to be played for    if you like PvP and/or crafting is a decent game, it's full of exploits and hacks though, and all land to place a house ( there is no point being a crafter without house/farm/aquafarm ) is taken, so it's not an easy sell unless you enjoy the freedom of attacking others in many places, not all, just many, but that is way more than in most games

    it's also a game that has to be played for thinking long termo, it's not the best game that could exist, but pretty for me prolly the best one out there, and I'm giving it a 6, imagien how are the others xD    … Expand
  17. rlwright34
    Sep 18, 2014
    6
    This game has the potential to be fun and is able to fulfill my asian mmo grindfest wishes. However, I cant look past the massive problems with the ques, lack of paid for patron gear, and the massive land shortage. For me not being able to build a small house and farm, a large part of the game, is a huge turn off. I dont want to be a baron, but unfortunatly western greed remains prevelant,This game has the potential to be fun and is able to fulfill my asian mmo grindfest wishes. However, I cant look past the massive problems with the ques, lack of paid for patron gear, and the massive land shortage. For me not being able to build a small house and farm, a large part of the game, is a huge turn off. I dont want to be a baron, but unfortunatly western greed remains prevelant, and while I agree compition for land and resources is good and in part what the game is about, being completely unable to even get a very small plot is ridiculious. Hopefully Trion will help smooth all this out. If I was a new F2P player, I would wait 6 months for the game, economy, and community to stabilize.… Expand
  18. zombiechan
    Sep 24, 2014
    6
    It's an interesting game, I love the class system. I kept on making new characters to try out different combinations. The combat system though is quite boring, even with the combo setup, it's rather dull. Tab targeting is too old of a concept.

    The housing in this game is more annoying than it is fun. I prefer the WildStar housing were you could do a lot more with it and it was instanced    It's an interesting game, I love the class system. I kept on making new characters to try out different combinations. The combat system though is quite boring, even with the combo setup, it's rather dull. Tab targeting is too old of a concept.

    The housing in this game is more annoying than it is fun. I prefer the WildStar housing were you could do a lot more with it and it was instanced off though I do get what ArcheAge is going for with having a sandbox. My main problem with sandbox MMOs is always the same. People abuse the sandbox system ruining the fun for people.

    Overall ArcheAge is a fun game to try out for a while, it's pretty, and you can spend hours just exploring. But it's not an MMO I'll stick around to see what max level is like, at least not for now.    … Expand
  19. Dulgrand
    Sep 17, 2014
    6
    WELCOME TO THE ARCHEAGE

    I'm waking up to housing and rush Have credits to buy everything I must Alpha vet, no tutorials (deep breath) Logging in, queue shows up Then checking forum and all its fuss This is how Trion run their bizz Wooaahh... I'm patron, bro I paid for 16 months Enough to make my character grows Welcome to the Archrage, to the Archrage    WELCOME TO THE ARCHEAGE

    I'm waking up to housing and rush

    Have credits to buy everything I must

    Alpha vet, no tutorials

    (deep breath)

    Logging in, queue shows up

    Then checking forum and all its fuss

    This is how Trion run their bizz

    Wooaahh...

    I'm patron, bro

    I paid for 16 months
    Enough to make my character grows

    Welcome to the Archrage, to the Archrage
    Welcome to the Archrage, to the Archrage

    Wooaahh...
    Patron is inactive
    Told ya isn't active
    Patron is inactive
    Told ya isn't active    … Expand
  20. Scalphunter
    Oct 19, 2014
    6
    ArcheAge was released in Korea on January 15, 2013 and is described as a 'sand box' MMORPG i.e. players have the ability to modify the world themselves and create how they play.

    It has now been one month since it was released in Europe and North America on September 16, 2014 and its premise has been a good one. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, it is currently rife with several    ArcheAge was released in Korea on January 15, 2013 and is described as a 'sand box' MMORPG i.e. players have the ability to modify the world themselves and create how they play.

    It has now been one month since it was released in Europe and North America on September 16, 2014 and its premise has been a good one. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, it is currently rife with several issues which I will touch on later in this review.

    In my opinion, ArcheAge is (or rather, 'was') an excellent game. It does not do anything ground breaking when it comes to story, questing or even combat. However, it stands out by having a no holds barred open world PVP (reminiscent of 1997's MMORPG Ultima Online), a robust trade and crafting system and ... naval warfare! :O

    Another interesting thing about this game is that you can attack your own faction and engage in piracy and other nefarious activities. If caught, you can be brought to trial and be sentenced by other players.

    Although it is 'free to play', players definitely need to spend some real world cash in order to get anywhere significant in ArcheAge. The game revolves heavily on having land, which only Patrons (aka paid customers) can own.

    With land you can farm materials to build boats, houses, tractors etc. The bigger the area, the more you can put on your farm (e.g. livestock, trees). These all yield a certain amount of materials for you to use to craft. Of course, the tradeoff is that you have to actually wait for everything to grow (in real time) in order to harvest them. Friends and guild members can share land and needless to say, the more powerful guilds have the most land.

    The problem with land is that it is in limited supply. It is not 'instanced' as with housing areas in other MMORPG's. Most (if not all) land in all servers are taken, which is difficult if you are a new player. Land can be claimed if a player hasn't logged on for a significant time but you will be competing with many other players for the land grab. Unfortunately, you will also be competing with botters and/or hackers.

    I actually woke up at 5 am to claim a plot of land which was due to expire, only to lose it to a botter who was on the other side of the world. I never would have believed it if it didn't happen right in front of my eyes.

    Without land, it will be difficult to create trade packs which can be used to trade in other areas to generate gold. The further the area, the more gold you earn. Too bad you are competing against gold sellers and teleporting hacks.

    To the publishers credit (Trion), they are aware of the issue but they are in an awkward position, since they're not in direct contact with the code which is owned by XL Games in Korea.

    I am currently uninspired to go on with Archeage but there may still be some hope in the currently unreleased content of Auroria, where guilds can build Castles and claim land for their faction and battle it out in new areas.

    TLDR: ArcheAge is a good game but in its current state, it is hard to recommend to new players. Especially if you have no land or are not in a strong guild. (6/10)    … Expand
  21. thedesertwolf
    Mar 21, 2016
    6
    Played since the US alpha and a lot has changed.

    The good; Archeage has well polished pvp mechanics and a metric ton of stuff to do. Stuff includes land based, oceanic, and transcontinental trade routes as well as building your own farms, housing areas, and finding other ways to make landmasses productive for you and your group. It also has some of the most amusing naval combat put    Played since the US alpha and a lot has changed.

    The good;

    Archeage has well polished pvp mechanics and a metric ton of stuff to do. Stuff includes land based, oceanic, and transcontinental trade routes as well as building your own farms, housing areas, and finding other ways to make landmasses productive for you and your group. It also has some of the most amusing naval combat put into an MMO to date.

    The bad: Unlike in the beta and the Korean release the claimable land zones do not change size based on population, they are absolutely static. This creates massive inflation on land values that just doesn't exist in the same fashion on the original release. Want anything in a safe zone? Be prepared to bleed gold. The LP system directly punishes both paying subscribers and their FTP crowd, Labor is required to build/do most things that generate income such as trade runs, ftp only get 5 per 5 minutes while online, subscribers get 10 per 5 minutes while online and 5 per 5 minutes while offline. Your play time will be punished.

    The Ugly; Mass normilization of specialty items such as the nearly unique ships, hang gliders, and mounts. Paying RL cash for in game power (reforging), and the community (At least on the west, dear bloody god do they have problems on Calleil before it merged. East was livable.) If you ever wanted to see people tear each other apart for utterly zero reason, here's a great example what not to do. Use your guild as a MLM scheme, set up a pyramid scheme, deliberately steal in bulk from members land and tell them "Oh well" when they can't afford to maintain their claim.    … Expand
  22. Elsinrostro
    Jun 18, 2018
    6
    It was a good game until the ascension patch. It went vertiginously downhill from there.
    The P2W features made an even bigger breach between its F2P counterpart when the Eternal grade gear arrived.
  23. F3T1W
    Aug 27, 2021
    6
    VLADMA approves, an amazing story with crossing the mainland in the hope of seeing a friend and of course, the kraken
  24. Morlach
    Sep 18, 2014
    5
    In the game's current state, 1 week after release, the game is total fail due to massive queues, bugs with Founder's access and all land taken up. Once these issues are resolved then then game will deserve a better rating.
  25. MrBuckie
    Sep 23, 2014
    5
    This game had potential, but turned out to be quite bad in the end.

    This game doesn't seem to be P2W .Subscription just makes things quite a bit faster, and allows you to own property. It's acceptable to me. Although, the game has some serious design flaws, regarding to PvP. One example is you can't help your allies if they're being attacked at enemy territory, all you can do is watch    This game had potential, but turned out to be quite bad in the end.

    This game doesn't seem to be P2W .Subscription just makes things quite a bit faster, and allows you to own property. It's acceptable to me.
    Although, the game has some serious design flaws, regarding to PvP. One example is you can't help your allies if they're being attacked at enemy territory, all you can do is watch your friendlie die, how awesome and well designed is that!
    Labor point gain and mount experience gain is poorly designed as well, it encourages player to be afk in game = more queues for f2p and some patrons.
    Questing in this game is just plain boring, kill x amount of y, or obtain 5x of y items. And all the quests are like that, doesn't really keep me interested.
    Dungeons aren't really difficult either, and most of them are just poorly done.
    It's a korean game and seems to be rushed a bit too, would I recommend this game to others? Not anymore.
    Did I mention problem with bots? Bots are flooding the chat with spam, and there are teleporting bots killing mobs& gathering ore, + trading.
    Overall the quality of game is poor, or at least questionable.

    Let's talk about some positive things for a change then!
    The housing and farming was quite fun experience, farming is rewarding and worthwhile to do, and courages you to do some crafting or trading. Only bad thing about the housing spots are limited, even though there's free space.
    Criminal system in this game is something you don't see in any other mmo. At least for my knowledge. You can plunder friendly people in neutral locations, or steal friendly crops in unprotected & illegal farms. If you get enough criminal points, you get sent to jail after you die by a player, and can be judged by other players.
    Vehicles are awesome, getting your first boat with a harpoon was amazing, and you can do lots of things with it. There are lots of pets too, mounts to battle bets. Also pets and mounts have different abilities, so mounts aren't the same, so they offer you variety and that's a really good thing.
    Also you get gliders which helps getting to certain areas and exploring. -Although exploring in this game doesn't seem to be as rewarding.

    Positive things: Housing, crafting, farming, criminal system and mounts/vehicles.
    Negative things: Overall quality is bad, or at least questionable. PvP, design flaws, questing, horrible dungeons.

    In a nutshell, this game isn't that great, and would I recommend it to friends? No.
    Korean games, not even once.    … Expand
  26. Vareba
    Sep 17, 2014
    5
    It is important to understand one thing: Archeage is a game by XLGames, which happened to be launched by Trion Worlds, Inc. for the NA/EU market. Archeage itself is an amazing game, without doubt. Therefore, critiquing it here on MetaCritic is somewhat of a misnomer, as it's very broadly labeling the game, not the company managing the localized launch.

    That being said, the Trion launch    It is important to understand one thing: Archeage is a game by XLGames, which happened to be launched by Trion Worlds, Inc. for the NA/EU market. Archeage itself is an amazing game, without doubt. Therefore, critiquing it here on MetaCritic is somewhat of a misnomer, as it's very broadly labeling the game, not the company managing the localized launch.

    That being said, the Trion launch has been an absolute disaster and a farce.

    "All launches have problems", "QQ your tears are delicious", etc. is irrelevant. The problems that have been exhibited are huge, and the response has been completely vacant. They have not only failed to address urgent issues, but they have not reflected any desire nor attempt to solve them in the future. their failure to manage this launch, compounded by their immoral service practices is inexcusable, and would easily garner a 0 rating.

    However, as previously mentioned, Archeage is a fantastic game, and itself would deserve a 10.

    #ThanksObama360noscope    … Expand
  27. archanjo
    Nov 10, 2014
    5
    bots. hacks . pay to win. pure crap.
    one of the worst community ever also.
    ...........................................................................
  28. Revelator
    Sep 16, 2014
    5
    The game has potential, but anyone who spends money on it right now is nuts.

    Headstart was a debacle. It was as though Trion had never released a game before. Now, at launch, queues are hours long before they don't have enough 1) servers; or 2) capacity on a given server. Add in problems that drop you out of the game or out of queue, and it is a recipe for aggravation. Early levels,    The game has potential, but anyone who spends money on it right now is nuts.

    Headstart was a debacle. It was as though Trion had never released a game before. Now, at launch, queues are hours long before they don't have enough 1) servers; or 2) capacity on a given server. Add in problems that drop you out of the game or out of queue, and it is a recipe for aggravation.

    Early levels, if you can get in, are grindy, and the quests are uninspiring. There are problems with multiple people turning in quests to a quest giver, so there are lines in games with people waiting their turn to talk to the quest giver. Long lines. There was a problem with the mob tag mechanic, where only the first hit gave credit, so people had trouble finishing what they needed to (this may be fixed; when I get out of queue I'll find out). These are ten year old MMO mechanic problems that other games have worked out.

    Housing is a big draw, but a lot of the available on land on the servers is already gone.

    Some elements are closer to pay-to-win than I'd like (you can Google search it, so I won't rehash that).

    If you can get in, and if you can stick it out through the uninspired low level play and boring quest implementation, you can get to some cool PVP, crafting, trading, running a ship, etc. There's an interesting justice system as well.

    As I said, the core is there to have a good game. Right now, it's a bit of a mess and not something you want to spend anything on. If you want to play, go f2p and do that until things level off and you can see what the state of the game is.    … Expand
  29. kitsuneshoujo
    Sep 17, 2014
    5
    Good game, bad management... my biggest complaint is the way they apply the pre-oder in-game perks. Instead of simply give the items to all your characters you make on all servers, they apply them the *first six* And if you happen to make test characters to see what they look like in-game, well then, sucks to be you... cause you just deleted your in-game stuff and no soup for you!
  30. NanaelSoloer
    Sep 24, 2014
    5
    The first days allways have issues, on this case, i agree that it was a disaster, but Trion was able to solve the queue problems, reduced the lag, and is fixing every issue that is reported to them. For exemple, today many players started spamming the chat with bots, they allready fixed the issue, yesterday there was people running in circles while AFK to not be kicked, they allreadyThe first days allways have issues, on this case, i agree that it was a disaster, but Trion was able to solve the queue problems, reduced the lag, and is fixing every issue that is reported to them. For exemple, today many players started spamming the chat with bots, they allready fixed the issue, yesterday there was people running in circles while AFK to not be kicked, they allready fixed, patron not arrived on the last days? Most of the players allready received, and if u enter in contact with a GM in-chat or on the support, u'll receive that. Patrons are not P2W, the Apex system is balanced, any player can bought it easy if economize his Money while doing the quests to lvl up. The auction house is ACESSIBLE FOREVER after u buy it, and it's not that expansive. Public farms still full, but if u search well, u can find spots to plant your trees. And if u need more space, use the farm of a friend, he can invite u to his Family and u'll be able to plant there. The game is good, funny, and Trion is trying to solve all issues as soon as possible. U don't need to spend anything, just test it ;) u'll have a lot of fun.… Expand
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Awards & Rankings

74
#74 Best PC Game of 2014
14
#14 Most Discussed PC Game of 2014
22
#22 Most Shared PC Game of 2014

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
80

Generally favorable reviews - based on 11 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 11
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 11
  3. Negative: 0 out of 11
  1. SpazioGames
    Jan 5, 2015
    80
    What ArcheAge presents, past the horror of the chilling launch, is an open world full of opportunities and challenges as we have not seen for a too-long time demonstrating that the real MMORPG, those based on persistence and interaction, have not disappeared.
    Read full review
  2. CD-Action
    Dec 13, 2014
    85
    Don’t let your judgment be clouded by other people’s opinions influenced by terrible server problems they encountered when ArcheAge was launched. It’s a really good, beautiful game. [Dec 2014, p.76]
  3. Gaming Nexus
    Nov 18, 2014
    88
    ArcheAge is one of the best free-to-play games to be released this year, with a near endless amount of content awaiting eager adventurers.
    Read full review
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