Arche Age: New Next-Gen MMORPG by Lineage Creator

Jake Song, the creator of Lineage now is releasing the official name for their new MMORPG (origianlly codenamed Project X2) - Arche Age.

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The team began to develop Arche Age in 2006, and applied famous CryEngine2. The 3 official screenshots below improved themselves considerable exercise of the reality. "Everyone who enter Arche Age, will start their journey to solve the relationship between 12 forefathers and this world." Korea popular fantasy novelist talked about Arche Age's main storyline. Other than humans, elves and dwarves, there will be 5 other races to choose from, most being very unique races.

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Besides, Jake Song announced their next-gen MMORPGs will make users to design multiple of in-game contents at KGC 2009. All behaviors in game will interact original world. It's the time to change the gaming ways - from enjoying oneself's simple behaviors to turning behaviors into parts of the game's history!

To compete with other next-gen projects such as 7 Souls, C9, Tera and Blade & Soul. Beta Test of Arche Age will be confirmed later. The first beta is being planned in June 2010 in Korea. Open Beta is expected to start at end 2010.

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Next-gen RPG Arche Age, a next-gen MMO developed by the creator of Lineage, released its teaser site to the public on Feb. 25th, 2010 as well as the first gameplay video.

Korea-based XL GAMES' in-development MMO Arche Age, developed by Jake Song, the chief creator of Lineage, launched its official site with two silent gameplay videos presenting the game world in Arche Age for players. XL Games announced that they launched this teaser site, hoping to provide a place to hardcore players who have high expectations for this game to discuss. The official site of Arche Age is scheduled to launch in this summer.

The first video showcased the forest scene in game and previewed the vivid game environment for players. Players are able to enjoy the character skill in the second video and the interaction between characters and environment.

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CryEngine 2 MMORPG Arche Age has just released several screenshots and 3 new concepts which show players 3 different areas. The game is developed by XL Games led by Jake Song, the creator of Lineage and is set to start a FGT test in the summer of 2010. So far the developer hasn't released much more information about the system of the game but some of their ambitiousness conceives.

Arche Age - Gameplay Teaser

More Arche Age videos

Originally named Project X2, Arche Age started in 2006. By using CryEngine 2 the developer provides a destructible world for players, as the video above shows. Not only does the game aspire for shining graphics, in an introduction speech, Jake Song hopes that the game can also give players a community like Ultima Online, PvE like WoW, and PvP like Lineage. Do you think they can make it come true?

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Arche Age new screenshot

So far we also know that the game will use features from traditional MMORPG gameplay, and players have to first lock onto the targets if they want to make attacks. Players can hire NPCs as mercenaries but they probably can't join in the battle. As for the world, there are three continents and one of them can be captured by players while the other two are occupied by NPCs. Player can travel to different continents by ships while controlling the ships and selecting their own routes; another way to travel is by transmission.

Related article: Arche Age: New Next-Gen MMORPG by Lineage Creator

http://aaportal.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=65&Itemid=83?=en



just thought you guys should check this out


Btw i haven't been on here in like 2 years, how is everyone doing ? any old faces still around

lol very old face.

hi kurupt,hope u are doing well heh

heard about this game.reviews about it is not very good regarding the combat system.but seeing its still in the making i will wait and see longer if it will be good before i form a firm opinion ^^

Hey Kurupt long time no see

hey snow ! hey shu ! hope you guys had holidays

http://www.mmoculture.com/2010/12/rumor-ultima-online-2-back-on-track.html

also ^ news of upcoming of the actual ultima online 2 rumor :)

wow nice news kurupt.

if UO2 really comes out i will be sure to test it and play :)

The first step in Archeage is creating a new character. When you select
three primary skill schools, you get many tips on your selection. As
announced, there are preselected classes along with a custom class.


Special attention should be given to your character’s customization.
Some details of the character’s appearance can be freely modified; some
of them are selected from a list. For example, you can pick scars and
tattoos from the available options, but still be able to move them
across the face freely, rotate them, and increase them in size. There
are not so many types of customization available yet, but we can still
get an idea of what will be available for the release.

After the loading screen, we get an introduction video. There is no
sense in telling you what goes on in the intro, you still won’t
understand either you will lose interest to watching it. However, I
would like the developers to make these cut scenes more epic. Not that I
didn’t like it, but the possibilities of Cry Engine 2 and the animation
we have seen on the clips would be enough to make something way more
epic. By the way, your character takes part in such cut scenes, and it’s
rendered with the game’s engine.


The game loads quite fast. The good part is that, when you enter the
game, you only load the necessary part of textures, and all the other
details load as you play. This is very good for people with unstable
internet – if you get disconnected on a serious battle or any other
important matter, you can return to the game in a relatively short
period of time.

We start in our race’s start location, and we receive our first quest
“on the spot”. The first quests are pretty easy and traditional.
Developers give us time to get used to the game and look at the
abilities of our character. Fairly close to the place of our appearance
is the town. It has everything we need for the first hours: post office,
various merchants, quest givers, skill trainers and other NPC’s.


Quests in this game are quite diverse. I have only done like 5-6 quests,
but I have already looted monsters for trophies, planted a few trees,
collected eggs from bird nests on the trees and even travelled around
the place. Several abilities are given out immediately on the start. And
it’s fairly easy to use them.

The zones in Archeage are huge. As promised they are incredibly
beautiful, and completely seamless. The starting areas and cities are
especially beautiful and detailed. The first thing that comes to mind is
that the developers have decided to show that they can do everything
beautifully and accurately. However, some other locations don’t shine
with fine textures and richness of landscapes, but it’s for sure a
matter of time. I think their goal in this CBT was to test some new
aspects of game play.


The world is very diverse, although unlike some other games, the
transitions of scenery are not as noticeable. All locations are
connected in a logical order, so you can’t find snow-capped mountains
near the desert, as it happens in some other MMORPG’s. You can easily
get lost in Archeage; there are just so many roads in this game. And I’m
not joking about getting lost, because that’s what happened with me,
after I wandered through several locations in an imprecise direction.
What really makes me happy is that the locations aren’t separated from
each other clearly. You can traverse from one of them to another
anywhere you want, as long as it’s not over a mountain top. Some
locations have similar terrain and flora, which connects them between
each other, making them a united part of a whole big world despite the
separation of the zone maps. However this similarity doesn’t mean
absence of uniqueness, in this case it’s more like an emphasis to the
realism.

You can find many different innovations in ArcheAge that have not been
previously combined in any MMORPG. You can already ride around on
horseback, establish settlements, build ships, plant trees, collect
resources, and travel. The game is very atmospheric - when i played, i
felt being a part of this world, even considering that everyone around
me spoke in a foreign language including NPC’s. Archeage special
atmosphere - it is not like anything else, it has its own comfort and
charm. The world is so extensive and fascinating that you inevitably
feel yourself as an ant, but you realize that you can still find a
suitable place for yourself in it.



The target combat system looks very interesting in ArcheAge. Fighting in
Archeage is very exciting. Even now, the game has a wide variety of
tactical opportunities. For example you can raise a player in a floating
bubble to help him jump up on a tall object, heal yourself, cast on him
a long spell meanwhile, run away from him. Or you conjure a stone hand
to hold the enemy on one place until you cast another fireball. You can
also do it the old way, rush at your enemy, knock him off his feet,
throw him up in the air with a mighty blow and slice him open with a
finishing blow (that’s not a hack’n’slash combo, just skills used at the
right time). Characters and abilities are animated very realistically
in a beautiful way. The way characters fall is always different.
Depending on how the body fell down, it rolls down the slope if it died
on the mountainside or if it was knocked down off the cliff. You can
feel the power and the slaughtering effect of the abilities in ArcheAge,
you won’t envy the person hit by a fireball. If you die - just click a
button and you will appear nearby the nearest priest. If you kill a
monster, just click on his corpse and select the loot you need, or just
simply to kick the body around (Yes, it does move when you kickit). You
can learn a large variety of skills from a Skill Trainer by using your
Skill Points. There won’t be enough points to learn all the skills, so
this opens a door to the uniqueness of your character.



I really liked the way armor and clothing looks on players. Clothes are
very detailed and fit well to the character. It’s quite difficult to
find an ugly dressed character in ArcheAge. I was very pleased by the
harmony of the appearance, of many characters gathered in one place.
All of them were dressed differently and wore different armor, but these
differences are not striking. Moreover, unlike many games, in ArcheAge
each player is free to wear what he wants. There are no restrictions,
but it’s more profitable to wear a certain kind of armor to suit your
style of playing. Such moments are a step forward when compared to other
games.

It should be noted, that the races of Men and Elves are not alike. It’s
not just about the differences in appearance and culture; it’s also
about their behavior. They have specifically different cities, different
looks, physique, style of dress and animations. I have also managed to
see the Dwarf and Ferre races in the beta test. But unfortunately, it
was too brief.

At this point, the only means of transportation in ArcheAge are
carriers, horses and ships. In this Closed Beta Test, I got a horse
almost from the beginning of the game. The way it behaves is very neat.
It moves quickly and smoothly, and turns around comfortably fast. The
horse’s animation is arranged so that the movements look realistic: for
example, it can’t jump on one place (it stands on its hind legs
instead), neither turn around 180 degrees in a jump. Also, the horse can
wear armor, gain levels, and learn new skills. At level one it can only
knock back enemies, but as it levels, it gains access to skills like
throwing the rider off to selected position – a quite long-range skill
or a skill that allows the rider to fight mounted. In addition, you can
dismount from your horse, order it to stand still or follow you. If the
horse gets killed while someone is mounted on it – the rider will fall
down on the ground to continue the fight. You can also ride your horse
together with somebody. Moreover, the passenger can thus fend off
enemies - wield a weapon or shoot a bow.


You can also find an island or just some free spot with great sights and
lay the foundation of your house. Your house is your fortress and your
new home. You can build and manage furniture freely around your house,
invite people to your house, smith some armor if you install a forge in
it, do plenty of stuff, just remember to clean the mess up! Outside the
house you are free to construct a farm and a garden, the crops you grow
belong to you, and you can collect them once they are ready to cook
something or just sell it on the market. If you construct a group of
houses with your friends, you can actually form a village, because it is
possible to construct not only private houses, but public ones too.


The sea deserves special attention. ArcheAge is the first MMOPRG, where
the sea is a legitimate part of the game play. Spending a considerable
amount of time to reach various islands, naval warfare, the atmosphere
of sea travel and the beautiful sights won’t leave anyone cold-blooded.
To lose your ship at the middle of the sea is a quite serious danger,
since the distance to the nearest land is significant. To control the
ship decently, a team of 2 to 10 people is required. At this moment, you
can raise/lower the anchor, raise/lower the sails on each mast, climb
the masts, take the steering wheel in control and lower planks at the
sides of the ship, to walk aboard. In addition, at this CBT, each ship
had 4 cannons on each side. If you fall off the ship, you can climb back
up on the net, hanging from the deck. There is however a bind point
system in game. You use some binding stone, and you can return to it
with a help of a skill, which has a cool down of 30 minutes. But if
there would be no such skill, you could do stuff like leaving some guy
on a deserted island :thumbsup: .

You can also lose your ship in battle, but you are likely to die earlier
from a cannon impact on the deck. Oh yes! The cannons are really
dangerous and besides, long-range. If you aim for the coast, you can
hurt or kill players and monsters that situate there. Piracy in ArcheAge
will flourish just because having a ship is a great advantage for its
owners – it is sort of a mobile fortress, which can destroy everything
on its path. Apart from that, it’s incredibly fun!


ArcheAge has a very convenient interface: it’s easy to use and freely
manageable. At the top of the screen, you can see all accessible menu’s
with intuitive icons. You can move around and resize the interface
freely. I was pleased to see, that the interface has everything I need,
with nothing extra. It is worth noting, that the characters equipment
and characteristics interface is situated at the sides of the character,
instead of having a doll to dress up like in other games. However this
is subject to change after the 2CBT, but I do hope that XLGames will
still leave the possibility of resizing and managing it around enough.


The graphics in this game are simply divine. The view distance is
amazing, for instance you can see the two Twin Mountains, known to every
fan of ArcheAge from the port city of Solzreed peninsula. From the
position where I stood, it was a 5 minute horse ride up to the
mountains. Trees and grass in ArcheAge behave as in reality - they sway
and cast shadows. If the sunset is shining through a tree, its rays are
visible in the evening’s haze. A light haze hides objects, situated very
far away, which makes them look even more beautiful. It doesn’t look on
screenshots as good as it is in action. Birds fit well into the overall
picture. They fly just like the real ones, sometimes gather in flocks
and fly over some place. Locations have different looks depending on
various weather conditions and the time of the day. From all this
diversity, I liked the sea sunsets on tropical islands most of all.


We can now draw a conclusion - This game promises to be a new
hit in the MMORPG genre. Farmer, soldier, pirate, magician, merchant –
even on this state of development, the players sphere of activity is
already forming up. All these aspects of game play, capabilities in
physics and graphics, functions, and most importantly – the wisdom of
the developers highlights ArcheAge from the total mass of MMORPGs. The
game play is alike Ultima Online in its freedom, and the pve does look
similar to World of Warcraft indeed. Everything described above is
subject to change before the game is released, but I’m sure the changes
are for the best, because at the origins of the development stands Jake
Song, and he knows what he’s doing.

How many CryEngine 3 MMORPGs have been announced? You may mention Cabal 2, and some knowledgeable gamer may put forward Warface. This month's GDC tells us that there are at least 4 CryEngine 3 MMORPGs are under development, including AcheAge. What? Yes AcheAge.



There's no official announcement on whether AcheAge, as well as ASTA,
have updated their engine from CryEngine2 to CryEngine3. AcheAge has
finished 2 phases of Closed Beta in Korea and could kick off the third
CBT next month and seems that the game won't change its engine in Closed
Beta stage. Similar to AcheAge, the other 2 games, ASTA and Forge by Chaos are initially developed with CryEngine2, looks like it won't be too hard to make the transition from CryEngine2 to CryEngine3.




AcheAge


AcheAge
There's also an untitled CryEngine 3 MMO appears in the video, and we
have no clue about the mysterious game that features ancient Chinese
battlefield and town.

I always was dissapointed that I missed the Ultima train when it was good
Watching the developement of this game closely hehe

Second Beta Test review of ArcheAge by Stable



You start by creating your character. You can select the
gender, race and appearance from few premade choices. You also get a
selection from some standard classes: Mage, Warrior, Rogue etc. Hardcore
players get a possibility to choose their characteristics themselves.



After character creation, the player wakes up in his starting
location, devoted to levels of 1 to 10. The developers don't try to
impress the newcomers immediately with original gameplay, instead they
use a standard set of simple learning tasks and quests. Amazing quality
of the world makes players discover this part of the continent with
pleasure, and won't let you get bored during the first hours spent in
ArcheAge.





All quests are based on a standard scheme - find/kill/deliver, but
it does have some unique touch: one of quests asks the player to climb a
treetop and find a bird's nest. Mechanics of interaction with trees in
ArcheAge is quite simple: the player right-clicks on the tree and
selects an option from the pop-up menu: cut, climb, etc. It's easy to
climb - you press W and S, but you can always press space to jump and
fall down from the tree.

The combat mechanics in ArcheAge are
similar to Lineage 2 or Aion: you select your adversary and use your
combat skills on your target as they cooldown - which allows you to
defeat any monster thats your level. Lack of pvp zones didn't allow to
test the balance of classes "in battle mode", but there was no intention
to test that in the 2CBT.



Battles with monsters or falling from great heights often leads to
character death, which gets reborn at a nearest obelisk immediately
after you select an option to. No debuffs or delays were noticed during
the CBT2 on the death.



The world of ArcheAge is enormous. Even to cross a small open zone
on your 2 legs - is a very hard task: aggressive monsters and great
distances between cities make such a trip painful. The developers let
players have their first mount in the first hours of gameplay.
Right-clicking on the mount icon in your inventory summons your healthy
pet any time and any place, even if it recently died.

A unique
feature of mounts in ArcheAge is a possibility to take a companion with
you. It can be your friend or even a passerby, who has the ability to
jump on your horse during the stop, which everyone uses to get around
faster.




As you understood, ArcheAge has a target combat system. To attack the
opponent, you need to select him with your left mouse button and use a
spell, either click the right mouse button to autoattack. However,
autoattack works only for hitting the monster, not for following it, so
if your adversary jumps to the side, you will have to manually turn your
character. So you can stay next to the enemy, click autoattack, but
miss, because of invalid direction of attack. Proper positioning of your
character plays an important role. For example, a warrior can parry
some hits automatically with his shield, if he is facing the attack. It
may still change.



Now lets talk about different states of the fighter. For this moment i
have noticed about 4 possible negative conditions during a battle: Stun,
immobilization, knockout and levitation. Stun looks standard for an
MMO, but i haven't noticed any stars above the head. Immobilization
differs from stun by a total freeze of character's animation - it turns
to a statue. Knockout can be triggered by a similar attack to stun, but
this condition lasts a bit longer and has a wide variation of
animations, which includes Rag-doll. Levitation is a special kind of
knockout, which raises the victim high in the air, instead of sprawling
it onto the ground.



Bard - How much in this word... I have randomly selected the third item
in the list of character creation, and I became a bard. It would seem
that the peaceful minstrel would mean no danger to others and would play
a role of some classic supporter, but XLGames thought otherwise. The
main difference of this class compared to others is that some skills are
used not only for healing but for dealing damage too. For example the
spell л№›кіј м–ґл‘ (Translated "Hand") not only damages the target
alot, but also heals your party members if you target your friend. For
me, this was the most pleasant surprise in the bard gameplay. Also, the
bard has a standard set of songs, that can last half an hour or 40-50
seconds, which does not allow you to relax during a fight.



To construct your own house, you need to buy a plan from a vendor,
select a location in one of the large construction sites, and place it's
foundation in a suiting place. Just in a second, the landscape in a few
meters from the house changes its shape and type. Also, some trees and
rocks might disappear close to the foundation. After that, the owner
must buy building materials and pay for the construction work. To
construct, you would need the so-called "Labor points", which allow
others help you build your house.



Few key phrases:
- Locations after level 20 are open for free-world PvP in LineAge 2 style.
- To toggle the PvP mode, you need to press Ctrl+F combination.
-
There are no barriers between locations, so you can walk the world with
no restrictions (appart from high mountains). You can also sail and
land on shore anywhere you want without experiencing any restrictions.
-
Your horse can knock-back your enemy with a skill, if you are riding
it. If your mount gets killed, you fall down on the ground when it
happens.
- Mounts have levels. Apparently you can train them by killing monsters.

We were able to test the Player-Kill system during the cbt. It is
likely to change in the future, but at this moment, it looks like this.


To activate the PK-mode, you need to hit Ctrl+F. Then you can deal
damage to other players, their mounts, ships, etc. After the characters
death, a blood stain appears. The loser can return to this place later
and pick up "Large Blood".

It seems, that for a player kill, you get 10 points of karma. However
it is still unknown, whether they are counted immediately or only after
the victim will hand in the blood to some NPC. Also, we found some
blood stains that gave 6 points of karma, which indicates the presence
of some extenuating circumstances.

Construction is an important
part of ArcheAge. I was able to build a foundation of a dwelling house
on one of the construction sites in the starting area. The plan of a
simple house is worth around 150 silver coins, which is a substantial
sum at the initial stage of character development. After the player
purchased the plan, he can choose a place for construction and lay the
foundation. After you activate the plan, you can see the skeleton of the
house, which you can accommodate on a construction site, limited by
columns. For example, on the next screenshot, you can see a dialogue of
construction, which allows you to set the workers wages.
It is a likely requirement of 30 labor points to construct the
house. The exact purpose of the 2 counters is still unknown, but judging
by the fact, that only the lower one is active, it is the amount of
money already invested, and the amount of money that can be put
furtherer into the construction.

Second Beta Test review of ArcheAge by La2_Cobalt

---

First Impressions on ArcheAge

As you know, the second
closed beta test of Archeage has started in Korea. In a miraculous way,
it became possible to catch some taste of this promising game. Of
course, MMO games are rather converse to the brief acquaintance, but
even in the short time one can make an initial opinion about the game.
Please keep in mind though that the following description is a product
of a very superficial glimpse on an extremely raw variant of the game,
and when it comes to its publication everything can change any way.
Also, in transcriptions of certain aspects of the game there may be some
factual inaccuracies arising from a limited (better say missing)
understanding of the Korean by the author.

As in any true Korean MMO game, ArcheAge begins from the screen of
choice and the making your character. As up today, a gamer is offered
two possible races: Nuian and Elf (at final release there will be many
more). Nuian are just regular humans, the same way as in any fantasy
game. Elf are elves whose appearance reminds of wood elves. These are
neither "civilized" elves from LineaAge2 nor elegant aristocrats from
Tera but exactly the legendary forest inhabitants. The starting image of
female Elf is typical - bare feet, flower-styled dress, overall -
entire ecology and unity with the Nature.

After the racial
choice, you can choose the gender of your character and adjust basic
characteristics of his/her appearance. And as you choose a class, the
first surprise strikes you - the meaning of "class" is tremendously
changed and re-worked in ArcheAge. In few words - there is a set of 10
skill trees (combat, witchcraft, invincibility, magic, nature powers,
etc.). Any 3 out of these 10 constitute a class. The number of
combinations reaches 120 - this is the theoretical number of possible
classes in this game. During the creation of the character you are
offered 4 pre-built classes - Warrior, Priest, Mage, Ranger and there
also is a possibility to create your own custom class by combining any 3
skill trees. It is worth mentioning that in the process of the game the
skill trees can be switched (not for free), therefore your original
class choice does not predetermine all the future path of your character
as opposed to what we find in the majority of similar games.

Every
race has in its disposal its own starting zone and corresponding story
line. This distinguishes ArcheAge from Tera where all races start the
game from the same location, and the problem of over-population is
solved by means of instancing (parallel copies of the same location). In
ArcheAge, as it can be seen right now, there are no instancing and the
World is undivided and whole, with numerous starting zones in LineAge2
style.

A fresh Nuian character starts in the Solzreed Peninsula
of the Western continent of the World. An introductory video plays
(animation clip on game engine) where the site of your character
appearance - unremarkable marsh - turns literally upside down bringing
the player either into back memories or into a parallel World, to the
same marsh terrain only in dim dusk light. Some dialogue takes place
between the new gamer and two NPC's, one with appearance of a wise
tutor, another one - a blond Elf female. Apparently, the talk was about
the fates of the World but its exact transcript was hidden from me
behind solid barrier between Korean and Russian languages.

Screenshot from the introductory video for Nuain
After the video, the character enters a traditional starting zone of a
solid Korean MMO - beautiful terrain, lavish vegetation of a summer
forest, small starting village submerged in jadeЂ¦
Conveniently-positioned NPC's expectedly give you traditional first
quests - kill a mob, bring its skin back. The graphics is of high
quality, the models for players and monsters are quite respectable. The
top-echelon Korean games already put the plank for graphical quality so
high (and constantly push it further) that we are already tired of
astonishment.



The starting video for Elves is much more dramatic. As creatures of
sharpened feeling of honor and duty, elves are cheerfully slaughtering
each other in a sacred circle in front of a crowd. As a result, the
future conqueror of the World gets either orphaned or loses friends -
hard to understand but this certainly leaves her without too many
sentiments. Hard childhood does not dispose to long speeches with
enemies - hit'em by sword, bring the next one.

A screenshot from introductory Elf movie (the drama!)

The starting location of Elf (Gweonid Forest) is quite corresponding
to expectations of an elven forest - even more bushy and abundant than
in Solzreed. In its depths, you can find hidden ruins of an ancient
elven stronghold (where the drama of introductory video has taken
place), lakes, magnificent trees and corresponding mobs - wild animals,
earth spirits, fire and water elementals. In the center of a small
lake, there is a grand tree with something looking like a dungeon
entrance, now strictly locked and guarded by a band of elves accompanied
by a brawler-golem. A very atmospheric location, lovers of green should
like it. The starting quests given here are very much similar to those
for Nuian, the differences are few.



Whats nice, is that running elves leave behind a trail of glowing,
grass-growing steps. It looks funny and, against expectations, not very
boring. Hopefully, future races will also have some similar specific
"bells and whistles".


As one would say - better once to see than hundred times to hear.
This is true - the design of levels is tremendous. The World is
saturated with small details, very-well made and looking convincingly.
While running over these locations, you believe that all this is for
real. It is dreadful to imagine how much of tedious labor has been put
in all of this - grass blades, rocks, various trees, ancient ruins,
modern obelisks are all composed into a single harmonious mosaic. The
topography is well-thought, the roads, villages and castles are not just
randomly thrown but make a distinct system.

The villages are
surrounded by farmers fields, both finished and also prearranged for use
and construction by gamers themselves. Castles are believably complex,
encircled by sturdy walls with small country shacks sticking to their
perimeter. Inside the castle there is always an urban zone with
workshops, stores and gardens, as well as an upper town - white-stoned
villas and capital palaces.

Looking at such a castle, it is hard
to believe that it can be allowed for players to possess. It is too
monumental, complex, extensiveЂ¦ The scale of the castle built invites
for a serious siege, maybe with hundreds of players on each side. The
declared earlier 50 defenders will be just dissolved between the walls,
giving no actual perception of a real battle. However, the sieges are
promised. Interesting to see how they will look like.



The Western continent architecture consists of a contemporary
Western-European style - the magnificent villas hidden behind strong
city walls will make a tribute even to Abramovich, whereas country-side
houses in suburbs and on the fields would very well suit to happy
modern-day German citizens. The Eastern continent though looks
definitely like India with some Arabic influence. The main city of the
East Mahadevi is not completed yet, but after finished it can contend by
its splendor with the capital of the West (up to my recent
understanding) Marianople.



As of now, the central city of the West Marianople is the most
magnificent place in the game. It represents an immense conglomerate of
white-stoned palaces, towers and walls, encircled on the outside by
potent moat and a belt of villages, water mills and other country
structures.



The city embodies huge cast-iron-fenced villas, tall towers,
cathedrals as well as a bank, a library and even a small theater. Wide
avenues run in all four directions from the central plaza with a net of
small streets between them containing numerous shops. Opposite to the
also not-so-small but badly planned capital Velika in Tera, this capital
has a clear-thought radial/circular structure reminiscent for example
of Moscow. It has even a circular line of a simple subway. The planning
of the capital and other cities is so much plausible - it literally
invites you to live there. However this scale and variety comes for
their price - these places do have the best lags in the game and RAM
consumption jumps up to 1.9 Gb.



The game has excellent time-of-the-day and weather-related
atmospheric changes. Sure, this is a benefit of the graphical engine
CryEngine2, but I have not seen anything like this in an MMO so far.
Fully dynamic lightning, seamless flow of the day - bright sunny noon
gradually fades into evening shadows and then into very dark night which
in turn breaks up in morning haze. In the evenings, I would recommend
you to keep your jaw tightly to avoid unnecessary trauma - not to drop
it in a view of a gorgeous sunset with the last light beams penetrating
clouds.



The closest competitor to ArcheAge by its graphical solution - Tera -
apparently lacks in technology. Both games have high-quality graphical
engines and luxurious level design. Nevertheless, static global
lightning in Tera puts it to a disadvantage. This is a pity that Tera
fans will have to settle for permanent noon in some locations and for
permanent evening in others, whereas in ArcheAge the atmosphere and
spirit of each place change drastically in the course of a game day.



In general, the game areas are pretty big albeit they are not so much
bigger than in other competing games, for example - Tera. After all,
the size of the areas is dictated by the number of players and it does
not look like that ArcheAge is going to surpass the good ole LA2 in this
regard(Don't agree - RomTim). Frankly, a population of simultaneous 5,000-7,000 players can be preliminary considered a real limit for this game(Actually closer to 10,000-15,000 - RomTim).
Some places, especially starting zones have signs of
"Let-me-guide-you-by-hand" where different logical patches are separated
by an impenetrable relief and the roads direct player along steadily
increasing complexity. Nevertheless, this is seen only in few parts and
the wast size of the territories alleviates crowdedness feeling.

I
somewhat doubt the approach realized back in LA2 where huge chunks of
game territory are assigned to zones for starting levels. Now it is too
early to say if the complexity levels are finally set, but level
distribution of monsters is very reminiscent of classical LA2 - separate
for each race starting zones of big size are allocated for levels 1-10,
not-so-small buffer zones - up to level 20. The zones in vicinity of
the western capital Marianople are below level 30.

It
reluctantly reminds me of the "nucleus" of LA2 World: a West-East band
of cities Gludin-Gludio-Dion-Giran with attached to Gludin/Gludio
beginner and buffer zones. These areas for levels 1 through 30, which
were a pinnacle of level design by LA2 developers, become too big with
time for low-levels. A modern-day player breezes them through without
even remembering them, as if they never existed. As a result, all these
spaces turn out unclaimed whereas the new levels from recent updates are
already not so well-designed as the starting nucleus. Developers are
trying to confront this now (by converting a 35+ zone into a 83+ zone,
for instance). However, all this just looks as an attempt to offer a
walking stick to the intrinsically faulty planning and breaks the
long-established atmosphere of the game.

Developers of ArcheAge
risk to fall into the same trap except if they have a trick down to
their sleeves, which we do not know about yet. We shall see how good
will the distribution of difficulties over areas turn out to be.
The game world is made absolutely seamless; given that, there are no
means of instant transportation found yet. Also, the game does not use
instances (parallel copies of a given location, usually - starting one).
All this greatly amplifies impression of the grandness and unity of the
game world, because your character has to adventure not by means of
money and portals but in a bipedal manner, quite literally. Given the
oh-not so small distances in the game, the transportation becomes a hard
task. The only teleportation method found so far is your character
death that brings you to the registration point (not often than once in a
half an hour). I do not know if the developers are going to introduce a
teleport system, but they only benefit from its absence - try, for
instance, to cross on your feet the world of LineAge2 and then you tell
if it is small and limited after such a march.

Luckily, there
are few alternatives to the bipedal walk in the game - first, there are
mounts to ride and second, there is community transport and ships.



Horse means everything in ArcheAge. Without it you are nobody and you
have no possibilities. Stay on the bus stop watching happy owners of
personal transport passing by you. Thankfully, in the CBT2 it was
trivial to obtain a horse and there was practically no way to lose it.
Already 3rd or 4th noob's quest gives you a quality personal ride. You
can also buy it at any stable for 1000 silver, alternatively, but these
are crazy money for a newcomer who gets paid pennies for his quests.

Either
quested or acquired, the horse appears as an item in your inventory,
from where you can call it and it appears along with its interface. The
window displays the pet's level and action keys - stay/follow,
mount/dismount, skills, show stats, show pet's inventory, dismiss. An
interesting option is a possibility to ride two players. While you
cannot use your fighting skill riding the mount (but your passenger can,
until you train your horse to be able to do so) you can use skills of
your pet instead. Using basic set you can kick of feet your adversary.
Among the pet's stats there are its level and current experience as well
as speed modifier, armor level and set of essential parameters such as
STR/DEX/etc.



Riding the horse, you can move around pretty fast; this is a nice
opportunity to accelerate out of battle and it can be used regularly.
The horse can jump, buck, and swim. Maybe it was a cheat or developer's
omission, but the author effortlessly crossed on his mount the ocean
between the western and eastern continents. It took a long swim, but in
absence of a ship you have to reconcile.

The horse can be
dressed - you can buy different armor at stables, some of its varieties
increase run speed. You can also level up your horse. Possibly, to
increase its vitality (not to die from one hit of a monster), obtain new
skills or maybe something else. As a rule, if you can level up
something in an MMO, do not postpone this, do not stick with a 15th
level pet on your level 80; who knows - maybe your horse learns to fly
at its cap level?

To level up your pet, you need to level up
yourself keeping your horse in the vicinity. It is not supposed to do
anything - just to stay nearby. Surprisingly - the leveling is free,
none of your host experience is diminished, and your horse receives its
exp "out of thin air" and even more than you if its level is lower. The
leveling rate is few times faster than the owner's.

A horse that
is non-leveled has level 1 and can be easily killed by any adversary.
Surprise - take it to inventory then call it back, and it resurrects.
Almost like a holiday. It is not clear if at the release the horse will
remain as easily available and immortal as now. If so - who will buy
those brand-new horses at stables for 1000 silver coins?

There is no choice but to swim.

The ships are also a part of transportation. It is known that you can
build them and then sail on them and man the cannons. On a ship, you
can go down, hold on, or climb up the mast, take the look-out position,
stand by the steering wheel or charge a gun. This is team entertainment -
somebody has to steer, somebody shoots, somebody hangs on the mast or
just fools around. The building materials (metal, lumber and canvas)
along with blueprints can be acquired on pier in Two Crowns zone.
Because a blueprint costs 900 silver, I was deprived from the building
attempt - therefore, I wisely restrain myself from any further comments.
Quite possibly, there was a quest for a free blueprint, but I did not
find it or my level was insufficient.
Central zones of the western continent instill thoughts of a strong
government power. So much strong that it had enough means to connect all
corners of the kingdom by a system of public transportation! Along main
routes, there are "bus stations" and stops where self-propelled
carriages run. You can take such a car and safely ride from point A to
point B with a speed slightly faster than that of a horse. Mobs do not
attack you while in a car and in general - this is classy.

Home village left behind...

This way, if you want to come from eastern Garangdol Plains into the
capital city of Marianople, you can just pick a carriage and safely
cross the desert separating them, enjoying views along the way. The
stops are few on the route, you can take the car only at one of them,
but you can leave it at any convenient place just pressing Space. During
CBT2 the rides were free but on the stops there were NPC's who
apparently will sell tickets in the future.

In addition, the
aforementioned Marianople city has a circular over-the-surface train
line, which has stations and NPC employees. The ride is free for now and
can be considered as an entertainment, because horse rides across the
city are more efficient for business purposes. However the views through
the train window are irreproducible and unique. As well as a precious
feeling - "I just rode an elven subway". Of course, WoW has an
underground ride, but the entertainment value is way different.



Game controls - mouse and keyboard, movement is done by arrow
keys (WASD), along with point-and-rigt click mouse control. Space key
causes jump. Jumping is functional - you can go over low fences and
hedges. Jump while on horse is also available, but only in moving. The
horse is not a flee, it only bucks if you attempt to jump from a still
position. Pressing left mouse key results in camera rotation, moving
mouse with right key pressed aligns your character with view line and
cancels its previous movement (e.g. by point-and-click). Simultaneously
pressing both left and right keys causes your character to move in your
view direction automatically. In general, the system is very convenient
and well-thought, mouse and keyboard commands are combining well and I
had no discomfort. Automatic path search is very raw so far,
point-and-click on a remote point may cause your character to lose his
way, take a wrong route. This is especially true for horse riding - it
can even turn into opposite direction or start to rotate. Hopefully,
this is a temporary inconvenience.

Skills are called by numeric
keys - 10 generic + 10 more are called by using Shift option. The main
menus are related to keyboard in an LA2/Aion style; as in Aion, Z button
switches weapon if the inventory has a number of them of the same type
(the weapon type is switched automatically when attacking). Chat window
is opened by Enter key. The chat modes are familiar - regular, shout
(/s?), private (/w), party (/p). There are text commands to invite and
expel party members or call a variety of emotes (/yay, etc).



A question arises - what does ArcheAge's gameplay look like? Is it a
soft lamp of LineAge2 or cold crystal of WoW? Certainly, the first steps
in the game cannot uncover all its aspects, but basics of PvE and
questing are already apparent.

My first main feeling in the game
was something almost forgotten after the projects like Aion and Tera -
equipment freedom. Yes, your character can (and should) utilize any
kinds of weapon! In Aion, available armor and weapon are restricted just
to a couple combinations out of all the variety (though there are even
more serious shortcomings), in Tera, the weapon is explicitly bound to a
class that takes out any flexibility from you. Mage = disk, priest =
staff, mystic = clubЂ¦ No variation allowed. Compared to all this
nonsense, characters in ArcheAge enjoy very nice freedom. Continuing the
idea of the flexible class creation, the character comes into the world
literally equipped to the teeth with various weapons. My mage (one of
"pre-built" classes) had with him a two-hand club, a short sword, a
shield and a bow. And he was proficient with all the above! In addition,
he had in his inventory a less useful for a mage musical instrument (a
minstrel's "weapon").

All classes in the game have a basic set
of attacks; among those - melee strike, ranged attack, musical
instrument use. The character carries his melee weapon (if it is
one-handed, a shield can be added) and a bow on his back. Weapon type
switches automatically depending on attack type and skill used. There is
an auto-attack option but it cancels any possibility to use ranged
weapons in melee - the auto-attack forces melee weapon choice. This
complicates kiting but still allows some ranged skills. It is
disappointing that the automatic weapon toggle effectively precludes
kiting with a bow under conditions of a heavy lag. Also, the auto-attack
malfunctions if your character is not correctly oriented; the avatar
does not turn toward the enemy automatically that might be just a bug
for now.

Physical damage in the game comes in three varieties -
piercing, slashing and crushing. Any weapon piece has a description with
percentage of each factor. Most weapons have single attack types - 100%
piercing (e.g. rapier), 100% slashing (sword), 100% crushing (club,
staff, etc). Interestingly, a bow has 90% piercing and 10% crushing
attack. In addition, each attack type has its potential effects - for
example, a crushing hit has a chance to stun. Probably, armor also has
different defensive characteristics against various damage types.

The
fights consist of targeting the mob and applying on it all available
hits and skills. The battles are easy at the beginning, and not as
long-lasting as in Aion. The monsters are not very intellectual too.
During the battle, HP and modificators (buffs, debuffs) of the player
himself and his target are displayed, a line of casts is running. When
the defeated monster falls on the ground, you can mouse over it to check
loot presence (if present, the arrows changes to a bag sign). The loot
does not drop on the ground, instead, as in WoW/Aion a window appears.
Everything is done traditionally. The drop is familiar - quest items,
resources, items (fulldrop).

First quests and battles are
unremarkable, such ones can be found in any good MMO. Everything is
understandable without translation - gtt a task, attack first mobs you
see, collect loot, distribute it to the needing ones in the village.
Quest dialogues display reward and number of required items as well as
some other conditions. To teach you extended game possibilities, some
quests require you to climb a tree, to help an NPC, to build a home etc.
As far as i see it, there will be many quests and in addition - a story
line will be present in the game to build an atmosphere.

If
your character dies, he resurrects at a special obelisk. There is no
death penalty, but there will be equipment deterioration. Next to the
obelisk a servant can be found who will provide you with a defensive
buff for 66 copper coins, which lasts for an hour. In addition, every
class has a basic skill of return to a binding point (Return, 30 min
cooldown) - identical to Aion. The binding is done by interaction with a
characteristically looking pole (not an obelisk), also almost like in
the above-mentioned game. The binding was provided for free in the test,
but not every pole lets you do it. In the description of the skill a
"current" return point is mentioned, where the character is sent to. If
your character dies in a remote location, there is a choice - to
resurrect at the closest obelisk or to go to your binding point.

A
faction system is apparent in the game, however free PvP was declared
and RvR system is absent. Whatever the actual intention is, all players
and NPC belong to their own factions (and those for Nuian and Elf are
different). Relationships between factions can be friendly, neutral or
hostile. Friendly ones are marked green, neutral - white, hostile - red.
No difference between green and white signs was mentioned - both can be
attacked in PvP using Ctrl-F.

It was declared that for killing
other characters (PK), the perpetrator will accumulate some analog of
karma - crime index. No details are available yet but probably its
amount will depend on level difference. After its value hits 100, the
character will be automatically teleported into a jail and debuffed for
30 minutes making impossible for him to use any skills. While in jail,
the crime index will gradually decrease and when it vanishes, the
character will be freed. How much time will it take - this is not known
for sure, but developers hint that there will be some ways to escape
from the jail.

The game suggests a variety of social elements
and importance of team interaction (particularly for ship sailing),
however in this particular test the socio-political system was in its
infancy. A basic possibility to form parties does exist, but there were
no named monsters, epic or raid bosses. The guild system was also
non-existent. It would be natural to guess that the facets of social
interactions will be a focus of the third stage of closed testing in
Korea.

Overall, the game is ordinary-friendly to a gamer, its
simplicity and convenience are most reminiscent of Aion, however monster
fights are simpler - in this regard the game is closer to WoW (speaking
of regular mobs, of course). There is nothing of harsh and inhospitable
sandbox where sullied and impoverished characters have to wear rags,
search for hidden NPC, guess actual meaning of quests, and fight by
rusty axes, risking to lose all their hard-gained possessions in an
event of death. Comfort and convenience of the gamer are a spotlight in
this game, along with diversity of the game content. This should attract
both hardcore (due to sieges and PvP) and casual gamers (due to the
absence of significant death penalties, presence of PvP-free zones - at
least at the beginning - and a simple, understandable and hint-providing
gaming process).



Development and leveling of a character in ArcheAge has its own
specifics related to the system of free choice of classes and skills. As
I already mentioned, there are 10 skill trees - combat, witchcraft,
invincibility, magic, bow shooting etc.). Each class possesses 3 out of
these 10 trees so the overall number of classes in the game is 120
(number of combination by 3 out of 10).
At initial character creation, you choose 3 active trees, and the
first level character has one skill from each tree. The basic stats in
the game are STR/DEX/stamina/INT/spirit. Unlike in other games, these
characteristics are not fixed but develop with character's level. At the
beginning they are all equal to 10, and each new level increases them
by 2. A variety of parameters of your character (HP/MP, strength,
evasion, critical hit probability, magic etc) is calculated from them.
The basic stats can be increased/rebalanced using appropriate equipment:
the better quality of an item the better are bonuses. Magical weapons
and armor give big INT/spirit bonuses, melee equipment - STR/DEX. Also,
passive skills from different skill trees may affect the stats too.

Skills
are learned from an instructor using Skill Points - studying one new
skill costs exactly one point. SP are acquired when a character levels
up, but not every level. To increase the level of an already known
skill, you will need some money (and the price is quite perceptible).
Now all skills can be learned from the same instructor, who also
performs changes of skill trees (you can disable any one of original 3
and add instead any other). The level of the skill development is
reflected in your character info window whereas skill window displays
all possible skills for the present trees. The skill description
includes info at which tree level (not the same as character level!) it
becomes available for learning. The skills are many, now already about
ten in each tree. I got a feeling that you will never have enough SP for
all of them and you will be forced to choose which particular ones to
learn, that should determine your character built-up.

An
interesting peculiarity is skill tree switch. In the game, in addition
to the character experience gauge, each tree skill has its own leveling
gauge. In the beginning, they fill out equally and simultaneously with
the overall character experience lever. In this situation, when
character breaks next level the trees automatically get the new level
too. The growth of the skill levels does not depend on particular skills
used, all of them grow equally:

After switching the trees, the timing breaks. The switch can be done
easily - just asking the instructor. In the skill exchange window you
choose one old tree and one new, and then pay 8 silvers (not exceptional
money, even for a noob). The old tree will be disabled and its SP will
be returned to the character (if there were 3 skills learned, the
character will obtain 3 SP), then the new skill tree will appear. If the
tree was never used, its development level will be 1 and the lever will
be empty. Apparently, at high levels it should cause significant
weakening of the character because of the uncompensated loss of the
skills. Now with experience accumulated this tree also starts to
develop, and because of its low level it does so much faster than the
older, already developed skills. No limitations and penalties was found,
the skill tree exchange does not force you to go back to low-level
locations to use its undeveloped skills on weak monsters. However, while
this skill tree is undeveloped, it simply does not give you much
advantage in a battle. Once again, availability of skills for learning
is determined by the level of the corresponding skill tree but not by
the character overall level.

If you plug in a skill tree that
has been developed and used before, but was disabled at some point, a
similar process takes place - the skills of the outgoing skill tree
become removed, SP for them are returned to you. The re-installed skill
tree gets activated with all its skills in a not-learned status but
available for re-learning (for the recovered SP). All paid skill
improvements remain valid, i.e. after skills are re-learned they appear
at the same level as they been unlearned. Such a system allows to switch
between skill trees deliberately, losing nothing except the switching
fee. However, because of the reset of the skills, it is not a one-click
process (as subclass switching in LA2, for example) - you will have to
spend some time to restore deactivated skills. The icons on your
quickbar don't get lost in the process, you can just use separate
quickbars for each particular skill set, without their re-arrangement.
It seems that developing a character with all skill trees leveled up to
the maximum can be feasible.

The rate of leveling isn't clear so
far, initially it is fast, but quickly de-accelerates with level growth.
After 4 days of the cbt, one can see characters of 25+ level while the
level cap is about 50 for now. I do not know if the rate was
intentionally increased, but usually it is not the case because one of
the targets of such tests is to measure actual leveling speed. At first
glance it looks too fast, especially taking into account the size of the
areas devoted to levels 1-30.

In the game, big attention is
given to non-combat interactions with the game world. Next, after the
open class system, a distinguishing feature of the game is a very high
degree of interactivity with the world. Indeed, you can climb trees,
ladders, ropes. Also you can plant trees and other useful vegetation,
collect harvest and other resources, build ships and houses. Sure
enough, there are still many static items and buildings in the game -
you can't climb every single tree or ladder but only specifically
dedicated interactive objects. On the positive side - they are not few
but quite many.

One can expect that the development of
interactivity will inevitably cause some sensitive moments and
unexpected problems, therefore I am glad that finally a team of
developers has risen, which was not afraid of the difficulties and is
prepared to introduce a new degree of freedom of interaction with the
game world in a MMO. Already now, first difficulties were identified and
workarounds found. For example, to plant a tree, a model of the tree is
displayed in front of the gamer, surrounded by a standard frame of a 3d
editor. You cannot place the tree anywhere - the color of the frame
shows you if the planting is permitted there (green - allowed, red -
forbidden). If the color of the frame permits, the gamer can affix the
tree on the chosen spot, set desirable rotation angle around vertical
axis and confirm the planting. Then a small bonsai-like tree actually
appears and starts to grow slowly.



I did not have enough time to try crafting, but it is apparent that a
great deal of attention is devoted to this aspect of the game. Like in
Tera, there is a variety of crafting skills separated into 2 big groups -
collection and processing of raw materials and also item crafting. Each
craft requires its device - workbench, mannequin, kitchen or furnace.
The devices are situated in craftsmanship areas of castles, cities and
villages, but can be also put in zones of private construction - i.e. in
an open space. To learn a craft, recipes are used; some of them are
sold in specialized shops along with the required components (money
sink). It appears that the unique for ArcheAge characteristics Labor
Power is the craft currency. It accumulates up to certain level with
time, even while the character is offline.

Each craft skill is
developed separately which is figuratively displayed in skills window by
an empty development path next to each skill. During the test, there
were no limitations on resource collection - low-level characters could
pick up resources in middle-level locations. Most probably, the system
of harvesting and craft is far from finished, otherwise it remains
unclear why resource gathering can be leveled up. As it stays right now -
it is a cheat opportunity when noobs can collecting precious resources
in high-level zones and sell them in stores for big money instead of
grinding starting quests for pennies.

The money in the game are
made by WoW blueprint - these are copper and silver coins. Logic tells
that golden ones will be introduced in future, but right now they are
absent albeit some prices in shops exceed thousands of silver. In the
beginning of the game, you can make money by selling resources to NPC
stores and doing quests. There are traditional shops in the game, where
you can buy some items or sell your junk. Conveniently, when you NPC an
item, you can Repurchase it, if it was sold by an error. The sell/buy
difference is of factor of 2, i.e. if you buy something from NPC, you
can sell it then for half the money (hello from LA2 economics).
Interestingly, that info on items in your inventory includes their price
to sell to an NPC shop (for those that can be sold). For stacking
items, a price of the entire stack is displayed. Nice touch.






Overall view of game screen.
In my opinion, the interface of the game is very good. It is
convenient and minimalistic, and looks stylish. As opposed to Tera
interface, which is crowded with tasteless awkward heraldics and other
excesses, the ArcheAge UI is "fantasy"-neutral. Its gaming purpose is
only visible from skill icons. An interface like this can suit any
modern software or website. It is slim, contains no distractions and
takes possibly minimal space on the screen. I would like to compare it
with Google Chrome browser interface that demonstrated to all other
browser manufacturers that the screen should not contain anything but
address line and narrow band of tabs. In ArcheAge it is like that. I
sincerely think that designers of user interface from Tera must sign in
for usability courses at their colleagues from XLGames.

The set
of windows is traditional - character conditions, target bar, chat
window with tabs, inventory, skill list etc. All popping-out windows
have variable transparency, almost any of them can be turned into a
transparent state. Some windows change transparency depending on focus -
active window is denser, inactive - transparent. Therefore, there is no
separate transparent map, just the main map can be turned transparent.

The
upper part of the screen contains an unobtrusive status bar displaying
Labor Power on its left and the geographic position of the character -
zone name (e.g. Solzreed) and sub-zone (e.g. Newbie Village):

The
Labor Power element gets the same naively-excessive attention as DP
parameter in Aion. It looks like the designers introducing a fancy new
parameter try to represent it as a cornerstone of the entire gaming
process that must be displayed permanently, higher and bigger than
anything, even than the life level of the character. We will see if this
is true.

On the upper right, a string of icons like this is placed:

These are keys to call basic windows and menus - character info,
skills, knowledge base (details below), quest journal, inventory, craft
list, map and system menu. Further on the right there is a button of a
drop-down menu with the same options. Right corner is occupied by a
clock (real time).

The info window on character, inventory,
skills and crafts appear on the screen both at the left and right taking
all its height. Numerous parameters and stats are grouped by meaning,
skills - by corresponding skill trees. The windows design is slick and
minimalistic. A curious solution was used to display character's
equipment. Instead of a separate window with a 3d paper-doll, (or an
ugly silhouette as in Tera), the actual view of the character on the
screen becomes surrounded by two strips of icons representing equipment.
Very efficient and meaningful - why display a separate character view
while it is already in the middle of the screen! Very nice decision.

There is a default quick-bar with skills on the bottom of the screen, for numeric keys 1-0 and their Shift variants:

It looks quite convenient, albeit another option exists with a more traditional multi-raw view:
Below
the quick-bar, there is an EXP gauge over entire screen width.
Interfaces of quest, dialog, and shopping windows do not differ markedly
from their cousins in Aion, Tera, etc. They can be seen on many Korean
screenshots.

Technically, the interface is built as a set of
scripts from Lua language, having various access to the main program
core of the game. On one hand, this gives a potential possibility to
write extensions and modifications of the user interface (with or
without permission from the game publisher). On other hand, the wide
possibilities of the open script system will be used by people to create
convenient PvP radars with auto-spam of potions and other lovely
features of a modern MMO game. At the moment, the game is protected by a
GameGuard-similar system HackShield developed by Korean company AhnLab,
but its potential to stand against collective creativity is, carefully
speaking, doubtful.

Also, a web browser Awesomium is built in
the game (a gaming-oriented version of Chromium). It allows for
introducing accurately any extra content into the framework of the user
interface. At the moment, the browser is used to display an additional
info on the game and quests, its page design fits the game organically.
What can I say - such a solution has been in the air for a while and was
long due. I do not know if it will be permitted in the future to twit
or use FaceBook directly from the game, but for now the browser
functions just as a supplementary database for the game only.



In essence, this is all what I can say about the game based on my
short playing session. It is true that the game did not disappoint by
its graphics and atmosphere of the first impression. Gameplay looks
quite regular; an extended interaction with the world and big politics
are considered to be the main selling points of the game but this is too
far away for now. As of today, there are all signs present that the
game will be playable and interesting.

Unequivocally, the
approach with class flexibility and interchangeable use of weapons is
very welcome - this is a shortcoming in other big modern MMO's (Aion,
Tera). Probably, in the future this may cause big insoluble balance
problems resulting in a limited number of classes actually worth
playing, but at the moment this principle looks very promising.

I
was very-very glad that the developers had enough audacity to break
away with the long tradition of the minimally-interactive MMO worlds,
outrunning the competition. It is even more enjoyable that this was
implemented within a big-budget project that put the visuals of the game
on the highest level and provided variety of the game content.

The employed video engine CryEngine2 together with the scrupulous work
of the Korean designers and developers allowed to create extremely high
quality of the imaging and a believable world with realistic lighting
and powerful physics.
Among deficiencies, a poor network code
optimization can be mentioned, which causes me to feel ArcheAge much
more laggy than its competitors at higher network loads. The network
traffic isn't used optimally (the game consumes about 2 times more
resources than Tera) that causes uncomfortable delays on limited
connections or on remote from server sites. I hope that eventually this
problem would be solved.

Also, the game inherits innate
graphical shortcomings of CryEngine. The engine cuts off the level of
detail on some objects too often. As a result, on parts of the picture
the texture quality looks more reduced than expected. The engine also
displays characters hair in a peculiar "plastic" way. Nevertheless,
given the early stage of the particular game version, these defects are
explicable.

No less unpleasant serious difficulties may await
users of "weak" computers that lack operational memory. The quantity of 4
Gb RAM becomes not adequate for such busy locations as Marianople. It
is evident, that the game came really close to the 2 Gb limit for 32-bit
Windows processes. Its client even includes specific means to push this
limit to the maximum possible 3 Gb. However, consuming almost 2 Gb
memory, the game in 32-bit mode in complex situations puts a significant
toll on input/output RAM processes. Computers with only 4 Gb RAM, have
almost no space for disk caches, which complicates resource uploading.
Clearly, no less than 6 Gb RAM should be recommended to allow the OS
cache more data. To play at higher graphical settings, it is better to
get concerned with an acquisition of the best video card possible. It is
good the game is going to be published later than in the middle (or in
fall) of the next year and will come to the Western countries only in
2012 - the hardware manufacturers have a time to issue something new,
and the price of the devices will drop significantly.
A global
solution might be a 64-bit version of the game client. This would allow
to use the entire potential of computers with RAM of 8 Gb and higher.
Unfortunately, we do not know if the developers have any plans for this.



All in all, it looks like one of the best Korean game projects of the
modern times, which is easily able to compete to the equally ambitious
Tera project. Lets hope that its gameplay and socio-political system
will not disappoint, so that the game has a bright future.

The
game was tested with a computer having Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 processor
at 3.16 GHz, 4 Gb RAM, SSD Intel X25-M disk, and NVidia GTX 280 video
card. This system allowed to run the game comfortably on Very High
settings at 1920x1200 pics resolution, except while in Marianople zone,
where a deficit of RAM and a limited video card performance become
apparent. A very low player density is also worth mentioning - just 1000
ppl for the entire big game world. In real situation at big population
densities, the game will ask for more serious resources.

Second Beta Test review of ArcheAge by Thisisgame.com

---

The second closed beta test of ends today. Ordinary UI, life on sea, combo battle system, impressive local music and so on are introduced at the 2nd CBT.

---

Impressive Music, But Needs More Optimization

provides impressive background musics for each territory or place. For
instance, harsh wind can be heard in the Sandstorm Plain so players can
immerse themselve in the game. But loading nearby objects and places as
we move across the locations caused a huge lag. Especially the loading
speed could not catch the speed of a stagecoach which drives players
from a town to another so screen was frozen and only sound was heard.
Even taking off from the stagecoach was hard to do due to the heavy lag.
(I don't agree, to get off the stagecoach, you need to press "space", no lags can prohibit you from pressing "space" - RomTim)

Although we are well aware of that it is still being under development, the lack of optimization was inconvenient.
optimizes nearby objects by reducing the number of polygons, but it was
too awkward. The objects got optimized looked so bad. The object kept
changing its appearance when just zooming in/out the view ponit and got
even worse as the character moves. It is just a minor issue, but it
definitely bothers immersing in the game .

Coarse grasses

---

Battle System Like An Action Game

's battle system works based on location and direction. It is very similar to the battle system of . Like , messages like Ђ˜too far away' or Ђ˜wrong direction' would be notified if players cast skills at wrong position.

The
character's action motion got improved much better compared to what
used to be in the first CBT. But the character's attack motion, damage,
and the reaction of the monster did not work simultaneously and skills
released little bit later.

Direction and distance needs to be correct

If we say 's battle system is like a chess game, 's battle system would be a chess game with action thanks to tons of skills and status effects. The skills in
provide unique status effect such as normal, down, aired, fainted, and
so on. Some skills will damage double to downed target and some will
thrust the target away. So there would be so many different combination
skills and their effectiveness might vary extremely. Only 6 instant
skills that are well ordered can damage 100% while more skills without a
strategy would result just 30~40%.

All skills have unique status effects.

The
horseback battle did not change a lot from what used be in the first
CBT. It is unfortunately still less effective and less immersive.

---

Warfare at Sea

made awesome warfare at sea
although it is not even a voyage MMORPG. Players can construct their own
ships at dock with a floor plan just like building a house.

Keel is set to be constructed.

To
construct the ship, the labour point which fills as time goes by is
needed. A small sailboat needs 200 labour points and can be constructed
alone and with hands of other players which will result much faster
completion.

After constructing the ship, the owner can summon it
with a sextant and can drive it with other players in the same group. A
player with a helm will be a steersman, a player with a cannon will fire
the enemy, and a player with a sail can control the sail by clicking
the post. They also can stay in the middle of the sea by casting an
anchor and move across the ships by laying a plank. In addition,
navigating the ship was pretty realistic.

Point of view of a steersman. The POV also tilts as the ship changes its direction.

Bombardment
was non targeting but the anticipated spot and the trace were displayed
as a guide. Ships can be destroyed as its HP gets reduced but the
detail partial destruction was not developed yet. Oh, cannons can be
destroyed since they have independent HP.

Awesome effect.

A guide line is given for bombardment.

POV of an artilleryman.

---

New Race for Next Test

The overall 2nd CBT of
was good enough to give more expectation for next CBT. Personally, I
wished to commit some crime and get into a jail but I did not have
enough time to do it. At the closing party on 4th day of 2nd CBT, new
race was introduced. I do not know what they should be called but they
are good-looking and cat-like kind. They will be available at the 3rd
CBT.

New race for the next CBT

XL Games' third-generation MMORPG ArcheAge is scheduled to start its 3rd CBT on May 24th and going for six days. The 3rd CBT will recruit 5,000 test players from now on.
Players in the 2nd CBT said they experienced an unprecedented sea battle and house building.


During the 3rd CBT period, some industry insiders will be invited to experience ArcheAge. And the developers will also ask these people for their valuable suggestions.

this game really have immersion i think and the feel of a new gen ultima online.
will be looking forward for this game ^^

Yea this one really has my attention

Ship construction and house building are two important part of the gameplay of CryEngine 3 MMORPG ArcheAge. Known as labor system, ArcheAge fansite AAportal today gives us a preview on this feature.


To join naval war you need to build a ship first. You can buy the
blueprint from npcs at the docks, and advanced ships cost you more money
and resources. After you get everything ready, the building process
begins and it's in real time.


The control of ships is not simply done by clicking the 4 arrow
buttons. You need a group of other players to take care of the sails,
cannons and the captain to handle steering wheel. The more advanced the
ship is, the more crews it needs. Besides, the tidal current, wind
strength, angle of the mast and the law of inertia are something that
can affect your ships.
When entering the combat, you can use the cannons to attack as
well as board the enemy ships to take them down. The ships and the
cannons have separate HP.



The preview of house system is based on West&East continents and
the situation on Northern continent could be different. Houses can vary
from size, type and architecture, and once it's built it can't be
cancelled. House building is similar to ship building where you buy
blueprints, prepare for resources and wait for it. You can then start to
think about decoration when your houses are finished since the game
allows you to craft various furniture. And it's possible to plant trees
and grapes outside your houses. Because of the lack of restriction at
the beginning, some players even grew trees on the road which was quite
ridiculous.
You can read more about the labor system at AAportal.

ArcheAge Unveils Battlefield & Prison-break Systems












The next-gen anticipated project ArcheAge from Korea-based XL Games
has recently unveiled two latest systems – the battlefield system and
the prison-break system. The two systems are both derived from a novel
that the South Korean writer Cheon Min-hee wrote for ArcheAge, and cover
siege battlefields, prisons and criminal courtrooms etc. Prior to
ArcheAge's third CBT, let's take a sneak peek at the two mysterious
systems!



Battlefield System - A Platform for Sieges

The battlefield system of ArcheAge is different from
those of other MMORPGs, and is mainly characterized by sieges. Each
siege in the game falls into three parts, including Skirmish, Counter
Attack and Holy War, and strives to give players stimulating fighting
fun with the help of powerful CryEngine 3.

However, only those hitting the level cap can experience
sieges. Players hitting the level cap can find the corresponding NPC or
locate the sign-up center in the UI to apply for participation in the
siege. Once no more players are allowed to take part in the siege, two
teams will be formed automatically to fight each other.



After the siege ends, players will be rewarded with
honor points according to the scores they received and the number of
foes they killed. The honor points can be used to buy PvP equipment from
the store on the battlefield.




Prison-break System

Featuring a highly free combat system, ArcheAge enabled
players to experience combats in the wild freely in the past two tests.
However, the combat system offered so much freedom that it received a
mixed response: 1) it did provide breathtaking combats; 2) it was an
impediment to players' advancement.



Such a phenomenon will be restrained in ArcheAge's third
CBT, when the prison-break system will make its official appearance. If
players conduct malicious combats or interrupt lower-level players'
efforts to level up, such deeds will be recorded automatically, and when
players' evilness reaches a certain level, they'll be summoned and
tried by the court.

Players will be jailed once found guilty, and during the
term of imprisonment, they won't be able to act freely and their crop
yields will be halved. But prisoners can just break out of the jail, and
once making it, they'll become public enemies and see their names turn
to red.



This system was introduced into the game's second CBT
version actually, but was not made public because the official company
didn't focus on in-game systems at that time.

ArcheAge is going to carry out a 6-day third CBT from May 24 to May 29.

Source: Thisisgame.com

These kind of games take aaaaages ^_^
Gotta love em :P

Mortal was a good go at this type of gameplay, too bad they lacked the resources to do it propperly.

yeh they always take a while and then when they are complete half the players complain about dieing and being grieved, which is why they wanted to play in the first place lol.


Though i guess its never as much fun when its you getting grieved =D As most its more injoyable being on the hilt end rather than the blade.

haha I love it the hard way
In Mortal I've been robbed, murdered, my horse has been killed, my pet had been killed, I've been guard bug abused, etc.
But hell the game was fuuuun!
Nothing was certain, anywhere you go there's risk and opportunity I just loved that.

Like farming up soooo much gold during the night, then walking it over from town to town, straight under the biggest thug gangs nose, but because I had no equips on me I looked so noob that I wasn't worth murdering, even though I was carrying more loot then they had all together haha

"We will show you as much as we can in the 3rd CBT of
ArcheAge!" As the date of the 3rd CBT gets closer, XLGames raise
people's expectations with various video on their renewed official
website of ArcheAge. The 3rd CBT will bring you new contents such as
siege wars, instances and generally - a more polished game. We met Chief
Designer Kim Kyung-Tae to hear a detailed story about the 3rd CBT of
ArcheAge, which will be tested by over 5,000 players. The original is
taken from Thisisgame.com, the translation is provided by AAportal.net.
Q: What is the purpose of this 3rd CBT?
A:
The 1st and 2nd CBT's were small because of the preparing stage of
ArcheAge in them. This 3rd CBT is to show ArcheAge to more people. We
improved things from the last test feedback, such as quest flow, hit
effects, animations and so on. This CBT is designed for 5,000 people, so
we work harder to match our game to production quality. In addition to
what we have built, we think it's proper philosophy to let players try
new contents and show them. This time, we have implemented adventures,
battle fields, instanced dungeons. We have many other contents which can
not be shown yet because of their low quality, but we want to them to
you show as possible as we can.

Q: What things are most reflected from user's feedback?
A:
First of all, the character becomes more beautiful. Animation and hit
effects get much better. Many users gave feedback about those, so we
have improved that part very much. Even tho this might be compared to
today's many new targetting-way games, we still seek better ways which
would make ArcheAge unique rather than follow other games. Expect a more
beautiful shape of ArcheAge.

Q:
The interaction between the player and the world often caused bad
things (such as blocking roads with trees) at the last test. So, do you
have plan to twitch that part?
A: I don't think the fact
that users can make a house and effect terrain is a big problem. On the
new continent, users will be able to build their house on permitted
area, but not on roads and rocks. However, things that use physics, such
as bridge or wall collapsing in the open world are very difficult to
implement, so we will implement it partially. About the problem with
users planting trees to tightly, so that noone can pass will be solved
with terrain elements.

Q: There was a guiding teleportation system, but few users used it. Any plan to delete it or alter it?
A:
We thought that it's good even if a few people enjoy it, but we don't
think that we have achieved its original purpose. Users demand a
mini-map which would allow you to find a way for yourself easier than a
road-guide, so we have implemented a mini-map for this test. There was a
feature in the road-guide which enabled players to go to places that
they want to go. We think that this is convenient, so we didn't touch
it. (This means, that users can make quest marks to help other users do
them, such as putting up special items, that would help others teleport
to the next quest place by activating them. This was also used as a
trap: You read "Use me to go to reclaim the next quest item fast", you
use it, and you are on some cliff, about to fall, so you lose alot of
time while trying to descend.)

Q: What's the level limit on this test? What contents have you prepared for high level players?
A:
We plan to open the server for 5 days (=60 hours). We didn't limit the
max level, but the published fields are meant for until the 25th level,
so you can reach the 30th level if you invest time in leveling up. We
think that most players will reach the 20-25 levels. We felt that there
were blanks while leveling up between quests in the 2nd CBT, so we have
polished the level up flow to make it better. There are many contents
except for leveling up, so enjoy yourself during these 5 days.
Q: Is there any change on crime, trial, imprisonment, prison breaking system since the last test?
A:
The trial system needs to become better to meet our expectations. You
can be caught or can be chased. The trial will be shown with just a cut
scene for the 3rd CBT, so you can't experience it yet.

Q: Looks like you have focused on the siege war. What's the
difference between the training ground's siege and the open world siege
war?
A: We have implemented a battlefield that can be used
as a small siege war analogue in the 3rd CBT. The open world siege wars
are the end content of the northern continent for hardcore users. It is
interesting to use siege weapons and take down walls in gates in the
open world siege wars. You can experience such things in the training
grounds - between man-to-man combat, you can try out group skills and
siege weapons. There will be bigger instanced battlefields in the 4th
CBT, which will look more like a siege war than now, but for now it is
limited to 10 vs 10.

Q: What are these adventure contents in ArcheAge?
A:
There was a feedback that ArcheAge is too difficult and has a steep
learning curve. Users can't enjoy many contents when they play for the
first time, so we guide new players through quests. When you expand
outside the borders of the quests - you can find other contents.
Adventure contents work by a system of hints: the player can randomly
find a clue or a hint how to find a special place. If you collect enough
hints to find it, you will see a special item or monster. These can't
be found in normal ways, only through the adventure contents, so it is
not related to leveling up, it is some kind of a fun thing. The reward
won't give you a better item than you can recieve through quests, but a
toy item or an uncommon ornament. It's just for fun.

Q: Please explain more about instanced dungeons.
A:
Generally, these are dungeons in which you can enter with a group.
Difficult boss monsters will apeear. You can experience things like
breaking boxes, placing devices, as seen in other MMO's. It will take
30-40 minutes for an experienced user and over an hour for a newbie. If
you get level 20, you can experience PvE dungeons, while battlefield
instances can be entered with the 15th level. Most users will be able to
reach level 15 in one or two days of gameplay, so everyone will
experience it.

Q: There are about 120 classes. We expect special party gameplay. What does it look like?
A:
If you consider a 5 player group gameplay, then it is not different
from traditional groups. But, we don't want the game to require having
special classes in each group, we aant so that players can find their
own style to solve problems and kill bosses with the help of their
various skills. If you do not have a tank in your group - do not worry.
The game is not too difficult, so you can solve quests even without a
tanking class. We do not want to let good equiped players slay difficult
monsters, so the overall gameplay will be around using various devices
and cooperating with other players in the party. In real life, noone
should be able to "tank" a big monster, and instead take it down with
trickery. We want it to be the same in the game.

Q: There might be 120 different classes, but the same
specalization allows the players to use the same skills. What about
enabling players to use new skills depending on their class combination?
A:
Even if you are the same class, you can't learn all the skills. So, you
will have your speciality based on the learnt skills. There are 120
classes, but there will be way more, based on various skill
combinations. We consider to implement a system, which will allow
players to acquire skills based on certain combinations in the 4th CBT.
We will leave the skill choices to players. Not all skills are combat
related, and there will be fun and special skills too. Such as the
drunker having a drinking animation, and bards playing real songs.
Q: What's the flying ship in the videos?
A:
That's just a public way of transport, and it is not a special content.
If we let players fly freely, the PvP system will be ruined, so we don't
consider creating personal flying transportation devices or mounts. But
if it's for going to a tall place, or a safety device for when you're
falling, that might be ok. We'll implement it as a parachute rather than
a ability or a skill.

Q: Are there special contents at the sea?
A:
Every player needs to ride on a ship to go to other continents. The ship
does not limit the movement, but it's a good option. There are great
monsters which can be only found at sea, so you can choose to hunt it
down by riding on the ships. There is practically no limit in PvPing at
the sea with no laws. If castle siege takes place near water, ships can
be used in the war then. The ship is currently a player's item. There
was feedback about sea trade, but there are problems with that, since
the ship is technically a summoned item. You will need to unload cargo
when you unsummon the ship, and that is unconvenient, so we did not
consider implementing that. However, we considered stealing materials,
items, and salvaging ships to take some money.

Q: What's a pirate?
A: If you kill a friendly
player, which is on your faction side many times, you increase your
crime output. If it goes beyond a certain rate, you will start belonging
to the "pirate" side. Pirates are enemies to everyone else, and anyone
can attack them with no penalty, and vice-versa. Pirates are more like a
3rd side, which is at war with everyone, so we will make special
places, where the pirates can live. Usually, you need to enter a special
mode to kill allied players (activating PvP status by clicking a button
to start damaging them), but pirates can attack anyone without
activating any status.

Q: Was there any change to crafting or gathering?
A:
The visuals did not improve much, but many more recipes and features
were added, to help you enjoy the process. There are still many things
not implemented yet, but it won't stop you from feeling the crafting
system. For now the main gathering objects are the wood and the stone.
You can level up through gathering, because it will give you exp. You
generally get exp by using labor power, so if your level is low enough,
it would be even better to cut a tree than to kill a monster, because
you will get more exp.

Q: What about the private land and housing systems? What's with the taxes?
A:
There are many housing regions on the continents. If you build your
house in that region, it will become your personal space.If you have a
house, then you'll be taxed. The size of the tax varies over time. If
you don't pay tax, then your house will be destroyed. We consider
letting players construct castle walls around their settlement and
implementing village communities for their villages. For example, if you
plant crops on your private land next to your house, only the same
villager would have the rights to gather it. Houses can be destroyed by
ignoring the tax, but they won't be destroyed by attacks of other people
completely, because you can't guard your house all day! On the northern
continent, players can own land and let other players build their
houses on it, and set the tax for them. If the siege war happens on your
land, the crops can be stolen if you fail to defend yourself and your
garden. But the houses will not take any damage nonetheless.

Q: What is the advantage of owning a castle?
A:
Many things are still not confirmed about the siege war, so I can not
give you an exact answer. Owning the region alone will not benefit you,
you will need to have people living in your region to make money. We
expect this to grow into a political system naturally. Players can lower
tax rate, offer protection or many goodies, but the most important
thing is having many people following you, and living on your land.
Siege wars will start in designated times, and we are still thinking
about rewards.

Q: We have felt that ArcheAge is still far from finishing, so when is the estimated time of arrival of the complete product?
A:
Maybe we need about two more tests. We will try hard to launch the Open
Beta Test this year. You are not forced to play new contents with every
CBT, for example on the 2nd CBT, there was a guild that focused on
planting forests and selling wood. So instead of telling them to go to
war, we want to help them play in their own way - to make their own
gameplay, instead of telling them where to go and what to do. What's
important is to have fun. Every user has his own playing style, so do
we.




Some player has said this on the Korean forums:
Why
does XLGames keep on saying "It's a next generation game", while many
people anticipate, that ArcheAge has made yet only little changes from
other existing games? Why find compromises, that look like making the
game more casual? Aren't you ashamed to put the words "Online game of
the next generation"?

Jake Song has replied to that, that was his first message in the last 6 months:
I'm ashamed. We will work very hard.

when is this game due? looks interesting