ArcheAge - A new CryEngine3 MMORPG hit?

Article taken

from this International community of ArcheAge.


Today we will talk about the new generation in MMORPG, to be precise -

about ArcheAge.
To begin, lets name the authors of the game. Archeage is being developed by

a Korean company XLGames, which by the way has affiliates in USA.

The head of XLGames is Jake Song. He is very known in the circles of MMO

development. To be straight, it is his games, that became the first

milestone in the evolution of the MMORPG genre. Although there were other

developers of course. Jake Song worked on projects like "Nexus", "The

Kingdom of the Winds","Lineage", "Lineage 2", "Tabula Rasa", "Aion", etc.

Thanks to him, NCSoft published a lot of popular MMORPG's, and became so

famous. In the year of 2003, Jake Song left NCSoft, because of some

tensions with the direction, and founded his own company "XLGames". He is

currently developing the first next-generation MMORPG. The project got

named Archeage, and was announced in February 2010. The first closed beta

test was successfully completed this summer, and the second - in November.

(The budget is over 60,000,000$ Based on the company's own money,

investitions from Giga-Media and money from selling localization rights to

Japan and China. Archeage was also tested on many computers (i tested on 3

different configs myself), and it ran smoothly even being in CBT2. So there

is nothing to worry about, because CryTek failed to optimize their game.

The game can run good on most configs, the minimum requirement for

comfortable play is geforce8500gt and a duo core (tested myself). Do not

forget, that the game will be released in the end of 2011 in Korea, so you

still have plenty of time to enjoy i83 cores and geforces780s )


The developers try to include the best parts of all modern MMORPG's in

Archeage:
A huge, detailed game world; Quality graphics; Massive PvP and sieges;

interesting quests, which will be based on a big plot rather than regular

grind; Raid dungeons; A possibility to build your own houses and towns!

Archeage is created as a Sandbox - kind of games, where the player is free

to do anything he wants in the game world. There will be a plot of course,

but the developers want players to create the most vivid events.

There are 8 races in the world of Archeage: including humans, elves, dwarfs

and ferre (Catlike humans). The races are divided to 2 fractions, East and

West. A long time ago, all races lived on a single continent, but after a

cataclysm, the world got divided. The player enters the game a few thousand

years later after the catastrophe. If you follow the quest plot, you will

learn the history part by part. To write it and the quests, XLGames hired a

famous Korean novelist Jeon Min-Hee. So we can expect a lot from the quest

lines.


The most amazing part, is that Archeage is made on CryEngine 3. When you

look at high res screenshots, made on high graphic levels, you simply can't

believe that THIS will be a MMORPG! The developers already released some

video clips showing the physics of the Cry Engine 2. Unfortunately, at this

moment, the environment destruction physics are enabled only in instances,

while you can still interact with other players in the open world

accordingly. If enabled for the whole world, it will open great

opportunities for tactics in the genre of MMORPG.

The size of the game world exceeds the size of the world of WoW including

all expansions. The interactivity of the world in Archeage is very high.

There is a day-night cycle. One should take a torch with him in case he

gets caught in a dark place during the night. The developers have promised

to implement season cycles. In one of his interviews, Jake Song asked to

imagine a lake, created after someone casted a meteor to hit the ground in

a battle a week ago. It is possible, that things like this await us in

Archeage.


Control of the character is also innovated compared to other games. For

example one can fight mounted on his horse, climb walls and trees, ropes

and build houses. The trees in Archeage grow independently. They have many

stages of growth, and you can see them increase in size in real time.

Players can then cut these trees and build a house. You can also plant

trees, but its way more fun to cut them down. You can place a scout on the

top of a large tree. Then watch your enemies approach and cut the tree down

with the scout!

Its pretty interesting how the in-game transportation works. There are

different types of public and private transport. For example you can ride

in a public carriage or on a horse, sail your own boat between islands. The

developers don't want to implement ways of teleportation, because that will

ruin the feeling of a magnificent world. This can also help solve a problem

with top guilds dominating all over the map - it will be way harder to hold

castles situated long away apart from each other simultaneously.


XLGames have a goal to solve all the problems in the MMORPG genre. There

were many issues in all MMORPG's, for example a dominating clan wouldn't

let any other player develop, because they controlled all the lands

totally. Or for example, the existence of an external market made it

possible to buy game items for real life currency. XLGames say that in

modern MMORPG's such problems aren't solved but bypassed - ignored. For

example, to bypass total chaos in pvp, World of Warcraft made fractions. As

another example, World of Warcraft has instances of the game's world, many

copies of the same dungeon, so that there would be no guild that dominates

the entiere world, so that every player has a chance to get good gear.

Modern MMORPG's are Amusement parks - so says Jake Song. You ride on one

attraction with your friends, and the developers invent a new one for you.

But players don't have an actual choice to make, no freedom. They can only

follow the scenario set by developers.

The main goal of Archeage is to push these limits. Players will make their

own world. If i don't like some player - I will kill him. If he doesn't

understand the lesson, I will set fire on his house, trample his crops and

eat his horse's corpse for weeks! The social aspect benefits from all this.

Archeage is made FOR players, not to get alot of money instantly. If you

want a sweet ride and get top gear doing nothing, you better pick another

game. However, even a casual player, that wants to spend his time with

pleasure, can find his place in Archeage.


Jake Song has a nice opinion about the economy system. As far as you can

judge from his words, there won't be auctions in Archeage. However

everything can be bought and sold - from houses to crops; from food to

weapons, armors and ingredients. This makes the game pretty unique. There

are people, who want to get known not by their skills in PvP, or their

gear, but by their wealthiness and business connections. You can even sell

the world map! This means, that you draw the world map yourself: as you

travel, you discover new lands, and mark different townships, created by

players, interesting places. As there is no mini-map in ArcheAge, maps will

be needed. You will have a set of tools to help you make markings on your

map. This aspect of Archeage gives alot of opportunities.

10 skill schools form up the class system in ArcheAge:

School of Combat Consists of different melee combat skills. Powerful

blows, buffs that increase characteristics, aoe skills and stuns. This

school is oriented on warriors.
School of Witchcraft Consists of many different types of control.

You can slow your enemy or chain him to the ground. This school allows to

cast damage over time spells and summon minions. Looks like THE magic PvP

school.
School of Stuttering has many different abilities, that help the

character survive. Those are skills that increase HP of the player, that

stop the enemies from casting, that aggro monsters. So, evidently, this is

the tanking school.
School of Will consists of skills that increase the characters

mobility. Teleportations, magic resists, silences, hp to mana spells. Looks

like a neutral magic school, that can be used for many purposes. It seems

less aggressive than Witchcraft.
School of Death is interesting thanks to the amount of assault

spells. There is also an AoE skill along with a possibility to summon a

wraith.
School of Wild is unique. This is the only school that fits an

archer. There are many different abilities you use from a large distance, a

way to tame animals, and to increase the speed of your character.
School of Magic is the "classic" magic school. Fireballs, meteors,

ice arrows, magic shields etc. It seems it will be needed for raids mostly.
School of Assassination is an analogue to the Rogue class from World

of Warcraft. For example the ability Raided resembles to "Shadowstep" from

WoW. Different nuke abilities, invisibility and all sorts of tricks that

help survive.
School of Romance has a big list of buffs. Every single ability from

this school magnifies the character and his companions. Maybe there will be

more opportunities for this school in the future.
School of Love ends this list, with a large variety of heals.

However some skills can damage your opponents. For example "Light and

darkness" heals your group members and damages your enemies.


We should let you know immediately, that most schools don't have a clear

focus. The majority of schools have similar abilities. This will greatly

facilitate the selection of the characters build. You can pick only 3

schools out of 10. This way there is an overall amount of 120 combinatins.

Of course not all combinations would be in demand, for example when you

cross a mage a tank and an archer, you won't get something extraordinary.

You can switch between these schools in-game. The process can be done in

the city for a fee. You would need to train your new schools from zero, so

it will make your character more vulnerable than usual, until the level of

the new school meets the level of all other schools. Your character becomes

stronger each time he levels up, however, not only your character will have

levels, also your abilities, schools and your mount. Apart from independent

choice of schools, you will be offered few premade classes. This will be

very useful for beginners.

The combat system works by target. The player has a target, and he will hit

it, heal it or control it. However, there still are aoe abilities, that are

used on the ground. The developers have announced, that the game's engine

already holds a battle of 100 players with no lags. I can't even imagine

how beautiful would the sieges be in Archeage. We don't know yet, how will

the clan wars wark, but we know, that they would be able to create

kingdoms. But there is a small problem. On the moment of the release, there

will be enough housing space for only 50% of players, as far as XLGames

estimated. But thats just a reason to fight for, and is more of a benefit

than a minus. By the way, you can hire NPC's for your house, so that they

sell different stuff or guard it.


Not much information about PvE however, but if they want the best from each

MMORPG, we can suppose, that there would be dungeons with many interesting

bosses. Jake Song repeated many times, that he doesn't like instanced

dungeons, and that he likes a freedom of action. So a question stands -

will small guilds survive in Archeage? If you would need to fight with

other players for each raid boss, it would be very hard for small PvE

guilds.

The developers regularly publish answers to the questions of players on the

official website of the game (Archeage.com). XLGames doesn't want to

disappoint players, so they do not talk a lot about aspects of the game,

which are still in development. However, many information is wandering

around the Internet about Archeage, so you can form up your own point of

view on this game, if you read our website as an example. The only thing

that Jake Song said straight - is that he wants to make a world like in

Ultima Online - where players can create their world and make history. The

developers of Archeage listen to the player's opinions very closely. Jake

Song underlined that XLGames won't do whatever the player says, but they

will take into account the opinion of the players and implement the most

interesting ideas.


Expectations for ArcheAge are already sky-high! Many articles have spread

in the internet on this subject, that tell about freedom like in Ultima

Online, PvE like in World of Warcraft and PvP like in Lineage 2. This is of

course very good, but the developers haven't said anything specific on this

part. A variety of interviews can be interpreted in many ways. So far, we

don't have any information about sieges and raid dungeons - so you

shouldn't draw hasty conclusions. However, in total, Archeage is a very

promising project. A very strong team of developers, who are mostly natives

of NCSoft. A very interesting model of game's mechanics, which includes all

the charm of modern MMORPG's. And most importantly - freedom!

The release of ArcheAge is announced to be at year 2011. However, the

developers can postpone it, if they feel that the game isn't ready enough.

It is very difficult to talk about the game's success. We are taught by

bitter experience. A lot of promising games failed miserably. However we

still place our hopes on ArcheAge, to become the next-gen MMORPG we all

waited for. All we have left is to wish luck to XLGames.


All information about ArcheAge can be found only on

AAportal.net. The administration of this

project are experienced MMORPG players, have relations with XLGames and

spread the latest news on regular basis. Registered users can also upload

their own news about ArcheAge, communicate with other players, who wait for

ArcheAge, and of course put forward their ideas and proposals on the

forums, which will be reported to the appropriate departments of ArcheAge

development.