Sunday, July 25

Archeage




Development started in 2006, this Korean title has a budget of 25 million dollars and the development company (XLGames) was founded by ex lineage developer Jake Song.

It uses CryEngine 2 so looks good and likely requires an above average system.


The game hasn't been slated for release in the west but the official website recently received an English translation, it's currently in very early stages of Closed Beta in Korea (the developers stress how important it is not to treat this as most CB's but more like an alpha), it's unlikely we'll see it for a long time yet.

There are 8 races (only 2 have made it in to the first CB) and 5 classes, these are: Mage, Priest, Warrior, Ranger and a Custom class, the latter giving you more of a sandbox option. Skills are split in to 10 skill types, you can only pick three from the 10, they are:

  • Combat - melee combat
  • Witchcraft - debuffs and crowd control skills
  • Invincibility - tanking and survivability skills
  • Will - magic damage, buffing and teleport skills
  • Necromancy - necromancy and damaging skills
  • Wild nature - archer and beast taming skills
  • Magic - Magic
  • Assasin - stealthy damaging skills
  • Romance - helpful buffing skills/songs
  • Love - healing and resurrecting skills

That's 120 possible combinations so quite a wide choice for character development/customisation.


The world is reported to be larger than the WoW world and they also intend to make the majority of the world interactive, see a tree then climb it to avoid mobs or just to pick some fruit, or maybe chop it down and use it as a bridge and then grow some new ones.


It has a housing system, you can have your own small house or build a larger house with friends and even create a village, they hope housing becomes important and will also be used as a base for crafting. You can grow crops in your yard and use them for crafting, such as grapes for wine. You can also hire NPC's too look after your house. The developers have stated housing will be limited at release due to bandwidth restrictions, not in terms of mechanics but by how many people can build.


The game has something called 'Labor Power' which is used for crafting and building etc, this is gained all the time (offline too) and can even be borrowed from friends

Armour is reported to be based on kind of damage reduction it gives so all classes can wear any armour type.

The game has mounts, which wont be restricted to horses, and players will be able to engage in combat while mounted.

The game has mass PvP with RvR, nothing yet to confirm whether PvE only players will be catered for.

The combat doesn't look that exciting yet, this is early CB footage so hopefully it will improve.


There are a lot of unanswered questions and the game has lofty ideals, the dev's seem to be playing it cautiously and readily admit they may have bit off more than they can chew, I'd rather hear them say that than pretend they can do it and deliver a bug filled hell hole. A lot remains to be seen but it looks a title well worth watching.

All info courtesy of Romtim over on the archeage forums


3 comments:

  1. Looks very promising! Great screenshots. I am a bit worried it is a Korean game. They play MMOs in such a different way, and concentrate more on achieving and killing than exploring and socializing. But it might be worth trying to beta test *grin*

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  2. Very nice. Hopefully they do better than Vanguard here, because the pics and info is giving me flashbacks to that...

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  3. Ok, so Archeage turns out to really be named after the titles that the members of the team did previously. It's made up of ARCHlord and linEAGE developers.

    I'm going to be incredibly politically incorrect and assume a Korean Grind Fest until proven otherwise.

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