So Lytic’s post got me itching for a quick MMO fix and I wasn’t feeling ArcheAge too much so I found this:
Suffice to say I got absorbed for 4 hours and didn’t even realize it. Also, pickup the Steam version; I spent way too long downloading and repairing and re-downloading patches last night only to realize there’s a bug with the standalone installer.
Well? What’s the verdict on this puppy?
Its pretty great. I haven’t finished the story, still just leveling a character but there’s dailies and tons of bonuses and things to unlock…and I’m still just on a low level character. Haven’t even scratched the surface of the crafting system but it looks fairly deep too.
I go back and forth on this one. It had changed a lot since beta. Micro transactions really put me off though.
They aren’t so bad. The biggest downside is the way the character swapping is handled and in addition to that, bank space. You have very limited space to store items. The bank slots are probably 6 by 8. You can store some stuff in your “Team Up/Sidekick” inventory even if you don’t have a character unlocked for that which is maybe another 20-30 items.
There’s no traditional character menu like in Diablo or WoW. You pick your starting hero and that is permanent on your account (tied to an email address). If you want to play another hero immediately, you’d have to create a throwaway email address and then another account. It does take time to unlock the other characters, less time if you aren’t choosy (Random Hero Unlock is 175 tokens, picking a specific Hero can be 200, 400 or 600). The drop rate on those tokens is about one every eight minutes but you get them from gifts and bonuses like completing the story or logging in X amount of days.
When you switch character, your current character “calls them in” and that’s the only thing that is swapped; your inventory is shared between all Heros. Say you had a Medkit in slot one on Hero 1. When you call in Hero 2, you have that same Medkit in slot one. Same goes for the bank, new characters don’t net you more storage space.
So far the storage space looks like you’d have to buy it with the Shop purchased currency, you do get some as a story or a login bonus (I don’t recall which) but it isn’t enough to unlock another bank tab.
An interesting feature is the vendors can be leveled like in D3. Instead of selling items to them you can choose to donate them and they gain experience based on the value of the item. This can be a bit of a grind at times but thankfully the Midtown Patrol event in game gives you plenty of items to donate. As they reach new levels, you get access to more abilities: you can combine higher level enhancements (gems essentially), buy more powerful items and apply better bonuses to your gear.
Lag can be an issue at times when you are in open areas and there are lots of heroes on screen. I keep my graphics settings turned down for this but it is a server processing issue as well so the slideshow can only be avoided somewhat. Other than those issues I haven’t run into any other negatives yet but I still don’t have a max level character.
When I started playing it randomed a hero for me so I started with thing. That was quite awhile back though. Been getting lots of lag during this midtown event (yes I have reinstalled it thanks dalans). Bought hulk because he’s more enjoyable and tells everyone to shut up. Though with this event I got thing from 20 to 37 in a few hours.
The the Midtown event is definitely the way to go to level quickly, the exp just flows and you can basically follow the group around and just pick up things. That’s both good and bad because I feel like I have to loot everything, go back and sell or upgrade vendors only to have to hurry up and run back out and do it all over. At first I didn’t realize that was the daily event and I leveled wayyy past the story before I realized what had happened. That part might cheapen the story line for some people as I was just walking over enemies at some points.
i’m monkhaus in game
I’m Dalans (of course), I’ll try to catch you tomorrow night. Its NCAAF/trivia/drinking night.
In real life, as well!