Tag: ArcheAge

Next ArcheAge Test Coming August 22nd


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ArcheAge beta tests are like the McRib, they only come around for a little while and the next event is always sooner than you think. Whether you’re itching to get in for the first time or have already tested ArcheAge and are hungry for more (or have to wait out your prison sentence), you’ll be glad to hear that the next closed beta event begins August 22nd and goes through August 27th. Your crops will pick up exactly where they left off at the end of the previous event.

What’s new? Now you can play ArcheAge in English, German, and even French. Beta Event 3 keys will not be valid this time around, but you’ll be able to grab a key from a number of partner sites (not MMO Fallout, we’re not a partner site) in the coming days. Otherwise you can buy into the ArcheAge founders packs and get instant access.

(Source: ArcheAge)

Why Does ArcheAge Have Sixteen Thousand Spammers?


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ArcheAge is currently in alpha stage getting ready for its launch under Trion Worlds. Players are in-game thanks to a $150 package, where they are bug testing, balance testing, and apparently gold farming and spamming in massive quantities. How massive? Trion Worlds banned sixteen thousand accounts for spamming chat and botting gold. In an alpha.

We’re pleased to report that over 16,000 nasty, evil, foul, and most importantly misbehaving accounts have been reactively and proactively removed from Alpha. These accounts were purchased using ill-gotten funds and have been used to farm gold with bots and to spam chat channels, neither of which is allowed in ArcheAge.

Patch 1.2 arrives next week and gives Trion more power to rid the game of evil spammers and farmers.

(Source: ArcheAge)

ArcheAge Criminal Sentenced To 13 Hours Prison


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Criminals beware, you’re in for a fair…trial. ArcheAge has one of the most interesting crime systems that I have ever seen. It is far too complicated to explain in this article, but the gist of the system is that crimes leave behind evidence that can be found by other players, and if you die as a criminal you are sent to a court and sentenced by a jury of five players. As one gamer found out in the alpha test, that sentence can be rather harsh. Especially if you’ve racked up over one hundred charges. As you can see from the screenshot above, the player was sentenced to 770 minutes in prison, or just under thirteen hours.

Prisoners in ArcheAge can either wait through their sentence or try to break out.

(Thanks to DSWBeef for uncovering this, and credit to Reizla in the same thread for the picture)

Awards and Success Are Not Interchangeable


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There is some discussion going around the internet about how ArcheAge has performed and whether or not the game has “failed,” which is most assuredly has by one person’s standards or another. While I don’t know for sure how Archeage is performing following the game’s launch in Japan and Russia, I can tell you that last September we learned that XLGames was laying off staff. We also know that the layoffs and transition to free to play was due to the game’s poor performance as a subscription title and subsequent quickly declining revenue.

A few people are under the impression, and I am paraphrasing here, that ArcheAge can’t possibly be doing poorly. After all, according to their logic, a game that has won so many awards has to be raking in the money. The fact that ArcheAge won a number of awards at last year’s Korea Game Awards means nothing in terms of how many people are playing and, furthermore, investing money. Warhammer Online won nearly twenty awards in 2008, including several “best of 2008,” none of which mattered much when both the servers and staff were gutted shortly thereafter.

The best way to gauge an MMO’s success is to follow its ability to retain players.

Trion Controls ArcheAge Prices


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Anytime you have separation point between a publisher and a developer, the question is inevitably raised as to just how much control the publisher has in the relationship. We have seen publishers take over development of a game from its developers all the way down to publishers only capable of forwarding bug reports to the developers for them to fix. The ultimate answer we seek in judging where the scale tips is so we know who to blame when the things hit the fan and players want to know who is responsible for mucking things up.

In the case of ArcheAge, at least we know that Trion is in full control of the cash shop. As Community Manager Scapes posted, Trion controls the content and the pricing.

“We decide what’s in it and at what price, simple as that.”

You can check out the entire Q&A at the link below.

(Source: ArcheAge Q&A)

ArcheAge Launching 2014, Trion Confirms


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The question of the year for 2014 has finally been answered: When is ArcheAge coming to the west? Trion’s own Evan “Scapes” Berman appeared on ArcheAge Source to confirm that ArcheAge will be heading into beta and launch later this year.

While the tech work continues, the team is also finalizing plans for “early supporter” pre-launch packages slated to be introduced during this timeframe and available for the duration of closed beta, leading into launch later this year.

Scapes went on to confirm that ArcheAge will be free to play while avoiding some of the pitfalls in other territories.

Allow me to say this here and now: both Trion Worlds and XLGames want ArcheAge to be a free-to-play sandbox that fits our “No Tricks, No Traps” vision and will make development decisions for to achieve that goal in Trion’s territories. There are a couple of important recent examples we’d love to share: XLGames has agreed to our request that racial quests grant experience (which had been removed) and that mounts/gliders purchased from the cash shop provide solid value and fun, while earned and crafted items are objectively superior.

A new website for the western ArcheAge release is on its way, with more news coming in the future.

(Source: ArcheAge)

ArcheAge Says Dosvidanya To Non-Russian Players


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ArcheAge is a long time coming to the west, so long in fact that dedicated players decided to forego the wait and jump on board the Russian servers hosted by Mail.ru. Hopefully none of them have spent a lot of money on the game, as Mail.ru has announced that access to the servers will be restricted to gamers in Russia and former Soviet states. The IP block was requested by XL Games and provides no details on whether or not players who have already invested money only to be blocked will be able to receive any sort of refund or compensation.

If only Mikhail Gorbachev were here to tear down this wall.

(Source: Announcement)

XLGames: Goldfarming By Any Other Name


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MMORPG.com recently conducted an interview with Yinzi Cheng of XLGames, creators of the MMO ArcheAge. The interview is based entirely around the game’s monetization format, which Cheng believes makes the game impervious to gold farmers. There are three currencies in ArcheAge: Gold, Arcs, and Crystals. Gold is the usual in-game gold, crystals are the real money currency, and Arcs are used to purchase many of the game’s premium goods. Gold and crystals are not tradeable, but arcs are. As Cheng says:

Gold that is earned from game contents is untradeable.  Arcs could be earned by purchasing Crystals, by enjoying some contents such as catching boss monsters, or by trading with other users. So ‘gold farmers’ cannot produce gold illegally. Therefore, the ‘gold farmers’ easiest way to earn gold, which is auto playing, will no longer bring them profit.

I don’t think XLGames fully understands how gold farmers work. Don’t believe me? When Jagex introduced trade restrictions to RuneScape, players simply converted to a currency based in junk items, allowing them to bypass the system completely. Materials can be traded between players, so what’s to stop a gold farmer from botting millions of gold worth of materials and trading those materials to the buyer who then sells them to an NPC for gold? Arcs are open season for gold farmers to generate in-game, as they can be mined from bosses.

ArcheAge’s non-tradeable gold idea isn’t new, and XLGames should be aware that the process hasn’t done much to impede gold farming in the other titles, like ArcheAge, where despite a strong insistence that the process isn’t feasible, there is quite a variety of gold farming services with varying methods of delivery. The lesson here is that so long as there is a trade system, people will find a way to farm gold.

(Source: MMORPG.com)

XLGames Prosecuting Staff Leaks


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Video games are serious business, serious enough that every once in a while here at MMO Fallout we hear about employees leaking update information to players. Generally this insider information is related to upcoming updates that will cause a rise or drop in the price of certain goods. As for the employees themselves, assuming they are caught, punishment ranges from company to company. Usually they are fired.

In a post on MMO Culture, however, XLGames has promised a very serious reaction. Recently a leak was discovered when several high ranking guilds began hoarding very specific items, with the community taking to the forums to demand action. In response, XLGames has revealed that an internal investigation is going on, with the possibility of criminal prosecution against those held responsible. I assume that the charges would fall under revealing trade secrets. Was it worth it?

(Source: MMO Culture)