Even if you hate Age of Wushu as a game, there is little denying that Snail Games took the title to crazy town when coming up with some of the more inventive features.

5. Offline Living

I don’t know what my character does in RuneScape when I’m not around, and considering that all he does is look for a rich girlfriend when I am logged in, I think I’m better off ignorant. Have you ever wondered where your characters go when you log out? In Age of Wushu, your character is transformed into an NPC and continues living even when you aren’t controlling them.

Players have real jobs in Age of Wushu. While you are logged out, your character might be patrolling his school, acting as real guards toward players of other schools. For instance, if I logged out and my character worked as a guard, another player would encounter him while trying to sneak into the school. Players are compensated with experience and money for their actions while logged off, whether it be patrolling a school or acting as a street performer for random bits of change.

And offline living leads me into…

4. Kidnapping

Living is harsh in the world of Age of Wushu. In fact, so harsh that your offline avatar can be kidnapped and sold into indenture servitude! Players are able to kidnap offline player characters. The person uses a knockout powder, stuffs the player into a sack, and runs off with them. The kidnapper at this point is flagged, receives a movement debuff (you try running with a sack filled with a person), and can be attacked by literally any player that comes across them.

The kidnapped can’t be moved out of the region that they are in, but they can be sold to other shops as slaves. The effect this has on the kidnapped player is that they log in at the establishment they were sold to, and must either stay logged in for five hours or pay for their freedom with silver coins. They also lose their accumulated offline cultivation gained in their normal job.

Snail Games went a little further by even allowing players to pay for a kidnapped avatar’s freedom while that player is offline, earning chivalry points for doing so.

3. Jianghu/Affinity System

Generally the best you can expect out of a game that leans toward hardcore pvp is a simple flagging system, whether or not that character can be attacked by the person they’ve offended, everyone, or no one. Age of Wushu has taken this to a new level by introducing the Jianghu System. Jianghu is described as a whole social networking concept, and provides a deep link between the player and both their friends and enemies.

There are seven relationship types in the Jianghu System. There are two “friend” modes, friend and close friend, where players gain intimacy points with one another by taking part in activities including sending congratulations, teaming up on quests, and more. On the other hand, players can become enemies or blood enemies by killing one another and raising their hatred rating. Players can see others listed as enemies on their mini-map, and cannot join teams or send gifts to one another.

Then you have followers (think Twitter), acquaintances (people you pass by), and blacklists (/ignore). In order to end a blood hatred with another player, they must have dinner together as per Chinese tradition. You might think that last part was a joke, but it is indeed a feature.

The feature goes even deeper by setting up relationships with NPCs just by doing stuff around them. Simple things like playing music around an NPC might make them hate you if they are musicians and they see you as competition. Many NPCs frown upon players kidnapping or killing each other without justification and will view the kidnapper/murderer unfavorably. NPCs at spectator sports won’t like you if you stand in front of them and block their view, while others will get offended if you get on your horse and stand near them. A good-aligned NPC will frown upon you buying off of an evil-aligned player in his field of view.

For this, the affinity system is essentially the Jianghu system but for NPCs instead of players.

2. Crime and Punishment

Killing a player in Age of Wushu without cause (rival school, defense) adds 400 infamy to your meter and marks you as an enemy of that player. Players can place bounties on the heads of their killers, but only when those kills were unjustified. There are players with 0 infamy that can become constables, hunting down players that have outstanding bounties on their heads. Killing enough constables will lower your infamy.

All pretty standard stuff when you think about it. But unlike your average MMO where your character dies and loses some stuff and wakes up somewhere else, Age of Wushu has taken another step in punishing criminals: actual jail time. No, Snail Games isn’t going to come to your house and take you to real prison (they send your local police out to do it). When killed with an outstanding bounty, players go straight to jail without parole.

In prison, you’re pretty much stuck. Players with orange or red infamy levels can wait out their sentences or pay a hefty bribe to be let go early, or play a game of dice for a lower price to either be let out or lose a bit of infamy per roll. Players can attempt a breakout if they have a group of five friends who are willing to fight their way in to break them out, but it won’t be easy.

The highest level criminal is executed. If you aren’t able to break out (which is much, much more difficult than lower breakouts) and are too poor to pay the heavy fee to bribe the guard, your character is publicly executed. Once executed, the character is set to a very hefty 24 hour debuff.

So you think “whatever, I’ll just log out and get back on the next day when my character is executed.” Well you thought wrong. Punishments are dealt in game-time, and debuffs/jail time don’t mark down unless you are logged in. To give you a better understanding, I like to use this story by an AoW player who killed thirty people to show how rough the crime and punishment system is:

72 hours in jail. I killed 30 people and after that i died to 4 other players and went to jail. Now i need to serve 72 game time hours of jail. I literally didn’t believe it at first, but its true. SO: I play 4 hours a day, that means that i will be released out of prison in 18 real life days, IF i managed to be online all those 4 hours a day, after that i will be executed and i will have halved stats for 24 hour game time. So i’m back to normal in 26 days if i play 4 hours a day.

1. Castration

This one speaks for itself. In order to learn the Sunflower Manual move, male players must first be castrated. The side effect of this is that the character receives a 30% movement reduction for one day of game time, due to the excruciating pain of the process. There isn’t really much to say on this other than to admire the attention to detail.

Oh and luckily the process isn’t shown on screen.