It's still in closed beta and is a Korean mmo that will be made for North America too. But before you get all down on it... go read about it! It might not be for all Wow players probably. But those of us that liked the combat in AC and the talent trees like AC might be intrigued.

http://archeage-online.com/


OK, for some of you too lazy to click the link I will cut and past some stuff.

To make anything in ArcheAge, you need materials. There’s no “god” material like Aion’s “aether” that can be transmuted into other things, so there’s no shortcuts gatherers can take to amass a quick fortune. You’ve got to pick apples from an apple tree if you want to bake something with apples in it. Cut down trees for wood, mine for stone, ore, and minerals, etc. Everything make sense, everything has a place and time and order and use in ArcheAge’s crafting system. Everything costs labor points to harvest or craft.

Real quick, let us define labor points for those of you who are learning about this stuff for the first time: labor points (LP) are one of ArcheAge’s three main character statistics, alongside health points (HP) and mana points (MP). Literally LP is displayed right next to those two stats near the top of the screen.

Labor points increase rather slowly, at a rate of around one per every ten minutes or so, even while you are signed out of your character. Labor points decrease much quickly. Some things, like crafting a simple item, cost 1 LP to do. Other actions, like mining, cost 2 to 3 labor points each attempt, depending on the difficulty of the task (mining minerals is more difficult than mining stone)......


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Before you go off thinking this is some kind of divine gift to bots and farmers, pause and do some math. Even if every labor action in the game cost 1 LP, which they don’t, you’d quickly exhaust your supply of labor by just gathering materials on one character. “So what?” you say. “Just sign on a different character and keep going!” We tried this, and it doesn’t help much.

We used up around 1000 labor points to build a boat by gathering mats, upgrading mats, and finally putting the boat together. CBT3 accounts were limited to 4 characters each, and newly-made characters only start with 10 LP. Once you use up all your characters LP, you might as well just go to sleep for 17 hours until your points are recharged. “Why not just have a second account?” You’re going to pay for that? Really?.....


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Building a boat or a house isn’t easy, and we didn’t have time or labor power to do both during CBT3, so we chose to build a boat. Why? Because boats come with cannons pre-installed. Houses don’t. Boats also allow you to sail between the two currently-available continents. Houses don’t float very well, so you can see our decision was practically made for us.

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Exploring the Sea

We saved our favorite section for (nearly) last. That’s right, we at ArcheAge-Online.com think sailing ships all over the deep blue/black sea was the most fun thing you could do during CBT3. Why? Brace yourself.

Freedom. Sailing a ship, exploring the unknown, discovering deserted islands or pillaging remote villages, this is the stuff children dream of, the kind of basic human desire that pushes people past the accepted limits of reality and puts human feet on the moon. We might be getting a bit too philosophical for our own pants here, but that’s honestly the best explanation we can give.

Owning a ship and sailing it wherever the heck you want, doing whatever the heck you want…it’s a pretty literal dream come true. Most people will never own a boat in their life, much less go wherever they want whenever they want. We did it all.

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Gear in ArcheAge isn’t easy to get unless you buy it from stores or get it from quests, and gear from those sources normally isn’t that great. The best gear is crafted and upgraded with enchantment stones, and good gear (green, blue, etc.) is also rarely dropped by mobs. If you get lucky, mobs will also drop the stones that you need to upgrade your existing gear.

Unlike some other games, you can literally wear and wield whatever you want in ArcheAge. Want to be a axe-toting mage? Then do it, but know that your spells aren’t getting any extra power from your weapon like they would if you were carrying a staff. Want to play a warrior who wears priestly cloth robes? ArcheAge won’t stop you. However, know this: the more of one type of armor you wear, the better the armor performs.
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As for the question of why someone would bother to kill bosses at all if crafted gear is better than dropped gear: bosses drop mats to craft the best gear. There’s your answer. Now you have a reason to do both!

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Let’s get this bit out of the way quickly: if XLGAMES tried to balance every class in ArcheAge, then we’d probably have to wait another five years before the game got released. Balancing classes in ArcheAge just isn’t going to happen, and it doesn’t need to happen, and anyone complaining about “balance” after retail is probably crazy. ArcheAge allows you to choose three professions and combine them to form a class. There’s no limitations. XLGAMES has given us players freedom to choose, and in doing so they’ve necessarily removed their hands from forcing a rock-paper-scissors class balance.

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PvP during CBT3 wasn’t even close to what it is planned to be by retail. Few players bothered to kill each other outside of the 10 vs 10 battlegrounds, but some griefers would habitually destroy a rider’s mount (most mounts could be one-shot at low levels and there seems to be no penalty for doing so). The result was a lot of annoying running back to stables to get your mount resurrected.

Retrievable PK blood splatters were implemented and working during CBT3, as was the trial and prison mechanic, though they’re probably not finalized. We didn’t get to personally experience any of that since we (sensibly) didn’t bother to go on a murdering spree. Remember, blood can only be picked up by someone who’s not the victim, so make some friends before getting yourself killed!


As for battlegrounds themselves, they were mainly for fun and bragging rights during CBT3. How battlegrounds work is this: you get spawned into an instanced map with (hopefully) 19 other players, thus forming two teams of 10. The objective you’re given is to basically carry out a 15-minute arcade FPS-style deathmatch, where every kill gets you a certain amount of points (100). You get 500 bonus points for staying alive the whole match, 500 for killing the most people compared to the rest of your team, and 500 for killing the most out of everyone in the deathmatch. At the end of the 15 minutes the team with the most points (most kills) wins and its members are awarded an extra 1000 points.

map from beta
http://beta.archeage.com/characters/11497/maps


Classes

Choosing a class in ArcheAge is a rather unique affair.

You can choose from four premade classes (Warrior, Priest, Mage, Ranger) or…

…create your own custom class!

Here’s how the system works:

There are ten schools available during custom class creation, but you can only choose three.

Later you can switch schools, but you can never have more than three enabled at once.

You can eventually master a school; however, if you choose to switch one out for another (a very expensive operation) you’ll have to start over as an apprentice.

Overall there are 120 possible combinations available, so ArcheAge has effectively 120 classes!

Each school has it’s own unique skills and some schools work better together than others. Some skills can be combined to do extra damage, such as a levitation bubble and a telekinesis throw.

Here’s a translated list of the schools that were available in the closed beta tests:

Combat (Melee combat skills.)
Witchcraft (Debuffs and crowd control.)
Invincibility (Tank skills for damage-soaking and surviving.)
Will (Magical damage, magic defence, opening portals.)
Necromancy (Necromancy.)
Wild Nature (Ranger and taming skills.)
Magic (Magic.)
Assassin (Burst damage skills.)
Romance (Buffs, singing and dancing.)
Love (Healing and resurrection.)


Teaser:
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Questing in Noobland (level 5)

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/wowclone

 

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looks sterile...maybe it is an early beta.

haha not even close

 

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ROFL! Did anyone notice how the collision detection (blech) pushed her off into a barn while trying to run around it? Graphics don't look too terrible (bout like rift).

 

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Im tired of; "looks promising".

Call me when "looks promising" becomes "it delivered".

...and no..its the same crap.

Ever been to a tourist trap area in like..Mexico. Same crap, different store.. again and again and again....

This.

Don't see how anyone could possibly fall for yet another MMO failure.

 

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Lance you really kicking Rifts graphics when you played that Turd Daoc and also play WoW? Really don't bash on graphics that are better than the games you have played.

Rift looks like an updated Shadowbane

 

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Never heard that before.

 

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