First impressionsEnjoying it so far, even though it's tab target/quite generic leveling. It's probably all the sandbox features that keep me motivated. Leveling is pretty fast, so getting to level cap doesn't probably take a long time. It doesn't however feel grindy even though there are kill x/interact with y quests, leveling overall feels very fluid, quests nicely guide you from zone to zone so you don't need to keep running around for longer periods of time, very streamlined.
While the combat is tab target, it increases it's depth by having a lot of combos, which are one spells reaction to another spells effect. For example if I cast a Lightning Strike on an enemy and then throw a Tsunami spell on him, he'll get extra damage from Tsunami because he was "electricified" by the Lightning Strike.
Here's a nice view of how many combos there is.World is beautiful (something azn games excel at actually), I love seeing player made farms occupy the land out in the open. Housing here is not instanced, so you can see zones where you can place houses all over the world. Even the early level zones have housing areas, although yet to see any player house due to the game just releasing. I took 3 screens of the world, mind you that screenshot quality is pretty bad and I only figured out how to disable interface before the last screen
Spider forest
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loginCool looking arabic themed city
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loginMore of it
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loginI was pleasantly surprised that Archeage didn't go the usual asian way of doing armors/weapons/character models AKA making weapons oversized and and armor bulky and female armor... severly lacking. Instead they picked a more western approach of non-ridiculousness. It's still fantasy, but much less so.
Here's two examples of heavy armor set in Archeage:
For comparison the usual AZN armor set:
While we're at armor sets, every player can wear any type of armor (light, medium, heavy) they want, but each provides their own benefits, for example light armor gives more benefits to caster classes. And while we're at classes:
Every player chooses 3 classes they'll play with. First is chosen on char creation, second at lvl 5, third at lvl 10, so you get them fast. With leveling you gain skill points with which you choose abilities or passives from one of those classes. Obviously skill points are limited, so you will not be able to max out all 3 classes, but instead will have to make a "build" out of those 3 classes. You could make a super hybrid that has a few points in each class, or you could make a very 1 class oriented build, but take a skill or two from the other two classes because they synergize with your "main" class. The classes to choose from are:
- Combat (melee/warrior type class)
- Conjury (heavy crowd control class)
- Protection (defensive class)
- Will (kind of a mix of crowd control and buffing)
- Necromancy (summoner / caster type)
- Archery (ranged/archer type)
- Magic (standard caster/mage type)
- Calling (rouge type class)
- Artistry (buffing/healing class)
- Devotion (healing class)
So taking in account that you can mix 3 of those, there's a lot of combinations to customize your character. Even more considering there's different skill distributions. The cool thing about this: you can change any of those classes any time you want (for a small fee). The skills/abilities of classes level up as well (as you play them), so you cannot switch the class and be instantly supergood at it.
I was also surprised at how good they utilized physics of CryEngine3, considering it's an MMORPG and physics system isn't usually a requirement. Probably haven't discovered all of it, but I did notice the game has ragdolls, character collision (you can actually slowly push someone) and for example rivers have current, so if you jump in one it'll take you away slowly. Other objects like boats have physics too.
Example videos of physics in play:
(boat flips at start)
(pushing boat over land)
