ArcheAge is Inching Ever Closer to Shutting Down With Latest Update

I’ve always been of the impression that ArcheAge (and by association, ArcheAge: Unchained as well,) was a very good game.. at its core. It has been so devastatingly mismanaged for years thanks to Trion and now Gamigo however that it’s become a shell of what it could have otherwise been.

Now, this is perhaps the most disgusting news I’ve had to talk about in a while. Regardless, Gamigo revealed last month that they were in the process of merging their 14 servers down into a total of 4. This is due to the server populations continuing to dwindle down over time – which is understandable. The game has limited content and doesn’t receive very regular updates.

However, accompanying that information was the reveal that they were going to go ahead and release 2 brand new “fresh start servers,” for players to re-roll onto, starting from scratch. Meaning you’d be required to purchase your cosmetic items, mounts and quality of life items all over again on an entirely new character. This has worked in the past because (for the most part,) fresh start servers have been free and mostly painless to transition on over to. Nevertheless, this was a distasteful move on their part, but they were hungry for money, and the game is dying as is abundantly evident.

After announcing the new fresh start servers, they went on to announce their brand new Akasch Invasion patch coming March 25th, that is only available if you pay for it, with the cheapest package being $16 and the most expensive being $60 for Unchained players, and a whopping $150 for base ArcheAge players.

This is an ungodly amount – an amount that is not justified by any amount of content they could reasonably push out in a small update like this, but you know what was even worse? The only way to play on those new fresh start servers is if you purchase this update. Yup, you aren’t just allowed to roll onto the new fresh start server.
So in essence, you have to PAY to start the game again. You have to PAY to replay the same content, with a very minor amount of content added in the update itself.
And the worst part in this entire fiasco? Gamigo are getting away with this and players are no doubt going to pay for it, continuing to fund these ridiculous, inane practices.