ArcheAge: Unchained – is the MMORPG Worth Starting in 2021?

ArcheAge: Unchained - is the MMORPG Worth Starting in 2021?

It’s been a long while since I dipped my toes in ArcheAge: UnchainedToo long, perhaps. With the realization that I probably should have covered the game in 2020 now in the forefront of my mind, I thought it was the opportune moment to invite Mrs Stix on a little journey with me. A journey of discovery. Of hopelessness in the face of overwhelming odds. Of.. an attempt at overcoming the incredibly boring leveling experience present in-game and the lack of any player-presence on the way to end-game.

This.. this was our journey.

Let me preface this entire thing by stating that in no way do I feel as though ArcheAge: Unchained is a bad game. It just isn’t. Does it have a bad publisher? Yes, yes it does. Gamigo are known for being a “graveyard for MMOs” while also repeatedly showing utter disrespect for their playerbase, but this isn’t about Gamigo, this is about ArcheAge: Unchained.

ArcheAge: Unchained is a tab-target 3D fantasy MMORPG developed by XL Games – yes, the very same XL Games that Kakao became a majority shareholder in recently. It’s a beautiful game with a seamless open-world to explore. No loading screens pollute the game, with the exception of teleporting, moving between continents, dungeons or instanced events.

Questing has you follow through a fairly basic story, moving from quest hub to quest hub, taking side quests where applicable. You can make it through to roughly level 30 without doing a single side quest however, if you prefer, but after obtaining roughly level 32-33 you’ll hit a wall where the story quests become far and few between, requiring you do substantially more to achieve each level. Or at the very least, that’s what it felt like to us as we played through to almost level 40.

archeage

Thankfully, this linear leveling experience (since questing seems more or less the only way to level) is saved by the engaging tab-target combat. I know, “tab-target, ew.” Some of us enjoy tab-target combat though! And not many MMOs do it better than ArcheAge. From the high quality animations, to the skill effects, to the deep, intricately built class system present – this is an MMO that shines when actually playing it, not when simply observing it.

Speaking of the classes, while there are several base classes to choose from, each player has 3 different skill trees they can spec into, providing a large number of different ways to build your class. This provides not only a lot of customization over who you are – and what you can ultimately offer your group, but also presents unique opportunities to stand out, and gives you seemingly endless freedom to pursue the kind of gameplay you’d like out of the game.

archeage-unchained-enhanced-graphics

So we’ve established that at its core, ArcheAge: Unchained can be a fun game. But one of the things that really kills it for me (well, Gamigo being the publisher anyway, along with the fact that they’ve gone back on their word by charging players for the Garden of the Gods DLC, but again, another story,) is the fact that the game feels so dead. Throughout almost 20 hours of playing the game, we encountered.. 2? people, I think, by the time our journey ended. And… for a game that requires you purchase it first before playing, this is something you wouldn’t know going in, and that’s – I believe, anyway, a very important part of an MMO. If a game is dead, then there’s no point in playing it. The core of what makes MMOs “massively multiplayer,” with the exception of hub-MMOs, is that there are hundreds, if not thousands of players all occupying the world concurrently. This.. was not the case here, much to our dismay.

At the end of the day, while it’s definitely possible to have fun in ArcheAge: Unchained, I can’t foresee myself ever dedicating enough time to it to warrant the initial buy-in, along with the Garden of the Gods DLC and all future DLC (which are much smaller than your typical expansion.) Thus I would not recommend anyone actually buy into this in 2021. There are much better games out there, by much better publishers.

  • author image
    3yearsAAUPlayer Reply
    Feb 21, 2021 @ 13:11 pm

    Its not worth playing anymore because of the unbelievable level of greed and scams perpetrated by XL/gamigo. AAU IS PAY TO WIN and you will never be able to catch up to top players. Gamigo/XL is going forward with server “evolution”, its just a server merge, going down to 4 servers on EU. Here’s the catch: They made people pay for server transfers 30 days before this. What was the point of making us buyi server transfers if you were going to merge them servers in less than a month ?? Also, people paid access to fresh start servers and now they are merging the fresh starts with the other servers. And did I mention they started implementing pay to win items in the cash shop ?
    On AAU you get more labor (like about 35 labor pots more in the paid archepass column) if you pay real money for the archepass upgrade tickets. If they needed money to run the game all they needed to do was make AAU subscription based without the pay to win elements. Talk about idiots managing a game.

    Why people left the game:
    1. XL promises that all future contents would be free if we purchased the game once: FAKE. Garden of the gods and future DLC was as paid DLC.
    2. No pay to win items in the cash shop: The idiots definition of pay t o win is: any items which= can be obtained in game is not pay to win. But labor recharges in paid archepass instantly makes it paytowin. Also, if some one buys something which I have to spend like 3 weeks to get via coins which are gainable via only apass, that’s pretty pay to win to me. Ex: You buy mailbox with cash, I buy it with dilligence coins. Now you can buy another item 80 labor pots with those 400 dilli coins you saved, meanwhile i need to grind my butt off for another 400 dilli and the cycle repeats …
    3. Why the hell you sell paid server transders when you were going to merge the server anyways ?? (scam)
    4. After server merge you will not get any land if you are low GearScore or not be able to go online on that day, I guarantee you.
    5. They destroyed a lot of great classes because they were too “overpowered” which makes ” Archeage letsyou to do anything” promise null and void.
    6. Whatever you do, high Gear Score players WILL one shot you and it may be your own faction player !

    Stay away from this scammy company/publisher, they do not deserve our money or respect !

  • author image
    Elle Reply
    Nov 12, 2021 @ 2:45 am

    I’ve only been playing a little over a year on Akmit server, which I believe is the less populated of the 2 main servers. I started AAU because Aion did away with crafting & I wanted a pretty world with a complex crafting system to satisfy my OCD needs. I was actually amazed at how much more game I got. While I agree with a lot of what the previous comment says, I’ve really enjoyed my time here. I focused on economics & crafting, & it took awhile but I found really choice property locations. I met some really nice people & joined their guild; I’ve normally only played MMOs that my RL friends were playing but AAU solo has been anything but lonely for me. Group sport fishing, playing music together, trade pack runs… maybe I got lucky.

    As far as XP, I have actually never completed my race quest & I’m Ancestral 30 something. I don’t even know. I keep leveling from crafting, farming, gathering etc. I’m still not even halfway through my list of things I want to do/acquire. When I 1st started, the learning curve was pretty steep. There’s SO MUCH CONTENT, at least for me. There’s still stuff I don’t quite understand.

    I’m told there’s a server merge coming, which I’m unhappy about. It means I’ll lose all my precious land. It took me so long to find the right spots. But I’ll wait until after the dust settles to decide if I want to stay or go. So far though, very happy with this game. =)

  • author image
    3yearsAAUPlayer Reply
    May 29, 2022 @ 4:55 am

    OMG! Kakao actually managed to fix Archeage Unchained !!

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