Archage - 1 week in game was enough

They say at 50 the game is open and sandbox... from what I hear from others its just grind... But from http://dalewj.com/my-archage-review/ here is my review of a week in archage. I also streamed my first day if you want a feel for the game. From day 1 to day 7 it was exactly the same.

I know there are 2 parts of the game. I only played the beginning theme park part and didn’t even finish it. So this review will not cover the other parts of pvp and raiding and such. I also did not join a guild cause I was never turned on enough to decide to accept one of those offers. like every other game being In a guild does make a change to gameplay.. But why join one if your not gonna stay more then a few days. third note: I was playing arachage (and other games) cause my main game went to shit on an update and I needed to do something. I never went in thinking I would be a long term player unless the game was better then I expected and found it was.List of things good and bad.

• Themepark: First part is truly a themepark. no way about it. you don’t play by the rules you wont skill and be able to move along. Not a day or so, but a good 2-3 weeks of themepark. There should be a method to skip ahead of the themepark. Maybe there is and I never found it.
• Money: Everything is very very expensive to do. Crafting costs enormous amounts for a noob. rasiing animals expensive. The gotcha is everything also costs time. If growing the items to make a very low user craft takes 24+ hours and then the craft costs a weeks worth of money ingame then its too expensive. I see guilds having 1 person who crafts and everyone else pays and finds the stuff for them. Cant imagine having everyone craft.. maybe that’s the reason for the high cost of entrance.
• Korean-English: I was more disappointed in this then I thought I would be. The words are all changed.. fine. No sounds were. the voices are Korean, the quests have the voices turned off because they didn’t start or have time to finish them all. I understand there are enormous amounts of quests (One reason I don’t like the game) and voice work on that would take a half year alone. But hey u bought the game and simply deleted the voices.
• Storyboards in quests: Impossible to read, the font is too large for the area you put it in. You automatically go to the end of the storyboard so its a pain in a half to read them. So what happens. I stopped reading them after an hour. really didn’t care what the story was and that never helps keep people. fix the graphics and fonts an make the storyline readable or don’t bother having one.
• Stupid Stupid quests. ID say the further u get in the game the stupider the quests feel. I had one quest where I got the quest (ignoring the storyboard) and the mission holder to get the XP from (Was over 3500 XP btw) was the same npc. I didn’t even have to move get xp and money. Wow… so many cross the road quests to tell someone something when the npcs see each other, they could have said it them selves. Those quests quickly made the game boring and feel like im not gaining any real experience, just fake stuff. Now did this means that the Korean version had real quests in place of these or is it just a failure of the game as a whole?
• Killing quests: now the killing quests (except for some exceptions) all were go to a field, kill X amount of mobs, and return. The mobs are always at or just a bit ahead of you in HP so pretty much I lined up the weapons in order from range to melee and every battle I clicked on the mob and typed 1..2..3..4..5..6..7..8 Wow that was exciting. I won nearly everyone. Only reason to die is being jumped by more then one (Once a day). Or an occasional higher mob being in the middle of the field and you didn’t see it (Again once a day). I died basically 3-4 times a day overall and death wasn’t much of a loss, you lost less then 100 Xp server time and the cost was 30 minutes in labor points to keep it that way.
• Economy: I did not participate in the economy much because most of what I got I sold back to merchants or threw away. The auctions are empty at the noob level unless you your in an area where they can sell you something at 10 times its value. I quickly decided not to use the auction. Merchants.. some are very hard to find and they are very expensive. The weapons/armor merchants are very rare and hard to find. Transportation is ok by horse, you can jump places but the costs of the rocks in auction is way to high, might as well get XP for your horse for that cost.
• single mob quests: Ever 20 or so quests you get a quest to kill a single mob. 1 guy someplace with 10 people needing to kill him. HE spawns once every 5 minutes and these people spend upwards of an hour waiting for a chance to kill him. Not in line, its a free for all every time the mob appears. VERY VERY annoying. I understand the game is overloaded at the moment but this dynamic is killing the experience and should have been looked at.
• Spammers. OMG they have to take control of the problem. You cant even use the main channel.
• Age of players: Sure they are kids, no duh. Can’t really complain that chat was a 16 year olds wet dream these days can we.
• Final thoughts: It is a very Korean game in feel and sadly I got more of a facebook game feel of it then I expected. I think probably the trio folk bought something that will be a niche market in 6 months. its no WoW for sure. there isn’t enough ability to get out of the themepark like wow. and group quests just aren’t there by level 31. Everything really is just you and 1..2..3..4..5..6..7. And that bored me and I left.