Planet Arkadia: My view on a year of Arkadia

Back when David 'Ozi' Dobson first told us he was going to be building a planet within EU, here on Entropia Planets, I immediately got excited. I did not know Ozi in game and to be honest I had never heard of the guy, but to me he came across like a down to earth guy willing to work very hard and with some nice ideas.

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After the initial news we slowly got more and more info about Arkadia and the A-team, as they were called, communicated with us a lot and asked for ideas and info. This to me was very refreshing compared to the lack of news I was grown accustomed to the 6 years before that.

During the release of the storyline you could tell people became more and more excited about the planet and more info came to us both from David and from Cyrus, the community manager. During this period I had a little contact with Cyrus trough email and PM's and I can say that he was (and still is) doing a great job and up until then he was the best community manager in the game and to be honest I think he still is (sorry Meg, Lykke, Farah, Kim).

Anyway, I went to Arkadia on the first possible day. The days before I started to sell some of the stuff I had in storage and packed up the rest and waited patiently beside a TP to take me to Arkadia. Yes, I say TP, because there was no space yet and we could TP to other planets for a couple of PED.

On the day of the launch I downloaded the planet and took my 1100kg weighing self trough the TP to Arkadia. I ended up at one of the Academies (forgot which one), unloaded about 1000 kg of stuff into the Arkadia Storage and did the beginners missions available there.

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After the missions I started to explore the planet and came across some weird creatures and collected info about them for the Entropia Planets wiki. Eventually I ended up at Sanctuary Cove, which was the main place to be at that time.

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Not sure if it was the first day, but it was during the first few days, but my first global on Arkadia was from the second Huon I killed. Didn't get anything fancy, but it was a good start.

Explored the planet some more until I got TP's all around the planet and I could move pretty quickly.

During the first few days the planet was pretty busy with people coming to check out what Arkadia was all about. Some liked it and some didn't and returned to what ever corner of the Universe they came from. The people that ended up staying loved the planet and wanted it to work, but with a lot of people leaving again, it was hard to keep the economy going especially without blueprints in the beginning and people started to complain more and more people left. One other thing people were complaining about was the lack of missions, shops, apartments, mobs and of course treasure hunting.

Even during these hard times the A-team kept us in the loop about what was going on and the radio interviews with David were a big hit with the people on Arkadia. He answered questions with great honesty and I had a feeling sometimes he even told us a bit to much when he got caught up in his story.

In the next months we slowly (well quickly actually) got new content and updates to a lot of stuff. A big part of the new stuff was the new 'beginners experience” which started with the Quarry and a few updates to that quarry afterwards with shopping booths for instance. After the quarry was added to the game, that quickly turned in to 'the place to be' on Arkadia and was the place all trading happened and all newbies went to to gather and sell sweat.

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The big update came with a very cool beginners area and a huge beginners mission which takes beginners all over the planet and learn them all about Arkadia and how to survive on her and in the process giving newbies some cool items including the Hoverpod. I did that mission with all the skills I have and it took me a while to complete it. I believe, and I heard from lots of people, that this is the best newbie mission/beginners area in all of EU and really gives new players a feel about the game.

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The next major thing were the apartments and we also got a few new mobs (Feran, Oratan Slasher, Ostelok, Scoria, Nusul, Riptor). During all the above things we also, at a steady pace, got loads more blueprints for all kinds of stuff, which got the economy started.

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The creatures on Arkadia look very nice and a lot of attention has been put into designing them and with the update to 2 of the old mobs not to long ago they are at least a bit more different now. I do hope that the cat like creatures (Carabok, Halix, Kadra, Madana, Korwil, Kiana) will get an update as well, to make them not look so similar, but then again, here on planet Earth, there are creatures that looks the same as well.

The last major update brought us treasure hunting (finally) and with it a lot more items we could loot and a lot more BP's we could craft. We now had loads of stuff to put in the apartments and of course there was a interior design competition to go with that. I myself do not have an Arkadia apartment, but they do look pretty nice and it is cool that the top apartments have a roof they can use to have parties on.

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The thing with treasure hunting as it is right now is that is just a more expensive version of mining with the added bonus that you can find items in the ground. I understand that they want to build upon this treasure hunting a lot more with different systems, like instances. This will make it more fun to do and make the planet more different then other planets, I guess we just have to wait a while for that.​

With all the vital stuff now on the planet there is nothing stopping the A-team from starting that add campaign to attract more people, so my guess is we can expect more and more people to come to the planet every time, which will be exciting for sure.

Of course we will also see a lot more content arrive with every update together with more updates. I think we will also get more chapters from that great story line with every major edition to the planet which is something a lot of people, including myself, really love.

If there is one thing that in my opinion could use some work on Arkadia it is the overall look of the planet. As you have seen in my article about Next Island I really love the look of that place and Arkadia just does not seem as nice looking. I also seem to have more lag while playing the game on higher settings then on Next Island.

It looks like Arkadia is doing well, but there is still a long way to go to become and even better planet. To do that the economy needs to become better by getting more people on the planet, which I'm sure will happen in time.

All views expressed in the article are the authors' own views, and they do not reflect the opinion or views of EntropiaPlanets.com as a whole.