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ArcheAge, a true UO sandbox successor?
MMO.Maverick
Member CommonPosts: 7,619
Interesting Q&A article on Massively regarding ArcheAge (source is here), heres some quotes of it:
Massively: We've heard tell that ArcheAge is heavily influenced by Ultima Online in that there is no preset advancement path, players choose skills, etc. We've seen some interesting speculation about everything from witchcraft to wild nature to romance skill trees. Can you talk a bit about the game's unique skills, how they're acquired and advanced, and if there are any limitations?
Jake Song: In ArcheAge (currently in beta phase), there are 10 skill sets. We call these "abilities." Users will be able to create characters by choosing three out of these 10 abilities. Each ability will have levels; when users level-up after gathering experience points, the three abilities will also level-up. Users can change the three abilities any time, but the new ability will start from level one -- that is, the new ability will be of lower level than other abilities that have not been changed. However, by constantly leveling-up, all abilities will eventually reach the highest level. Hence, if users wish, they can fully learn all 10 abilities, although only three can be used at the same time. The cost of changing abilities will be a reasonable amount.
Each ability will have a dozen skills. We are trying to make every skill unique. For example, there are skills such as Floating Bubble, which traps the selected character in a bubble and makes it float in the air for a certain time, and Psychokinesis, which allows you to lift and throw a character. We are also thinking of making some combos between skills. For example, if Shock Arrow is used after Floating Bubble, the selected character will be sent farther than when struck on ground.
Further they talk about interesting stuff like labor power and how they plan to be sandboxy like UO and SWG were:
Fan sites have mentioned players growing and cultivating forests and crops and the official site mentions highly detailed (and destructible) housing. Can you talk a bit about the game's non-combat options? Are you aiming for a create-your-own-content sandbox world like Ultima or Star Wars Galaxies?
Yes, if possible, we want to allow users to freely build houses, ships, and castles. However, because users can get lost not knowing what to do if we tell them to do whatever they wish from the very beginning, we plan to guide the users by providing quests and other contents until they get used to this game world.
We've also heard that there are no armor or equipment restrictions in the game. For example, someone with mage skills can don a chest plate and it will provide them with some amount of protection. Can you elaborate on this, as well as talk about gear and equipment in general? Is gear crafted or looted (or both)? Is there any sort of item decay, and if not, what sorts of money sinks will exist?
We do not want to enforce any restriction in equipment but instead would like to enable and encourage users to choose to wear appropriate equipment by giving benefits and penalties at the same time. For example, mages can wear plate mail, but then, as a penalty, its casting and movement speed will decrease, and thus they will tend to wear cloth.
Gears are both crafted and looted. The durability of items will decrease with usage, and users will have to pay a certain amount to repair them.
For some items, we are considering separating their function and look. For example, a dragon defeated through a raid will not drop a sword with very good stats; it will drop something like a magical essence. The user can take this to the blacksmith and combine it with a sword that has a look that he/she likes.
There will be all sorts of money sinks, from construction and leasing of houses, ships, and castles, to using all sorts of consumables for castle sieges, and so on.
There's also talk about travel and sieges in the article, one last great info bit I'd like to mention here as well:
We recently saw some closed beta footage dealing with ships and a naval battle. Are these player ships and can they be crafted? Can you give us more details about how sailing works? Can you sail between the game's three continents or are there zones/loading screens?
Yes, users can craft and control ships. The ship will be controlled by the user who takes over the wheel. However, because the speed varies depending on whether the sail is put up or lowered, other users' help with the sail will be necessary. Yes, we do plan to enable sailing between the three continents.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Comments
You guys really do a disservice to both the author and the originating website when you copy/paste entire articles onto these boards. "For the sake of convenience?" Really? It's inconvenient to click a link and read an article on the site that published it?
Honestly, I'm not surprised that MMORPG.com allows this to go on, they're not exactly a beacon of industry professionalism, but realize that threads like this take page views and credit away from the people who worked to bring you this information.
Meh.
Shrug. Copying, not copying, I couldn't care less. If there'll be lots more of posters stating what a disgrace it is that the text was copied I'll just delete it and leave the link, no problem that I see.
What I find more interesting is the news itself instead of such petty details.
Heh, yeah, and that's why I'm wary about it until beta news arrives.
It can all sound great on paper, but the devil is in the details and implementation.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
That's great that you couldn't care less, neither do music or movie pirates. Doesn't make them any less douchey though. Carry on with your complete disregard for others, good sir.
If they can deliver what they promise, this game will be my SWG-fix
.... but with better graphics.
For me, feature wise, the mose anticipated game.
Good advice, thanks, I will
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I hear what you are saying but I dont think it will hurt Massively in any way I always stop there for news before I meander over here to see what is enflaming the "10 second refreshing forum chat post highlighter"
here is the link if it makes you feel better.
http://www.massively.com/2010/11/02/massively-exclusive-jake-song-talks-archeage/#continued
Song is the man behind the original Lineage, and he also worked at NCsoft on Tabula Rasa and a Lineage sequel that eventually became Aion.
*sarcasm start*
He's worked on some spectacular games. I'm sure it will do well.
*sarcasm end*
Some of what i read i dont like. The labor system sounds restricting to me. I like how they are going to do the skill system though. Player houses and whatnot sounds cool too. Ill keep an eye on it, hopefully they get the formula right.
Yeah, I'm up in the air about that. Though I do like the idea that players can sell their labor to other players, it will give new players something of value to the community right off the bat. ...Or encourage the creation of many alts, hah.
Sounds really awesome overall. Much of what I miss from SWG. I'll keep my eye on this.
http://mmo-hell.blogspot.com/
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/rejad
Lineage and Aion are two of the most successful mmorpgs of all time.
Also, It's a bit pointless to compare to Mortal Online and Darkfall. Both of those games are low budget trash. Arch Age is a fully funded MMORPG with arguably the best graphics seen thus far, which is a sign of high production values.
Even if that would be true - so what ?
They're both asian style games ... which are not so fun for us europeans / americans.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Those 'low budget trash' games come a hell of alot closer to the likes of UO than big budget horseshit like Aion does.
Oh and graphics quality is the last thing most UO vets will look at when a game purports to be the successor to UO.
I'll keep an eye on it but I have my doubts.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Well, except for me. Lineage 2 was one of the best games I've ever played And I'd still be playing Aion if I had the time to devote to more games than I play now.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Darkfall is absolutely not a UO succesor becouse UO is casual fluff mainstream and to carebear comepare to darkfall.
Darkfall took some ideas maybe from UO, but mainly from AC-AC2-Morrowind-SB and many more with alot of ideas from devs themselfs most have played AC.
Archage sound so asian and i doub the maker of lineage can make a UO succesor it prolly will be more like a asian grinder:P
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Good job OP, interesting info and I see you correctly labelled a reference to this piece, so think that's fine.
As to this game, sounds interesting and they are targetting a western audience. Wonder how that will work as like others I prefer Western developed MMO from my limited experience, but it does look interesting. Wish they would discuss high-level then drill-down details from this summary when introducing a new MMO...
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Doesn't sound like my cup of tea.
That doesn't make any sense. Aion was never even trying to be like UO, it was going in the same direction as WoW and it did a pretty good job at it, unlike both Mortal Online and Darkfall which both failed miserabely as pretty much every low budget MMORPG does.
to Adamantine:
While the graphic style of Aion is eastern, the gameplay and design of the game is noticeably Western.
How exactly has DF failed again? You seem to be under the delusion that a niche focused ffa full loot pvp sandbox with fps aiming has the same qualifiers for 'success' that a AAA mmo linear themepark does.
Again i'll reiterate the fact that most people with an eye on a game setting itself up to be the successor to UO are going to pay little credence to the fact it has nice graphics and is from the guy behind the likes of Aion.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Probably not fair to make baseless accusations about the site either as I think they take their professionalism fairly seriously.
But this in from the ROC:
Copyright and Press Material
Reposting material in its entirety from other sources is against our rules. Quotations from things such as news articles are fine, provided it is cited and (if possible) linked to. We ask others to respect our content and ask our readers do the same for other people's content.
But back on topic, I have my doubts that anyone can really make a successor to UO, as someone said, the expectations would be too high, and any deviations from virutally an outright copy would be viewed with cries of dispair and doom.
If someone truly wants to build such a game, they should do so but never whisper this intent, let others be the judge after its gone live.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
On the behalf of the most honorable Cyphers: you Sir are a fool.
What has writing about features in the next MMO to do AT ALL with musics piracy? Cypher is the messenger. He never claimed to be the author, nor does he get any money! He often brings news or info from websites, that I and surely many others just overlook, and I am very grateful he shares his finds!
Your critique is ridiculous.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Is this F2P or P2P?
Darkfall has failed both in terms of population and quality. It's a low quality game with a small population.
Also, what I said is that good graphics are an indiciation of high production values and a game with high production values tend to be better than those with low production values. Darkfall and Mortal online a great examples of this.
They share SOME common characteristics, but they are no more successors to UO than Eddie Izzard is a successor to the crown because he's British.
First of all, they're both First Person View "Centric". Darkfall has over the shoulder, which is some relief, but doesn't detract from the fact that...
Both of them are FPS' with RPG elements. Aiming, Ping, and twitch skills are the most important "skills" one can have, secondary to grind time/a good macro program to raise attributes.
Third, they're both focused so heavily on PvP that they forget that UO wasn't made to be a PvP game primarily - PvP was a byproduct of it's open nature, not it's focal point. Social structures, dungeon crawling, crafting, RP, lore, character development.. These things were arguably paramount to UO, once upon a time. Mortal and Darkfall are all about getting the skills and equipment needed to PvP competitively, and everything else is secondary.
Darkfall doesn't even have skill caps - You can get them all, and use them all at your discretion. (This is the one bad side I see to ArchAge thus far - You shouldn't be able to swap out skill sets and have one master character.) Not sure about Mortal.
So yes, while the creators of these games may have INTENDED to be successors to UO, they simply were not.