Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Thinking about buying it... part 2...
booleanops
Member Posts: 7
Thanks to everyone who read and commented on my first post. I appreciate your feed back and comments. I'm glad to see it didn't become a hate fest and everyone had something to contribute. Including one member who said this:
Well i found it new on eBay for 15 bucks plus shipping, for that price ill give it a try... I know its lame to quote your self, but ill also add my review in in 2-3 weeks. Which i know will mean squat since you don’t know me..
--JLAristotle
After he said my review probably saved him 30-50 bucks. I say good on ya. The purpose of my comments wasn't to dissuade anyone from buying the game, but to share a real experience rather than angry or bitter commentary. I thought I should follow up. BTW, if you have ever played Knight OnLine this game will feel familiar.
Ok, so it's been about two weeks and I'm still playing regularly. This for me is pretty amazing since I jumped off Anarchy Online, Face of Mankind, Ryzoom and so many other MMOs after the first few hours of play. There have been others, but the point is that I can lose interest pretty easy. And, I don't think I am unusual.
I still stand behind my statement that ArchLord is buggy as hell. And, Codemasters is irresponsible for not at least the fixing the little things. Like quest texts are often misleading or have typos. The crafting system and recipes for combining items are unclear. I have wasted both time and money more than once because it simply was misleading or incorrect. A few mails I sent between characters got lost in the ether. This sucks, because I lost not only the message, but the armor upgrade attached to it. The most recent one was a skill upgrade that apparently doesn't work with one-handed weapons, but the text says all blunt weapons. All annoying. But and this is a big but; the engine has been stable. I am having fun killing the hell out of things. Even if those things are miniature knights in varying colors of Jell-O cubes. I still think that's dumb, but whatever. There are still pigs, bears, goblins, skeletons, spiders etc. My favorite is the occasional smart-ass who tries to jump me while I am grinding out in the open. Yes Heidke I owned your French-speaking bitch ass 3 times. Too bad you had to wait until I was at half-health and fighting a boss to actually kill me. Ah, but I digress.
The story line is a bit of a yawn and quest system is also not real deep. What I mean is you get few quests you can complete easily and then you have to grind it to the next level for more quests. But, when have we not seen these flaws in games before? I just usually don't see it all in one game. 
But, what I can say is that Archlord with all it's flaws has been keeping me up late at night. Rather than signing into Echo Isles or Zuluhed on WoW, I find my self logging into Gaiahon. I even dropped a few bucks in the mall to buy some extra potions and power ups. Maybe I'm hopeful that Codemasters will actually decide to start caring a little more about the product if they see it's got some more revenue potential. But, I'm not holding my breath. So, I've had my chance to complain about it, now here are 11 of the reasons why I still play. These are in no specific order.
1. It's free to play after my initial $30 investment.
2. Servers for the moment are not over-crowded
3. The community is rather helpful and friendly. I think most everyone really wants to see the game succeed.
4. Since there are people from Europe on the server to, I am actually learning a little French. Nice!
5. Chat is generally very business oriented with request for info or help. No Chuck Norris chat - thank god.
6. The party system is easy and fair. Not sure about guilds I am a soloist right now.
7. Leveling is fast and pretty easy if you a grinder.
8. Your text gets tagged (muted) for swearing if you type ass. But ASS is not.
9. Teleporting between towns with portal scrolls - one-way and two way -- think Diablo -- and portals, keeps you in the action longer.
10. Killing a dragon - no matter how small is pretty balls.
11. Morphing into one and killing stuff is even better!
So, see there are good things to say about the game, and I could add more. But it's up to you to decide if you want to discover them. Some tips for you if you are going to try out. Be prepared to go through lots and lots of potions. Use the auto potion feature (sliders on the health and mana bar) as it will be come your best friend. And if you can get help killing bosses - do. Soloing them is a BITCH.
Hahah, I make joke you no get!
Anyway, you might get some resurrection orbs for those boss fights so you can revive in place rather than run back and start over. Use the forums. That seems to be the key source of info if you are confused and can't get help in-game.
I hope that folks have found both my posts fair and useful. At level 23, it seems I am still on the tip of the ice berg. There's lots of map to discover and things to kill. I'm not cancelling my WoW subscription yet. But it's not out of the realm of possibility. I have yet to join a guild or know the real thrill of an epic PvP battle. So who knows what adventures lie ahead.
-=Boo
Comments
Great read once again.
Iv recently purchased Archlord, i hadnt played since beta and i must say im having a blast. It is 100% worth it for the price, i payed £15 which is about $28-30, that is absolutly nothing for a game, especially once that can keep you going as long as AL can.
Yes there are still bugs, but these should be sorted once the Episode 2 Season of siege patch comes out, if they had released the game with that patch active it would have been so much more successful and of course it should have been no monthly fee from the start.
Season of siege is bringing a hell of alot to the game on the PVP front of things, also some great features for the Archlord himself/herself, thing such as being able to control the weather patterns in the game and various other things. Of course it will be a massive challenge in itself just to get to become the Archlord, but hey its worth it.
Either way, the game is steadily growing in population now and i see it only getting better in the future.
Mr.Ktat does a great job with the community to, so thumbs up for that.
Fair enough though, AL wont be everyones cup of tea, but for the price its well worth buying, especially with the massiv eupdate coming soon, which will improve the game greatly.
I recommend that people give it a chance.
Garrik
________________________________
"once upon a midnight dreary, while i porn surfed, weak and weary, over many a strange and spurious site of 'hot xxx galore'. While i clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning, and my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour, " 'Tis not possible!", i muttered, "give me back my free hardcore!"..... quoth the server, 404."
Even at free it's still one of the worst games on the market.
Poorly implemented pvp - that actually discourages pvp.
Poorly implemented pve that is repetitive and needlessly boring.
I could go on, but I won't - they were losing so many players they had to make the game free. That tells you how good it is.
Pro's
I do think AL has a really nice web site.
And comparing this game to Knight Online is not doing this game any favors.
Knight Online is another crappy game.
But its just zigmund, he didn't like Lineage 2 either. you should stick to your western games, asian MMORPG's clearly aren't for you.
ArchLord is a very decent game, the community is growing more and more, and with Season of Siege just around the corner, ArchLord's future looks good.
Iv got to agree with Gameloading.
Yes the game didnt do to great (although good enough to keep 2 servers up, which is more than some games) at release due to some bugs etc, but now that its free to play and the community has doubled already, it can only get better and with the coming update again it can only get better.
CM definatly made a good move making it free, i belive in the long run the will earn more money by doing it this way than they would have if they stuck to P2P.
So yeah, its only going up.
Garrik
________________________________
"once upon a midnight dreary, while i porn surfed, weak and weary, over many a strange and spurious site of 'hot xxx galore'. While i clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning, and my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour, " 'Tis not possible!", i muttered, "give me back my free hardcore!"..... quoth the server, 404."
Yeah, you guys are right, I think zigmund is a poopy pants.
Based on previous threads and comments, it would seem zigmund has a vendetta against CM. That's too bad. Maybe zigmund's inital impression matched mine or that of the various reviewers. Why spend so much time trashing a game? Go play something you like ziggy. Seriously. You'll add minutes and maybe days to your life.
I bet if CM offered to pay zigmund $14.95 per month to play it; zigmund would still trash the game.
Maybe it is only me, but I think Knight Online and ArchLord have similarites. Other than being crappy -- as ziggy so eloquently puts it. So, obviously, what's fun for ziggy and what's fun for me are two differnt things. And, that's ok - I still got love for ya zigster.
-=Boo
How is the pvp done?
I enjoy pvp, but not while im trying to quest or lvl.
searching for the next DAoC....
Kay-exile