this is a cryengine issue and i bet TESO is based on same engine as the exact same crap was going on , however..you talk about bots....perhaps on some servers but one i am on there are very very few.
in fact i enjoyed going mining and trading my goods for other goods....
ALSO the spam is being dealth with.....however that type a chat is exploitable out they ying yang
regarding land ..well what reason is there to have patron status if i cant own land ..well i can get into shipping for now and see if this land issue clears up....or more areas get added...
the fact is this system was very botched....they should have made it 3 places for founders , 2 for patrons and one for free to play...
there are people with 10+ houses.....
now think if those people cheat buy gold and keep paying taxes.....
"As a player who has managed to grind out three separate weapons in Hasla (that’s 450 tokens and many, many hours of wasted time), I can safely say I never want to go there again. I enjoy playing ArcheAge quite a bit, but I never want to visit Hasla again."
I don't want to ruin your day, but... that is only the tier 1 Hasla weapon. There will be at least 2 more tiers which even require more tokens.
You can craft similiar (from stats) weapons but that takes huge amounts of gold/resources/labor and luck because of RNG.
So, don't throw away your Hasla map yet, you might need it again.
ugh... I'd rather staple my private bits to a bullet train...
I'd like to see a game that promotes not being a douchebag towards your fellow players.
Unfortunately, most gaming companies do just the opposite.
Promoting douchebaggery is good business.
(serious. I mean, REALLY seriously. I recall soooo many cases of seeing douchebaggery in F2P MMOs that only encouraged EVERYONE to spend even MORE. And I mean people messaging me saying "That's it, I'm buying 'whatever' because I refuse to lose this guy" and other things along those lines.)
I hate to bring up this game because it too had a rather horrible community, but for the whole "Global Spam - Gold Selling " thing, look to AiON.
They had an issue at the beginning then they said, "Ya know what, lets change it. You can NOT use global or map chat till lvl 10." .. And it friggin worked. Once that happened, it damn near stopped. You would as usual get the mail spam or at times randomly spammed in a /whisper .. but once they changed that level rule it dropped. Maybe, they could try that?
If you purchased the extra character slots... and you were able to create all your characters before lock. Each character can buy a labour potion... the Labour is shared across characters....
So the people who buy pots... with the max character slots... maximize their labour... they are so far ahead in crafting... its only a matter of time before they start face stomping people. I know this because before I got my refund... the gaming guild I was in... had a few people doing this. Cant wait to see the crying posts on gear when that occurs, it wont even be fair.
ESO had bots everywhere, way worse than AA. It had gold selling spam, probably every MMO has, it'll only get solved if MMO's can attack the companies who sell & send us the GS in the first place.
The land is 'supposed' to be hard to get and even on early area's you can get a housing spot but it requires you trying every possible space in the zone. Which alot of people don't want to do. They could have it so you can build houses anywhere but then people would build them basically as near crafters as possible onthe dipshits who would build them ON the NPC's
Labor is only a problem if you let it be, it can be worked around with another character or more who will chug a pot and gain you 1000 LP, you can craft and then go do various missions whilst it builds up again, if you are a f2p then YOU knew the limits before deciding to play. A sub isn't much and the queue's are now almost non existant. On Lucius the max queue i've had was 25 and it is normally 1.
Lag i have had a bit of recently, before never had it but i have a decent connection and ping is usually 11 - 17, i never check ingame as that just causes problems when people aren't getting the speeds ingame they think they should.
LP i never have a problem with but then i use some and then play EVE or CO etc and they gain back to 5000.
If the game is SOOO bad like people keep saying, how comes land is not so easy to get and people keep reporting queue's on f2p but then if more f2p players went patron, i'd have more than a queue of 1 lol
Queue's at start were due to patron & f2p being in the same queue, not a great start but people waited out the queue's. The removal of delete timer i don't agree with though as that just helps GS. If it were me i'd increase it to something like EVE's .. 10 hours and give a better reporting system, maybe set chat so anything but /whisper requered a certain level, 10 would be great since it doesn't take that long to get to. Perma bans of email addresses, IP's etc too
If you purchased the extra character slots... and you were able to create all your characters before lock. Each character can buy a labour potion... the Labour is shared across characters....
So the people who buy pots... with the max character slots... maximize their labour... they are so far ahead in crafting... its only a matter of time before they start face stomping people. I know this because before I got my refund... the gaming guild I was in... had a few people doing this. Cant wait to see the crying posts on gear when that occurs, it wont even be fair.
I imagine Trion is whale-watching their revenues from those people and the system designed to encourage it while happily cheering, "THAR SHE BLOWS!"
The main director of the game is the main guy behind Lineage2.
Its a korean mmo, you don't play this if you don't love the pvp, the insane grinds, the tedious tasks. This is the absolute opposite of a world of warcraft , achieve everything in 2 weeks mmo.
Ban every IP from china. If its U.S and Euro release than only allow players from those areas to play. That will get rid of most of the bots ,spammers, and hackers.
If you purchased the extra character slots... and you were able to create all your characters before lock. Each character can buy a labour potion... the Labour is shared across characters....
So the people who buy pots... with the max character slots... maximize their labour... they are so far ahead in crafting... its only a matter of time before they start face stomping people. I know this because before I got my refund... the gaming guild I was in... had a few people doing this. Cant wait to see the crying posts on gear when that occurs, it wont even be fair.
Exactly why this game is one of the premier pay-to-win games on the market.
LP is the root of all that is evil in this game and until it is removed or at least changed in a major way this game will be a complete joke.
This game is such a massive failure it isn't even funny. The problem isn't so much the game although it has its weaknesses for sure. The problem is mainly Trion being so completely inept in every way. They launched with too few servers. They made completely idiotic decisions with game mechanics such as giving more labor points for being online which only encouraged people to find ways of staying online afk. This made the ques really long but in reality not nearly that many people were actually playing. So while they did have too few servers they probably ended up opening more then they needed. No server transfer ability didn't help either.
This game is beyond terrible in terms of security. Botting and hacking are just crazy. People teleporting all over the map to do trade runs. Bots running trade routes endlessly. Bots farming mob kills in many zones. Trion has had the publishing for this game for almost 2 years and has done nothing but collect money. Anyone that paid 150$ for this shitfest should call their bank and chargeback any money they spent. What a scam by a garbage publisher.
Only legit point is the botting, and to some point the housing...
Hasla, took me about maybe 2-3 Hours of game time for T1. Allready a few tokens in into T2, as soon as we get them.
There is no Grind in lvling,getting gear imo. Its just that ppl are used to get done in a week and get to the next hype mmo.
Spam cost me about 5 min gametime, got them blacklisted faster then trion was blocking them.
or in other words before you guys write a review/preview/summary.....actually play the damn game more then a few hours or inform your self if the info is still legit before youpost it ...
love this side for some short time infos, but the most articels are a waste of time ....
I've been playing this game for longer than most people have known about it.
All the spammer/bot shit in MMOs is a major reason why we can't have nice things in MMOs. And indeed, players themselves, or at least those players who buy gold, are partly to blame. That is indeed one reason why f2p has grown, if you buy "gold" from the developers instead of gold sellers it's better in the long run. Although I think that has to be built-in from the ground up to work, whereas in this game the f2p element sits rather badly with the basic design which I think is built around subscription originally. Still, they might be able to find the right balance eventually.
Anyway, ranting on: developers have to waste time trying to stop this kind of crap, and it also hamstrings the kind of gameplay they could have in an MMO. It's a sorry situation, but there's nothing to be done about it.
It mirrors rl. Most people are decent and generous and perfectly capable of behaving well without any kind of supervision, but there are always dickheads who can make great and unfair gains by free riding, so we can't have the peaceful anarchy that would be right and proper for human beings, and we end up with government and shit that's sometimes more trouble than it's worth.
Looking on the positive side, though, all this arms race crap does sharpen everyone's wits somewhat. We might get very dull and bovine in a peaceful anarchy!
even better than doing nothing, when you are profiting from that thing about which you are "taking action", is do something really poorly - now you can point at that, "we DID do something!" and wring your hands "but they are SO strong" and wet your pants and so it goes. There has been a stench associated with NC Soft for a looong time regarding farmers and gold sellers - as in, they profit from them. Someone posted that servers got hit with a DDoS after implementing some filter and the game was "forced" into letting the bots and sellers back in. Really? I work in the computer industry and that is so much crap. We can instantly block regions, domains, ip blocks, services, ports. The bottom line is this - whine, complain all you want - if asked, I would estimate 1/2 the population is dedicated to selling gold and services to the other half - and of the 1/2 that's left. half of them are dedicating their lives to ganking the other half. It was like this in Lineage, in Aion, in every front line game NCSoft gets involved with. Lotro had a significantly larger player base and no farmers, no gold spammers, Secret World at it's peak - the same way. This is a curable problem if the desire is truly there to cure it... BUT... let's suppose my model is correct... the population is cut inhalf [maybe more? maybe a LOT more]. Let's pretend they decide it shouldn't be a grinder... ok, now you tell one... it's still a zombie game. The bad press sets the stage... people who love it [and there are some!] love it EXACTLY the way it is, they are succeeding with it the way it is, why change? People who are enduring it, have found something they can latch onto and enjoy. That's ok - good for you! Have fun.... but... for the rest of the world, if I am making a choice where to spend my hard earned $$$ [F2P is NOT FREE - just a shared news flash there] this game is not it. Don't mistake, I played it in beta and liked some of it but then hit parts I didn't care for - open world pvp is not my cup of tea - folks camping the crafting quests, pirates camping the transport zones etc. And in NO WAY is this a commentary on the people I met and played with - good folks all and they made the grind better [sidebar - in any mmo, it the people who make or break the game - solo questing is kind of an interesting mutation of the game dynamic... I want to join a social game but want to play it as a single player! ] anyhow..All that to the side, don't expect Trion/NCSoft to every do more than rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic as far as spamming and bots - it's against their business model. That said, when the spammers and bots impact actual game population, they will naturally [like any parasite that has killed the host] leave for the next pvp grinder - maybe Black Desert?
As F2P, totally not worth it. Game is not F2P. It's Free 2 Try. Once your Labor Points are gone, that's it. No offline LP regeneration for LP even though there's a cap that's less than half of P2P. If a person is interested in playing, I suggest you get a month, get your land for farming, then gather stone and farm like crazy to get materials for trade packs, sell extra stone on AH, use money to purchase APEX and keep sub going. If you're not interested in P2P, I suggest you move on as the model is not free-player friendly just due to the Labor Point system.
If you do decide to play, don't go it solo. You'll do fine until mid 30s, but after that you'll be in contested/at-war zones and getting ganked is a way of life. As someone has already stated, Archeage is a game of guilds and grouping. It's not very solo-friendly. I enjoy games where grouping makes the game better, but don't care for those that (for the most part) force ya to do it. It wouldn't be so bad if the community in Archeage wasn't pretty poor. I don't mean the guilds here, people. I mean the community as a whole. Most people you encounter (outside of guild-play) are not interested in joining your group to help you kill mobs, and some get downright rude when you invite them to a group when they're literally standing in the middle of a kill-count quest area. I do hope that the community as a whole does improve over time, but being a pvp-centric game (contrary to what some may say, Archeage is all about the PvP, especially at max level) does tend to bring with it a specific demographic made up of many megalomaniacs and elitists.
However, there are many good guilds out there and many of these guilds exist to make life easier for the working "Joes" within Archeage. One that I've found (not joined, just studied) is Critical Moment. They seem to work together really well, have some "real" goals, and are (currently) active. I'm sure there are many guilds out there to choose from, but Critical Moment was one that caught my eye.
Whichever guild you decide to join, choose one that has the same goals in mind as yourself. Don't be shy and afraid to ask questions about the game. Archeage does have a decent tutorial (Levels 1-50), but you'll learn the game from active guilds that have "been there, done that".
Archeage has some very nice features, especially the open water/sea. However, the class mechanics are my least-favorite with hundreds of class combinations, but less than a dozen viable cookie-cutter builds. Also, it's WAY too expensive to change your skills around, especially for F2P due to we having to hold onto our precious Labor Points and not being able to even open our money bags from trash mobs. I think at the time of this writing I had over 200 money bags unopened due to not having enough LP to open even portion of them. I'm trying to make money, even having a paying friend that has sent me logs to sell on the AH. However, seeing as how I have to use LP to even obtain/open my Auction House MAIL and get my sold goods, LP are hard to come by. I refuse to bot/afk just to gain LP because it isn't fair to those that actually want to play the game, and queues have been to long as it is. Give Patrons 15/15 and F2P 10/10 and you'll get rid of the queue problem without having to add servers that will eventually need to be merged.
Personally, I've already moved on, just logging in occasionally to finish my final sales/checking mailbox until it's empty. There are some good things about the game, but just not enough to keep me here. I was going to try and tough it out and get my last APEX and try a month as Patron, but PvE is just repetitive and boring. Don't get me wrong, there are actually some very well-written quests and some spooky encounters, but the combat mechanics are just too...Eastern...for my playstyle, nor do they seem to work very well. Every fight feels like a fight for my life, and my character should weigh about 500lbs from all the eating/drinking they have to do. I understand that some fights should be difficult, but MOST fights just take too long, especially when you're trying to get your players to level 50 quickly...seeing as how it's been said over and over that the first 50 levels are a tutorial and the "real" game starts at 50 (sandbox version of the game).
I love the open sea, though, and definitely miss that aspect of the game. Never have I witnessed such realistic water effects and boating in an MMO as in this game. It's such a shame that the rest of the game was such a huge disappointment. This is, of course, all from a F2P aspect and many features are MUCH better in the P2P version. However, I believe that Trion has the right of it the way they did Rift. Completely F2P, not restrictions on gameplay, but HUGE bonuses and perks to Patrons. If you want to advertise as a F2P game, go truly F2P. Don't gimp the game and strip it down to the skeleton for the F2P community. Instead, give your Patrons HUGE bonuses/shinies that actually ENCOURAGE people to WANT to pay for the game. As it stands, many people are *stuck* in paying for the game because they don't want to lose their house/land/farm. Change it where F2P can't purchase land or houses, but have it where they can pay taxes on it. Let people pay for their first month, take a month off without fear of losing their stuff, give HUGE incentive for coming back with loot/currency bonus, increased rewards, increased LP regeneration, bonus cosmetic loot, etc...
F2P should not be synonymous with Free-2-Try-Then-Pay-2-Play. Choose what you want your game to be and advertise it as such.
Hope ya'll have great fun in whatever game you choose to play.
Another potential problem with the land hacks is what happens when Auroria opens? Players are saying this should solve the land issue, but if they can't stop the land hackers now, can you imagine how it will be then?
People are screaming now about land, the forums have post after post about the lack of something that's so integral to the game. Imagine what will happen if only a few get a hold of the land in Auroria.
I started playing in CB 3. I enjoyed the game and the community. When the game went live like everyone else the wait time was horrid. I spent over 10hrs in queue. So I logged out for a couple of weeks.
I checked back and the first problem I had as far as the community goes was the lack of any manners to an extent I have never seen in other games. While not a game mechanics issue and it may seem very minor to some, I enjoy the social interaction and its a big part of gaming for me. I have grown very tired of paying players lording over the F2P players and calling us poverty stricken, welfare bums, etc.
I don't know many kids (unless things have changed over the last couple of decades) that have $150 to drop on a game, or most adults that I know. Some of the chat I have read has been very harsh and it ruins the game at least for me. So I left yet again hoping that when I decided to go back somethings had cleared up ie: queues, spammers etc.
I figured that after a while the "play for 2 days and leave" players would be thinned out a bit. I am still waiting for some more idiots to drop off the map, Though it does seem that there has been a reduction with the whole 'get off of welfare" statements,
This is why people have got to stop buying into the Founder's Pack culture MMOs have been developing. It's too similar to what Hollywood has been doing with their films: they only care about opening weekend sales. Make sure people are hyped enough with commercials so that your ticket sales opening night make the profits to cover production costs. Even if the product itself is horrendous, if it made the money opening weekend due to hype, Hollywood still considers it a success.
It's the exact same mentality here. And game-developing side, it's even worse because it makes it okay for developers to release buggy product early.
It's a shame because with localized games you can get a preview by playing the games on foreign servers to see if it might be worth it. But $150 for an otherwise F2P game? No thank you. While the game improved from closed beta, I'm still very glad I didn't shell out anything for this.
This is why people have got to stop buying into the Founder's Pack culture MMOs have been developing. It's too similar to what Hollywood has been doing with their films: they only care about opening weekend sales. Make sure people are hyped enough with commercials so that your ticket sales opening night make the profits to cover production costs. Even if the product itself is horrendous, if it made the money opening weekend due to hype, Hollywood still considers it a success.
It's the exact same mentality here. And game-developing side, it's even worse because it makes it okay for developers to release buggy product early.
It's a shame because with localized games you can get a preview by playing the games on foreign servers to see if it might be worth it. But $150 for an otherwise F2P game? No thank you. While the game improved from closed beta, I'm still very glad I didn't shell out anything for this.
You are absolutely right sir. Trion was very clever though, they sold founders packs on the idea that you would only get land if you bought the founders pack. And since we know having land is integral to the competitive pvp enviroment, they sneakily tricked a lot of people, Trust me, go the the AA website and nowhere does it mention limited land and how much it alters your chances of being competitive in the game.
I for one got talked into it by old guildmates of mine from Shadowbane, had I known before I bought AA what the real trick was, Id have never bought it.
The most stupid game i ever been played. Hard to get in the servers. Long queue waiting, constantly disconnect, and at the end, I spent all the pity money the game provides and bought seeds for a stupid quest, planted, and when I could get back in teh game again, someone just destroyed my plants. And I was doing this for a stupid quest. Fack off! Im out this shit!
The only thing that bothers me at all about this game is the lack of ability to get the land you want/need. And even that is not enough to make me stop playing. I am not much for PVP in a level based MMO so pvp is not what I play for in AA. On the other hand, I hate repeatitive do the same thing over and over grind that most MMO's seem to routinely put into their games. I love to craft if it is doable. I love to PvE if it is not boringly repeatable. For now, I may only get 1 of 2 on that point.
Comments
this is a cryengine issue and i bet TESO is based on same engine as the exact same crap was going on , however..you talk about bots....perhaps on some servers but one i am on there are very very few.
in fact i enjoyed going mining and trading my goods for other goods....
ALSO the spam is being dealth with.....however that type a chat is exploitable out they ying yang
regarding land ..well what reason is there to have patron status if i cant own land ..well i can get into shipping for now and see if this land issue clears up....or more areas get added...
the fact is this system was very botched....they should have made it 3 places for founders , 2 for patrons and one for free to play...
there are people with 10+ houses.....
now think if those people cheat buy gold and keep paying taxes.....
Funny is that even @Scapes (Trion GM) praise someone who rushed and took 27 land spots.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-cards="hidden" lang="en"><p>To the guild leader on the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ArcheAge?src=hash">#ArcheAge</a>; forums selling in-game real estate before even claiming, kudos and this video: <a href="https://t.co/UG8EytrNUv">https://t.co/UG8EytrNUv</a></p>— Evan “Scapes” Berman (@Scapes) <a href="
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
I'd like to see a game that promotes not being a douchebag towards your fellow players.
Unfortunately, most gaming companies do just the opposite.
ugh... I'd rather staple my private bits to a bullet train...
Promoting douchebaggery is good business.
(serious. I mean, REALLY seriously. I recall soooo many cases of seeing douchebaggery in F2P MMOs that only encouraged EVERYONE to spend even MORE. And I mean people messaging me saying "That's it, I'm buying 'whatever' because I refuse to lose this guy" and other things along those lines.)
I hate to bring up this game because it too had a rather horrible community, but for the whole "Global Spam - Gold Selling " thing, look to AiON.
They had an issue at the beginning then they said, "Ya know what, lets change it. You can NOT use global or map chat till lvl 10." .. And it friggin worked. Once that happened, it damn near stopped. You would as usual get the mail spam or at times randomly spammed in a /whisper .. but once they changed that level rule it dropped. Maybe, they could try that?
For those not aware...
If you purchased the extra character slots... and you were able to create all your characters before lock. Each character can buy a labour potion... the Labour is shared across characters....
So the people who buy pots... with the max character slots... maximize their labour... they are so far ahead in crafting... its only a matter of time before they start face stomping people. I know this because before I got my refund... the gaming guild I was in... had a few people doing this. Cant wait to see the crying posts on gear when that occurs, it wont even be fair.
ESO had bots everywhere, way worse than AA. It had gold selling spam, probably every MMO has, it'll only get solved if MMO's can attack the companies who sell & send us the GS in the first place.
The land is 'supposed' to be hard to get and even on early area's you can get a housing spot but it requires you trying every possible space in the zone. Which alot of people don't want to do. They could have it so you can build houses anywhere but then people would build them basically as near crafters as possible onthe dipshits who would build them ON the NPC's
Labor is only a problem if you let it be, it can be worked around with another character or more who will chug a pot and gain you 1000 LP, you can craft and then go do various missions whilst it builds up again, if you are a f2p then YOU knew the limits before deciding to play. A sub isn't much and the queue's are now almost non existant. On Lucius the max queue i've had was 25 and it is normally 1.
Lag i have had a bit of recently, before never had it but i have a decent connection and ping is usually 11 - 17, i never check ingame as that just causes problems when people aren't getting the speeds ingame they think they should.
LP i never have a problem with but then i use some and then play EVE or CO etc and they gain back to 5000.
If the game is SOOO bad like people keep saying, how comes land is not so easy to get and people keep reporting queue's on f2p but then if more f2p players went patron, i'd have more than a queue of 1 lol
Queue's at start were due to patron & f2p being in the same queue, not a great start but people waited out the queue's. The removal of delete timer i don't agree with though as that just helps GS. If it were me i'd increase it to something like EVE's .. 10 hours and give a better reporting system, maybe set chat so anything but /whisper requered a certain level, 10 would be great since it doesn't take that long to get to. Perma bans of email addresses, IP's etc too
I imagine Trion is whale-watching their revenues from those people and the system designed to encourage it while happily cheering, "THAR SHE BLOWS!"
Most people just don't get it...
The main director of the game is the main guy behind Lineage2.
Its a korean mmo, you don't play this if you don't love the pvp, the insane grinds, the tedious tasks. This is the absolute opposite of a world of warcraft , achieve everything in 2 weeks mmo.
Exactly why this game is one of the premier pay-to-win games on the market.
LP is the root of all that is evil in this game and until it is removed or at least changed in a major way this game will be a complete joke.
This game is such a massive failure it isn't even funny. The problem isn't so much the game although it has its weaknesses for sure. The problem is mainly Trion being so completely inept in every way. They launched with too few servers. They made completely idiotic decisions with game mechanics such as giving more labor points for being online which only encouraged people to find ways of staying online afk. This made the ques really long but in reality not nearly that many people were actually playing. So while they did have too few servers they probably ended up opening more then they needed. No server transfer ability didn't help either.
This game is beyond terrible in terms of security. Botting and hacking are just crazy. People teleporting all over the map to do trade runs. Bots running trade routes endlessly. Bots farming mob kills in many zones. Trion has had the publishing for this game for almost 2 years and has done nothing but collect money. Anyone that paid 150$ for this shitfest should call their bank and chargeback any money they spent. What a scam by a garbage publisher.
I've been playing this game for longer than most people have known about it.
ArcheAgeSource.com
All the spammer/bot shit in MMOs is a major reason why we can't have nice things in MMOs. And indeed, players themselves, or at least those players who buy gold, are partly to blame. That is indeed one reason why f2p has grown, if you buy "gold" from the developers instead of gold sellers it's better in the long run. Although I think that has to be built-in from the ground up to work, whereas in this game the f2p element sits rather badly with the basic design which I think is built around subscription originally. Still, they might be able to find the right balance eventually.
Anyway, ranting on: developers have to waste time trying to stop this kind of crap, and it also hamstrings the kind of gameplay they could have in an MMO. It's a sorry situation, but there's nothing to be done about it.
It mirrors rl. Most people are decent and generous and perfectly capable of behaving well without any kind of supervision, but there are always dickheads who can make great and unfair gains by free riding, so we can't have the peaceful anarchy that would be right and proper for human beings, and we end up with government and shit that's sometimes more trouble than it's worth.
Looking on the positive side, though, all this arms race crap does sharpen everyone's wits somewhat. We might get very dull and bovine in a peaceful anarchy!
even better than doing nothing, when you are profiting from that thing about which you are "taking action", is do something really poorly - now you can point at that, "we DID do something!" and wring your hands "but they are SO strong" and wet your pants and so it goes. There has been a stench associated with NC Soft for a looong time regarding farmers and gold sellers - as in, they profit from them. Someone posted that servers got hit with a DDoS after implementing some filter and the game was "forced" into letting the bots and sellers back in. Really? I work in the computer industry and that is so much crap. We can instantly block regions, domains, ip blocks, services, ports. The bottom line is this - whine, complain all you want - if asked, I would estimate 1/2 the population is dedicated to selling gold and services to the other half - and of the 1/2 that's left. half of them are dedicating their lives to ganking the other half. It was like this in Lineage, in Aion, in every front line game NCSoft gets involved with. Lotro had a significantly larger player base and no farmers, no gold spammers, Secret World at it's peak - the same way. This is a curable problem if the desire is truly there to cure it... BUT... let's suppose my model is correct... the population is cut inhalf [maybe more? maybe a LOT more]. Let's pretend they decide it shouldn't be a grinder... ok, now you tell one... it's still a zombie game. The bad press sets the stage... people who love it [and there are some!] love it EXACTLY the way it is, they are succeeding with it the way it is, why change? People who are enduring it, have found something they can latch onto and enjoy. That's ok - good for you! Have fun.... but... for the rest of the world, if I am making a choice where to spend my hard earned $$$ [F2P is NOT FREE - just a shared news flash there] this game is not it. Don't mistake, I played it in beta and liked some of it but then hit parts I didn't care for - open world pvp is not my cup of tea - folks camping the crafting quests, pirates camping the transport zones etc. And in NO WAY is this a commentary on the people I met and played with - good folks all and they made the grind better [sidebar - in any mmo, it the people who make or break the game - solo questing is kind of an interesting mutation of the game dynamic...
I want to join a social game but want to play it as a single player! 
] anyhow..All that to the side, don't expect Trion/NCSoft to every do more than rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic as far as spamming and bots - it's against their business model. That said, when the spammers and bots impact actual game population, they will naturally [like any parasite that has killed the host] leave for the next pvp grinder - maybe Black Desert?
Whyspre
As F2P, totally not worth it. Game is not F2P. It's Free 2 Try. Once your Labor Points are gone, that's it. No offline LP regeneration for LP even though there's a cap that's less than half of P2P. If a person is interested in playing, I suggest you get a month, get your land for farming, then gather stone and farm like crazy to get materials for trade packs, sell extra stone on AH, use money to purchase APEX and keep sub going. If you're not interested in P2P, I suggest you move on as the model is not free-player friendly just due to the Labor Point system.
If you do decide to play, don't go it solo. You'll do fine until mid 30s, but after that you'll be in contested/at-war zones and getting ganked is a way of life. As someone has already stated, Archeage is a game of guilds and grouping. It's not very solo-friendly. I enjoy games where grouping makes the game better, but don't care for those that (for the most part) force ya to do it. It wouldn't be so bad if the community in Archeage wasn't pretty poor. I don't mean the guilds here, people. I mean the community as a whole. Most people you encounter (outside of guild-play) are not interested in joining your group to help you kill mobs, and some get downright rude when you invite them to a group when they're literally standing in the middle of a kill-count quest area. I do hope that the community as a whole does improve over time, but being a pvp-centric game (contrary to what some may say, Archeage is all about the PvP, especially at max level) does tend to bring with it a specific demographic made up of many megalomaniacs and elitists.
However, there are many good guilds out there and many of these guilds exist to make life easier for the working "Joes" within Archeage. One that I've found (not joined, just studied) is Critical Moment. They seem to work together really well, have some "real" goals, and are (currently) active. I'm sure there are many guilds out there to choose from, but Critical Moment was one that caught my eye.
Whichever guild you decide to join, choose one that has the same goals in mind as yourself. Don't be shy and afraid to ask questions about the game. Archeage does have a decent tutorial (Levels 1-50), but you'll learn the game from active guilds that have "been there, done that".
Archeage has some very nice features, especially the open water/sea. However, the class mechanics are my least-favorite with hundreds of class combinations, but less than a dozen viable cookie-cutter builds. Also, it's WAY too expensive to change your skills around, especially for F2P due to we having to hold onto our precious Labor Points and not being able to even open our money bags from trash mobs. I think at the time of this writing I had over 200 money bags unopened due to not having enough LP to open even portion of them. I'm trying to make money, even having a paying friend that has sent me logs to sell on the AH. However, seeing as how I have to use LP to even obtain/open my Auction House MAIL and get my sold goods, LP are hard to come by. I refuse to bot/afk just to gain LP because it isn't fair to those that actually want to play the game, and queues have been to long as it is. Give Patrons 15/15 and F2P 10/10 and you'll get rid of the queue problem without having to add servers that will eventually need to be merged.
Personally, I've already moved on, just logging in occasionally to finish my final sales/checking mailbox until it's empty. There are some good things about the game, but just not enough to keep me here. I was going to try and tough it out and get my last APEX and try a month as Patron, but PvE is just repetitive and boring. Don't get me wrong, there are actually some very well-written quests and some spooky encounters, but the combat mechanics are just too...Eastern...for my playstyle, nor do they seem to work very well. Every fight feels like a fight for my life, and my character should weigh about 500lbs from all the eating/drinking they have to do. I understand that some fights should be difficult, but MOST fights just take too long, especially when you're trying to get your players to level 50 quickly...seeing as how it's been said over and over that the first 50 levels are a tutorial and the "real" game starts at 50 (sandbox version of the game).
I love the open sea, though, and definitely miss that aspect of the game. Never have I witnessed such realistic water effects and boating in an MMO as in this game. It's such a shame that the rest of the game was such a huge disappointment. This is, of course, all from a F2P aspect and many features are MUCH better in the P2P version. However, I believe that Trion has the right of it the way they did Rift. Completely F2P, not restrictions on gameplay, but HUGE bonuses and perks to Patrons. If you want to advertise as a F2P game, go truly F2P. Don't gimp the game and strip it down to the skeleton for the F2P community. Instead, give your Patrons HUGE bonuses/shinies that actually ENCOURAGE people to WANT to pay for the game. As it stands, many people are *stuck* in paying for the game because they don't want to lose their house/land/farm. Change it where F2P can't purchase land or houses, but have it where they can pay taxes on it. Let people pay for their first month, take a month off without fear of losing their stuff, give HUGE incentive for coming back with loot/currency bonus, increased rewards, increased LP regeneration, bonus cosmetic loot, etc...
F2P should not be synonymous with Free-2-Try-Then-Pay-2-Play. Choose what you want your game to be and advertise it as such.
Hope ya'll have great fun in whatever game you choose to play.
"I am handicapped...I'm psychotic."
Another potential problem with the land hacks is what happens when Auroria opens? Players are saying this should solve the land issue, but if they can't stop the land hackers now, can you imagine how it will be then?
People are screaming now about land, the forums have post after post about the lack of something that's so integral to the game. Imagine what will happen if only a few get a hold of the land in Auroria.
The game will be finished...
I started playing in CB 3. I enjoyed the game and the community. When the game went live like everyone else the wait time was horrid. I spent over 10hrs in queue. So I logged out for a couple of weeks.
I checked back and the first problem I had as far as the community goes was the lack of any manners to an extent I have never seen in other games. While not a game mechanics issue and it may seem very minor to some, I enjoy the social interaction and its a big part of gaming for me. I have grown very tired of paying players lording over the F2P players and calling us poverty stricken, welfare bums, etc.
I don't know many kids (unless things have changed over the last couple of decades) that have $150 to drop on a game, or most adults that I know. Some of the chat I have read has been very harsh and it ruins the game at least for me. So I left yet again hoping that when I decided to go back somethings had cleared up ie: queues, spammers etc.
I figured that after a while the "play for 2 days and leave" players would be thinned out a bit. I am still waiting for some more idiots to drop off the map, Though it does seem that there has been a reduction with the whole 'get off of welfare" statements,
Just my 2 cents
This is why people have got to stop buying into the Founder's Pack culture MMOs have been developing. It's too similar to what Hollywood has been doing with their films: they only care about opening weekend sales. Make sure people are hyped enough with commercials so that your ticket sales opening night make the profits to cover production costs. Even if the product itself is horrendous, if it made the money opening weekend due to hype, Hollywood still considers it a success.
It's the exact same mentality here. And game-developing side, it's even worse because it makes it okay for developers to release buggy product early.
It's a shame because with localized games you can get a preview by playing the games on foreign servers to see if it might be worth it. But $150 for an otherwise F2P game? No thank you. While the game improved from closed beta, I'm still very glad I didn't shell out anything for this.
You are absolutely right sir. Trion was very clever though, they sold founders packs on the idea that you would only get land if you bought the founders pack. And since we know having land is integral to the competitive pvp enviroment, they sneakily tricked a lot of people, Trust me, go the the AA website and nowhere does it mention limited land and how much it alters your chances of being competitive in the game.
I for one got talked into it by old guildmates of mine from Shadowbane, had I known before I bought AA what the real trick was, Id have never bought it.
Go to hell!
you know what i love the most about archeage?
people have been crying for a sandbox, and as soon they play it:
1) they will cry there is no "storry" leading them to max level
2) they will cry as soon they enter pvp
3) they will cry because they have no "dedicated building spot" (as used in warlords of draenor with the garrisons)
4) they will cry cry cry
sure you people wanted a sandbox? sure you didn't mean to play a themepark? because it surely sounds like it.
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
The only thing that bothers me at all about this game is the lack of ability to get the land you want/need. And even that is not enough to make me stop playing. I am not much for PVP in a level based MMO so pvp is not what I play for in AA. On the other hand, I hate repeatitive do the same thing over and over grind that most MMO's seem to routinely put into their games. I love to craft if it is doable. I love to PvE if it is not boringly repeatable. For now, I may only get 1 of 2 on that point.
Let's party like it is 1863!