Today is the day for more ArcheAge goodness. In my last column I discussed all the different forms of transportation and my encounters with them. This time around we're going to take a moment to talk about my latest experiences with ArcheAge, some announcements, and PvP as much as I understand!
EDIT - Per Trion, the Gilda Stars situation as it is now is thus: The Gilda Star rewards have been added to intercontinental trade routes, not taken away from daily quests. They were originally removed as rewards from all trade routes by XLGames. This change allows for players to choose how they collect them: slowly by PvE or quickly by risking PvP.
The last livestream from Evan “Scapes” Berman and Victoria “Firecait” Voss provided a few small announcements that may grab your attention. Running down the list, we have Gilda Stars being only earned from trading packs between continents as opposed to dailies as well. You'll need Gilda Stars if you intend to get anything major such as mounts, houses, and ships. Also, the item shop will be implemented into the alpha soon, so we'll be able to see how it converts from Korea. They stated that they're reworking a lot of the items that can be deemed as overpowered. For example, making sure the cash shop items are “in-line with world obtained items.” It's worth noting that certain items from the Founder's Pack will be created exclusively for the NA/EU regions of ArcheAge and won't reach others immediately. One more note, anything used from a Founder's Pack during the alpha will be given back when you enter the release of ArcheAge. Therefore, if you spend say 6000 credits on the item shop coming soon, you can get them back in the launched version. I came across that wrap up of announcements from Reddit user chrisco571 here!
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Thus far I haven't had the opportunity to mess around with PvP. Although, I'll be getting there soon as I've been noticing zones near me have been getting hostile. Specifically I recall one time I was questing along a beach and came across a good five or six players with red names circling me on horses. A couple were about my level with several others being much higher. They kept running around me and casting spells but not actually hurting me. So instead of panicking and attacking them as I had the opportunity to, I left my mouse cursor as far as possible from them. Resorting to asking the global chat what was going on, someone gave me the grand advice of pressing “ctrl + f” so they couldn't kill me. When in a game can you trust people? Certainly not now. Before making the mistake of pressing that I thought to myself, how many times do I find people in the global chat in a game stating, “alt +f4”. Later I realized “ctrl + f” activates Bloodlust Mode, which allows players to fight in zones that aren't at war. Fortunately, my suspicions were correct! That's been my closest PvP encounter so far, but I'll try to answer some of the questions you guys may have.
Yar Har Fiddle Dee Dee
If you end up killing allies often you'll find yourself going the pirate way. You'll want to know that they can only interact with NPCs on Pirate Island. As any other NPC will try to kill you, therefore it can be difficult to do anything as one. Specifically you'll learn there won't be as much room for farming which if you haven't heard yet, is one of the popular activities. If you become sick of the pirate life, you can work your way back into your faction. You'll have to finish a long grueling quest-line to get back in. The questing basically consists of community service, too... not always fun.
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Wrapping back to PvP you'll notice that certain zones will cycle through levels of danger. This can occur naturally without anyone doing anything as well as people killing others in this zone. As the danger levels proceed from one to five, these areas will become more dangerous as one might expect. Once the danger levels are complete, the zone will go into war and players can begin killing each other for honor points. Honor points are the PvP currency which can be used for purchasing certain weapons, armors, crafting materials, mounts, and so forth.
If you intend on only killing players of your faction, as yes you can certainly do that, then you won't earn honor points. Instead you'll be earning criminal points furthering your progress to becoming a pirate or going on trial. If you have over 50 crime points, you'll be sent to trial on your next death from another player. Before going on trial you'll be given the opportunity to plea guilty for a smaller sentence or stand trial. Then this gets into having five random players act as a jury to vote on whether you're guilty or not guilty. I know what you're thinking already, five random players, this could be anyone. Not quite, don't worry! The five random players are selected from a pool of people over level 30 that have volunteered for jury duty. Now yes, it can essentially be anyone over level 30 that's volunteered for it. Once the Founder's Packs went live, so did the global jury chat in ArcheAge. I found myself and plenty of others instantly disabling it for one sole reason. The people were ridiculously silly and irritable. I'd like to imagine the people aren't as crazy when we get to release, but that's wishful thinking. At the very least, it's nice to know that a group of five people that know each other can't just hop on a jury and vote a player as guilty.
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Stepping away from PvP for a moment, one of the PvE experiences I had the other day was my first dungeon. From what I understand there aren't many dungeons in ArcheAge so this isn't a huge element of the game. Although there are some few and far between. Personally I've always loved dungeons since having played World of Warcraft and my first dungeon, the Palace Cellar had me get together a small group. It was for groups of three, generally a DPS, Tank, and Healer, I had the DPS role as an archer. While waiting around for a bit calling out in the chat to get a tank I finally got one from shouting, “HALP” and someone questioning what that meant. It was nice to work together with a group of people for more than a minute or two to finish one quest. We were coordinated in luring small groups of enemies, locking down certain ones with floating bubbles, using buckets of water to put out enemies, etc. As everyone knows with every game, there are times when you question the community of a game and others when you can enjoy it. This was a time I was able to get away from the trolls of the global chat discussing what the first MMO was, Alienware being the best, etc.
Where is my Beta?
For those that are waiting for the beta to kick off or any information on it, it sounds like June is the plan. Plenty of people have tried to narrow it down to June, but Evan Berman mentioned in the last stream that they're “Aiming to do beta in June”. That's not a confirmed statement or release date, so it's just a possibility. If you don't know already, the beta will be kicking off with three to five day events sprawled out across weekdays and weekends. These will be wiped prior to launch.
Jeffrey Lerman / Jeff can be found playing games 99% of the time, with the 1% being writing about them. Feel free to follow his banter on Twitter @Snakester95.
