It’s been one week since Albion Online launched, and how’s it doing so far? Pretty smoothly… no really there’s been very few issues. This is our Review in Progress of Sandbox’s new MMORPG.
There were of course some of the normal new release issues where people would have trouble logging in and sometimes once you were in game lag was an issue just due to the amount of people trying to play in the same areas at once. A week later though and these issues have cleared up as the player base has spread across the game. The biggest issue I’ve experienced so far was the character I had premade somehow disappeared and I had to remake her. Of course, since character customization isn’t a huge thing in Albion and I was still able to use the name I wanted this wasn’t a big deal.
As far as the game itself goes, it’s been an interesting experience so far. I’m not one of the people who has been following this game closely over the years. I pretty much saw it was a sandbox game which allows for the players to decide how they want to play the game. I also had heard it was supposedly “super hardcore” which after playing for a week I think is a pretty good description. My main thought about Albion so far is, it’s a great game for people who feel like modern MMOs have gotten too easy and miss older games like Runescape and Ultima Online.
One of my first big surprises in game involved what happened to things you are carrying with you when you die. I wasn’t surprised that you dropped these things, because really that’s a mechanic that has been around for a long time. What was surprising is if I had any of my founder’s items on me when I die those would also drop. It just seems weird to me a player could lose an item they paid real money for in such a manner. Thankfully there was a warning so I knew not to take some stuff with me but it’s still an odd concept to me.
One thing I was really amused with is the fact I started the game off in my underwear. It’s just sort of funny because the story is you are traveling to a new land to settle it and you arrive in your underwear. As funny as this was it serves a real purpose since there’s no classes and gear is where your skills come from. Since the player makes all choices about what they want to do in game (and not during character creation) starting in your underwear makes sense.
One big problem which has only lessened a little over the week is trying to get resources can be a real pain sometimes. Every node only has a certain amount and although they do seem to respawn quickly, it can still be frustrating. With so many people competing for the same things it can be slow going. A compounding factor in this frustration is the fact I couldn’t turn my camera around to look around as I run around in game. This is one of my habits I always forget about until I’m in a game where I can’t do it anymore, and I’m not sure if I’ll adjust to this or not. It certainly made finding resources more of a pain than they might have been if I could just simply look around.
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One other big surprise was the world isn’t seamless and there are loading screens between zones. The method of loading to different zones is pretty similar to FFXIV where you run towards the area you want to go and there’s an indication of the end of the zone and you get the loading screen. This isn’t a huge deal, and the load screens have been short, but it was a surprise.
Overall after a week in I am enjoying Albion Online quite a lot. It is certainly interesting and quite different from most MMOs I have played in the last few years. Plus, over all the launch has been about as smooth as MMO launches go. I’m looking forward to spending more time in Albion Online over the next week.
