Out of Pod Experience

... and I am disappointed.


It's a theme park in an open world, but not a sandbox at all.

There is no real meaning to anything.
No politics, no power blocks.

This is not only because it's not a single world,
but several worlds seperated as servers, no.

I've heard of guilds with hundreds of people,
so I can safely assume that there always are several thousand people on each server.


No, that's not it.



The reason, why the game as a whole lacks any actual meta,
is because death is meaningless for the victims.


Without death, there is no way to project power and influence the behaviour of the individuals.



What's even worse, is that while the victim has no loss at all besides repaircosts ...
... the offender gets punished heavily, if he keeps shooting non-legal targets!

Shooting legal targets has no meaning either.

Honor points for shooting the enemy factions ...
... will end up in gold only.

Here too the victim loses nothing.




Bots are a widespread phenomenon too. I've screenshotted a group of bots here ...
... and the blatanly obvious names show how much they care.


Through the fact that there is no loss through pvp deaths, bot owners don't even have to write bots that fight back. There is no way of hurting their gold/hour, unless a real person dedicates all of his time killing them, while hoping that another player doesn't come and shoots him away, eventually ending in trial and sentence. (sentence is time based, in minutes)


Also sad are the people who are extremely harsh against Pirates, which are PlayerKillers. Even when these people lose nothing but repair costs for their gear, (no lootdrops, no XP loss), they treat PKers as if they were sociopaths. It seems to be the other way round for me, though.


What I absolutely did like was walking around through the immense world. I stopped reading all the texts after a while, because it pretty much is always the same ... but wandering around picking up plants and chopping down trees to craft things together ... was very enjoyable for me. :)



If you love a big, beautifull, peacefull and meaningless world to wander around in ...
... then this game is probably for you. I like it partly and I am still playing it ...
... but I have started "counting the days" already, while figuring out how to create Change.



I can not recommend this game ...
... but you're welcome to help me try change it for the better.



It's still young and it has soo much potential! The forums are full of haters ...
... most seem not to actually pay for the game ...
... lots of whiners about being banned.

There's basically no moderation whatsoever and the whining and hate goes beyond reasonable.



Well, that's it. Thought I'd write this down ...
... as it's the second MMO I've ever played.


TL;DR:
ArcheAge is far from a sandbox. For sand, death has to have a meaning.


Killing is just a means of communication.


Removing the most important part of "killing" ...
... removes the whole message.




Oh and I will probably visit THERA ... but on a trial account. :)

Hey ... I know you! Nice work on the portrait!

The weird part is that people say the asian version is much better ...
... and that Trion completely ruined it.

So I'm not sure what you want to say here ...
... unless Trion is known for fuckups like this one.

Only if you rip it out of my cold, dead hands.

I see.

I'm so sorry I forced you to read it to the end so you could make such an insightfull statement.

Your Stuff fat boy, GIVE me it NOW!





I like UAE.

I did.

Sol makes for interesting reading and the format is part of that (getting better btw close to that happy medium of desired effect and readability).

At the very least read the whole op before trash talking it ffs.

Quoted for truth.

Hahaha, thanks!