The other mistake they’re about to make hasn’t gotten a huge announcement as of yet as far as I’m aware, but the list of goodies included with the two pricier expansion pre-order packs contains this little nugget: It’s still capped at two per server however, and the token is bought with, you guessed it, diligence coins. *You can now buy a token that extends the maximum amount of characters per account to three. Also, until a couple of days ago* you couldn’t have more than two characters per account, so an army of alts to buy costumes for is out of the question too. The problem I see with those is that they’re too expensive (the baseline is around 30$, some cost more, some less), meaning that a lot of players won’t even buy a single one of ’em, and the majority of those who do will probably only buy the one they like the most and use that forever.
Pretty much the only thing you can exclusively buy for credits are costumes, and there’s admittedly quite a selection. Put the fancier looking ones in the cash shop, and players who are willing and able to spend additional money on the game have something to buy and show off. They’re all equalized in terms of speed anyway and the skills they have don’t make much of a difference either, so it’s basically just the looks that set them apart. Why, I ask? At least half of those absolutely should have gone to the credit shop. Each and every one of them went to the diligence shop. Lots and lots of new mounts and their corresponding bardings have been added to the game in recent months. Almost everything one could ever need or want can be bought with diligence coins, and as much as I hate it when games want me to pay through the nose for every little thing I think this really is a big mistake.Įxample: mounts. I’ve said before that the ArchePass – now that it works – is too generous with its rewards, and I stand by that.
It’s the same mistake Funcom made when The Secret World went free to play. What they’ve failed to do, though, is to give us enough cool stuff we can spend money on instead. For Unchained they’ve promised not to do any of that – it’s the whole premise and raison d’être for this re-release after all – and until now they adhere to that, which is obviously a good thing. Labor potions, premium houses and farms, vehicle upgrades, stuff to help with gear progression you name it, they sell it for real money. The thing is, the original ArcheAge is very heavily designed to make money with buy-to-progress mechanics. Even if they hadn’t openly admitted as much in the forum post linked above it would’ve been obvious to me. Why? Because they can’t possibly have made enough money with Unchained up to now to make the whole thing sustainable. Don’t get me wrong, it’s obviously not cool to announce one thing and then do the opposite, however in my opinion it’s actually good that they’ve decided to charge for it.
I’m not talking about the fact that the upcoming Garden of the Gods update will be a ‘paid expansion’ although they’d originally said that any future content will be free.
Alas, Gamigo’s and XL Games’ current plans make me wonder whether they actually want their game to be successful.
When I look past the various screw-ups – of which there were many, there’s no way nor reason to sugarcoat that – I see a game that has pretty much everything I want in an MMORPG.Īs such the game’s well-being is understandably of great concern to me. We’re closing in on eight months since ArcheAge Unchained’s launch and I’m still playing every day.