I got an idea! Let's market the new and improved non-pay to win version of the game as pay once and then own get to play all you want! THEN Let's suddenly sell the game to another company a couple months in and suddenly swap to a subscription model! THAT'LL MAKE US SO MUCH MONEY! You get what you deserve, XLGames and Kakao. You get what you deserve. Killed an extremely fun game with your greed.

I remember ArcheAge from the very beginning.
My best friend got me hooked on it in 2013 and we even bought a new PC each to be able to play the game.
We've been on board since the beta.
Sea battles, guilds, housing system, crafting, farming.
There was so much you could do. From alchemy to leather crafting or ore forging.
But then came the publisher's greed for money. or was it the developers? nobody knows exactly, we just remember that it got worse from year to year.
Farming was made simpler and simpler, so that in the end everyone did the same thing, systems in which you could build up something became more and more difficult. You got the feeling that at some point the developers no longer wanted players to experiment and the focus became more and more on pay to win.
In 2020, after more than 6000 hours of total playing time, the game was over for me.
The fun was gone.... It was always the same old story.
Fewer and fewer players, always the same pay-2-win players who literally dominated the world. Always the same paths you had travelled...
after every ‘merge’ it got worse and worse...
what a shame. such a good concept, ruined.

ArcheAge, you were my World of Warcraft.
Farewell, old friend.
I'm happy and disappointed that I didn't get to see you end, but I have fond memories of you.

You get what you deserve.

ArcheAge coulda been one of the greats- Pulling in money from a community that cherishes the game. The closed beta tests easily topped any other experience I've gotten from an MMO. You had a beautiful world. You had a good take on quests. You had one of the greatest PvP systems out there. You had a system that let players fine-tune their builds to their playstyle. You had a GOLD MINE. Instead, you ran it into the ground didn't you, Kakao? You and your greed.

Hate to see you go, but love to watch you leave.

The developers of this game need to be rewarded for what they made. Business decisions killed what is still the best open world guild vs guild experience I have ever had.

I almost wish we had not cared and kept playing. This game deserves to be played and loved for what it was meant to be, not what it became.

Was a great game once upon a time

Played ArcheAge on launch many years ago, back then the PvP was plentiful, the battles long, and the greatest fear was a kraken. I remember sailing for hours and sitting in the court house to farm labor points. Spent so many materials trying to make good armor and weapons. Tending to my crops and bees on a little house I build on a cliff overlooking the sea. I was in a small guild, we had one member named Boodle. I'll always remember asking Boodle "Why are you always dancing" He would give words of great wisdom "Dancing hides the pain" I hope life is treating ole Boodle well.

Goodbye ArcheAge, goodbye to my little farm, goodbye Fathom's Below, and more importantly goodbye Boodle.
You will all be remembered.
o7

I saw XL Games and Kakao ... transform Archeage into a machine fueled by people's crushed spirits, broken dreams and emptied pockets. Corps've long controlled our lives, taken lots... and now they're after our souls! ... I've declared war not 'cause capitalism's a thorn in my side or outta nostalgia for an America gone by. This war's a people's war against a system that's spiralled outta our control.

Came for the ships many years ago, and I completed what I set out to do. Building one of every ship in the game, waiting patiently for the "Large Warship" since Enoan Galleon was considered "Medium". Medium compared to what though? Anyways, can't believe it's all about to disappear before my eyes after all this time (Only played it via steam for the easier screenshots. It wasn't on steam when I started playing anyways, so numbers do not represent true time)

Had so many enjoyable activities that didn't have to just be combat or crafting that would still feel satisfying and rewarding because it would still progress your character. My favourite used to be raising sunken trade ships from the ocean floor, which granted exp in the exploration skill, and as you levelled the skill up you could open special boxes that would occationally spawn on it, which had a higher sell price than the standard relics.

You could write songs on music paper to level your artistry skill, and then play the tunes for your friends whenever you felt like entertaining them or yourself on a long trade journey across the sea, or maybe it was a land route, and eventually you would start having dreams when you sleep that you could put to paper in a painting to decorate your home.

Homes were also open world, so you wouldn't have to suffer loading screens, and you could see your neighbours go about their daily routines when they were home, maybe crafting stuff or planting seeds and gathering their harvest. Maybe they were even loading a wagon for a trade run! Who knows? But point is that the world felt more living that way, because everyone's not just standing the same places at all times to do the same things. No one was crafting and farming in your home except you and your family, maybe guild or friends.

You could even go fishing in the ocean. You wouldn't just have only small fish that fit in your inventory. If ya brought some chum and a lure, you could do sport fishing which would give you anywhere from a small fish that you'd have to store in a water tank in your fishing ship, to a huge one that you'd have to hang up on hooks and drag behind you across the water. You could then sell it to the fish appraisers for easy and fun money.

The other (Standard) faction even spoke a different language that you couldn't understand by default, and had to learn. To learn this, you'd have to show up to a language tutor either at home with a private teacher summoning pillow, or scheduled lessons in one of the 2 great cities in Marianople or Mahadevi, and you'd have to have studying books with you that you could potentially print yourself if you had ranked up your Printing skill. This would open the doors for diplomacy and friendships because not just everyone from the enemy faction would know how to communicate with you, so if they understood you and weren't showing signs of hostility, the faction diffrence wouldn't matter to ya. Met a buncha friends like that. It sounds weird, but it helps with the first impressions a lot.

Of course combat was also fun with a class system that had you build your own class by picking 3 from a list of initially 10, but later on 14, which would then give you a special class name for each combination. You would then pick 20 skills from a list of 12 per class with 3 of them being locked behind the need to invest more skill points in the respective class to unlock them. You'd also get passive effects based on how many skills you had picked up in each school, maxing out at 6 passives at 8 skill points invested.

Not all combat was based on character skills though, sometimes you'd find yourself in naval combat where you'd also be likely to need to operate the guns of the vessel you were on, or if you were the captain, try to get your vessel in advantageous positions, and often to use collision damage to destroy the enemy's vessel before they destroy yours by other means. Figureheads would give the captain special skills sometimes, other times they'd give passive effects, or even unlock a new weapon for someone to activate. Typically you'd fit your warships with a Tsunami figurehead which allowed you to pull enemy ships in, push them away, do a hard stop, or if you were already completely still it'd back you up a good amount, or you could swing your ship wildly to either the left or right for immense collision damage, which would be based on speed and the weight of your vessel.

Everything felt rewarding, so you could just focus on having fun with whatever you prefered to do, and you would probably thrive in your own little way. If you didn't want to take part in combat, no one was going to force you to do that to reach the goals you valued in most cases. Be it because the goal could be completed naturally without, or because you could do activities to scrape gold together to bypass that stage.
Naturally didn't mention everything, because there was simply too much to do to just jam it all in here.

There was immense joy to be had while it lasted. I will miss you, my once-happy old home ♥
Maybe we will meet again in another life, so to say. Maybe Classic, maybe Rage

p2w and greedy devs killed this game :)

ArcheAge had a lot of potential, but it was overshadowed by its heavy reliance on pay-to-win mechanics. The world was fun to explore; it had a pretty great art-style; it offered a variety of activities (crafting, trading, and naval battles); it allowed you to combine 3 classes to create a new, unique class (some were better than others, but still, the flexibility was pretty great); and the combat, while tab-targeted, was meaty and felt responsive.

The biggest problem is that the grind became repetitive really fast, and the monetization held it back from reaching its full potential.