Kakao Games Europe posted the initial details of the service merge between ArcheAge and ArcheAge Unchained, effectively acknowledging that the subscription model was a failure. Both versions will be merged into a single server for each region (after the maintenance on November 30), and will take on the ArcheAge legacy model with Patron. A lot of specific details are not mentioned yet though. They also have no mention of the Rosen Crystals (the currency created to deal with the missing item compensation).
I called this one last year after Kakao Games Europe took over the publishing from Gamigo (when they absolutely botched up the compensation for missing items) since they effectively gave up between 90-180 days of subscription revenue when they offered this range as compensation for the transition from the original buy-to-play to the new subscription model (and the screw up with the missing item compensation, dramatically affected credit sales for at least that first six months when they finally acknowledged the screw up). I don’t think they ever recovered from that mess.
Some players were quite confident this type of service merge would never happen because of the amount of stuff on legacy ArcheAge (AAL), or how some ill run events on ArcheAge Unchained (AAU) resulted in high gear score at a fraction of the normally required effort. The bottom line for the company however is money (and not these things that affect the player base or economy). If anyone was wondering why they kept running these events on AAU that was trying to get you to spend your Manastorm crystals, this service merge is one of those reasons because Manastorm is fairly constrained on AAL (the shop itself is small on AAL, and usually contains a few mounts/battle pets and boosts). When Kakao Games Europe took over (and implemented the global build), Diligence in AAU (which was the currency you earned from completing Archepasses) was converted to Manastorm.
Manastorm on AAL was meant to be scarcer so that the small shop would occasionally have these desirable items. However, it looks like not much attention has been paid to it on AAL, while AAU players have hundreds or thousands of them (since that is the primary means of buying the earnable stuff from the cash shop). Most of the items AAU players take for granted, costs actual credits in AAL. If one did the calculation for the credit costs to buy those things and comparing the monthly subscription costs for AAU, you come out way ahead with the latter. True, there is also a lot more stuff (especially character progressing items) in the AAL cash shop since that was one of the premises of AAU’s business model (reducing the amount of pay to progress items which Gamigo after a certain point, reneged on, and then Kakao Games Europe removed when they took over). The positive of course (with doing away with AAU), is no longer needing a subscription to be able to login and access your characters, and have your credits between the two versions combined (I still have 9500 credits on AAL; credits that were originally from Devilian when Trion allowed us to transfer what we had to one of their other games; I chose ArcheAge).
AAU was extremely popular on its launch for a reason; the buy-to-play premise sans all of the pay-to-“win”/”progress”/”convenience” aspect. It brought back a lot of OG AA players who didn’t care for that latter part (but it eventually bled out due to Gamigo’s own incompetence and then, broken promise as they learned that they could not sustain revenues on just cosmetics; especially when most of that was low effort recolors of the same items). Safe to say, a good portion of the remaining AAU player base, will not bother with AAL since it has years of RMT driving some accounts especially during the Trion years.
Additionally, only cash shop housing can be dropped without an active Patron sub on AAL (most other designs require an active Patron subscription to place and build). The amount of these are limited on AAL (but are Manastorm purchases on AAU). These include the Full-kit Elegant Pure White Marble Mansion (9800 credits, 1000 Manastorm), Full Kit Desserted Cottage (7000 credits, no AAU equivalent except for the design which is 470 Manastorm), Full Kit Little Witch’s House (5000 credits, no AAU equivalent except for the design which is 400 Manastorm), and the Full Kit Mushroom House (4600 credits, no AAU equivalent except for the design which is 400 Manastorm). There’s also the full kit Stellar/Solar/Lunar farms. It remains to be seen how all of this will be handled. If none of this changes, there’s more than enough of these on AAU where property potatoes (like myself) won’t need Patron continuously (just only when pre-paid taxes are about to run out). Myself, I would lose just my Beanstalks (x3) (correction: these are also marketplace designs on legacy that cost around 1000 Manastorms on Unchained), miners (x2), trade manor, and advanced fellowship plaza (if I decide to go through with the land rush). But it’s an easy downsizing to begin with (and is meant to illustrate how this translates into lost revenue from some of us for Kakao Games Europe by eliminating AAU).
I’m going to call it now; it’s going to be a mess when this merge happens when it comes to missing items or how some things that were never available in AAU (but have long been in AAL), will cause issues. Also, the resulting combined server puts the game on its final legs (because this total merger will lose more players in the process since there will be folks on both existing versions, to decide against another land rush). Additionally, I doubt a lot of those remaining subscriptions on AAU, will translate into actual gains with Patron/credits/APEX revenue on AAL. At least on NA, I don’t even see land being a huge issue (maybe players favorite locations and the amount they can claim from the start might be problematic). All I see is this hastening the bleeding to where this original version will be sunset once AA2 is released (and I doubt it will have the longevity that AA has had).
What I find interesting is that entire recent developer note that was put out to allay the rumors (in the South Korean financial press) of ArcheAge being sunset in regions outside of Korea once those publishing contracts expired. The NA/EU region is the only one running AAU and it is now officially being sunset (but giving players on it a lifeline by merging them into AAL). But it is clear that this region isn’t in a good place (it easy to look around AAL, and see it is no better than AAU at least on NA). What AAL does have are the diehards that have stuck with it (in terms of being both Patron and credit purchasers).
The details for accounts with both AAL and AAU characters, is also pretty sparse (except for a blurb regarding login time). On my main account, I have 5 ancestral level characters on AAU, and have 3 characters on AAL (one ancestral, and the other two being lower level). So it is going to be interesting to see how they deal with character slots. My other alt account, I never used for AAL, and have only 4 ancestral level characters on it for AAU.
Kakao Games is supposed to provide more details next week as more questions/feedback are posted on their Discord. I’m not going to bother providing any feedback since it doesn’t really matter except for whatever is decided (and I will make a decision from there).
