XLGAMES via Kakao Game Europe, put out a developers note from Jennifer Lee, lead for ArcheAge’s global content design team. They’ve been releasing these occasional notes to highlight future content updates for ArcheAge and ArcheAge Unchained. This one reiterated the global arena (that allows participation from players across all serviced regions) as well as the new Fairies race (that was talked about years ago) that is on track for release in 2024. I’m personally curious how they will deal with latency with this global arena (which is seemingly both PvE and PvP in nature: I’m presuming it will not be in standard form, nor use standard skills).
I’m also presuming the timing of this note is to try to deflect of the rumors (reported in South Korea by Korea Money Today News) that the company has plans to sunset the overseas versions of ArcheAge once all those existing publishing contracts expire. Part of this is in relation to the purported news that XLGAMES (the studio which develops ArcheAge) is looking to downsize the ArcheAge dev team by offering voluntary retirement pay outs or in-house transfers. MTN is normally reliable on company news like this, but I believe there are some issues with this piece.
For one, the majority of resources has already been refocused to ArcheAge 2 for awhile now. And previously when they were pushing ArcheWorld, resources were diverted to it (with a mostly skeleton crew dealing with ArcheAge and ArcheAge Unchained). A similar diversion happened when they worked on the mobile spinoff, ArcheAge War. Parent Kakao Games (Korea) denies this report (or at least parts of it since their PR posted an announcement on the official Korean ArcheAge site about this).
Basically, there are no (immediate) plans to sunset any region of ArcheAge, except they are (always) assessing each region (performance wise) as to potential closure. In other words, standard boiler plate PR when broaching the closure/sunset/service termination subject. However, I do believe this downsizing will be what happens once ArcheAge 2 launches (the above could also be in relation to how maybe the most intensive parts of the production are mostly completed already including the graphics and animations, and looking to downsize or reposition personnel to other projects due to that).
This is also a reminder that Kakao Games own subsidiary (Kakao Games Europe, B.V.) publishes ArcheAge in the west. But like most of these arrangements, they are still treated like other publishers they have had contracts with in the past with little preferential treatment. Translation: Kakao Games Europe still has to meet metrics (metrics which I believe have dropped off dramatically compared to when Trion Worlds and then Gamigo were publishing the game). It didn’t help when Kakao Games Europe dropped the ball early on by miscalculating the compensation for items that were missing from the global build they transitioned to (which eventually led them to remove those credits if they hadn’t been spent yet, and to subsequently replace that with Rosen crystals). IMHO, I believe NA/EU is in the underperforming category now.
I previously wrote (in some other post that I can’t find) that my time in ArcheAge Unchained was going to be ending in September (when my subscription time expires) since that is when they planned to merge the servers. However, Kakao Games Europe suspended that merger plan back in May after a lot of negative feedback stating that it made no sense (given that the existing EVO servers are the most populated, and that the other previous fresh start servers that will be merged, has only a handful of players left on them; it makes little sense to upheave an entire established server just for the few on those servers when they could be given free transfers/full kit demos to self-move). I wrote in feedback to them that my subs are good as gone if they went through with it. They are supposed to eventually announce an update on the plan. The temporary fresh start servers that were last opened, ended in June and players there were given free transfers plus a method to full kit their properties. Similarly, transfers/full kit options were finally opened for the other previous fresh start servers where it is a free one way ticket off to the existing evolution server (this applies to both versions of the game).
However, since no end date has been given yet for those transfers (or any concrete plans for those two servers), I am presuming that Kakao Games Europe is waiting to see how much accounts remain on them before deciding to 1) just merge those two servers together, 2) enforce a closure date for those two servers to force the remaining players to transfer off, 3) go through with merging them into the evolution server. So for the time being, this entire merger is in a holding pattern where folks like myself don’t really care which way they go (merging would simply mean I go through with not extending my subscription; and losing easy revenue sources from players like myself is not conducive to the metrics that they still must meet. I’m enjoying the casual potato property owner role where I have no problems paying the discounted $52 for 180 days of time (even though I dislike spending money with companies that are mediocre). I’ve reached a point where sometimes that cannot be avoided if you find decent entertainment value that isn’t much in terms of cost (and at less than $9 per month, is incredibly cheap entertainment).
Part of this re-evaluation is also due to the lack of other games that I am interested in playing. Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, and Tower of Fantasy are filler games. Diablo IV is something I am not interested in playing daily nor even long term in its current state. Lost Ark, I have a partially completed posting regarding the recent LOAON drama that the player base across multiple regions were up in arms about (I personally found it amusing since a lot of the game issues are self-inflicted by its core design and narrow end game focus). Guild Wars 2 is now one of those titles I occasionally log back into and play for a short while. That leaves ArcheAge Unchained as pretty much the only game now I log into daily (to do my property related stuff and fits the potato play style I now enjoy since I can completely ignore the PvE and PvP parts; I haven’t even upgraded my gear for over 2 years now even though I have a lot of the materials; I just prefer using my labor for something else).
Most of the upcoming stuff doesn’t interest me at all either. Chrono Odyssey is a nope when I look at what that studio has worked on before (NFT crap). Throne and Liberty is a nope (the grind in that is not what I am into now). Blue Protocol is an unknown but I am no longer enthusiastic about anything that AGS publishes (which is the other demerit when it comes to T&L). Palia while it seems would be up my casual potato alley, doesn’t interest me (not a fan of the character art style, instanced housing, and real time building timer to build out the property). Similarly, the art style, pre-defined character aspect, and Destiny/Warframe type of game play with Wayfinder doesn’t interest me. Basically, the gaming industries shenanigans over the years has made me less tolerant of the marketing and hype put on by these studios. Diablo IV is a prime example of the pre-launch marketing being way better than the actual game.
