ArcheAge, the MMO with sandbox elements, will be launching in Europe with a patch emphasizing sandbox elements that were left out of the Korean version.
ArcheAge launched in 2012 in Korea to great attention. Players, including those from Europe and North America, saw in the game a return to sandbox ideas they had missed in the genre since Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. However, with Update 1.0, a “theme park” update, the game moved away from these sandbox roots: Crafting became less significant, while the daily and instance craze known from theme parks made its way into ArcheAge. Some say it lost a bit of its drive because of this. Others say that it had already been missing shortly before. Anyway – the game never regained its initial significance afterwards.
What remains of the sand
Trion Worlds is now bringing the game to Europe and is surprised by the ongoing success. Access to the Alpha via a “founder pack” is exorbitantly expensive, yet it is being purchased so frequently that they had to expand the server to three times its size. For players, a sensitive topic: Which version of ArcheAge will we get? The dreaded theme park update 1.0, which would be a “logical” but unwanted starting point?
No, Trion Worlds has made a deal with the Korean publisher XLGames. As massively reported, both Trion Worlds and XLGames have recognized that ArcheAge has taken an “unintended” direction. Both publishers now value the sandbox elements and want to emphasize them.
Back to the Future? Orphan Black? Alternate Realities? Sounds all exciting!
For Trion Worlds, this means: They will not be launching with the theme park update 1.0, but with 1.2, which emphasizes the sandbox features more strongly. It will be very interesting to observe whether the European ArcheAge distances itself from the Korean ArcheAge and what happens with the hybrid ArcheAge being developed by mail.ru for the Russian market.
[intense_testimonies][intense_testimony][intense_testimony_text]This is really an exciting direction being taken here, where localization chooses a path into an alternate reality. It somewhat reminds me of the clone show Orphan Black.
This has happened before with localization from the Asian to the European market (WoW skeletons in China must have flesh because bones are taboo there; also, there are 2 lockouts per week instead of one) and there are changes in game mechanics with the GW2 port as well, but here it seems that the philosophy behind the game is also being changed.[/intense_testimony_text][intense_testimony_author image=”https://images.mein-mmo.de/magazin/medien/2014/01/Logo-022.png”][/intense_testimony_author][/intense_testimony][/intense_testimonies]
