The Sandpark MMO ArcheAge had a tumultuous start in September 2014. Now, almost a year later, the CEO of publisher Trion Worlds, Scott Hartsman, admits mistakes.
Last year, hardly anyone wanted to know about this. In interviews, it was long said that things were going fantastic with ArcheAge. In December, as serious problems became apparent and could no longer be denied, the CEO of Trion Worlds, Scott Hartsman, spread good cheer – but already made it clear, that a little more development time would have benefited the Western version of the Korean game.
Now, however, the phase of downplaying the problems with ArcheAge is over; priorities have shifted.
Now Trion Worlds wants to bring a new game from Korea to the Western market, the action MMORPG Devilian: But a lot of porcelain has been shattered, a lot of trust has been destroyed, including at the US site MMO-Bomb. They were extremely disappointed with how things went with ArcheAge. They stated that the developers destroyed all the “credit” they had built up with Rift.
These two mistakes are acknowledged by CEO Scott Hartsman at the launch of ArcheAge
In the interview, Hartsman also admits two mistakes from back then that they will not repeat:
- They integrated the shop and other systems too late in development. This should have happened in Alpha and Beta in front of a “live audience”. It was the first time they worked with a partner from Korea, and they learned from it: In the future, the Beta should be more like the “finished product”.
- And secondly, they brought all “hardware” live at that time, to cope with the influx. This meant that there was no test server for 6 weeks. This should not happen again. The new game will have a dedicated test server.
Questions remain
Mein MMO means: It’s a shame that Hartsman does not address why they deemed it necessary to bring the Auroria patch at the beginning of November despite a lack of test servers. Auroria was the goal that many had worked towards. Here it was necessary to capture fortifications in a short sprint. Everything had to go smoothly to ensure fair conditions. But on the critical day, there were major technical problems where half of the players in the USA could not log in. And this gave the MMORPG a serious setback, from which it seems it has hardly recovered to this day.
At the time, there was the impression that Trion Worlds wanted to deliver game content despite all the problems to financially exploit the “hot phase”. Possibly a “tightly secured” schedule with the Korean partners was the reason. This could also explain the enormously accelerated start phase. They rushed from Closed Beta to Open Beta to a head start without a break for their team. They occupied a favorable time window between WildStar and the then-new WoW expansion, but also paid for it with a multitude of technical difficulties that turned November and December into a nightmare, almost making ArcheAge a “running gag”.
At the end of the year, ArcheAge was voted “MMO Fail 2014” by a US site, and it also took first place on our list.
If you listen to Hartsman, everything suggested that the Beta phase should have been significantly extended and that the Auroria patch should not have been brought in November and virtually “blindly”, without a test server. A decision that turned out to be disastrous in hindsight.
However, it is unclear whether this timeline arose from overly tight expectations from the Korean partners. Or whether Trion Worlds simply overextended themselves in the rush to launch the “hot title” and then continue to refine it.
Either way: Trion Worlds says they have learned from it.
