Jake Song is the head of XL Games, the developer of ArcheAge. In an interview, he discussed the upcoming ArcheAge 2. The sequel is intended to do some things differently, partly because the developers were too greedy with the first part.
What does the head say? In the interview summarized by the website MMOCulture, Jake Song admitted that the developers were too “greedy” with the original ArcheAge.
They wanted to satisfy as many types of players as possible and pursued ambitious ideas for that. However, this led to many delays in the release and affected the live development. Too many projects just piled up.
This should be different with the successor ArcheAge 2, which was recently announced. This is also expected to influence the development time.
Fewer features, but more quality
What should change? With ArcheAge 2, the developers want to focus more on quality of the core content, rather than constantly adding new features and bloating the game. However, the successor is intentionally designed to attract players from the first part.
Song sees “freedom” as the most important design principle, which was also a theme in ArcheAge. There will still be content like housing, naval battles, and vehicles, which will, however, be equipped with new physics. But he could not provide exact details yet.
The world is fundamentally the same, but it is set in a different time and in a parallel universe. It is being written by Jeon Min-hee, the writer of the first part. The new MMORPG is also being developed in the new Unreal Engine 5, which excited audiences during the presentation in May 2020.
When will ArcheAge 2 be released? A team of between 40 and 50 developers is currently working on the new game. The number of employees is expected to gradually increase.
In general, the development time is expected to be shorter than with the original ArcheAge. Exact details about it and also about the MMORPG itself should come in the first half of 2021.
ArcheAge is popular in the West
In the interview, Jake Song also spoke about the development of ArcheAge in North America and Europe. According to him, more than half of the total sales have been made here.
Whether and how ArcheAge 2 will come to us in the West is not yet known. It is possible that Kakao Games, the publisher of Black Desert, will take over the distribution this time.
Finally, the company has held more than 50% of the shares of the developer XL Games since February 2020. In addition to Black Desert, Kakao will also handle the distribution of Elyon, an MMORPG that will be released in Korea in 2020.
