Many people will attack ArchLord for one thing before they even look at it - mainly, that it's not World Of Warcraft. While it's weaker but with similar ideas, it's also fun, rewarding and not half pretty for a game that's been out for more than a year overseas.
Like RF Online, ArchLord is a Korean MMO localised for our fair seas, entering a rich canon of inaccessible grindfests built to steal your waking hours and push you to malnutrition and social isolation. Plus, what you actually get for your money has a somewhat milder learning curve mixed with newbie-friendly quests that will ease in even the most unseasoned of gamers.
With an appeal similar to the National Lottery, you'll seek to defy the awful odds and rise to the top of each server through a series of events to become the one and only 'ArchLord', a PvP goliath who rains fire on other players, rides a dragon to work and always has a bird on his arm. Regardless of this heavy emphasis on PvP gameplay, there's a generous amount of questing to be had around a varied and expansive landscape, and while the classes and combat don't do a lot new for the MMO industry, they're familiar, intuitive and a laugh to play.
LORDING IT UP The PvP atmosphere is what brings ArchLord down, though. The current model of player-on-player combat in MMOs is a hurricane of half-skill and the ability to circle your opponent endlessly, and there can only be one ArchLord per server. What's more, the actual odds of reaching it are so remote that it's hard to justify a great investment of your time - and even if you do make it, your 15 minutes of fame will be that of an empty PvP god-mode.
While not a WOW-beater, ArchLord is definitely a viable alternative. It's a mishmash of unoriginality behind slick, gorgeous graphics, with a fair bit of content to plough through to get to level 99 and potential to expand. It ends up being a fun MMO romp for casual players and a rich PvP hamster wheel if you're sitting out there with an axe to grind.
I was in beta for both RF Online and Archlord, and the similarities between them and almost every other Korean RPG-by-numbers is shocking.
With the amount of grinding required to progress in any of these games, it's no wonder so many bots get set up.
Perhaps it's time developers started putting less focus on quick cash from cheap sources and more into developing something that actually has unique features all the way through and not just at the higher levels, forcing people to mindlessly hack and potion, hack and potion all the time.
All MMORPG games seem to be all grinding and leveling in an attempt to get up to a high enough level to pvp.
World of Warcraft is quite enjoyable in this respect. With interesting and varied quests. But it's still grinding.
I do hope that Warhammer online delivers what it is promising. That is, the ability to get right into pvp at the start and level up that way. aswell as a few quests thrown in for variety.
Not all MMORPGs. Guild Wars allows you to start a character for the PvP server at level 20 (the level cap on Prophecies, not sure about Factions or Nightfall).
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, UK BA1 2BW England and Wales company registration number 2008885
Well put together
