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Introduction to the ArcheAge world map
This article is a copy of this article from AAportal.net - The largest International Community of Archeage
There are 8 races in ArcheAge including humans, elves and dwarves. They are divided on to 2 fractions: The East one and the West one. Their ancestors lived on a highly civilized continent, but they had to flee to East and West without a reason we know about. In ArcheAge, you begin playing two thousand years later, and you must find the cause of that big disaster, simultaneously quenching your curiosity, enjoying the game and exploring the world.
In the beginning of the development, XLGames has invited a well known Korean novelist Min Hee Jun to write the storyline. So we can expect a quite interesting quest line with special stories in the open world.
As Jake Song said, they are willing to develop ArcheAge as a game which would unite the strongest features of Ultima Online, Lineage (2), and World of Warcraft. Jake Song mentioned For example, the constellations players see in the sky, will change as time goes, and as the characters moves around the world. The state of the same forest will also change as the seasons go.
We have already said a lot of times – the world of ArcheAge is huge! It is bigger than the size of World of Warcraft with all expansions! It is time to tell you more about the world, in which we will spend a lot of time in just a few months. To begin we want to show you the complete world map of ArcheAge.
If you click here, you can see the fullsize picture.
To be honest, even the small part of the world (18th), which was available on the 1 CBT, is very big. It was a bay surrounded by land and small islands. Of course you could enter the ocean from the bay. You could also visit a small part of the East continent. However, the distance between continents is not very large. We hope that the developers will resize the size of the ocean to make sea travel and trade routes more dangerous but also more rewarding and exciting aspects of the game play.
When you walk between zones, you won’t notice any difference in the flora, so you can easily get lost if you try to recognize it. However there still are some contrasting locations, along with various objects to investigate, secluded places to discover. Imagine how good it would be to build your own house in some secure location, where no one would find it.
We have decided to number the locations for your comfort along with a brief description and screenshots. The World of ArcheAge is divided to zones instead of certain locations. Some locations may hold few different types of zones with different landscapes and monsters, while some other locations have the same appearance. There were overall 8 locations on the 2 CBT: Solzreed Peninsula, Gweonid Forest, Garandol Plains, White Forest, Marinople, Two Crowns, Maha Devi and also a volcanic location with such a severe name, that I don’t even know how to write it. To make it easy, let’s call it “Volcanic Plains”.
If you click this link, you will see the fullsize map.
All locations in the game impress you with their atmosphere. They have lots of details, which you might not even notice – flocks of birds, rabbits, sheds in the gardens, mysterious runes on some strange rocks. All of this is accompanied by marvelous music and stunning ambience. Actually, screenshots can never show all the beauty and dynamics of this world. Only watching videos might transfer this feeling. But you should play and see it yourself. However I will try to tell you more about Archeage and pass you a part of what I’ve seen.
Comments
This is great! Thanks so much Romtim.
Man, I can't wrap my head around all those features list.
What the hell... if they can manage to implement all those features, this game will be awesome!!
I've said it before, the MMORPG that'll be able to mix sandbox features succesfully with themepark features, a themepark/sandbox hybrid MMO, will be a huge success. Looks that ArcheAge might be that game.
Which leaves me to wonder:
- a world that is larger than WoW with expansions included
- graphics of that high a level, which must be the best in the MMO business
- you can build houses, ships, gardens, hold sieges
- a lively world with seasonal changes
How the heck will they be able to manage that, where other MMO companies fail to cram all that into one MMORPG?
Something's got to give. Let me guess, no seamless world, right, but instead a world divided into zones?
edit: I'm really curious how long it takes to cross 1 such square on the worldmap in a straight line, it'd give me an idea of the size of the world.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I hope it is seemless, even if it's too much to ask
but i do agree that the server hardware will have to be some type of amazing machinery to run all this smoothly.
I also wonder whats the size of those zones, haven't found that info yet.
Future: WoD, SWTOR, Arche Age, Tera (maybe), GW2.
Present: None.
Past: Eve, RIFT, UO, bunch of F2P crap.
man if they pull this off.... im screwed lol
building ships, houses, and even airships in a massive detailed world that has seasonal changes. hell i could make my own content with just that!
I wish they would start talking North American development. As much as I want this game, I'm not going through a proxy or dealing with a language I don't understand just to play it.
Maverick's right, something gotta give. Not trying to discredit the game, but nothing is perfect. My bet is that at launch they cant implement all these stuff they mentioned, promising them on the 'next patch'.
From what I understand, the target market is NA/EU. Supposedly, they are using the Koreans as testers so that the West will only see the final versions of the game.
If this is true, its a good idea and a bad one, while it will keep the opinion of the game high since there will be no "this game sucked in alpha, so I wont play at launch" but at the same time, koreans do not share the opinions of the West in games.
We shall see, but you certainly will not have to proxy to play the final.
Most of this stuff has already been seen in the first 2 closed beta tests last year.
Last i checked all thats left to see is the sieges, the original continent (place that players can conquer and build cities and castles and shit in), the karma & Jail system related to pvp, and of course the rest of the map.
and closed beta 3 is this month or next, so well see what else is done shortly.
We shall see but if i were to make a prediction i would say nothing will "give" as you say. They have been developing this game since 2006 and have 60 million behind them, i think their good for it, lol.
"I will Turn your name into a synonym for weakness"
You sure about that? Because I've been following the game pretty closely and last I heard on that front was that they had not yet made a deal for NA/EU releases. And usually that means the development hasn't happened yet either. And as much as they're not building the same game from the ground up, there's still so much translating involved.
My understanding was that the Korean release was the main release.
Hell, some genius will figure out how to translate it, then its proxy away for me! If this game even meets 50% of what its claiming its going to blow everything out of the water, thats worth a proxy for me (I live in Australia so it will be similar ping anyway)
I have been dreaming of a game like this since my first MMORPG (Sadly I missed the sandbox phase, but even before learning they even existed I always thought the true potential of an MMORPG is creating your own content and impacting on a persistant world)
Seems this is the only AAA title aiming to fulfill that need and therefore has my support.
I'm surprised with all of you at how much stuff seems to be crammed in AA. I hope that the use of advanced programming tools/methods makes it all work smoothly. Sounds too good to be true but the videos seem to say other wise.
XLGames does have affiliates in US but I'm not sure who they are or what they specifically do. XLGames does have two apps so that could be what the affiliates work on. I hope everything is set up ahead of time though and the "westernized" version of AA will follow the Korean version quickly.
Oh, I just realized that since XLGames is already doing apps that a mobile AA app similar to, say, GW2 (crafting/trading by mobile) is not out of the question? This is purely based on theory... I need to sit down.
Just not worth my time anymore.
My question about the map would be that it ends with landmass at it's edges, how will they effective make such a barriar in game. Mountians? or a gaint ass wall?
Korean gamers might not share the same opinions about gaming as gamers in the west, but the more and more I read on these forums leads me to belive that gamers in the WEST dont even share the same opinions as a group!
we all have different wants! :P
--Gaymer Extraordinaire--
I read that the map will be divided into zones.. but that doesn't really indicate if they will be joined seemlessly..
as for the landmass idea, I definitely read that you will be able to ride a ship between landmasses and that the actual size of the ocean was on the small side and they wanted to expand it to make sea travel more treacherous. With that in mind it seems like the world would be seamless.. Though, I suppose they could always just make the ocean its own seperate "zone" if they were using landmasses as boarders....
WoW uses that landmass idea with their continents, and there is no actual sea travel. I feel like traveling is a huge part of this game. I read in a beta review posted in the forum that there are no quick ports as of right now so they are really encouraging exploration. ...reminds me of old school EQ before all the ports were everywhere, it was much more fun to explore back then.
--Gaymer Extraordinaire--
of course they are joined seamlessly