I never got the fascination with this game....Everyone kept calling it a sandbox, all I saw was quest hubs.....FOrced PVP later was a total turn off....Moved on.
I think with Archeage (not sure if it really is a "sandbox") you ignore the quest hubs. In other words, you choose what you want to do as opposed to following the "!"
I mean, that's' what I did, and it made all the difference for the time I played it.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
The game is amazing. HOWEVER, they do not really reveal how you MUST pay for Patron in order to really do anything in the game to make coin. If you decide to buy APEX from the in-game auction house, which can convert into Patron, the price is high (right now 940gold each & you need 2) and you honestly no longer have methods of making this coin, to buy APEX (2 a month to cover your Patron). Eventually, unless you use a credit card to buy your Patron each month, you are grinding away farming wild plants (not easy), just to pay for the privilege to play. And the only way you can sell these plants are in chat, less you get someone to buy you an auction ticket from the cash shop. They do these "show you the game" sessions where the 3 presenters appear to know little to nothing about the game and they give away keys.
TRION has put so much effort into getting rid of 1 tiny private server (no one really cares about this server) - trying to blame it for their loss of players. No, the loss of players is due to good content being removed from the game, such as the Donkey quest, which would reward the player 10g each day. You cannot own land w/o patron, can't own a home, can't do much of anything. If it expires, you lose... everything. You also have to pay taxes for the land or the house so you honestly are grinding away - just for the privilege to play the game.
Then, a large % of the player base is rude caustic young teens who run have nothing better to do than insult each other day in and day out. The gear in this game is definitely a severe pay to win, but you can enjoy most of the content without getting into the PvP zones.
Do yourself a favor, skip this game. While the game IS really one of the best I've seen, it is not really managed well, definitely not monitored, most of the servers are ghost towns and updates are generally riddled with not being able to log in for days. Poorly managed game which needs a serious over-haul. They will open new legacy servers in order to bring in players, but our server died in less than six months.
Comments
I mean, that's' what I did, and it made all the difference for the time I played it.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo