Archlord Beta Ends.

Archlord comes out today at retailers. I have been fooling with the beta for the last three weeks. The game has low minimum PC requirements, and runs; however, I cannot believe they released the game. It had quite a few glaring bugs and often you would see Korean text throughout the game. Some windows didn't scroll properly for the English text. It did not feel polished in the slightest. Folks are gonna complain about the lack of customization in the faces (similar to Lineage II), and the whole point and click move thing. They did have WASD and key mapping support, but WASD was way slower than using the mouse/camera to move. I honestly liked the point and click this time. I zoomed the camera out to a 2/3rds view like in Diablo, and felt at home.

The good thing was the game is playable. It had quests, I didn't see any real combat issues or anything of that sort. My ablities worked. I played an Elementalist, so yes my pet did his job slowing mobs. I looked awesomely cute. (See Xianthe the Elementalist above... ((^_~ Y.)

Even with all the bugs, I fully support the concept of the game. Not every game needs to be an EverQuest or a WoW. It's nice to take a break in a PvP oriented game with PvE elements and not care about your gear cause it doesn't take long to level. (Although during beta it didn't seem like you lost gear even though some of the game text talked about it.) It reminded me a lot of playing Diablo with quests and crafting and a keke ^.^Y feel.

I actually enjoyed it and may have picked it up if they spent more time fixing the client bugs, but no way am I paying $14.95 a month for a truly buggy MMO. I would have preferred to see a smaller monthly fee ~$5.00 then I would have been tempted. I cannot possibly fathom why they would need $14.95 a month to run this MMO. Its not going to be a ton of servers, they probably aren't going to release a ton of content, and events will be done related to PvP. The players are making the content beyond the leveling grind.

Maybe I'll check the game out again in 6 months or so. If it's really good then they will have fixed those text/client issues. But I must say I was impressed with the amount of quests for this sort of game from what I saw.