Archlord is the latest fantasy MMORPG on the market, from the guys at Codemasters. It pushes you into a world of conflict, mainly amongst three races ( Orcs, Humans and Elves ) and leaves you to make your mark, choosing your alliegance and path in the game. It follows most of the standard fantasy MMO traditions: basic PVP, quest grinding, crafting and all the females wearing tissues for armor. It's not out to break conventions or new ground, in fact it's quickly clear that when they thought it up, they just thought along the lines of ''World of Warcraft, but Korean''. They've improved on WoW's combat in many ways, and the graphics are far better, but Archlord lacks in ways unexpected from a genre with so many mistakes to learn from.Archlord's main premise is that any player can effectively own the game through their achievements. Accomplished players will have the opportunity to become the Archlord, with several powers and features that put them above the crowd. It's an interesting idea, but very few players would have that opportunity, and it's just a reward for elitists and hardcore grinders - meaning you can expect to see people paying others to grind for them for this chance. And when a game's only new feature is one that most players will never experience themselves, it's basically evidence of lack of planning and the developers shooting themselves in the foot.
The well done parts of the game, however, are the less exciting but most prominent ones. It has graphics which are far better than most other MMO's at the moment, and it's combat system is extremely easy to get into and looks great. There are several problems with lighting which will annoy most people, though, as moving the camera in any direction changes the effects of lighting from sunny to wintery, to nighttime to glaringly bright. It makes it extremely hard to tell what kind of environment you're meant to be in at any time, as all the places look the same.
Archlord is also clearly still a work in progress. It's got spelling errors littered everywhere, so it's pretty hard to tell what exactly you're being told to do by the quest givers - although considering all the quests are soon discovered to follow the exact same paths and ideas, you'll learn what your next quest is before you even have to read it. There are also several animations missing, and movement with the keyboard is near impossible - the only real way to play the game is with the unpopular method of point and click. The developers didn't really know what they were getting themselves into when they forced this game out, and it's glaringly obvious in most, if not all areas of the game.
With work, Archlord could be a great game, capable of competing with today's top condenders, but in it's present state it's littered with bugs, poorly executed and more of an effort to break through than badly cooked steak. Approach with caution.
I'm 14 and I'm a student. I've always lived in South London, and don't plan on changing that anytime soon. I enjoy poor horror movies and good comedies. I love MMOs and FPSs mostly, but I play pretty much every genre there is.
