Some games contain many great elements that provide legitimate reasons to sink hundreds of hours into.  Sometimes these features are rendered irrelevant by one rather trivial feature that alone sells the greatness of the title.  When I had a chance to spend some time with ArcheAge, previewing the new additions and new playable races and learning about the simulated economy and justice system, all these impressive feats were overshadowed by one simple action: I witnessed a ship fire a harpoon into the side of a cliff.  This harpoon stuck into the rock a considerable height above sea level, and I witnessed the ship rappel up the side of the cliff.  This single action made a stronger impression than all the other great features I got to witness. Most gamers, however, probably care about the other features in the game, so we will discuss those.

ArcheAge is an open world PvP MMORPG.  It is going to receive an update in Q4 2016 entitled ArcheAge 3.0: Revelation.  This update will bring some major changes to the game, the most noteworthy being the introduction of two playable races, the Dwarves (Nuian faction) and the Warborn (Haranya faction).  Writing under the assumption most people have a general idea of what dwarves are, if you picture bearded, stocky short dudes, go with it.  The Warborn are a dragonesque large, muscular people.  Looking at the character models, the Warborn male definitely doesn't skip arm day.  To help level the playing field against players who have had characters for over two years, these new races will have the ability to temporarily enter a massive superform, granting them an advantage for a short period of time.  The expansion will also feature a new open world flying boss, who will be of such a scale that battle will even be able to take place on the boss itself.

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At its core, ArcheAge is a PvP and as such this expansion added two additional PvP modes.  These modes include a Naval PvP Arena, so friends can determine which faction has better seamen, and a 12 player Free for all Arena.  Updates have been made to the visual effects associated with certain equipment so when you do enter the arena your presence will be a more unique and personal representation of your character.  On a related note, ArcheAge is one of the few MMOs where a player can own a piece of shared world with their own house, and this update will include new upgrades for the housing system, including new buildings.

ArcheAge attempts to create a virtual world within itself, complete with a functioning economy, justice system, and an expansion on guilds which are commonplace in MMOs.  Going a step further in trying to simulate a real world community in an online game, players can form groups with their neighbors into what are essentially subguilds known as families.  On the other end of the spectrum, guilds can band together and form Nations, which would be a massive faction composed of many united guilds.  If a player is caught committing a crime, they can be thrown in jail and tried by a jury of peers, which can either find them innocent and have them released or found guilty and serve hard time.  If a player commits too many crimes, they are banished to the pirate island.  Oddly enough, in Korea where this game was made this was viewed as a punishment, but when ArcheAge made its way west the cultural romanticized view of pirates had many players willfully becoming pirates.

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ArcheAge is not the most well known MMO but that does not mean it does not have a lot to offer.  Between the different levels of communities that exist in the game, along with its criminal justice system and trade economy, it does offer one of the richer online social components in gaming.  As an added bonus, it is also free to play which seems to go hand in hand with Trion Worlds published games.  But, as I am seeing more commonly now, a lot of free to play games are catching up to buy to play games as far as production quality and overall fun, with this one fitting into that category.  So for people looking for a new MMO to get into, this is not a bad one to check out.