Archlord

Genre Pay Progress Quest
Developer NHN Corporation
Publisher Codemasters
Rated Teen
Requirements 1.5GHz CPU; 512MB RAM

The best thing you can say about ArchLord is that after launch, Codemasters removed its monthly fee requirement. It needed something, that’s for sure. It’s a shame to see a game with artistic potential and a tendency to provoke mass homicide among its players (hopefully in-game) go terribly awry with its game design.
When you start out all fresh faced, probably as a Moon Elf (hey, they’re cute), you notice that plenty of quests are immediately available to you. What fun! Oh, you want me to slay those eye things and bring you 10 of their viscous fluids for your alchemy experiment? Um… OK. And you? You want me to deliver this letter where? To that NPC standing right next to you? Sweet! Easiest experience ever! After you’ve done all the quests in town, you realize something. You gain a lot more XP by just killing things.
Then you discover the tradeskills. First, you can gut monsters you’ve killed to potentially score phat lewtz, but their sale value is disappointing. And you have to sit there for like 15 seconds while your avatar plays with the knife. And while you’re waiting, you’re not gaining any levels.
You can spend at least 20 levels fighting monsters outside the newbie town, at least until you discover dungeons. The monsters’ main advantage is that killing them delivers more XP, meaning faster leveling.
The main goal of this level grind is to engage in PvP guild wars. That’s what you bought the game for, right? You want to be the ArchLord, with the power to set taxes and control the weather! You want fear and respect! You don’t really have to wait to PvP someone; just Ctrl+click them, and you’re able to attack. But you gain rogue status for this, with harsh in-game penalties, and potential bounties even land on your head.
And here’s the bad news. After all those hours of repeatedly killing the same mob just to join in guild battles, the truth emerges: The guild wars are boring, and you gain nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true: If your guild wins enough battles, you get a sweet graphic for your guild displayed over your name. The problem with PvP, though, is that while you’re doing it you’re not killing anything that gains you XP or levels.
Even worse, the class balance in ArchLord is totally screwed up. In PvP, melee classes are useless, because stun abilities keep them out of attack range. If you have ranged abilities, you can simply stun a melee class, range attack, stun, range attack, and so on until they’re dead.
After a certain point, the non-PvP strategy is nearly identical for all classes: Just use area-of-effect kiting. Whatever you have that does AOE damage, spec it to its max. Then just run around the biggest group of monsters you can find and spam your AOE spell, popping expensive healing potions while they bang on you. That’s it.
Another problem is that the game outright lies to you, and the in-game documentation is needlessly complex and ambiguous. Did you know that your ring that grants you +2 knowledge and +4 intelligence is actually granting you +6 intelligence? And that Berserker skill that says you need a blunt weapon? Nope, you need a two-handed weapon. When you go to the Item Trader (Auction House) and spend what little money you have on the sweetest new piece of equipment, only to find it doesn’t function as advertised, it’s enough to make you want to harm innocent keyboards. Or other players.
ArchLord is nothing but a grind, one with very few players. It’s a waste of the $40 you need to spend to buy it in a box…but at least it has no monthly fee.

This article originally appeared in Computer Games Magazine #195