The trip overseas used to mean months cramped in a boat not nearly large enough for the crew required to run it, food so bad that the fish you'd normally throw out become your dream food, and nothing but hope and a compass to guide you on your way. These days things are much simpler. All it takes is a buddy in a Western publishing company and a generic spin-off of every other Korean MMO. I suppose that's not completely fair, but after playing so many "new" MMOs that are headed to the states, they're all starting to blend together.

Archlordis currently on its way over, and it is changing a few things. Now, there's the incentive that one player who works well enough through a major guild could run the world for a month or more. Well that's all well and good, except for the whole question of what about the other thousands of players. Only three guilds get to vie for the title, where does that leave the majority of players? Doing the same thing we did when we tried Lineage II, grinding as much as possible in an ugly environment and with no quests or real motivation.

Running around in the world of Chantra has its ups and downs. The sounds are fantastic, what with the London Symphony Orchestra and all. Sadly, that's the best thing I can say about it, though. The enemies are generic and have poor animation, the quests are barely there if at all, and I can't help but feel like this is a world that could never exist, if only because there's nothing in it but people and a couple shops.

Lineage II was wildly popular in South Korea, but here it hardly scratched the surface. Why? Culture. People are different. South Koreans must prefer a different kind of game, as what's important to them in a game isn't what the majority of Americans want to play. Lineage was one of the most popular games in history, holding world records in South Korean players. Then the sequel comes out here, and it's not even near the top ten played games.
So what does this mean? Is Archlord a flop? I don't think so, but I think it needs a lot of work. Players need customization, enemies need flair and some movement pumped into them, and the quests need to be much higher in number and have some real story and variety to them. People need fun and they need things to do in a social world besides hunt, literally, 500 of this bat before moving on to 500 of such-and-such bird.

Things could definitely be better, but they could also be a lot worse. The Archlord idea is a great one, and the formula could definitely work. I could see running through castles and seizing them with a large group of friends being a great deal of fun, so long as it didn't come as a meager reward for the sixty levels of hell I went through to get there. I really can't see myself or many others shelling out our $13, $25, or $51 (!!!) dollars for Codemasters' weird subscription plan just to get a few more credits per month in the game. Especially not when the first few months I will be playing solely to grind, over and over again.

Don't turn away just yet from Archlord, and it's not out the door. There is still time for it to get a whole lot better, and from what I've seen in the beta it is. I just hope it's before the game comes out at the end of the month.