I played til 37 and got in quite a bit of PvP and some PvE. It has been years, but I felt like I was playing Civilization in an MMO, and I mean that in a good way. This game is meant to be played on a grand scale. Guilds will succeed by organizing and having each person do their part to keep ships sailing and castles defended. On the same note, one or two people running trade packs are going to get ganked and lose it all. An organized guild will be able to keep up trade runs and enrich their little empire. This really is a team focused game.
A few things of note:
The good:
The world is huge, and you can go where you want and do what you like. In my faction there was a "zerg" guild that no one apparently liked, and if you ganked them and went to trial, the jury would find you innocent based on rep alone. If another guild of your faction is in a war, you can turn on bloodlust and attack them from behind.
There is no shortage of victims, no matter what. I didn't bother to bloodlust and go criminal, I just went to enemy territories with a friend and blew people up. There are players everywhere.
Your level 50 weapons and armor come from open PvP zones. The higher level arch dust you need for crafting comes from open PvP zones as well. This is the only game I have played since EQ where the open world is vital to progression.
The glider reminds me of levitate in EQ. Use it to short cut things and get an advantage in PvP.
There are hidden quests all over the place if you explore around, and no, they aren't given away by a glowing yellow "!". Also a ton of random world boss spawns.
The neutral:
Combat is kind of blah. Maybe I wasn't high enough to get access to more "clutch" skills in a tree, I didn't really see a tool kit that would enable someone to out play another versus out damaging them because their gear was simply better. This may correct itself in group play when coordination between cc specs and heals comes into play.
The bad:
The early game lacks anticipation, and I think that is why so many people lose interest quickly. EQ in the day had anticipation at every corner, from vengeful musicians to exploring dungeons, to PvP. WoW in its early days had ezmode quests, but it also had some pretty fun and at times challenging instances where you didn't know what this next boss was going to do. Not to mention PvP in Blackrock Mountain or Dire Maul. If ArcheAge ever gets anticipation, it will probably only come running a ship full of trade packs through hostile waters or gathering a rare and valuable commodity from a hostile zone. Or world boss raiding I guess.
Misc:
Labor points are not this horrible thing. After the end of CBT4, 85% of players polled liked the system. They just mean you learn to prioritize instead of just grabbing everything you see. Get some friends, everyone chips in, and you make a ship instead of just solo farming everything yourself. No comment on the recent changes with LP pots, since they may be reversed soon, and it no longer takes labor to identify gear upgrades.
I'm sure I forgot a ton of stuff, but overall it is a pretty good game with a lot more to it than you will ever see in a few hours. Every game is different, enjoy them for what they are worth. AA isn't the second coming of EQ just because someone tagged it a sandbox, but it is actually a very deep sandbox in it's own right.
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