Arcfall Review

Open world full loot PvP. Non-instanced dungeons and player housing. A robust – player driven economy. These are just a few of the features already in place in Neojac Entertainment Inc’s sandbox mmorpg game, Arcfall. While the game is still well deep in early access, what there is available to test right now, gives a lot of hope for the future. It has been a long time since a game was able to capture the feeling of a real, true-to-life society. Not since the days of the themepark mmo, WoW, and Everquest, have gamers been given the opportunity to really step into the shoes of the character which they are playing, and to fully encompass all that that character is, and may eventually become. There is rarely a greater feeling in the world of mmorpg games than that of knowing that you succeeded based off of your own characters merit, rather than off of the back of some arbitrary system. Arcfall aims to deliver just that experience – consistently.

Whether you’re interested in PvP, PvM, gathering, crafting, or something else entirely, Arcfall surely has a place for you. In a game like Arcfall, with the entire economy running solely on the efforts of real players, rather than NPC’s like in many modern games, non-combat characters are allowed to truly shine. Try spending all of your game time crafting and selling items in a theme park game – you will quickly see that your productions are not only commonplace on the market with so many crafters doing similar things, but that they don’t even really matter at all. In a themepark, the best item is always the one that drops from that high level raid, or that end game quest. This of course makes the crafter obsolete, save for perhaps a few trinkets or bobbles that might give them some kind of combat advantage unique to their profession. In a game like Arcfall, the experience is completely opposite. Not only can the best items be made by crafters, every item, from the first sword you can make to the finest set of armor, will be put to use in one way or another. In a sandbox, with people constantly losing gear, or trying something new, there is always a fantastic opportunity for any crafter to not only play successfully, but to make a real mark on the world.\

Boasting full loot on death, Arcfall does away with the casual nature of many mmorpg’s and instead replaces it with a cutthroat and demanding atmosphere that requires you to pay attention. Playing Arcfall, you might notice that mindlessly gathering doesn’t seem so mindless anmore once you need to watch out for roaming Player Killers. Killing hoards of weak enemies might not be so monotonous when a rare could pop up at any moment and destroy you, along with any progress you may have just made. These kinds of high risk, high reward systems are exactly the thing that modern mmorpg games have allowed to slip away – and are in turn the greatest selling points of sandbox mmos such as Arcfall.

While Arcfall has undeniable promise – it is also, undeniably, unrefined. Early access doesn’t even begin to explain the state in which Arcfall currently resides. Bug after bug will plague your game experience, shoddy AI will hamper your progression, and the lack of a detailed ui may drive you a bit insane at times. The creatures that are implemented are plain and uninteresting, many of the skills are not finished, and PvP can be a bit of a mess. All of that said, give this game a shot. I know all of that may seem like negatives, but please do remember that this game is currently in early access on Steam with a price tag of free. Playing the game now might be an arduous process, rife with frustration and rage… and yet, in the end, it may very well be worth it. How else, after all, will Neojac complete the game that we the gamers want to see – and allow all of us out there searching for a real mmorpg game to finally settle into a new home again at last.