State of AL (long post/rant)
Introduction
Expansions over the years
Events
Goldloot
New players
Hardcore
Monetization
Afterword
Introduction
Good Morning/afternoon/evening from wherever u are on the globe. I've been playing since may 2013 as an warr, then went rogue with the name silencehunter and today known as darkrai in game. Today I wanted to show my concern for the future/present state of AL. I've had many great years in the game and it pains me to say that over the last 2 years i just felt no reason to really log in, today in this thread i would like to explore why i and many others have the feeling that the game somewhat left them as the years went on
Expansions over the years
Here i'll discuss all the expansions AL has had over the years and my opinions etc over them if i played them.
New dead city lvl 21 cap https://www.spacetimestudios.com/sho...ntent-and-More!
Did not play during this time and AL was pretty young still, some old veterans can most likely ‘back in my day’ you on it but so far i know this was the last time when we got any real cinematics/cutscenes in the game
The kraken isles lvl 26 cap https://www.spacetimestudios.com/sho...Arcane-Legends
Also didn't start playing then, was probably still enjoying my elementally school life which was oh so fun
Battle for nordr lvl 31 cap https://www.spacetimestudios.com/sho...-in-Late-April
Ah this was when i started playing, starting out as an warr, finding randoms to play with and just casually leveling, finding a guild to hangout in (ah nl legends u wil be missed), sadly did not get to the level cap in time so can't really say to much about how the farming was since i was still fairly new to the game and was already amazed to see an arcane maul, which was really an status symbol back then
Realm of shadows lvl 36 cap https://www.spacetimestudios.com/sho...dows-Expansion
This expansion was my favorite out of them all
The 5 maps you get, the unique bosses in every one of them, the challenges you get like defeating the main boss of the expansion whiels hes enraged and the ‘secret’ crystal boss which was bloody challenging this was when i felt the game had a good pace going in terms of difficulty and balance
The story also tied nicely into the main nordr story which in later expansions i found lacking that the expansion didn't really seem to have an branching story overall and were just seperate things which can be good if done well but the later stories i just didn't enjoy or didn't remember so well at all.
Was also the first expansion that introduced an farmable arcane pet named nekro and let me tell you he was the go to pet in the day and was so for at least a good year or 2 nowadays it feels like every event or two there's an new top pet everyone wants and its of course locked behind plat
Also they introduced arhon rings that had a very rare chance of dropping from elite only maps if I recall which are very pretty damn good for a legendary ring and came with a little glow on your hand if you had one with different colors depending on the type you wore. Nowadays every legendary drop may as well be an common drop
This expansion also introduced gem slots if i recall correctly which let you craft gems into your gear which you couldn't take out, with a chance of it becoming a grand gem which give extra main stats this was before we have the current jewel system
there's probably something i forget to tell but this was peak AL for me sure the following expansion were good but they never reached this type of good
Dragons enclave lvl 41 cap https://www.spacetimestudios.com/sho...agon-s-Enclave
I fondly remember farming teeth to craft mystic bar you needed for the arcane ring while slow but surely farming kraken mines for locked drops in order for me to craft my own arcane ring, that whole adventure was for me the most fun i had in the game, sadly never got the ring but there was an journey for me here which i never really got to experience again in the later expansions
The rage of the Ren’gol lvl 46 cap https://www.spacetimestudios.com/sho...ansion-is-LIVE!
This is where it somewhat started going wrong, not so much yet but cracks were starting to form, first they reduced the typical 5 maps expansion to only 3 maps which i still have no real idea as to why they thought we wanted less maps?
Also I didn't particularly enjoy the use of dolls to awaken a special boss which will only be defeatable for x amount of hours, u were sleeping and had to work? to bad u missed out on the boss better luck next time
Overall i didn't immensely enjoy this
The curse of the cryostar lvl 51 maybe 56 cap? https://www.spacetimestudios.com/sho...f-the-Underhul
Did not play much here, had taken a break for school etc we all know how that goes, i'm not gonna tell my opinion on something i don't really have developed for this expansion.
Arlorian twilight lvl 61 cap https://www.spacetimestudios.com/sho...orian-Twilight
In my opinion one of their most unique and mechanic intensive expansion, it didn't quite grasp me since i was still fairly busy
It was quite interesting how we had to unlock specific ranks in the order to build up trust and unlock community milestones and go deeper into the mausoleum, getting to the last rank was quite a feat which none barely did and those who did clearly stood out among the rest more of an sort bragging right before u could basically buy the points of event chests that would later on release
Demons of dreamscape lvl 66 cap https://www.spacetimestudios.com/sho...the-Dreamscape
ah studies keeping me busy the whole expansion..
Introducing raids which kind of flopped as far i asked around the guild back then, wasnt doable that much and was as i saw it kind of meant to be an gold dump with all the buffs etc u could obtain if you paid gold but as far i saw there wasn't exactly something unique going on here, reskin mobs realm of shadows expansion, just long corridors till the boss and you kill it, so overall just looked like an lackluster expansion overall, as the theme of expansion quite made clear, quite sleep/dream introducing.
Festerfang lvl 71 cap https://www.spacetimestudios.com/sho...xpansion-Guide
quite an decent expansion, introducing 4 man raids instead of the 12 player raids, an oper place in town to fight just for the funs, ultimates being introduced as well
Spirit gear being introduced and just being forgotten about in the next expansion was also a thing, those were a chore to level up with being promised to get better as time went on, but they never got that much needed love and were sadly eventually forgotten about since arcanes just were better.
it was here that the game was pretty much for me, all my friends had quit and all the content was pretty much ust done for, nothing going on anymore
Vardan valley lvl 76 cap https://www.spacetimestudios.com/sho...ghlight=Mogera
Haven't played this at all, i'm still on 71 with no real drive to play, just coming online once in a while to chat if someone happens to be online so i can't really give my opinion about this.
So yea.. expansions haven't been the best and are mostly always forgotten about in a week or 2, basically what expansions are is that they bring new town hubs that's it, i barely see new expansion being farmed at if it doesn't have good gold drop, if it doesn't it's considered an good for nothing map. Game is being decided on how much gold it drops, not on drops itself which if STS put meaningful loot in maps people may actually run those.
Events
I feel events are less becoming like events and more of how much little work can we actually put into the event itself and how much can we charge for the vanities itself.
Pirate booty
One of the few events that's actually worth doing if you want something that's meaningful to you and not just vanities, you get gold where you buy things with, straight forward enough
Event gave too much gold in the beginning that I can at least agree on but what i dislike is that since this year they force you to play it solo, i and others enjoyed just running it casually with friends/guildies well that is what an mmo is isn't it?
Awakening extravaganza
oh boy the most controversial event in the game in my opinion, it turned the whole awakening system of AL upside down and this event should have never released and here's why
The event makes it so u get better awakes if u decide to roll for awakes and sells blue awake gems for a good price sounds pretty good right? If this event had a more set release time and not whenever STS feels like it i wouldn't have such a problem with it, let's say it released every first of the month this would solve some immediate issues this event has.
Makes it so u can time when u want to awake gear and doesn't make u hold back on awakening gear, every player feels like it isn't that worthwhile to awake gear when they know they can awake when there's an event for it going on, giving them more value for every awake, now it feels somewhat like a waste to awake
The hoarding of awake gems would basically stop at that point and wouldn't raise above 20k for an awake gem, since the vent would have a set time when to release hoarders wouldn't feel the need to hoard and sell off their gems since they will be back next month anway. now we don't have any idea when the event is making gems skyrocket to 90k each as of writing of this post while normally with event they are an reasonable 8-10k this is an raise of around 900% and knowing my luck i need at least around 50-100 of these to unlock all 4 slots costing me 9m+ purely to unlock the slots and then we can finally spend another 9m+ (can be way more) to get somewhat decent rolls costing u 18m+ on what you already have paid for your arcane or whatever
The extra stats u can get are alright, an extra % dex str etc here and there is ok but what isn't alright in my book the 50% gl u can only get in this specific event on armor and helm. any person using gl knows how valuable this extra 100% is. only being able to get this on your armor/helm on a once/twice in a year event is crazy, making these armor/helm one of the most sought after by players who want to run gl making these easy 10m+ each so that's another 20m+ u already have to spend and that's not considering the gold u have to spend on decent gl gear (i go more in depth of the whole gold loot debacle later in)
This event needs an major overhaul, make it monthly or somewhat more frequent cause how it is now isn't healthy for the overall game or u can keep it like this an cash in on all those extra plat sales u get from people buying elite awakes from shop when the event randomly returns giving yet another impulse to buy plat to buy awakes.
Eggzavier
I remember this event first releasing and it was actual great fun to run, drop rates were actual decent and the thrill of running kt4 with friends/guildies and yelling here etc was actual refreshing then all the other events where its just farm points for vanities which don't give anything in terms of strength in a mmo game
Not too keen on the whole need an plat elixir in order to farm more but since the elixir is tradeable not too much to complain about it.
one of the more meaningful and fun events to do in order to gain gold and power yourself up in terms of getting heroic eggs and decent arcanes not something i can say for over the other events where all u can get is vanites or an arcane that has an 0,005% chance of dropping from an event boss where as with egg zavier you always get something
Forgotten vanity event
This event I was not happy with when it came out, as a collector I felt like the event just threw old style weapons into the game and made the tradeable ones plat purchase only.
It felt like a cheap way to have an event, not even bothering to recolor them what they love doing anyway, keep the originals original and now the old weapons basically have no value
Goblin event
Ah the goblin event, always was great fun. I honestly can't remember much in depth detail about it. While it was a main event it was in my opinion one of the more lackluster ones even to this day
Want to be speedy? good! take out your wallet and pay for the new speed sets only found in lockeds or u can buy them from players for gold! so much fun.
in a more serious tone, i find it quite dirty that these are only available in the loot boxes, not lootable at all, once again showing how much of AL’s gear is gated behind loot boxes. Ah and of course an higher level set gets released every time as well so the min maxers in terms of stats can pull them out of the lockeds insuring plat sales for STS
Ursoth
Enjoyed back in its heyday when it was new and fresh, i fondly remember running this event and finding out that a plant lady which i forget the name of was harder then the main boss of the event ursoth, nowadays anything dies within seconds or minutes not really posing any challenge at all in this ‘MMO”
Of course not pleased that this event's special loot boxes is the only way to get the gold loot sets which were pretty necessary if u want to farm gold in the late game so better take out that wallet if u want a chance of looting it and god forbid u loot the correct sets as well. Anyone saying ‘just buy one’ would love to hear how a new player this day and age can properly farm gold without an event, pretty bad too that we need an event to make gold in the first place
Halloween
Always liked halloween, the unique atmosphere, boogies mansion etc. nowadays it suffers from no innovation, it has been the same for years, this goes for a lot of events where the devs think they can just slap new recolors on existing vanities with 1 new vanity set and call it a new event. Can say the same for ursoth event and the goblin event, not much to say about those events
One of the only events together with the first christmas event that gave u actually useful items for your character. The para gem, this was a gem that you could craft into your gear which then gave you a massive dmg boost with a somewhat cool aura along with it. After this they sadly never did it again and I always wondered why they didn't at least try some other things instead of only releasing vanities.
Christmas
Sorry but i don't like this years christmas event, most of it has been gate kept bij introducing weak flamestones, while it used to be free by just buying an badge for points and it granted u unlimited access to the that portion of the event, now it's just craftable weak flamestones only
It also used to give an achievement for the first person to find the egg in event runs, giving players somewhat of a need to rush and find the boss that drops the egg.. for some reason this also has been dropped? Not sure why STS decided to just do it away since it was something in the game already
Event feels stripped of its gameplay and used for a mean to sell you vanities and other plat related stuff as limited edition locks, vanitys, auras and with most of them limited to a set amount or just in the shop for a day or two, giving u the need for impulse buying, an event that already asks so much of u just keeps on asking
The race car event
I actually felt like this was an nice change of phase then what we usually get from sts in terms of events, came with the usual special locks and store vanities ofc
(there are alot more events but i feel these are the more important ones that need mentioning)
Goldloot
Goldloot has single handedly changed the game's progress and economy how? Let's break it down.
When goldloot was introduced it was quite overlooked at first, since the gold increase wasnt that subtenstial en the first time it truly shind was with halloween event if i recall, mobs dropped decent amounts of gold and so it was the beginning of large amounts of gold being pumped into the economy
Then the curse of the cryostar expansion came out. People discovered that Southern Gates drops a lot of gold in combination with gold loot and so started the rise of farming gold instead of other methods since STS at this point had taken locked farming out Gold loot farming was one of the few only methods left ingame to farm gold to improve yourself ingame (not talking about merching etc since those aren't especially tied to an mechanic of the game and be done whenever the state of the game is)
So.. what happens if massive amounts of people suddenly start to farm lots of gold? You get inflation and gear gets more expensive. In that situation what do you do if the gear you want gets more expensive? you start buying GL gear in order to farm more effectively, which then produces even more gold into the economy then inflation rises again, you see the picture at this point, gold loot changed the whole economy in a pretty bad way in my eyes. Direction of AL went from farming items to farming gold, which the game never really recovered from and still to this day gold loot is the best way to farm gold
New players
Here's the thing though, if a new player joins and gets to lvl 71 then what is that player supposed to do? They cant buy GL gear since that way to expensive, they cant run AG since they are to weak and can't keep up properly in the map, low end guilds basically don't run these or are to inactive and said player cant join higher ranked guilds since to weak or not enough aps etc to join. Also most guilds have their own little farm groups with who they farm with or interact with in events, it's hard breaking into this circle that well established guilds have built up over the years.
Just have them join smaller guilds. I hear you saying, well easier said than done, try finding a decent sized endgame small guild that openly accepts everyone and actively goes farming with you etc. These are extremely hard to find and shouldnt be considered as an alternative for new players to join and farm.
It’s really easy to say ‘just farm gold bro or farm events’ but new players are often stuck in this limbo where they can't escape from gear wise and may have to wait months for a proper event to farm gold if they even have the motivation to play at that point so i can't blame them for leaving.
Hard(plat)core
When this was first announced I was pleasantly surprised, something new and refreshing where I can put my game knowledge to the test and be strategic about what and where to farm. I couldn't wait to start farming, but…
Game isnt exactly balanced around being hardcore, what they did wasnt just making it hardcore but also solo self found were you cant trade/stash stuff. the game is balanced around buying stuff from CS and trading with players with gear u need and jewels etc. They should have made an special CS just for hardcore players
point 1 wouldn't be such a problem if they also decided to close the plat store and made it so you couldn't spend any plat at all. What's the point of closing CS if u can still use the plat store to buy everything u need? expect of course if you wanted to boost your plat sells and give the plat store somewhat of an relevance but of course this would never be the reason.. *cough*
1600 plat to resurrect your dead character.. excuse me? you're asking almost a 100 euro to resurrect a dead character if u want to reuse it..? Why not if a character dies it gets transferred over to the non hardcore side? You shouldnt even be able to resurrect them in the first palce since that under mines the whole tone of hardcore even if the level is reset the items etc will still be there so thats why an character should just be transferred to the non hardcore side when it dies.
These are one of the main key problems i have with hardcore there lots of little things aswell not spefic hardcore related but does contribute somewhat to it like. Red zones not working properly.
STS even made a feedback channel regarding hardcore and all the good suggestions for excample Antimatter (https://www.spacetimestudios.com/sho...eedback-thread) makes an excellent point, there are alot more insightful feedback being posted in there but what does STS do with all the feedback? nothing of course, the whole feedback thread was made to make it look like they gave somewhat an care for hardcore.. we all know how that's looking these days.
Monetization
At the moment im not quite pleased how STS is milking its fanbase of money in all kinds of different ways here are some
Lockeds
I absolutely hate how every single endgame item is tied to loot boxes, this is not how an mmo should be, you either get lucky out of an lootbox or just farm gold to outright buy it, which is not how an mmo should work but thats how STS operates, put different kinds of gear (speed set, GL set etc) in all kind of different loot boxes so u have to buy different ones with each event. If these were pure cosmetic drops like vanities or soimething i wouldnt care but that endgame gear is purely based on paid gambling or just run the same GL map over and over is stupid and not in style of an mmo
Limited edition aura’s
Yes you bet i'm gonna complain about this as well, almost 100 euro/dollar for a ground skin..? Is this valorant or something? I get some to buy them and can easily afford it and dont care for the price but just think, what kind of future will AL go down into if this becomes the norm? First they introduced limited edition vanities in the shop for a reasonable price, then as we got used to that they release limited quantity edition vanitys to give u the impulse feeling of buying, then as we got that here are the 100 euro/dollar ground vanities.. what's next? a purely cosmetic pet that sits on your shoulder/flies next to you? added weapon effects to your weapon? It's just getting wilder and wilder and i'm wildly interested to see where it goes 2+ years from now
Limited tied event potions
Not as outrageous as the other examples but really.. an 10 plat something elixer that makes you farm more effectively? basically making u feel like you're not farming good enough if u dont get the elixir? I get that these are accessible for gold as well but that shouldn't be the standaard of these, they can just decide to make them play only someday.
So yea over the years you can bet they will add more things to get more out of you.
Afterword
If u made it here after reading my whole rant and can at least agree on one point i'm making then i found it worth writing this 4200 words essay, you can call me salty, toxic etc i don't care, i've been loving this game for years and all that i wrote is out of fear in what direction i see the game heading, it's more and more becoming like an dress my character simulator that its losing its heart as an MMO which it barely still has any left of. Ask yourself, when was the last time you actually farmed that's not an event? exactly not farming any of the base game, STS just keeps throwing these ‘Events’ at us but at what point does it stop being an event and just filler caused by a void of no content? Think about that but im done, done seeing the game i used to love become so devoid of life.
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