Yesterday, Gamigo put up a teaser website under the old Trion domain promising a big Gamescom reveal. Accompanied by an ArcheAge account tweet hinting at a “secret project,” the site posted player complaints referencing labor points, farming, pay-to-win, housing, sandboxes, and pirate armadas, all of which pointed to something going down in ArcheAge.
As of today, the website’s updated again; the background now peeks out onto a landscape, and the quotes are now paired with developer responses that imply the studio is addressing specific problems in the game as part of whatever’s incoming.
- On pay-to-win complaints: “We understand that not everyone is able to spend money on a regular basis. Rest assured we heard your feedback. Stay tuned for what’s about to come!
- On social features and sea battles: “Speaking of sea battles, there is more to come! Let’s set sail into a new adventure!”
- On housing: “Housing is an amazing feature and nothing feels better to invite friends to a housing party, showing everyone how much love you put into decorating your home. There will be some changes coming up that will ease your pain to get a house.”
- On labor points: “Labor is something fundamental in the game, that’s true! It’s part of the game to choose wisely where to spend Labor and make the best out of it. However, we are working on a more balanced approach for Labor points.”
MMO players will recall that Gamigo’s the German company that bought up Trion’s assets last year and currently maintains ArcheAge, RIFT, Trove, and the Defiance franchise. As we noted yesterday, in January, Gamigo said that it had “reached an agreement” as to the development of the game with XL Games, increased the size of the ArcheAge team, and planned monetization changes on the order of “revaluating [its] business models and phasing out some of the older, aggressive micro-transactions along with reducing the reliance on lockboxes,” instead focusing on “selling the service and optional objective rewards through modern, hybridized models.”
