We travel afar to the mythical world of Chantra, the world where the Archlord rules and mystical battles are being fought on a daily basis. Humans, Orcs and Moon Elves rule the land. This is a cruel world, where everyday matters are decided by the steel of swords and the blood masking the grass. Fierce elemental beings walk the earth and mysterious quests are waiting to be solved.
There’s one question that lies on everybody’s lips; who will be the next Archlord? Who will prove worthy? The gallery of heroes can never be long enough. Chantra is in need of those ‘ordinary heroes’. People like you.
Archlord is an MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game) by NHN Games Corporation and Codemasters. The game was also featured in the movie BenX, about an autistic boy escaping into the virtual world. You might know the guys at Codemasters from other good games like Overlord, The Lord of the Rings Online and Sensible Soccer. There is one major difference, though. Since the 18th of August, Archlord (together with all of its expansions) was released as a free download.
The Chantra Shop
Archlord gets its money from the game’s ‘Chantra Shop’; a place to buy exclusive in-game items with ‘Chantra Credits’, funded by your (dad’s) credit card. In short, you can play Archlord without paying a penny (or cent), but you might miss out on some exclusive pieces of armour.
There are basically two ways to play Archlord; solving quests and getting into the Archlord System. The quest solving is pretty much self explanatory. There are tons and tons of quests, widely differing in their length and difficulty. This is a more solo-aimed play, though you can team up with other players to beat that impossible village boss.
The Archlord System
The Archlord System is a bit more complicated. As you may know from the intro, Chantra is ruled by an almighty Archlord. This is one player per server (there are three in total), with exclusive powers. The Archlord has the ability to choose between night and day, rain and sunshine on the entire server. He has a personal guard and can summon powerful monsters to protect him or fight by his side.
To become the Archlord, you first need to become the head of a guild and train your ass off. When you and your guild are strong enough, you can participate in a castle raid. In this raid, you have a defending and an attacking guild. The goal of the defending guild is to defeat the attackers, or at least try to hold them off as long as possible. The attacking guild, on the other hand, needs to attack and claim the castle. A detailed guide of how this goes into work can be found here.
When you’ve obtained the castle, you need to perform a siege on the current Archlord’s fortress; The Rensphere Castle. You join this ‘run’ against the guilds of the two other castles. The goal is to fight off the monsters and each other and be the first to challenge the Archlord’s right hand; Dikan, The Dark Lord of Chaos. When defeated, you will be crowned the new Archlord.
The game looks great, sounds great (the original soundtrack was composed by the London Symphonic Orchestra) and the playing environment is simply huge. I have played the game for a few weeks, and I haven’t even been in half of the possible places. If you were to walk from one side to another, you’d literally lose a day, so you’ll be happy to see the (pricey) teleport gates they’ve put in the game.
Archlord is freely available. The 1.3 GB download (featuring all expansion packs) can be found here. Enjoy!
(By) Simon is a student from Belgium who wastes his time relaxing, gaming and surfing the net. He would tell you to check out his blog, only he doesn't have one (yet)!
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Filed Under: Games
Tags: gamer, Games, mmo, mmorpg, virtual world
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