The gameplay is what the developers hope will hook you with this game. They are trying to position the game as a player vs. player title that also offers other standard MMORPGs aspects. The gameplay reminds me a little bit of "World of Warcraft" and "Lineage II," with a dash of "Guild Wars" thrown in.

"Archlord's" approach to leveling is pretty much standard issue, and there are many quests thrown at you as you try to level up. This is a good thing in that it gives you a fairly wide variety of goals and things to accomplish, as opposed to the repetitiveness of many games. As you get to the higher levels, you'll also have to change your playing tactics. That, too, is a good thing. Repetition is only fun up to a point, no matter how much you love a game initially. There is still a lot of grinding to be done, however. If you want the game to play like a pay-to-play game and offer a little less grinding, you will have to part with some money. This is inevitable in most free-to-play games at some point, as the amount of grinding you'd need to do to get everything free would be overwhelming to the point of being tedious.

Potions are a vital part of leveling in this game. Slots one and two are automatically set to mana and health potions. The UI is set up so that if your mana or your health gets too low, you can preset that you'll automatically get a potion. You can grind without stopping as well as the potions are automatically picked up.

Getting in groups also offers advantages. For example, while you're in a group, your character auto-loots mobs you kill. None of the items are shared. You'll also get a boost in HP and MP when you're in a group. It's worth it, though, just for the auto-loot feature alone.

The name of the game is "Archlord," and there's a reason for that. While you can have fun in this game without ever concerning yourself at all with the concept of the Archlord, becoming Archlord is the ultimate goal of the game. The Archlord is the ruler of the entire game world. As the saying goes, "there can be only one." The Archlord holds the title for a full 21 days before any challenger can confront them for the position. Players who intend to challenge for the position will have to fight their way through a series of challenges. These challenges will thin the field down to the single challenger who will go mano a mano with the Archlord.

The Archlord gets a lot of cool toys, including a huge flying dragon mount and three bodyguards, as well as twenty fearsome monsters as allies. You will also be able to control the weather, and tax the other castles in the game. Additionally, you can call forth a massive meteor shower.

"Archlord" is a solid game that is constantly improving. The graphics are current, gameplay is what you'd expect with some subtle improvement, and PvP is interestingly different. It has the potential to be one of the best PvP games on the market. It's free to play, but if you want to advance as far as you can in a reasonable time you can expect to be visiting the store. If you paid to play, however, you'd probably spend more than you'd pay in the store. The idea by going free is to attract as many players as possible and have them spend a little, rather than have a small number of players spending a lot of money. Given the emphasis on PvP, this is the best strategy. After all, the more players you have, the more PvP opportunities there are. The game is occasionally buggy, and there are still quite a few patches that need to be released. Still, it's a solid entry, and it is worth keeping an eye on this game if you're in the market for some more player vs. player action.

November 2, 2009