So Albion Online released yesterday (7/17/17), with a tiered release schedule. People with the Legendary packs got in yesterday, Epic packs got in today (including me), and the Veteran packs get in tomorrow at 13:00 UTC (8am CDT). Roughly 12 nows from now. There were some hiccups with the Legendary start yesterday, but my experience was flawless today. No crashes, no disconnects, no lag. Kind of crummy that the folks who paid $100 were the guinea pigs, but it all worked well for me haha.
It's a buy to play type sandbox MMO deal with a premium plan that makes life easier that can be bought with ingame money too. So far getting gold for beta is extremely easy, I got enough gold in a few hours today to pay for a month. I expect once we get further into it the price of gold will go up significantly, but will probably still remain pretty affordable. The game seems to have a lot of whales - I've met quite a few folks who spent $2000+ on gold. While I personally couldn't justify blowing $2000 on a game, if that's what they want to do it supports the game and makes it more accessible for the rest of us.
I thought it might be of interest here because of the way the game works. It's a pretty freeform sandbox. Instead of levels and classes, you simply have equipment and the skill to use the equipment. Changing you equipment changes your build. Everything in the game is crafted by players from gathered materials, even the items dropped by monsters - they have a black market system where you can sell items to be dropped in the world. Then there is pvp and gvg action which is seeming to be a lot of fun. I haven't tried the 5v5 or 20v20 GvGs yet, but I've done Hellgates (they have 2v2s and 5v5s) and had fun with them. With GvGs you can capture cities and guard towers in the black zone and build crafting stations and houses and stuff. The highest end materials are only on watchtowers, and the higher end stuff is all in pvp enabled areas. It's full loot pvp in the higher end areas, no loot in the yellow zones (you just get silver based on the repair bill you inflict on the guy you kill), and no pvp in the blue zones. It has some good PvE content as well with bosses and dungeons that are fun, as well as an instanced expedition type deal if you don't have time or interest in venturing to the open world. No quests or stuff as complex as games designed for that, but fun enough.
It's kind of like EVE in many of its systems, but fantasy with kind of MOBA style combat. The leveling is a combination of passive (daily learning points) and active (gain "fame" which is this game's experience as you do stuff). You have to get part of the fame in actual effort (30%), then can spend LP to finish it off, which is nice for casual players - can get 3.33x skill gain if you don't play enough to exhaust your LP.
Crafting/GatheringGathering materials involves you roaming around and extracting them from nodes scattered around, or killing things for them in some cases (hides off animals, artifacts off bosses). Crafting involves gathering materials and then using buildings to refine and craft stuff with them. All the city buildings are built and owned by players, and they can set a fee to use them. They require food which you have to grow on farms.
You can also get your own private island to farm and build crafting stations there if you don't want to deal with other players' buildings in cities, but you miss out on the bonus 15% material savings when crafting in cities. Black zone cities get 20%. There are also focus points to use on crafting, which is intended as another boost to casual players as they regen over time and help you save more resources. And laborers in your house are another time gated system that helps casual folks (they really tried to level the playing field a little between casual players and the no-life folks who play 24/7).
Classless Combat SystemThe ability system deserves a mention too. Every item you equip gives you abilities and bonuses, and you have to skill up the items individually. You can pick from a short list of abilities when you equip an item. You can learn how to use cloth boots, robe, and hat and they all add to your damage and make you kind of glassy. Or you can throw in a plate boot in there for a little defense increase and one of the more tanky abilities like one that charges in and throws a shield on you and any ally nearby. Or you can go full plate set and be much more survivable, but your damage won't be near as high. Then there are specialties that go even deeper to learn specifically how to better use one type - like the knight plate boot as opposed to the soldier plate boots - which gives a little more boost using them.
Weapons are varied too, and what role you end up playing largely depends on your weapon choice. Overall there are 15 different main weapon classes divided between 3 base types (warrior, ranger, caster) and divided again into 4 different specialties within those that have slightly different powers (one class is artifact, which currently has 2 totally different weapons in each category). Different weapons have different abilities. Some are damage focused with high damage abilities like fire staff or axe, others like hammer and mace are tanky focused with things like stuns and slows and pulls for crowd control, others like quarterstaves and bows offer enhanced mobility to jump around and avoid the tank types. They have done a good job with balancing, because I see all the weapon types being used by people.
For instance, I'm going with spear and leather armor with a torch in offhand. I have seen people use spears with plate armor with shields and cloth armor too. Each of those plays differently - plate has more CC bonus, so the root or stun lasts longer. Cloth has more damage, so the special attacks and auto attacks hit harder. Leather is middle ground, but also offers an optional attack speed bonus which is good for spears since they use auto attacks a lot. I have seen people with frost staves in cloth acting as DPS and in plate acting as crowd control and tank.
Similarly, I've seen people level both plate armor, arcane staves, and maces. Then, depending on how they want to play, they can grab a mace with their plate and be a tank or grab the arcane staff and play a support role.
Here's a referral link if anyone wants to check it out (if anyone buys it from that I would get a little bit of the premium currency to use on game time).
https://albiononline.com/?ref=FZ26QY8NM6Or if you hate the possibility of me receiving anything for this, here is a link without the referral:
https://albiononline.com I'm currently in game as Cian if anyone wants to play with me. I can craft everything I wear - leather, spears, and torches. I'm currently playing with the guild Till Valhalla.
-note- Edited 7/18/17 to correct errors (I didn't know that much about the game when I first wrote this, lol) and update for launch.