Looking at archage's reviews out of curiosity.
What I've seen is 'It's not like other MMOs! There's PvP! Less dungeons! Boats! You have to look after your mount! 120 classes!'
Which I see as 'It's like any other MMO but with a few gimmicky features and a slight gameplay change.'
Looking at the videos, the graphics are pretty bad to boot, even for an MMO.
Do people just have some weird sub-standard mindset for MMOs or something? Because I've seen people praising them and praising them when there's no discernible difference between that one and the one before it.
The most interesting parts of ArcheAge would be the crafting, building and outfitting your own ships, buildings, castles, farms, cities and the like. Everything related to physical structures and the economy sounds like it's player-constructed and interactive, like back in Ultima Online.
If the reviews are focusing on the PvP and number of classes, they're doing it wrong and the problem is that the reviewers out there are not the real people that this game is aimed at, hence why they're focusing on the unimportant stuff, which you can get in WoW or any other MMO out there already. This sounds like it would appeal more to players of Wurm Online or other social / city-builiding MMOs than it would to combat-oriented players.
You can found new cities anywhere you like, how many MMOs let you do that?
I haven't looked into the game at all, but the strategy, city building and RPG elements seem to be the key parts, not the combat and eye-candy. It *could* be really badly implemented, i don't know, but what the reviews are focusing on isn't really what the game is all about. I guess that's what happens when WoW players reviews something, they review it as a version of WoW, if you know what I mean.