Whether you hate it or not, the name Archeage echoes around the worlds of the MMORPG digital universe. XL Games, a subsidiary of Kakao Games – which most players know as a publisher for Black Desert – originally released Archeage back in 2013, before coming into North America in 2014 under Trion Games. Of course, the game has later been passed around to Gamigo, but that’s just a brief history over the game. Regardless of this, XL Games has begun development of its IP for Archeage 2, but with Unreal Engine 5.
According to a new post by their recruitment post, the team behind the Archeage IP is hiring new programmers and developers for its upcoming title. In fact, Jake Song, the CEO of XL Games has stated, according to Korean website ruliweb:
“It has been more than seven years since Archeage, which began its full service in early 2013, and has been around for more than seven years. I wanted to create a new MMORPG that connects Lineage with Wow, and I think it was a bad result in the market. In particular, it is good to hear that it received a good response from overseas, especially in North America and Europe, with more than half of its total cumulative sales. Archeage 2 wants to create a great game that is recognized for both marketability and workability.”
Not much is known about this title, or what will come of it, but given that it’s just essentially started development – especially in Unreal Engine 5 – players should expect it in about 5-7 years from now. The creator of the original title seems to have 40-50 employees working on the title as we speak, and admits that in the original game he was “greedy” and was too ambitious. All we know is that the game will take place in a different time from Archeage, but set in a different dimension of sorts, with the lore written by the same original story creator of the first title, Jeon Min-hee. We’ll see where this story goes, and what the plan is for Archeage 2. Who knows, maybe it will make a comeback and bring back the joy of what Archeage could’ve been, but done right. There are details set to be releasing in the first half of 2021, so hopefully that’ll bear some news and interesting hope for Korean MMORPGs.
