Arcane Legends IPhone/IPad/Android/Chrome Review

Update: It seems the new expansion 'Rage of Rengo'l' has some promises. Looking forward to it.
I recently wrote an article how to play MMO with reference to Arcane legends also known as AL. Well, this is an in-depth review of Arcane legends. I also wrote how to earn gold in this game legitimate. I see a lot of reviews which came out when the game is released back in 2012. Those reviews are outdated and some information is misleading the actual players or customer. So I decided to write this 2015 review to educate the current scenario to new players who just started to play the game. So you’ll know at this stage the game is worth or not.

Arcane legends: The Past

Arcane Legends is a free to play MMORPG developed by Spacetimestudios. The studio is founded by former Sony veterans. This game is the successor to the Pocket legends and 4^th game in the Legends series. The game received favorable reviews due to its new free to play approach and graphics and frequent updates. The game uses ‘gold’ and ‘platinum’ as game currency. The gold currency can be farmed. The ‘platinum’ needs real money to be spent in game.

The game was amazing till Lvl Cap 21…

What happened then?

Initially, the game is balanced very well. There are only 3 classes in the game. The class balance was very good. Not perfect but doable. There is also very much PVE content to play. Everyone was happy and the game environment was friendly. Also, they introduced PVP. It was also balanced. The items, gears... all were good.

Starting off the Dark Age - Paywall

Locked Grand crate of the Watch

STS introduced a box which drops in the game. This contains special pets, gears…etc. These items are powerful. The best of them is the arcane rarity. Thought this was cool and everyone will be able to open it and get something cool. Guess what! This can be only opened with ‘platinum’. So the one who pays the real money can open this box and get better items. The point is this was ok at that time.  The company needed money to pay their employ. Also, STS is a small independent team of developers. But it started the rich and poor wealth gap. Initially, this was very negligible. Because even though the items were powerful the advantage was very minimum. Also, the nonplatinum customers were able to sell the locks and able to make money.

The game started to become more popular and more new players came to play. You have to know what happened next. The company started to become greedy. They introduced more powerful items through locks. Only rich and paying customers could afford it. So the Rich and poor new player’s wealth and gear gap started to widen.

Milking more...

This was a very tricky move by them by making everyone believing they care about every player. They made all the items tradable once can only be bought with platinum. So naturally everyone thought this was good. But in reality, this was milking their honest customers. The items bought with platinum can only tradable. So the paying customer has to spend real money, buy platinum and buy items with platinum and then sell it for gold. The poor customer didn’t know they are milking him/her.

Energy System – Restriction on PVE content

This was a game system they implemented on ‘Dark Legends’ the other legend game which failed. They Run events for a limited time. The first event was full of free. All you have to do was enjoy the game and finding the portal. Then afterward energy system came. You can only enter 3 times with this energy in a day. After that, you have to craft energy. So naturally players thought ‘oh its ok we only needed to craft energy’. But it takes 4 hours to craft single energy. To instant finish you need platinum. So again pay wall. So the paying customer can get unlimited times as long as he pays. Still the positive thinking players thought ‘oh well, we still getting chance to enter free though’.

The Big Whales and small fishes

The Big Whales are the customers who spent a large chunk of real money in the game. They have everything from expensive vanities to expensive pets. Fishes are the customers who do micro transactions and spent less money. Naturally the there were another group of players started to originate. They are the middle class. And the gap between these poor (free player), Middle and rich players become enormous.

The Game Economy

There was once a stable healthy economy. Now there is no economy. The economy is controlled by big whales. They can influence the market. And the economy is dead. If you are a new player hope to make some money with your free time then you are in no luck. This game has the worst looting system. It’s broken. The best items come through locked which need platinum to open. Even if you spent real money there is no guarantee you loot something good. The chance of looting the best item from this box is close to zero. Maybe 0.1%? Even if you managed to loot something best in the game it still won’t do anything good. Because you need multiple of best gears, pets to stay competitive. Be ready to spend at least $1000 to stay competitive. Even this won’t guarantee. It won’t stop there. When a new expansion comes you need to spend money again.

Influential Players and forum

It’s now a no secret that the big whales who spent a large amount of money have influence on game and forum. If you were in the forum for some time you already know that. You can see they respond to their forum thread. These big whales act like they are representing the players in their guild and game. Of course, there are some real active legitimate nice players who actually represent their guild and honestly posts suggestions and feedback. But the developers bend the rules for these influential players. Also, these big whales ranting on the forum how good they are in the game. Also, there were multiple incidents where support staff behaves unprofessionally. Once the support guy said ‘don’t dance’ to some player through email’ when the player repeated the same request. Later he apologized.Also, there was rumor that one mod gave items to players in game and fired for that

Player vs. Player and balance

Once was competitive. Now the one who pay high win (with the exception of some who won the contest and who started when the game launched). Mostly now consists of big whales. Also, there are some guilds which consist of these top players who gangs new players, trash talk, and block. Also, they ruin every other player’s gameplay experience. Due to this many players quit. The PVP is highly p2w now. The Devs don’t care about this part of the game because this kind of bad environment actually makes them money.

Player vs. Enemy (PVE) balance

There are only 3 classes and the Devs can’t even balance the game. One class (Rogue) is way overpowered. And also, the PVE content is off balance. It’s also for that op class. Other classes are struggling to survive. They don’t get a party.

The Servers

The game lags a lot. Players get disconnected a lot. Dev’s say it’s the latency issue because their servers are in us and the one close to the server gets the stable connection.

The game difficulty and rewards

The normal game maps fairly easy to play with good gears. Elite maps are tough with one hit enemies. A new player will get maximum 7 platinum free when progress through the game. To get more platinum you need to buy with real money.

The Future

The future of the game is now questionable. Because STS is going to launch a new game called ‘Call of Champions’. The Dev said they still have a dedicated team for AL but seeing the end of Pocket Legends, Dark Legends, Star Legends I doubt AL has bright feature.

The Verdict

Maybe the game was the best MORPG in 2012 as many reviewers said. But now the game is non-competitive, highly pay to win and provide the worst experience once player progress through the game. The only thing that I love still is the social aspect. You can make many friends in the game. You can run with them and chat with them. If you want a score I give 4/10. I hope you enjoyed this review. I appreciate your feedback.
Take a quick look at my other AL Guide here

AL PLAYER GUIDES