What Would You Change About… Age of Wushu & Age of Wulin?

September 21, 2015 10:12 ( Articles, F2P News ) 0

What Would You Change About... Age of Wushu & Age of Wulin?

For our latest “What Would You Change About…?” we take a look at Wuxia martials arts inspired MMORPGs Age of Wulin/Age of Wushu (depending on your region it is essentially the same game with different publishers: Age of Wulin in Europe and Age of Wushu in North America). In the game players can build up their own wandering nomad join one of the many legendary Clans that exist in the period and embark on your own personalized adventure. The game has a lot of interesting and unique features, inspiring content at times, but really seems to suffer from not capitalizing on some of the great stuff and instead letting some key problems go uncontested for too long that the game has really begun to suffer; here’s our own issues with the game:

• Pay To Win - You don’t have to pay to play, just to get anywhere. The problem with the game at its core if the VIP status that players can pay for far exceeds the types of perks one would expect for an MMO, scratch that, the perks aren’t amazing, it’s the base/free to play game that is just awful and made deliberately difficult to get ahead without VIP status. Joining the game, which already has a fairly difficult learning curve for a lot of players, F2P players will find the uphill struggle due to the generally tedious content, and so XP “Cultivation” is a grind. VIP players get 100% of their Cultivation, with F2P players getting a decreased amount, meaning you are put behind the levelling curve that the game was designed around (as opposed to leaving F2P at 100% and improving it for VIP). However, that’s only the tip of the iceberg, you can literally buy skills, items and weapons for cash that will be fair better than a lot of the stuff earned in the game. What would we change? The general business philosophy of the developers/publishers that are fine with ruining games with these kinds of business models.


• Reduce Jail Time - Do the crime then you gotta do the time… literally… a lot of time. So the game is pretty much PVP focused, there are no safe havens and world PVP is one of the primary features of the game, the game has been designed that way; you can attack and kill people anywhere. Clear? Okay. You build up infamy by killing players, 400 for killing them and an extra 50 for an actual killing blow (which ensures they don’t just respawn where you are and start attacking you again). The more points you have the more hours you do.. yeh.. hours. Literally people have reported of having to spend 72 hours in Jail, 72 hours that you can do VERY little. Now you have the option to try and bribe your way out with cash (it costs a lot..) or gamble with the guards to try and make money and then bribe your way out (pretty difficult), but other than that there’s not a whole lot to do in jail other than do your time. Essentially you are punished as a player by having to endure ridiculously boring gameplay for days simply because you used a system that has been put in the game; you’re punishing as a player, as a griefer…. However, it is “illegal” killings that are punishable, which can be anything including killing known spies who haven’t been exposed yet or without patrol status, or killing a criminal/murderer without police status.. you can’t kill these players without having the right status and if you do… well you’re as bad as they are. I’m all for finding ways to curb random player killings, but something so harsh in a game that supports force World PVP is pretty bad; what we’d like to see is more interesting things to do in jail, less jail time in general, or simply get rid of the system and go for major debuffs so that at least players can still enjoy the game.


• Kidnap Changes - Only VIP players get silver/Teals from kidnapping. In the game you can kidnap other players, when you log out your character becomes and NPC and they can be kidnapped, it’s a useful source for currency, but one that was massively abused by bots to farm silver and so was put as a VIP only feature… essentially removing one of the main ways to make money as a free to play user. This all ties in with the VIP system and the overall feeling that the VIP status is being forced more and more to the point where it makes it nearly mandatory to have it to even enjoy basic features of the game.


• BOTS/Gold Sellers - The BOTS run wild. BOTS and Gold Sellers are an issue in practically every MMORPG, but Age of Wushu/Wulin has it BAD, and in all honesty it really doesn’t look like much is being done about it other than the odd random spate of bannings every so often . Logging in and the chat channel is simply flooded with Gold Sellers trying to give you great deals, which has forced limitations on broadcast range for free to play players who will generally just have difficulty talking to anyone (it is ever apparent that to “deal with the BOTs” the developers have just made F2P accounts crippling bad and limited, at the expense of actual interest F2P players. Limitations aside the BOTs have near enough crashed the player economy by camping resource nodes 24/7 and bottoming out the prices so that other players can barely compete as player crafters. Solution? Who knows… they made their bed and the game will fall apart because of it, the developers nor publishers seem to have a major handle on these types of accounts and until they make an active effort the death knell for the game will be to the sound of “BUY GOLD FOR DOLLARS!”


• Generally Boring Content - The questing is a tiresome grind. Everything you do with PVE questing feels like one endless trek from one NPC to another, region spanning hand-ins that whilst taking you through some amazing vistas really lack any engagement or variety. The lore itself is generally weak and the quests to match, which is only further punctuated by the terrible translations and constant spelling mistakes and illegible dialogue that will leave you feeling confused for the most part. The game world is large, a wonderful sandbox, but there is absolutely no reason nor reward to ever explore it and it just feels like an absolutely wasted feature that could have otherwise been far more compelling. Players should have things to seek out, reasons for finding unique places, rewards for heading out into the world and seeing it for themselves instead of just sticking to the grind path.

These are some of the things that we would change about Age of Wulin/Wushu, but what do you think? What would you change about this game? Would you add anything else to the list? We await your opinions! Let us know!!!!!

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