ArcheAge's Makers Admit a Pay-to-Win Problem. Their sequel, ArcheAge S, drops fixed classes and crafting-only gear, and a 17-minute documentary just showed its first gameplay.

What Happened

ArcheAge's own developers say its economy and its monetization together made it pay-to-win, and they just showed the sequel built to answer that.

The admission

• Pay-to-win, on camera. In a new developer documentary, XLGAMES says the original ArcheAge, the studio's earlier PC MMO, became pay-to-win when its economy combined with its monetization.
• Crafting was everything. In the original, crafting was the only way to progress your gear, and that gear could be sold on the auction house.
• Too real. Wccftech quotes producer Jeong Seok-won: "The world was built so true to life that many real-world problems found their way into it."
• Who said it. Aroged credits the economy and pay-to-win lines to executive producer Kim Kyung-tae; Wccftech credits them to Jeong Seok-won. Both translations say the same thing.

The game

• First footage. Kakao Games, the worldwide publisher, posted the roughly 17-minute documentary to the official ArcheAge S YouTube channel on September 29, Korea time: the game's first public in-game footage.
• Who leads it. XLGAMES develops ArcheAge S under executive producer Kim Kyung-tae, who Inven Global reports was the first planning team lead and producer on the original ArcheAge.
• Release window. ArcheAge S targets a Steam-centered global PC release in Q2 2027.

What ArcheAge S Changes

The sequel changes where gear comes from, how you build a class, where you live and who you fight.

• No fixed classes. Skills come from gear instead: each weapon grants four combat skills, and armor adds skills of its own.
• Gear from play. Gear comes from field hunting, dungeons and trade, not from crafting alone.
• Farm it yourself. Some materials can only be obtained by playing the relevant content yourself.
• A home each. Every player gets a personal home tied to their account, easing the original's land grab.
• Rotating matchups. PvP (player-versus-player combat) runs across servers, and the team plans to regularly reshuffle matchups so a faction imbalance can't lock in.
• Quarter-view camera. The camera uses a quarter view, looking down on the action at an angle.
• Naval battles. In Gamemeca's report, Kim Kyung-tae says early choices "feed into combat and rivalry, eventually blowing up into massive disputes and naval battles."

What This Means for the Riot MMO

XLGAMES just named the loop that made its MMO pay-to-win, and Riot hasn't revealed any of the systems that loop runs on.

• No model on record. Riot has never said how its MMO will make money; its current games are free-to-play and sell cosmetics.
• One old hint. In January 2022, Greg Street, then the MMO's executive producer, tweeted that its model would "almost certainly be consistent with Riot's other games." He left in 2023; Riot reset the project in 2024.
• Sellable power. When crafted gear is the only road to power and that gear can be sold, power follows money.
• Classes from gear. Weapon-built classes let players build a class from their gear instead of locking one in at character creation.

Riot hasn't said whether its MMO has classes at all, let alone whether simple ones can win. Gear supply is on Blizzard's mind too: WoW Forever will hand out fewer blue rewards, its first dev podcast says.

Our read. XLGAMES doesn't blame the cash shop alone. It blames crafting as the only gear source, sellable gear and a surplus nobody needed, with monetization on top. If the MMO follows Riot's cosmetics-only games, that covers the store half. Riot hasn't said whether the MMO's best gear will be crafted and sold, and that's where ArcheAge's trouble started.

Your Take

What to Watch

Reported from Kakao Games / XLGAMES (official ArcheAge S developer documentary) and corroborating coverage. The MMO read is ours and clearly speculative. Analysis by RuneGrove.