Death of a Game: ArchLord (& ArchLord 2) 

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I played this game almost from its very beginning. I was a teenager back then, in a very poor mental state. A toxic home, fake friends, a school I hated where I was being bullied. Every day after school, and sometimes even before going to school, I played Archlord. It was a virtual world where I could escape and feel safe. Actually it was the only world where I felt safe. Now, as an adult turning 30 this year, I am emotionally stable, and my life looks completely different from back then. I can finally say that I am a happy person, but I remember that game with sentiment and tears in my eyes. Today, I know that it was an escape strategy I used as a child because I didn't know how else to deal with my problems or negative thoughts. I had negative thoughts and conflicts at home every day. Sometimes I just did not want to live but to disappear. Archlord really helped me alleviate my internal suffering at that time. Greetings to all the players, and I hope you are happy and fulfilled individuals :)

Man the only time I ever heard of Archlord was when it had a key role in a movie that was made here in Belgium about a kid that struggled with autism. Was actually a really good autism awareness movie.

There was a belgian movie called BenX where Archlord was a main plot point. We where forced to see the movie with school because it was sorta a big deal due to the anti-bully themes. But in the end it was like most belgian movies: sad and very dramatic. But afterwards, Archlord was pretty popular for a little while.

I eagerly await Raid: Shadow Legends being the focus of one of these episodes, it's going to be so cathartic.

ArchLord was my very first mmo, and will forever be very dear to my heart. The music theme of the elves starting town still triggers something in my brain. Thank you very much for doing a video about it and making it live in history. Your work is amazing

1:38 You can hear his pain

Ah memories... Glad you covered this game...not very known game...but I loved it.

i can so hear the checked out feeling of that raid ad lmao

I may be in the minority but I watch stuff like this to learn about games I never heard of.

I love when you cover games ive never heard of! I understand that you have an audience you wanna hold onto or please, but i can assure you there are many of us who will watch anything you post! And at the end of the day, whats most important is that you enjoy what youre working on. Thanks for the great content, i literally get so excited everytime you post.

Pretty wild how 3-4 years later and Raid Shadow Legends ads are still prevalent across RU-vid

This game is so special to me. So many memories and well spent time. Just got some messages from my old friends that are starting again on private servers, and i will join (just not sure which one). Still getting goosebumps when i hear Tullan theme... Lets gather on one of those private servers and do it all again :) Cya ingame... Mlad3n

i would love to see a video about mabinogi, i know it isn’t technically dead but it’s as close as an MMO can get to dead without being shut down. it was the first MMO i got into so seeing a video about its history would be rly cool

Always love your DOAG series. Would you consider doing one for MuOnline? It was the first mmo that pulled me into this fascinating and beloved genre. MuOnline was a massive game in the early 2000s and I feel it deserves a deep dive. Thanks for all that you do!

ArchLord trailers were basically all over RU-vid back in the early days, almost any game music video had those, I still remember War Is Coming gmv.

As a teenage boy, the one thing I remember the most about Archlord is moonbunnies (or elves?), especially their starter outfit. Also, yeah, all these F2P korean MMO's are something I played growing up due to lack of money. Probably tried 90% of the ones that came to the west that weren't things that looked like they could be browser games. Good times, and I wish I could enjoy simplistic grindy games again, but alas, we get older, weaker (arthritis) and our standards get higher (nevermind life responsibilities).

Man, never seen a post before from you, but randomly i see this. Nostalgia. My first MMO, and also my realization i loved korean grindwh*re games. Norey Morse Level 79 Orc Berserker of Divine guild I wish i remembered the NA server name lol Watching this video and thinking back, this game really wasnt great lol it was basic as hell with not much plot. I joined because my brother was a leader in his guild. Maybe it was its simplicity for a newbie at the time. But learning about the level grind, it was the ultimate challenge for myself. I was hooked grinding, helping clan members grind in places we nicknamed for the best xp output. The ranged room, small island, big island. Aside from the grind, the search for optimal gear was the next adrenaline rush. Finding level low 70s pants with 4 slots, where the norm was 2 slots. A 4 slot chest piece. The thrill of posting these on the forums to show them off and receive applause and hate. I think the best high at the time, was knowing i was one of the few that went beyond level 78 and didnt bot. Often accused, but always replied when questioned. Day, night 80 hour grinds on 4 day weekends. It was a great sense of pride for me. Shout out to anyone that was in our rival guild XIII! I still remember a few names feom that guild, thebleader Striker, a high level named Azaroth? Spelling could be wrong, but calling for guild backup and fighting for grindspots at 3am was an exhilirating experience to take a break from the grind. Eventually the game slowed down so we all moved on. A month layer, i happily learned a guildy i gave my account too became Archlord with my account lol Thank you for this post. Its a genuine trip back almost 20 years to the first MMO i ever played. P.S. i will search your DOAG series, but if you have not covered Space Cowboys, you should look it up. Amazing pvp based mmo. I always referred to it "Starfox 64 as an MMO"

5:58 This actually has been replicated quite some time ago. In 2007, I started playing Last Chaos, a free-to-play, (in hindsight) completely pay-to-win "China grinder" as we called those games back then. It was basically Lineage in a different world. Since I was only 11 years old at that time, I wasn't allowed to play anything that had a subscription model. WoW was especially taboo because the TV had told my mother that it causes addiction in children. When my favorite PC games magazine had Last Chaos included, I begged her to let me play the game. And for once, she actually allowed me to do something I had asked for. It was free, after all. Back to topic, so, Last Chaos had castle sieges. In the beginning, there was only one literal castle. Later, they added a pyramid that was an endgame dungeon at the same time. It was on another map. The entire system was GvG. The guild who controlled the pyramid could set the difficulty level as well as entry fees. The guild who controlled the castle could set some sort of tax on trades that they got payed. The guild leader also for the time being received a weapon which adapted to their level. The battles happened on specific days each week. We had an attacking guild an a defending guild, both accompanied by like 2 or 3 support guilds and a whole bunch of individual mercenaries. It was completely ridiculous because I ran around as a level 35 trying to find anyone who I could even do damage to while around me, people were level 60, 90, later at the pyramid 120+. But those were different times. You actually had some level 20s, 40, 50s running around there. It was so, so much fun, even though my guild and never stood the tiniest chance. This was one of the best times of my entire life. A beautiful, diverse guild ("Power Girls"), real and normalized interaction between players, an actual social life that played out for example around the public arena in the main city (wasn't instanced or anything, unlimited people, you could just run in and out). Feuds developed over people from one guild harassing and camping low-levels from our guild (open world PvP with Karma system), you could forge alliances and declare war on other guilds (no karma penalty for killing them during war period) and stuff. We took that seriously. Like, when we got an allied guild, those people became friends. It was natural to talk to them every day, support each other, do stuff together. Because that's what allies do, right?? This is how I was taught an MMORPG should feel like. Despite the game itself being dogshit. Didn't matter in the slightest. I loved that time. I even got married one one day and was a priest for one of my best friends the other day. The castle is what we used for marriages, btw. In the throne room. Sorry, I completely derailed the original question. But that's how it was. The siege mechanic sounds pretty similar to yours. Maybe Lineage even had the same? Never played that one.

This game somehow was banished to the edges of my memory. I had vague memories of it from the era me and my mates tried out free MMOs left and right like it was some MMO wild west.... Thanks for bringing it back!

Personally i don't know most of your video's subjects, especially early mmos. It makes it funner going in without knowing what killed the franchise the video is on.

The best part of covering games I've never heard of is that I get to see business patterns repeat themselves. A strong reminder of what to do and what not to do.

I think this is one of my favorite youtube video series I've ever watched.

god damn. Ive played this freaking game growing up.....first under Codemasters and later under Webzen until it got shutdown. Played several private servers afterwards. Insane to meet someone who actually played this game aswell back then! EDIT: With release of Episode 1 they introduced 3 new instance based areas - Ice World - Lightning World and Poison World. Good old PK fights over the new gear farm spots!

When i played Archlord i came across and afghan dude that went to Switzerland to save himself from the war. Great guy. I think his nickname was Shratter. I lost track of him on the Archlord 2 migration

I gave Archlord a go in late 00's because the local gaming magazine had a section dedicated to free MMOs and the thing that got my attention was a comment saying "classes are gender-locked and somehow Orc females are hotter than Elves" so installed the game to see if this is true. Yes, I was shallow like that. I haven't played it for long tho, can't remember the reason.

Still got the manwas pf Archlord and im amazed how great was the whole idea of someone so powerful in the entire game, even if A2 was p2w 1000% I was one of the last Archlords in A2... I only have 2 opponents that day... Only 4 people in the final battle. I fight a another member of my guild, was a savage and LONG fight, but i win using the most dumb gorilla move in the game to unleash damage over though (tank meta). And when i have to fight the only other person remaining, it was my first friend in the game, waiting there, saying he was almost worried it take me so long. He let me win... I almost cried. Thanks Hunter, gracias.

Honestly I would say most of the games you cover I've never heard of. Obviously I know of some of them, but I just find the case studies rather entertaining in their own right, regardless of the game.

When i saw the thumbnail it felt like i had a Jimmy Nutron brain blast. i played the SHIT out of this game, but someone forgot it exists completely.

RFOnline also had the "faction leader" mechanic, people voted for the archon (race leader) and also ministers, minister of attack, etc. And it was launched in 2004

Seeing gameplay of this awakened some deeply dormant memories of exploring it. Cool video.

Seems to me that Korean MMO’s just need to get rid of their leveling all together and just make it the endgame only. Since Korean MMO’s are mainly about pvp anyways why even care about pve where leveling and storytelling matters. All Korean MMO’s will ever be are a cesspool of pvp try hards hopping to a new Korean mmo every 2 years

I really enjoyed Archlord 1. I still play the soundtrack on youtube while I work. I wish we could still play it.

After the initial talk about picking significative games or important to you on a personal level, over more popular games that would be better choices from the business perspective, I thought that it was great to watch content created by someone with such passion, conviction and integrity about their work and the medium. And suddenly, raid shadow legends ad.

You can tell how excited he was to do a Raid ad by the tone of his voice. I don't mind it because I know you gotta pay the bills.

Wow! I wasn't expecting to see AL or AL2 on this series! I remember playing both back in the day. I remember playing AL2 as it was shutting down, and the game went out with a whisper. Shame really. I haven't checked out either private servers for AL 1, but, I'm glad the community came together to create a private server to keep the game running. Really makes me wonder why companies are so afraid of private servers (looking at you Atlas, and your recent lawsuit against SMT:I private servers).

My childhood!! Can't believe a fairly big RU-vidr would even cover Archlord in 2023. Amazing. It's definitely a flawed game but the nostalgia is crazy

Man i miss this game so mutch was my first mmo, and that graphics and music amazing, i had so manny friends playng 😢

god i miss this game… the soundtrack giving me chills of nostalgia, i was a kid then

Oh wow someone remembers Archlord?? I remember reading about it in gameinformer, wasnt even sure it actually came out let alone got a sequel

Archlord... the MMO i played when i was in university.... good old times

This game was my teens game... So nostalgic. I still have the music on my playlist

This was the first mmorpg I played. I remember fighting those blobs. I also remember daring to run as a lvl7 through the map past mobs that would one shot me. I remember one high level player messaging me, "Run, Forest, run!" until I obviously could not run further. Oh, the nostalgia!

5:55 Nice memory

never heard of this before and after i can see why, and tbh most of your videos i watched were for games i never heard of before.

I played this game for the first time around 2007, and found it pretty cool, but didn't go very far. Played it again a couple years back on a private server, and actually had a good time, despite the intense grind.

This game looks like a Carbon copy of lineage 2 which was released 2 years earlier. It amaze me how similar they are, even the arch lord system it's similar to being the king of a castle in lineage 2

I never played either of the games but I had all the manga series translated in English. It was pretty standard of the mill stuff, not the worst you'll find but eh. The games always sounded pretty cool but my time was already taken between console games, school, and wow at that point. Might have to give one of the private servers a shot. Dope video as always!

I remember this being a great game for the time, I came from flyff, and remember this game filling my spare time while I waited for cabal online. It was a beautiful world for the time and had some cool unique things I loved about it. It’s taken years for me to remember the name of this game, as anything you google with arch in the name, of course comes up with 7bil pages of archage. Thanks for the nostalgia trip!!!

the only korean pvp mmo i played was rising force online (rf online) and, as Archlord, the PvP is kinda late game with the race v race thing, but the journey to PvP was really immersive with quests, monsters, systems, classes etc. Archlord always felt like a game that is missing a piece and that's why it never got to me. I remember also asking on social media at the time about the game and the Archlord community was really toxic (at least in br)

This game was a huge part of my childhood - I started playing ArchLord near the end of the Codemasters era and continued until Webzen shut it down years later. It's crazy seeing the game footage and recognizing some of the players or actually knowing them. I still log on to the game's private servers every year or two for a nostalgia trip. Thanks for the video!

Damn i played this game so much jesus, from the very very start, in like season 2/3 even became the archlord my self on my moonelf ranger spamming rain and snow , Guild Esoteric and Eyes of war merged guild.

Anyone else hear NS being super depressed he has to shill for Raid again?

me and my grandad used to play this together :) i miss him and this game a lot

that raid advert reading was painful. zero fucks left to give lol

I recommend covering Ace Online. It was an MMORPG mainly featuring aircrafts instead of characters. It was cool, and the music was great too.

The game was my childhood, and not long ago I've decided to give private servers a try to relive those memories a bit. Considering how small the community is, and how I assumed most people there were older adults wanting to experience old joy again, I thought it'd be a tight-knit and wholesome community. Sadly, the most common interactions are either 1. Completely ignoring each other 2. Toxicity in the form of 2007-era slurs and broken english. So I think I'll stick to just keeping this game as a memory. A time that came, and a time that ended.

I tried the Archlord 2 beta and it was one of the smoothest tab target games I ever played, comparable to wow. Like it had no input lag which plague almost all wow clones

11:28 Hello, nerdSlayer chair!

lmao the tone of the raid ad

Oh man you took me years back with archlord

I played Archlord on Evengarda server between the server launch, and up until it closed when Codemasters gave it back to the Koreans. I switched to WoW at that point. I was in the guild 'Warlords'

I've played a lot of MMOs. Archlord and last chaos were some of the best

I honestly like the videos about games that lived and died without my awareness more interesting, so I'm here for this.

i think i only heard of arch lord through reading a manhwa tie in, i keep confusing it with Archage

best game ever, been playing it since forever, even now when its officialy dead there are private servers with lots of players

Oh boy Archlord me and 3 friends tried this game then man grew so frustrated at how far off some things were we had for example one quest where the items we needed were a literal hour away on foot through multiple high level zones it got so frustrating with quest designs like that we barely lasted 2 months then gave up we still discuss all the things wrong with it to this day when we think of bad mmo design.

I liked the soundtrack for Archlord, Limelite is still one of my favorite songs from that game.

I have a physical copy of the Arch/Lord manga translated to spanish. It was expensive as heck, but I don't regret buying it one bit. I also loved the first game (even tho I didn't experience most of it, the levelling experience was enjoyable and chill) and the movie that featured the game was pretty great. I will always remember Arch/Lord as an amazing IP.

My first mmo, played it from 2006 to 2011 ❤❤❤

throwback, i remember there was a movie about it too

Who else here waiting for the overwatch 2 death of a game to drop?

A good part of Arch Lord 1 and 2, their relation to each other, and how the quick failure of the sequel lead to the entire franchise being officially shuttered sounds almost exactly like Microsoft's old Asheron's Call MMOs.

I think that the game that hurts me most is Aion, mainly because we can't get it to work through private servers since the game is heavely focused on pvp and there is not enough people to play anymore...

Patiently waiting for a Death of a Game: Defiance/ Defiance 2050

Hey nerdslayer was wondering if you can cover club penguin from what I understand it’s completely buried by Disney and only the private servers remain with some being taken down

Just because I dont know the game doesn’t mean I wont be interested. Your videos are always entertaining and I love learning history. Even videogame history. Keep up the great channel.

I only heard the name once but never heard it again till now Wtf. This is crazy perfect video. Didn’t know it was a real game 😂

4:55 thats me! im on the news! hi mom! :D

There can only be one! I remember playing the elementalist summoner grinding excessively until the memory leak crash would happen lol. Never played #2

One I haven't seen anyone talk about, which was my first F2P MMO grindfest before I could afford subscriptions as a kid/teenager is 9 Dragons, terrible and great game!

NO WAY! I thought no one knew about this game hahahaha

Gotta get that Raid money to pay the bills so you can continue to work on what you’re passionate about. Keep investigating! ❤

I crave for the ep about Dekaron/2moons almost cry everythime anything from those games appears in any video (even if as a reference on something bad lol)

yo my guy.,we need another episode for overwatch it would be so funny. also bring back the old thumbnail. i deadass couldn't regconize the videos when i was trying to find your channel

Archlord is still going strong on private servers

I played the original Archlord with some friends when it was still pay to play. It was a pretty fun time. I could see early on the signs of how a cash shop would heavily influence the game, of the game developers digging pot-holes to slow progress, then selling the asphalt to fill them in the cash shop. I feared it would spread into the rest of the genre. Of course, hardly a spoiler alert.. It did. I just want a PvP open world PvP MMO like the old days of Lineage 2, in its first years, during the Chaotic Chronicle, up through Interlude. Yes, it was overrun with adena-farming bots... who, ironically, helped keep the prices of materials down 'cause they could farm them 24/7. It was otherwise unmolested in terms of a player's wallet (well, except maybe Olympiad, but that only mattered if you competed). I've tried the private servers, but they all have some kind of "improvement" in the setup - increased xp, sp, adena, etc.. Gimme a pure, original L2 experience, and I'll be happy.

I never played this game but i remember seeing the trailer on youtube and thinking it slapped hard

Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time....great video, would love to see more content on more lesser known old mmos!

funny, started playing custom-archlord two days ago. ps: i was so sad when archlord 2 went offline.

I've been playing this game consistently from the first days, to nowaday. I must say that the game now is merely a milking factory, same as webzen was, but light-version. Private servers : It's so buffed characters lost their identities, the experience you earn from this game is nowhere close to what it was back in the days, no matter what server you join, it's just WRONG :/ Community hate and love the game they play at the same time, they're addicted to it but they don't want it to become something better, I'm just saying this because if you're willing to play this game, the experience you'll have is really whored from what it initially was. The community is active, and there's even an Emulator project going on, the game will have more options in future, I highly recommend people to try the game out Video production : However, you made a really good quality video explaining every detail, good job man I was amazed someone still brought to the light such a special game like ArchLord. Personal conclusion : We need more players ! Come and join us anywhere, this is such a good game, that deserve more attention than it actually has, thank you all 😄 The game is not dead, it's still alive, if you're looking for a great oldschool game it's your chance to try it out, cheers guys!

Archlord was plagued with bots and gold sellers.

I remember wanting to play Archlord so many years ago and trying to circumvent IP blocks before VPNs were mainstream, haha. Because it wasn’t available in my county back then. Anyway, any chance you can cover RF Online and RF Online 2?

Will you ever make a Death of a Game case of Conquer Online (1.0 + 2.0)?

Archlord will return ❤ just need to be patience

That had to be the least enthusiastic add read I've seen and no I don't blame you 😂

reminds me of, what I can only guess, was my first mmo: Risk Your Life Path of the Emperor. I know there's been private servers of RYL (it's technically RYL 2 somehow), but yeah. I'd love to see info on that game someday.. it was actually kinda cool, it was more an action MMO, you had an over character camera and went around, could upgrade weapons, had two races/factions and different classes each. wasn't bad, but didn't have the money to spend per month. (and I was a kid and the naga serpents didn't have bras, lol)

Shin Megami Tensei : Imagine Online DoAG when ? That game got done real dirty....

I still have my physical copy of Archlord

I played this game so much when i took a break from my other most played mmo that no-one heard of called Pristontale. Both had a certain quality that most mmos don't have even these days. (I do love myself some grind)