ArchLord hits 500,000 players

By Oli Welsh Published 22 May, 2008

Free Korean import scores in West.

Codemasters Online has announced that ArchLord, its free-to-play fantasy MMO, has reached a total of 500,000 registered player accounts in the US and Europe.

ArchLord, originally launched in South Korea by NHN, is a massively multiplayer RPG with a heavy focus on guild warfare. In the game, the leader of the most successful guild alliance becomes ruler of the entire server, with the power to control the economy, curse and enchant players, summon elite monsters, and kill stuff from a flying dragon mount. Death and taxes, basically.

Codemasters originally launched the game as a subscription title but, after finding limited success, made it entirely free, alongside stablemate RF Online. It's this move that has brought half a million players to the game in the West.

However, it should be noted that free game accounts aren't as representative of the game's actual player base as subscriber numbers are for a paying game, since there's no reason for inactive accounts to be closed.

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About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (8) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • berelain #1 4 years ago

    but... but....

    its rubbish.

  • Clive_Dunn #2 4 years ago

    Yeah, but it's an opportunity to reread the original review - still amusing.

  • Slamhound #3 4 years ago

    Note the key word here is registered with regards to the statistic.

    I have a registered account, and spent approximately one hour playing before realising "hang on, this is utter shit" before vowing never to return.

    It didn't help that about 99% of the player characters in the starter zone I found myself in where goldselling spambots. Subtract those and you're looking at about a hundred players.

  • DFawkes #4 4 years ago

    To be fair, I registered, attmepted to install, it broke and I gave up. So at least 1 user hasn't even played it ever. Not a second. Or even a millisecond.

  • makeamazing #5 4 years ago

    I think this is the norm in MMO's and online services, they don't say how many are currently playing only how many have registered. I think 2nd Life has been doing this for a very long time, and was criticised for doing so, but its better from a PR point of view to say 1 million than 50 thousand...

    Anyway I think its still a milestone regardless of the numbers playing.
    Edited by 1 at 22/05/08 @ 20:38

  • hula hoops #6 4 years ago

    Isn't this game which had 'Life time Subscription' when it was first released?

  • Krelle #7 4 years ago

    hoops: that was/is LotRO

  • levitate #8 3 years ago

    I actually tried this piece of crap for a couple of days in the summer. I didn't find any cubes of jelly, but I found a static, void world with almost nothing to do. It was crap when EG review it and I can't see what has improved since.