From Trion Games comes the new MMORPG, ArcheAge. Many MMOs typically follow tried and true formulas with few alterations to switch things up. Within ArcheAge there may be an interestingly in-depth crafting system that leads the way for the player to act as composer and write their own music.
How does that work?
A German Let’s Player posted a video on how you can start composing through crafting. Basically, you collect all the required items (something about fish sperm…) and craft music paper. A few more things are involved, but that’s the gist of it.
Interacting with that paper opens up a guide to writing music with computer keyboard symbols that control pitch, duration, and transposition.
You start with notes A through G and you can transpose those notes up or down with the parentheses symbols. Next, the letters by themselves are quarter notes, but putting in certain numbers shortens the note duration (ie. a pitch letter followed by an 8 makes it an eighth note, a 16 makes it a sixteenth note, etc.)–larger numbers mean shorter notes. Punctuation also increases duration, or at least the period does.
Composing in this game is rather reminiscent of making the Animal Crossing town tune, so I’m positive people are going to have a lot of fun with it. In fact, another player made music through connecting a Guitar Hero-like instrument, so there are some experimental opportunities you could explore if you so desired.
This is an interesting facet to include and hopefully ArcheAge has several other cool details like this scattered throughout. Would you be up for going through the process to make lovely music? Well, ArcheAge will release in 2014 and you can sign up for the beta now to test out your music chops.
