Being a Retired EVE player and having to answer the question why should I play Albion over any other game here is a compilation of the best reasons I can come up with that answers that question.

Albion is not only a great game, but it is one of the most unique MMOs released in recent memory.

The game has DPS, Tanks, and healers like what you would expect in a MMO, but the economy, meta-game, politics are completely different to what you may be used to.. This isn’t your mother’s MMO. Read this list and see why.

#10: ALBION Online Only Has A Single Server

Unless you live in the People’s Republic of China, there is only a single server on which to play ALBION Online. There’s a test server for screwing around but trust me when I say that doesn’t count. Anything you do in ALBION Online has the potential for far-reaching consequences that will affect every person that plays. No PvP servers or no-PvP servers (though there are areas that are more specialized in that). No roleplaying servers (though that too has specific places and groups oriented toward it).

There’s just the one server, and on it you can find anybody that plays the game. If somebody insults you on an ALBION Online forum, you can find them and mess with them. If you want to start a business plan with somebody that you know plays, it’s on the same server. It’s all one world.

#9: ALBION Online Is Always Growing

ALBION Online has had a steady increase in players since its release date. Despite being a sort of dark horse MMO game because it deals with fantasy and is not associated with any intellectual property, it continues to grow. ALBION Online has tons of free expansions each year, with lots of things going on in them.

A sample: this year we have already had multiple patches with major content including the up and coming one called Percival https://albiononline.com/en/update/Percival . It’s not one of those games that is abandoned or relegated to a skeleton crew after a few months.

#8: ALBION Online Is Full of Mystery

There are all kinds of weird Easter eggs, niches, and sites throughout ALBION Online. It’s rather baroque, really. There are complex forms of PVP and PVE alike as well as feature that combine both of those called hell gates. There are entire areas of Industry and crafting that are not well understood by the general ALBION Online population, that you can explore and exploit. And that’s just the directly created Albion Developer content.

Players have all kinds of things going on in player run communities called Guilds and Alliances or Cartels that completely control and extort the populace of major cities(More to come on this one soon).

#7: ALBION Online Rewards Intelligence

ALBION Online isn’t a “twitch” game. It rewards intelligence and patience. Players that come up with ideas, first, are rewarded appropriately. Innovation happens in gear setup, group composition, positioning, and, most especially, in business. Lots of people spend their time trying to figure out how other people are innovating, and why, in all these categories.

If you are good at combining seemingly unrelated pieces of information to form a picture that nobody else has seen, yet, then ALBION Online is right up your alley. Although often slighted as having a difficult learning curve, those players that are skilled at educating themselves can find themselves more competent than players that have been at it for years longer than them.

#6: ALBION Online Is Intensely Political

No matter what area of the game you are in, there are dozens of guilds and alliances all competing for the same resources. In black zones, there are hundreds of guilds trying to stake out a claim and defend it against all comers. In yellow zones, red zones, and the royal cities, there are hundreds of guilds trying to get an edge over each other in trade and private wars.

All these interactions make lots of room for personal charisma, interpersonal guesswork, and manipulation. Larger groups often have specially appointed diplomats, whose job is to be the public face of their group. These people spend lots of time developing ties with other organizations, sounding out possibilities regarding shifting alliances, and negotiating truces. If that sounds like your style, there is ample room to play.

#5: Real Life Skills Matter in ALBION Online

A broad set of personal skills can be engaged in ALBION Online. Are you artistic? People will pay you to make forum signatures for them. Can you code? Guilds need projects done with SBI’s API. Are you a smooth operator? You can find a place gulling easy marks and stealing anything they own. Are you good with people and think clearly under pressure? Shot calling might just be the thing for you.

The point is that no matter what you are good at, you can probably find a way to make it work for you in ALBION Online.

#4: ALBION Online Plays for Keeps (Full Loot PVP)

When you die and lose gear in ALBION Online, it is gone for good, and so are most of the things it was using or transporting. You might get some of it back if a friendly player loots you as a consolation prize, but it isn’t going to do much to offset your loss. If another player accidentally accepts a misleading deal from you or is tricked out of his property with a smooth word or two, some GM isn’t going to reimburse the transaction or reimburse lost goods.

Anything in ALBION Online reflects this hard-core ideal. It makes PvP a lot more exciting. Consider: I still get shakes from Albion low-stakes PvP, and I have been playing for years.

#3: ALBION Online Is A Sandbox

The company that makes ALBION Online has essentially given us a giant, messy world to play in. And what one decides to do in that world is up to you. There’s no defined endgame. No maxed out or off-limits areas that restrict you out once you have a certain level of skill. You can do whatever you want and define your own goals.

Does your vision of success include leading a successful guild or alliance? You can do that. Does it include flying being the best GVG team wearing T8.3 gear or the most notorious ganker and pirate? You can do that. Really, whatever your self-defined goal is, you can pursue it and make it happen. But nobody tells you what that goal should be. There are no victory conditions, no final battles. You are your own master.

#2: ALBION Online Has an Astounding Economy

ALBION Online’s economy is true to life. Sometimes amazingly so. Speculation and market trends rule entire industries. Players start investment funds to build up investment capital. Disgraced Guild Masters’s embezzle entire guilds wallets, leaving potentially thousands of people out in the cold. Or outsiders come in and set up a cartel to dominate or extort entire cities. It’s all there, intricate and active, ready to be exploited by the right man or woman.

There are dozens of industrial niches, thousands of item variation, hundreds of sought-after commodities used for manufacturing, and tons of alternate approaches that can be taken toward accumulating any of them. There are luxury markets, commodity markets, financial markets, and gold markets. Brimming with possibility.

#1: ALBION Online Has the Most Devious Metagame

All’s fair in love and war, but what happens when one loves war? ALBION Online’s metagame is fantastic. The high value of in-game items, protracted nature of war, and value of intel, all make the metagame an all-important aspect of ALBION Online. Spying, social engineering, diplomacy, and even IT is critical in the game and outside the game.

Real life nationalities play a big part of Guild/Alliance politics, as do personalities. People cultivate modest (or not so modest) cults of personality that can command loyalty or even give them a special role within the game. It’s as devious and sketchy as can be, but an edge in an intel war can give a Guild what it needs to triumph over its foes, sure as the sun shines.

So that’s that. Go try ALBION Online, or show this list to your friends and maybe we can pique their interest.

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