The “what happened here” wilderness islands are cool, but having more of the “oh this is nice” sort of ones is not something I would complain about
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Aye
I am incompetent here, since I don’t know how all of that looks from the inside. But I feel like it is worth trying to learn something from Tech. No doubts that they could tell some interesting and mysterious story that wouldn’t break AO’s lore. If they wish ofc.
Maybe, idk.
Tech giving “Arcane Universe Lore” class, after they with vetex retconned and re-wrote lore 5 times in a month.
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the arcane chronicles are taking up 2/3rds of development time
There’s a couple things I think AO lacks in terms of worldbuilding. One of which is music. I might explain this more in its own topic because one, it’s not really related and two AO does have music. It’s got a soundtrack. The soundtrack just unfortunately… feels lacking in some very specific aspects.
The other thing, more related to what Cryo said here, is individuals.
This is on a grand scale, Arcane Odyssey is yet to have it’s Trigno, Rupin and Averill. We’re closer to this with Legendary Ships on the line, Evander, Dusk, Leviathan, more Grand Navy and Assassin members, etc.
However this is also on a minor scale. Stuff that does not affect, and will not affect the wider world. I want to know about the poet who lived on that shoreline before their house was destroyed in a storm. I want to know about the young mage who set out from a town to find lost scrolls and is set to return home in a few months. I want to know about the cultural traditions of a small town, people with personal ambitions that they wish to reach. “I’m gonna climb the stepstones one day.” “I can’t wait to join the Grand Navy”
I want to know about the fisherman who traded some fish for a safe passage with a pirate ship. I want to know about the guy trying to write a book. I want to know about stuff which honestly doesn’t need to be mentioned for the game to work. There doesn’t need to be a deep connection with the wider lore. Ninety percent of the playerbase might ignore it but for others it might be the difference between playing a game in a dead world, and in an alive one.
AO has some of this. The rare npc has a family, or mentions a whirlpool, or something they’ve been doing. But for one, this only really applies to the major islands we find. And two, by the time we’re at Sameria a lot of the more personal sides of the characters are not shown.
Every single character we get a chance to meet is also on their own Odyssey. Their story that needs to be told, even if its just a piece.
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Yeah I agree with this
If vetex brings back the wom soundtrack we are so winning
Okay here’s the full topic if anybody wants to read my opinions on making AO feel more alive via both music and character.
Keep Arcaning
you mean like how high spirit energy is no longer the prereq for magic circles but vetex hasn’t updated the lore doc for that 
?
sigma
AO’s fighting style mentors aren’t nearly as memorable as AA’s, for whatever reason. It’s hard to pinpoint why exactly. I’d love to see the fighting style mentors relate to other characters and get their own lore.
more islands + no nostalgic feeling from finding a random outlier island that happened to have someone.
ao exploration is a lot less memorable because of the map
i hope if a new fs does get added that it in some way synergizes with sand
pocket sand style
I swear this guy can’t go one week without changing the AU’s lore
yknow maybe it would be pretty neat to see a fs based around disorienting your enemy, dont know how it could work but it sounds cool to me (and by disorient i mean not just by like moving around frantically but also like hindering vision)
maybe it could also synergize with magics that also obscure vision (wink sand wink)
Exploration is certainly one purpose of wilderness islands, but when you strip them down to their core function in AO’s gameplay loop, they’re simply plots of land for repeatable content. Wilderness islands don’t actually need secret areas, ruins, or cool side zones to serve their purpose. They could just be open spaces with grass and sand, and the only thing missing would be the fancy set dressing.
Take Dark Sea islands, for example. They’re wilderness islands stripped of any personality—just random patches of land with procedurally generated content. They don’t even have names. You could swap out most wilderness islands with a Dark Sea island, and as long as you can still complete treasure charts, kill NPCs, gather resources, loot treasure, claim the island for infamy, and build, the island’s appearance wouldn’t really matter. It’s just visual decoration.
Some might call this cynical, but it’s simply how wilderness islands function. If you remove what makes them visually interesting, they’re essentially just places for repeatable tasks. It’s up to the builders to add secret areas and points of interest that give each island personality and a reason to stand out beyond their basic function in AO.
I wasn’t trying to criticize exploration in my initial response, but rather highlight the core function of wilderness islands and why they can feel generic. The look and feel of an island create the initial sense of exploration, but once you’ve seen everything, that feeling fades. On the other hand, repeatable content like treasure charts, fighting NPCs, gathering resources, looting, claiming islands for infamy, and building depend on wilderness islands much more than exploration does. That’s why I focused on those features—exploration isn’t the boring part; it’s the repetitive tasks that feel generic and fail to make islands stand out.
To me, this is a deep topic, and I could go on about it, but simply put, exploration is good. It’s a bit bare-bones and could be better, but overall, it’s great. Even if it’s a one-time experience and the feeling fades, it still helps make wilderness islands stand out—just not enough, in my opinion. What I think would really improve them are custom armor sets and loot for each island, puzzles, mysteries, lore, environmental storytelling, ancient languages, mini-bosses, unique NPCs, questlines, minigames, and more. Features like these would make the islands feel more unique and engaging, compared to the current experience of walking around, checking off tasks, and admiring the visuals.
In my opinion, wilderness islands need more interaction, but adding too much content would conflict with their core purpose—claiming, building, looting, and resource gathering.
Honestly, my solution would be more islands—some for claiming and resource gathering, and others purely for exploration and content. This way, islands with more content won’t be claimed by clans and can offer more for exploration, while claimable islands can still be interesting but mainly serve as areas for clans to build on. Right now the current trajectory when I asked Vet is any island not story related and is a wilderness island will be claimable, which just makes me worried wilderness islands won’t reach their full exploration potential because builders have to worry about leaving space for building, while also making islands interesting, but not too interesting where it conflicts with their core purpose.
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