So ArcheAge is the new Flavor of the Month. Months ago curiosity got the better of me and I bought a Founders Pack which came with some Patron time, so when the game launched I figured I better jump in since I essentially had pre-paid for time. Of course by now you’ve heard the horror stories of 14 hour queues and such. I don’t have time for that nonsense. But late last week they added a couple more servers and I tried again and these new servers have Patron queues that have so far been manageable, so I’ve been playing finally.

I got to where I could buy a farm and that’s been pretty much full-stop on adventuring. The PvE questing/fighting in ArcheAge is fine but it isn’t anything really special. What I find interesting (and I can not explain WHY I find it interesting) is raising chickens and stuff. So my little farm right now has 5 chickens, an aspen tree for lumber, a couple of grape vines, a few stalks of barley (grain to feed the chickens) some thistle, azaleas and iris (all treated as herbs) and maybe some other odds and ends. I’m going to make…something.

Well, I have a crafting quest to make a specialty tradepack and I need meat (sorry, chickens) and grapes to do that. The rest is just stuff that seemed like it’d be useful to have and I didn’t want farmland laying fallow. And while I wait for my crops to grow I’ve been riding around harvesting trees and ore out in the wild.

This morning the servers are down and it struck me that the one thing I don’t like about ArcheAge so far is that it’s an MMO. The world is PACKED right now and there’s a LOT of idiocy being shouted back and forth. My blacklist probably has 100 people on it already. Now in theory I need these people so the game has an economy, but can’t an economy be simulated?

All this led me to decide I want to play a game like ArcheAge, but one that is single player (or local co-op or anything that’s not an MMO). It seems like a niche that should be filled but I can’t think of anything. Something like Banished but on a smaller scale. Or something like The Long Dark but with more building and cultivating. Or like 7 Days to Die but without zombies tearing down everything you build. Or like Don’t Starve with a little bit less weird to it. (Don’t Starve is probably the closest thing I can come up with.)

I’m looking for a game where I can farm, craft things, build a home (and eventually a fortress), and also go out and fight mobs. And maybe there’re NPC townfolk who need corn to get through the winter, or warm blankets or something. So I could do some bartering as well. And the building should feel like building not just, y’know, you buy a house from a vendor. More like you put down plans and then have to add components to build your house.

This feels like a game that should exist. Anyone have any suggestions?