Lost Ark EU - !!

Soldato
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Updated release date now February 11th. If you purchase a founders pack you can play from the 8th

edit: could have sworn it was a March release previously but I can’t find it anywhere.



No surprise they brought it forward with New World bleeding out. The only reason they pushed it back to March from an Autumn release was to give NW a clear run in the first place.
 
Soldato
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Found it earlier today. March 31st wasn't official, it was a placeholder. Won't stop people thinking it's about New World though :cry:

NW close to collapse and ooh look over the horizon on the first light of the fifth day, at dawn from the East (literally), it's MMO Gandalf with a Lost Ark banner in his hand!

Won't stop people believing that the launches of two MMO's dev/published by one company aren't connected though...

:cry:
 
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Associate
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Anyone else here who has never played an MMO before but has played pretty much every ARPG and is really excited for Lost Ark?

I played a couple of hours during the open beta and really liked the combat, not sure how an MMO plays and what the mechanics are but I gotta say I'm pretty pumped for release! I have to settle on a class though, there are quite a few that I really like.
 
Soldato
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Anyone else here who has never played an MMO before but has played pretty much every ARPG and is really excited for Lost Ark?

I played a couple of hours during the open beta and really liked the combat, not sure how an MMO plays and what the mechanics are but I gotta say I'm pretty pumped for release! I have to settle on a class though, there are quite a few that I really like.

Yeah loads will be playing this on release.

There's way more end game content to do than your typical aRPG that will involve occasionally grouping with other players.
 
Soldato
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Good gameplay trailer, the previous ones were garbage that zoomed in and showed very little.

This covers a few of the basic features without going too much into the end game stuff.
 
Associate
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bit of a review from someone who's played every type of game like this :D - played to max level and done a lot of the end game stuff.

Leveling = Very bad. I'm never usually a fan of leveling, but this felt particularly boring. There is no variety or creativity that i can recall. Pick up X, kill X, Speak to X. The dungeons that appear throughout the main story are decent when played on hard mode solo and combat feels more fun here. The absolute worst part of the leveling experience is just how much travelling you have to do. It becomes unbearable at points. There's plenty of times when you have to go between 2 or 3 NPC's, often in different parts of the world, just to speak to them several times and repeat the process. Constantly had the feeling that the game was slowing the leveling experience down for no real gain. I suppose those that enjoy the stories in these games may have a better experience. Not a fan myself, seen it all before. You get a fast travel option on all continents and waypoints which help, but even with those it felt really slow and right in line with a typical 'eastern mmo' grind.

End game = A lot of content here, but its heavily gated by item levels. You need to progress to a certain gear level to do the next bit of content and even progress with the main story. You get a starting set of gear easily. You then need to upgrade each piece 10ish times using currency. This currency stops appearing after X number of activities that reward them, have been completed per day. So from my experience i felt like i had to do a couple of 5 min dungeons to get all of my currency, didn't hit the cap to unlock the next content and thus had to basically just wait for next day and the next and the next until the new cap was hit and i unlocked the next content. Unfortunately it seems you could purchase these upgrade currency shards from the real money shop. So if you want to pay for your shards to hit the next gear level breakpoint, you'll get to it quicker. I think these issues were worse because of the difficulty of finding groups to do other content, which i'd expect to be a none issue with this release. I think those that are left behind and reach end game a lot later will struggle to find groups though as there's so many different 'tiers' if you like.

PVP - seemed to be some fun to be had here, didn't spend too much time doing it, but it seemed polished and decently balanced.

PVE - a lot of content at end game, the combat feels fun and there are build options and variety. The bosses/raids seem to provide an appropriate challenge, so overall quite a few positives here. With a fresh launch i'd expect it to be good fun progressing for a few months at least when groups are easy to find and the gear level breakpoints are more easily achievable without waiting days and days for dungeons to reset their loot.
 
Soldato
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bit of a review from someone who's played every type of game like this :D - played to max level and done a lot of the end game stuff.

Leveling = Very bad. I'm never usually a fan of leveling, but this felt particularly boring. There is no variety or creativity that i can recall. Pick up X, kill X, Speak to X. The dungeons that appear throughout the main story are decent when played on hard mode solo and combat feels more fun here. The absolute worst part of the leveling experience is just how much travelling you have to do. It becomes unbearable at points. There's plenty of times when you have to go between 2 or 3 NPC's, often in different parts of the world, just to speak to them several times and repeat the process. Constantly had the feeling that the game was slowing the leveling experience down for no real gain. I suppose those that enjoy the stories in these games may have a better experience. Not a fan myself, seen it all before. You get a fast travel option on all continents and waypoints which help, but even with those it felt really slow and right in line with a typical 'eastern mmo' grind.

End game = A lot of content here, but its heavily gated by item levels. You need to progress to a certain gear level to do the next bit of content and even progress with the main story. You get a starting set of gear easily. You then need to upgrade each piece 10ish times using currency. This currency stops appearing after X number of activities that reward them, have been completed per day. So from my experience i felt like i had to do a couple of 5 min dungeons to get all of my currency, didn't hit the cap to unlock the next content and thus had to basically just wait for next day and the next and the next until the new cap was hit and i unlocked the next content. Unfortunately it seems you could purchase these upgrade currency shards from the real money shop. So if you want to pay for your shards to hit the next gear level breakpoint, you'll get to it quicker. I think these issues were worse because of the difficulty of finding groups to do other content, which i'd expect to be a none issue with this release. I think those that are left behind and reach end game a lot later will struggle to find groups though as there's so many different 'tiers' if you like.

PVP - seemed to be some fun to be had here, didn't spend too much time doing it, but it seemed polished and decently balanced.

PVE - a lot of content at end game, the combat feels fun and there are build options and variety. The bosses/raids seem to provide an appropriate challenge, so overall quite a few positives here. With a fresh launch i'd expect it to be good fun progressing for a few months at least when groups are easy to find and the gear level breakpoints are more easily achievable without waiting days and days for dungeons to reset their loot.

Thanks for the insight. I was worried you were going to say the combat was boring rather than the actual levelling process.

I don't mind an Eastern mmo grind but the travelling to talk to npcs doesn't sound particularly fun!

From reading reviews, I got the feeling that Lost Ark is a very alt driven game, so there should be a constant flow of people reaching the level cap on various characters. It will be interesting so see how that works out in reality.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the game but due to the sheer amount of mmos that haven't live up to the hype, I'm going to play for a few months before making any decisions about the long term.
 
Soldato
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Leveling = Very bad. I'm never usually a fan of leveling, but this felt particularly boring. There is no variety or creativity that i can recall. Pick up X, kill X, Speak to X. The dungeons that appear throughout the main story are decent when played on hard mode solo and combat feels more fun here. The absolute worst part of the leveling experience is just how much travelling you have to do. It becomes unbearable at points. There's plenty of times when you have to go between 2 or 3 NPC's, often in different parts of the world, just to speak to them several times and repeat the process. Constantly had the feeling that the game was slowing the leveling experience down for no real gain. I suppose those that enjoy the stories in these games may have a better experience. Not a fan myself, seen it all before. You get a fast travel option on all continents and waypoints which help, but even with those it felt really slow and right in line with a typical 'eastern mmo' grind.

You can very easily level to 50 in about 10-12 hours by skipping every side quest except for the last continent and doing them there. If you focus on the main quests until then you'll get the grind done in no time. A day to max level isn't the same as old fashioned months grinding to max level IMO. I agree with the traveling to hand in quests but with the fast travel I didn't feel it as much as you describe since there was almost always a fast travel point in each npc area, bare in mind there is a cost (silver) to fast travel if you don't have the paid perk.

End game = A lot of content here, but its heavily gated by item levels. You need to progress to a certain gear level to do the next bit of content and even progress with the main story. You get a starting set of gear easily. You then need to upgrade each piece 10ish times using currency. This currency stops appearing after X number of activities that reward them, have been completed per day. So from my experience i felt like i had to do a couple of 5 min dungeons to get all of my currency, didn't hit the cap to unlock the next content and thus had to basically just wait for next day and the next and the next until the new cap was hit and i unlocked the next content. Unfortunately it seems you could purchase these upgrade currency shards from the real money shop. So if you want to pay for your shards to hit the next gear level breakpoint, you'll get to it quicker. I think these issues were worse because of the difficulty of finding groups to do other content, which i'd expect to be a none issue with this release. I think those that are left behind and reach end game a lot later will struggle to find groups though as there's so many different 'tiers' if you like.

So a lot of discussion comes up around end game. The first thing you do at end game is usually.

0. Finish Vern/Bern questline get ultimate ability and gear to 250 gear score.
1. Chaos Dungeons (250gs entry requirement) you use energy allowing you to run it for currency twice a day, but the first time you do this it'll always get you up to gear score 302 (once you craft upgrades). You CAN run this more than twice for currency crystals which you can trade with a vendor for additional currency, it's obviously slower than the first 2 runs of the day but is something you can do.
2. At 302gs you unlock Guardian Raids. This can run unlimited amounts but you can only "harvest" the guardian soul twice per day similar to Chaos Dungeons. (Guardian Raids are basically Monster Hunter).
3. Cube Dungeon (302gs requirement) to run a Cube Dungeon you need a ticket that can drop from a Chaos Dungeon. You run through a set of trials to get as far as you can with your gs, each level you get through increases the difficulty and the loot you get at the end.
4. Towers 302gs entry requirement. This is a giant tower where you climb the floors. Each time you clear a floor you get the rewards, this isn't repeatable, it's something you will keep coming back to as your gs increases over many many months & years. Rewards permanent stats, books, engravings etc. Once you die (ie: floor 3) once you come back you'll restart at floor 3.
5. Abyssal Dungeons (340gs requirement) these are your standard 4 man party dungeons from any other MMO. This can be run 3 times per week.
6. Once you've done all the above you have your daily & weekly quests just like any other MMO, these reward currency, materials, rep etc. You pick from a selection of quests available with a max of 3 per day/week.
6a. A side thing - join a guild do the guild mission and donate for stones you exchange for more rewards.

7. Once it's released, Raids.

Another thing to mention is that islands are generally catch up mechanics that shouldn't be available but was on beta. This will give you a quick gear boost if it's on release.

You can also click the compass under the mini map and do field bosses, ghost ships, chaos gates and island adventures. These things are usually done if everything above has been completed for the day.

While you're technically right that you're limited on what you can "typically" earn & run per day, it doesn't mean you're locked from progressing further, you can keep grinding but earning much less the more time you keep playing per day, but this isn't efficient or what most Koreans and Russians do.

Alts. Any sweaty player will level alts to repeat all the above I have mentioned doing Chaos Dungeon twice per day, Guardian Raids 2x a day etc. This allows you to gather materials at a faster rate than just playing 1 char and you'll be able to funnel most of these materials back to your main. A recent change coming next week on Korea will only allow you to maximise this method with a maximum of 6 chars.

So my point here is that if you have the time to do everything on 1 char each day, you definitely want to invest in alts, but if you're already doing all of the above on 1 char each day you're already playing a few hours each day! You absolutely don't need to spend money on the cash shop to "keep up" with someone spending hundreds or thousands, generally most income smilegate earns is from cosmetics.

PVP - seemed to be some fun to be had here, didn't spend too much time doing it, but it seemed polished and decently balanced.

There's competitive PvP tournaments in Korea. The good thing about PvP is that gear is normalised - so no player has an advantage over the other.

PVE - a lot of content at end game, the combat feels fun and there are build options and variety. The bosses/raids seem to provide an appropriate challenge, so overall quite a few positives here. With a fresh launch i'd expect it to be good fun progressing for a few months at least when groups are easy to find and the gear level breakpoints are more easily achievable without waiting days and days for dungeons to reset their loot.

Absolutely!
 
Soldato
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From reading reviews, I got the feeling that Lost Ark is a very alt driven game, so there should be a constant flow of people reaching the level cap on various characters.

See my post above about alts. TLDR is that alts are an efficient way to keep playing IF you have the time to invest in them, they aren't a requirement. When we get tier 2 and 3 we also get catch up mechanics through Islands. You'll always be able to play the new content with 1 char, but you won't have the same gear score as those people playing more than you *shocked Pikachu face*
 
Caporegime
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While you're technically right that you're limited on what you can "typically" earn & run per day, it doesn't mean you're locked from progressing further, you can keep grinding but earning much less the more time you keep playing per day,
I bet there's no limit on progression through real world money though.


any game that encourages alts to replay the same content as endgame is basically trash anyway.

I thought people were finally breaking free of the alt ball and chain, realising how terrible a mechanic alts are
 
Soldato
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I bet there's no limit on progression through real world money though.

There was on the beta, we wont know until release if its the same.

any game that encourages alts to replay the same content as endgame is basically trash anyway.

It's no different to any other MMO. If you want to play 20 hrs a day on World of Warcraft and don't play alts I'd call anyone a liar. I'd also argue playing to much of anything is unhealthy but we both know people will ignore that.
 
Caporegime
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It's no different to any other MMO. If you want to play 20 hrs a day on World of Warcraft and don't play alts I'd call anyone a liar. I'd also argue playing to much of anything is unhealthy but we both know people will ignore that.
or play an mmo without alts
 
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