Lost Ark

TLDR; Play the campaign for the story if you want to, as the combat/visuals/gameplay are 10/10. [b][u]Otherwise, I would highly advise against getting into Lost Ark solely for the endgame experience in 2026.[/u][/b] If you're a WoW or FF14 veteran looking for a new game to raid in, then you'll end up disappointed and hurt. There's truly nothing else like it. It's tragic to see it in it's current state. Lost Ark is an incredibly popular and successful ARPG from Korea, but the Korean servers are not legitimately accessible if you live outside of Korea. This steam version is the highly anticipated Global Release that finally allowed North America/ROW to get a taste of the game. On the global release, the [u]game was approximately 16-18 months behind of Korean[/u] servers in terms of the available content, patches, balance changes, bug fixes, new classes, raids, etc. We received a very barebones version of the game in 2022 without any quality of life (QOL), which was divisive at the time. They intended to catch the game up to the Korean servers over time, which they've done for the most part. I believe the contention regarding this to be solely from the lack of QOL on release, as it made sense to spread out the new classes/raids over time instead of giving us Korea's version on day 1. It is currently only 2-6 months behind in content now. (Feel free to correct me.) This resulted in accelerate release schedules which might've pressured a lot of the community to feel like they couldn't keep up with the "power curve" that the general population was at. My further points compound onto this. [u]The game suffered from severe botting issues and aggressive monetization problems even as far back as 2022.[/u] I've been around since TF2, and I have never seen a botting problem as bad as the one Lost Ark had in it's prime. I can recall personally reporting hundreds of these bots over the course of my playtime. You would still see them every single time you log in, without fail. With botting problems comes in-game economy problems. While not completely dead, the economy became incredibly stunted and it make it very difficult for legit players to progress at a normal pace. [u]This led to many people feeling like they needed to RMT to keep up with the pace that they desired.[/u] The game featured a RNG system for "honing" or improving your gear that was quite literally gambling. It was incredibly disliked and very few quality of life changes were ever made to remedy this. And the changes that were made took a long time to be implemented. You would farm materials for a few days or a week, sit down to "hone", or upgrade, your gear as it was an anxiety ridden process with how expensive it was, you would end up failing a 1% chance, then you would feel pressured to purchase more materials with real money to finish off that honing chance that you just barely missed. I recall watching friends screenshare on discord whenever they went to hone their gear as we all watched. [b]It was literally like watching someone play slots.[/b] And trust me, [b]the RMT was NOT cheap...[/b] Even if whaling is your thing, you needed some SERIOUS money to be able to do it in this game. I remember $100 equating to a negligible amount of currency back in 2022. It wasn't nothing, but it definitely didn't feel like you just spent $100. The Korean version of the game is infamous for this, as an absolute top-tier whale weapon, (an Esther weapon), could cost anywhere from $30,000-$100,000 to max out depending on your luck with honing. Then there's the community.. I'm not sure what to say that the other 10 reviews around me aren't already saying. It was really bad. The community was incredibly toxic and had an extreme gatekeeping problem as early as the very first raid release. You basically NEEDED to study up and clear the new content right when it came out to get your foot in the door for future clears of the same raid. If you wanted to learn a raid boss a week after it released and you didn't have friends/connections, then it was an absolutely miserable experience. You basically didn't exist without your certificates saying you've killed the boss before.. You would simply never get invited to groups - and the ones you do get invited to are essentially bottom of the barrel. I'm not talking about 8 new-players that are willing to learn the raid.. I'm talking about 2 bots, 1 afk, 1 toxic carry, and 3 people that just won't communicate whatsoever in a mechanical and strategical fight that requires coordination. After experiencing this firsthand, I made an effort to always clear the new content immediately. (After clearing content, you would get a badge to denote yourself to others. Groups would see this when deciding whether or not to invite you to a raid. This was mostly in the form of player titles.) That being said.. The boss mechanics in Lost Ark's raids were better than what I saw coming even from Mythic Raids in World of Warcraft as I was also playing that alongside Lost Ark. [b]I had more fun progressing and learning on Kakul-Saydon than any other boss in any MMO, including Cutting Edge raiding in WoW.[/b] All of this negative.. But there is 1 thing that keeps this game in my mind to this day, wishing I could do it all over. Of course, I'm talking about the combat. [u]Lost Ark had the best combat in any ARPG to date.[/u] I'm a PoE1 alpha veteran, Diablo 2/3 veteran, and WoW 15-year veteran. None of those games even came close to how addicting and fun the combat in Lost Ark was. The build crafting, while solved for the most part, was still incredibly in-depth and allowed for a lot of customization. It was fast, you had optimal rotations, and you could not really button mash your way to victory in this game. [b]Everything was so snappy, fluid, and satisfying.[/b] While most of my time was almost exclusively spent between 5 separate bard characters and 1 paladin, I can only imagine how some of the fast-paced DPS classes must have felt to play in the end-game. The lows were low, and no one will ever deny that. But despite that, a lot of people felt some magic with this game at one point or another. Nothing scratches the itch for me like this game used to. I hope another game can recreate this experience again one day. The mechanical raids, the incredibly intricate and complex combat system, and the exploration/sailing. The highs were so high.