No one logged in today because of Lost Ark

[Conundrum]

Meanwhile I'm living my best post-apocalyptic life in Dying Light 2. You have to consider that there's a few big name releases happening right now in rapid succession. Pokemon Legends: Arceus, Dying Light 2, and in a little over a week there will be Horizon Forbidden West. Toward the end of the month there will be Elden Ring as well. Considering we're in a bit of a lull until the next patch it only makes sense that people are picking up other games to play, especially these ones.

I do admit when Horizon: Forbidden West drops it will be my focus game until complete...I love that world and the story of it at least as much FFXIV. The reveal of what Project Zero Dawn was in the first game was pretty much on par with any reveal in FFXIV.

[Conundrum]

When I first saw the game appear and looked up its business model, I already knew it wasn't for me. I'm surprised so many latch on to it, despite decrying "the state of the MMO" every chance they get. If people keep supporting such practices, nothing will ever change.

Lost Ark has a lot of streamers shilling for it...a suspiciously large number.

[Divinemights]

Typical Korean MMORPG:

Super sexy characters to attract players
Strong start but lack of substance (story/character development)
Lack of sustainability and turned mindless grinding.
Weak finish by turning to free to play and charge you nick and dime on in game features.

I don't see how this Lost Ark is going to do anything differs

[myahele]

Lost Ark has a lot of streamers shilling for it...a suspiciously large number.

Not surprising when Amazon is publishing the game and it also owns Twitch. Same thing happened when New World released a few months ago.

[YukikoKurosawa]

Here's some fun facts for you guys today:

Amazon is the company publishing the game

This game is not new at all, but in fact a game which has been out in Korea for the past 3 years. Amazon is only publishing it in the west now.

This game is infamous for being a typical korean-grindfest, along with P2W elements.

Amazon also owns Twitch, funnily enough, and is currently running a rewards system where streamers on said platform are paid to give out drops for people who watch their Lost Ark streams for a certain amount of time.

Amazon previously released another similar, grindy P2W MMO called New World, which you've probably heard of.

Similarly, Amazon, owners of both afformentioned games and Twitch, had a program just like with Lost Ark they paid streamers to play New World on Twitch.

Much like Lost Ark has recieved a surge of viewership on Twitch, New World did as well. (Strangely, this viewership actually dwarfs the people who are actually playing the game, but don't think about that too much, it's not at all suspicious that a game has 3 times the amount of people watching vs playing it. Definitely a sign of an organic, and not totally-astroturfed game)

Another interesting fact, New World, which had roughly 1 million peak players during it's hayday of promotion by countless content creators on Twitch, is now currently down to 30k players, a whopping 97% drop in players. Turns out the game had, ontop of P2W elements, giving server-wide benefits to streamers, etc. the game had a slew of game-breaking bugs that the devs never bothered to fix. Which may or may not have had something to do with the 97% afformentioned drop in players.

Well I'm sure the company with this track record of paying streamers off to promote a broken, P2W, grindest that ended up losing virtually their entire userbase in only a couple months, wouldn't do the same thing all over again, and we can trust this this new game won't later be found to be horribly P2W and fundamentally broken as well, be abandoned by the same streamers paid to promote in only 2 weeks before the average player realizes this, and virtually the entire population leaves rendering it a ghost town. I'm sure none of this will happen what with this company's already proven track record.

Surely.

[Erendis]

Who is this nobody? I was on all evening yesterday.

Anyway, this game was not released in Netherlands so it says a lot.

[Driavna]

Not going to play it since I don't like isometric camera angles. However, the amount of uniformed comments are at the level of "FFXIV is just a weeabo game kek".

[Ardeth]

Looks like extreme grind for this one. I'll pass.

https://www.mmorpg.com/reviews/lost-...iew-2000124288

Pros:
Tons of content
Competitive PvP and PvE endgame
Equalized PvP

Cons:
Nearly endless grind
Money can provide quicker gear upgrades
Incredibly boring leveling process

Ah pay to win. And before someone jumps down my throat if spending money saves you time it's pay to win. I don't care if there's no like definitive player power boost from it. Pay to convenience is still pay to win. Time is our most valuable resource.

[MidnightEquinox]

I don't understand why everyone randomly got obsessed with this game. It was even shown to me on Steam as similar to ARPGs, which... it's not, lol It's a Korean grinder. Why is anyone paying attention to it? TERA was already a thing. If you're into that sort of thing, sure, but if you otherwise just want to play quality MMORPGs, I'm not sure why Lost Ark is a contender at _all_ and was confused for about a year now. *sigh*

[RobynDaBank]

I'm slacking on logging onto FFXIV lately because I've been playing TES: Skyrim when not studying. It's such a wonderful game even when unmodded.

Lost Ark is just another one in the line of "the game to save the MMO genre" IMO. Before WoW was king. Valheim came along for a little, then FFXIV went mainstream even more, New World happened, and now Lost Ark. Knowing the script Eastern MMOs stick to, it's likely not even anything super special aside from being pretty and having a huge publisher and localization for once. Honestly I'm sure if other Eastern MMOs were as artificially hyped up and advertised, with a proper localization, they'd have teeming communities too.

I'm not someone to wish ill on anybody, my gripe is just with the game. It's sad that too few relatively bat an eye to loot boxes, scummy cash shops that bundle currencies in wonky packages on purpose, pay-to-speed-up models and what have you.