It’s coming up to the second week since the official launch (not counting the 72-hour head start) of Lost Ark in the west. The game broke the one million concurrent players mark last week Saturday (Feb 12th), and has seen daily peaks of around 1 million each day since (not far off the 1.3 million peak set later on that same Saturday).
While this MMO-ARPG is most definitely not up everyones alley (some are definitely not enamored with the fixed isometric quarter view camera and lack of WASD for movement), the game does have a hook especially once you get past the initial 10-50 leveling. Being this is around my 7th or 8th time leveling through the main story quest, the typical kill/fetch/gather/deliver/escort mechanic does feel old and outdated (maybe a bit overdone). And if you aren’t paying attention, slamming that “G” key on that main quest NPC can also feed you a side quest they may have.
In the original season 1 version of the game in Korea, doing a lot of these side quests were required in order to not hit a leveling drought. The revamp and streamlining of the game by season 2, resulted in a much smoother progression where you do hit level 50 in the main story quest (and well before you hit Bern/Vern). Some first time players are unsurprisingly not quite feeling it because this questing is all fairly generic (with some interesting parts like the very cinematic Wall of Glory or the King’s Tomb dungeon). In retrospect, these two cinematic pieces of content were early trailer highlights that also ended up being used as part of the initial ending content for the initial CBT (where the max level was 30).
Knowing how long this part of the game was in development, a lot of it was hashed out around the 2015 timeframe by the original Smilegate RPG/Tripod Studios design team that are no longer with the company (this due to Smilegate’s original labor practices). Part of their original design ethos was centered around trying to immerse the player into the story (even though as it turns out, is fairly generic Korean high fantasy). Additionally, a lot of the original questing was designed as a time sink since the end game systems really hadn’t been fully fleshed out even by CBT2; and what did exist in CBT2 (which a lot of testers felt was more fun), ended up changing for CBT3. Everything was carefully time gated since the original enchanting system had an important material (acrasium) gated behind your limited Epona’s dailies (Una’s Tasks in the western version). So if it seems like there are parts where you are tediously running around (and your mount is unavailable), those were all designed time sinks.
A lot of the ocean and island content has also been revamped (thankfully mostly for the better except a lot of the time sinked quests remain the same). In the original release, certain island content needed to be repeated for each character (in order to get things like songs and emotes). Now, a lot of this is roster wide. So once you unlock an emote, song, mount, pet (or anything that is deemed roster wide), it’s available for all characters. This is the part that Smilegate RPG really fine tuned and got mostly correct because you can play your main or alts, and make progress.
But as noted, some of the quests for these islands (to acquire their island tokens) were originally designed as intended time sinks since the game lacked end game content early on. I recently did one of these island quests (which I remembered doing in the OBT soft launch) where you had to travel back and forth to numerous islands or continents to complete. Given the sheer amount of content the game has since accrued since the KR soft launch in late 2019, a lot of it does feel like unnecessary tedium now. Additionally, some ocean content has been depreciated/made less visible. Before, you’d run into sharks, designated fishing and treasure hunting areas (all of which were mini-games onto themselves). Before, there would be sailors on floating flotsam that you could save; now, its just the barrels. Some of this has now been repurposed into sailing co-op events.
Generally speaking, there’s some decent QoL stuff like being able to set 4 auto-routes. There is also a fairly low cost (420 blue crystals) ship skin (Hermida’s Song) that is usable on all ship types; it provides a huge QoL improvement (including a speed boost and auto pickup of floating treasure). But overall, this part of the game (when you are actually sailing) which already felt odd because of the fixed camera and having to scale things the way it is, makes it feel less engaging than before. I guess the best way to contrast it is with sailing in Genshin Impact (a non-MMO but with a game world that scales really well both horizontally, and vertically (so when your traveling on the water, it feels a lot more to scale).
As for the tiered content, it’s all streamlined now. Some folks who went hardcore the first few days since headstart, got to tier 2 in the first 24 hours and were already upwards of 1000 item level by the 2nd or 3rd day of head start. Most of these folks are now over 1300 item level (and near the T3 cap). Myself (playing semi-casually), I just hit 540 item level on my main (460 is required to get the quest to travel to Rohendel) this past weekend, finally setup my first alt (which is at just 340), and am just farming materials to hit 600 (aka T2). I soloed the first Guardian Raid at ilvl 500 just to see what an unoptimized deathblade could do since mechanics wise, this boss is easy. The HP for Guardian Raid bosses are inflated compared to tiered content in the other regions since players complained during the alpha and technical beta that they were too easy (uh, GR’s were never meant to be challenging; that is what Abyssal Dungeons are for). AGS and Smilegate RPG decided to launch with T3 (1100+ item level) content (both Japan and Russia launched with only T2). I think launching with T3 was a mistake because it just adds to this rush to get from T2 to T3 (leading to more dysfunctional forms of game play).
Gear does not break in this game when it comes to failure based RNG enchanting (honing gear); you build fail stacks or you can increase your success rate (when below 100%) using a farmable item (some dailies provide them as a reward). Another plus is the ability to transfer your gear stats to the next gear set once it hits +15 (and it is always successful). The game basically makes gearing up less tedious and annoying compared to most other Korean MMO’s.
I also finally completely the Lopang dailies (50 reputation points total) to unlock the Braham’s ship (which has enough default resistances to deal with the Red Siren portions of the ocean as you travel towards Rohendel). Alternatively, one could just upgrade the default ship and find crew members that increase the resistance to hazards; it will just take a little bit longer to travel (since it is slower). And with that, I finally am experiencing the Sea of Procyon content which includes Punika, Rohendel, Yorn, and Feiton continents (I stopped playing on KR just prior to Episode 1: Rohendel being released). So this part of the game is completely new for me (but I still have a lot of the islands in the Sea of Gienah that I still need to visit, to do their associated content, and to get their tokens, in addition to all of the Mokoko seeds that I have yet to gather on those earlier continents).
Basically, Lost Ark is more than just about your “gear score” item level. Sure, it will help you to progress through the available content and gain that early edge. But this is the content for the time being, and we’re only coming up to week two of the game. I get that content creators and streamers are so far ahead at this point since that is what they need to do for their viewership. The pace I am proceeding at should keep me busy until the first major content upgrade drops (which is something that Smilegate RPG wants to do at a 2-month interval). What I do like are the catchup mechanics that have been designed including the transfer knowledge system (once gold becomes more trivial, the 600 gold cost to level a character to 50 over an 8 hour period through the Bern/Vern continent content, makes part of the process of creating a new alt less tedious). The game currently only provides two free power passes (these were originally a paid event item in KR); you get one once your first level 50 clears the Bern/Vern part of the main story quest. You then get the second pass on this new 50 once you complete a short set of quests.
Alts are pretty much a conscience design decision since you can do more dailies, and grind out additional material (the tradable ones can be passed to your main) while using the bound ones for that character. It’s also a clever way to get players to try the other classes (though one has to remember that you can only acquire gold rewards on up to 6 total characters). They aren’t required; they just make it easier to get more of the requires materials to progress through tiered content. An important part and related thing about Lost Ark is that unlike a lot of other companies (developers and publishers), they give you 6 open character slots (lot of these Korean MMO’s give you only 2-3 where you need to spend money to unlock more). Additionally, the main character stash is fully open (your pet inventory has unlockable slots though using the blue crystals that you earn in-game). The game does have a lot of different currencies and materials, but most currency items take up no main character inventory space while a lot (not all) materials go into their own separate tab which is automatically organized.
Basically, the top end will be hitting the content wall before the first month is out while everyone else will be progressing at their own pace and possibly still not hit T3 by the time first major update is released this spring. As for the EU region, there are still problems with queues on the original region as well as matchmaking issues (again, this is where the tech seems limited which is why they had to add a new region once they came up on the twenty server mark). There are rumors that some of the excessive traffic is coming from players from other regions (including China) playing through the restrictions via VPN. That is probably true on all regions given the amount of gold seller spam I see on US West.
The million plus CCU’s will likely also begin trending downwards towards their more accurate numbers as the end game of Lost Ark isn’t going to be everyones cup of tea since it is a typical Korean grinder (February 23rd’s peak was the first time since the official launch that it dipped below a million). Hopefully this will provide some relief for the EU Central region with the long prime time queues they’ve been experiencing.
