This was the final 15 minutes of the FCBT hanging around the statue in Bern (channel 3). Other channels in the city were full and there were many other spots in this and other cities where players had gathered. My earlier video capture (where GM’s were turning players into panda’s, turtles, or if you walked into certain areas, rock golems) failed when OBS encountered an unexpected issue. In other words, the closing was much more fun than this.
12 days of closed beta with only the last four being 24 hours was far too short and I couldn’t no-life those 24 hour days either (so I wasn’t able to play as much as I would’ve liked to). But I’m still glad that this time around (not sharing time with two others on an account), I could even put in this amount of play time to actually check things out as much as I did. Just 45 minutes prior to the ending, I completed the story quest on this character; I only ended up with level 50 questing gear with an item level of 276 as a result.
I wasn’t planning on writing up more detailed thoughts given this still needs to hit actual open beta. To back up a bit, I was very much skeptical several years ago (I’m not one that buys into early hype since often times, the end result is nowhere close) that this studio would be able to accomplish even a fraction of the designs and content that were initially hyped in that now infamous trailer. The way they’ve imagined the story and questing is something that exceeded my expectations (it’s hard to explain until I can edit down game play video) because in most MMO’s, your questing is pretty generic (kill mobs, gather n-number of something, go back and forth between NPC’s).
Lost Ark still has some of this mundane stuff but on many occasions, it offers differing twists on how they are accomplished. Some of this also chains into instances of an area with a common theme; use of a lot of machinima style cutscenes (most can be cancelled after a short delay). Whether or not this becomes an annoyance (in dungeons for example) remains to be seen. But from a story and game play point of view, it provides a far more immersive and engaging playing experience (for those choosing to level that way).
And a lot of this design and actual coding is one reason why this game is taking awhile to go from first closed beta to this final one. The amount of questing and storyline content in this final closed beta alone was staggering. Over 95% of it is well done and polished for something that has yet to move into the open beta phase (presuming it will be a stress test soft launch when it happens). The same cannot be said of many other Korean MMO’s that eventually launched there (and extending to launches in other regions). This is honestly a refreshing change of pace in terms of actually over delivering.
The decision to go with the 2.5D fixed camera view and point-and-click movement/combat unfortunately means this game will be a niche because there are a lot of MMO players that find it restricting (being able to more freely see everything and/or mobile combat). It’s part of the reason why sailing still feels lackluster (since as I noted in my short CBT2 overview, your character is just turned into a ship model that has free roam ability). This also means restricting characters pathing especially when it comes to verticality (often times, I wanted to just freely jump down from a cliff or while waiting for an elevator platform) which the game makes liberal use of. My point is that this game would’ve really been mind blowing had it gone with the 3D rotatable camera because they could’ve turned this game world they’ve created into some fully explorable (ala ArcheAge’s world environment) and doing away with different instances for each zone (loading screen between them versus seamless transition).
This isn’t a knock on the rationale for going with this design; it’s a testament to how well done most of the game world is where the fixed camera doesn’t do it full justice. It takes a lot for someone like myself who skeptically reserves judgement to come away feeling impressed with the state of this closed beta (which in recent years, is a term that has been bastardized/marginalized as a marketing term). And the content available as of this final CBT is like a starting point since there’s the guild stuff that still needs to be added plus the other half of the map that still isn’t opened yet as well as all of the islands they could drop in the ocean. For someone like myself who is into the adventure and exploration aspects of RPG’s, there’s just so much to do and experience (I had to stop scanning map edges looking for hidden zones, only did a few treasure maps with their secret dungeons, and only hit a small fraction of the islands).
I only quickly looked at the crafting (for higher tier gear) and that is a whole extensive system onto itself. I didn’t even have time to get into the actual level 50 endgame either (I did just the first 10 floors of the tower for example). Oh, and they are still working on the cosmetics system. Those items like most other Korean MMO’s, have stats on them. But they have heard the feedback from Korean players about having to be locked into certain costumes (so they are working on some type transmog and/or stat migration system (plus I presume some sort of wardrobe system). There are some things that aren’t perfect (I will cover those in a separate posting once I also have the videos for those).
Their really huge challenge is finalizing their business model for Korea. I’ll probably be covering that in a separate post as well though. I have to now go through the remainder of my post level 30 recordings and pull out the stuff I want to highlight (as well as further thoughts on the Soul Master subclass that I was playing). Overall, I had a really fun time and wished there were at least a few more days but I also cannot complain about having the opportunity to get into this final closed beta and experience much more compared to the first two.
