Lost Ark Online

Gravel said:

That's not to say I dislike the game. I've put in almost 900 hours.

Click to expand...

And that's EASILY worth the money.

I think with where the MMO genre is at currently, people have to quit with the idea/notion that you must play an MMO forever/years. The only reason that worked for games like EQ and to a lesser extent WoW is because of novelty and lack of options. The novelty in 2022 has long since expired and the options nowadays are nearly limitless - I have a "backlog" on Steam that's easily 30 games deep.

Anything over 500 hours in the MMO genre is a total win IMO.

Voldeth said:

I agree with the premise of this post however 500 hours is a weird cut-off for me. Most MMO players I know haven't gotten above 50 hours in a new MMO for the last decade or so. This is also a F2P game, so while I don't mind people who hate a lot about Lost Ark (I do too) I would hope that everyone agrees that they got their money's worth on this game.

Also, just want to emphasis, there is absolutely nothing coming out in the MMO landscape. Given the amount of production time a good MMO takes, if you're an MMO junkie like a lot of us are here, you really should consider just taking a break from LA when it frustrates you and coming back for new classes rather than getting so frustrated that you quit/delete. You're not going to have much else to play until something like Riot's MMO comes out in 2030. Also, if you're lurking the forums, you absolutely can still roll on Regulus and ask for a guild invite / help to satisfy your itch (please roll bard or paladin).

Click to expand...

Eh, I put the cutoff at 500 hours because I think that is a solid amount of time to give an accurate assessment of most any MMO's systems. I don't think you can do that at 50 hours with most MMOs, or even 150.

As far as MMO's on the horizon, I think Fractured Online looks really promising. But, it's going to be very niche (mostly appealing to those of us who liked UO) and it needs probably at least another year or so of work. Ashes of Creation sounds cool, but I think that game is going to suffer from system bloat like a motherfucker. Not to mention all the money it'll waste on all the likely stop/restarts on the project.

But, you're probably right in that Riot's MMO is probably the next "big" MMO that'll have broad appeal, similar to a Lost Ark, FF14, WoW, etc.

Voldeth said:

With that being said, my experience is that when people quit LA that has made it to Legion raids+, they do what every MMO player does: they watch some TV, catch up on social life, enjoy summer. That lasts a few weeks at best. Then they go through their steam library (it likely has 5000+ games they swore they'd play but never did). That lasts an extra week. They then see a new class get's released in LA. They remember the fun of the combat system. Shit, the class looks fun as fuck too. They tentatively log in and are rewarded to some express pass and a honing buff. All of a sudden every day is like launch again - they're gaining 50 ilvls, going through legion raids and having a blast. Fuck, they might even get an accessory that sells for a metric fuckton still and it feels good to be the envy of the world. Of course the inevitable occurs: they hit the catch up point where the wall is and fail a bunch of honing. They remember how much they hated that shit. They make a mental note to not come back. The game won't get any of my money this time - the fuckers tricked me by releasing this class.

They repeat this cycle until the next class is released. But this one lets you play as fucking Iron Man, so how can you not play?

Click to expand...

I mean, I get what you are saying, but I feel like this is true of a fairly large number of MMOs. I did the same with EQ, WoW, EQ2, etc. Each time I "returned", it was for less time than the original stint, until the point where I just don't play at all and have no desire to come back. Sure, some MMOs like EQ will snag me on nostalgia for a month or two (Mischief server grabbed me for a good 6 months), but I haven't touched WoW since Legion and hold ZERO nostalgia for that game, despite being in a top 3 world-wide guild during the TBC era. Same story for FF14 - I played around the time Heavensward was released, returned around the middle of Shadowbringers, quit after a month or so, and I won't touch that weeb shit ever again. The list goes on and on, each time I "return" it gets a little easier to put it down.

The cyclical content that Korean F2P games tend to do works for a bit (and hopefully long enough for them to get you to drop $40-50), but it's usually something you'll put a week or two into, realize why you quit, and then shelve it for months again - to the eventual point where you just never return.

And I think that's ok. I think people just need to resign themselves to the state of MMOs in 2022. A game like The Witcher might be amazing, take hundreds of hours to "complete", and be one of the best gaming experiences of your life. Why do we hold MMOs to such lofty "time played" standards? Many people have their fun and move on and I think it's time for players to realize they don't need to buy into a "sunken cost" fallacy with MMOs anymore. The gaming world has far, far too many options nowadays. You can have your fun, enjoy your time, and move on from the experience when the game starts feeling more like a chore rather than something you look forward to doing each day.