Lost Ark Online

That South Park episode on the topic sums it up perfectly

While it sucks, the future of free games as a service and a cash shop / dlc / lootbox model is the future. If you look at Madden for example, the game is hot fucking trash, but they have absolutely blown the top off of their revenue by doing that Ultimate Team bullshit where people pay wads of cash for players. Companies are finding that they can get a massive more numbers of people to play their games and shell out $5 -$10 , than they ever made selling them for $60 a pop.

This shit is here to stay.

Cinge said:

It's funny when you think about it. MMOs are about the most anti casual game type yet mmo developers continually try to appease them more and more and they are still a large chunk of most MMOs population. If I only had a couple hours to play a day I am not sure a MMO would be on my radar at all.

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That’s why I gave them up and play single player games and ARPGs. The whole online massive multiplayer is too much for me. I guess as I get older I’m getting grumpier and don’t have the patience like I use to. I prefer single player games like PoE or Diablo and still get the items solo or in a group. It’s just my choice how I will try to obtain the gear. I may take me longer solo than in a group. I don’t want to rely on 10 to 15 people for a chance to obtain an item. I just want to hop in and play stress free and not have a meltdown over a video game.

Raes said:

And warrior is one of the basic launch classes. This is my main:

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I think it's fair to say that it's impossible not to enjoy LA's class design. Scouter is literally like playing Iron Man in an MMO, Soul Fist is Goku, etc.

KR just provided a new trailer for the upcoming Sorc class. You'd be hard pressed to find someone that doesn't think this look cool:

so is there no concrete info on a closed/open beta? was gonna pre-order it just to have access to the betas when they come out

TecKnoe said:

so is there no concrete info on a closed/open beta? was gonna pre-order it just to have access to the betas when they come out

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Well, Amazon is in an interesting position right now. With their flagship mmo Bland World about to launch, and the only real competitor is...Lost Ark, which they are publishing. Could be they just want to make sure they get those box sales from people who are "just looking for something to do until LA launches."

Or it could be they are still working on finishing up the voice acting. LA has a shitload of it.

Either way, it's been weird how news about Lost Ark has been handled by them, starting with the vague announcement of the original deal.

Raes said:

Well, Amazon is in an interesting position right now. With their flagship mmo Bland World about to launch, and the only real competitor is...Lost Ark, which they are publishing. Could be they just want to make sure they get those box sales from people who are "just looking for something to do until LA launches."

Or it could be they are still working on finishing up the voice acting. LA has a shitload of it.

Either way, it's been weird how news about Lost Ark has been handled by them, starting with the vague announcement of the original deal.

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ah ok, im just honestly itching to play this so bad i jumped through the hoops when it was in the KR beta phases, but it got kinda boring semi frustrating because translation of it while it was good enough to get around, trying to find info here and there for certain quests etc just got too annoying so i put it down and have been patiently waiting on the sidelines i almost feel like jumping through the hoops again just to play it with so many classes i could see myself playing the foreign versions until NA releases and still not be bored of the combat in this game

TecKnoe said:

ah ok, im just honestly itching to play this so bad i jumped through the hoops when it was in the KR beta phases, but it got kinda boring semi frustrating because translation of it while it was good enough to get around, trying to find info here and there for certain quests etc just got too annoying so i put it down and have been patiently waiting on the sidelines i almost feel like jumping through the hoops again just to play it with so many classes i could see myself playing the foreign versions until NA releases and still not be bored of the combat in this game

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Playing the RU version is even easier than it used to be, no need to deal with making a mail.ru email, and all that. Just any old email, making an account takes like 30 seconds. Download the launcher, download the game, and translation program. Fire up your vpn and you're good to go. You've probably got a good couple of months. Good time to mess around with the different classes and decide what you want to main. Just try not to get to attached to the classes we aren't getting at launch, since they'll be another 3-6 months down the road for NA.

Monk will be what I play through first, but fuck me if that scouter doesn't look awesome.

Raes said:

Playing the RU version is even easier than it used to be, no need to deal with making a mail.ru email, and all that. Just any old email, making an account takes like 30 seconds. Download the launcher, download the game, and translation program. Fire up your vpn and you're good to go. You've probably got a good couple of months. Good time to mess around with the different classes and decide what you want to main. Just try not to get to attached to the classes we aren't getting at launch, since they'll be another 3-6 months down the road for NA.

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Hey, how hard is it to make a mail.ru account / what info do I need? Pretty tempted to try this.

Ehrgeix said:

Hey, how hard is it to make a mail.ru account / what info do I need? Pretty tempted to try this.

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Just an email address.


Click "register"

Just now starting to read and look into this game. Is it PTW?
like what are Royal Crystals and Crystalline Aura benefits?

Terial said:

Just now starting to read and look into this game. Is it PTW?
like what are Royal Crystals and Crystalline Aura benefits?

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Depends on who you ask. Using EQ:SoV as an example, you would have a Blade of Carnage and the P2W guy would have a Scepter of Destruction. Not a vast difference between the enhanced version and the one thats not, but there is a difference. But I really liked playing the RU version, regardless. Just didnt want to grind out things while waiting on the US release.

Daidraco said:

Depends on who you ask. Using EQ:SoV as an example, you would have a Blade of Carnage and the P2W guy would have a Scepter of Destruction. Not a vast difference between the enhanced version and the one thats not, but there is a difference. But I really liked playing the RU version, regardless. Just didnt want to grind out things while waiting on the US release.

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So there is specific gear that you can buy as opposed to just random drops (ie Diablo)?

Terial said:

So there is specific gear that you can buy as opposed to just random drops (ie Diablo)?

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Not really. Same item - max enhance versus 5 enhances lower kind of thing. Still able to do max enhance without throwing your wallet out of the window, but you'll be grinding your ass off on multiple characters (apparently, I didnt go that far).

Daidraco said:

Not really. Same item - max enhance versus 5 enhances lower kind of thing. Still able to do max enhance without throwing your wallet out of the window, but you'll be grinding your ass off on multiple characters (apparently, I didnt go that far).

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Which means the game is specifically designed to encourage players to pay money vs. earning it in game. Capping a resource needed to advance, but letting players swipe a card to bypass that daily cap, means the game was designed from the ground up to be frustrating.

Archeage did the same shit with labor mechanics - they knew most players would eventually spend money on labor pots vs. the time investment to let it build up naturally.

I plan to give this a try, but if the NA release is non-stop mobile game/RMT "convenience" mechanics, then I'm not going to stay long.

All gear is static drops, with rng secondary stats (1-3 random tripod boosts), and a random 0-100 grade. They don't sell gear. The purpose of the cash shop isn't really selling shit to use, it's to allow you to convert cash into gold, by buying shit to sell on the AH.

The "Crystalline Aura" is a straight up cash grab, and essentially worthless. It gives you minor boosts and silver discounts on things that only have a cost to make you think the Aura has worth.

Cybsled said:

Which means the game is specifically designed to encourage players to pay money vs. earning it in game. Capping a resource needed to advance, but letting players swipe a card to bypass that daily cap, means the game was designed from the ground up to be frustrating.

Archeage did the same shit with labor mechanics - they knew most players would eventually spend money on labor pots vs. the time investment to let it build up naturally.

I plan to give this a try, but if the NA release is non-stop mobile game/RMT "convenience" mechanics, then I'm not going to stay long.

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I'm a little less worried. The pvp content I want to play is normalized and iirc the highest pve content(hardest) is normalized(Hell modes). So you can pay to get there quicker I guess(which is odd to me, pay to finish a game faster) but in the end the two top content it seems it doesn't matter. I think the one place it could suck is the pvp island, but not sure how required that is, if it all.

Will see. I still had a ton of fun in BDO and AA and such without paying anything more then I would with a sub and the occasional cosmetic. I think the thing that turned me off the most about those two games was downgrading or out right destruction when enhancing. Neither of which I think this game has. Going backwards is never fun.

I never stuck with BDO long enough, but crafting in AA was absolute dogshit. Even if you paid RMT to get gems and scrolls and shit, they still didn't fully eliminate the chance for your weapon to blow up. The day I quit AA, I used the best luck gem and best scroll and tried to upgrade my orange weapon. Thing vaporized. That type of mechanic was trash.

Then they tied your ability to earn gold to labor usually, so you had to use labor pots to even have a chance to earn gold at a reasonable rate. Then they normalized speed on my fucking sports car I had spent months gathering all the materials to make, which was another kick to the balls in terms of earnings potential. Fuck Trion and Fuck the stupid company that made AA.