Just completed 500 hours of LA in the NA/EU version, so thought will share my experience if anyone would like to play. I will also compare some aspects to DDO - although I am not implying one game is better than another, this is just an observation.

Preview:
DDO was the only MMO I played since 2010 on and off, and the way SSG handled the game I was very downbeat about the whole genre. GW2, New World - nothing interested me so I kept playing the shit Lynnabel and her crew threw at me. Then I read about Lost Ark releasing in EU, saw the gameplay was close to Diablo (do you not have phones?) and thought I will give a try.

UI/Graphics:
I was using a Potato laptop which handled DDO very well, but was blown away by LA's graphics. My laptop struggled to keep up even at medium settings, the art was great and the whole game felt so modern. It is built on Unreal Engine 3, with some modifications for skins and such. After a month or so, I decided its time for an upgrade and bought a latest spec gaming laptop and turned on the beans to maximum graphics setting with RTX - the wallet hates me but I think it was a good investment 

Creates Alts to your heart's content:
This game survives on Alts. Almost all classes are balanced and fun to play, and with game so resource intensive to upgrade your weapons (see below), you need alts - tons of them. But unlike DDO, you do not need to level up individually or need tons of past lives. You can level them up in your stronghold (see below) while you continue to play or just chill on the beach. Upgrade their gear and they will repay your main everyday. Most of the rewards are roster based (DDO term: Account based), so you can share them freely amongst alts. There is no power gap between your main and alt, as long as you maintain your gear score - you can pop-in to any dungeon or raids without handicapping the party. 

Classes
This is your traditional MMO with Holy trinity well established. The games match-making system tries its best to get a party created based on this when you enter the dungeons. Supports are highly welcomed as it increased party's DPS, health and mana regen significantly. Infact the second most favourite and played class is a bard (with sorceress first) - a bard is a must in some of the raids to ease through. As this is an alt-friendly game, most of us have 3-6 alts fully geared at the end-game. Lack of TR and pastlives means all the alts are well within your main's power level.

Storyline:
The storyline is nothing to be excited about. Its the same old "Us vs Demons". You do the story once in your main, reach level 50 and then train your alts to get ready for the end-game.

Stronghold
Stronghold is your home. You can level up the stronghold to get various buffs and bonuses, increase your gear upgrade chances, craft battle items, train your alts etc. You can also customise what furnitures you need, the landscape etc. You can also craft secret maps, which you can use to get more mats for your gear upgrade and gold to use in Marketplace.

Active combat:
LA has one of the most active and intense combat I have played - you can dodge, counter, stagger, maim, recall enemies all the while the fight happens at light speed. Chaos dungeons are all about DPS, Abyss dungeons are DPS + party mechanics which will wipe your team if you play dumb. A decent mechanical keyboard and a gaming mouse is a must, else you will cause a raid wipe in matter of milli-seconds. Positioning is paramount in some raids else you will be one-shot and will be "observing" the fight and handicapping your team.

Itemisation
Where do I begin? Aside from the standard gear and weapons as in any MMO, you can wear gems, fuse gems to higher version, use engravings (similar to Diablo), set card-effects to get bonuses etc. Your end-game is all about itemisation and gear honing, so if you like this aspect rather than TRing you will love LA.

Gear-honing
The most important aspect of Lost Ark. Your gear score (item level) determines which content you can get into. You get the base items at each stage of the game and use materials from Chaos dungeons, abyss dungeons to upgrade them. The higher the level, the less your chance of upgrade and you will fail many times before you succeed. This is a drawback and there is lot of frustration but this is one way to keep the hamster wheel going. Recently they released a super-express event and provided tons of materials and increased honing chance to 20% to encourage people to play more alts and bring them up to your main level. There is also a stronghold buff coming up to increase your honing chance so this is something to keep an eye on.

End-game:
End-game consists of dailies and weeklies. Dailies you do Chaos dungeons, cubes, Tower, island quests and guardian raids (inspired from Monster hunter games). This will give you materials to upgrade your gear. Weeklies you do Abyss dungeons for gold and rare engravings. Most of your gameplay will be at end-game rather than leveling up or TRing. I find this perfect as this fits well within my gaming schedule.

Mounts and skins
Its all about showing off - mounts and skins are the main staple of the game's income and you have tons of options to customise your characters looks and how she travels. Pick from horse, mountain lion, giant tortoise, skateboard if you want to look modern or if you are the nerdy type, buy the Robot from store to travel around. Whales keep whaling this area to keep the lights on for rest of us.

Islands and boats/ships:
Arkesia is filled with islands. At end-game islands are your side quests to get materials, skill points and boat upgrades. I always wanted to own a yacht in real-life but not able to, so the closest is getting the biggest and fastest boat in Lost Ark  . Similar to your character, you can upgrade your ships mast, color, wood materials and so on. If you are into boats and yachts, you will love this.

Inventory and storage:
Welcome to 21st century MMO inventory management - you get a limited bagspace but all the ingredients, materials etc are mapped to separate place at the backend so you do not have to worry about space. You can also store items in stronghold, increase space in stronghold if required. This is one area I really like about the game. I usually trash most of the junk and rest are all always in the DB.

Teleport and fast-travel:
Running to quests is something I hate (looking at you Desert sands and running to DQ1). Thankfully all locations in LA has a teleport and all dungeons are closer to teleport with map fully reveled in terms of dungeon location. Combined with fast moving mounts, you will be fighting bosses rather than falling from ridges. You can also set a "tripod" for your favourite location and instantly teleport for a small amount of silver. If you use match-making, the game will teleport you inside the quest so you can eat ice-cream while the party fills up (within a minute).

Grouping and population:
All the servers are region-based and the party, marketplace, auction house are shared across a region. This means it doesn't matter which server you play on in a region - you will be grouped together, you can buy/sell materials across servers in your region. Coming from DDO this was a big change for me - I was checking the server population before I created a class and later found out this is not required. With a population of around 500,000 in the EU region, usually the match-making queue barely lasts a minute. The marketplace is full and thriving and you can buy any item or sell within hours - there is always someone to buy.

Lag:
There is no lag. I can't believe how they do this but DDO can get help from them I guess.

Smilegate and Amazon:
Smilegate is the developer of the game and Amazon is the publisher for NA/EU version. So far the game management by Amazon is abysmal in NA/EU region, but Smilegate knows what they are doing and seems to have a decent developer/artist team when it comes to the size. Maybe Koreans can chip in about this area.

F2P and P2W
You can be fully F2P (as me) and enjoy the game at all levels. But you can also give-in to temptation to get high gear score fast and can spend all your credit-card limit. There are videos and stories of people spending 100,000$ in Korean and Russian versions to get to high gear score, character customisations and dozens of alt to farm golds. Do not go to forums and moan about P2W because the developers know what they are doing and it is a Korean MMO. I got to item level 1340 after 500 hours, some of the players were at 1375 within a month of game release - just enjoy the game.

Conclusion:
Overall, I have found Lost Ark to be a good MMO, especially coming from DDO. The graphics, gameplay, combat and technology has literally blown me away. But the game is not without its flaws - having atleast 3 alts to farm materials is a must, need more content in end-game, need proper group to avoid raid-wipe mechanics and being a korean MMO, you can swipe your way to high gear score. Locking content behind a gear score is also something I am not fan of, but I have taken the journey at my own pace rather than swiping to high GS.

I am happy to finally find a MMO I like and play daily, but sad there is no single D&D based MMO which is equal to Lost Ark.  Anyways, if you would like to try LA, go ahead but be patient until you reach level 50. Thats when the whole game (and fun) begins. 

Hardcore_Girl wrote on May 15^th, 2022 at 5:25am:


Question: is the stronghold instanced or built somewhere in the world?

goldgolem wrote on May 18^th, 2022 at 9:53am:


That's not a good sign. Generally means that the grind is back-loaded into the end-game.

noamineo wrote on May 16^th, 2022 at 7:29pm:


I think it is somewhere in the world, as you can invite other players in your stronghold area to have a feast.

Hardcore_Girl wrote on May 20^th, 2022 at 3:37am:


But can you walk from it to, say a city?

A buddy on my server talked me into trying it.  Unfortunately, he is 50 and I just started so I don't see much of him.
I have about 15 hours in, and cringe at all the collectibles that I will have to back track later and find... but it has been fun and I have only had lag issues once.