The Lost Ark

Some time ago, I started looking for a new game to pass the time. I've been playing World of Warcraft almost since it was released and kept up on all the expansions over the years, but the latest Shadowlands content has been boring. I am one of the few who still plays Diablo 3, but lately I only play during seasonal events so I can see the cool new weapons. Sadly I am never good enough to see the high end content, but the most recent season brought back Ethereal weapons from Diablo 2, and I managed to collect all of them. May not sound like much, but for me it was an accomplishment. Occasionally a game comes out on Steam that holds my interest for a while, like Shipbreaker - that was a LOT of fun, then they reset everyone’s progress in order to add new features, and I just couldn’t get back into it.

A few new MMO titles are popping up recently. Some have been around for a while, like Final Fantasy 2 Billion and One, and are now seeing record numbers of new subscribers in the wake of the Activision Blizzard lawsuits. (You have players who are genuinely offended by what is going on, and you have players who don’t care but think they are making some sort of statement by screaming “I’m LEAVING!”) Most of them don't look all that great - so far New World has been getting praise but also suffers from problems that you'd think a company like Amazon would not have. Seriously, how long has online gaming been a thing? This far into it, people are sitting in queues to play? You’re telling me Amazon couldn’t afford a few extra servers to handle the massive influx of players who are leaving WoW in droves?

Comments on Lost Ark were pretty good (from what I can tell, the game has existed in other countries and is now being adapted for North America.) It seems to have the usual generic story line - many years ago ancient legendary beings used some powerful object to do something really cool, and now that thing needs to be found and you're the only one who can do it. (Well, you and thousands of others.) Surprisingly, I received a key for the closed beta that runs from November 5th to the 11th, so I dove in to see if it was worth my money. I did try out the Final Fantasy MMO on a 30 day trial, but it did not hold my interest for very long. You could play as a cute little fuzzy thing, a beefy warrior, or an anime babe. Guess which one suffered from overpopulation.

One thing I did see going into Lost Ark - it’s a North Korean MMO, which right away could be high praise or the kiss of death. The games that come out of NK usually look really nice, the character designs are awesome, and the game mechanics are over the top. On the other hand, they don’t seem to last long. The players tend to get turned off quickly by unforgiving penalties for mistakes (such as losing experience points for dying, looking at you Lineage) and eventually the game turns into Free to Play with an in-game store to buy stuff. In-game stores are nothing evil by themselves - World of Warcraft has one now, but so far they are only selling mounts and pets. If the store allows you to buy currency or powerful items to help you progress with a minimum of effort (“Pay to win”) then the game is now all about the people with the most money. You’re not rewarded for putting time into it, you’re rewarded because you can afford to sink money into it. Eventually the regular players all leave, and the game ends up being nothing more than a bunch of god-like characters standing around town showing off their new hats.

Characters

There are the typical variations on the warrior-rogue-mage types.

Warrior

The burly beefy guy with the heavy armor and gigantic huge “no I am not compensating for anything” sword. Warriors are the front-line fighters, taking and dealing damage. You can specialize to be a Berserker, Gunlancer (using a weapon that looks like a cross between a huge sword and a huge gun) or a Paladin.

Mage

Magic users can be Summoners who can call upon elemental beings to fight for them, or Bards, which use magical musical instruments as weapons to either do damage to enemies or heal their allies.

Martial Artist

The melee hand-to-hand fighters. Martial Artists can be Strikers, Wardancers, Scrappers, or Soulfist.

Gunner

You speak softly and carry a big gun. You can swap between pistols, rifles, and shotguns. Subclasses are Sharpshooter, Deadeye, Artillerist, or Gunslinger.

Assassin

The rogue class, using swords or demonic powers (Deathblade or Shadowhunter) to quickly take out opponents.

Each class of course has its strengths and weaknesses. Typically, a warrior can take a lot of damage because they can wear heavy armor. Mages do a lot of damage but don’t have a lot of defense. You need at least one class that can heal, and that appears to be the Bard class (and perhaps Paladin, I have not yet tried one.) But right away the first thing I noticed is that certain classes can only be male or female. One of the biggest complaints in World of Warcraft is that of equity. It pretty closely mirrors the arguments of equity in modern society, in that if one person has access to something that another does not, it is “not fair.” I actually used to see a lot of discussions centered around why some classes can do more damage than others. These were mostly by people who had no idea how their character is played. If you’re sitting there wondering why your Priest is not allowed to wear plate armor - not simply because you want it, but because another class CAN and yours CAN NOT - then you seriously need to ask yourself why you haven’t been outside in 4 weeks.

Many years ago when World of Warcraft was still in (what is now referred to as) its Classic Age, no expansions, level cap of 60, no flying, character classes were pretty solidly separated. Mages and Rogues were the damage dealers, Warriors were the tanks, Paladins were Warriors that did less damage but could heal, Priests were the healers but could not do a lot of damage, Druids and Shamans were pretty much whatever you needed at a moment’s notice. These were based mostly on the familiar rules created by Dungeons and Dragons - Warriors wear Plate Armor but can’t cast spells, Mages can hurl fire and ice but are limited to light armor (for freedom of movement, you see) and it worked pretty well. Then suddenly there was this contest for DPS (damage per second.) Every player class decided that THEY absolutely MUST be the highest DPS in a group, even if it was not their character type to do so. It made no sense - why should a healer strive to do more damage than the guy with the twin daggers? It started to cause an imbalance - priests didn’t want to heal anymore, so it was hard to form groups. Initially, there were damage spells available to Priests, as you would need some way to attack things when leveling a character without a group, but Blizzard saw the demand for more specialization and offered more class customization. Now Priests could be Holy, which focused on healing but could still do some damage, Shadow, which did damage but also allowed for healing, and Discipline, a combination of the two. And so it went with other classes, until we had a population of “anti-social gamers.” Classes that used to depend on grouping were now self-sufficient. Warriors were given attacks that would heal. Rogues now had a built-in health potion that they could use in combat. But there was always one unbreakable rule - males and females MUST BE EQUAL.

AD&D’s rule set once made male warriors more powerful, allowing for strength rolls above the normal limit of 18. Females had bonuses to Charisma, which helped a lot when the group had to go shopping (while wearing a ring of “Batting Eyelashes +2” I suppose, and yes I am oversimplifying it.) Eventually, this was updated to make the genders equal, to the point where some D&D-based games went overboard to make sure they hit you in the face with “Females can do everything their male counterparts can do and suffer no penalties to their abilities.” However, an argument against Blizzard (which is not exclusive to World of Warcraft) is that female characters are still overly sexualized. All you have to do is look at the armor sets - the same armor that completely covers a male fighter will leave a female’s entire midsection exposed and accentuate the chest area. Chain mail pants on a female will look more like chain mail bikini bottoms. Imagine that wedgie...

I guess I was not too surprised to look at the character creation screens for Lost Ark and find that certain classes were gender-specific. Warriors can only be males. Mages must be females. Gunners and Martial Artists can be either one (there is a separate menu selection for each one, not just “choose the class and make it male or female.”) Assassins are females only - I guess the stiletto heels offer a damage bonus. The Asian art style is obvious here - the women all wear skin-tight outfits with at least half their chest exposed.

I checked the Steam discussion forums to see if this had been brought up. Boy has it, but as expected the argument sounds like a bunch of 12 year olds fighting at recess.“Why is this still happening in 2021” vs “it’s a game, get over it” vs “it’s an Asian game, that’s how they are” vs “OMG the WOKE SJW are ruining everything!” I found a post on Reddit that did a better job of explaining it. Aside from the whole “it’s Asian, women are sex toys, deal with it” mentality, apparently the developers are addressing this but they are not just making one character with the only difference being “does it have boobs?” They are making entirely different characters and releasing them as content updates. The menu for character class selection is not “Gunner” and then you pick what gender it is: the male and female versions are completely different characters with different backstories. Sounds cool if that’s actually what is happening here - I have yet to try it. I got as far as the Class Demo, yawned, and moved on to a Bard. Also, apparently NK gamers are not so hung up on whether they are playing a male or a female character. As long as the story is good, they don’t care what the character’s gender is. (There were a few people who felt it necessary to make insulting comments about how only Americans are hung up on gender. One went so far as to say he was offended because there were only two genders represented.) I guess if you think back to when Tomb Raider was first released, your only option was to play a FEMALE. Like, omg, I’m a guy and I am being forced to play as a woman! But was the game fun? Did you enjoy killing a T. rex with a pair of handguns? Apparently it did well since it spawned several sequels, a couple movie adaptations, and a reboot. I never understood the big deal, really. I play female characters occasionally by choice and there’s nothing wrong with my sexuality. The first two Diablo games locked you into a gender selection - if you wanted to be a magic user, you played the Sorceress. I was fine with that. Diablo 3 allows male or female for each class, but it’s the same story either way. The only difference was in dialog - the NPC would address you accordingly. Backstory type narratives would call you “son” or “daughter.” Squirt would call out to you, saying “Hey mister!” or “Hey lady!” Other than that, there’s no difference in the game based on gender choice. I actually find myself playing the female monk because the male voice actor is TERRIBLE. The joke I have heard in WoW is that guys play female characters because “if I am going to be staring at the back of my character for 120 levels, I want it to have a nice ass.” Maybe I am just weird, but when I play a game, I am not looking at my character, ass or otherwise. I am looking at what is going on around my character so nothing jumps out and bites my ass. But, hey, if you wanna play dress-up and spend the endgame looking for the most revealing armor you can find, by all means you do you. Me? I spend less time with “does she have a nice ass” and more with “can she KICK ass?”

But, as the Pandarians say, “Enough of that.”

Gameplay

I’ve played a few Asian MMOs, and they all seem to have common features. Big, over the top weapons would be one. You don’t carry a mace or a hammer, you carry a sledge larger than a Volkswagen. Your sword looks like it weighs more than your character but you swing it around like it was a letter opener. Projectile weapons have blades on them, which actually makes sense. Ever tried to fire an arrow with a giant tiger clawing at your face? Put a bayonet on that thing! Stabby stabby! Then there are the general looks of the characters - guys are either so large they barely fit through doorways or they are overly effeminate. Females are either tiny fairy like beings with large eyes and wings or large breasted Victoria’s Secret models wearing spiked bikinis carrying swords the size of a surfboard. Or there are the waifish “magical girls” who can flit about like hummingbirds and look like the slightest gust of wind will send them off the cliff, but while you’re laughing they are conjuring catastrophic storms that do enough damage to singe your underwear. Bonus points if they have cat ears and/or tails. Despite the look of the character, they can all beat up large mobs of enemies without so much as breaking a nail. Lost Ark likes to send large crowds of enemies at you, which you can take out with attacks designed to hit multiple targets. 7 people attacking you at once? One swing and they are all flying backwards 25 feet. Other games have you take on one at a time, with the occasional attack that can poke 3 or 4 at a time, but those are few and far between. Lost Ark is designed to make you feel powerful. 15 guys heading towards me with large axes? No problem. Rush headlong into them and knock them all back, jump up in the air and come crashing down with a lightning blast, then sneeze at them and BOOM they are all puddles of goo. Walk 25 yards, do it all again. At least I haven’t unlocked an attack that centers on you as you glow, rise up in the air, scream something unintelligible while the camera circles around you, fire shoots out your ears, right before you let loose a glowing ball of energy that destroys a small city. Maybe at level 15.