Lost Ark Drops to 60% Positive Reviews on Steam – What Happened to the Most Popular MMORPG?
Lost Ark was the most popular MMORPG on Steam when it was launched on February 8th and made a good impression with up to 97% positive reviews. Now, however, the game has only had 60% positive impressions in the last 30 days and thus even a balanced rating. But why is that? We at MeinMMO summarize.
how did it start Lost Ark started phenomenally well here in the west. The game went live on February 8th and has garnered over 1.3 million concurrent players, earning it a solid #2 spot on Steam to date, just behind PUBG. And this despite the fact that the boss of the game only expected around 200,000 players.
Despite massively overcrowded servers and long queues at the start, the atmosphere was just as great as the number of players. With 97% positive reviews, Lost Ark was even the most popular and highest rated MMORPG on Steam for a while. Although this figure dropped to around 85% in the first two weeks, Lost Ark was still very popular with fans of the genre.
What’s the status now? On the evening of June 9th, Lost Ark on Steam slipped to a balanced rating on Steam. This is what happens when a game gets more than a third of negative reviews. Currently, Lost Ark still has 60% positive feedback in the last 30 days. This rating is based on 5,760 individual reviews from the last month.
Looking at the total 163,523 reviews, there’s still a glowing blue “mostly positive” on Steam. But that has also dropped drastically compared to the launch. Because here currently only 74% of all reviews are positive. Here the MMORPG is also down about 10 percentage points.
Why was Lost Ark so successful in the first place? You can see 5 reasons for this in our video:
Amazon and the communication
Why did the reviews go down right at launch? After the good 97% start, the general reviews went downhill already in the first two weeks. This was mainly due to the communication from Amazon. The fans had problems with bugs, queues and the plan for the future, but the publisher was silent on these issues for a long time.
The Argos raid appeared with the first major update and again caused mixed feelings in the community. The raid came into play too quickly for many fans and caused Pay2Win discussions among the players. The charge was that only people who paid for upgrade materials could run the new raid.
After this incident, however, the situation regarding Amazon’s communication improved significantly.
What’s the status now? The Amazon team issues monthly team updates in which they talk about current issues, tasks and new features. These announcements also usually contain something new about the upcoming updates, which is well received by the fans.
However, it only became apparent last month that communication had not been consistently improved. In the May update of Lost Ark there were things in the game that were not announced in the patch notes. There was also information in the notes that were not then in the game. Amazon apologized for this, but that also caused a smaller torrent of new, negative reviews.
The problem with the bots
What is currently driving valuations down? Lost Ark has had a massive problem with bots in the game for months. They farm gold all the time and then sell it to real players, the whole thing is also called RMT, i.e. Real Money Trading. In the beginning, Amazon fought the waves of automated accounts very successfully and even banned over a million of them directly.
But the problem seems to be getting worse again. Lost Ark currently has over 800,000 concurrent active players and even we in the West are again having queues to log into the MMORPG. And that, although there was no content update. The flood of bots is currently unstoppable and can no longer be ignored in the endgame.
It’s not just about characters running around wildly, who are up to mischief in low-level areas, like at the start of the game. In the meantime, the bots have made it into the endgame and also have a strong influence on the economy there. The satisfaction of the players in the high Gearscore range drops as well as that of new players, some of whom hardly get any monsters, due to the many bots.
Scenes like these are unfortunately part of everyday life and are not uncommon:
How is Amazon reacting to this? As a player, you have the feeling that the publisher currently lacks the answers to this problem. Although it was recently announced in the forum that buyers of gold would also be punished more severely, this has not yet had any effects.
Amazon has also attempted to remove some in-game sources of gold to prevent bots from getting gold quickly. However, this not only led to a reduction in the number of bustling characters, but rather to even more bots in the MMORPG.
On top of that, it’s also taking away the same revenue streams from honest players, which could lead to the quicker RMT rush for gold that many fans fear.
How to proceed on this front is currently an open topic, which bothers many players and is currently causing negative reviews.
Bugfixes have been missing for weeks
What else is frustrating? Hotfixes for bugs that disrupt gameplay were commonplace in Lost Ark’s early days. Although there were regular unplanned server downs, the players weren’t angry about it, because the errors in the MMORPG were solved quickly and most of the time there was even compensation for the downtime.
However, this is currently not the case. For example, an annoying bug where the user interface sticks to your mouse pointer and you can no longer walk has been in the game for over 3 weeks. It’s particularly annoying when this happens during a raid. The fans therefore demanded compensation for lost loot due to failed dungeons and raids, but so far in vain.
Here you can see the bug in action, although the player can still walk here. This is not always the case:
A serious error that caused your character to get stuck in a loading screen and could only be saved by contacting support stayed in the MMORPG for over 2 weeks. Other, smaller bugs were and are even longer in Lost Ark.
How are the fans reacting? They are currently angry and frustrated that apparently small errors take up so much time. Again and again the “time bug” comes up as an example. These were incorrectly displayed times in the in-game calendar. This bug has been in Lost Ark for 2 months and caused some anger even though it had little real impact on your game.
Again and again one stumbles across reddit and in the forum about fans who are turning their backs on the MMORPG after well over 1,000 hours of play. Many of these postings allow a sad and at the same time hopeful conclusion.
Lost Ark is still a good game
Why are the reviews just a screenshot? A lot is currently going wrong in Lost Ark and this can also be seen in the fallen Steam ratings. But that doesn’t mean that the MMORPG is a bad game per se – on the contrary. Lost Ark captivates and draws its fans in because the basic gameplay just feels really good.
This is also made clear by the fact that many of the negative reviews on Steam are written with a crying eye and the notch “I’m having so much fun with the game, please don’t continue as it is now”.
Some of the negative reviews come from gamers with over 500 and even over 1,000 hours of play who are simply hoping that Amazon will address the latest issues in a meaningful way so that they can play their favorite MMORPG with renewed vigor.
What are the fans saying? We would like to quote some of these, exclusively negative, reviews for you at this point. They are all from the Lost Ark Steam Page:
- ZomgSquirrel writes after 906 hours: “I’m writing this while I’m in line. The game is fun and there is really a lot to do for every type of player, but the ever-increasing bot population and the kinky RMT make it impossible to play normally. […] As long as there are no much tougher measures against bots and RMT, I unfortunately have to advise against playing the game. Thank you for your time.”
- tatjanat writes after 522 hours: “I love this game, but I have the feeling that Amazon is no longer interested in the real players.”
- vee writes after 899 hours: “The best combat system I’ve ever experienced in an MMORPG. Awesome raids with unique mechanics and great horizontal progression. Unfortunately, the game is currently plagued by bots and poor management. […] None of this has been worked on, even after months.”
- otomeanzu writes after 1,059 hours: “Currently the game is just not playable because of bots and a publisher who just doesn’t care. The game is super successful in Korea and Russia for a reason and it could be here too. Lost Ark is a great game, but Amazon gets too many things wrong here.”
What do you think of the current situation of Lost Ark? Do you still play yourself, or do you see it like the writers of the negative comments? Do you also have the feeling that Amazon should do more or can’t you understand the flood of negative reviews? Write it to us in the comments here at MeinMMO.
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