I threw money at Lost Ark and I’m finally enjoying it

MeinMMO editor Alexander Leitsch played Lost Ark for the release, but had some points of criticism at the time. In November 2022 he returned to the game and invested a few euros. Since then he’s been having a lot of fun.

Lost Ark and I have a difficult relationship. Shortly after the release, I published an opinion article in which I criticized 5 points that I just don’t enjoy about the MMORPG. And even now I would still fully agree with four points.

The entry, the areas, the key assignments and the working points are still a thorn in my side. However, my opinion of the combat system has changed, as has my opinion of the game as a whole.

Because Lost Ark simply has a very cool endgame. The boss fights are fun, the group search is still quick and my character is also becoming more dynamic thanks to shorter cooldowns and more frequent dodge rolls.

However, the road to fun came at a price as I used real money to skip the boring parts.

Who is speaking here? Alexander Leitsch is the MMORPG expert on MeinMMO and plays almost every new game. Most of his time has been spent in Guild Wars 2, ESO and New World. Lost Ark has been back since November.

With real money to fun content

The way to the endgame was actually quite simple. Paid 50 euros for the latest power pass and I was given a character who is level 50, has equipment level 1,302 and has completed the story up to and including Punika.

In the next step I bought the Crystalline Aura for free teleports and some other bonuses. On top of that, there was the item Una’s task a few times: completion ticket, with which I can automatically complete daily quests once they have been completed. That will be important later.

The last thing I treated myself to was the Battle Pass in the premium version for 15 euros. There are some upgrade materials and other useful items for quick progress.

Overall, the fun cost around 90 euros, even a little more than a completely new AAA title for the PC. However, it brought me a lot.

In just five days, I had skipped gear level 1370. This was also done so quickly because there was a returnee event running and I was getting a lot of bonuses for completing content about the Mokoko Challenges for the first time.

Here the tickets to Una’s tasks came in handy. I’ve only done the daily quests in Punika once and then always completed them with the ticket. This saved me the annoying grind and brought bonus rewards in the events.

From item level 1,370 the first raid started and the dungeons got crisper. Night Fox Yoho from a four-player dungeon was far from being directly defeated in every attempt. And the first rounds against the raid boss Argos were also challenging.

Argos is so much fun because the players are divided into two groups, day and night. This plays an important role in several mechanics of the fight. For example, some attacks won’t damage you if you’re on the right team.

Epic boss fights are the best thing about MMORPGs

Learning these mechanics, fighting epic bosses and then finally defeating them – this is the core of any PvE MMORPG. The boss of the new LoL MMORPG Ghostcrawler, who especially loved the raids in WildStar, thinks so too.

But in Lost Ark, the way there always annoyed me, full of grind, slow progression and boring tasks. Now I’ve spent 90 euros and finally have fun in the MMORPG.

I have to grind my way through the dungeons and raids to get to the really hard endgame content – the Legion raids. But every instance run is just plain fun, even if one goes wrong.

Above all, I save myself the stale areas that I still don’t like at all.

I know some players are critical of these passes and content skipping. However, I feel it is important that such mechanics exist. Because my group of friends around MeinMMO author Mark Sellner plays Lost Ark very actively. However, I was always on the outside. Without the pass I would have had to struggle to ever catch up again.

This also closes the circle to a controversial column from last week. That’s where I said that more MMORPGs should be able to sell characters, and I still stand by it:

Selling characters in MMORPGs is frowned upon – I think all games should offer this feature

What are your thoughts on the ability to skip content and grind? Should more MMORPGs offer this or is it a bug?