Best ReviewLost Ark Series

Lost Ark Honest Review: Grindy MMO? Pay To Win (P2W)? Know Everything

Lost Ark Online: New Free To Play MMORPG

Lost Ark Honest Review: the best MMORPG in terms of content quality. However, it’s in no way perfect. Like any other Korean game, Lost Ark suffers from one of the worst progression systems we’ve seen in MMORPG games. Such as massive Pay To Win (P2W) and repetitive grinding, and other problems.

In this article, we share everything we’ve learned and experienced about Lost Ark including its pros and cons. Plus, an overall Lost Ark review in an honest way to guide and help you to avoid our mistakes when playing this free-to-play MMORPG.

In Short: Lost Ark is an action MMORPG with a huge fantasy and beautiful open world. It’s worth playing MMORPG which can work with every type of player. Besides, Lost Ark is stunning across all levels of gameplay. However, based on our review and experience, Lost Ark like any other Korean has bad systems such as honing, super P2W, Grindy, no real progression, and too much repetition. However, it remains one of the best-quality games by content. Finally, Amazon Games released Lost Ark Global NA/EU in early 2022.

Table of Contents

What Is Lost Ark?

Lost Ark is a 3D fantasy free to play online, which is an MMORPG game with action combat RPG including a huge world. Furthermore, this game is using Unreal Engine 4, which makes the epic world looks so beautiful and fantastic.

Is Lost Ark Worth Playing?

Yes, Lost Ark is a game worth playing. Because Lost Ark is a high-quality game in all aspects. Plus, this game model is quite generous and rewarding for the free-to-play players If you play it smartly.

The word smartly means that it is not a good idea to play this game as a hard-core gamer. This is because you will lose a lot in the end. This is explained in the following topics.

Where many of my friends quit Lost Ark MMORPG when many things become clear to them. Besides, since Lost Ark is like any Korean game it has too many problems because of the gearing level-up honing system.

Despite all this, the game offers other systems that can serve every kind of MMORPG player such as hardcore, norma casual, PvP, and PvE players.

Bonus System For Casual Players:

This can be a good thing for casual players who can’t do the daily dungeons and quests every day.

Arena System For PVP Players:

The PVP reward is good for players that don’t want to get into the Lost Ark grinding endgame in the PVE content.

Dungeons System For PVE Players:

The Lost Ark PVE content is amazing with good quality that you never get bored since there is so much to do. However, you will get bored if you lost in the endless repetition of the same dungeons every day or week.

Grinding System For Hardcore Players:

The hardcore player can do multi-characters to maximize even further beyond fast to the end game.

Buy Power With Real Money For P2W Player:

The Pay To Win player can spend real money in Lost Ark by swapping money for in-game currency such as gold. As a result, they can buy everything from the cash shop or the in-game market with gold. (Scroll down to the game cons below to find out more about Pay To Win)

In addition, PayToWin players can buy a max-level Lost Ark character with endgame gear. After that, they can max the gear score in less than one hour by purchasing enhancement material.

In turn, they can see all content faster, be relevant with updates, and solo 8 players’ dungeons by inflicting millions of damage on bosses. Plus, they can one-shot another F2P player in GVG the PVP type (If you really enjoy doing that lol).

Moreover, F2P players can buy cosmetics with gold in-game from Pay To Win (P2W) players.

Lost Ark PVE Storyline Gameplay:

Lost Ark looks beautiful across all levels of gameplay. Moreover, every time we play Lost Ark’s main story or side story for the first time. We feel the fantastic epic world, which only a few games in the MMORPG genre can do.

At first in our experience and review of the game, we thought that Lost Ark is a very complicated MMORPG.

However, it gets easier with time. Besides, it also feels rewarding and fun to play, especially with your friends depending on the way you play the game.

The character leveling experience is gorgeous, and the storyline is amazing. However, the leveling experience is also good for the first time only.

You may feel bored if you repeated it since it’s the only way to get other characters to LVL 50 fast. However, Lost Ark Online needs more than one character to progress in a good way.

This applies a lot to the free-to-play player who needs so much gold to power up his main character.

The main storyline of this epic game will take you to many islands. Besides, every island contains an epic secondary story that is required to complete the main story. Where you must finish each island to find the ARKs and unlock next-level gear and dungeons.

Where you must know that the world of Lost Ark Online is huge. So you may need months up to more than a year until you can complete every region and island.

Things You Should Know Before Playing PVE Dungeons In Lost Ark:

This game has unique PVE techniques that distinguish it from the rest of the MMORPG games.

Therefore, here we explain some of the most important PVE procedures in more detail in our Lost Ark review that players should know before doing any PVE content.

Game Mechanist:

Every dungeon, raid, and boss in the lost ark world has a machinist. This means that you must know it before you play it. Consequently, If you don’t know what to do, all your allies will be wiped out or may receive a high amount of damage.

If you are new, you should see a guide or videos about the machinist of dungeon, raid, or boss. However, if the game has reserved new updates and new content appears without any guide, then play it and learn it with your friends or guild.

Impairment Attribute Effect:

Impairment is an effect among many that can be used on different types of monsters or creatures in the Lost Ark world such as Rare, Boss, and Big Raid. Where the impairment can be found in your character skills. Also, some items have it such as bombs.

The primary use of the impair effects is to weekend these monsters until the impairment bar become empty. As a result, the monster will break down for a small amount of time, allowing the team to do a massive amount of damage.

In many situations, it is used to prevent the Boss or Raid from reaching a more powerful level. Not only, but it also prevents the Bosss and Raids from using a powerful skill that could wipe everyone or cause very big damage that could not be avoided.

Furthermore, many of the game’s mechanics include impairments as one of the most important parts to defeat bosses and raids.

Destruction Attribute Effect:

In Season 1, the Destruction effect was the phrase Penetration and Cutting effects. As an example, the Cut effect was used on bosses like Nacrasena.

When the boss breaks down then all should use skills or items that have a cut effect to cut the boss’s tails. However, it changed in season 2, so the destruction replaced the Penetration and Cut effects.

Destructions are used in special mechanics cases that are required to destroy parts of a monster, such as armor, barriers, shields, wings, or tails.

It can also be found in the character’s skills and some items such as bombs. In addition, classes such as Destroyer have a lot of destruction effects included in their skills.

Consequently, check below our playlist on our youtube channel to see the gameplay of Lost Ark.

Lost Ark PVP System:

The PVP in Lost Ark MMO is also may feel complicated at some point. But later after getting used to it, the player may feel that it is very easy and limited due to the small number of skills in the slots.

Also, the PVP arena reward is ok somehow. However, it’s better than most MMORPGs that forget about including the PVP system in the first place or with bad rewards.

The game PVP system works mostly in the arena, in which the item or gear level is not applied. So everyone is fair and equal no matter what item levels the character has outside the arenas.

Consequently, it’s only about the stats you have chosen. Further, potions are not allowed inside the arena.

In addition, many may see Lost Ark PvP as it can work as an E-sport game. However, I can’t validate this because there is no real 1 vs 1 arena since the arena is a turn-by-turn or team deathmatch fight.

The open-world PVP in the lost ark goes into some islands or areas. Besides, some events may randomly occur with additional rewards including rare items that may be dropped as well.

There is also GvG, where each guild can queue up with 8 members to compete with other guilds, which is an 8 VS 8 PvP and 16 VS 16. However, Lost Ark Guild vs Guild is super P2W since other players can one-shot you.

Lost Ark Online NA & EU Global Release Date:

Is Lost Ark heading to the West? Well, this is one of the topics that has been talked about a lot.

In 2021, many YouTubers and some news claimed that Lost Ark coming in 2021. However, as we expected, Lost Ark didn’t come to the EU and NA in 2021 after all.

Since there was no official trailer, global website, or even a beta western announcement until the end of 2021.

Consequently, we were losing hope among many players. However, Lost Ark MMORPG is finally coming.

According to the official Discord on 1-9-2021, the Lost Ark MMORPG game did not come in 2021 globally as we previously expected.

In turn, the game has been delayed until early 2022 and the closed beta started on November 4 to 9 in 2021.

Additionally, Amazon Games released an official trailer on Steam as well as on the new official website for Lost Ark EU/NA Global. Plus, they announced the official release date in early 2022 and the game will be free to play.

Lost Ark MMORPG Global release is good news for new players. However, it started with old content like what the JP server got. However, Amazon Games released some new content such as fresh new classes alongside the old content.

Lost Ark Cons & Problems:

This section is the most important thing since the Lost Ark review should be honest like other games’ reviews.

It’s absolutely unacceptable the huge amount of reviews out there that do not show the game’s problems at all.

Besides, players need to know the game problems more than anything else. So they can be prepared for it and have fun without feeling that they have been deceived.

Therefore, check out the problems and cons of Lost Ark below:

Too Much Repetition Loop:

This game is really fun, but some things can really kill the fun. To illustrate, it’s when players feel that they are forced to repeat things too many.

It is summarized as follows:

Repeating The Storyline Makes It Too Much Boring:

At first, the story seems interesting and rather long because it is rich in details. But why do players have to do the storyline again every time they want to create a new character?

Regardless of the main story that leads the new character to Level 50. So why players should repeat the stories of other regions? Be aware, that these regions are locked if you didn’t do their storyline quests.

The answer to this question is very easy. To force players to buy pre-made characters boost for real money without the trouble of making these stories or quests.

Why Do I Say They Are Forcing Players To Buy Characters Powerpass Boost?

Because they could make it possible to complete the main quest once for the account, but they chose to not do that. Besides, they already did this but only with small island quests, so players get rewards once.

Plus, the Awakening quests are also completed once for the account. Since the second Awakening quest is one of the longest questline in Lost Ark.

After the player did it once, its rewards are given to all the characters when they reach level 50 without the trouble of doing it again.

But they chose not to apply this for main quests, so players have to choose between the boredom of repeating the questline or paying for Lost Ark Characters Powerpass Boost with real money to avoid all of this.

Repeat The Same Dungeons Every Day/Week:

If the F2P players skipped doing some of the dungeons because they are bored. As a result, they will lose the power to keep up, become useless, and no longer relevant.

Players now are forced to do the same dungeons and repeat it over and over again or just be a low-gear players until prices become lower.

Because a new tier or new quality in the same tier arrived, which impacts heavily on old values. Plus, repeating dungeons so many times is not fun and also kills the game.

Consequently, the regular players will not be able to move forward normally in the game unless they are hardcore with many geared Alts or P2W. This means that players have to repeat the same dungeons so many times (daily and weekly).

Some Grindy-type players may laugh at the topic of repeating things in the first place. However, how about other players when they know that the gear in Lost Ark never stops (honing system) at some point? Plus, players will continue in this grind repetition loop throughout their in-game life forever. As a result, many players may lose the motivation to explore the rest of the world in Lost Ark. This is what leads us to the next.

Gearing-Up & Enhancement Is Broken (Honing System):

The player life in Lost Ark Online will be always about getting gold and material to gear up (honing system). For me, it’s not fun to force players to max their gear enhancement every time like 8 times or maybe more.

Therefore, the game will be like hell If it’s an old update version such as the Lost Ark JP region or if new players don’t know new patches and tricks to level up fast.

One of the ways that we can describe this broken system as it makes dungeons very difficult at first and too much easy later on. Moreover, a few enhancement levels create a huge power gap.

For example, an end-game dungeon of 8 people becomes so easy. Plus, it can be solo if you have a high gear level. see here:

Also here:

In addition, the Lost Ark Online PVP system outside the arena is not fair (Guild VS Guild). As if the player classes don’t have a gear +20 they can’t compete with others. Plus, if somehow players got it to +20, then it will go back to something like +12 when recycled (+15 will go back to +6).

Moreover, every time the gear is enhanced to +15, it will recycle with a new tier or quality over and over. Therefore, If the player is not hardcore, it may take 2 full months to get their gear to +15 in each tier or quality. For example, upgrading from legendary gear to artifact.

Moving From Old Gear To New One Example.

Look at the following photo, which shows how the current situation in gearing up (honing system) in Lost Ark. Where when moving from old gear to new gear, high enhancements are lost. Plus, they have a very low success rate.

For example, the +12 level in all gear has the same success rate. Plus, the +20 is very difficult also in all gear types even in Tier 1 and 2. Since all gears are similar during enhancements, without boosts.

lost ark,Lost Ark Honest Review

In the end, tens of thousands of gold are needed to reach high-level gears. Since the dungeon gives too low gold compared to the needed amount. This forces F2P players to make multi-characters for loop dungeons. This leads us to the next.

Game Force Player To Relies A lot On Multi-Characters:

F2P players are forced to make multiple characters to process normally in Lost Ark. The main reason to repeat or make multiple characters is to get enough gold as we talked about in the previous topic.

Therefore, Your in-game life every week in Lost Ark MMO will literally be 90% on Alts character and 10%orr less on the main character.

In addition, It’s impossible to play this game with one character and no one should think that he/she will be able to. Without multiple characters, players will not be able to gear up their main character.

Moreover, regular players will be forced to sell everything for gold if they don’t rely on multiple characters. Plus, selling whatever drops to the market, even if it’s super rare items.

Therefore, what is sold will be bought by hardcore and P2W players who pay real money in the game. Plus, the items dropped are just materials to gear up.

Lost Ark Is Massive Pay To Win (P2W):

The first thing you’ll notice is that Pay To Win (P2W) people can buy everything in Lost Ark for real money. This includes the main in-game currency which is gold. To clarify, a swap between real money to gold is available in the cash shop.

The second thing is that Pay To Win (P2W) players can buy power with real money by buying enhancement material. This is the same thing as buying the best gear from the cash shop.

The third thing is that people need to pay to stay competitive or relevant in Lost Ark. This is because gear and materials lose their value shortly.

The fourth thing is that the Free 2 Play player will never reach the maximum level in Lost Ark before any new update.

In short, as long as you pay money in Lost Ark you will max and maintain your power.

lost ark,Lost Ark Honest Review

This image was taken and modified from the following video. It is an honest review that shows you what Lost Ark is.

Pay Money or Grinding Loop:

Whereas if players don’t want to pay in Lost Ark then they have to force themselves to bear the grinding boring loop with the need for too many Alts characters (a zombie in front of a PC).

Plus, P2W who didn’t play the game can buy a character boost with only 30 USD or less (based on RU). In turn, Pay To Win players in Lost Ark can catch up in one day with old players who spent two years in-game progressing in so hard way through game updates.

However, it’s not a bad thing to have a Pay To Win player on your team and play in PVE content such as dungeons. However, the P2W player will be at a level you can’t catch up and you will feel useless in the dungeons.

Too Much Enhancement & Pretty Huge Power Gap In Gear Level:

Normally in any MMO, you reach a level like 50 then you aim to get the best gear for level 50 and that’s it.

This is not the case in Lost Ark, since you are gearing over and over (bad honing system). You need the old gear at max enhancement for recycling to get the new one, which is a serious problem. Moreover, it is like 6 to 8 times of repeating gearing for the full set, which depends on the game patch.

Instead of leveling your character, you are now forced to level up a gear to match new content requirements. In turn, a huge gap has been created between LVL 50 players, which feels like a character level 1 goes fight against level 100.

In the newer updates (T3), more power has been added after reaching an enhancement of +16 to 25. This definitely serves those who are paying money in Lost Ark. Since it’s hard enough to reach +15 in the first place for F2P players.

It’s Not Worth Being Hardcore Or P2W, Because All Your Progression Will Be Lost:

Players sometimes might ask themselves if is it even worth upgrading, or even should care. Since everything they got will feel like it has been reset every time a new small update comes.

To clarify, If you play hard to collect a lot of gold to raise your gear or buy resources with real money. Unfortunately, it all goes to waste. Plus, If you are an old player you will find that your hard work gear is now useless. This happens because with every new update old things become worthless.

Therefore, if you are not ready to lose all your hard work so fast then this game is not for you.

Alternatively, forget about focusing on gear and just focus on having fun with balanced and equalized content including the huge world of Lost Ark.

Example About The Lost Progression In Lost Ark:

If you have been playing for months and find a very rare accessory that may be sold for thousands of gold at that time. This accessory will become worthless when a new dungeon is released.

Plus, if you are one of those who waste hours and hours playing Lost Ark to get something good. Unfortunately, your hardcore playing has been in vain.

To be clear, we are not here to talk about the natural gearing-up and progression in any MMORPG game.

However, If you are a new player that doesn’t know how free reward boosts from the mail work and used the old enhancement way by mistake, you might quit the game immediately.

Anyway, it will take a lot of time if the player doesn’t spend real money. But also it’s a waste since you only pay money in Lost Ark just to stay relevant.

Check this article before upgrading your equipment:

Healthy Progression Example:

Lost Ark’s gearing progression is not healthy. We have never been forced in any game to upgrade gear sets in such a quantity.

In other words, we have upgraded a full set of equipment 6 or 7 times for one character, which we don’t count as Alts characters.

Let’s take Aion as an example since it was the main game of one of our admins for many years before it became dead.

When Aion was a good game, several major or huge updates happened, which include gear of varying strengths. Some of them were easy to get and some other was hard.

The differences between gear in Aion weren’t too great and he wasn’t forced to get and upgrade the hard gear to do content.

As small updates don’t change gear value in Aion. For example, Hyperion’s Set in Aion MMORPG was one of the top gears for more than 3 years.

So any player who gets that gear set didn’t have to change their gear to try new content even if the game brought new gear.

But even so, Aion players couldn’t bear to start over again because of big updates that happen every 2 to 3 years.

So how can Lost Ark players bear losing their gear every two months????????? Since it takes hard work and grinding to level up.

All this leads us to the following.

Regular F2P Players Will Never Reach Maximum Level In Lost Ark:

Yes, because it’s hard and it will never end or stop, especially if the player is playing with a single character. Also, new contents are always locked behind the new gear level, which needs max enhanced gear to +15 or more and tons of gold.

See the image below, where you can see the cost of one type of material that you need to upgrade your gear level in Tier 3.

Besides, be aware that this will cost much more than that If you have bad luck (RNG). Plus, it will take more than 136 weeks to get +25 in T3 if you are using one character to play Lost Ark.

lost ark,Lost Ark Honest Review

Lost Ark Accessories Are The Hardest:

The hardest part comes when searching for new gear in every Tier or quality. For example, a player will have to replace accessories every time he wants to move to a higher quality or a higher tier. So, if somehow got a good accessory with good engraving and stats.

As we have said before, there is no real progression in Lost Ark online. As it will become worthless and will be thrown away after a short amount of time. Especially, when the player accesses the next quality/tier or because of the new update that brings only a single dungeon with new gear.

Also, it’s hard to get good accessories since engraving and stats are random. Therefore, people focus on accessories at the max level. But unfortunately, when an update comes, players will lose everything they did and start all over again (accessories and gear).

A game update is not bad if updated patches for gear come every 6 months or a year. However, updates for new dungeons can be a problem because they come with new gear levels and new accessories.

Therefore, players will be forced to update their gear again and start all over. Furthermore, there are 4 qualities in each tier. As a result of all this, a Free 2 Play player will never reach the maximum level in Lost Ark before the new update.

The really bad thing is that there is no way to fight outside the arenas. Since the regular F2P players will not have enough equipment level, they will not be able to compete in guild wars GVG.

Gear Tier/Quality Example:

Moreover, the list below shows an example of gear tier, regions (low/high), and quality:
(They may change the T1/T2 score but it’s the same idea)

  • T1: 270 – 415 Low – Rare/Epic/Legendary.
  • T1: 415 – 550 High – Artifact.
  • T2: 802 – 915 Low – Rare/Epic/Legendary.
  • T2: 915 – 1050 High – Artifact.
  • T3: 1302 – 1415 Low – Rare/Epic/Legendary.
  • T3: 1415 +++ High – Artifact.

To be clear, it is normal to replace things after a very long period, but here we talk about changes that happen monthly like one or 2 months that make things lose their value and the time we spend to get them, which is something no one can bear it.

Lost Ark New Updates Kill Older Content Faster Than Any Other MMORPG:

With every new update that comes, the old content becomes worthless as it becomes very easy with no rewards.

There is a huge gap in power because of the broken gearing-up system in Lost Ark that made the old content easy like a joke, regardless, and worthless.

Sometimes a player may get stuck in a situation such as reaching a gear level of 1415. To clarify, the old Lost Ark content can’t be played because it is useless since reaching a certain gear level makes the old dungeons give no gold anymore.

Plus, new content can’t be played because other players request a high equipment level, which is much more than the recommended level to quickly finish the dungeon. This takes us to the next point.

Dungeons In Lost Ark Become No Fun After Time:

The repetition of the Lost Ark system makes players look for finishing the dungeon as soon as possible rather than having fun.

So if you were slow or looking for something such as having fun, the drama will start and some players will get very angry at you, but Why?

This is because they do the same dungeon so many times with multi-character every week, making them very nervous players.

The players are not free to do dungeons at the time or moment they like. They have dailies or weeklies, if it isn’t done at its time then, the player will be a loser player becoming no longer relevant.

Lost Ark Pros & Advantages:

The following are some advantages that will be noticed while playing Lost Ark:

Lost Ark Is A Beautiful Quality Game:

This game is made amazingly, especially with the small details. Every small detail is made perfectly, regardless of whether it’s not the best graphics game.

Therefore, if you zoom in on your character or try to take a photo of the world, you will notice details that you will never see in any similar game at all.

In addition to the creatures, the characters look at the way that everything moves in the world. Plus, the skills fantasy look is all made professionally, beautifully, and amazingly.

Stories In Lost Ark Is So Fantastic:

Same as anything else made in Lost Ark, the story is so fantasy, super epic, and detailed. Even more, they got many ideas from other games and movies such as the Lord of the Ring story.

This game has many islands and regions (huge islands). Each one of them has a storyline with a cinematic story to watch.

Yes, even the smallest island had its cinematic storyline and the quest to do. Players will feel like playing mini-games inside these islands or something else that will make them forget what game they are playing.

Lost Ark Updates Makes The Game Easier With Time (Quality Of Life Updates):

In the recent updates that took place in Lost Ark RU, players can now use three cards/tickets instead of one to enter the cube dungeon.

As a result, the final reward will be tripled, which are boxes that contain engraving boxes, silver, and enhancement success rater materials. In the RPG genre, this is called a quilty life update, which saves a lot of time repeating the same dungeon repeatedly.

For me, I have an Alt character that does have like 21 tickets. This type of update is so great for anyone who has this type of problem.

Lost Ark Will Unleash Your Creativity:

There are many things you can do in this game uniquely. In other words, you can play Lost Ark in your way, despite what others tell you (including us).

The uniqueness of Lost Ark MMORPG created a huge amount of outstanding opinions, builds, and gameplay, which cant be accommodated.

Where there is a possibility to quit the Lost Ark game if you listen to all these opinions, as each of them suits its owner.

Moreover, If you really love your main class in Lost Ark, you will create something completely different from the other Lost Ark class guides and builds, even different from what the class was originally for or even the opposite of what everyone else does when playing with the same class.

So it is way better for you to make your way in this game. Remember, you are free to do anything you want in Lost Ark, don’t let anyone force you to do anything you don’t like.

Just have fun because it’s just a PVE game after all. Plus, players don’t have to take the Lost Ark MMO seriously, since it’s not a PVP game with real wars and castle sieges or something like that.

Lost Ark Game In Overall:

Overall, Lost Ark is a very good game, but you need to be smarter using your time in this game.

Therefore, check the overall Lost Ark review below to learn from our mistakes and get a good and fun experience in the game:

The Main Story Is Great But Doing It More Than Once kills It:

The story is really exciting and fun, but for the first time only. However, repeating the storyline many times made us hate it. If a player wants to make a new character or class, he is forced to redo the entire storyline.

This is not like Final Fantasy MMORPG where you can change character jobs without changing the character itself or making a new one.

Lost Ark is different, where each character is bound with only one class that cant change. Plus, Lost Ark has many unique classes, each of which is done in a beautiful and very detailed way.

This makes the player want to play and try them all. But unfortunately, there is a big holdback to this, which is that the player must repeat all the stories from the beginning or pay real money to skip them.

It’s unacceptable, it must be made as a credit to the old player who has already finished the story. But unfortunately, there is no credit for the old player over the new player. We all lose all progression of what we did after a short period and started to repeat everything again and again.

Don’t Invest Too Much Time If You Care About Progression:

Sometimes updates in Lost Ark are too little or big. But it comes fast with new gear, ​as this game focuses heavily on gear, not on players’ skills in PVE.

In short, there is nothing important to do in Lost Ark other than grinding dungeons over and over for materials to polish the gear until you get bored.

Don’t make the same mistake I did by trying to be competitive in a PVE game. To illustrate, if you don’t like gear enhancement or you are not ready to lose your progression, then don’t spend too much time in Lost Ark.

This is because old gear needs to be fully enhanced to +15 to get a new one and also old one loses its value. So, the new player will get everything you had just in a few minutes.

To clarify, players can buy a new level 50 character with full endgame gear for only less than 30 USD on the RU server.

As for me, in the next update, my 1-year progression in Lost Ark is worth somehow like 50-60 USD. Since I am only playing with 2 characters (1430 & 1400).

Lost Ark is a game that you can enjoy in less time. Lost Ark MMORPG should not be taken seriously. Since everything will come and will get easier over time.

Plus, hardcore and heavily P2W players will waste their time and money for nothing, and those who played less will catch everything and will have fun.

However, if you are willing to pay, it’s smarter to buy an instant character boost to level 50 or more advanced with end-game gear instead of repeating the story content over and over.

Lost Ark P2W May Not Affect F2P Players:

Moreover, Lost Ark mostly focuses on PVE content. It’s not bad to buy a character level 50 fully geared with T3 items level 1302 or T2 LVL 915.

However, some may see this as a huge P2W. But the real problem is that P2W players can buy everything used to enhance from the cash shop or the market. For example, they can buy gold and get +20 and +25 in no time.

Overall, P2W makes it somehow like Black Desert Online or worst in terms of grinding and gearing. But sometimes as a F2P player, it feels ok. Since Lost Ark is a high-quality game in a term of content. Plus, Lost Ark online doesn’t have real PVP content in an open world.

However, P2W killed GVG for me, but it’s like 1 hour a week. Plus, PVP outside arenas is dead anyway. So this is why I say it’s ok, but this is not good either, and can’t maintain players.

Our Final Lost Ark Review In Short:

Finally, Lost Ark is the best game in terms of quality, which We highly recommend trying, but without going too deep into it and wasting too much time.

Lost Ark is like any other MMORPG that comes from Korea, it has a really bad system with P2W and multi-character dungeon grinding which is the worst thing ever. In addition to that, it wastes the progression of the players after a short period.

However, sometimes losing progression doesn’t affect the people who spend real money on the game. Where whoever spends money does not need to repeat the game over and over again.

Where P2W gets max gear enhancement and progression in less than an hour. However, this doesn’t impact F2P players unless they play GVG, and feel useless in PvE even if they are pro players.

You Can Play Lost Ark Right Now:

Lost Ark MMO can be played on Russian, Japanese, or even Korean servers. As there’s a patch that translates the game into English. So, if the game language worried you, then it was resolved.

The game country restrictions can also be resolved by using any kind of VPN. Where EU players can get a good ping when playing Lost Ark in the RU server.

At the moment, the Russian server is considered by far the best in terms of game release, versions, and rewards.

How To Play Lost Ark Online In English On Russian Servers?

To play Lost Ark in RU, you need to do the following:

Download And Register Using RU E-Mail From Mail.ru:

Get English Patch:

Download free VPN software such as the following:

Note: You can use accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, ..etc.

Note: OpenVPN GUI needs VPN servers, which are from VPN Gate. However, VPN Gate shows only some of the available servers, so you need to check the VPN Gate website daily to find good Russian VPN servers:

Note: Check these guides to learn how to use free VPNs:

Guides & Resources:

Here you will find everything you will need to explore the fantasy world of Lost Ark.

World Map:

This contains Mococo seed location and hidden stories places and more:

Below are guides about Songs, Skill Point, and Island for Lost Ark Season 2, which can make exploration much easier for new players:

Moreover, you can find additional guides here:

You can get, download and play Lost Ark from the following:

Lost Ark MMORPG Honest Review In Short

Gameplay - 90%
Game Story - 70%
Graphics - 90%
Progression System - 20%
Free To Play (Pay To Win) - 20%
58%
OK

Lost Ark is the best game in terms of quality and gameplay, which we highly recommend trying, but without going too deep into it because the game wastes too much time due to the bad progression system.

User Rating: 1.91 ( 3469 votes)
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18 Comments
  1. 1 – Lost Ark is 100% P2W. I love seeing people equate P2W to directly buying equipment and skills, that a VERY narrow view, in this case, P2W and Pay to fast is the same thing. With HEAVY restrictions on everything from farming materials to craft, farming gold for everything that needs it, to grinding materials for equipment upgrades, all of it is time locked. The only method to bypass this time lock, is buying things with gold, which is a VERY rare commodity after doing quests. In order to advance at a “reasonable” pace, one is forced to buying either gold, or extenders which allow you to farm more. There is absolutely NO difference here between P2W and P2F, because end-game T3 (1400+) has richer rewards, and REQUIRES higher gear.

    2 – Lost ark is NOT open world. Not sure where you got that from, but you are DEFINITELY confined into areas, and segmented maps.

    3 – Lost ark P2W does 100% affect PVE. P2W characters have advanced far enough through brute-forcing the item upgrade system, that F2P Players are left in early T3 grinding for the little scraps of mats that come from the 3 or 4 sources you get. an average of 2 – 3 attempts a day of 5 on reset day equates to a single potential piece upgrade per week, assuming you are lucky

    4 – the game is HEAVY GRIND MODE. For the VERY VERY MINUSCULE mats you get, you are forced to grind hard, and long. Caps on everything from trade skills to rapport actions make sure you don’t advance too fast. You can of coarse, bypass these by, you guessed it, hemorrhaging money either for crystals to turn to gold, or for converting them to blue crystals for extenders in the P2W shop.

    The Whales are DOMINATING the dungeon materials, and gear markets, and bots are setting prices for farmables. Unless something is done, people WILL leave the game. Because honestly, there is NO content to this game except the low-reward, high time-sink collectables, and rapport, everything else you NEED is locked behind daily dungeons / weekly raids that give very little in materials to begin with, and can be done in about 2 hours.

    Before the fanboys chime in, no, collectables aren’t “content”, they are side avenues of interest to keep you sinking time into the game, they have very little affect on the game, your gear, your funds etc. Also, before the derpderps toot their horns about alt’s, that’s a massive time-sink as well, because you get very little from it, and the fact you feel it’s “required” for keeping your funds in good enough shape to afford upgrading your items should show just how grindy the game actually is.

    We haven’t even begun talking about the plethora of “percentage” rates that don’t seem to be accurate. the loot-box style success rates of doing just about anything. the EXTREMELY low drop rates of important items, the weekly push towards spending money with “mari’s market” the constant annoyances such as channel lock outs, mounts tripping over every ground clutter item, animation locks, nameing restrictions, etc…

    EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF THIS GAME reads more like that of a mobile game, or those old facebook games, where yes, you CAN advance, but you’re going to be SO locked down that 99% of your time is going to be used for non-essential tasks, rather than actually “PLAYING”. Every aspect of the F2P path in this game is HEAVILY locked down, and slowed at every turn. Be it storage space, the whole “cards” system, the 99 different currencies, etc. There is NOTHING about this game that is fun, unless you have the wallet to ease the burden.

    1. Thanks for your comment,
      1- Yes, but also things in global are way more p2w than KR and RU.
      You haven’t seen anything yet, as when the legion raids come you will see the level of 1400 is nothing.
      The P2W Whales will pay more to stay relevant and F2P people will get 1400 mostly for free. All of this destroys the concept of progression. In other words, it’s a fake progression.

      2- Open world isn’t similar in all games, but Lost Ark is similar somehow to Aion, Tera, B&S, ..etc in terms of the screen between areas or dungeon. Despite the fact that the Lost Ark Open world is dead most of the time.

      Anyway, if we want to be very detailed we won’t consider it an MMO and just say it’s a dungeon RPG game. Also because all classes are DPS.

      3- We said if you are playing with your friend May Not affects.
      But if you are looking to be a competitor player in a PVE game, which is something useless and worthless in our opinion.
      In this case, yes it affects you because you will feel useless in dungeons since gear ilvl gives a huge power gap between players. (we said that under “Pay Money or Grinding Loop” and written in red)

      4- Most of what you said is already written.
      We think that your experience comes from the global region, which had crossed unbelievable lines in terms of P2W. They removed and nerfed many things and made it for P2W Whales. But still, the core game is P2W.

      Lost Ark has a good amount of content but mostly is not worth doing.
      Because of this players will feel that there is no content. ​Also, they killed old content really fast in the global region.
      Also, as we and you said, there are only some dungeons left to repeat over and over until players become hating the game and then quit (same for the game story).

      Indeed, when we spent some time on these “collectibles” we found ourselves being left behind because they weren’t important and were mostly a waste of time just as you said it has a very little effect.

      Because of the Lost Ark Honing system, one of us has already made a decision to not play any game that has excessive equipment enhancement. He said, “If it’s not one gear set that maintains its value at least for a whole year, then it’s not worth game to play”. He doesn’t want to waste time “on non-essential tasks, rather than actually playing” as you said.

      They made a game that they don’t want anyone to ever reach the end or even rest.

      Finally, we thank you again for your detailed comment. We will use everything written here to develop this article more in the future when we start updating it again.

  2. I started full steam ahead in this game, believing that things could be different from other f2p mmos, but I already realized that no, I have two characters in T3 and 2 in T2, I’ve been doing so many repetitive things in this game that it’s making me lose my mind I wanted to play it, so I decided to practically take my foot off the accelerator, and I don’t take this game seriously anymore, I did that otherwise I would end up quitting the game, now I just do my chaos and guardians raid and a few things and I leave the game like this preserving my health and having fun with what is possible without high expectations. Everything I read in your post is like confirming my experience I had with my 600 hours of play, I think not everyone wants to see the truth of how this game is extremely p2w and repetitive to the point that you get stuck in your alts farming for hours until exact without big gains. I wish I had found your post before starting the game, I certainly would have given it another meaning at the beginning.

    1. Thank you for your comment, you can share this article link with others to make it visible more if you want.

      It’s a PVE focus game that cannot be taken seriously, new things are just similar ​dungeons or doing the same things that have a different name.

      No matter how much they try hard to make dungeons hard or unique, they have no chance to compete against the fun that comes from the intensity PVP, furious guild war, and epic siege wars alliance ​in open-world PVP that never ends.

      PVP open Wars can maintain players forever unlike PVE but the impact of P2W is way more worst than PVE, which can kill PVP way faster.

      P2W & maintain players are the reasons ​why new games focus on too much repetitive PVE.

      since there is no war and an open world, so what you do in Lost Ark is similar to what you would do in any offline game, but the only difference is that you will play with others.

      At first, you couldn’t imagine the number of spam or bad comments we received from the Lost Ark fanboys ( from who didn’t try it or P2W) when this site was too small because we put our honest experience. However, nowadays they are all gone because I think ​they learned the hard way since P2W elements are too much visible and came faster in the global regions than RU or KR.

      Not only, isn’t there a big gain, but it will be lost soon as well.

      In the end, how to know if the game is bad for you? if they focus on the gear in the first place.

  3. Its a decent review, however i just want to point out i get The feeling that you are mad at this game.

    Since all games stop being fun at one point, The whole experience is before that happens. I enjoy lost ark im sure I will not in The future. But every game release updates with new content, even wow. All gear will be replaced.

    The fact is the game is free, if you want to speed up process of the game and loose interest faster pay money. But else dont lay money and just enjoy. Game is free and such a great game is not Easy to make!

    1. Thanks,
      It’s not like we are angry about the game, it’s an honest review that should focus on the negative more than the positive, especially if there is a serious negative or trap that the player could fall into without noticing.

      But the only thing that we could be angry about is that not many big voices talk about the Lost Ark system’s serious problems.

      MMORPG value mostly comes from its system, not the graphics and not content quality.

      Also, some of us feel sad because a game of this high quality uses a very bad system that pushes players to be either zombies or pay to win. Also, because we got too much hype about it.

      But in the end, it’s the same as other P2W MMORPG Korean games. but the new thing is that they wipe out our progression within 1 or 2 months! (excessive gear enhancement for nothing)!!!

      As we said in our article, we do not complain about the normal things, but again what is happening in Lost Ark of the weekly and monthly waste is aimed at pushing players to P2W.

      Since it’s impossible for a F2P player to reach +25 which is needed at the end of T3.

      The game is not really free, since one of our admins pays a year of his time doing non-fun content (game force players to repeat) to progress to fun content.

      And another admin paid like 200 USD (to skip repeat storyline for new classes), which is nothing compared to people who pay thousands of dollars monthly to stay relevant to game content.

      These new contents become not fun after repeating too many times using Alts characters (+100 of dungeon repeat weekly).

      Alts characters take +90% of players’ in-game time which is ridiculous.

      We think that season 3 is coming soon this is because of how much global is rashing players to get to the end of T3 content as soon as possible or to get into the real P2W sooner (+16 to +25 or Argos gear +25).

      They give players ~2 years of content in one month, which is good for a normal MMO, but with the Lost Ark system, they destroying too much content so soon.

  4. Very interesting , im actually playing this game with high ping (somewhere around 200ms) just to be able to play with some friends and have fun , i think my friend thinks the game is fair but after reading ur review im pretty sure thats just not the case but at the same time i dont want to be that guy that tells them the endgame sucks as free2p so for now i think i will enjoy the game with them and when things get bad just get out, thanks for the review btw .

    1. Thanks,
      More than 150 ms was difficult for one of us especially when need to do a hard machinist since the team might be wiped out because of the delay.

      Having fun is the main reason to play games. So as long as you are enjoying the game, you are good. Especially when you play with your friends.

  5. I’m starting this game during it’s Launch on the NA realms and greatly appreciate your insights. My plan is to play gunslinger and just have fun with friends. I might play the warrior tank if finding teams becomes a problem. We don’t want to overgrind, just have fun and be strong enough to at least see most of the content.

    1. Thank You & Good luck. As long as you’re having fun, it’s a great plan.

  6. it’s not pay 2 win, it’s pay 2 fast, wich is totally different. Pay 2 win would be selling powerful items wich are not acquirable by playing the game.

    1. First, this is the last comment we accept about the Lost Ark Pay 2 win subject because this has been answered over and over again and has been explained in detail.

      So please just read and understand before commenting.

      If you really believe this nonsense, you are free, but no matter what happens, Lost Ark will remain P2W because it’s a F2P MMO game and they want to make money.

      Second, perhaps you didn’t read this article well, or we may have failed to explain it well. So we will shorten the idea for you.

      In short, P2W players are buying power with real money:
      By exchanging real money for in-game gold.
      By buying fully-equipped characters to level 1302 (for now).
      By buying resources using real money or with exchange gold.

      The only way to be at the same level as P2W players are to be like a zombie in front of your PC repeating and grinding the same limited dungeons with too many Alts characters.

      After getting all you want if you are fast enough, the game will release a new gear score destroying everything old and every progression you did with gear (Your progression becomes no longer relevant).

      Then they give new players events, free methods, and P2W to get the old worthless level so easy (Just like any current Free2play P2W MMORPG game).

      But again, this doesn’t matter in PVE UNLESS you don’t want to feel useless in level-based dungeons.

  7. It’s honest but not objective. First of all the author has to clarify a few things.
    1. What is P2W in his eyes. Is he speaking of cashshop exclusive items which give you an advantage over non-spenders, exspecially in pvp or is pay to progress faster already P2W in his opinion
    2. What is his definition of grindy? Killing monsters for a couple of hours for a level-up like an old/traditional koren mmorpg or the overall gear progression like most other mmorpgs?
    3. Is it necessary to have multiple characters?! No.
    4. How long does it take to reach level 50. It’s ~10h and that is for a (korean) MMO really short.
    5. Boosters. If i am not mistaken Smilegate had a lot of events in which they were handing out level boosters for free. In the end they don’t force you to buy those boosters. It’s up to you!
    Furthermore the author didn’t mention that they’re at Tier 3 for a very long time. In other words enough time for non-spenders to catch-up. They are also enough content to avoid the mentioned “repetition”. There are different dungeons, boss-monsters, raids, etc. to choose from.
    Overall these points are similar to any other MMORPG and has nothing to do with Lost Ark being a korean game! E.G. WoW.

    1. Seriously!!! not objective??? Did you really read or just saw the headlines only??? Besides, Your comment info and definitions for P2W or Grinding are so limited.

      First of all, everything was explained. As always, we continuously update and add new information to our content.

      All of these you mentioned are P2W and to make it simple, just buying anything that can give power with real money is pay2win. In any game and no matter what, just buying equipment or item to boost equipment power is P2W. Even if it can be gotten in-game.

      Some of our admins like being P2W to save time from worthless things that waste their valuable time for nothing notable.

      Not to mention the worst thing ever, which is exchanging real money for gold. So even without the cash shop, the exchange of dollars for in-game gold itself is ridiculous.

      As we said before, Lost Ark P2W does not affect PVE F2P players unless they don’t want to feel useless or to want to compete with P2W players or play Guild War PVP.

      For non-spenders, to reach that level they need to make a lot of characters to grinding the same dungeon over 100 times every week to get an item level that becomes no longer relevant.

      We don’t have a problem with the grinding, but the problem is what we grind for became no longer relevant in weeks.

      (Any MMO GAME game should maintain items values for years or it’s a fake MMORPG)

      Why became no longer relevant? because the broken gear system in the game makes old things worthless.

      For example, the level from 1302 to 1370 (levels before also lost its value) was soo hard to get at first, which needs too many Alts for grinding and selling everything such as very rare drops even if you don’t want to, to get that gear level, just to enter the new dungeon.

      But now the new events or updates let you get that level in a few days or for p2w they need a few hours to max it or instantly buy ready level 50 geared characters (I think by now the instant level 1302 is available to purchase in KR and RU).

      Also, isn’t most MMORPG are a failure and in miserable condition. So should new MMORPGs repeat the same failure system with new taste?

      You are right it’s not necessary to have multiple characters, but why play this if we cant gear up normally and compete or cant even enter the dungeons because of gear level. (old dungeons are dead or sold for gold)

      If focusing on one character isn’t enough and cant satisfy standard needs, so why even try!!!!

      Seriously???? do you think it’s important at all to mention character level at this point, which became a game based on gear leveling so the company can make more money.

      We rather would spend 5-8 dollars to get a level 50 character instead of doing the long 16-20 hours story (at this moment no one can clear it less than that).

      Tier 3 is self is a joke, too many gear quality, and accessories. Especially, how many accessories should be thrown away that costs 100k gold for one at first or at some point then they release a new one in the same Tier or color.

      WTF!!!!! WE WERE GRINDING FOR????? one-month GRINDING cant cover this. And if could, the accessories will become worth 1 gold in a few weeks after getting what we looking for.

      Sooner or later Tier 4 will come or season 3 (game now season 2.5), which might completely wap out many long-term progression (such as engraving books) side by side with the short-term progression (such as gear level) just like what they did in season 1.

      You cant count all dungeons. (Again old low-level dungeons are dead or sold for gold).
      Since the only thing that is worth doing is high-level ones, which are a few dungeons that need to be repeated over and over every week to progress gear that will be lost in a few weeks.

      We say Korean because most MMO games that come from there are Grinding and P2W Massively. Including that “NA” and “EU” publishers make them even worst.

    2. You call him a liar, that’s what you said with “non objective”, but YOU are a liar. Anything that gives a SMALL advantage in a game is pay to win, all games with advatages for money are pay to win, that is the ONLY definition, there is no “subjective definitions”, when the term pay to win was invented or first used, it mean THIS. What you call pay to progress was always pay to win definition. So you are manipulating people. Also this game is EXTREMELY pay to win, you can ****ing win in the first ****ing week. And i would say that the “updates” and i disagree here with this article in many points, including this one, because this makes it more pay to win. This is one of the most pay to win games ever. Whales don’t care about money they are sons of politicians and CEOs of corporations, their kids are playing pay to win games, they don’t care, specially the minors before they can start pay to win for other things.

    3. It was very difficult to accept your comment (we modified hard-to-accept words), but we accepted it to tell you just be calm because nothing is worth all of this.

      Everyone has their own opinion and it is normal to disagree with each other.

      Pay to win or not, they will know everything when they try to raise the gear then lose the hard work.

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