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How MMO's Of The Past Have Formed Lost Ark and the Future of the Genre

Lost Ark might be the kick that the MMO genre needed.
by Adam Braunstein on March 03, 2022   

The MMO is a fascinating genre. The oldest one I can remember is Everquest and I remember trying it back in the day and being overwhelmed and just confused at how everything worked. Everquest of course became infamous for not only being a well-regarded game, but also a game that drove people crazy and caused all kinds of tragedies to occur.

Part of the reason for those tragedies was the concept of the grind. It wasn’t uncommon to see Everquest players waiting in a corner for enemies to respawn so they could level up over and over again. This fad was followed by games like Final Fantasy 11 and eventually, the titan known as World of Warcraft. This style was strange but addicting and the auto-attack nature of the game made it so that you only had to manage your items and skills. Soon, players would be on autopilot for all hours of the day.

It didn’t matter to Blizzard though as they were printing money with the WOW franchise and other games started to come out trying to emulate that style. Despite the massive success of MMOs, there was still a massive amount of players who refused to play because it was too “MMO-like”. How about that? MMO style became a thing that would be mimicked by single-player games like Final Fantasy XII and the hit Xenoblade Chronicles.

Slowly though, the gameplay of MMOs began to grow, it went from autopilot to needing to be actively engaged in order to succeed. The first of these were largely Korean MMOs like Blade and Soul which were not perfect, but they showed that MMOs could be action RPGs instead of a point and click simulators.

Elder Scrolls Online took this one step further, creating the most amazing online game world ever created and mixed it with some Action RPG combat that brought the past together with the present. It was still lacking though because there was no weight to the attacks, so no matter if you were attacking with a knife or a gigantic, two-handed ax. The separation between MMO and action RPG was still there, but the gap was closing.

Black Desert Online then came along and introduced full-action RPG combat that was both weighty and brutal to witness. The story was kind of weak though and the questing was pretty boring to boot. The world was gorgeous but it felt empty and seemed like it was there just for the sake of being there. So now we had the combat the other side was looking for after all these years, but still not the engaging world that defined epics like World of Warcraft

This brings us to Lost Ark. In so many ways, Lost Ark is the culmination of years of trying to get something right. Immediately, it looks different than any MMO you’ve played before, resembling Diablo more than it does WOW. While the story is certainly not the most fascinating tale in the world, the questing system makes up for it by sending you to some of the most amazing dungeons an MMO has ever seen.

What about the combat though? Lost Ark hits the mark here and FINALLY, we have an MMO that captures the furious combat that’s taking place on-screen, while also giving us engaging content to play with. The weapons are all over the top huge and produce massive swings and each time you fight something, the sound effects and animation have an incredible presence to them that only rings out the truer when you play with a controller.

The variety of character builds you can go with and the fluidity of the movement makes most modern action RPGs blush. This is the current apex of the genre and could be a landmark moment for RPGs in general.

Years ago, WOW became the prototype that was copied by hundreds. In 2022, Lost Ark deserves that mantle as it’s provided a new way to experience an old genre.

This isn’t to say that the classic MMO should die off, as I feel just the opposite. Final Fantasy XIV is one of the best games available right now and has a great combat system that feels somewhere between Lost Ark and WOW. You can still have the point-and-click crowd and the active crowd in the same genre.

Lost Ark is simply evidence of where the evolution of MMOs can go. We finally see the passion in all of the most important parts of an MMO game and it's been a long time coming. It could just be a fad that dies off within a year, but for this MMO player, I’m hoping to see more games take this torch and run with it.

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