I've played video games since I was 5. I look back on all the games I have played, I think my time was used well and not wasted. With Lost Ark, I cannot find that same feeling of not having wasted my time. The portion of the game that is fun is fantastic if you find a good group, but from my 819 hours, I would say, at best, 200 of those are time spent where I can fondly look back on. A more realistic number would be near 100.

Finding a good guild was something I had instantly, as a friend of mine already had a guild. This guild was pretty good and had and still has a good chunk of players dedicated to playing, on the guild ranking, we were top 5 of our server(I'm not sure if that is important, really). this allowed me to not have issues finding groups or carries for later game content. Argos, Valtan, Vykas, Clown. The people in the guild were also supportive and fun while being reasonable too. I feel like this is important to mention because even with a supportive group around me the games gate-keeping issues along with others still would arise.

The times I would use the party finder for legion raids or Argos went poorly almost 100% of the time unless it was my strongest alt which 5 months ago was pretty good. Some would say well my other alts had to have been a poor build or poor ilvl or I forgot to equip my title. ALL of my alts upon reaching 1370 would get 4x3 with 6x6 stone, legendary accessories. Upon reaching 1415, these alts would then get relic stone with 4x3 or 4x3+1x1 or 1x2. They all had minimum level 5 gems with all important skills having level 7 gem. So if you are reading this going was not properly built, for the time being around 4-5 months ago I think I was.

That was just me building my ethos so my reasoning could appear stronger. The gate-keeping as mentioned in a lot of other reviews is bad and from the sounds of it has gotten worse. Worse from how poor it was was pretty bad. Even trying to set aside the negative pheon issue, the random Vac-bans. You spend so much time working on characters doing dungeons just to lose all the progress in means of RNG by honing. The RNG began to weigh more on me, as each time honing felt horrible, felt like clocking into work hoping to get a pay raise and then somehow losing money with each click.

Gearing characters used to be fun because it was not insane to get to the level but with accessories when I left the game being over 200k per it got ridiculous. Paying over 1 million gold to gear each character just to get denied into groups because ilvl is not high enough because all your money went to accessories is Ludicrous. At my peak during the summer, when I was not doing anything major as I was on break for the year, I clocked around an 4-5 hours a day on the game. With a minimum being 3. Even when playing for everyday 4 hours there were many who were leaving me in the dust with progression. What seemed to be magical was more likely them using their credit card.

To begin a talk about the Bots, RMT, gambling, and poor management of the game which forced you to spend money(Negative pheons) would take more words I feel like typing.

TL:DR - The game has fun combat and fancy graphics. That is all the positives. The negatives include gambling time away, toxic player base, gate-keeping, poor management from developers, huge pressure to pay to win, and the combat is most fun when you pay to win (Big numbers bbrrrrr). I might have forgotten some other ones.