Launch and long term are two different things. Most of the polls etc indicate that only around 10k players participate in these (still relatively big number tho), mind you you being here on this forum and making an acc already makes you “hardcore fan” of the game. Most players wont be looking here and just choose servers based on queue time or population.
However long term as the playerbase starts to settle and the “hey its f2p imma try this” leave, you will start to notice that certain servers have large population of the same nationality (word of mouth makes this happen eventually) and overtime as I have said it turns out into a hub for that nationality.
It happens every single time unless the player population of the game is so small that everyone is forced to play with each other but thats probably not something people who are fans of this game want right? My solution is to mark 3 servers for the 3 usual “suspects” Spanish, French and German - which community kinda did already with Wei, Trixion and Asta. Again to remind you this game has no character transfers so your choice is there for as long as you play the game OR you are forced to abandon everything which for the most people will mean abandoning the game.
We are talking about more than grouping here. Don’t avoid the question.
If they are on discord and you are not, the language doesn’t matter you are right. Because you feel the same way as if they were typing in a language you don’t understand which is out of place.
Also your groups experience won’t be the same for everyone. My experience with foreign groups is usually either radio silence or just a wall of text I don’t understand.
This doesn’t really happen like this. Communities, especially the larger ones end up moving to where their number is the largest, usually by word of mouth. It’s how the server I played New World on went from 70% english - 30% turkish to 80% turkish 20% english by the end of the first month
In the past 15+ years I have always seen the same trend when a lot of different nationalities join the same server within a region, because it is “The Server” to play on. It was not like the players did not know that different nationalities are playing on the server, they all did and once you checked out the global chat 5 different languages spam 24/7.
Even if you grouped up using the group-finder (Be it same server or cross-server) and where placed for example in German or French group, even tho you wrote politely in ENG they would answer almost always in their native language most of the time.
So now imagine you are a new player that has no clue at all and joins a random server you will have a hard time to switch guilds or interact with players, your options will be limited not just as a ENG speaking player but also as a German, French or Spaniard only speaking player. Also the toxicity tends to be a lot higher on multi-language server within the community because of frustration not understanding each other, that can result in hating on each other and trying to make each others lives very uncomfortable. Just in the hope to bully people out of the server.
That is why those nationalities that have difficulty’s with the ENG to communicate or just don’t want to are more comfortable being on a server where a lot of players play that speak their native language. And no one wants to make a character on a sever just to realize at some point that the server they play on is toxic towards them when they ask for help or try to communicate with others, or strait up just ignore you like you don’t exist.
That is not fun and my guess is that the new player that had no clue who was leveling his Bard to 30 will be like “Nah won’t level again on different server, I will wait till server transfers are open”. Especially for a free 2 play game that decision is easily made and most likely those players will never come back because he was out of the game for some time.
That is why these days and for some time guilds/community’s try to organize stuff before the game releases, just to avoid the mess and to secure a nice environment to enjoy and play the game and grow the community in a healthy manner.
I am not avoiding the question. Both grouping and trading in Lost Ark are cross server within the same region. So you can either pick your group based on your preferences or use the random matchmaking tool that will group you with players than might not speak the same language as you whether or not you are on some French/German/whatever server. Language also won’t affect trading through the auction house since everything will be translated to the language your game is localized in.
Your guild chat will also be in the language you chose.
The only thing affected by language specific server would be zone chat. And I don’t see how seeing different languages in zone chat is a problem.
I really understand those of you that are saying “there are more languages in EU than fr/de/en/esp, make every server international”. If that happens, and Amazon does not listen to us on this problem, do not come back here saying “wtf my server is full of people speaking in X. Do something Amazon.”. Nope, they can’t do anything, and you know why? Because the game is TRANSLATED into those languages, and people feel entitled to speak in the language of their choosing based on their territory. So, as much as I’d wish that anyone would speak perfect English and language barriers would not exist, that’s an utopic point of view as of today. Maybe in 10-20-30 years this situation could change, but not today. I wish Amazon will listen us and put those language tags to avoid incomfortable situations that could be handled very easily.
Ye guild chat will be the language of your choice assuming you are on server that has any of those. THIS IS THE POINT. If you join a majority ESP/GER/FR server odds are u might not find a guild eventualy.
What ive heard not everything is cross-realm. But I might be wrong, but if not everything is cross-realm then you will still be stuck with alot less people to play with that you can understand. I wouldnt care if a server got 20% of every nationalities as long as everyone actually writes in english but I wouldnt want to be stuck on a server where vast majority speaks a different language that I dont understand, I highly doubt majority of the people would like that.
But if you dont care, then I would love to see you join a server where its basically 80-90% of a different language community and tell me how you like it when you cant transfer server either.
Y’all gotta be careful, one thing you forgetting here is Cross-realm carry runs are ONLY and STRICTLY done by server. you can trade whoever carries you in dungeons or raids ONLY if all party members belong to the SAME server as you. So if the majority in your server speak only German, u might as well start taking some German courses or switch to another server.
So, you intentionally joined a RU server couz… its RU region makes it fine? You had any only english servers on RU?
What I mean is, you knew full well what you went into at that point since u rly wanted to play Lost Ark. Start thinking what a beginner or someone who might feel insecure due to other languages would feel joining a server where basically noone talks your language. (but like you said, cross-realm. But what if not EVERYTHING is cross-realm.)
People want to feel they are a part of a community. Not an outsider. Which can extremely easly happen for some people.
Grouping about which even streamers tell you: “Do not use it. Make your own party. Because this system more often than not puts 4x same characters together.”
not everything is cross region - literally all world content(some of it is extremely important to progression)
also the matchmaking is very poor it does not account for “tank/support/dps” etc which makes it near impossible to do the endgame using it as you do need those.
you then have the fact global chat would be in a language you dont understand which just then feels like shit and you may as well just be playing a single player RPG as there is no interactivity with other players.
also grouping up with other players for pvp is not cross region so if you want to find more dedicated players to play with and push ranked going to have a much better time if they actually speak your language
I played on RU server couple of months (and trust me - they don’t speak ENG) and had no issues that you mentioned and also was able to communicate with them with pings.
what a bad take, this is terrible. its an mmo, locking yourself out of 80% of the playerbase because thers 5 languages on the same server is basically locking you out of 80% of the players in dungeons, guilds, pvp, and any other MMO activity. Sorry but you missed the whole point.
No es mala idea, la comunicación es importante para el mundo abierto, como para encontrar un gremio o una static, si se reduce el numero de personas en tu servidor con las que pudes comunicarte, también se reducen tus posibilidades de poder participar en ese tipo de contenido.
Wait… may be you didn’t understand that because we were not speaking the same language…
EN:
It’s not a bad idea, communication is important for open world, as it is to find a guild or a static, by reducing the amount of people your are able to talk to you are also reducing your possibilities of taking part on that kind of content.
And if you think that you will find a lof of ppl like me who can or want to communicate in more than one language, you are wrong.