I was so happy when they announced OCE release, this turned to skepticism when they decided no OCE servers, and now I just feel downright insulted.
Let’s start with the server decision - us Aussies (and NZ’ers) have dealt with this in MMOs for a while now, but recently there’s been a move to provide servers as companies recognize the potential market for gamers here. WoW, FFXIV and New World amongst others all have/had thriving OCE servers and communities, and I guarantee there are enough Lost Ark players to warrant a server or even 2.
Playing with a 0.2s delay is NOT enjoyable, it is frustrating early game at best, and debilitating end game at worst - dodging an attack and being visibly outside the telegraph only for it to hit you anyway, for example, is incredibly annoying, and I can assure you this will drive away players as soon as it starts becoming noticeable. For me this was during the first world boss.
Either way, this has been covered extensively in other posts, and while I understand that this is a publishing issue, that is for AGS and Smilegate to figure out, and it’s a real shame they didn’t before release as this will seriously damage the reputation of the game for OCE.
The new major issue is servers being locked.
Those of us who purchased founder’s packs are effectively being punished for paying for the game. If we have friends who were waiting for the f2p launch and already redeemed our items, we now effectively have 3 options;
- Lose all our founders items, bonuses, and time spent on characters to reroll on a new/low pop server with our friends
- Play main on one server, on friends with another and hope for eventual transfers
- Continue playing on main server and only do instanced content with friends
Now to me, option 2 is the only viable one, as I want to play the whole game with my friends, not just parts of it. This means all my progress on main/alts is split until transfers (if they ever happen).
Frankly, this is a spit in the face for someone who paid for the game and is further supporting it by bringing more players in. As a current solo player, I’m not even the worst affected by this; I feel bad for the OCE players who already built a community and are faced with the same dilemma.
All of this could have been avoided by simply having an OCE server to begin with - why you didn’t put more effort into making this possible I’ll never understand.
Anyway, seems like it’s been decided no further steps will be made at this point to cater to us, so this is mostly shouting into the void; but to whichever suit made this decision I want you to know you were wrong, and it will cost you.
Such a shame, as this is a fantastic game otherwise.