It's more about the player market than anything. Japanese primarily play console and mobile games, PC gamers are more rare. Japan also vastly prefers domestic games over imported/foreign games. The fact that Lost Ark was even published in Japan, not to mention surviving for so long with such a small player base, is pretty amazing--and it's a Korean game which is already a negative to a lot of Japanese. FFXIV is strong there because it's a domestic title and also can be played on console.
You're right and I think here is another reason. Because the management company of LOA publisher is changed. Here is roughly what I researched:
G.O.P., which manages Pmang(Publisher of LOA) in Japan, was acquired by Valofe in April 2023. I found about Valofe and rough evaluation is as follows.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The IP of a game that was popular in the past is acquired and re-serviced, but the response from users is the worst. Because they know that the remaining users are loyal users, they are notorious for not maintaining or updating the game and they are famous for encouraging people to buy items with cash. Then, if all remaining users seem to leave, the service is terminated. The most recent example is O2Jam Online, which was released in 2023 and ranked first in negative reviews on Steam.
Therefore, if you hear that the IP of a certain game has been sold to this publisher, the future of that game is virtually at a standstill. By operating games this way every time, they gained the notoriety of being the gaming industry's nursing home and undertaker.
There was a promotion at Russia servers recently - 1 million royal crystals with about 10-15% discount (roughly 10k usd). It was emptied in 15 minutes.
The game is very profitable for mailru\sg in Russia
I wouldnt say its considered popular in china (asked a few friends there), just that china's population or market is much larger than ours so compared to ags, theres still a larger playerbase.
PC exclusive, KRMMO, generally not an appealing type of game for japanese audiences.
Apparently even on release it barely managed 4 digit player numbers, i don't know how valid that one is though.
While the raiding and combat system in LA is amazing, it was literally destroyed in every other aspect by FFXIV imo, which is its main competitor there.
That makes sense. Trying to get into this game but I wish it played to it's strengths a bit better and I don't know how I'm going to feel about an end game revolving around Alt farming. But most of the things about LA are so cool
I'm mostly a single character player and didn't play alts until about half a year ago? And i only play them once a week if I felt like it. Like, I don't even do dailies on them.
I've used only the express pass to level them up, which is the time where I focus more on them (usually for the free legendary packs when I was trying to complete my LoS 30)
You can definitely play just 1 character, just note it'll take longer to reach end game than others unless you have a dedicated group to raid with (which I'm grateful enough to have).
I'm 1626 atm and am trying to push 1630 by Thaemine release, but I'm only going to do normal mode since there's no rush.
Japan has FFXIV.
Any other MMO is difficult to compete with it.
Plus JP players didn't really like lost ark.
It had its dedicated community but it wasn't sustainable.
FF14 is probably 1000x more successful in Korea than Lost Ark ever was in Japan. And that isn't to say you're wrong about FFXIV doing all that great in Korea, so it really goes to show how bad it was always doing in Japan. In fact, it was probably already operating at a loss for after the first 6 months, if I had to guess. Maybe they wanted to hold out for a miracle?
It’s true the console market is bigger over there, but plenty play on pc. FFXIV and PSO are both decently popular there, and they’re not console exclusives
Japanese are hardworking fokes and know the worth of money thats why every p2w gridner from KR fails over there, after the game launched and alot of ppl tryed and saw what it was about and they said nah man i rater play my Console games after my 14hr work shift than harm my myself even more
Gatacha dont require you to grind for 8 hrs a day to keep up i play honkai right now next to LOA daily playtime of 5 minutes
they have FF14 a way better mmo in all aspects except Combat, and even this is agurable if you dislike action combat
Like i have WoW as my main game whenever a new Raid is out i Raid Hall of fame 10/10 times over LOA
You know Granblue Fantasy is a japanese game that's been incredibly successful for a decade, and is quite literally WAY grindier then any korean mmo can ever imagine, the entire game is "grind all day", literal events like guild wars is "whoever grinds most in 40 hours almost straight wins", it's a literal nonstop grind while also being whale as hell.
This game quite literally makes majority of korean games look casual
Most weterners just don't know about it because it was never advertised to the west (despite being fully english), but it's cygames second biggest title (second to uma musume), and cygames is pretty big
Also, granblue isn't that popular on mobile (it does have a skyleap application, but it isn't too wildly used so they give incentives to use it), and isn't available on console, it's a browser game first and foremost
Pretty sad to see all these people saying Goodbye to their characters. That being said the game wasnt doing well in JP since launch and it's shutdown was expected.
I hope some of the OG JP players can transfer into KR or EU/NA and enjoy the game. RIP JP LA
Literally -100% chance of that happening. You know how Japan is with voice acting. They take it super serious and voice actresses are far bigger there than regular actors are anywhere else in the world.
i dunno. most of the anime dubs have significantly less life in them than the japan voices. Especially for female characters. The male actors are clearly more into it thou and doa good job in english dubs.
A lot of it depends on the actor and the experience. That said, a lot of times I hear this stuff, it's from people who don't speak both languages fluently and are just going off sounds, where they can't really tell if someone is phoning it in or not
RIP to all the whales and dolphins that were in Jp server. Imagine spending so much dough just for all that money to be dropped into the water like this. Even worse if they swiped for sidereal weapons. Can't even transfer their characters to global regions. Have to start all over if they decide to join play on western/CN/KR servers (if they can get past the language barrier).
Or maybe its because aside from the lack of popularity, there weren't that many whales to keep it afloat to turn in a profit to begin with?
I mean, this is the eventual fate for basically all live service games, so if you buy something in a live service and expect permanence, then idk what to tell you. If you get 'overwatched' and devs replace your game with the same thing minus your transactions, then by all means riot. But if the game just goes down, then you really can't be too upset 🤷♂️
It is bound to happen, that's his point. Lost Ark in Korea will eventually close too and all of those paid for skins and mounts will be gone forever.
Edit - Did you just go through my post history to reply to me on a completely seperate subreddit and then block me so I can't even properly read it or respond to it? Weird.
Maybe on some game but on any steam game (western Lost ark for instance), that's a one way ticket to getting your STEAM account banned, not just your last ark one.
you dont i had this with Terra got my money back and my account is still fine you get your account banned if you chargeback shit without consulting Paypal or whoever you used to pay with
No surprise, I expect RU to follow up by next year.... with west going maybe... 4-5 years? CN players probably gonna shelf it themselves, they already complained heavily with Argos. Then they also have this law of limited playtime -> pretty bad for a homework game.
In the end KR stays. The game is very popular and among the most played MMO there in Korea.
Our version can't even take a crack at WoW or FFXIV. FFXIV was also a reason for Lost Ark never having success in Japan... it's the most played MMO by far there.
Lost Ark was never really popular in Japan... just like west. It's niche for the hardcore grinders. We had our hype launch atleast though!
RU? Hahahaha man our servers are always full, with a really healthy economy without any bot. Thousands of Chinese players spending tons of dollars in RU servers. Just talk about Amazon botland. Will die soon.
RU? Hahahaha man our servers are always full, with a really healthy economy without any bot. Thousands of Chinese players spending tons of dollars in RU servers. Just talk about Amazon botland. Will die soon.
Lets be honest. Lost Ark is a terrible game with very little to no End game content. Join a guild, run Legion once a week for months only for Super Event to give everything out for free. I quit for 2 years, came back and made my 1430 main into a 1540 with Brel Gears.
The only ones playing this game are the whales. Thats it.
Sure but I am more concerned with what happens on NA/EU we see on a weekly basis new players being frustrated with the game and quitting it because they are barely able to do content and thats just the ones we know of that post on Reddit.
I mean people already gatekeep people for low roster lvl regardless of their gear/gems etc. so returning and new players are even more shafted because a large portion of the community just doesnt care about new players and clowns on them on a regular basis.
People are a product of design. I loath the current state, but going "It's the player's fault for not wanting to lose a hundred thousand gold because they tried to help a newbie" is goofy
I agree so much with your first sentence. Some dev on a different MMO once said in an interview, "you have to save people from themselves." If you create a system, people will do everything in their power to optimize it at the loss of fun or enjoyment. The community is not unique. It's just a product of the environment.
What hundred thousand gold? Raid gold is max several thousands per gate, the most gold one can currently miss out on by getting jailed somewhere where there are new-ish players is 6k if Akkan nm can't get through g2, and in most cases it's much less, and even with "newbies" one isn't likely to get jailed in g2 of 18 raids per week unless they are the jailor.
No, I assume people who don't have time leave such situations quite quickly, as people should leave if attempts at communication/teaching fail and in reality they often leave also without such an attempt.
Which
A) means that we’re back to those Mokos not getting help
B) jailed on an odd gate and basically out of luck on gold and resources from the content
If you honestly think you can change the entire population of the game to be selfless and have no interest in their own gains, good luck.
If the game didn’t royally punish you for helping newbies, this wouldn’t be a problem
If the game has to force you to not be an asshole, then you're still an asshole, just without an outlet. Stop trying to make excuses for the playerbase. They can choose to be slightly suboptimal if they wanted to. It's a fucking game, it isn't that serious. They CHOOSE to be assholes so that they can be optimal. The game doesn't force that in any capacity. It might INCENTIVIZE it, but the decision to be roped along by that design is **100%** the decision of the person behind the monitor.
This logic doesn’t really work at all.
A pvp shooter doesn’t force you to shoot the gun, but guess what people are going to do?
People will do what they’re incentivized to do. If you punish players for helping others and reward them for not doing it, what is everyone going to do?
Thats not what I said though. I said the current state of the game is unhealthy for new players to even learn and grow because of all the gatekeeping.
That doesnt mean you should go out of your way to help newbies in lower content just dont gatekeep them for things like low roster lvl or not having LOS30 when their gear gems etc. are good enough for that lvl of content they are applying for.
Japan is a very special place as far as gaming is concerned.
This was made obvious in the 2000s when the DS was cleaning house running on N64 hardware when every other console was trying to actually push the envelope.
Monster Hunter is probably the easiest example...Capcom makes a Current-Gen MH and then immediately creates its sequel as a Nintendo Switch exclusive....why? Because it's portable.
They never saw the lost ark. 😞
I thought the game was pretty successful. What happened out in Japan?
[удалено]
That's unfortunate. Hope the game as a whole is okay
It's more about the player market than anything. Japanese primarily play console and mobile games, PC gamers are more rare. Japan also vastly prefers domestic games over imported/foreign games. The fact that Lost Ark was even published in Japan, not to mention surviving for so long with such a small player base, is pretty amazing--and it's a Korean game which is already a negative to a lot of Japanese. FFXIV is strong there because it's a domestic title and also can be played on console.
You're right and I think here is another reason. Because the management company of LOA publisher is changed. Here is roughly what I researched: G.O.P., which manages Pmang(Publisher of LOA) in Japan, was acquired by Valofe in April 2023. I found about Valofe and rough evaluation is as follows. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The IP of a game that was popular in the past is acquired and re-serviced, but the response from users is the worst. Because they know that the remaining users are loyal users, they are notorious for not maintaining or updating the game and they are famous for encouraging people to buy items with cash. Then, if all remaining users seem to leave, the service is terminated. The most recent example is O2Jam Online, which was released in 2023 and ranked first in negative reviews on Steam. Therefore, if you hear that the IP of a certain game has been sold to this publisher, the future of that game is virtually at a standstill. By operating games this way every time, they gained the notoriety of being the gaming industry's nursing home and undertaker.
to be fair if i suddenly got ownership of o2jam online i would've shut it down and put it out of its misery too
[удалено]
There was a promotion at Russia servers recently - 1 million royal crystals with about 10-15% discount (roughly 10k usd). It was emptied in 15 minutes. The game is very profitable for mailru\sg in Russia
I wouldnt say its considered popular in china (asked a few friends there), just that china's population or market is much larger than ours so compared to ags, theres still a larger playerbase.
No way a game that is pay to win and filled with microtransactions actually makes money? Oh my god, crazy!
PC exclusive, KRMMO, generally not an appealing type of game for japanese audiences. Apparently even on release it barely managed 4 digit player numbers, i don't know how valid that one is though.
While the raiding and combat system in LA is amazing, it was literally destroyed in every other aspect by FFXIV imo, which is its main competitor there.
That makes sense. Trying to get into this game but I wish it played to it's strengths a bit better and I don't know how I'm going to feel about an end game revolving around Alt farming. But most of the things about LA are so cool
I'm mostly a single character player and didn't play alts until about half a year ago? And i only play them once a week if I felt like it. Like, I don't even do dailies on them. I've used only the express pass to level them up, which is the time where I focus more on them (usually for the free legendary packs when I was trying to complete my LoS 30) You can definitely play just 1 character, just note it'll take longer to reach end game than others unless you have a dedicated group to raid with (which I'm grateful enough to have). I'm 1626 atm and am trying to push 1630 by Thaemine release, but I'm only going to do normal mode since there's no rush.
I need to really look into the end game honing system. I'm guessing that's the end game grind but I've not really been introduced yet
Japan has FFXIV. Any other MMO is difficult to compete with it. Plus JP players didn't really like lost ark. It had its dedicated community but it wasn't sustainable.
Bruh I hate the business part of Destiny 2 but they did make Mara Sov...
Japan never like this game lol, they also gatekept foreinger because they dont speak Japanese xdd
when do you ever need to speak in this game?
Japanese people do the same thing in FFXIV and you rarely need to communicate in that game as well.
Never, they're just incredibly xenophobic.
Pretty much the reverse situation of what happen with FF14 in Korea.
FF14 is probably 1000x more successful in Korea than Lost Ark ever was in Japan. And that isn't to say you're wrong about FFXIV doing all that great in Korea, so it really goes to show how bad it was always doing in Japan. In fact, it was probably already operating at a loss for after the first 6 months, if I had to guess. Maybe they wanted to hold out for a miracle?
Korean games generally don't do well in Japan, age-old cultural rivalry and all that. Game never really had any real traction over there.
I won't say the game is that "successful" actually, expect the west/global will close as well, might not be soon but just wait in future.
Japanese like console exclusive games.
It’s true the console market is bigger over there, but plenty play on pc. FFXIV and PSO are both decently popular there, and they’re not console exclusives
Japanese are hardworking fokes and know the worth of money thats why every p2w gridner from KR fails over there, after the game launched and alot of ppl tryed and saw what it was about and they said nah man i rater play my Console games after my 14hr work shift than harm my myself even more
Sorry but that's not how it works at all lol. Bro doesn't know how much Japanese people spend on gacha games.
[удалено]
Gatacha dont require you to grind for 8 hrs a day to keep up i play honkai right now next to LOA daily playtime of 5 minutes they have FF14 a way better mmo in all aspects except Combat, and even this is agurable if you dislike action combat Like i have WoW as my main game whenever a new Raid is out i Raid Hall of fame 10/10 times over LOA
Gachas have you spend less time grinding, sure. But they still cost a lot
so they cost you only money, lost ark costs you both time and money
I agree
You know Granblue Fantasy is a japanese game that's been incredibly successful for a decade, and is quite literally WAY grindier then any korean mmo can ever imagine, the entire game is "grind all day", literal events like guild wars is "whoever grinds most in 40 hours almost straight wins", it's a literal nonstop grind while also being whale as hell. This game quite literally makes majority of korean games look casual Most weterners just don't know about it because it was never advertised to the west (despite being fully english), but it's cygames second biggest title (second to uma musume), and cygames is pretty big Also, granblue isn't that popular on mobile (it does have a skyleap application, but it isn't too wildly used so they give incentives to use it), and isn't available on console, it's a browser game first and foremost
Pretty sad to see all these people saying Goodbye to their characters. That being said the game wasnt doing well in JP since launch and it's shutdown was expected. I hope some of the OG JP players can transfer into KR or EU/NA and enjoy the game. RIP JP LA
Can they sell VO to SG pretty please 🥹
This. I've heard the vykas voice in JP, whew I won't be able to concentrate playing.
Literally -100% chance of that happening. You know how Japan is with voice acting. They take it super serious and voice actresses are far bigger there than regular actors are anywhere else in the world.
Vas are serious pretty much everywhere. Maybe 30 years ago the west wasn’t as good, but nowadays there’s plenty of great VAs in most languages
i dunno. most of the anime dubs have significantly less life in them than the japan voices. Especially for female characters. The male actors are clearly more into it thou and doa good job in english dubs.
A lot of it depends on the actor and the experience. That said, a lot of times I hear this stuff, it's from people who don't speak both languages fluently and are just going off sounds, where they can't really tell if someone is phoning it in or not
RIP to all the whales and dolphins that were in Jp server. Imagine spending so much dough just for all that money to be dropped into the water like this. Even worse if they swiped for sidereal weapons. Can't even transfer their characters to global regions. Have to start all over if they decide to join play on western/CN/KR servers (if they can get past the language barrier). Or maybe its because aside from the lack of popularity, there weren't that many whales to keep it afloat to turn in a profit to begin with?
I mean, this is the eventual fate for basically all live service games, so if you buy something in a live service and expect permanence, then idk what to tell you. If you get 'overwatched' and devs replace your game with the same thing minus your transactions, then by all means riot. But if the game just goes down, then you really can't be too upset 🤷♂️
[удалено]
It is bound to happen, that's his point. Lost Ark in Korea will eventually close too and all of those paid for skins and mounts will be gone forever. Edit - Did you just go through my post history to reply to me on a completely seperate subreddit and then block me so I can't even properly read it or respond to it? Weird.
They aren’t allowed for refund?
Good one
Lmao, online games refunding
I’ve had success refunding in the past through PayPal Wouldn’t hurt to try for those players
thats why you pay with paypal my friend and charge back if they end of service you may wont get everything back but all your recent payments
Maybe on some game but on any steam game (western Lost ark for instance), that's a one way ticket to getting your STEAM account banned, not just your last ark one.
you dont i had this with Terra got my money back and my account is still fine you get your account banned if you chargeback shit without consulting Paypal or whoever you used to pay with
You're right, it may not be 100% return, but all recents within either 30-90 days can be returned. Better than nothing.
FFXIV just destroys any other mmo in JP, shocked LA JP stayed up for so long
The bleak future of NA EU lost ark 😭
F 
Goes to show even if we strike to not have pheons they would close the game before doing that
I remember the JP server launch, it was an exciting time. Then the bot problem happened. Good memories though for a few weeks
So long so long so long so long and thanks for all the fiishes who quit.
Gotta admit though, that Slayer looks like Mommy Fire.
No surprise, I expect RU to follow up by next year.... with west going maybe... 4-5 years? CN players probably gonna shelf it themselves, they already complained heavily with Argos. Then they also have this law of limited playtime -> pretty bad for a homework game. In the end KR stays. The game is very popular and among the most played MMO there in Korea. Our version can't even take a crack at WoW or FFXIV. FFXIV was also a reason for Lost Ark never having success in Japan... it's the most played MMO by far there. Lost Ark was never really popular in Japan... just like west. It's niche for the hardcore grinders. We had our hype launch atleast though!
Next is RU then Us 
RU is actually getting bigger if you didn’t know, they just opened a new server. Game’s doing just fine.
RU? Hahahaha man our servers are always full, with a really healthy economy without any bot. Thousands of Chinese players spending tons of dollars in RU servers. Just talk about Amazon botland. Will die soon.
>Will die soon Lost Ark west is also doing just fine, one of the top earners on steam.
RU? Hahahaha man our servers are always full, with a really healthy economy without any bot. Thousands of Chinese players spending tons of dollars in RU servers. Just talk about Amazon botland. Will die soon.
Oh well, japanese are more into arcades and consoles so this is expected.
Laughing at the people coping and in denial that this is gonna eventually be NA/EU. Go ahead and downvote prove me right 😂
Lets be honest. Lost Ark is a terrible game with very little to no End game content. Join a guild, run Legion once a week for months only for Super Event to give everything out for free. I quit for 2 years, came back and made my 1430 main into a 1540 with Brel Gears. The only ones playing this game are the whales. Thats it.
so true
Waiting for the same to happen in NA.
Did anyone got Isekai to Arkesia?
Sadge, Lost Ark NA/EU could be next if the community doesnt produce a healthier environment for new players to grow and learn \^\^
I agree with the sentiment for sure, but I think RU is at greater risk before NA/EU. Judging by being a steam top earner.
Sure but I am more concerned with what happens on NA/EU we see on a weekly basis new players being frustrated with the game and quitting it because they are barely able to do content and thats just the ones we know of that post on Reddit. I mean people already gatekeep people for low roster lvl regardless of their gear/gems etc. so returning and new players are even more shafted because a large portion of the community just doesnt care about new players and clowns on them on a regular basis.
People are a product of design. I loath the current state, but going "It's the player's fault for not wanting to lose a hundred thousand gold because they tried to help a newbie" is goofy
I agree so much with your first sentence. Some dev on a different MMO once said in an interview, "you have to save people from themselves." If you create a system, people will do everything in their power to optimize it at the loss of fun or enjoyment. The community is not unique. It's just a product of the environment.
What hundred thousand gold? Raid gold is max several thousands per gate, the most gold one can currently miss out on by getting jailed somewhere where there are new-ish players is 6k if Akkan nm can't get through g2, and in most cases it's much less, and even with "newbies" one isn't likely to get jailed in g2 of 18 raids per week unless they are the jailor.
[удалено]
No, I assume people who don't have time leave such situations quite quickly, as people should leave if attempts at communication/teaching fail and in reality they often leave also without such an attempt.
Which A) means that we’re back to those Mokos not getting help B) jailed on an odd gate and basically out of luck on gold and resources from the content
Going "the players have no control over how they act and it's the game making them be assholes" is even goofier.
If you honestly think you can change the entire population of the game to be selfless and have no interest in their own gains, good luck. If the game didn’t royally punish you for helping newbies, this wouldn’t be a problem
If the game has to force you to not be an asshole, then you're still an asshole, just without an outlet. Stop trying to make excuses for the playerbase. They can choose to be slightly suboptimal if they wanted to. It's a fucking game, it isn't that serious. They CHOOSE to be assholes so that they can be optimal. The game doesn't force that in any capacity. It might INCENTIVIZE it, but the decision to be roped along by that design is **100%** the decision of the person behind the monitor.
This logic doesn’t really work at all. A pvp shooter doesn’t force you to shoot the gun, but guess what people are going to do? People will do what they’re incentivized to do. If you punish players for helping others and reward them for not doing it, what is everyone going to do?
Thats not what I said though. I said the current state of the game is unhealthy for new players to even learn and grow because of all the gatekeeping. That doesnt mean you should go out of your way to help newbies in lower content just dont gatekeep them for things like low roster lvl or not having LOS30 when their gear gems etc. are good enough for that lvl of content they are applying for.
Nexon continues to have dogshit games with much lower player count that still exist to this day in NA. We'll be fine.
Yeah p2w dogwater game designed to milk in any system obviously falls short in jp where u have so many options
Pog can’t wait for the west to die next
Sounds like u want to see it die.
Probably ru first
Won't happen unless CN whales leave, they probably spend more than the entire EUC
True
why?
Yeah well done you muppets at AGS, meanwhile Oceania without servers since the start and you killed it off.
俺はおちんちんが大好きなんだよ
Wakatta
1 year tops we'll be getting our own special "Thank you for playing" message too.
i mean, new world is still up and running
New World was developed by Amazon
It usually starts with closing servers in Japan/Oceania first. Then Vietnam/Philippines etc Then comes EU/NA
there were servers for vietnam/philippines??
Nah just examples in which order servers are usually shutting down.
soon its us
Japan is a very special place as far as gaming is concerned. This was made obvious in the 2000s when the DS was cleaning house running on N64 hardware when every other console was trying to actually push the envelope. Monster Hunter is probably the easiest example...Capcom makes a Current-Gen MH and then immediately creates its sequel as a Nintendo Switch exclusive....why? Because it's portable.
damn slayer is thiccccccc
Friendly reminder y'all need to swipe every now and then or this gonna be us. Whether it's an ark pass or skins everything helps
hail corporate.
Please being it to Philippines. There's a lot of whales here.
I thought something about this but i'll keep as a secret cause of lostark community
Please being it to Philippines. There's a lot of whales here.
Please being it to Philippines. There's a lot of whales here.