In February 2007, the MMORPG Last Chaos was released. MeinMMO author Mark Sellner was already involved in the beta and now, 15 years later, returns to his very first MMORPG – and regrets it right away.
During the time between the years, most gamers take on a game that has been on their list for a long time and now finally have the time to play it. But since I have nothing to do right now except waiting for the release of Lost Ark, and I have played most MMORPGs on the market, I did something completely crazy: I installed Last Chaos.
I played the MMORPG around 2007 at the release in Asia. Now, after nearly 15 years, I have returned to where it all started. My very first MMORPG. What does it feel like to rediscover the game 15 years later?
Last Chaos is an MMORPG that makes me wonder how it still runs. Currently, Gamigo publishes the game in our region, and Aeria Games is responsible for the USA. However, I had contact with the game long before there was a German or American version of it.
I only vaguely remember, as I must have been 10 or 11 years old when my uncle excitedly came to my father and told him he had found this really cool new game. It was called Last Chaos, and since I didn’t have my own PC back then, I spent hours just watching Dad play.
Back then, the game only ran with a fan patch in English, and the servers were, if I remember correctly, in Malaysia. Accordingly, the connection and ping were pretty bad. Tools like ExitLag were painfully missed back in 2006.
After my dad got so annoyed that I constantly stood behind him while he was gaming and I begged long enough, I finally got my first PC for Christmas. It had Last Chaos Malaysia, including the English language patch pre-installed.
This didn’t help me much since I couldn’t speak English at 11 either. But I was as happy as a clam.
This is roughly how the game looked back then:
I associated Last Chaos with very positive memories for a long time. My first steps in MMORPGs, the first character slowly leveling up, and playing online with friends for the first time.
I played the game for about three years, always with great enthusiasm for the rather mediocre MMORPG, looking back. When I had already reached the maximum level for a long time in Malaysia, the announcement came that Gamigo would release the game in German.
I played the first beta of the German version and about 20 hours after the official release. At some point between 2009 and 2010, I finally buried my time with Last Chaos and moved on to other MMORPGs. Until today.
The first steps are Fetch
The renewed entry into the game was more difficult than expected. I downloaded the client, which was splendidly presented in 800×600 resolution. Well, that probably hasn’t changed since 2007 either. As I was sure that my account would no longer exist, I wanted to create a new one.
I was surprised to find that my account still existed. I reset my password and shortly thereafter received an email from Gamigo. In Polish, in the spam folder. At least it only took a few minutes until I was actually in the game and could get started.
I create a character, a rogue that I loved back then. The classes in the game are genderlocked, but that doesn’t bother me personally in general. I was positively surprised that there are now significantly more classes than back then and even a kind of premium class.
The shadow priest can only be created if you already have a level 90 character on your account. Too bad, because the shadow priest looked the most interesting.
After logging in, the game recommends a server to me, which I accepted. Last Chaos also asks me if I want to play a tutorial. That’s new too, so I immediately say yes and get teleported to a beginner area.
It was right there that the disappointment about my return began. After my nostalgic joy that the animations still look just as bad as back then and that nothing had changed in the sounds, it became exciting.
Because the tutorial consisted of a handful of quests that couldn’t be worse. First, I have to kill 10 young foxes, then I have to kill 10 foxes. Once accomplished, I can kill 10 young wolves, then 10 wolves, then 10 old wolves. You get the pattern.
After completing this tutorial, I’m about level 10 and return to the city, which, by the way, is still relatively full. The game still feels much more lively than many new games. However, nobody wants to talk to me, which is a shame.
However, it immediately becomes clear that most characters I meet on my way are at an extremely high level. I searched in vain for other low-level noobs like me. A little later, an experienced player also confirmed to me that most users from back then are still there and new players are in short supply, but more on that later.
What is positive, however, is that there are quests galore in the first few hours. Although they are not particularly diverse, they keep me busy. The entire user interface also looks nicer today, and many mechanics have been added over the years.
Relatively early on, I even stumble into my first solo dungeon, where I can fight against a Balrog at the end alongside a bunch of skeletons. At this point, my character is level 16 and the battles are pleasantly challenging. The game, at least at the beginning, is definitely not too easy.
However, over time, the questing and grinding become so monotonous that I really don’t have much to say about it anymore. I accept the same quests over and over again, collect money, which I then have to spend on healing potions. Apart from monster killing, there is simply nothing to do in the low-level area of the game. I ended my excursion into Last Chaos at level 36 after about four hours. I was relatively calm, perhaps a bit disillusioned. The real disappointment followed afterward.
Coming home – to an ugly apartment
However, I didn’t want to leave my excursion to Last Chaos like that. In Guild Wars 2, I recently reconnected with a buddy I had previously adventured with in Last Chaos years ago. He told me that he still actively plays the MMORPG to this day.
For this article, he was kind enough to lend me one of his accounts for about a five-hour gaming session. So I had an opportunity to peek into the endgame of the old MMORPG. The account has a rogue, an elf, and a shadow priest at the maximum level of 190. They are all equipped as perfectly as possible. According to him, this account has about 1,000 hours of playtime.
Finally playing again on a rogue at max level felt for a moment like coming home. However, I soon realized that the memories of the game were much more beautiful than the game itself.
Extensive skill trees, various attribute combinations, and alternative weapons on most characters play absolutely no role in the endgame. The characters he gave me all functioned according to the same pattern: attack speed.
And indeed so much that the animations reached their ridiculous peak. The character made about four attacks in the time of a single attack animation, that just can’t end well. Also, the fact that I could run faster through various buffs than by riding on a mount seems silly.
I thought, okay, perhaps it could be played like that with a rogue. However, the shadow priest, a kind of dark elf magician, would surely throw impressive spells around. Wrong thought. You also play the shadow priest optimally with 1 to 2 control skills and auto-attacks at high speed.
To my great shock, I also had to realize that the PvE endgame of the game has not changed in a whopping 12 years. Not even the location changed. I’m still beating down exactly the same zombies in the exact same pyramid and grinding for better armor. Only now everything is 100 levels higher than before.
Once you’ve assembled the perfect armor, there is simply nothing left to do in PvE. The real endgame is therefore in PvP, which was also confirmed to me by the colleague who lent me the account. However, the PvP of the game only works rudimentarily at best.
There are regular battles for a castle, in which I unfortunately couldn’t participate. These seem to be the highlight of the endgame, according to reports. Otherwise, PvP is limited to open-world player killing and an arena in a city that you can just walk into and then be activated for PvP.
And that’s it. Besides new pets and a handful of new classes, not even new maps or areas have been added. I was not only disillusioned but bitterly disappointed by how little a game can evolve over a decade.
“Basically, the whole game is somehow broken”
After the session in the endgame, I talked for quite some time with Timo, the buddy who lent me the account. Overall, he has many accounts on several servers and has invested well over 10,000 hours into the MMORPG.
He tells me that the game particularly suffers from the fact that there are few to no new players. Also, Last Chaos, like New World at launch, has massive problems with dupers who clone money and items, thus driving the economy in the game into the ground.
Moreover, just two weeks ago, there was a server merger that couldn’t have gone any worse. Because while one server was already economically in ruins, the other server was still holding up well. This inevitably led to all players from the second server suddenly being broke due to the merger.
This is because Gamigo didn’t adjust or balance anything here. While Timo could afford just about everything with 4 billion gold before the transfer, decent endgame items are now worth over 100 billion gold. The community is understandably angry about this approach.
Also questionable is that the new pets, the elephant and the jaguar, were only introduced to the server through the transfer. They only existed previously on one of the two servers. The overall mood is downcast, and many players have thrown in the towel, according to Timo.
Last Chaos also suffers from massive pay-to-win issues. While I was just able to reach level 36 in my four hours, Timo tells me that with knowledge and enough money, one can easily reach level 120 in under 30 minutes. If he really put in the effort, he could reach the maximum level in about two days.
This makes the entire leveling process of the game somewhat irrelevant, which would be okay if PvP could offer enough, but it doesn’t either. The areas where Last Chaos shines for the time, namely leveling and solo dungeons, are thus completely irrelevant in the later game. What a shame.
The memories were nicer, and now they are destroyed
At this point, it’s really hard for me to draw a conclusion, as I had fun in Last Chaos, but for the wrong reasons. As a new player, I can unfortunately not recommend starting in Last Chaos. There are now too many games that do the same thing better.
Moreover, the economy in the game is so destroyed that as a new player you will simply never be able to afford the really good things. In the first hours of play, all my money went for healing potions from the NPC. I could only dream of new weapons.
As a returnee, you have fun with the nostalgia of the title for as long as you can look behind the facade of the leveling process and see how broken everything is afterwards. It’s okay if you want to see how the game looks nowadays, but for me personally, I would have preferred not to take that look.
Because Last Chaos had a good place in my memory. Many positive memories of a game that one had better in mind than it actually is. It’s been too long to claim that the game was better before. Probably it wasn’t. Nevertheless, it felt better in my mind, and that part is now gone.
I regret the excursion into the world of Last Chaos, because I have replaced good memories with negative ones. Although it was fun to be back for a while. The places where I grinded for many hours many years ago feel strangely familiar.
Nonetheless, I must sadly say that this was probably my last excursion into the MMORPG. I wish all players who still enjoy the game to continue to do so, but for me, that’s it. No matter how good it was back then and that I could only dive into the world of MMORPGs because of you – Farewell, Last Chaos. Until we meet again.
